John Rachal's Blog

Two mobsters walk into a bar. They’re burly guys, and they both have bulges under their coats. The first one says to the barkeep, “We need to see your boss.”

“He’s not really available right now.”

“Tell him two associates of Don Corleone want to chat with him.”

The barkeep does as he is told. The bar’s owner comes out, a little intimidated.

“Mr. Smith, ya gotta nice establishment here,” Mobster Number One says, surveying his surroundings. “Real nice. Real cozy-like. Lotsa nice customers, I’m sure. Never had no trouble here, I’m sure. Yeah, trouble is bad, the kinda thing ya wanna avoid. Know what I mean? Ya know, fires, and bad stuff like that. We can help ya. I’d like ya to do us a favor though. Ya know we sell insurance. Very reasonable. Two grand a month. Ya think about it, OK? We’ll see ya next week.”

Later that day, a sweaty Mr. Smith goes to the police station and finally gets in to see Detective Jones. The bar owner had a camera that captured the earlier exchange in both video and audio. He tells Detective Jones, “That was a shakedown. You need to arrest these guys, and Mr. Corleone. They tried to extort me for two grand a month. They won’t burn my place down if I hand over two grand a month.”

Detective Jones sees and hears the recorded conversation on Mr. Smith’s phone. He’s skeptical. “Mr. Smith, did they use the word extortion?” “No” is Mr. Smith’s response. Did they use the word bribery?” Another “No.” “Did they say, ‘if you give us two grand a month, we won’t burn your place down’?” A third “No.”

“But detective, when he said, ‘I’d like ya to do us a favor though,’ that very word though tells me the two things are connected, even if he didn’t use the word extortion.”

“Look, Mr. Smith, what they did was maybe inappropriate. I wouldn’t have done it myself. But it’s not like it’s a quid pro quo, or bribery, or extortion. It’s not like they conditioned the safety of your place on you having to pay them every month. They just made some comments that might not have even been related. And besides, just because they work for Mr. Corleone doesn’t mean he’s involved. Did they say that he directed them? No. You can’t send a guy to trial for that. It’s just not a crime or even a misdemeanor. In fact, we might need to investigate you. Bringing false charges against an upstanding citizen and his employees could be a sham. And do you have the proper license for your bar?”

Yesterday morning I’m sitting in the waiting room for my eye doctor appointment, innocently reading NPR News on my phone, and two rural women, perhaps a daughter and her 70-ish mother, come in and sit nearby. An older man and woman come in and sit down, three feet away, and eight or nine feet across from me. The man strikes up a conversation with the two women. Within a minute or two the conversation turns political. The next thing I know, the man is saying Trump is the greatest of our presidents (I start shaking my head in sad resignation), followed by his telling them who our two worst presidents were: FDR and—I knew it was coming, as inevitable as sunrise—Obama. FDR, he explains, knew about a Japanese invasion coming two weeks before Pearl Harbor. Apparently assuming no explanation is necessary, he offers not even a specious reason for Obama, though I’d put my money on race. So what does the older woman say, clearly in such obvious agreement that the sides do not even require identification? “I think it’s just come down to good vs. evil.” And I thought, “yes ma’am, you’re right—but maybe not in the way you think.”

It set me back for the whole day, despite my reading of The Daily Stoic. I’m a Mississippian, but even so, such views expressed right in front of me still hit me like a punch in the gut. I probably should have offered a rejoinder, but it wasn’t my conversation, and I just shook my head. Who is living in Alice’s Wonderland, me or them? My truth is their are-you-crazy? lie. Their truth is my are-you-crazy? lie. Their yes is my no, their bad is my good, their black is my white, their up is my down. Either for me or for them, facts just don’t matter, or, more likely, twist themselves through some contorted and fevered illogic into their opposites. The nurse calls me in.

To my own satisfaction, at least, I’ve basically figured Trump out: dishonest, authoritarian, self-dealing, ignorant, bullying, racist, amoral, narcissistic, incompetent. The folks in the waiting room and upwards of 40% of the country have a totally different take, and I keep trying to figure out why. Even accepting the estimate that roughly 30% of any given population have “authoritarian tendencies,” what do they like so much about a man I find so abominable? Well, he’s “tough.” He breaks the rules. He tells it like it is. He never has to admit he’s wrong. He hates all those foreigners taking our jobs and ruining our way of life. He sticks it to those pointy-headed pinko liberals bent on raising our taxes and confiscating our guns. But beyond that, forever Trumpers, let’s get specific: What has he done that makes you like him so much? Do you like it when he lies to you, as when he said Mexico would pay for the wall? Or when he said he would have won the popular vote if it hadn’t been for all the fraud? Or when he said he saw the video of the Muslims dancing in the streets in New Jersey after 9/11? Did you like it when he stiffed those small contractors—often little guys, with a handful of employees—by refusing to pay the amount specified in the contract, then telling them to sue him, then stalling in court for years, sometimes bankrupting them? Do you like how he admires Putin and other autocrats and dictators like Kim Jong Un, Duarte of the Philippines, el-Sissi of Egypt, Erdogan of Turkey, and others? Do you like how he groped women and bragged about it on tape, but somehow claims that he never did it? Would you like it if he groped your wife or your daughter? Do you like how he sold out our intelligence community by saying how “strong” Putin was when the Russian denied interference in our 2016 election? Do you like how he mocked a genuine American war hero like John McCain? Do you like how he paid a doctor to say he had bone spurs in his feet to keep him out of Vietnam, especially if you or your friends or relatives got drafted or volunteered to go?

