Finding the Democratic message and messenger

Comment by "Low Dudgeon" regarding Tim Ryan:

     "The problem for Tim Ryan is that few have heard of him even though he already ran for President. He never made the grown-up’s table."

Tim Ryan, who???

There is a joke about politicians. Politics is show business for ugly people. 

Tim Ryan isn't ugly. But he doesn't have movie-star good looks, and he isn't mega rich, and he can't shoot three-pointers, and he isn't already famous for doing something in show business. He looks like a normal American married man of 48. He doesn't have charisma. 

I am re-introducing Tim Ryan as a potential future president. He is a long shot. I want to put him on the mental radar of readers. This blog won't make him famous, but if things break right for him, he might win a senatorial election, get noticed, get nationally famous, get popular, then get elected president. It could happen.

He is a ten-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio, a candidate for U.S. senator from Ohio, and he was briefly a candidate for president in 2020. I saw him speak at the New Hampshire Democratic convention. He was one of about 15 candidates, along with the "major" ones, which included Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and the big star of the show, Elizabeth Warren. The crowd went crazy for Warren. Joe Biden also spoke. No one paid any attention to him or to Tim Ryan. Both were also-rans--not at the "grown-up table" of Democratic activist interest. Biden was a has-been. Ryan was a never-heard-of-him wannabe. Why bother paying attention to either of them. And yet, Biden is now president. 

Here are 52 seconds of video of Tim Ryan, giving his core message, that America needs a fiscal policy 

"where we start building things in this country, where we start making things in this country. One of my first acts will be to appoint a Chief Manufacturing Officer. If we want to address climate we need to dominate the industries of the future. . . "

Click here

Maybe Ryan will disappear without a trace. If he loses his senate race in Ohio that would be likely. He would have failed in his "proof of concept" message. Ryan says he understands what really unites Americans--a strong economy with good, family-wage jobs manufacturing things the world needs. Ohio isn't the rustbelt, he insists. It was a hub of manufacturing know-how and infrastructure, and it can be that again. He says his message will win majority votes in America's heartland. If he wins, he will have proved his point.

Here, again, is the photo of Tim Ryan I posted yesterday. 

Zoom meeting

This is how he dressed in a Zoom meeting with large-dollar donors: A tee-shirt or sweat shirt. It is so "un-cool" as to be "cool," because of its defiance of political fundraising norms. Ukraine president Zelensky is charismatic in a tee-shirt. He looks sympathetic and in sync with his countrymen, a David confronting Goliath Putin. Ryan is making a parallel statement. He is Mr. Meat-and-Potatoes. Solid. Unpretentious. Authentic. You must be confident in your "un-cool" authenticity to pull this off. This isn't John Kerry in a duck-hunting outfit; that was laughably phony. People recognize fake working-man-solidarity. I liken it to paying extra to buy ragged jeans with holes in the knees. That is faux authenticity, and it is uncool, especially when one pays extra for designer rags. Ryan is genuinely "uncool," and therefore might in fact become genuinely cool. 

He isn't cool yet. First he must win his Ohio senate race. Then the comments about "big boy table" will stop. All of a sudden Ryan would be re-positioned into a star, a winner. Pundits and activists would suddenly pay attention. They would be deciding whether they preferred Ryan to Kamala Harris. Ryan's victory might mean that the Democratic message--even Harris'--shifts from race relations to jobs for American workers. Democrats have been eroding votes among Black and Hispanic working people, and have already lost them among White blue collar workers. The Democratic message on economic and racial justice isn't working, especially among the people Democrats say they are trying to help. Democrats appear to be slow to notice this reality. The Democratic message is condescending, and the objects of the condescension notice.

Ryan is authentic meat-and-potatoes, so he looks authentic. He projects a new message for Democrats. Working people don't hate the wealthy. They want to be wealthy. We fix Black and Hispanic poverty by getting good jobs for Black and Hispanic working people. They value hard work and want to be well paid when they do it. They aren't a basket case of victimhood. They are Americans.

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Tee-Shirt President.

There is a new look for a president of courage and integrity. 

Tee shirts. 

Ukraine President Zelensky

I do not mean to trivialize the selection of a U.S. president by writing about presidential costuming. Too late. Trivialization has already taken place. 

