With the election of Joe Biden as the next President, the right-wing scare-mongers have revved up their rants about how the “ultra-liberal” Democrats are going to impose “socialist” measures of all sorts on the United States.

Even if, unlikely as it is, the Democrats win both Georgia Senate seats, they’ll only have a one vote edge in the Senate and that includes two independents, one of whom is Angus King, who left the Democratic Party almost thirty years ago because it had become too liberal. Add to that Joe Manchin, who has consistently opposed almost all “liberal” Democratic positions.

Any legislation that has a chance of passing the next Congress is going to have to have bipartisan support in the Senate or be a small and incremental improvement on existing programs and laws. In addition, as President, Joe Biden will be limited in creating new initiatives through Executive Orders.

Trump was successful largely because the vast majority of his successes lay in destroying or limiting existing programs. While Biden could restore some environmental regulations, he will be very limited in creating new programs without Congressional approval, and he’s not going to get approval of anything even remotely close to what the right-wing scare-mongers are claiming and projecting.

Some of what he may be able to get is a statutory ban on using pre-existing medical conditions to deny health care insurance or to require higher premiums for such insurance. It’s conceivable he might be able to get an increase in the federal minimum wage, but is it all that radical to push for a minimum wage that’s higher that the present one – which is set at 60% of the poverty level? He might also be able to reinstate some air pollution regulations rolled back by Trump, which would be helpful in allowing people to breathe without greater damage to their lungs.

But there won’t be any “Green New Deal” or “Medicare for Everyone,” no matter what the scare-mongers claim. Even getting improvements in the Affordable Care Act, beyond a ban on pre-existing conditions, will be difficult.

The votes just aren’t there, just as the votes weren’t there for Trump to be reelected, but that apparently doesn’t matter to the far right, which is, again, busy creating an alternate political reality, rather than trying to fix the one we have…and the one in which all of us, including Trump, will have to live.

There are always scams and scammers, but one of the scams that’s taken off this year is one that, I have to say, really burns me, for several reasons. It’s not a scam that I would have guessed to be one of the “hot” scams of the season, but the fact that it is makes a very sad sort of sense.

What am I talking about? Puppy scams!

When we thought about getting another dog, we discovered that the internet is filled with fraudulent sites claiming to be reputable breeders/sellers, sites filled with pictures of adorable puppies. There’s also a site that deals with listing fraudulent sites called Petscam, and the numbers of such fraudulent sites are staggering. Because we have a fondness for dachshunds, I checked out the listing of fraudulent dachshund sites, and there were close to two hundred listed over the past two years [if I counted correctly]… just for dachshunds.

I checked out several of those sites, and while the pictures show healthy adorable puppies, the sites I looked at were short on specifics, such as addresses, references and other details that could be checked, and offered pure-bred dachshunds at well under the going rate [purebred dachshunds aren’t cheap!]. They also offer unnamed, nonexistent, and inexpensive “pet courier” services. Having had to transport a dog in the past, I certainly couldn’t find any courier that was reputable and inexpensive, and I suspect it’s even harder today.

Why are puppy scams up? I’d guess it’s because people are lonely, both children and adults. It’s been a long isolating year for most people, and puppies aren’t under quarantine. In addition, dogs are loyal at a time when loyalties have been strained for many people.

The internet has made scamming almost risk-free for scammers, and scammers always go for those who are vulnerable. Still, understandable as it may be why puppy scams are flourishing, and given that all scammers are lowlifes, I can’t find those who are engaging in this kind of scam anything but particularly despicable.

One of the cries of the left, not just the far left, unfortunately, has been a clamor for “free” college educations and even a forgiving of college-incurred debt. As someone who has raised college-educated offspring, who has taught on the collegiate level, and who is married to a university professor, I’m strongly opposed to both.

Why?

Because it would not only be a tremendous waste of money and resources, but because it would be absolutely the wrong thing to do. Obviously, I believe that a college education is valuable, but it’s not valuable to everyone. I also believe that while a college education should not be a blanket right, it should not be denied to anyone on the basis of race, color, creed, or economic background.

Unhappily, far too many incoming college students are not only lacking in basic skills, but also don’t know how to work intellectually, don’t want to do the hard work necessary to learn higher level skills, and don’t seem to want to learn anything that doesn’t interest them. But university administrations seem determined to increase their numbers, rather than to increase the quality of the education provided. Rather than flunking out the uninterested and the lazy, the pressure mounts on faculty, especially at public institutions, to provide watered-down “edutainment.”

This emphasis deprives the better and more motivated students of the best education that they could have while saddling those merely “processed” through the system with debts that they cannot pay and a pricey and close to useless “credential.” The result of doing this for the last fifty years has been degree inflation, so that additional education at additional cost is required in many fields as more of a “screening tool” than for work-related requirements.

Now, a college degree has become the panacea for economic inequality and the optimal way to assure a “better” life for one’s children. For the fortunate, highly intelligent, and well-connected, it usually is, but not always. Given the skyrocketing cost of higher education, and the even higher cost of graduate degrees such as law and medicine, the inexorable result is that as many as half of those graduates are so burdened by debt that they can barely make ends meet… and that’s without house payments or the cost of having children.

