Trump – A View from the Purple Seats

To Convict or Not to Convict – That is the Question

Now that a week has passed since the insurrection at the US Capitol (and there can be no other word for it than that) several members of the House and Senate are trying to once again re-write events and placate the more “moderate” members of Trump’s base by saying now is not the time for trying the sitting President (an embodiment of the dark lord in Harry Potter whose name we do not speak), but rather a time for healing and unity. I partly wonder if they are doing so as they fear the finger pointing will ultimately turn on their own malfeasance or nonfeasance during the period leading up to the events that day.

While I understand the call for unity and healing, the problem with this belief as put forth by ardent supporters of the President, like Jim Jordan of Ohio, and others who urged protesters forward in their charge to the Capital is that by glossing over the events that happened on January 6, 2021, the country will not heal. The wound will scab over, but the infection that is just under the surface will continue to fester and come to a puss filled boil from time to time until it is finally cut from the body and eliminated. If you continue to let it fester, you risk that it will infect other areas and cause irreparable harm to the body… or in this case the body politic.

Believe me I do not think all Trump supporters are like those who stormed the Capitol… most were there to voice their opposition to an election that was lost and that they perhaps even believe was stolen, simply because those leaders they trust say it was stolen. There were those core people like members of the Proud Boys and supremacist groups who saw a kindred spirit with the current President and saw an opportunity to act with impunity. Why? Because we have opted to “unite and heal” time and time again rather than hold his base accountable – after such displays in the past like in Charlottesville a few years ago. Why? Because like their idol, they believed like he does, that based on past history, they could essentially “walk down 5^th Avenue and shoot someone – and nothing would happen to me…” I think most moderate supporters of the President’s policies are appalled by what he and his minions encouraged at their rally. And you are starting to see the repercussions – GOP fundraising has dried up; several corporate donors are asking for their money back from members who voted against the certification of the certified electoral college results.

These people, in addition to Trump and his minions need to pay a price – a dear price. Why? Because while they are elected by a majority of their constituents; when they take the office, they vow to do nothing to knowingly undermine the safety and security of the country. By continuing to support claims that the election was stolen and to regurgitate claims that machines were “switching votes” from Trump to Biden all the while knowing that these claims had been repeatedly refuted was clearly done so to undermine the safety and security of the country.

How can I confidently state that these people knew the claims were false? Because in most if not ALL of the disputed jurisdictions, multiple recounts were had. Even hand recounts were done in most if not all of these jurisdictions. If machines were switching ballots by the thousands, this would have been discovered in the hand recounts – but the hand recounts matched the machine counts – in most instances within 1% of the machine results. There were not millions of cases of dead people voting, or people from out of state voting, or people voting multiple times. There were a few hundred to a few thousand cases from across this country where this happened – and more importantly they happened in favor of Trump as well as in favor of Biden. They may claim they “truly” believed the election was stolen, but these aren’t dumb people (some were clerks to Supreme Court justices) and know fact from folly. I believe they knew the truth but wanted to stay in the good graces of Trump’s base for their future campaigns; knew that they didn’t have the votes to ACTUALLY overturn the results of the election and felt whipping up the crowds in speeches leading up to January 6^th would keep them in good stead, but still allow the outcome to unfold as it should.

So what now? The impeachment needs to continue and 17 brave Republicans need to do the right thing and vote for conviction and then 51 members need to vote to prevent him from ever holding office again. Why? Not because I find his policies repulsive or I am vindictive, but simply because he is the cause of the infection and he needs to be removed from being directly involved in any way, shape, or form involved with governance of this great nation. We need to make sure that he can no longer run for office again in his lifetime and make sure that he does not receive the daily security briefings that former Presidents are entitled to get. I could care less about the $100,000 per year pension or Secret Service protection, but the other two are essential.

In addition, we need to have hearings (public hearings) for what I will call the co-conspirators that helps foment this insurrection and I think punishment including censure and removal and banning from future office may be appropriate. But while I think criminal punishment is necessary for some, I believe we need something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that South Africa had at the end of apartheid is necessary. I think people like Rudy Giuliani, Don, Jr., Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mary Miller, and Mo Brooks need to be held accountable for their conspiratorial and incendiary words and actions. Did many of them think their words would cause the fury that was unleashed on January 6, 2021? Doubtful – but that doesn’t make them any less culpable for the injuries and deaths that resulted. As the conservative Oliver Wendall Holmes indicated so many years ago – there are NO absolute freedoms in this country. Yes, we have a freedom of speech, but that does NOT allow you to cry “Fire” in a crowded theater if there is no fire… nor should it allow you cry fraud nor tell people that they are like “the patriots at Bunker Hill” when you know there is no fraud… just political expediency…

It is time for our leaders to take a lesson from To Kill a Mockingbird and like Scout, learn the difference between thrusting one’s self into the middle of a lynch mob because one doesn’t know what one is doing and standing UP to a lynch mob because one does.

That is my take… take it for what it is worth.