Donald Trump was a "reality TV" star and tabloid presence who played the role of a decisive CEO and real estate tycoon. Blue suit, white shirt, red tie. He created a brand that gave him credibility as president. Trump's schtick was Mr. Winner. He demolished his enemies. Shave their heads. Say, "You're fired!" Voters liked the schtick in 2016, but had tired of it by 2020.

Had Martin Sheen given political speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2015, saying we needed a president who inspired us, he might have been elected president. After all, we had already seen him on TV in The West Wing, looking like a wise, sensible president.

"President 'Jed' Bartlet"

Americans first need to be able to imagine candidates as president if they are to consider their campaigns. We could do it with Biden. He had put in the time. In the 2020 campaign he was nearly invisible, which made him a generic Democrat, distinguished by not being Trump. As a candidate, that was enough. As president, it isn't.

Biden has a tailwind of events that should be boosting his approval. The economy is booming; unemployment is dropping; COVID is falling away; there is a grave foreign threat. We have inflation because people have money to spend, willing to buy cars well above MSRP. This would normally be enough for Americans to rally around the steady and reassuring voice of a president. Biden struggles with that part of the job. Trump taught Americans to expect bombast and certitude. 

Scenes like this one last month plague Biden: The First Lady holds his hand to guide the president from the stage. 

Democrats write me complaining that I exaggerate Biden's frailty. "It isn't that bad," they tell me. "Writing about it draws attention," they say. I think I see what everyone sees, except loyal Democrats. In the last year of Reagan's presidency everyone saw Reagan's decline--except loyal Republicans. Biden's condition is worse.

Democrats developed a brand reputation as the party led by prosperous, educated, white-collar workers, especially women. The brand has problems once people leave college towns and coastal metropolises. Democrats are thought too "preachy" and "judgmental."  

I believe the Democrat who can "push reset" on the Democratic message is one whose very essence--voice, appearance, biography, and message is fundamentally different. I expect that person to be a red state Democrat because to be successful in a red state means such people would already have distinguished themselves from the national Democratic brand. The candidate likely would have an economic message that rejects global free trade policies that put American workers in direct competition with workers from low wage countries. Such a person won't talk much about culture war issues. He or she won't sound Ivy League. The message won't be about getting race relations right. It will be about getting good, manufacturing, high-wage jobs. What do White, Black, Asians, and Hispanic Americans all want? They want low crime in their neighborhoods and a well-paid job.

Who might such a candidate be? Tim Ryan, Democrat from Ohio, is serving his tenth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is giving up his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate. He is 48 years old. I saw him in a Zoom call for an hour where he spoke with donors. Maybe him. If he wins, he will have a national presence.

Never heard of him? He doesn't look like a president to you? He doesn't sound like one, either. He sounds blue collar. It is time to re-think what a president looks and sounds like. 

Ryan is a tee-shirt Democrat. 

Zoom screen shot

Refugee story

Some immigrants come here for something. Others come to get away from something.

In either case, they bring something.

Immigrants are good for America. We native born Americans create vitality and energy ourselves, of course, but immigrants bring an extra dollop of it. America profits from their entrepreneurial energy. I liken immigrants to fixing a stalled computer by pushing "reset" or re-starting it. For some reason a fresh start fixes whatever was wrong. Immigrants are more appreciative of America's opportunities. My observation at my farm is that they work harder than the rest of us. A lot harder. America is their land of opportunity.

For many it is also an escape from violence and tyranny. My wife's parents escaped from China, back when communist ideological discipline made life dangerous for my wife's father, a newspaper writer. He escaped, then the family followed. My wife came here as an eight-year-old. Geza Tatrallyay also escaped. He was seven.

Geza is a college classmate, although he graduated a year after me since he took a year off to work at Expo 70 in Japan. He writes from home in Vermont, where he spends half the year, or from San Francisco where he hangs out with his daughter and grandsons. He often visits Nairobi to see his son and two granddaughters.

He has an immigrant story. He is a refugee. 


Guest Post by Geza Tatrallyay

Geza Tatrallyay

Sadly, Pax Americana is no more. The world is returning to a previous era of military confrontation, and civilization as we know it is threatened by dictators who only care about personal aggrandizement and riches and are prepared to unleash immense suffering and death on whole populations. Putin is the prize example, but there are others, including one former hopeful one in this country who shall remain nameless.

