Part One:
WHAT ABOUT PENCE?
All media eyes are on Pres Trump and his possible impeachment. But we don’t focus much on the man who will become president if Trump is in fact impeached: VP Pence. Shouldn’t the voters and the media think about Pence’s complicity in Trump’s corruption and abuse of power? Shouldn’t we ask whether Pence should be allowed to take control over the country?
We remind ourselves that Pence has immersed himself deeply in Trump’s illegal efforts to coerce a foreign government (Ukraine’s president Zelenskiy) to interfere in the U.S. 2020 election – by investigating Trump’s political opponent, Joe Biden, and his son. Like Guiliani and his henchmen, Pence met in September with Zelinskiy, and discussed “in great detail” the $391 million in already-appropriated US aid that Trump had suspended. Pence personally pressured Zelinskiy to investigate so-called “corruption” by the Bidens, and told Zelinskiy that he would report back to Trump about Ukraine’s “progress” in the investigation.
Democratic candidates and the news media should be talking more about these facts (as well as others) to make sure that the voting public remembers the truth. Trump and his enablers should not be allowed to succeed by repeating his talking points over and over again (even if they are totally untrue!) until people are so numb that they believe in his false reality.
CAN WE NEGOTIATE WITH EVIL?
We discuss Harold Meyerson’s article in the American Prospect, entitled “The Empty Center of American Politics,” about the “neutral” group, No Labels. Meyerson, who accidentally wound up at the group’s “Problem Solvers Convention,” sees this movement as a place “where second-tier presidential candidates talk bipartisanship while not really agreeing with each other on much of anything.”
We question whether there is any real value to pretending that “bipartisanship” is, in and of itself, something inherently righteous, which we should all aspire to. Why should we care that Amy Klobuchar prioritizes “working across the aisle” when the Republican Senators with whom she is “working” are led by Mitch McConnell’s promise that he would never allow any bill that Barack Obama supported even to be debated – much less enacted – on the Senate floor? Will the centrists be working across the aisle on anything more substantive than National Asparagus Day?
The motto for the No Labels group is “stop fighting and start fixing.” In a perfect world, with reasonable, rational people, this might make sense. But what if you had to face the real-world, with its irrational and sometimes unpleasant facts. For example, what if you are on a playground and one or more school bullies are beating the tar out of several ordinary students? Will it truly be productive to tell the bully to “stop fighting and start fixing”? Or would that be akin to asking Mitch McConnell to allow Judge Merrick Garland to have a hearing and at least be considered as a Supreme Court nominee? Perhaps “No Labels” should have a warning label on it.
Part Two:
PLAYING WITH FIRE.
We take a long view of the history of fire on earth, with Stephen Pynes, a fire historian and professor of environmental history at Arizona State University. Before humans intervened, fires occurred naturally (differently in different places) and the environment reached some kind of equilibrium. Once humans started setting some fires (intentionally or unintentionally), and containing others (or putting them out), the ecosystem changed to accommodate the fires. Extracting fossil fuels from underground brought about more interrelated changes in the ecosystem, including in the way the earth responds to fires and to human fire-related efforts.
When we think about the catastrophic fires in California (and elsewhere), we must keep in mind this long-term ecological history. The California fires can be seen as a preview of a new “fire age” that seems to be coming upon us. Will we adjust our responses accordingly?
