Here’s a recent column by David Brooks which
might prompt you to do something. Read
on to see one of the things which I did.
*
* * *
What Will You Do if Trump Doesn’t Leave?
- Playing out the nightmare scenario.
New
York Times Opinion Columnist
On the evening of Nov.
3, Americans settle nervously in front of their screens to await elections
results. In the early hours Donald Trump seems to be having an excellent night.
Counting the votes cast at polling places, Trump is winning Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin and Michigan. Those states
don’t even begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, yet
Trump quickly declares victory. So do many other Republican candidates. The
media complains that it’s premature, but Trumpworld is ecstatic.
Democrats know that as
many as 40 percent of the ballots are mail-in and still being counted,
and those votes are likely to be overwhelmingly for
Joe Biden, but they can’t control the emotions of that night. It’s a gut punch. As the mail-in ballots are tallied, the Trump
leads erode. But the situation is genuinely unclear. Trump is on the warpath,
raging about fraud.
Within weeks there are
lawsuits and challenges everywhere. It’s like Florida in 2000, but the chaos is
happening in many states at once. Ballots are getting tossed because of
problems with signatures, or not getting tossed, amid national frenzy.Trump
says he won’t let Democrats steal the election and declares himself re-elected.
It’s an outrage, but as when he used the White House for a campaign prop during
his convention, who’s going to stop him?
A certain kind of
Republican takes to the streets to enforce Trump’s version of events. According
to research done by Larry
Bartels of Vanderbilt, 50 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents believe “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so
fast that we may have to use force to save it.” Nearly as many believe, “A time
will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.”
The left is in the
streets, too. On the fringe of the left there are those who want to overthrow
the racist, cisgendered, patriarchal neoliberal oligarchy. This is their chance
at mayhem, too, and they seize it with sometimes violent passion.
But a new force looms into view.
For the whole Trump era a certain sort of conservative has been cowering from
the Trump onslaught. Certain sorts of moderates and liberals have also been
keeping their heads down, so they won’t get bitten off by the woke mobs. But
now the very existence of the Republic is at stake.
It turns out, amid the
existential crisis, there really is a group of sober people who are militant
about America, who can see reality unblinkered by the lens of partisanship, and
who are finally compelled to organize. They
understand that, like so many American tragedies, this is largely about race.
It’s about the transition from a certain kind of white-dominated America to a
diverse America — and the people who will do anything to stop it.
The Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. once argued that sin is buried so deep in the human soul that sweet
words are insufficient to get people to give up their unjust power. “Instead of
assured progress in wisdom and decency,” he wrote, “man faces the ever-present
possibility of a swift relapse not merely to animalism, but into such
calculated cruelty as no other animal can practice.” But the realist militants who walk in King’s
shadow also know that it is the U.S. Constitution that keeps us from slipping
into chaos, along with all the norms and values built around it over the
centuries. They know, too, that this crisis is not just about race, but also
the greatness of American institutions, so scorned and derided of late, so
neglected and abused.
If Trump claims a
victory that is not rightly his, a few marches in the streets will not be an
adequate response. There may have to be a sustained campaign of civic action,
as in Hong Kong and Belarus, to rally the majority that wants to preserve
democracy, that isolates those who would undo it.
Two themes would have to
feature in such civic action. The first is ardent patriotism. The country
survives such a crisis only if most people’s love of nation overwhelms the
partisan fury that will threaten to envelop us.
The second is the preservation
of constitutional order. Through epic acts of self-discipline, the nonviolent
civil rights marchers in the 1960s forced their foes to reveal that if there
were to be any violence and anarchy, it would come from the foes. That’s how
the movement captured the moral high ground and won the mind of the nation.
The process of
mobilizing for an accurate election outcome, before it is too late, would be a
struggle to preserve the order of our civic structure against the myriad foes
who talk blithely about tearing down systems, disorder and disruption. It may
be how we rediscover our nation again.
It’s time to start
thinking about what you would do.
* * *
Once I read this column which disappointingly
does no more than offer a “think about it” answer to a premature Trump victory
claim, sometimes referred to as a “red mirage," before mail-in ballots are
counted, I wrote the following letter to the Palm Beach Post, which
carried the column. As of this moment, I
don’t know if they will be printing it.
Welcome to Venezuela!