Of course, I am speaking about Ukraine, but also about what might come after. My heart goes out to the more than a million refugees who left their homeland in the first week of this senseless invasion – the largest movement of people in the shortest time frame the world has ever seen – as well as to all the others. As a seven-year-old, I lived through this, when my family escaped from Stalinist Hungary during the 1956 Revolution: we were caught twice, the third time we were lucky. It was my mother who was the driving force (it is Women’s History Month after all). She would rather risk her and our lives than stay in a country where there was no freedom, and where she saw no opportunity to raise her children and live life in a dignified way. After a brief stay in Austria, we immigrated to Canada, where my parents eked out an existence and ensured happy and successful lives for their children, which is what nurtured their own happiness. They were pleased to see me become on Olympian, graduate from Harvard and as a Rhodes Scholar, from Oxford and LSE, then go on to a career in finance and eventually become an author. I captured this all in my memoir, For the Children—the title encapsulates in three words the refugee rationale. So, I understand what the Ukrainian people staying to fight and those leaving their country are going through.

As it happened, I was involved as a young adult in two other Cold War era escape or defection attempts. First, at Expo 70, the world’s fair in Osaka, Japan in 1970, where I worked in the Ontario Pavilion during a year off from my studies, I was approached by three Czechoslovak hostesses from their pavilion to help them defect to Canada. This is the stuff of my second memoir, The Expo Affair. And at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where I represented Canada as an epée fencer, I helped a Romanian fencer friend defect to Canada and this story is told in The Fencers, my third memoir. 

Amazon

All three books paint heroic true tales of people trying to leave their country of birth, which were then governed by corrupt régimes that relied on terror to subjugate their people. The spying of neighbor upon neighbor is a facet of daily life in these dictatorial states. In all three of the memoirs, the secret police in the employ of the régime are the main bad guys and I work in much of the historical context. In The Fencers, we see first-hand the corrupting mentality these régimes create and nurture—which by the way was evidenced just recently at the Beijing Olympics. To survive, to maintain your lifestyle, to get ahead under a Putinesque dictatorship, Russian athletes—or those who want to do well—have to cheat, do everything just to stay on top, sacrifice all morality. And this explains why the Ukrainians are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the Russians from imposing their will on them again. They have already suffered tremendously under such previous Stalinist dictatorships and do not want this for their children. Rather fight to the death or leave everything behind and start afresh in a country that is still free and democratic.

Vladimir Putin though, unfortunately, will not back down. He is committed to owning Ukraine like his Soviet predecessors did and will destroy it and its people rather than agree to restore some semblance of peace. Even if it means the return to the Stone Ages for Russia. Which it will with the western countries’ necessary response and resolve.

And for western civilization. Because, as the sanctions we impose in support of the Ukrainian people destroy the Russian economy and the wealth of Putin and his cronies, he will at some point turn to a more drastic, perhaps even, nuclear solution. Unless the people around him stop him, but the chances for this are, at best, remote.

Mankind has been lucky to get this far, so let’s hope our fortune continues to hold. We seem to have dodged the pandemic, now we are battling Putin—if we survive the threat he poses, there is always climate change to ensure our demise. So, the future looks grim my friends.

How this ends for Ukraine

Proverb: "God is on the side of the big battalions."

There are several ways this could end. In all of them, Ukraine loses.

Russia's seven-day-plan didn't work out. Ukraine did not fold its poker hand in the face of overwhelming power. It would have been the smart move in poker. When the opponent shows two aces and you have nothing, fold with most of your chips intact and await another deal. Ukraine didn't fold.

Russia is escalating its tactics. Amid the fog of self-interested reports, some things are undeniable. Russian artillery is either firing indiscriminately into cities or targeting residential and civilian structures. In total war, Russia has the winning hand.

40-mile convoy of Russian troops and equipment

Ukraine is making Russia pay a price. Ukraine has the sympathy of the West. Ukraine is adjacent to the West and arguably part of it. It is European, White, and Christian. Ukrainians are witnesses to their victimhood and can upload videos. Their president is popular. They have turned Putin and Russia into pariahs.

It won't be enough. Russia surrounds Ukraine on three sides. it has a much larger army and it is willing to do whatever it takes to win. It is not a question of whether Russia wins this, but when, and how Ukraine loses.

