Notes from a Disillusioned Democrat

What the alternative media are saying about Kamala Harris shows the degraded state of America's political discourse. Too often, commentary has focused on personal attacks--her ancestry, her laugh, accusations that she is a closet drinker. Very little of the media chatter focuses on her policy.  Podcaster Candace Owens--someone I like a great deal when she discusses other matters--has devoted several of her podcasts to examining Harris's ancestry and claiming that Harris is not really African American.  I am not sure I find her arguments convincing.  Of course, Kamala Harris's ancestry should be a non-issue.  I only mention it because the subject seems impossible to avoid.  After the Fox News interview, some podcasters have said she was screaming or yelling. No, she was not. She did raise her voice a bit and get very intense, but there is a huge difference between speaking a bit louder and screaming. She is not good at impromptu speaking. Many people are not. As ...

 Recently, the Trump campaign released an ad about Americans--often white females--who have been killed, allegedly by immmigrants from Latin America.  The goal, obviously, is to scare white Americans into voting for Trump. In this ad, Trump appeals to fear instead of reasoning from evidence.  The Trump ad begins at 2:28: A few points need to be made:  Whereever there are human beings, there will be crime. Showing pictures of Latin American men doing the perp walk in order to induce fear in voters is demagoguery of the worst sort. One can just as easily show white males doing the perp walk to create fear of them. Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey Epstein. All the white clergymen on Sinister Ministers. Young males of any race, particularly if they are poor, have few job prospects, and lack the restraining influence of family are more likely to commit crimes. Family composition and economic prospects count for more in determining criminality than ethnic origin. The sad thing abou...

 Before the lockdown, I had a conversation with someone I respect highly.  She is highly educated, thoughtful, and reasonable. She happens also to be African American. I mentioned that I appreciated the fact that few military personnel had died under Trump.  "I'm a big fan of not getting Americans blown up." Her response: "I am too."  She went on to say, "Donald Trump doesn't bother me. He's just another guy out for himself."  What worried her was that Trump's over-the-top, bullying rhetoric encouraged white racists who could then become violent. In an earlier conversation with her, I had mentioned that I favored removing monuments for Confederate "heroes" from public places and putting them in museums.  She said she was okay with leaving the monuments there as long as both the good and the bad about these people was discussed. In other words, she had a more moderate position than I did.  When a moderate, reasonable person express...

Below is a video of Kamala Harris praising Dick Cheney, the former vice president who played a vital role in lying our nation into war. My question: is Harris signifying her support for Cheney-like policies of war?  Will she regard herself as beholden to the Cheneys if she is elected?  If she is accepting their support now, will she accept their advice in the future?  As anyone older than forty knows, Dick Cheney visited CIA headquarters  before the Iraq War began and pressured its officials into coming up with "intelligence" that supported that war.  Consider this paragraph from a paper posted to the  National Security Archive There were several avenues by which the Bush administration made its preferences clear. Vice President Richard Cheney questioned his CIA briefers aggressively, pressing them to the wall when he saw intelligence from other agencies that portrayed a more somber picture than that in CIA’s reporting. He sent briefers back for more inform...

 For those readers unfamiliar with the Gray Zon e and  antiwar.com , both sites provide useful informatin often ignored by the mainstream media, that are too preoccupied with Trump's relations with a porn star to cover the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the genocide in South Sudan. The Gray Zone reports on covert US actions around the world while antiwar.com reports on many of the same issues but from an antiwar perspective.ective.  Recently, I found this Gray Zone video on YouTube that gives an overview of Kamala Harris's hawkish campaign ads, ones that appeal to ethnic loyalties--in this case--of Polish Americans, by presenting the Democratic nominee as a refurbished cold warrior. It is worth listening to.

In the vice presidential debate, Tim Walz bragged about Kamala Harris being endorsed by both Dick and Liz Cheney. Today, I got the following email in my inbox from Hold the Line, a political action committee working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.  Why should I give *them* money?  According to them, it is because Liz Cheney has endorsed Harris: NEW YORK TIMES: “Liz Cheney to Campaign With Harris at the Birthplace of the G.O.P.” Liz Cheney just DROPPED THE HAMMER on Donald Trump! – She knows better than anyone else just how dangerous Donald Trump is. ** Remember, she took a HUGE risk to bring Trump to justice on the January 6th Committee – and she lost her job because of it. **  Democrats are beside themselves with glee about these Cheney endorsements. They frame them as matters of principle but I suspect it is a matter of spite: Trump criticized Dick Cheney for the liar he is about the Iraq War and that rankled both Dad and Daughter. In case anyone needs a refr...

 As I write this, NPR (National Public Radio) plays in the background and CNN's website is open on my laptop in a different tab.  Both of them are still  airing reports that Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen.   If by "stolen" they mean dead people voting more than they always do in America or China hacking into computerized voting systems, then no, the election was not stolen.  But there are more subtle ways to shift a close election, especially by shaping media coverage.  In fact, the major media tilted the election in Biden's favor by depriving Trump of the chance to make his best case for reelection to the American people. They did so in these ways: Burying Trump's antiwar stance, one that appeals to broad sections of both the liberal and conservative wings of the American public.  Airing false claims that Trump called neo-Nazis "very fine people."  Mishandling the Hunter Biden laptop story I. Trump's Antiwar Stance ...

 Jackson Reffitt turned in his father for his actions at the January 6, 2021 activies during the election protest that turned into a riot. He also testified against his father at his trial. Dad is serving 7 1/2 years in prison. Jackson Reffitt's treatment of his father has become a public issue again because it is the subject of an off-Broadway play, Fatherland.   The NBC interview with Jackson Reffitt contains his account of his actions, which begins at about 1:40 into the video.  The right is having a collective hissy fit, comparing Jackson Reffitt to kids in Hitler's Germany who, encouraged by the Nazi regime, turned in their parents. John Leonard, writing for the ultra-conservative website American Thinker states: Exactly why is Jackson’s father in prison? Well, he’s currently rotting away behind bars because Jackson called the FBI and reported his father for participating in the January 6 “insurrection,” while giving federal authorities all the evidence they wou...