Well… that didn’t go as planned…

In my previous blog… which was from much longer ago than I remember it being… I had mentioned I had done some traveling and had some very interesting conversations with people from all parts of the political spectrum… I knew I had some business travel coming up and I wasn’t going to be able to regularly posting, so I had penned a few posts that I then scheduled to be posted over a certain period of time… or at least I thought I did… only they never posted… I’m guessing I messed something up as I am of the age which I am capable of enough on the computer to be dangerous, but not skilled enough to be proficient.

When I realized what happened… I thought about posting what I had written anyway. But then I re-read the articles, and thought that while still relevant, it was stale – so I deleted them. And since then, I’ve tried to write about several different topics, but then something else seems to pop up on the political front that seems to make what I had done irrelevant or behind the curve, so I deleted it. I guess that is the problems of the politics by Twitter.

So I will be working to post a few things in the upcoming days… but I make no promises since last time it didn’t go as I had planned.

A different perspective

As I mentioned in my last post, I was traveling quite a bit over the eastern seaboard over the last few weeks. I had the opportunity to talk to quite a diverse group of folks along the way… ranging from “conservative” corporate, to “rural conservative,” to “liberal progressive.” Ranging from the Carolinas, to the back door of Charlottesville, to upper New England.

As I also mentioned, during this time we had two shake-ups of Trumps inner circle, we had the Charlottesville situation, the bluster with North Korea, and at the very tail end, the attacks in Barcelona and Finland.

In the course of my travels, I saw the people in “rural” Virginia as the most tied to their beliefs. The “Corporate conservatives” in the Carolinas were supporting the administration only so far as they thought he’d improve the life of corporate America. They wanted tax breaks, health care reform (but not repeal), and reduced regulation. At the time, there was the sabre rattling with North Korea going on. The reaction I got regarding the Administration’s reactions to this was “He’s f***ing insane and Korea is as bad.” They didn’t think anything would happen, but they didn’t really trust Trump to act in a sane and rational manner either. These are the people who, when the recent poll numbers came out, were the ones who were showing Trump’s approval rating slipping. But they will support whomever they feel will provide them with the financial incentives that they need to profit.

I was most intrigued by the conversations I had in the “rural” Virginia area. As I arrived into the area, I can’t say I was surprised by the number of Trump supportive signs I saw, but I was intrigued, as this was an area that Trump won handily, but also seemingly hasn’t “produced” in any of the campaign promises that he had made in this area. The loyalty to the President’s campaign message surprised me a little. I was expecting some frustration on the lack of delivery of the promise. And I did get that… but it wasn’t geared towards the President… but at Congress… and specifically at the Republican leadership – more so on the Senate side than the House side. The feeling I got was that they were torn on the healthcare situation… The don’t like Obamacare – because for the most part their rates have gone up – and in some situation by a big percentage. But they seemed to acknowledge that this wasn’t the case everywhere. Most felt the ACA was broken, but really didn’t need to be repealed and replaced… but needed a major overhaul. Oddly, indirectly blamed people like me, who owned the own businesses and offered their employees “private” insurance for a lot of the problem for pulling the “healthy people” out of the ACA pool. I have to admit I was surprised a little by the nuance understanding of the issues, but also by the implication… they wanted EVERYONE to be in the same boat… so they wanted a single pool of people, but they definitely didn’t want a single-payer system. While intrigued – I have yet been able to reconcile the divergent aspects of this view.

What struck me most about my conversations, was that these people felt that the President, if left to his own devices, could lead America to a better place. They were loyal to his vision of making “America Great Again.” They saw him thwarted by the “establishment” and by his own Cabinet. When I talked to the about what specifically they looked for, their response was telling… Most were people working two or more jobs every day… seven days a week… many had more than three part-time jobs just to make ends meet. They relied on minimum wage jobs and tips to get them through… more often than not putting away for a vacation so their children wouldn’t know how tough thing were…

They did not say the President was infallible… just the opposite, they thought he was his own worst enemy, but they have grown over the last several years to feel that they were no longer the recipient of the American Dream… but just a cog in someone else’s dream. They repeatedly said that Trump talked about their concerns and that was why they supported him.

At this same time, the situation in Charlottesville occurred. In the South, pride in their heritage is very important. However, everyone I talked to said that this wasn’t about heritage, but rather the “alt-right” taking advantage of the situation and capitalizing on the situation. Many felt torn over the statutes. They felt that in many ways the statues were a point of pride in a very difficult period of American history, but in the same breath, they acknowledged that most of these statutes did not go up during or immediately following the Civil War, but 50+ years later during a period what many states were trying to limit the enfranchisement of the vote for former slaves’ descendants.

As I traveled north, I met with an increasingly liberal/progressive mentality… admittedly, the median age also dropped to the early 20’s so that people were just dealing with having to find jobs, pay rent, and come to grips with student loans. Not surprisingly, they didn’t feel that the current administration had any of their interest in mind, but only focused on those who had already “made it.