Losing Option 1. Ukraine folds this week. There is reason and morality for this. Ukraine is overmatched. It issued rifles to civilians who stand to get slaughtered--and for what? To extend a hopeless war for an extra day or two? And in the prolonged fighting as troops close in on Kiev, Ukraine's bridges, hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings get destroyed and the people in them are killed. President Zelensky's patriotic nationalism is inspiring, but prolongs a losing war. It is selfish. He knows that. Zelensky, as a matter of conscience, might present himself for arrest to save the lives of his countrymen.

Losing Option 2. Ukraine fights on for another few weeks. The end might be slow. We might witness building-to-building street fighting in Kiev. Zelensky could broadcast brave announcements from a basement bunker. He would be Churchillian: Never give up. Never. Never. Eventually Zelensky will be killed or captured. Either way, he is silenced and removed from the scene. A new government will be installed by the Russians. Ukraine begins adjustment to the new reality. Russia starts a propaganda campaign inside Ukraine with stories about Zelensky's corrupt dealings, his disgusting war crimes, how he was despised by his staff, and how his self-serving heroics cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. They will make him pay for trying to be a hero.

De Gaulle in London

Losing Option 3. Resistance, then Zelensky escapes. Zelensky announces he represents the legitimate government in exile somewhere. Like Charles De Gaulle after the fall of France, Zelensky keeps hope alive with regular broadcasts, cheering the resistance. This means the dream of an independent Ukraine persists, with sabotage, arson, suicide bombings, and snipers harassing the Russian occupying force. It keeps Ukraine in perpetual turmoil. It is an operational and public relations nightmare for Putin, but also a dangerous place to live. Russia establishes a puppet government in Ukraine but it maintains little legitimacy or popular support because Zelensky is a pebble in the Russian shoe. Putin maintains a brutal police state in his new quagmire. 

In all three outcomes Putin promptly establishes a new government that takes direction from Moscow. Ukrainians settle into a life with internal spying and monitoring of suspicious behavior. It will be as heavy or light a yoke as Russia finds necessary. If dissent settles down, it will be a return to a Soviet-era life remembered by people over the age of 40. It is life as experienced in Russia and China today, with strong authoritarian government, and no way for citizens to change it. People survive this. Authoritarian governments are orderly. They can address problems swiftly and decisively. Many people prefer it to the disputatiousness of democracy.

The long view. Option 4. However Ukraine loses, the defeat won't last. Everyone dies. Everything changes. Oligarchs might depose Putin, or an assassin or Putin's prostate cancer might kill him. Technology will change the world economy--Russia's too. The oil trade will change. There might be new wars, perhaps disastrous ones for the world. Time will continue to shuffle the deck. Whatever the political status quo will be for Ukraine at the end of 2022, it will be very different in a generation.

Fog of War.

Putin says he considers Russia and Ukraine to be one country. 

No shock and awe. Yet.

No analogy or extended metaphor is perfect, but something needs explaining. 

Russia is invading Ukraine, but not crushing it, at least as of this morning.  As Putin describes it to the Russian public, this is more an intervention than invasion. After all, Ukraine is part of the Russian family. Ukraine was seduced into the clutches of a malevolent cult, in this case the West, and this is a rescue mission. As of now, we are not seeing massive aerial bombardment that would terrorize Ukraine and destroy its seat of government. Russia has the capacity to do it. Russia had been restrained, measured against what it could do. We were not seeing shock and awe.

That may be changing. We are hearing word of the intentional destruction of Ukraine hospitals and kindergartens. It may be true. Or not. We don't know. The Russian public heard that Ukraine crucified a three year old boy because he spoke Russian. I am skeptical of everything.

Putin outlined his understanding of the greater Russian land and people back in 2005, and he reiterated it in a speech just prior to the invasion. 

Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space. Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians.

Historically Ukraine is the cradle of Moscow-centered Russian civilization. In Putin's view, Ukraine was kidnapped by a suitor whose real intent was damage to Russia. The West, he said, wanted to deprive Russia of its natural borders, and forever burden it with ethnic and cultural incoherence. Putin wrote:

The Ukrainian authorities — I would like to emphasize this — began by building their statehood on the negation of everything that united us. . .. Ukraine itself was placed under external control ... a colony with a puppet regime.

