Protest! Time for all Americans to use their First Amendment Rights

After the American Century

By his recent actions, President Trump has lost all credibility. It is utter nonsense for him to claim he won the 2020 election. He has lost touch with reality, and he is intentionally subverting the democratic election process. 

It is time for ordinary citizens to use all of their First Amendment rights to protest Trump's bizarre attempt to subvert the election.

It is time to protest his refusal to fight the coronavirus pandemic.  Two thousand Americans died yesterday in that pandemic. Almost certainly 2,000 more will die tomorrow. Trump has done nothing for months, and his task force has done almost nothing.

I protest the continual lies and exaggerated statements made by President un-elect Trump. He will be remembered as the first president to refuse to accept an election loss, and as a man without honor who refused to help with an orderly transition of power.

I protest the media who repeat barefaced lies and encourage citizens to believe them, Fox News in particular. 

I protest the silence of the Republican Senators and many other Republican elected officials regarding Trump's behavior. It is time for the Republican Party to realize that their silence is consent. Every elected official who does nothing now is guilty of letting the government of the United States spin out of control. Bravo, Mitt Romney, for standing up almost alone and making his voice heard.

I protest the misuse of social media to slander the officials who conducted the election, and to spread false statements about the conduct and the results of the election. Social media need to be regulated and to prevent lies and slander from flourishing on their websites.

Lincoln in 1858

Abraham Lincoln declared in 1858 that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Republicans are dividing the American house, and it cannot indefinitely survive if politics continue as they are now, At this moment, because of their refusal to cooperate on combatting the coronavirus, more than thousands of people are dying every day.  If American politicians cannot manage such an obvious crisis, what chance is there that they will come together to solve more complex social and economic problems? 

The Republicans are playing with fire. Already, it appears certain that the United States will emerge from the Trump years weaker and more divided than it was in 2016. Trump said he would "make American great again,." He has done just the opposite.  

The Trump Denial Regime

After the American Century

It seems possible that President Trump has had a mental breakdown. Who can offer a rational explanation for his behavior since he lost the election? He is hiding from the press and public, while sending out odd messages on Twitter. He really seems to believe that he won the election that he lost.  He appears to be in the grip of a conspiracy theory that seems to be a paranoid misreading of reality. He lost the popular vote by more than 5 million votes and he lost the electoral vote as well. Some commentators have said that he is "in denial," as if this is all right. 

It is not all right for the commander in chief to sulk for weeks after losing an election. It is not all right for him to mislead millions of Americans with claims of election fraud that are unsubstantiated by any evidence. He has lost all the court cases brought so far, and most of the lawyers who worked on them have withdrawn their services. Presumably, they realized that they were being used as part of a vast deception. 

It certainly is not all right to pretend that Trump is in his right mind. Millions of Americans are not at all certain that Mr. Trump is now rational or capable of making complex decisions. He gives no indication that he is performing his job as president. Quite the contrary. He is spending time playing golf but otherwise doing little more than repeating endlessly - obsessively - that he won the election. 

Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people are dying every day from the coronavirus. The President endlessly told the public that this is not a serious illness, that is was largely fake news, a bogus crisis.  Even after he got the coronavirus himself, he told his followers that it was nothing to worry about. It would cease to be a news story the day after the election, or so he said. Trump has led the public down that false road of denial, too.

The number who have died from the coronavirus in the US has already topped the death toll for the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. The majority of these deaths could have been avoided, had the US had leadership as competent as in New Zealand, in Norway, in South Korea, or in Taiwan, all of which have had far lower death rates. But the Trump White House did not take a leadership role, it did not coordinate a national response, and it did not even give accurate information about the situation much of the time,  The Trump White House is responsible for the majority of these deaths.

In any other job, a person behaving irresponsibly would be sent to a psychological examination, and he would be relieved of his duties until he was well again. Amendment 25 of the Constitution sets forth the possibility that a president can be treated in a similar manner. In that case, the Vice President would assume the duties of the President.

Amendment 25 is not likely to be invoked, however, because the president has infected those around him with his fantasies. The White House and the Republican leadership seem to be collectively deluded in a way that is common in religious cults. No one wants to upset or offend Trump. This is the Republican Party that refused to call a single witness at the sham impeachment proceedings, in which the Senate did not allow a trial to take place. Trump the untouchable.

The Washington Post has kept a record of Trump's lies and exaggerations and has been unable to keep up with him, because he repeats the lies so often, at a rate of more than 25 a day. They estimate that he has lied 25,000 times during his 4 years in office. It seems doubtful that Trump and his millions of followers have much of a grip on reality any longer. They have heard the lies so often that they believe them all.