The political reaction is to forgive all that debt. Unfortunately, that will ensure the continuation of creating more graduates who cannot find jobs in their field of study. It will also increase the federal debt, which is fast reaching unsustainable levels, unless taxes are increased. While those on the left claim that higher real incomes of those graduates will contribute to higher tax revenues, that assumption rests on such jobs being continually created… and that’s highly unlikely.

As I’ve noted previously, the United States is producing roughly twice as many college graduates annually as there are jobs for them. The scientist and historian Peter Turchin terms this the “overproduction of elites” and has pointed out that such “overproduction” over history has always led to severe societal unrest, if not worse, as in the case of the French and Russian revolutions, because, in time, a significant number of those who view themselves as elites but who do not get elite jobs and income reject the “system” and enlist the help of the economically disenfranchised to attack the elites. In a sense, that was the whole message of the Trump presidency, beginning with Trump himself, who has always felt that the “elite of the elites” minimized him.

Over time, college can’t be for everyone. The question that needs to be asked isn’t how everyone can go to college, but who should attend, and for what reason, because assuming that everyone can and should go is an expensive proposition that isn’t working and that will become more unworkable every year.

What Democrats – and everyone else besides Republicans – fail to understand is that Republicans are opposed to any real improvement in government or the condition of anyone, including themselves. They don’t even like the status quo; it’s too “progressive” for them.

They’ve cheered every time that Trump rolled back environmental protections. They cheered when the Supreme Court declared that unlimited money could speak in elections, the way it did in the time of the Robber Barons of the 1890s. They initially even opposed the removal of lead from gasoline and warnings on the carcinogenic effects of tobacco. They opposed the clean-up of hazardous waste sites. They’ve consistently tried to minimize the voting rights of pretty much everyone but white males. They’ve opposed giving women equal rights to men under law. They’ve opposed affordable health care and worked to remove the prohibition on charging more or refusing health care coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions. Now, it even appears that Republicans even oppose fair elections, or at least any fair election that they don’t win.

The list of what Republicans oppose is almost endless. At present, I can’t think of a single positive measure that Republicans have seriously proposed in recent years.

What this means is that there likely won’t be any legislative compromises in the coming session of Congress. That’s because stopping any forward movement on almost anything is viewed as a victory by Republicans. The notable exception is tax cuts, because any tax cut limits federal spending and puts money in their pockets.

Unless the Democrats win both seats in the Georgia Senate run-off elections, Mitch McConnell will halt virtually all legislation that might benefit poor working Americans, and he and most Republicans will see that as a victory.

They aren’t looking forward to creating a better United States; they’re looking backward to an America that never was… and close to half of the United States agrees with them.

There’s been much talk about the President not facing reality… and that’s obvious… and unfortunate. It’s already led to street violence between Biden supporters and Trump partisans who can’t and won’t accept the fact that Trump lost in a free and fair election. Trump is fomenting the illusion that the election was stolen because that illusion preserves his power. No great surprise there.

But there’s another illusion, one less obvious, that could prove far more dangerous over the years to come… that’s the failure of the Democratic Party to understand that, in all practical terms, it lost the election of 2020, if narrowly.

In an election where the Republican Party ticket was headed by a lying, crooked, misogynistic racist, who mishandled the greatest pandemic in a century, and whose mishandling resulted in enormous economic damage to the entire country and especially to the poorest segments of society, the Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives, and so far have failed to gain enough seats to capture control of the Senate (despite the fact that 23 Republican Senators were up for re-election and only 12 Democrat Senate seats were on the ballot). Democrats also lost ground overall in state-level elections.

If this was the best the Democrats could do against a ticket headed by Donald Trump, unless the Democratic Party does a complete overhaul of its strategy and messaging, the 2022 mid-term election will be a disaster for Democrats. Some perceptive Democrats have already voiced that concern, but the loud voices of the “progressive” wing of the party seem to be prevailing for the moment.

One well-known and progressive F&SF writer has publicly opposed the idea that “‘defund the police’ should be called something else.” That author goes on to say, “This argument is the same tactic that misogynists use re feminism and racists re BLM, derailing conversations on substance into pedantic nonsense about the name.”

Frankly, while I respect the author and that author’s work, the comment misses the point that any author should know. Words and labels matter. People are overwhelmingly in favor of the “Affordable Care Act,” but a majority oppose “Obamacare.” And too many don’t know that the two are exactly the same thing.

The columnist and author Carl Bernstein [one of the two who uncovered the Watergate conspiracy that ended the Nixon Presidency] has observed that Donald Trump has ignited the “civil cold war” into a hot civil war. And in war, labels become “truths” even when they’re not true at all.

James Clyburn, the black U.S. Congressman whose endorsement ignited Joe Biden’s candidacy has said, “Make headway, not headlines.” And he’s right. When rhetoric gets in the way of accomplishment, it’s time to ditch the rhetoric.

Several others have claimed that progressive Democrats won, while centrist Democrats lost. That’s not quite accurate. Progressive Democrats won progressively inclined districts; they lost ground in less progressive districts. To obtain enough power to change things, they need to win both.

Whether Democrats really understand this or will do anything about it remains to be seen.