My letter: David Brooks’ recent column paints a frightening scenario
whereby Donald Trump declares himself a winner in the November presidential
election before all of the ‘mail-in ballots,’ the counting of some of which
cannot start in some key states until Election Day, are tabulated. This
year, there may be many more ‘mail-in ballots’ than ever before, resulting in a
delay in producing the final results. Brooks describes confusion “like
Florida in 2000, but the chaos is happening in many states at once,”
conceivably resulting in violence from both sides. He then naively
suggests that Americans’ 'ardent patriotism' and desire to preserve the
constitutional order can provide a solution. That won’t happen. If
Brooks’ scenario comes to pass, the only solution would be intervention by our
supposedly apolitical Armed Forces, which are sworn to protect our
Constitution.
JL
Watching Political Commercials
There are two
types of commercials being used in the Presidential election campaign. Watch them carefully and you will see that the
Republican party’s TV commercials are trying to frighten you into voting for
their candidate. The Democratic
commercials, on the other hand, are trying to imbue you with a hope for a
better America to get you to vote for their candidate. If you can’t tell the difference between
these two strategies, and the two parties, you have a problem, my friend.
JL
Short Story Time:
From the archives, here's a short story I wrote about ten years ago. The "writer buddy" mentioned in the last paragraph did indeed base a script on this sad story. Can you identify the writer and the title he gave to his script? You've heard of both.
(Here's
a clue: Do you remember the name of the TV producer who was responsible
for "All in the Family" and "Maude," among many other shows
from the old days.)
Idea for a Screenplay
Jack Lippman
So there’s this senior
citizen rich guy, a widower, who begins to feel that he is finally losing it
and decides to retire from the hands-on management of his life. Two of his
daughters agree to split his real estate holdings and investment portfolio in
exchange for a promise to take care of him in his declining years. His other
daughter, somewhat of a free spirit, won’t have any part of what she sees as a
sleazy deal on the part of her sisters. Dad promptly disinherits her and she
runs off to Paris with a Frenchman.
Before long the two
daughters are fighting over which one can do less for Dad and finally, fed up
with them both, he sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night in a
driving rainstorm. One of his old buddies, whom he doesn’t even recognize,
manages to get him out of the torrent into a cheap motel and tries to convince
him to go back to his daughters, but the old guy refuses. He realizes that he
was wrong in disinheriting his third daughter and his old buddy tells him that
she is actually coming back from Paris to help him, having heard of the shoddy
treatment her sisters were providing.
While this tragic
story was unfolding, a retired senior executive of the rich old guy’s former
business was having his own family problems with his two sons, one of whom was
a real bastard who spent his time lying, cheating and trying to convince his
father that he was a better son than his brother. It’s clear that he’s after
the full inheritance. This father also got involved in attempting to shelter
his old boss when he was out in the rain storm. For doing that, the sadistic
husband of one of the old man's daughters brutally beats and tortures him,
blinding him in the process, to which his bastard of a son quietly acquiesces,
allying himself with the two sisters who are just as greedy as he is!
Meanwhile, the
sisters, tipped off as to their kid sister’s return from Paris and fearing that
they might lose their inheritance, heed the advice of their new-found friend,
the one whose father had been tortured and blinded, who helps them call in some
tough guys to take care of the situation. By then the third daughter had found
her father at a Motel 6, but sadly, the bad guys capture them both. One of them
chokes the girl to death, but the old man manages to clobber him with a two by
four and escape. Then, mustering his last bit of strength to carry her body out
of the place in his arms, he dies. How sad.
As for the sisters,
one of them had lost her husband in a fight with a servant over how she was
treating her father. The other sister’s husband files divorce papers after he
finds that she was having an affair with the rotten bastard whose father was
blinded. The two girls end up fighting over him before he is deservedly killed
by his brother. Finally, one of the sisters poisons the other and then commits
suicide.
A few weeks later, we
find the old man’s old buddy and the surviving son of the blinded man, also
dead by this time, in a sleazy bar. After commiserating with each other over a
few drinks, they agree that life sucks and wonder if they should tell this whole
sad story to their writer buddy, Bill, who might even use it for the plot of a
screenplay or something.
Russia Gets the Message from Me
Back on August 14, noting the excessive amount of 'hits' on this blog from Russia, I concluded it represented Russia's attempts to find ways to propagandize the upcoming presidential election by infiltrating social media in this country as they did in 2016. They look at blog after blog, seeking ones to infiltrate. I am sure they took a look at this one! Obviously, this blog's orientation doesn't draw the gullible audience they seek, and once I wrote about this (on Aug. 14), the excessive number of Russian 'hits' stopped. They obviously had decided that JacksPotpourri would not fit their needs, and once I wrote about it, they got the message. They continue to look in occasionally I presume. (Besides anti-Democratic and anti-Biden material, I am sure they seek to create friction between the left and center aspects of the Democratic Party, and this isn't the place to do that.)
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