This paranoid president is self-absorbed, with little interest in the pandemic raging on his watch. This Republican Party is unable to separate itself from his delusions, and instead helps to spread them, creating a bubble of conspiracy theories and false accusations of fraud. The real fraud is the Republican leadership itself.  

The Republican Party will not live down this dark period for at least a generation. The United States will not regain respect on the world stage for years, either, assuming it manages to escape from this self-inflicted crisis of government. 

Who benefits from this chaos? Russia, China, and terrorists. The crisis allows all of them to construct a plausible sounding narrative, in which the United States is not really a democracy. This is the narrative of electoral fraud that Trump is selling and that the Republican Party seems unable to reject. 

The Capricious Rule of Trump

The Capricious Rule of Trump: 

The Flynn case and the destruction of the rule of law

After the American Century


First, the Russians interfered in the 2016 election. This is not a debatable point, as it has been exhaustively established by a special prosecutor investigation.

Second, Michael Flynn had secret conversations with Russian diplomats before the Trump Administration took office. His phone conversations were recorded, because the FBI was tapping the Russian's phone. This also is a fact and not debatable.

Third, Flynn lied about these conversations, first to the Vice President and then to the FBI. This is also undeniably the fact.

Fourth, Flynn confessed that he lied.  He made a legally binding admission of guilt.

Fifth, after years of legal maneuvering, Flynn has just escaped any punishment because the Justice Department suddenly decided to drop the case. The Acting Attorney General, Mr. Barr appears to have interfered in the case in several ways. For details, see the lead story in the New York Times for May 8, 2020.

Sixth, the President of the United States declares that Flynn was innocent, and attacks the Justice Department lawyers who took him to court, calling them "scum." As reported by the Times, his words were “They’re scum — and I say it a lot, they’re scum, they’re human scum."  

The Trump Administration has politicized the Justice Department and turned it into his political tool. How it is possible that Flynn confesses his guilt, agrees to cooperate with the enquiry in exchange for leniency in punishment, but then manages to get the government to DROP the case?

There is no (American) precedent for such a thing. Confess guilt and then have the case dropped? What kind of legal system has Trump created? This resembles the way dictatorships operate.  Get your buddies off unpunished, and attack the Justice Department lawyers for trying to protect the United States from Russian interference.

Trump is not making American great, as he promised, but destroying the rule of law.  As for Mr. Flynn, he confessed that he was guilty of perjury, but that is not the main point. He was involved with the same foreign power that interfered with the 2016 elections, and the American people deserve to know the details of what Flynn's conversations were about. Note, too, that it is highly irregular to conduct foreign policy, if that was what one can call it, before one takes office - apparently in an effort to undermine the Obama Administration's foreign policy.  Some might call that treason.

But instead of getting to the bottom of Flynn's dealings with an enemy of the United States, he is walking away, unpunished.

Instead of the rule of law, we have the capricious rule of Trump.

US lags in reacting to longterm trends in energy, pollution, and global warming

After the American Century

The times are out of joint. The short term outlook is good, if by this one means unemployment is low, interest rates are low, economic growth stronger than it has been in years. But the long term outlook is terrible, if by this one means global warming, species extinction, political polarization, and overuse of the earth's resources.

So the question becomes, at what historical moment will these short and long-term trends intersect? When will pollution become so severe that it hurts the economy, for example? When these two trends meet, pulling and pushing in opposite directions, the short-term ones will lose the battle.

Some countries are far more ready to weather this storm when it comes. Holland builds dikes; the US builds on the flood plain and offers FEMA support to rebuild there after hurricane winds destroy homes schools, prisons, etc. Holland obviously is smarter about this than the US. Some countries are going in for recycling in a big way. Some countries are reducing their use of fossil fuels, requiring effective insulation of all new houses, building mass transit, etc  But the US is not doing these things

Instead, the Trump Administration is allowing pollution levels to rise, denying the existence of global warming, pushing for greater use of coal, and opening new lands to oil and gas exploration. These actions are setting the US on the course toward failure. When the long term trends overtake us, as they must, the effects are going to be more strongly felt in the US economy because we did not get ready.

I could produce statistics to back up all these points, but those who don't believe in any of these long term trends are not going to be convinced. So we drift on, embracing the failed policies of the past. Assuming humanity survives for at least several more centuries, the chapter on how the US faded away as the world leader will make for melancholy reading. After the American century, indeed.