So what else do you like about him? Do you like how he tried to extort our ally Ukraine by withholding $391 million in arms—already appropriated by Congress—to help them fight his pal Putin unless Ukraine’s president publicly announced an investigation into the Bidens and into how Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in our 2016 election? Do you like how under his presidency, the former anti-Russia GOP has become the pro-Russia GOP? Do you like how he tries to use the presidency to make a buck by trying to have official events at his properties? Do you like how he doesn’t have the stomach to fire people face to face but uses Twitter instead? Did you like how he put a “perfect,” totally innocent phone call on a highly classified platform so no one could see how perfect and innocent it was? Do you like his megalomaniacal bragging about his “great and unmatched wisdom,” how he knows more than all “his” generals, how “only I can fix it,” how he’s a “genius,” and how he’s “the Chosen One”?

How about some more things you might like? Do you like how the generals who have worked for him shake their heads at how ignorant he is of world affairs or how he acts in ways contrary to our national interests, causing them to resign or be fired? Do you like, for example, how he betrayed our Kurdish allies, allies who did almost all the ground fighting against ISIS and lost almost 11,000 men doing so, by pulling our guys out and giving a green light to Turkey to go in and clean the Kurds out? And how his buddy Putin was then able to fill in the void we left, enhancing Russian influence? Do you like how he considers climate change a Chinese hoax? Do you just love how he and the GOP got that tax cut, 63% of which goes to the top 20% of earners, and nearly one-fourth goes to the top 5%? Are you in that top 20%, making over $150,100, or in that top 5%, making over $303,200? Do you like how he said that tax cut wouldn’t help him at all, and that his rich friends would be mad at him? Do you really think he cares anything about you other than your vote and your continued gullibility? And do you love how the GOP used to claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but then passed that tax cut that adds about three trillion to the national debt over ten years and puts the annual deficit at a trillion dollars for the first time? Do you like how his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, called him a “moron,” and was honest enough not to deny that he said it? Do you like how he obstructs justice by firing FBI Director Comey and tries to prevent people under subpoena from testifying before congress? Do you like how in a 2011 poll only 30% of white evangelicals said that someone committing “immoral personal acts” could be an effective public servant, but now 72% say so? Do you like how he represents pretty much the opposite of what Christians, which he claims to be, would say constitutes character?

Two other questions. If Obama had done any of these things, not to mention a majority of  them, would you have liked him a little more? Or would you be screaming “impeachment” and “lock him up”?

The first time it happened was 1824, when John Quincy Adams beat Andrew Jackson. The next time was 1876, when Rutherford B. Hayes beat Samuel Tilden. The third time was 1888, when Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland. The fourth time was 2000, when George W. Bush beat Al Gore. And the last time was 2016, when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. So out of fifty-eight presidential elections, it has happened five times, almost ten percent. Of the five elections in this century, it has happened twice, or forty percent. In all five, it has happened quite legally, in accordance with the Constitution.

What is that “it”? In each of these elections, the person with fewer votes won. Yet the sine qua non of majority rule is that the individual with the most votes wins. The individual voter is the baseline of meaningful democracy, the most elemental characteristic of democratic government. The idea of one person, one vote was central to the civil rights movement; it is the fulcrum of our very sense of fairness. So why do we knowingly and willingly allow a system that potentially violates this most fundamental article of democracy to persist, especially when we have seen that violation actually occur five times in our history? At least in a country calling itself, above all, a democracy, are five times of the wrong person becoming president of the United States not enough?

We do not need a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college, a system of presidential election regarded—tellingly—by some founders including Madison and Hamilton as a means of holding in check the presumed dangers of the popular vote. Madison feared “factions,” and Hamilton, in The Federalist, number 68, feared that the popular vote might allow “foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” What an ironic concern given that the electoral college, not the popular vote, allowed Russia to focus its trolling in the 2016 election on a few “battleground” states. Many on both sides of the aisle were, and are, outraged by that Russian interference. But who in congress expressed even the mildest protest in 2000 or 2016 at the even greater outrage of giving the presidency to the person whom we know got fewer votes? We can combat Russian interference, but persisting in a system that has allowed the vote loser to win five times we do to ourselves.

No burdensome constitutional amendment is necessary, and lovers of the electoral college, with its element of representative rather than pure democracy, can rest content. Moreover, the issue is non-partisan: the electoral college does not inherently favor one party or the other. All that is necessary is a federal law making universal what Maine and Nebraska have already done, namely, dividing each state’s electoral votes in approximate proportion to its popular vote. No more winner-take-all victories. No more of all New York’s twenty-nine electoral votes quadrennially going to the Democratic candidate while all thirty-six of Texas’s votes inevitably go to the Republican. No more Mississippi Democrats knowing their presidential vote is a total waste, while California Republicans feel precisely the same. No more 78 thousand votes in three states trumping 2.86 million votes nationwide as in the 2016 election—making a mockery of one person, one vote in the process. No more “battleground” states and boring foregone conclusion states; they are all battleground states. No more of candidates ignoring voters in the foregone conclusion states and nearly taking up residence in the “battleground” states. No more of folks piously proclaiming that “the people” elected Candidate A when in fact “the people” actually voted for Candidate B, but Candidate A “wins” and is catapulted into the Oval Office by an enormous flaw in American democracy. And finally, and most importantly, no more of the simple debacle of the wrong person of either party living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. How many elections do we need to figure out that giving the highest office in the land to the person who got fewer votes is openly and ostentatiously anti-democratic? We don’t need to have rigged elections like so many other countries in order to defy the will of the majority; we openly and unashamedly defy the will of the majority.

