Use the form on the right to contact us.
You can edit the text in this area, and change where the contact form on the right submits to, by entering edit mode using the modes on the bottom right.
PO Box 3201
Martinsville, VA 24115
United States
Stephen H. Provost is an author of paranormal adventures and historical non-fiction. “Memortality” is his debut novel on Pace Press, set for release Feb. 1, 2017.
An editor and columnist with more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, he has written on subjects as diverse as history, religion, politics and language and has served as an editor for fiction and non-fiction projects. His book “Fresno Growing Up,” a history of Fresno, California, during the postwar years, is available on Craven Street Books. His next non-fiction work, “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street,” is scheduled for release in June.
For the past two years, the editor has served as managing editor for an award-winning weekly, The Cambrian, and is also a columnist for The Tribune in San Luis Obispo.
He lives on the California coast with his wife, stepson and cats Tyrion Fluffybutt and Allie Twinkletail.
Ruminations and provocations.
Filtering by Tag: Election 2020
The contrast with Trump couldn’t be more profound: The Donald listens to nothing but his own often misguided instincts and cares about no one but himself. He’s under the dangerous self-delusion that he never makes mistakes, so he never apologizes and — crucially — can never learn from them. Biden, on the other hand, acknowledges he’s not perfect, which means there’s room to grow. To get better.
Read MoreYes, Trump will fire up his base with racist fears. But when it comes right down to it, more people are scared of COVID-19 and economic ruin than they are of losing Confederate flags and statues, or of largely peaceful protests. Even when Trump, by his own actions, goads protesters into violence, that violence doesn’t directly touch most people’s lives. The virus and paychecks do.
Read MoreThe nomination of Joe Biden and by the Democratic Party has put progressive independents in a double-bind. They’re asking themselves:
Is a second term of a corrupt president more or less acceptable than a vote for a corrupt establishment?
If the president in question were anyone other than Donald Trump, the answer would be easy. Corruption has become so entrenched in our political system — thanks to corporate money, Gerrymandering, etc. — that voting for any candidate who enables this system seems nothing less than a vote for corruption.
Joe Biden has spent his career enabling the system, from his oversight of the Anita Hill hearings to his vote in favor of the Iraq War. And, perhaps most tellingly, his openness to weakening Social Security and his opposition to universal health care.
Now, there’s no question that Donald Trump is worse. There isn’t enough space in this article to enumerate his myriad failings. Voting for Trump is not an option for thinking progressives.
The question is whether voting for Biden is.
A vote for Biden will further entrench a corrupt system that relies on big-money corporate donors who’ll expect something in return from whomever they support. And yes, they’ll get it.
If Trump wins, on the other hand, he’ll continue to wreak havoc with everything from healthcare to minority rights. He’ll likely get a chance to appoint one or two more Supreme Court justices. He’ll keep lining his pockets and telling lies, and his victory will affirm everything so many progressives loathe about his blustering, egocentric approach to politics.
Will the damage caused by Trump be lasting? Certainly, a Trumpist high court would be a long-term nightmare. And the longer Trumpism flourishes, the more entrenched it will become.
On the other hand, however, the longer voters actively support candidates who cater to corporate donors, rather than the voters themselves, the more entrenched that pattern will become. And, in consequence, the less anyone’s vote will matter eight, 12 or 16 years down the line.
It’s tempting to say, “I’ll put my checkmark by Biden’s name, but I don’t believe in him and it won’t be a vote for him. It will be a vote against Trump.”
Biden won’t care. He’s run his entire campaign, not on issues or personal character, but on the mere idea that he’s the person best positioned to beat Trump. He doesn’t care if you support him, so long as that checkmark is next to his name.
He’s not running as Joe Biden. He tried that twice before and failed to win a single primary. He’s running as “the safe guy” and the “anti-Trump.” But “safe” means maintaining the status quo — which, in turn, means winking at corruption while putting your hand out to accept money from as many corporate donors as you can find.
In doing so, Biden is enabling corruption.
Trump, on the other hand, is actively engaged in it. Is one worse than the other? Sure. Should either one be acceptable? Surely not.
So I can understand those who choose to vote for Biden on the grounds that four more years of Trump could be catastrophic. But I can also understand those who sit the election out or vote for a third-party candidate on the grounds that the corrupt system itself is a bigger problem even than the most corrupt individual ever to hold the office. There are potent arguments to be made both ways.
But whichever course an individual chooses to follow (and I can’t stress this strongly enough), there is no good argument for shaming those who disagree with you. There is no good argument for casting blame on those with whom you largely agree of the issues, who are following their consciences and exercising their right to vote. And there is no good argument for pressuring, goading or threatening them unless they act the way you think they should.
That’s not democracy.