Joe Biden got a personal mandate to do his best to unite the country, but the voters delivered a very different message to the Democratic Party. Voters don’t want radical change, and they especially don’t like radical rhetoric. They didn’t like Trump’s inflammatory statements, and they didn’t like what they heard from the far left of the Democratic Party, and what they did hear resulted in losses in the U. S. House and the squandering of an opportunity to flip the Senate.

Now, I just heard a newly elected Democrat Congressman dispute that, saying that the progressive movement elected Joe Biden and that candidates should be free to choose the message that galvanizes their own voters. I agree with the second point, as well as the fact that Biden wouldn’t have been elected without progressive votes, but what the Congressman ignores is that Biden also couldn’t have won with just progressive votes. He also said that he didn’t see how such slogans would matter in other districts. There… I disagree. Given today’s communications systems, Republicans and Democrats alike have taken words and slogans from anywhere in the U.S. and weaponized them. The Republicans were far more effective… and used lies effectively to make people see red, literally and figuratively.

What Democrats need to do is to craft their message in ways that don’t do that to their opponents while still maintaining their goals and positions. As I’ve written more than a few times before, Democrats are too often totally tone-deaf in choosing their slogans and rhetoric. They pick or adopt phrases and terms that, while they resonate within their own groups, absolutely alienate the majority of the body politic.

“Defund the Police” is an example. First, the very words frighten most whites and many others, while unnecessarily angering most police officers. Second, those words misstate the aim of the movement. What those behind the movement want is not to reduce policing, but to reduce bad policing and police brutality, to incorporate better community relations, to develop better strategies and tactics for avoiding confrontation, to develop expertise in dealing with individuals with mental problems [rather than immediately shooting them]… in short, to improve policing so that police force is a last resort rather than the immediate option. But no one simply wanted to rally behind “Improve Policing!”

A second area is health care. Millions of people need affordable healthcare, but right now, government healthcare replacing private insurance isn’t going to fly economically, politically, or practically, and endorsing it raises the spectre of “socialized medicine,” a spectre that a number of Democrat politicians have said cost the party seats in the House and Senate. It also fails to address the real problems, which include the sky-high cost of healthcare itself, the lack of adequate healthcare at all in too many rural and inner city areas, and the high cost of medical education, which forces doctors out of lower-paying medical practices such as in rural areas, or in family/general practice. Making healthcare insurance cheaper and expanding availability while not addressing costs is a recipe for disaster.

Taxes are another area where the Democrats blew it. Raising taxes in any form and on anyone just doesn’t resonate well with most of the electorate, besides which, the tax rates themselves aren’t the real problem and increasing them won’t raise that much money, not without other reforms. The problem is all the special treatments in the tax code. Non-renewable resources can get up to a fifteen percent “depletion” allowance – effectively reducing taxable income by fifteen percent. That’s a subsidy pure and simple, and the tax code is filled with such subsidies. That’s one of the principal reasons why companies and millionaires often don’t pay taxes. Merely increasing tax rates on high earners is likely to be a cosmetic measure that won’t do much at all to increase tax revenues from billionaires, or corporations, but which will scare everyone else.

The Green New Deal and a confused message on energy and environmental issues definitely hurt the Democrats in energy-producing regions… and it was unnecessary. All they had to do was to press for economically-efficient clean energy… and insist that fossil fuels meet clean air standards – which is all they’d ever be able to get out of Congress anyway… if that. But the “progressives” pushed hard for the “Green New Deal” and that alone hurt the Democrats badly in Texas and in other energy-producing areas.

As I’ve also written before, the Democrats need to gain power before they start pressing for radical change. Pressing for such change without power is a sure way to assure that you don’t get power in the Congress, where all changes in law have to occur – and so far they don’t have that power, and likely won’t get it, even if they manage to win both run-off elections in Georgia.

While replacing Trump will improve a great many things, what it won’t do is improve the laws. For that, you need control of both House and Senate, which is looking highly unlikely. And if the Democrats don’t stay focused and united, matters will get even worse… both for the party and the country.

To begin with, stop trying to thwart the will of the electorate. While Donald Trump certainly has the legal “right” to lie [so long as it’s not under oath], to create frivolous lawsuits, and to keep the incoming Administration in the dark for as long as possible, that doesn’t make it right, and it’s certainly not good for the country…and you don’t have to go along with it.

But then, much of what the Republican Party has done in this election hasn’t been good for the country. You’ve whipped up the old-line conservatives, the misogynists, the ultra-conservatives, the rednecks, and the non-college-educated white males into a rage with lies about what the Democrats haven’t done, won’t do, and can’t do. That was enough to trim the Democrat majority in the House and will likely retain your hold on the Senate.

Now you’re pandering to a lying, narcissistic, bullying crook by supporting unsupported charges of non-existent voting fraud, an effort which strongly appears to resemble an attempted coup at worst and delaying and attempting to undermine the transition to a new Administration at best.

All this is, of course, a culmination of the past four years, where the majority of Republican accomplishments were largely destructive, based on an unthinking visceral attempt to gut anything accomplished by the previous administration, regardless of the impact on the country, the economy, public health, or the environment. So far as I can determine, the majority of the positive Republican “accomplishments” in the past four years consisted of a tax bill that provided small tax cuts to most Americans and enormous tax cuts to the wealthy and a modest criminal justice reform bill.