Let’s fix that.

In deciding who is the truth-teller after hearing the senate testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the latter seeks to become a Justice on the United States Supreme Court, it is worthwhile to note a number of pertinent facts, including: that Dr. Ford has taken and passed a polygraph test, while Judge Kavanaugh has not; that Dr. Ford made no known misleading comments to the Judiciary Committee, while Judge Kavanaugh did (stating, for example, that other attendees at the social gathering in question said the assault “did not happen” when in fact they said only that they had no knowledge of it, two very different things that any judge, of all people, should be able to distinguish between; or calling being a girl’s “alumnius” just being her friend); that Judge Kavanaugh alleged a bizarre conspiracy and “political hit” against him somehow involving the “revenge” of the Clintons; that the Republican committee chairman refused to subpoena the third person in the room during the alleged assault; that Judge Kavanaugh repeatedly evaded multiple questions asking him if he wanted an FBI investigation that might clear his name, while Dr. Ford asked for such an investigation; that Republicans on the committee accused Senator Feinstein of attempting to spring a last minute assault on Judge Kavanaugh by withholding Dr. Ford’s letter to her for weeks when in fact Senator Feinstein was abiding by her consent to keep the matter confidential; that Judge Kavanaugh’s high school friend, Mark Judge, wrote a book called Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk in which he describes a character “Bart O’Kavanaugh” as belligerent and sometimes passing out when drunk; that a Republican female friend of the Judge from their days at Yale declared in a letter to Cory Booker that she had seen him so drunk that it would be totally understandable for him not to remember events during those periods of drunkenness.

But for those assured of Judge Kavanaugh’s fitness for a Supreme Court seat, set aside for a moment those facts and ask three questions in determining the truthfulness of the two witnesses before the committee:

(1) Which one has something to gain by lying, and which one does not?

(2) Which one was often evasive in answering questions, and which one was not?

(3) Even if we rule out intentional lying by either witness, which one of the witnesses is more likely to remember the event: the one who knew her attacker by face, name, and social acquaintance; who remembered specific and telling details about both the setting and the attack itself; who told her therapist six years ago about an attack when she was fifteen and named her attacker to her husband sixteen years ago; who was traumatized by that event; and who did not want to become part of a political battle and did so only when her name was leaked presumably by friends to the press? Or, on the other hand, the one who, at that time, had a reputation for heavy drinking and drunkenness, has acknowledged his fondness for “skis” (i.e., “brewskis”), and has enormous incentive—a Supreme Court seat—to suppress a memory of something he may have done when so inebriated that he could have been physiologically incapable of remembering the event at all?

Let’s don’t talk politics for now. Let’s talk character.

A great American died this past weekend. And an American president, of the same political party—a petty, weak man incapable of a scintilla of grace—slinks to his corner, jealous of the honors and especially the respect and even affectionate regard being accorded John McCain, an affectionate regard that will never be accorded Donald Trump. Trump knows this, and it is central to the Iago-like hatred he has borne for McCain. In some reptilian way, Trump knows that McCain—whatever his flaws—had character, character largely built by transcending his flaws and seeking not his self interest but the national interest, even the global interest. This is alien to Trump; he seethes, knowing that he suffers grievously by any comparison to McCain. Like Iago’s hatred of Othello, Trump’s hatred is rooted in jealousy, though it is deepened by McCain’s criticism and Trump’s own sense of entitlement. After all, he achieved what McCain tried and failed to do twice.

McCain was not a war hero because he was a POW. He was a war hero because the North Vietnamese sought a propaganda victory when they discovered that he was the son and grandson of important navy admirals, and they tried to persuade him to accept an early trip home. He refused since his fellow POWs would be left behind. No doubt McCain’s decision was made just a tiny bit easier because he would have regarded a choice to accept his captors’ offer as dishonorable, and he would have hated the ignominy of knowing that he had taken a comparatively easy out while leaving his brothers behind. So possibly fear of dishonor helped him choose honor. But he did choose it, whereas Trump would have been wholly incapable of McCain’s choice, oblivious to the moral implications and pitfalls. Instead, he behaved then as he always has, his moral compass perpetually fixed on ME, in this instance by getting some physician to give him a medical exemption from the draft by claiming that his patient had bone spurs in his feet. So, no Vietnam for Trump, yet all the while he covets martial glory by looking quite fine in his military school uniform. (In a 1990s interview, Trump commented that trying to avoid venereal diseases was his “personal Vietnam”). Decades later, Trump, jealous of the honor accorded McCain for his service and endurance of five and a half years as a POW, could not help himself and petulantly denigrated that endurance by claiming that he “liked people who weren’t captured.”

It is impossible to imagine Trump doing what McCain did at a McCain town hall meeting in 2008. In front of a large crowd, a woman said she didn’t trust Obama as a Muslim and an Arab. Though McCain missed an opportunity to say that Muslims and Arabs can also be good Americans, he did not miss the opportunity to correct her, saying “No ma’am, no ma’am,” calling Obama a decent family man with whom he had serious policy disagreements. The response even elicited some booing. Two years later, in 2010, he did backslide a bit, turning rightward to appease conservative voters in his senate re-election bid. But Trump could have sprouted wings and flown into the air before he could have corrected a supporter inaccurately disparaging his opponent. He is so controlled by friendly audiences, and he so needs their adulation, that he could never have risked their criticism or disdain by saying anything that might have undermined their adoration. This is Lesson One in the art of the demagogue.