And, apart from being rude and childish, such behavior almost never works: People who feel disparaged and dismissed tend to dig in their heels rather than even consider doing things differently — regardless of their political persuasion. (Mitt Romney’s remark about the “47 percent” and Hillary Clinton’s derision toward “deplorables” on the one hand and “Bernie Bros” on the other provoked precisely that reaction, and cost both of them at the polls.)
Besides, it’s not the voters who are at fault for a lost election. It’s the candidate and, to varying degrees, the system.
That’s why the current situation is so galling. The system has, as it often does, produced two candidates who are woefully lacking. No, they’re not equally bad — I’m not suggesting some false equivalency here. But whichever one wins, it will make the situation worse by reinforcing a corrupt, bought-and-paid-for system that churns out “lesser of two evils.”
At least, they appear as two evils to many of us. It can feel like a choice between Machiavelli and the Marquis de Sade.
For corporate sponsors, by contrast, the result is a win-win. They often donate to both major candidates, so that, either way, they’ve got someone in their pocket. It matters little to them whether that someone is an incompetent egomaniac or a status quo partisan hack.
Maybe, at this point, it doesn’t matter to the future of the country, either.
Here’s a chilling thought: Trump’s scorched-earth presidency and corporate corruption may have both already done so much damage already that our democracy is beyond repair.
That bleak prospect is what keeps many people from bothering to vote. I’m not saying that’s the best response, merely that it’s understandable. You can rebuke them for their supposed apathy — and alienate them further. Or you can consider the possibility that, instead of caring too little, they actually cared too much. And that, at a certain point, people stop are bound to stop caring in self-defense if caring never makes a difference anyway.
It’s not being a sore loser. That’s not it at all. Most people don’t stop caring if they’re losing a fair fight. They stop caring if they believe the game is rigged and they never had a chance in the first place.
Criticizing them won’t help. Only one thing will: Leveling the playing field.
And barring a miracle, whichever candidate wins in November, that won’t happen.
Creep. Creep. Creep.
First, they legitimized white supremacists when Donald Trump referred to “very fine people on both sides” of the violence in Charlottesville, Va.
Now, they want to bring back the poll tax and the literacy test. Well, not quite. But the COVID-19 pandemic has given Republicans their most effective means of voter suppression in decades. Those taxes and tests kept citizens from voting outright. These days, Republicans are giving them a choice: Risk your life or forfeit your right to vote.
But voting isn’t a right if it’s not protected — and instead of protecting citizens from a deadly disease, most Republicans want to expose us to it.
Here’s the breakdown of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: 67% (two-thirds) of respondents want mail-in voting this November. Fewer than half (44%) of Republicans do.
Those Republicans’ paper-thin nonargument is being made by (to no one’s surprise) the same guy who talked about white supremacists being “very fine people.”
“People cheat,” he says. “There’s a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting,” he says.
Never mind that the government accepts our taxes by mail. It allows us to register for Selective Service, for driver licenses, for car licenses by mail. It runs a postal service that guarantees delivery. Never mind any of that. The mail is good enough for the IRS, but not for a federal election? Give. Me. A. Break.
Oh, and never mind, either, that Trump’s own handpicked task force found zero evidence of voter fraud. It’s routine for him to contradict his own appointees — and himself. And he makes assertions without evidence as a matter of course.
For example: People who took a drug Trump suggested for treating COVID-19 died at higher rates than those who didn’t take it. He’s not a doctor, nor did he even play one on TV. (He played a successful businessman, but he wasn’t that, either.) Still, he insists on practicing medicine without a license — and with a megaphone.
People died because of it.
Read that again: PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF IT.
Now, it’s possible that people will die exercising their right to vote, too. And once again, it will be because Donald Trump and his cronies are making a statement, without evidence, for the sole purpose of staying in power: “Mail-in voting invites fraud.” They don’t really believe that. They’re just using it a pretext to suppress voter turnout — something they’ve been doing for a very long time.
Don’t take my word for it. Just ask them:
“Traditionally, it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places.” — Justin Clark, senior political advisor to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign
What if mail-in voting were allowed nationwide?
“This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives. ... (It will) certainly drive up turnout.” — David Ralston, Georgia State House Speaker
It would spark “levels of voting that, if you’d ever agree to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” — Trump
This, of course, is nothing more than hyperbole. Gerrymandering has locked in conservative districts as “safe” for years or decades to come. At worst (or, in my view, at best) Republicans would be forced to moderate positions that don’t jibe with those of the vast majority of Americans. Then, maybe reasonable-minded voters would once again have two viable options when they go to the ballot box.
But Republicans don’t want to change. They have no interest in wooing the majority, and they haven’t for a while. They want minority government, the same concept that sustained regimes like, oh, I don’t know, apartheid in South Africa. Gee, wasn’t that a white-supremacist government? Trump would probably argue that there were some “very fine people” in P.W. Botha’s government.