How I came to write a novel: McSocrates

After the American Century

Once upon a time I was in Yorkshire for a semester of research, and after several months I had exhausted all the local archival materials. Not that my project was done, but there was nothing more to do there. At first I was bored, but then I decided to try writing a little fiction. I had often thought about writing a novel, but I always seemed too busy. And what kind of a career move was it for a historian to write a novel anyway?

As it happened, not only was I a bit bored but the weather turned inclement. Rain and yet more rain, all spring. And so I started a short story, or so I imagined, one set in a small college in upstate New York. I know quite a bit about small colleges, as my father taught at Trinity College, Hartford, and I went to Amherst College. Later I taught for a few years at Union College, and I have also lectured at quite a few small colleges over the years. In the novel I did not model Socrates College on any of these individual places, nor is its faculty like that at any one institution, though a few former colleagues have been gathered together at this new location. In any case, I did not have a plan worked out for a novel, but was just trying to write a short story.

Then something quite unexpected happened. After describing the campus and introducing several characters, a woman suddenly appeared. I had expected the main character to be Al Thayer, a middle-aged historian whose work focused on Renaissance Italy. But I began to make snide remarks about him, and after just a few pages, Michelle Jensen, a young woman drove an old Chevy into the manuscript and just took over as the main character. The book also became more irreverent and satirical. And what had been a short story grew to over 50,000 words. Fortunately, I know several women roughly the same age as Michelle, and they were willing to read the manuscript. To my relief, they found her credible, but they had helpful advice on her clothing and vocabulary.

By the time I had completed the first draft, I was back in Denmark, where full-time teaching and research demanded my time. I completed the historical study I had begun in England, and it was published by MIT Press. A year after I started my inadvertent novel, it was almost forgotten, and for another year I did not look at it. When I eventually did, I liked it more than expected. I made a few revisions, forgot about it again, and then made further revisions one summer later. I also got feedback from several more readers. At this point, I realized that the little book was done. But I was afraid to publish it. After writing many historical works, conceivably it would tarnish my reputation, to the extent I had one. Nor did I relish the prospect of probable rejection from commercial publishers.

So, in the summer of 2018 I made a final edit, and put the book out with Amazon. Since it deals with academic life and with the effects of digitization on a college campus, it may be of interest to some. I had fun dong it, and a sequel is starting to emerge.

The Energy Transition from Gas to Electricity

American Illuminations: The Energy Transition from Gas to Electricity

After the American Century

In 1900 the city of Cincinnati sent a small group around to ten other cities to study their lighting systems. Cincinnati had an old gas system and wanted to upgrade it. It may seem strange to us today, but it was by no means obvious that they should choose electricity. Gas lighting had improved greatly in the 1890s, and when the Cincinnati committee got to St. Louis they were told that while electricity was popular with the citizens, it was rather expensive and was only used on a few streets. Elsewhere, St. Louis was going to use Welsbach gas mantles. The committee next went to Indianapolis, but its system was not cutting edge and left immediately for Chicago, where they heard that of course the city was converting everything to electricity. But in Milwaukee, they learned that gas was preferred.

And so it went. The choices were also more complex than just gas or electricity, for there were many different kinds of arc lights, some open, others enclosed, some using alternating current and others direct current. The committee also had the problem that they wanted to compare systems side by side, but they were hundreds of miles apart. How could they compare the electrical system in Pittsburgh with the gas system in St. Louis? They might see one city when the moon was shining and another when it was raining. The problem is much like that of a city buying a technical system today, and it is not always clear which system is the optimal choice.  

This is just one of many stories in American Illuminations which looks at how Americans developed the most brightly lighted cities in the world by the end of the nineteenth century. The larger story includes the spectacular displays at world's fairs, the development of "moonlight towers" and electric signs, the illumination of skyscrapers, the invention of the city skyline, the lighting of amusement parks, the city beautiful movement, and the many uses of electric lighting in parades and politics, particularly presidential inaugurations. 

Walter Benjamin once wrote that "overabundance of light produces multiple blindings." Read this book, and see if you agree.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/american-illuminations

Our energy transition

After the American Century

We are living in the midst of an energy transition, shifting away from fossil fuels to solar, wind, biomass, and other forms of alternative energy. The price of solar power has been dropping rapidly during the last five years, and is now a cheaper source of electricity than windmills and more importantly, cheaper than coal. The price differences will become even larger, as new R&D keeps finding greater efficiencies, and manufacturers achieve economies of scale in production.