At some core level, even the ever-self-deceiving Donald Trump must surely have recognized his monumental inferiority to a man who, whatever his human shortcomings, had actual principles, demonstrated physical and moral courage, acted in what he thought was the best interest of the country, did not lie, did not approach his every single act in terms of how it might affect him personally, who was not a sycophant (especially to despots), who did not wallow in a sewer of corruption. These two men were the antipodes of the Republican party, and it is no wonder that only under intense national pressure could Trump grudgingly offer a half-hearted statement of respect after McCain’s passing, negated by days of dithering and reluctance to lower the flag to half-mast. Trump looks in the mirror and initially sees himself as the greatest and most feared president who, like Shelley’s Ozymandias, declaims “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” But then, little doubts creep in, and he sees in the mirror the man he wishes he could be—but only fleetingly, and he soon dispels that glimpse of John McCain and returns to his greatest deception of all: seeing himself as a great man.

All the recent Charlottesville and KKK news reminded me of my own encounter with the Klan, fifty-one or fifty-two years ago when I was about seventeen. Martin Luther King was giving a speech c. late 1965 or early ’66 at Memorial Auditorium in downtown Raleigh, and the Klan decided to march in protest. I believe it was a Sunday afternoon. Several of my buddies decided, in our marvelously naive and cavalier way, to ride our motorcycles downtown and watch the parade. My memory is that the Klansmen were walking single file about ten feet from us, some in robes, some not, and some in a kind of militia-like uniform, the last of whom were carrying flashlights about fifteen or so inches long as weapons. I had never seen Klansmen or their robes before, and, ever the absurd provocateur, I called out “Where’s the party?” A short, thirty-ish, rather Snopes-like fellow took umbrage, and before you could say white supremacist, he darted out of line, landed a fine roundhouse punch to my left jaw, spit out “THAT’S where the party is!” and then quickly retreated back in line immediately behind one of the flashlight fellows. I had never actually been sucker-punched before (childhood fights being mostly wrestling matches), and more than anything I stood there simply shocked—“Damn! Some SOB just hit me!” A plain-clothes detective of some sort quickly came up to me, asked a question or two, including “Do you want to file charges?” Not having any particular desire to enmesh myself in the criminal justice system, I declined. Then, in the throes of Justice Outraged, I started heading off to find the culprit and, I guess, call him out, or at least call him something. I had gotten who knows how many yards at a brisk walk on the way to finding him when a close friend—then and now—proved his courage, friendship, and sanity by chasing after me and dissuading me from my dubious quest.

It’s amazing how foolish a young fellow can be when seen through his own old man’s eyes. Not just foolish for the initial taunt, but even more so for interacting with the Klan when I probably could have seen MLK.

So after ceaselessly decrying Obamacare, and multiple Republican attempts to eviscerate it with their depressingly hypocritical mantra to repeal and replace, the GOP finally controls both houses of Congress, the White House, and, soon enough, the Supreme Court. And yet, when finally in a position to repeal and replace, they come up with, to reprise George H. W. Bush’s famous criticism of Reaganomics as “voodoo economics,” Voodoo Healthcare 1.0. But alas, it is still far too liberal with the taxpayers’ money for the far-right House “Freedom Caucus” to stomach, and no Democrat is going to vote for actual repeal, so House Speaker Ryan’s Voodoo Healthcare 1.0 goes up in much deserved flames without even going to the floor for its inevitable No vote, much to the embarrassment of Republicans, the cheers of Democrats, and the usual whining of our Liar-in-Chief, Mr. Trump, who characteristically externalizes all blame to others, in this case the Democrats. Well gee, Donnie Boy, aside from the right-wingers who were poised to vote against it, did you really think that the party that passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote was going to suddenly have a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus experience and vote your way?

Whatever the flaws of Obamacare, it did re-set the bar such that real healthcare reform, aspiring, at least, to eventual universal care at affordable prices, is now firmly in the public mind, and even the Republicans must respond. It is no small irony—actually hypocrisy—that in the early 90s, Republican current senators Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch along with then senators Bob Dole and Richard Lugar and House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich latched on to the conservative Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute’s idea of an individual mandate for healthcare. Thus armed with the imprimatur of conservative think tank bona fides, they boldly proposed it as an alternative to anything First Lady Hillary Clinton might come up with. The theory was that if everyone had it, not just the sick and elderly, prices would be affordable, we’d have universal healthcare, and those who already had it would no longer be subsidizing the many who did not and who sought out hospital emergency rooms since hospitals could not turn them away. In the curious flip-flop of party politics, the Democrats—rarely averse to a touch of hypocrisy themselves and hoping for better—were extremely lukewarm about the mandate idea, being leery of its provenance, and so of course it was never passed. It was a reasonable idea then, and it was just as reasonable when Obama proposed it as a key element in his healthcare reform package. It was also reasonable when Massachusetts Republican Governor Mitt Romney signed the mandate into law in his state. But somehow, in that magical way that political hypocrisy is portrayed as high principle, when Obama promoted the idea, it suddenly became the work of the devil and represented a godless attack on capitalism and a government overreach heralding the birth of American totalitarianism. The Grassley-Hatch-Gingrich-Bob Dole embrace of the mandate in the early 90s was happily long forgotten, and Democrats were weak in reminding the populace of it, likely because their view of it back then when it was a conservative idea was moderately contrary to their own present enthusiasm. Romney, as presidential candidate in 2012, was not quite so fortunate in escaping the national amnesia, being frequently peppered with questions about Massachusetts’ more recent Romneycare. But, as an accomplished politician, he wriggled and squirmed and demurred at all comparisons of his mandate and Obama’s mandate.