Republicans’ thirst for power is why they won’t reform the Electoral College to create a true system of one person, one vote. It’s why they consistently push voter I.D. laws. It’s why they tenaciously oppose things like motor-voter, election holidays and mail-in ballots. It’s fine to require earners to pay taxes and young men to sign up for Selective Service, but automatically registering them to vote? Oh, no! That would never do!
And it’s much better to expose them to a deadly virus than let them vote by mail!
That’s what Republicans did in Wisconsin, when they refused to delay that state’s primary election April 7. As a result, at least 19 people are sick with coronavirus. If any of them die, the Republicans will have blood on their hands
“Wait a minute,” you might say. “This doesn’t look like voter suppression not look like voter suppression to me. After all, the Republicans insisted on holding the election.”
But a closer look reveals the truth: A delay in the election would have given residents more time and opportunity to vote by mail, which would likely have driven up turnout. (Even without a pandemic, voting in person requires more planning, effort and access to transportation — something poorer people may not have.) So, yes, Republicans wanted to limit voter turnout in Wisconsin. And they used the threat of catching the virus to do so.
Despite the Republicans’ best efforts, forcing people to choose between their health and their voting rights didn’t change the outcome in Wisconsin. But that doesn’t mean it had no effect: The victorious liberal Supreme Court candidate did 10 percentage points better in mail-in voting than at the polls. If more people had voted by mail, the margin could have been even bigger.
Which has led Republicans to cry foul. It’s unfair that mail-in voting works against them, they say. But if that’s true, it’s also “unfair” that votes by blacks, women and metropolitan-area voters work against them. Why not limit those votes, too? And, indeed, that’s exactly what conservatives have tried to do, systematically, for years.
Once upon a time, they tried to suppress voting by charging people a fee to vote — a poll tax, which was declared unconstitutional in 1966. Alternatively, they sought to keep people from voting by forcing them to take literacy tests, a measure outlawed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Such tactics were aimed largely at black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
And guess what? Black Americans are at greater risk of dying from coronavirus than the general population. How convenient for Republicans. They don’t need illegal taxes and tests to keep black voters away from the polls. All they have to do is scare them with statistics — statistics largely driven by the fact that blacks have less-stable jobs, worse medical insurance and less access to health care.
All of which would be remedied by universal health care — something Republicans (of course) oppose.
Trump’s disdain for health care has long been apparent. He has tried repeatedly, via legislation and the courts, to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. He fed the current crisis even before it began by largely disbanding the White House’s pandemic response team in 2018, and he made things worse with his inept response to COVID-19.
Republicans don’t want people of color, people without health insurance and people facing economic hardship to vote, because those people tend not to support the GOP. The coronavirus gives them an ally in the fight: If people in these categories stay home from the polls, Republicans win. If they contract coronavirus and are too sick to turn out for the next election, Republicans win. And yes, if they die from the virus, Republicans win.
This is not to say that Republicans who oppose mail-in voting want these people dead. They simply care more about staying in power than they do about voters’ health or welfare.
Or their right to vote.
Now, they get to pursue their goals without poll taxes or literacy tests. Without goons or mobs keeping blacks away from the polls, the way they did in the middle of the 20th century. They don’t need them with COVID-19 on the loose. It’s their most effective 21st century weapon in their fight against democracy.
And it’s deadly.
Featured photo: https://www.vperemen.com / CC BY-SA 4.0
Remember when Barack Obama ran on the theme of hope? It seems like a million years ago. Joe Biden isn’t running on the idea that we can actually make progress. In fact, he’s not offering anything substantially new. Instead, he’s promising to return us to a mythical “golden age” (the Obama years, ironically), in which everything was somehow great and wonderful. I’ve even got a slogan for him: “Make America Great Again.” Oops. I guess that’s already taken. Trump’s nomination was the shot across our bow, and Biden’s coronation is the answering volley. Together, they signal that both parties have abandoned their ideals and sacrificed hope for the future at the altar of yearning for a past that never was – except maybe in the era of snake oil and sweatshops.
This isn’t new. In fact, it’s the rule, not the exception. Politicians know this, and they play on it. Fear of nuclear war in 1964. Fear of terrorism in 2004. Fear of immigrants in 2016. Fear of Trump in 2020. Occasionally, hope rears its head, but it’s an anomaly. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and a few others who have dared to suggest looking to the future instead of the past have been sidelined by fear that their ideas were too “radical” — even ideas, such as universal health care, that are standard operating procedure for the rest of the civilized world. But hey, that’s not how we do it here in Merica, where one candidate wants destroy the inadequate safety net we have and the other has vowed to destroy a better one if anybody even tries to build it.