The trade war with China hurt U.S. farmers more than it punished China; China just bought soybeans and other crops elsewhere. The costs of parts and components manufactured in China went up, and so did the prices of U.S. products incorporating them. Despite promising a better health care plan for four years, no plan was ever even drafted. Being against masks and not taking Covid-19 seriously for most of the past year showed a total lack of positive leadership, with the possible exception of speeding up the development of a vaccine. The “deregulation” effort increased air and water pollution and added to the U.S. contribution to global warming. The great Trump wall largely consisted of rebuilding existing barriers and was funded, likely illegally in part, by shifting federal funds Congress allocated to other uses, while the most notable feature of immigration efforts was to rip infants and children from their parents.

Foreign policy, if it can be called that, consisted of being friendly to dictators and other authoritarian governments, while attacking and/or minimizing long-time allies, and, of course, steadfastly refusing to condemn Russian interference in U.S. elections.

And to top it all off, most elected and appointed Republicans in Washington have now demonstrated that they’re largely Donald Trump’s bitches, with neither the guts nor the decency to stand up for democracy and for a peaceful transition of power to a new president.

Is that the kind of legacy and reputation you want?

Donald Trump won’t be president for the next four years, but I don’t see him going way. And Trumpism won’t vanish, even if Trump did. A good reason for that is because Trump effectively personified the anger and resentment of a large segment of the population, and they saw him as their voice against a society they believed had ignored them.

Over 70 million people voted for a lying, narcissistic, marginally competent at best, and totally corrupt incumbent president. One exit poll I saw showed that 85% of his supporters voted for him because of his stand on the issues.

They like the fact that he started a trade war with China, despite the fact that it meant the U.S. government had to provide massive subsidies to U.S. farmers. They like his stand on immigration, despite his stealing money from other programs to build an almost useless wall and despite the absolute cruelty with which his immigration policies were carried out. They either like his racist stands or those stands don’t bother his supporters. They want more coal mining jobs, despite the fact that those jobs will eventually lead to the early death of most miners and that the use of coal-fired power plants make it harder for millions of Americans to breathe. They support the existing structure of police forces despite a police culture that too often relies on brutality, especially against minorities. They like efforts to reduce the voting power of minorities. And most of all, they like his brash attacks on the “liberal” and “elite establishment.”

Now… most of his supporters won’t admit to supporting those specific policies, but there’s no secret about what his stands are on any of those issues… and 70 million angry people voted for him. Some will claim that his supporters are only angry because he lost. That’s bullshit. They were angry before this election. That’s why they voted for him in 2016.

They have reasons for their anger. All across the United States, rural communities are suffering, and many are dying. The income, standard of living, and lifespans of white, non-college-educated American men have dropped over the last thirty years. They don’t like it, and they blame the government and “the establishment.” Many of them also blame women, particularly educated and powerful women.

Because of the cost of environmental regulations, many “dirty” industries went off-shore, and those that didn’t either went high-tech and automated or closed up. The men – and they were largely men – who lost jobs blame the environmentalists and federal environmental regulations. To them, clean air and water come second to having a good paying job. Balanced eco-systems just mean greater chance of failure to farmers and cattle ranchers.

I even know a fair number of writers who violently opposed the Democratic ticket. They equate Democrat proposals with authoritarian dictatorship. I also know more than a few educators and business people who feel the same way, and for all of those people, Trump’s abysmal personal characteristics are secondary to their fear of what they see as the excessively prescriptive and over-regulated nanny state.

So…for these reasons, and quite a few others, Trumpism isn’t going away any time soon, and, if the coming Biden administration doesn’t act to defuse at least some of that anger with specific policies and programs, the 2024 election could revert to one like 2016.

As I was plodding through my editor’s comments on the manuscript she’d returned to me for revision, I couldn’t help but think about those comments in regard to those who might read the book, and it got me to thinking about books and readers in another light.

Certainly, people read fiction for different reasons, but primarily for escape or enjoyment, I’d guess, unless they’re critics, editors, reviewers, or agents… or possibly other writers. I read some books primarily to find out about how that author writes, and I may enjoy or escape into them, but that wasn’t why I picked up those books or loaded them onto my Kindle.

But those are reasons why, and whatever the reason why might be, it doesn’t address how individuals actually read. Does an individual attack the book as though the book represented a track to be sprinted through to get to the end as fast as possible? Or does a reader approach it like a snack, reading it a bit at a time as if between meals, just for a taste at any one time? Or does a reader sink into the book, enjoying every word and phrase, letting the book carry him or her along, not worrying about the pace? Or is the reader an analyst, trying to figure out what’s going to happen, why the author did or didn’t do something, pouncing on every typo as an indication of someone’s fault? Or perhaps the reader’s the type who seeks action or significant revelation every few pages.

Now, obviously, most readers have a bit of all of the “types” I’ve listed, as well as other reading preferences and characteristics, but I’d guess that in every reader, one of those “types” predominates more than others, sometimes varying by their mood and the book they’re reading.

But when a writer does something different, such as adopting more intricate internal structures and more measured pacing, readers who are used to something sparer or faster-paced often get angry or claim such a book is a failure, even when it’s well-written. The same often happens if a thriller writer attempts something more measured and detailed. That’s one reason why the traditional publishers often insist that authors adopt a different pen name for work that’s more than marginally different.