He said the West engineered the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-leaning Ukraine president, who was replaced by European-oriented leaders. Ukraine's government is illegitimate, he tells the Russian people.

Is Putin's description objectively accurate?

Ukraine is a borderland. It is accurate and inaccurate. Some Ukrainians consider their country a sibling with Russia; others a second-cousin forced into a bad marriage. Ukraine's rural peasantry endured genocidal starvation by Stalin's policies.  Obscured by the grotesque inhumanity of Hitler's holocaust was the prior genocide carried out by Stalin. Stalin killed three million Ukrainians for the benefit of Russians elsewhere. Ukrainian farmers' food was confiscated and sold abroad to get the foreign exchange needed to build factories. He literally, intentionally, starved Ukrainians to death. Stalin and Communist Party officials justified it as the cost of creating an urban proletariate necessary to sustain a Communist revolution. A decade later Ukraine citizens fought and died in huge numbers to protect the Soviet Union from Nazi Germany. The history is complicated.

There are 200,000 Russian troops in Ukraine, but we are apparently seeing Ukraine citizen deaths in the many-hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands. Look at this bit of Twitter video. Unarmed Ukrainians mob a vehicle with Russian soldiers. Notice what the armed soldiers did when under attack. They sped away. No one was shot or run over. 

Click

Americans don't know what is true and untrue in Ukraine. That includes this video. What will be unmistakable will be shock and awe against Ukraine, if it comes. 

Guest Post: Putin. Time's Up.

Putin miscalculated. Russia looks bad.

The damage is done.

The invasion of Ukraine is a week old. This won't be a war remembered for its brevity. Today's Guest Post is about Russia's error, but Russia could still "win" and absorb Ukraine, and move the border of Russian control to the West. That is Putin's stated goal. 

Ukraine radio tower hit

Still, this is likely a grave mistake for Putin and for Russia, whatever the military outcome. A conquered Ukraine will likely be a nightmare for them. Loyal citizens are problem enough. Unwilling, angry, conquered ones are far worse. International reputation matters to great powers. They want to trade. They want respect. They want soft power influence. Oil company BP is walking away from its Russian assets rather than be connected to an outlaw state.  Now Exxon as well. Apple stopped selling products there. Even Switzerland is freezing bank assets.

College classmate Sandford Borins is an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto. He studied political science and public administration, with a focus on the narrative stories that people tell themselves and others to understand the world. He has a blog of his own, where this comment was first published yesterday: https://sandfordborins.com  Readers would profit by bookmarking his site. He offers a Canadian perspective, one that is typically absent from a U.S. news diet.

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

Putin. Time's Up.

Whatever the eventual military outcome, the invasion of Ukraine is a disaster for Russia. It has already incurred substantial military losses. If the Russians conquer the Ukrainian cities, the cost of holding them will escalate, with a guerrilla/resistance movement continuing to fight using an abundant supply of arms from the EU and NATO countries. Ukraine will become Russia’s twenty-first century Afghanistan.

Russia will remain an international pariah, subjected to an economic boycott that has frozen much of its foreign exchange reserves and the assets of its oligarchs. Travel between Russia and much of the world has already ceased. Trade with the west is collapsing. Russia’s currency and capital markets will no longer function. Russia and Russians will be excluded from international culture and athletics.

Faced with so much disruption in their daily lives, Russians will not believe the disinformation the regime will disseminate. Widespread access to western media will amplify the message of Russian failure.

Regime Change

Were Russia a democracy, it would now have a moment in its parliament reminiscent of the 1940 confidence debate in the UK, when Tory MP Leo Amery flung at Neville Chamberlain Oliver Cromwell’s words: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

This will not happen in the Duma. Russia is a dictatorship. In a dictatorship, regime change happens by coup d’etat, either peaceful or violent. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s illness led to a power struggle in the politburo. Khrushchev was quietly deposed in 1964 and allowed to retire.

Without expert or better still inside knowledge of power in the Kremlin, one can hardly predict how Putin’s regime will end. Because Putin has centralized power and appears to be acting irrationally, a quiet coup comparable to that which replaced Khrushchev appears unlikely. Perhaps the oligarchs will try to convince Putin to leave quietly. If he is adamant about remaining, they may conspire with dissidents in the government and the military. If Putin wants to bring down the temple around him, those with a greater and wiser love for their country and its future will have to stop him. The rest of world is providing the pressure, but Russians themselves will have to act.