Meanwhile Foxy News—sorry, Mr. Ailes and Mr. O’Reilly; well, not really—aka Foxy Nudes, aka Faux News, aka Fake News, rails against all things Obama and what was originally a Republican idea is now transmogrified into the work of Beelzebub himself. This stokes the Gullibles, and the GOP, fearing another entitlement, excoriates Obama and his diabolical and un-American plan. They suffer a serious blow when temporarily apostate Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts actually affirms the constitutional legitimacy of the mandate, giving Obama a rare 5-4 Court victory, and earning the Chief Justice the eternal loathing of those masses who are largely ignorant of The Affordable Care Act’s actual provisions but know very well which president concocted it, which is all they need. So Obamacare escapes an early grave. Nevertheless many uninsured do not enroll, especially many younger, healthier Americans, despite subsidies for lower income enrollees, and they are reluctantly willing to pay the modest penalty for failing to do so. Consequently, the “universal” part does not kick in well. Predictably insurance companies raise prices, partly because it’s just what they do, and partly because they are no longer allowed to refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions, nor are they allowed to kick someone off coverage for exceeding maximums allowed for expensive medical conditions.

Citizen Trump, and later candidate Trump, has managed to take about every side possible concerning healthcare, which obviously means he has no real convictions at all. He has stated, in a debate, “I like the mandate.” He has blamed legislators and insurance companies for being in thrall to each other. He has actually endorsed the importation of lower-priced Canadian drugs, competition among insurance companies across state lines, and even, back in the day, a national, single-payer system—all anathema to conservatives whose fierce opposition to all of those has forced him into line. Candidate Trump, whose own physician appears to have just been released from the local de-tox rehab center and who declared in a momentary fit of ecstasy that Trump is the healthiest candidate ever to run for the presidency, promises to repeal and replace Obamacare on his first day in office with “something terrific.” Naturally he doesn’t have the remotest idea what that would be, nor do his fellow Republicans, as evidenced by their recent failure to do what they have long promised despite their congressional majorities and Trump in the Big House. Now that the luster of “repeal and replace” has been tarnished a little, the current GOP shibboleths are “patient-centered healthcare” and universal “access” to healthcare. The first one trips off Republican tongues as if it actually means something, which of course it does not, but it makes a deliciously invidious comparison to Obamacare, which by implication must not be interested in patients at all. The second one, like all political rhetoric, also sounds appealing—“access.” Heck, who doesn’t want access? By what conceivable right does the many-tentacled government deny me “access” to something I want? The worm in that pretty apple, as Bernie Sanders pointed out to Ted Cruz in a post-election debate on healthcare, is that everyone already has access to healthcare, just as Bernie has access to buying a Maserati. But if you can’t afford it, then “access” is a sweet-sounding but meaningless term. Or, rather, what it does mean is that those who can afford it can have it, and those who can’t—well hey, it’s a Darwinian world out there.

And that is where the political divide really is: Is healthcare a right, whose costs are to be amortized among all Americans, with the wealthy subsidizing the unwealthy; or is it a normal commodity like cars or L. L. Bean coats, where those who cannot afford it, even those working full-time, will just have to do without? (Or, as Representative Chaffee has characterized it in Marie Antoinette fashion, they should quit buying a new cell phone every few months so they can afford it.) Obama has forced the Republicans to come forward a little; even they now must speak favorably of preserving the ban on excluding those with pre-existing conditions as well as allowing individuals to stay on their parents’ healthcare until age 26—both progressive features of Obamacare. The problem is that they want the dessert but don’t want the vegetables, the vegetables being the mandate and the higher taxes on the wealthy which are indispensable pieces to make the whole thing work. In that sense it is simple economics: the goodies have a cost, and if you take away the mechanisms for paying for the cost, the system falls apart.

Having promised for years, the Republicans are trapped in their “repeal and replace” rhetoric, and Democrats are firmly resolved that no repeal will take place with their help. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has, however, offered that if repeal is abandoned by Republicans in favor of fixing some of Obamacare’s problems, Democrats would be open to that. Two obvious reforms would be allowing insurance company competition across state lines, and allowing Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices. Aren’t Republicans all for capitalist competition? Well, they are at least until corporate lobbyists with lots of dollars to dispense convince them otherwise. And what possible objection would Democrats have? Other bones will be much more difficult to pick, especially the “right” of healthcare vs. “access” to it, and the who pays, who benefits implications of that. Nobody, of course, is talking about a single-payer plan, as Canada and Britain have. Research indicates that those countries have lower per capita costs and equal if not better health outcomes. But that is not on the table—Democrats are too cowed to mention it and are aware of the corporate interests that would never allow it, while Republicans support those corporate interests and have screamed “government takeover” so long that some actually believe it.

So we’re still waiting for “something terrific.”

Let’s play Connect-the-Dots.

Dot 1. President Trump has long had connections to the Soviet Union and Russia. His first trip was in 1987 to explore the possibility of building Moscow hotels. In the 90s, he went to Russia to explore renovating already existing hotels in Russia. He sought wealthy Russian investors, who had become wealthy after the fall of the Soviet Union by buying up formerly state-owned properties. Also in the 90s Russian investors bought dozens of condominiums in Trump World Tower in midtown Manhattan.*

Dot 2. Trump developed projects internationally in the early 2000s, some involving Russian money.