Readers aren’t all the same, and even the same reader can read in different ways depending on many factors. Yet some publishers – and even some readers – seem to think that writers should deliver every book the same way. I’m very fortunate my publisher isn’t one of them.

Those are the basis of Trump’s campaign, but what lies behind the rock-hard support of his strongest supporters is even uglier. Trump’s character and appeal rest on an authoritarian personality manifested by hatred and condescension toward minorities, women, and immigrants, compounded by a belief that no method is too base to be used for his benefit, an absolute assertion that might, whether legal or illegal, makes right, and that no one should question the Great God Trump.

Trump supporters will deny this. They’re lying as much as he is, and that’s saying a lot. Those supporters are, for the most part, throw-backs to a time that never was. They think that the fifties were the glory days of American democracy, when women, people of color, and immigrants knew their place – well below imperial white males, but they refuse to remember that was also when factories belched out so much pollution that people couldn’t breathe and filled the waters with so many chemicals that rivers caught fire and that even bottom feeding fish couldn’t survive.

It was also a time when American policy was to suppress popularly elected governments in other lands, if there was any suspicion whatsoever that such a government might infringe the profits and powers of U.S. multinationals, and a time when nuclear weapons tests spread radiation across the entire U.S. southwest, leading to thousands of “downwinder” cancer deaths, if not more. It was a time when unrestricted and unregulated coal mining poisoned the lungs of hundreds of thousands of miners who would later die or be crippled by black lung disease. It was the time when leaded gasoline dumped thousands of tons of lead particles on inner cities, causing massive health problems, including stunting children’s growth, mentally and physically.

Anyone who supports Trump, no matter what their professed rationale, is in effect supporting a government based on hatred, lies and misinformation, a government that has taken step after step to restrict the votes of people of color, a government that systematically devalues women, and, which, if returned to office, will continue along that path.

Make no mistake about it. If you vote for Trump, that is what you support.

I’ve written science fiction and fantasy professionally for slightly more than 47 years, and if I’d put some of what has been in the news in recent days and weeks, any editor I’ve ever had would have said, “That’s not believable. Not even close.” Or words to that effect.

We have a President telling a rally that Californians wear special masks that they can’t take off even when they’re eating.

Friends and neighbors are claiming that the requirement for protective masks to curb the spread of a virus are instruments of oppression and tyranny. I mean, cloth or surgical masks aren’t anywhere like tools of torture.

The acting head of Utah public health lifted the mask requirement for Iron County because the rise in cases has only been 20%, as opposed to the record numbers of cases and hospitalization in adjoining counties.

Right-wing militia members plotted to kidnap and execute a female governor for enforcing public health measures. When Trump condemned the governor’s public health measures at a campaign rally, the audience responded by chanting “Lock her up!”, to which Trump replied,”Lock ’em all up.”

The President is claiming that the country has “turned the corner” and heading in the right direction as case numbers and hospitalizations are reaching new highs in many places and increasing in 41 of the 50 states. What’s even stranger is that huge numbers of people believe him.

The same President is claiming that children ripped from their parents arms are being treated “so well.”

And that in the steepest economic decline in ninety years that United States has had the best economy ever under him.

Or that he holds international meetings in his own luxury hotel chain and bills the government, in fact, overcharging the government – three dollars for every glass of water, for example.

He continues to insist at his rallies that Mexico is paying for his wall, but every dollar has come from U.S. taxpayers, often shifted from other federal programs.

He claims that five foreign auto makers are building new manufacturing plants in the U.S. when no plants have been even announced, let alone built.

Interestingly enough, Trump offers the most lies the most often in forums and media where they can’t refuted as the lies they are or can’t easily be refuted, just like an evil genius would in a F&SF book… except a fictional book based on Trump couldn’t ever have been published except as a farce – at least until now – because editors would have rejected it for being too improbable.

There are two common definitions of “liberty”: (1) the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views and (2) the power or scope to act as one pleases.

For the most part, the political party railing about “liberty” these days tends to be the Republican Party. In my part of the country, as well as elsewhere, they find masks and social distancing “tyranny” and “oppressive.” Most refuse to wear masks except when absolutely required, because they want the liberty not to be inconvenienced and, in effect, the liberty to infect others.

But this desire for “liberty” is only for their liberty.

What I find both ironic and hypocritical is that they support oppression and restriction in a considerable number of areas. They want to dictate what a woman can and can’t do with her own body, even what forms of birth control her insurance, whether private or Medicaid, will pay for. They want to legalize the right of religious believers to discriminate against employees and customers on the basis of their own religion.

They oppose removing barriers to oppression and discrimination, which is, in effect, the same as retaining oppressive restrictions. They close polling places and limit ballot drop boxes, which is certainly restrictive. They gerrymander legislative districts, which restricts the liberty and voting power of those in the other party.

They want the liberty to pollute the air and water, which restricts and oppresses the ability of others to breathe. They want the liberty to pay workers as little as they can, even when people can’t live on those wages, and then they complain about government providing aid to those underpaid workers, calling the taxes required tyrannical. They’ve pushed to restrict the ability of people to obtain affordable health care.

But they claim they’re for liberty.

Just whose liberty is another question.