Community at a time of War, Politics, and COVID

     "The public space in our little community is better than any social media."

Today's Guest Post is as earnest and warm as a Hallmark Christmas movie. 

Hallmark movies have a formula. 

Two people, obviously meant for each other, need to resolve whatever problem or misunderstanding keeps them apart. Their romance typically takes place in a small community full of friendly people with institutions and gathering spots that connect people, perhaps a bakery, a small hotel, or a community landmark. We see hugs, talk, smiling faces. Typically the movie ends with a finale gathering of community members in a sing-along or award ceremony of some kind. All the characters appear together, affirming one another. It takes a village. Villages take face-to-face proximity.

Doug Snider

Before COVID protocols were weaponized and made partisan, people of all political persuasions would have agreed that there would be a huge price to pay for social distancing, masks, and closed gathering places. Democrats and the COVID-conscientious frequently felt they needed to deny or minimize the costs of these protocols. They can stop doing so now. Those who want vaccinations are vaccinated. Masks and separation rules seem less relevant. States with Democratic governors are ending them. Red states already have. COVID precautions certainly saved lives--but they divided people and communities. Maybe it was worth it. I think it was. Some say it wasn't.

Doug Snider is a retired architect, now living in a community in the State of Washington I think picturesque enough as a setting for a Hallmark movie. People there are talking, sharing pleasantries, and doing what humans have done since the beginning of time. 

Guest Post by Doug Snider

I appreciated Jeff Golden’s Guest Post about engaging people with whom we disagree. Whether it’s for monetary gain or for a more nefarious purpose, social media and corporate media have done a good job of driving the political poles further apart and infusing the extremes with utter nonsense. Seeking common ground with someone whose political thinking includes Q-anon insanity seems perilous and purposeless. I believe, however, that there is hope for constructive discourse between those on both sides who don’t inhabit the outer fringes. Given the right setting, real conversations can be very conducive to mutual understanding.

When I lived in the Rogue Valley, my outspoken political views sometimes cost me friends and clients. I also gained some friendships which I treasure to this day. I left Medford six years ago and now live in a purple enclave on a very blue Indian reservation in a red agricultural county in the moderately blue state of Washington. Our lives are more directly impacted by the tribal senate than the board of county commissioners. Tribal jurisdiction often supersedes state governance. While not exactly a melting pot, our community has residents from all over the United States and many foreign countries.

Shelter Bay, Washington

It’s a wonderful community where I interact on a daily basis with people who proudly displayed their Trump signs and flags during the last election. We have many things in common to remind us that politics isn’t everything. Shocked as I was to see friends and acquaintances supporting a man I consider irredeemably evil, I can still work with them for the betterment of our small community. This has been a great place to ride out the pandemic because, through all the isolation, we have still been able to meet and exchange pleasantries while out walking or biking. Occasionally those exchanges include political discussions. They are always civil and sometimes surprising.

Sitting on a bench in our little park looking out over the Swinomish Channel one afternoon, my wife and I struck up a conversation with a woman we had never met. She was very willing to talk and we quickly learned that our new friend had fled Czechoslovakia in her teens to escape Soviet oppression. My wife assumed that having escaped Russian domination, this political refugee would not be at all sympathetic to a candidate who curried the favor of Vladimir Putin. Quite to the contrary, she explained that she had voted for Trump because Hilary had lied about Bill Clinton’s infidelity. We have since gotten to know her better and consider her a friend. I must ask her how this week’s events have impacted her.

Doug and Patti Snider

Another of our friends acquired from chance meetings on our daily outings is a delightful flight attendant, our age and now retired due to the pandemic. She is very religious and unashamed to speak about her beliefs. It was easy to assume that she would also be politically conservative. We were very cautious about venturing into anything political for fear of offending her with our liberal views. After the local paper published an op-ed piece I had written to counter a conservative friend’s letter to the editor praising Trump, she opened up to us about how much she detested the Republican candidate. She lamented that she and her daughter were now irreconcilably alienated because of their opposing views on Donald Trump.

To me, the public space in our little community is better than any social media. It reminds me of the way downtown Medford was when I was growing up. There is no substitute for meeting people face to face and getting to know the whole person and a little bit about what shapes their views.