Danish windmills

The energy transition is taking place most rapidly not in the nations that were dominant in the old oil-coal-gas energy regime, such as the United States, but rather in nations which do not possess many fossil fuel resources but do have lots of sun, wind, or thermal heat.  Chile, for example, has all three of these, and will soon be supplying most of its energy needs from windmills along its long coastline and solar installations in the large desert region in the north. When I visited Chile last year to attend a conference on energy transitions, I heard many people talk about the vast exports of energy that were possible, too, once high tension lines reached into other South American countries.  Iceland is a leader in thermal heating and thermal electricity, and sunny Portugal is also rapidly becoming a player in alternative energy. 

Old fossil fuel economies are not as quick to change, and they are behaving in quite different ways. Germany has invested heavily in solar and wind power, creating thousands of jobs, and its official policy is to close nuclear plants and get rid of fossil fuels as soon as possible. Britain seems unable to give up nuclear power as a fantasy solution, but meanwhile is muddling through and headed toward more alternative energies, though not with the same pace and determination as Germany. France has long invested heavily in atomic reactors, and of all the nations in the world, has the greatest dependence on them. 

The United States is divided, on this as on everything else these days. Some states, notably California, Massachusetts, and New York, are acting like Europeans, becoming more energy efficient, while investing in alternative power. In contrast, the Deep South until quite recently has invested almost nothing in alternative energies, and uses about twice as much energy per capita as the three states just mentioned. The Federal government is rather schizophrenic, with programs from the Obama years designed to increase energy efficiency and move toward wind and solar power, but run by Trump appointees who are undercutting the programs. Meanwhile, Trump is a strong supporter of the fossil fuel industries, particularly coal. One hopes he will be the last such president, for the long term health of the American economy depends on making the transition quickly, rather than lagging behind. Interestingly, some "red"states in the western US that usually vote Republican are nevertheless rapidly adopting wind mills, because their region happens to have steady, strong wind. This is in contrast to the American South, while has good sun but little wind except for that blasts of hot air coming from its politicians.

China is investing heavily in alternative power systems, and more recently India has begun to cancel plans to build new fossil fuel electrical plants, choosing alternative energies instead. The change is driven by falling costs at least as much as by environmental idealism.

How long will this take? Based on previous energy transitions, which I have studied, the shift in energy regimes takes at least 30 years, normally. But in the past the changes were driven by prices and the comparative versatility and convenience of different sources of power. For example, in factories steam power was not as flexible as electrical power. On the other hand, in 1910 gasoline engines were more convenient on the whole that electric motors to power automobiles, because batteries were not good enough. That problem seems to be all but solved, now, but it took more than a century.  How long will the transition as a whole take? Perhaps only a decade or two more in countries that are really trying to make the change, like Portugal and Chile. Sadly, the US, once a leader in the transition to fossil fuels and again a leader in electrification, is falling behind. The Republican Party is largely responsible, but the Democrats also share some of the blame. US energy policy has been a battlefield for decades. 

The big question is whether in the world as a whole the transition will come quickly enough to overcome the destructive effects of global warming. Since the current US government has adopted the policy of denying the reality of climate change, our hopes will have to rest with the US state governments, thoughtful corporations that shift to energy efficiency and alternative energies (such as Apple), and most importantly, other nations. In this particular area, we do seem to be living "after the American century."  

For anyone interested, I wrote about the earlier energy transition from gas to electricity as the source of lighting in a book that is about to be published, American Illuminations  MIT Press, 2018.

Republicans Vote for a Shutdown

Republicans vote for a shutdown

After the American Century

Only 45 Republicans voted for the budget bill that would keep the government open. They have 51 seats, barely enough for a majority, but need more than a simple majority. Under Senate rules, they need 60 votes to end debate and then vote on the bill. According to the New York Times, five Republicans who voted against included the majority leader, Mitch "ConMan" McConnell. He voted against his own party, and yet was later on the radio blaming the Democrats for shutting down the government. John McCain, who is not in good health, was the only senator who did not vote.

McConnell has been an incompetent, self-serving embarrassment as party leader. So little legislation has been passed in the last year and he has been so divisive, that he ought to resign and let someone else try their hand at it. Consider the situation. There ought to have been a budget by Christmas, but instead, McConnell only produced a continuing resolution that kicked the can down the road to yesterday's deadline. There is still no budget, and the Democrats were asked once again to vote for a temporary extension of last year's budget. This is no way to run the legislature. If the Republicans cannot manage to produce a budget when they control both houses of Congress and the White House, it is a sign of gross incompetence. 

Not all Democrats were against the bill. Five supported it, including te newly seated Doug Jones from Alabama. He voted for the bill, though one might have thought that a lawyer famous for defending civil rights might have voted no. The other Democratic turncoats were, like Jones, from swing states where moderation is the safe road to re-election: North Dakota, Missouri, West Virginia, and Indiana.