For Republicans and Trump supporters, apparently all Trump has to do to claim “victory” in the debate is for Trump to be relatively polite and coherent. There’s certainly no requirement for factual accuracy, and the repetition of popular lies apparently passes for intellect and truth among his supporters.

The most brazen and bare-faced lie that Trump delivered, at least to me, was the idea that separated refugee children were being treated excellently.

Biden’s natural courtesy, and the fact that his voice is softer, tends to work against him when dealing with someone like Trump.

Trying to accurately explain complex issues in a debate is usually not a good idea, because most of the audience is looking for soundbites with which they can identify. Biden had a very good point on oil industry subsidies, but didn’t explain it well. Oil and gas producers get to exempt as much as 15% of their gross income from taxation. That’s a subsidy that other industries and workers certainly don’t get.

Trump kept asking why Biden hadn’t done things while he was a senator and vice president. While it was an effective line, it was particularly effective with Trump supporters because most of them don’t understand government. The vice president literally has no power at all, except to break ties in Senate votes and whatever the President delegates, and that’s seldom much. Trump certainly hasn’t delegated any real power to Mike Pence. Individual senators also have very limited powers. They can propose, but unless they can persuade at least fifty others, and sometimes sixty, they’re powerless. Both the House and Senate are legislative bodies that have to work out compromises with other members. Almost never is legislation the result of one member. But trying to explain that in a debate comes across as weak and whining. All Biden could do was to cite some of his documented accomplishments. Given the power a President has, and how little power a vice president or an individual senator has – except to stop legislation from occurring – Biden was better off doing what he did, which was to point out Trump’s shortcomings, given how much power the President does have.

Republicans and Trump supporters make a big deal over the allegations about Hunter Biden, allegations that Trump’s own FBI declares represent Soviet disinformation, but are quite comfortable with all the money flowing into Trump properties because Trump is President. They also seem to have little problem with his keeping his tax returns hidden. Yet Biden’s tax records are public. So Trump and company use fabricated allegations against Biden’s son, while ignoring, if not dismissing Trump’s own sad and checkered financial history.

…the rise of misinformation, and “Covid fatigue” have been, in my view, the principal reasons for the surge in Cobid-19 cases and the coming increase in fatalities.

For most human beings, what we see and what we hear is far more important to us, and we’re more likely to believe what we see or hear – or what we don’t – than what we read in the newspapers or online (unless that online contact is a “trusted” source or friend), and our behavior reflects that.

Here in Southwest Utah, in my county, there have only been eight hundred cases of Covid-19 and three fatalities all year. Yet, as I write this, in Salt Lake some 250 miles to the north and in St. George 50 miles to the south, case numbers are surging, and ICUs are almost at full capacity.

Has that made any difference in behavior here? More people wearing masks or social distancing? Not that I can see. People wear masks only where they’re absolutely required, and there’s certainly no social distancing in public spaces. Outside, college students are unmasked and congregate in close proximity.

Almost no one knows anyone who contracted Covid-19, and the few cases they know about turned out to be mild. Then there’s the fact that Utah’s the reddest of the red states, and Trump signs and banners abound. And what is Trump saying? That Covid’s not a problem, and that we’ve “turned the corner.” With a resurgence of cases all across the Midwest and in Utah, we may have turned a corner, but it doesn’t look to me like that turn is toward a quick recovery.

But people are tired of not having sports and getting together. While restaurants here are open, they’re required to have social distancing. People are having large gatherings, without masks… and without social distancing. The governor is under intense pressure to relax what restrictions do exist, and the Mothers Against Masks [in school] continue to press against that requirement.

Why? Because no one’s seen much Covid-19, and what serious cases have occurred are quarantined, so that families don’t even see how debilitating the disease can be. Studies show that roughly ten percent of those hospitalized for Covid-19 have permanent systemic damage, but that damage isn’t visible to most people either. People can’t think or breathe as well, and there are a host of other complications.

We’re approaching 220,000 deaths in the U.S., but for too many people (largely Republicans) – those who haven’t lost someone or suffered that permanent damage – 220,000 is just a number, a meaningless and impersonal statistic… and that’s why the cases and deaths will continue.

It’s been four years since Donald Trump promised that he’d provide a cheaper and better national health program. So far as anyone can tell, such a program has never even been drafted, but he’s still promising.

He promised to bring coal back. He didn’t deliver on that, either, because he knew, as does every resource economist with any ability, that it’s economically infeasible, in addition to being environmentally disastrous.

He promised that by last April, Covid-19 would be gone, like a miracle. Since that promise, some 200,000 Americans have died, and case numbers are increasing. In addition, a recent study suggests that deaths due to Covid-19 have been undercounted.

He promised a great new wall that Mexico would pay for. Mexico didn’t pay for it, and of the 194 miles “built” only three miles were new. The other 191 miles were to strengthen the existing wall.

Trump promised to deport every single one of the 11 million illegal immigrants. He’s actually deported fewer illegals than former President Obama.

Trump promised to build an infrastructure second to none. There’s been no progress on that, either, and no real effort.

He was going to bring back manufacturing. That hasn’t happened.

Trump vowed to eliminate wasteful spending in every federal department. That was just lip service. He also vowed to eliminate the federal debt in eight years. Even before the onset of Coviod-19, the federal debt increased under Trump.