Or, rather, the only thing. Biden’s rallying cry throughout the primaries hasn’t been a platform or a policy proposal. It’s been this: “I can beat Donald Trump.” Again, this sounds a lot like someone else we know: Trump is, famously, obsessed with winning. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t matter how. It only matters that you win. In the words of Hillary Clinton: “I don’t care who the nominee is. I don’t care. As long as it’s somebody who can win...” Treating politics as a team sport isn’t new: The two-party system encourages it. The difference is that now, it’s no longer merely an undercurrent that drives the process; it’s a mission statement. And suddenly, nothing else really matters. Not policies. Not people. As Al Davis said, “Just win, baby.”
Long-term goals are ignored or dismissed for the sake of short-term election wins. Instead of addressing the major flaws in our democratic system, politicians exploit them. The list is too long to list here, but includes unlimited corporate funding; a process that rewards campaigning instead of governing; the Electoral College; gerrymandering; superdelegates; irrelevant primaries (most of them, after South Carolina) voter suppression... Politicians like Trump and Biden don’t bring up the tilted playing field, because it benefits them. And while they might give lip service to long-term challenges like lifting people out of poverty, dealing with climate change, or reducing health care costs, their real pitch is merely: “I can beat the other guy.” The only long-term priority either side really cares about is the makeup of the Supreme Court, which, once again, is just about winning.
For years, it was assumed that both parties wanted what was best for the country; they just had different ideas about how to get there. That’s no longer the case. The other side is no longer “the loyal opposition” but an evil enemy out do destroy the country. Politicians have figured out that the key to winning is fear, and there’s no better way to instill fear in people than to demonize and dehumanize the other side. It works in war, where it leads to atrocities. The Vietnamese weren’t women or children, they were subhuman “Gooks.” And it works in politics, too. (Is Trump’s use of belittling nicknames any different?) So now we’re in a civil war between red and blue, and when individual citizens are wounded in the crossfire, it doesn’t matter. They’re not people. They’re just collateral damage.
Trump demands personal loyalty above all else. But are Democrats any better? After Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, those who didn’t vote for her were excoriated online as though they were Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, and Brutus all rolled into one. They’ll likely use the same treatment on anyone who doesn’t vote for Biden in 2020. And it’s not just enough to vote for the person, you have to offer unflinching, undying loyalty. Clinton said as much when she all but accused Bernie Sanders of costing her the election even though he endorsed and campaigned for her. John F. Kennedy’s plea has been warped to become: “Ask not what your candidate can do for your country, ask what you can do for your candidate.” Whether or not you voted for him in the primary (and it’s still nearly always “him.”)
The two-party system doesn’t naturally lend itself to independent thinking. If there are only two options, you tend to gravitate toward one or the other. But the “winning is everything” mentality has made things worse. Today’s partisan climate rewards tribalists, conformists and dittoheads. People who might be conservative on one issue but liberal on another are excluded because they can’t be trusted. Never Trumpers are ridiculed as RINOs by the right, and those who don’t support the Democratic standard-bearer are blamed for election losses by the left (rather than blaming the candidate for failing to make a compelling case). Independent thought isn’t just inconvenient, it’s anathema, and free speech isn’t protected, it’s shamed as blasphemy.
The old skill set of “working across the aisle,” touted as recently (though somewhat disingenuously) as the George W. Bush administration, has fallen by the wayside. When the other side is seen as the enemy, any civility or attempt to actually work together is viewed as complicity. Or treason — one of Trump’s favorite words. Politicians talk a lot about unity, but they don’t mean they intend to compromise. What they mean is, “I’ll tell you want to believe and how to act, then you fall into line like a good little puppy.” Compromise has, in fact, become a dirty word. Instead of give and take, or meeting in the middle, it’s more often viewed as contamination: “The integrity of our message has been compromised” by those who dare to think for themselves.
No matter who wins in November, the next president will be a pawn of corporate donors. Trump boldly declared in 2016 that he’d be using his own money to run for president. No lobbyists. No donors. Yet, this year, to date, he’s raised $164 million of not his own money. Bernie Sanders raised more than that from thousands upon thousands of small donors, and there was talk that his success in doing so might shift the balance of power back to actual voters. But it didn’t. Joe Biden, who relied instead on corporate donors, won the nomination. So, guess who’s going to be running the country the next four years. That’s right: corporations.
George Washington warned against “the baneful effects of the spirit of party,” and his successor, John Adams, opined: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader.” Alexander Hamilton’s take: “Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.” And James Madison remarked on humans’ propensity to fall into animosity “when no substantial occasion presents itself.” Indeed, the remarked, “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly actions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Yet, here we are. Donald Trump is no George Washington, and Joe Biden is no James Madison. But far worse: The system we have is not the system our founders envisioned. It’s a bad counterfeit and a perverse caricature of the democratic republic they believed they’d established. They’re not just rolling over in their graves. With any luck, their ghosts will be coming back to haunt us. It wouldn’t be half as scary as what we’re dealing with right now, and besides, we might learn something from it all.