For readers abroad, who may not know what this means, the shutdown only affects the Federal government. I heard an incompetent "expert" on the radio this morning declare that because of the shutdown all the schools in the US would close on Monday and that no one would be able to take a driving test. This is not the case, as both are State (not Federal) functions. Likewise, if someone needs a marriage license, that is a local matter. But a shutdown, at least in theory, could stop airport security (it will not) and close all the national parks (it will). The tax offices will be closed and all federal employees in Washington will get an unpaid "vacation" until Congress starts to do its job.

Meanwhile, the Republicans will try to convince the public that the Democrats are responsible for the shutdown.

Expatriation: not what it used to be

After the American Century

A century ago being an expatriate had a certain cachet. Some major American writers once lived primarily in Britain, notably Henry James and T. S. Elliot. In the 1920s a raft of famous authors resided in Paris, as chronicled in Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return. Central works of American literature were written while the authors were living in Europe, and they often take place there as well, notably Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises or F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. A sojourn in Europe was once thought essential for every sculptor, painter, musician, and writer. The American artist abroad then lived well due to a strong dollar. In that era, the terms commonly used for such people included "emigrant," "émigré," "expatriate," and "exile." These did not usually have a negative connotation.

Today, the image of the foreigner who lives abroad is somewhat different. Many terms referring to them do not have positive connotations, including "illegal immigrant," "refugee," "alien," "deportee," "evacuee," "migrant," "foreign national," "itinerant," "displaced person," and "gypsy." The term "expatriate" is not much used, and I do not recall being called that by anyone, at least not recently. These days, the dollar is strong but not as strong as in 1920. 

Stokholm, June, 2013

For many reasons it is getting more difficult to be an American expatriate (the older term) or foreign national. This is an unintended product of many factors, including greater mobility, the tightening of security in the face of terrorism, and the digitization of information. The long lines at airports are one obvious example, where on arrival the non-citizen must wait in the slower queue. 

Banking offers a second example. The Economist writes that "Worried about being hit by massive fines for unwittingly aiding money-laundering, sanctions-evasion or financing terrorism, banks have over the past few years dropped customers in countries or sectors deemed high-risk." Even in countries where risks are low, it is now far more difficult to open a banking account. I know this from personal experience. When abroad for more than a few months, it used to be routine to open a local bank account. This has become more difficult, and one is forced to use ATMs and the bank in one's home country, with all the currency exchange charges that come with it. Yet a foreign account cannot deal with every contingency, as local services often are based on having a local bank and credit card. Digital payment systems, for example in the London tube system, do not always work with foreign accounts.

Pensions are a third example. Work in several counties during your lifetime, and each will give only a partial pension on retirement. Nor is there much logic to how much one receives. A nation where one worked only two years may pay half as much as another country where one worked more than 25 years. Saving privately can compensate for this problem, but saving for a pension in one country may not be accepted as a tax deduction in another. These matters vary from one nation to another, and generalization is impossible beyond the fact that sorting it out takes time. A lot of time.

A fourth example is taxation. A decade ago I was temporarily in Britain for a semester, and agreed to give a lecture in Norway. I made the mistake of accepting a modest honorarium for this work. As a result, the honorarium was taxed in Norway, in Denmark (my permanent residence), in the UK (my temporary residence), and in the US (my citizenship). Taken together, these taxes amounted to more than 100% of the honorarium. Perhaps there was a way to avoid paying so much. If so, the rules are hard to make out, and the time demanded to find and fill out various forms made it impractical to contest it.  Since then, I have been far less interested in being paid for lecturing abroad, unless it is in Denmark or the US, which limits the taxes to "just" two countries. Double taxation demands time and produces anxiety.

The difficulties of being an American expatriate have measurable consequences. An increasing number of long-term residents abroad are renouncing their US citizenship. I am not considering this option, but I know people who have turned in their passports. Fortune magazine noted that more people are giving up American citizenship, with a 26% increase in 2016 alone. That was before Donald Trump became president.

Both political parties have long ignored the plight of expatriates, and it was the Democrats who in 2010 passed tax laws for Americans abroad that are more draconian and punitive. As at the airports, the targets of this legislation were smugglers and terrorists, and the intentions were laudable.  The absolute numbers renouncing citizenship are still small, but the trend is troubling. The increase in the last decade has been more than 100%.

We are continually told that the world is becoming more international. Were Hemingway to return, he might disagree. At times, it seems to be more nationalistic and xenophobic.