Interestingly, not once did I hear anything about immigration… at least not in a negative light. The consistent message heard was, keep the one’s who want to work hard and contribute here, but send the “moochers” home. All political spectrums seemed to see the benefit of an immigrant class, but fell short of an open border policy.

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles… Almost

It has been a while since I have posted anything… I knew I’d be sporadic at times, but hoped to be a little more consistent… However, in this instance it was a combination of factors – I have been traveling a lot, which wasn’t really conducive to doing this; and when I did have time, the events on the news seemed to supersede what I was thinking of writing about – and I wanted to get my head around the events rather than giving some knee jerk reaction.

As I mentioned, I have been on the road quite a bit since I last posted. I think I’ve gotten to sleep in my own bed maybe 10 times in the last 6 weeks. It wasn’t all work, but it kind of takes you out of your routine… The good part was I was able to travel around a lot of areas of the country I don’t normally travel to, and got to meet a lot of very nice and interesting people and got to casually talk about how life is treating them.

When I’m on the road, I like to talk to people, I wouldn’t say I’m naturally outgoing, but I may strike up a conversation or two along the way… and while I won’t bring up politics directly, you can get a sense of how people think about things from the conversations you have, and sometimes, if they want to talk about issues, I am more than happy to listen to them. Why? Because I know that, to some degree, I live in a cocoon – we all do. We have our families, our work, our friends, and that limits your perspective to what is right around you – even if you try, like I do, to read news sources and blogs and posts from all sorts of different perspectives to “try to get the big picture.” But it isn’t the big picture – the big picture is meeting the people who’s lives are so 180 degrees from what you live and listening to what they are going through… what they are looking for from the world.

Can it take you out of your comfort zone? To a degree it does – but I guess it depends on what your comfort zone is? And that, in my opinion is the main problem with the political landscape today… is that everything is so “canned.” Town Hall meetings aren’t a real cross-section of they politician’s district. For the most part, it is the people who can be organized around a single issue to attend by one organization or another that usually represents one extreme or the other on an issue. Most of the people in a politician’s district don’t have the time, or the ability to attend these meetings for any number of reasons. So the politicians get a skewed view of the world… and the further up in politics you go, the more isolated your view becomes; because the more “staged” the events have to be, either for political reasons… or simply for security reasons – you don’t have to look further than the Gabby Giffords shooting a few years back, or the shooting of the Republican members of the Congressional baseball team at their practice a couple of months ago.

But enough of that tangent. During my travels, I was in very corporate “conservative” territory, to very rural conservative territory, to very liberal “progressive” territories, mainly along the east coast. And it was interesting to listen to what the people had to say. I found the people in the rural region the most interesting, and most eye-opening. As I traveled the following things were going on: the President shook up his staff; the North Korea situation was heating up (and seemingly faded from the front pages); the Charlottesville situation erupted; and as the President again shook up his inner circle. So there were quite a lot of topics to have conversations about – and in the next posting, I will share some of my musings on those discussions…

Until then… take care and be safe.

Welcome

Welcome. This is my first post… on my first blog. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this blog, or any of my posts, but I felt it necessary to put it out there.

Why? Because I feel that what we hear on TV is not what really represents America anymore. Unfortunately, in today’s age we hear policy being made by sound bites, not by reasoned analysis. We have too many politicians on TV who are from both sides of the aisle with the mentality of “if you are not with us, you are against us.”

I watched John McCain’s speech on the floor yesterday upon his return to the Senate and agreed with his passion for America. Yet, even with that passion for a return to normalcy… he voted to allow the debate on the repeal of the ACA to continue… Why?

I think in the six months of our current presidency, I have witnessed the Vice President be the tie-breaking vote in more votes than I can ever remember… Why?… Because our political parties aren’t doing what they are charged to do… To represent America. The leaders of each party, which unfortunately, the ones we hear on TV and radio, and social media, are more focused on getting on the news than doing what is best for America. Don’t get me wrong – the VAST majority of people who serve in the House and the Senate are there for the right reasons… they want to help their constituents… they want to make things better… but they also know if they buck the system – the bills they WANT to get passed, won’t get passed. So they cut their deals. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but when you do NOTHING but vote party lines, you aren’t listening to your people.

I travel a good bit with my job… I get to interact with a lot of great people all across America. From all spectrums of our country – white collar/blue collar, executives/factory workers, high school drop-outs to PhDs, immigrants to “Daughters of the Revolution.” I try not to talk too much, but to listen… and the one thing I hear is that we can’t be categorized as red or blue… America is purple. I have not met a single person yet that was totally Republican or totally Democratic – when prodded, they will show signs sympathy with the “other party.”

For now, this page will remain anonymous… as I want it to be voice of all of us. Or at least what I think I hear as the view of all of us. I will cover different topics… and things that are in the news… and even how I see other countries look at what we do.

If I do this right, some of you will sit there and scream – “This person is a liberal.” Other times, you will scream – “They are conservative.” And you are both right… I am liberal… I am conservative… I AM AMERICA…

Thank you for checking out the page and hope you find it intriguing… and welcome to a view for the purple seats… I hope you come back again.