Dot 3. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. told Moscow investors in 2008 that the Trump organization had trademarked the Donald Trump name in Russia and observed that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Dot 4. Trump took the Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow in 2013, funded by a Russian billionaire named Aras Agalarov.

Dot 5. Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was an Exxon-Mobil oil executive who made oil deals in Russia and in 2013 was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship award. Tillerson also met with Vladimir Putin.

Dot 6. Trump hired Paul Manafort as his campaign manager in 2016. Manafort had represented the former leader of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally. Unrest in Ukraine forced Yanukovych to flee to Moscow, and shortly afterward Putin invaded the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine. Putin continues to support ethnic Russian rebels fighting in Ukraine, who shot down a passenger jet in 2014. Manafort’s association with the Putin ally caused him to resign as Trump campaign chair.

Dot 7. Trump staffers objected to the GOP Platform statement that advocated “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine in its fight against Russia-backed separatists after Russia’s land grab of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Staffers insisted that the language be changed to “appropriate assistance.”

Dot 8. Michael Flynn, Trump’s newly-fired National Security Adviser, was also fired by President Obama as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. After being fired by Obama, Flynn called Obama a “liar” and led Trump campaign rallies in their chants of “lock her up,” referring to Hillary Clinton. He was also working for Russia Today, the state-owned news and propaganda machine for Russia, and advocated for closer relations with Russia. He travelled to Russia for the 10th anniversary celebration of Russia Today, sitting at the same table with Putin. He was paid for that visit. He has not said how much, nor whether his acceptance of payment was approved by the secretaries of Defense and State, without which the acceptance of payment would be a violation of federal law.

Dot 9. U.S. intelligence agencies monitored a call from Flynn to the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, discussing new sanctions that Obama had imposed on Russia after the Russian interference in the American election. He told Vice-President Mike Pence and, according to The New York Times, the FBI that he did not discuss sanctions. Totally uncharacteristically, Putin did not reply in kind to Obama’s new sanctions and the expulsion of thirty-five Russians, presumed to be Russian spies. The intelligence agencies concluded that not only had the Russians interfered with the election, they did so specifically to help Trump defeat Clinton. Currently it is not known whether Trump or others knew of Flynn’s phone call at the time he made it.

Dot 10. During the campaign, Trump urged the Russians, “if you are listening,” to participate in the election by sharing all of Clinton’s emails. The Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign was apparently shared with Wikileaks. Wikileaks revealed emails indicating that the chair of the Democratic National Convention, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, had clearly favored Clinton over Bernie Sanders for the nomination, and she subsequently resigned. Another Wikileaks leak, again presumably provided by the Russians, exposed an email from John Podesta, chair of the Clinton campaign. Trump declared that “I love Wikileaks!” The Podesta email was exposed by Wikileaks almost immediately after the infamous Access Hollywood tape became public, a tape in which Trump bragged of grabbing women’s private parts and other sexual exploits, presumably to diminish the impact of the the damaging tapes.

Dot 11. Carter Page, who runs an investment company, was named as an early foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Former Senate minority leader Harry Reid accused Page of being a conduit between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Page gave a 2016 speech in which he accused the U.S. government of having a “hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change” toward Russia.

Dot 12. Trump continues to excoriate the “dishonest media,” and now the “fake news media,” by which he means virtually all media except Fox News and other conservative news outlets. As the Russia connection scandal swirls, he tweeted on February 16 “The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC and @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!” In another tweet he referred to “This Russian connection non-sense.” In the February 16 press conference, he pointed out that “the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.”

Dot 13. Trump learned on January 26 that Flynn had lied to Vice-President Pence about the phone call to Russian ambassador Kislyak. On February 10, The Washington Post reported the phone call and Flynn’s lie to Pence that sanctions were not discussed. Three days later, and eighteen days after apparently first learning about the call and Flynn’s lying to Pence, Trump fired Flynn. Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed that it was an “erosion of trust” that caused the firing, although it came only three days after the Post article. The transcripts of the calls are not yet available, though presumably they will be to House and Senate Intelligence committees. Democrats are calling for an independent investigation (like the 9/11 Commission), but Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell wants to keep it in the Republican-led intelligence committees. Democrats also fear that new Attorney-General Jeff Sessions, the earliest senator to support Trump in the campaign, cannot be a fair arbiter of a Justice department investigation.

Dot 14. A day after Press Secretary Spicer said that it was an erosion of trust that caused the firing (and presumably therefore having nothing to do with the Post article revealing the Flynn-Pence issue), Trump himself praised Flynn, stating that he, Flynn, had been “treated unfairly by the media.” There was no comment about Trump’s eroding trust in Flynn.

Dot 15. Trump has defied four decades of precedent from candidates of both parties in refusing to make public his tax returns, despite calls from various sources that he do so. His claim has been that he cannot do so because he is under audit, though the IRS has made clear that there is no legal prohibition of anyone making public his or her own tax returns. Moreover, he has said that he would release the tax returns when he is no longer under audit. As it is likely that the IRS routinely audits billionaires’ tax returns every year, this is probably a safe promise to make. The tax returns would help clarify where Trump has investments and debts, in addition to revealing how much he has paid in taxes.

Dot 16. Trump has refused to place his assets in a blind trust despite near universal calls to do so from ethicists and neutral observers. Instead he has handed over leadership to relatives and close associates, meaning that he still has ultimate control over his business enterprises.