He said he wouldn’t take vacations, but he’s played far more golf than Obama, whom he criticized for golfing too much.

He said he’d eliminate the carried interest provision of the tax code that allowed financial moguls to avoid billions in taxes. He not only didn’t do that, but he passed a tax bill where most of the benefits went to millionaires.

He promised to ban foreign lobbyists from raising and spending money on American elections, but did nothing,

I’m not saying Trump didn’t keep all his promises. There were some that he did. He promised to raise import tariffs, which he did, and which increased the price of imported goods, as well as the price of American manufactured goods that use imported parts or components.

In 2016, he ran on a platform of steep tax cuts, increased defense and veterans spending, and no major changes to Social Security and Medicare. As a result, between those promises and Covid-19 expenditures, the president has enacted a total of $6.6 trillion in new borrowing, a total amount of debt now likely to exceed the size of the economy in 2021.

He’s also kept promises to roll back environmental regulations and to remove the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. He also kept promises to be tougher on all forms of immigration, with the result that families seeking to immigrate – both legally and illegally – were ripped apart and children separated from their parents, and often placed in cages.

In summary, between the promises Trump failed to keep and those he did keep, as a nation, we’re poorer (except for the very rich), less healthy, suffer more air pollution, and continue to have a deteriorating infrastructure… not to mention deteriorating relations with allies.

So why do so many people still support Trump?

Ultra-liberal voters also have less than desirable and clearly identifiable characteristics, and, as with “Trump” voters, not all of them share the following traits that I’ve observed in ultra-liberals over the years.

Sadly, today, most ultra-liberals have little or no understanding of the basics of politics or economics, which is why the conservatives have been able to create a political structure that favors them over time in the majority of states. It’s also why, once the current furor is over, Democrats will find themselves on the defensive again, especially at the state level, which will become ever more important with a Supreme Court that will be even more tilted to the right. Beyond that, they also continue to believe that more funding will solve almost every problem, except for the military, where less funding is the answer.

Ultra-liberals also have a tendency to focus on semantics, rather than power. They fail to understand that, if they get and hold power, the semantics will follow.

While many ultra-liberal voters are theoretically more secular than ultra-conservatives, many of them “compensate” for the lack of fervor in religious matters by channeling the same kind of emotion into politics and political correctness.

Ultra-liberals have a dismaying tendency to adopt causes, technology, words, and educational theories not necessarily because they’re good, but simply because they’re new. Conservatives, of course, reject most of what’s new simply because it is new.

Like many ultra-conservatives, ultra-liberals also tend to be condescending, and occasionally even hostile, toward those with whom they disagree.

Far too many ultra-liberals believe that there is an optimal and universally applicable solution to any problem, if only the conservatives wouldn’t stand in their way, when in fact, no technology or system has ever worked optimally for everyone. The choice is always between a system that works for most people, and which will fail or screw a minority, or the use of multiple systems, with the corresponding requirement for more funding and resources [and even then, people being people, some will fail or be screwed]. The liberal “compromise” is often underfunding both.

Liberals also seem to have a fascination with degrees, rather than actual expertise, and often fail to understand the difference. Combined with their fondness for “positive” curricula and their horror at any form of educational consequences, the result has been a dumbed-down and educational system at all levels. Yet they fail to recognize either the cause of this situation or the future economic and societal consequences.

The ultra-liberal voter enthusiastically and uncritically backs almost anything with the term “environmental” attached to it, especially touting solar power and “renewable energy” as being the most “environmentally clean power,” despite the fact that no such thing exists or ever will. The only questions are which power system has (1) the least adverse impact on the environment in the locale in which it is situated and (2) the lowest global environmental impact. Ultra-liberals often reject this position.

Right now, ultra-liberals are backing greater diversity as a solution to everything involved with cultural and racial problems. It isn’t. Lack of diversity in professional occupations, higher education, political office, etc., is a symptom of far deeper economic and societal problems. Focusing on diversity is a simplistic attack on the symptom and diverts attention and resources from the fundamental underlying problems.

But then, that’s the continuing basic problem with the far left, seizing on one simplistic and superficial answer to far larger problems, throwing money at it, and then going on to yet another superficial approach… and yet another.

Obviously, there’s no absolute template for the voters who back Trump and/or the Republican Party unconditionally, but there is a range of beliefs and attitudes which are far more common to such individuals than they are to those who are less than enamored of Trump or of the Republican Party.

One trait is a belief that Democrats/Liberals have debased the American system as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. More conservative voters have a greater tendency to reject various changes to our system as un-American or unconstitutional, despite the fact that the Founding Fathers specifically provided for a method of changing the system.

Another trait is a belief that the United States should “protect” and enshrine in law “traditional” religious beliefs, even going so far as trying to legislate one set of religious beliefs into law while fulminating against others and against other nations that have enshrined a different set of beliefs into law. They tend to ignore the Founding Fathers’ express desire to separate church and state, by claiming that the framers of the Constitution always meant “freedom of religion” only so long as that religion was some form of Christianity, although that was certainly not written into the Constitution… or even the Federalist papers.

From what I’ve observed, many Trump voters are angry about social and economic changes that they believe have left them in a poorer position. They also believe that government programs have unfairly elevated others, particularly minorities and recent immigrants, and that too much federal spending goes to the undeserving, which they label as socialism, but they tend to ignore the benefits of government that accrue to them. In general, they tend to view any government program that does not benefit them directly as wasteful and unnecessary.