Dot 17. Trump has had an ongoing hostile attitude toward the intelligence community, beginning with his pushback of the unanimous conclusion of American intelligence agencies that Russians interfered in the election with the goal of helping him get elected. He has sarcastically put the word intelligence in quotation marks in reference to the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The three agencies concluded in a report to President Obama that the Russians not only interfered with the election, they did so at the express orders of Putin and specifically to damage Clinton and help Trump (the CIA and FBI did so with “high confidence” and the NSA with “moderate confidence”). Most recently, Trump blamed intelligence officials for “criminal” leaks concerning the Flynn affair, and The Wall Street Journal—no particular friend to liberal Democrats—reported on February 15 that intelligence officials are no longer sharing certain sensitive details, such as methods of intelligence gathering, with the President for fear that their methods and personnel could be compromised.

So what picture do all the dots appear to create? Can any or all of these dots be connected? First, and almost certainly, Trump fired Flynn only because of The Washington Post article’s revelations, given the eighteen days between Trump’s hearing of Flynn’s actions and the actual firing. Without the Post article, Flynn would almost certainly still be National Security Adviser, a strange role for an American who just before had been an analyst for a state-owned Russian propaganda arm, Russia Today. Second, and far more ambiguously, what are we to make of the numerous connections between Trump people—Manafort, Page, Trump Jr., Flynn, Tillerson, and Trump himself—and Russian officials, including Putin himself? How is it, and why is it, that Trump has gathered such a collection of like-minded Russophiles in his orbit? Add to this Trump’s yearlong defenses of Putin, especially that some other entity could be doing the hacks, possibly China or some fat guy in his bed. Did Trump possibly authorize Flynn’s call to the Russian ambassador, thus making Flynn a scapegoat, albeit a highly unsympathetic one? Trump has publicly stated that he admired the leadership of autocratic and dictatorial Putin, including a recent interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, in which he stated that “we are not so innocent” when O’Reilly pointed out that Putin was a killer. Was Trump’s public invitation to Putin during the campaign to interfere in the election by leaking Clinton emails an ill-thought-out tip of the iceberg acknowledgment of a deeper collusion between Trump and Putin to actually rig the election?

It is certainly premature to suggest that Trump authorized Flynn’s call, though the apparent nature of the call—suggesting that Trump would lift or at least ease sanctions—is in keeping with Trump’s own thinking. The fact that Putin did not retaliate for Obama’s expulsion of thirty-five presumed Russian intelligence agents certainly reinforces the apparent subject of the call, at least in the absence of transcripts not yet made public. Flynn’s call also reminds us that we have one president at a time, and Obama was still president when Flynn made his call.

The Trump collection of Russophiles, not just individuals sympathetic to the idea of closer relations with Russia but individuals who have financial interests in that outcome, clearly tilts their (and Trump’s) perspective favorably or at least sympathetically toward Russian behavior, and thus neuters the natural skepticism that high level individuals in an American administration should have toward a long-term adversary. For example, so far the administration has had nothing to say about the Russian deployment of a ground-launched new cruise missile, in direct violation of the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States that prohibits the deployment of ground-launched missiles with a range of 300 to 3400 miles.

Trump’s financial ties to Russia, possibly including Trump debt to Russia or specific Russians, would certainly be one of two primary reasons that Trump would not wish to reveal his tax returns. The other, of course, would be that they may well reveal that he has paid no federal income taxes for approximately eighteen years after claiming a large loss in the 90s, which, apparently, he has effectively amortized over nearly two decades. But he certainly does not want his financial ties to Russia on public display.

Given that we know that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and subsequently shared that information with Wikileaks, it is probable that Russia also hacked the Republican National Committee for its own purposes. It is almost a certainty that Russian intelligence has whole file cabinets on Trump, going back to his first business dealings with the Russians in 1987, just as it has files on other presidential candidates and as we have files on numerous Russians. It is also quite probable that in addition to the Trump files containing business dealings and possible debt, some of the material is personally unflattering. Whether on the basis of business dealings or personal behavior, or both, Trump could be in the position of potentially being blackmailed without the threat even being spoken. As of this writing, February 16, less than a month into Trump’s presidency, Trump claimed in an almost bizarre press conference that he has no dealings with Russia: “I have nothing to do with Russia. I have no loans in Russia, I have no deals with Russia.” If the President had even a modest reputation for honesty, such a statement would have to be credited until proven false. But, even aside from his son’s own statement concerning Trump-Russia business connections, Trump is notorious for misstatements, falsehoods, and lies, and thus it is more reasonable than not to assume that “I have nothing to do with Russia” is not true. Also in the press conference he claimed to have won more electoral votes than anyone since Reagan (demonstrably false: Obama had more in both his elections, Clinton had more in both his elections, and George H. W. Bush had more in 1988). He also claimed, in connection with the Flynn affair, that the leaks were “real” but the news was “fake,” prompting the reasonable question, asked by a reporter, how could the news be fake if the leaks of that information were real? And while praising Wikileaks that helped him during the campaign, he now paints “illegal leaks” as the source of his troubles.

The business ties, the Trump inner circle of Russia supporters, the watering down of the GOP platform supporting Ukraine, Trump’s attacks on American intelligence agencies, Trump’s publicly expressed admiration of Putin, the expression of the moral equivalence of the United States and Russia when O’Reilly called Putin a killer, the silence so far in not condemning the Russian violation of the INF treaty, the likely intent to soften the sanctions on Russia, the refusal to release his tax returns, the Russian interference in the election with the purpose of helping Trump win, the unprecedented Russian decision not to retaliate after Obama’s expulsion of thirty-five Russian spies, all collectively point to, at the very minimum, an extremely un-Republican and worrisome relationship between the Trump administration and the most significant and continuous adversary of the United States since the end of World War II. It could be that Trump’s coziness with Russia is simply about money, with Trump using the bully pulpit to protect his investments and to expand his financial empire. Even given such a banal interpretation, a pro-Russia tilt for personal gain would be indefensible and almost inevitable.