A significant percentage of Trump and hardcore Republican voters are strong, if not fanatical, believers in the right to bear arms of any sort that an individual can carry, and oppose any restriction on what they see as an unconditional Constitutional right.

Despite the fact that every single person on the North American continent is either an immigrant or a descendent of immigrants, pro-Trump voters tend to be far more skeptical and critical of immigrants. They also tend to favor a more isolationist U.S. position in the world.

From what I’ve seen and heard, Trump voters and ultra-conservatives tend to believe the best times are behind the U.S. and generally oppose change, unless that change is to undo previous governmental action. They’re also more for economic growth, regardless of whether that growth creates enormous environmental degradation.

Those are the most obvious tendencies and traits that I’ve observed over the years, and there may be others as well. I’m not saying that the more liberal Democrats also don’t have identifiable traits as well, but that’s another post.

One commenter requested that I give my best shot at describing the “Trump” voter. Then I got to thinking that, if I was tackling one extreme, I ought to do both.
So there are two posts. One right after the other.

But before getting to the posts, I have to offer a disclaimer. I am not a psychologist nor a professional pollster. I am someone who spent twenty years professionally in the world of national politics, serving in the legislative and executive branches [as a Republican under Republicans] and working in the private business sector for a Washington, D.C., consulting firm. I’ve also spent the last decade or so in the “reddest” state in the U.S.; so I’m not speaking/writing from a “blue/liberal” enclave.

After requiring supplemental oxygen at least twice, and getting three different treatments for Covid-19, Trump is now declaring, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” That’s fine for someone who has an entire staff of doctors looking out for him on a minute-to-minute basis, but most Americans don’t have that kind of healthcare, as should be obvious from the more than seven million cases and over 210,000 deaths recorded so far.

The most blatant denial of the danger of Covid-19 was when Trump, still sick and contagious, ordered his Secret Service detail to drive him around so that he could wave to supporters. Just how many more people did he endanger by that stunt? Especially after the unmasked Rose Garden ceremony a week ago that resulted in passing on Covid-19 to at least two senators and a number of Trump staffers.

But that’s just the beginning. Trump’s entire Presidency has been one of denial. He denied that white supremacist groups were evil and a danger. He denied that air pollution was a danger by rolling back air quality standards. He’s denied the reality of climate change and the significant contribution to it by human caused emissions, and then pushed for less regulation of dirty coal-fired power plants. He’s denied the heritage of immigration – and the fact that almost half of the important patents that have led to U.S. dominance were issued to immigrants. He’s denied police brutality. He’s denied the right to affordable health care. He’s the first president in modern times to deny a look at his tax returns. He’s denied that there was and is foreign interference in our elections, and at the same tine denied the safety of mail-in ballots, a denial of statements by his own FBI that there’s no evidence of wide-scale fraud in any form of U.S. voting, including the mail-in ballots used by ten states. Even before Trump was President, he denied that President Obama was a U.S. citizen.

And all the time, he’s made impossible promises that he never followed through on… and likely never intended to.

Trump agreed with the rules for the first Presidential debate, including one that stated that he would not interrupt while Biden was speaking. He almost immediately broke that rule.

In one sense, that should tell everyone who and what he is. He’ll only follow rules, or laws, when he physically has to, or when they’re to his benefit, and even then he’ll twist them to his advantage, like when he paid his daughter something like $70,000 for consulting services – when she was already on the payroll. You can’t be both an employee and an independent contractor for a company at the same time, but that clearly didn’t faze the Donald.

For the Donald, rules are for suckers, just as dying for your country is for losers and suckers, and that’s why someone paid off a doctor to find the Donald unfit for the military because of bone spurs. That’s why he’s stiffed contractors.

He’s been in office for more than three and a half years, and he’s promised a better health plan since even before he was elected. He also promised a massive infrastructure program. So far, there’s no sign of either even having been drafted. He also promised that Mexico would pay for his wall. Mexico didn’t and won’t. Those are just the most obvious examples, but his failure to keep promises is because keeping promises is also for suckers.

He pushed through a tax bill that gave most of the population a short-term tiny tax cut and the millionaires and billionaires a huge tax cut, which dramatically increased the deficit and made it harder to fund existing government programs, and then he lied about what he’d actually done.

The Donald isn’t ever going to change. He is what he is.

What bothers me is that so many people not only don’t see that, but that they also don’t see that any successful society runs on rules, usually called laws. When people don’t obey the rules voluntarily, society goes downhill. When that occurs, three things can happen. Society can collapse into revolution or anarchy. Or an authoritarian strongman can take over, which is becoming more and more common in today’s world. Or people can decide that it’s better to do the right thing and obey the rules, and work cooperatively to make things better so that bad rules/laws are changed.

The real suckers are those people who believe rules are for suckers… because in the end, rules accepted by the majority are the only thing that holds a successful and free society together, and abiding by those rules and, where necessary, peacefully cooperating to improve them are the only way to remain free. And that’s something that the Donald will never accept… or understand, not surprisingly, since he wants to reintroduce the divine rights of kings, or in his case, the divine right of dictators.