But there is also a more draconian interpretation, clearly speculation at this point, but not unreasonable given what we know about Trump the businessman and the deal-maker, along with his penchant for a lack of candor. Might there have been some sort of collusion between Putin and Trump, in which Russia employs cyber-warfare to help Trump win the election, with a stated or unstated quid pro quo that Trump will take a soft stand vis-à-vis Russia. This could take the form of lifting sanctions, or, more generally, not standing in Putin’s way as he seeks to expand Russia’s international influence, to undermine other democracies’ elections through cyber attacks, to sow discord among American allies and NATO, and possibly to re-construct the Soviet Union. Certainly such a collusion would be a traitorous act and, as a constitutional “high crime,” an impeachable one. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose wife is in Trump’s cabinet, has his eye on the 2018 mid-term congressional elections, especially the tenuous Republican majority in the senate providing him with his senate leadership role, and hence he is reluctant to encourage any outside investigations. Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, though having their own personal reasons for despising Trump, seem to be placing country over party in their willingness to follow the facts—the dots—wherever they may lead. They could lead to a dead end. But maybe not.

*Factual data and quotations have been gleaned primarily from various news stories in USA Today, but also NBC News, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post and politico.com

Polls. Seriously? Margin of error: plus or minus 25 points.

There’s a whole lot of grievance out there, especially among white voters, 58% of whom voted for the winner.

The endorsements of the Ku Klux Klan newspaper and David Duke can help you, or at least not hurt you.

A history of infidelities and groping women you don’t even know can help you, or at least not hurt you.

A letter from the Director of the FBI to congressional leaders eleven days before the election casting possible aspersions on your integrity, followed by another letter a few days later saying never mind—sorry, got it wrong, doesn’t help you.

Getting the most votes doesn’t mean you win. Of course we’ve known that for a couple of centuries. This is the fifth presidential election—count ‘em, five—where the person with fewer votes won.

We have learned that there is not the least outrage at that particular fact; what we don’t know is why. We teach our kids that in a democracy, the majority—meaning the most votes—wins.

And while we’re on the subject of the infamous electoral college, we know (and have long known) that your presidential vote doesn’t count if you are a Democrat in Mississippi, nor does it count if you are a Republican in California. And it will be that way for a long, long time, if not forever, unless the electoral college is abandoned in favor of the popular vote or significantly modified to split all states’ electoral votes proportionately to their popular votes—the latter of which presumably would not require a constitutional change.

Still on the subject of the infamous electoral college, its all-or-nothing approach means that all the attention is on “battleground” states, and even their individual counties, meaning that their votes really count.

Discussing the size of your privates in a primary debate energizes your supporters.

Making public your federal income tax returns is totally unnecessary if you are being audited.

Lying on a titanic scale, even on matters that video and audiotapes can reveal as untrue, is not only not discouraged, but can actually be admired.

About a quarter of the population is amazingly gullible and will believe about any lunacy you tell them if it fits their world view—and will reject any self-evident reality if it doesn’t.

There is another quarter of the population that is not necessarily gullible or condoning of bad behavior or prone to racism but still feels disenfranchised and disaffected.

One should avoid running in years after your team has been in office for two terms. Reagan-Bush pulled it off from ‘81 to ’93, but before that you have to go back to FDR-Truman, 1933-1953. We like change.

Actual preparation for a debate is a liability.

Badly losing all three presidential debates, despite fantasizing that you won them, helpfully demonstrates that you are not burdened with useless information about unimportant issues.

Anything approaching civility to your opponents is idiotic because it turns off your supporters, though it’s fine to discuss how great those opponents are once they have ceased to be your opponents. But until then, the uglier the better; the more lies the better.

A senate majority leader not doing his or her constitutional duty by ignoring a president’s nomination for the Supreme Court when that president still has a year left in office can pay off handsomely.

Presidential elections are rigged until you unexpectedly win, and then they’re not.

You can have “great respect” for the current president after you win, even if he is “the most ignorant president” of all, “the founder of ISIS,” and not born in America.

Use the government server if you are Secretary of State planning to run for President—just sayin’.

Make colossal promises, like building beautiful walls that other countries will pay for or creating another police force devoted solely to deporting twelve million undocumented residents. Nobody actually believes such promises, but folks love to hear them anyway.

Developing budding bromances with Russian dictators, hiring campaign managers with Russian connections, and telling the Russians Sure, who needs NATO, prove that you are a peace-loving kind of guy.

Never let a response to a criticism go untweeted.

Being a billionaire and not paying federal income taxes for years can be financially beneficial; and even better, it can prove how smart you are.

Megalomania pays, at least through election day.

The electoral winner (and thus the actual winner) had some 59 million votes, over 2.7 million fewer than the electoral loser. Julian Assange—Wikileaks founder, indicted sexual predator, and self-appointed moral counselor to the world—deserves credit for at least a few million of the winner’s votes.

Education matters: College-educated voters went for Clinton by nine percentage points. And it matters especially if you’re white: Non-college educated white voters went for Trump by almost forty (!) percentage points. No statistics available on Trump University students.

When things don’t go your way: Bitterness is not a strategy.