As a retired scientist, with past faculty appointments at Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medicine and over 35 years of experience in the field of biomedical sciences, I am greatly disturbed by the shortsighted dismissal of science by White House executive orders that target science in general and the National Institutes of Health in particular.
When I first entered the laboratory of Dr. Henry Kunkel at Rockefeller University, I was instructed to “find the T cell antigen receptor” (or TCR). At the time, around 1979, this was the holy grail in immunology: It was the receptor at the very base of any immune response, responsible for recognition of foreign antigens and an immune response to a virus like the flu, or a vaccine like the Covid vaccine.
I was lucky, along with a list of other investigators in this field, and I published some early papers on the subject. The importance of the finding earned Jim Allison a Nobel Prize. Rightfully so.
The N.I.H. was the main source of funding for all the competing laboratories. The money funding my postdoc salary ($17,000 per year) and consumables (approximately $10,000 per year) came from research grants funded by the N.I.H. Monoclonal antibodies against T cell antigen receptors were the tools we used, and they led to a lifetime of work and funding of a laboratory at Weill Cornell with junior faculty, postdocs, and technicians, all of them paid by N.I.H. grants.
The discovery of the TCR led to major breakthroughs in medicine and patient care. For instance, “immunotherapy” for various cancers is now a term that we read about in the lay press and recognize as an exciting novel cancer treatment. The molecules that are targeted by immunotherapy are related to the TCR. Think of them as accelerators or brakes for the immune system, just like in a car. The new immunotherapy drugs can inhibit the brakes of the immune system and thus boost a dormant immune response to cancer cells. All of this was not known back in 1979. But in 2016, Time magazine named immunotherapy the most important discovery of the year.
Many people’s lives have been saved by immunotherapy, but few of us realize how early investments, by the N.I.H., for example, have paid off. A current A.I.-generated overview states: The immunotherapy industry, particularly in cancer treatment, is experiencing rapid growth driven by advancements in technology, increased research and development, and supportive government initiatives. Key players include companies like Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and BioNTech, with collaborations and partnerships fueling innovation.
I am not the only one who has noted the frankly unfriendly reception science and scientists are receiving these days.
There are two related issues. First, N.I.H.-funded grants and other government grants are simply being cut, stranding research personnel and universities. Supposedly this is, in line with the Department of Government Efficiency, namely, to cut “wasteful” spending?
Second, the State Department is revoking J-1 visas often issued to foreign workers on a temporary basis, and mostly for postdocs and junior faculty. Lack of funding and a hostile work environment imposed by the government are the main reasons that talented young scientists are considering leaving for Europe. A recent Reuters report by Olivia Le Poidevin, et al., dated April 11, reads “Brain drain? Trump cutbacks force scientists to seek jobs in Europe” and describes how E.U. countries are attempting to attract U.S. researchers.
A Cornell colleague, who is a world expert on epigenetics as related to cancer and leukemia, currently in New York, is moving to Barcelona, Spain, with his entire laboratory. Another friend is retiring and moving to Europe. Other scientists are leaving or thinking of leaving in droves.
I am most disturbed by the exodus of young aspiring scientists, the next generation.
After finishing undergrad studies at Berkeley in math and computer sciences, a friend’s gifted son is moving to Zurich, Switzerland, to pursue graduate studies at the top-notch ETH Zurich, where Albert Einstein studied.
“U.S. scientists’ lives and careers are being upended. Here are five of their stories.” So reads the title of a special article by Sara Reardon, et al., in the journal Science, published on May 2. “I don’t think I can do a career where there’s no future,” says Barbara Benowitz, who studies brain mechanisms underlying pain. Hers is one of the five stories.
In regard to visas for foreign researchers in the U.S., I suggest a simple glance at the names of the authors on a random scientific paper such as a paper in the prestigious journals Nature or Science or Cell. The majority of these names suggest they are foreign students, often with J-1 visas, working at American universities. They generate the primary data that is the engine of scientific progress. These people are now leaving their U.S. jobs because of a toxic environment in the host country, lack of funding, or fear of losing funding.
What to do about this? Scientists are not usually interested in sharing their political views. It can only get them into trouble. However, there is an interested pharma industry. I should know, as we collaborated with major pharma companies for much of my career. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry contributes significantly to the nation’s gross domestic product, accounting for 1.6 percent. Globally, the pharmaceutical industry’s contribution is 0.7 percent of the G.D.P. I imagine the pharma industry, too, will be looking to transfer grant operations to more science-friendly countries.
The damage done is not easily reversible. Think of the scope of the damage. According to a Harvard spokesperson, the university will stop funding of 570 awards for research at affiliated institutions across 32 states, with ramifications across the country.
Mass terminations of federally funded grants by the Trump administration total $2.7 billion since April. Researchers at the Mass General Brigham hospital system, probably the top hospital system in the country, have been instructed to stop all activity and spending.
Consider for a moment the contribution of N.I.H. funding to new drug approvals. From 2010 to 2016, there were 210 new molecular entities (or NMEs) discovered and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. N.I.H. funding contributed to every one of the NMEs approved, resulting in 84 first-in-class drugs.
Do we really want to discard such a productive engine of new drugs?
Most readers of The East Hampton Star will not be scientists, but many are accomplished in their own fields and many have received an education at our top universities. It is my hope that they will see the madness of the current direction this country has taken.
David Posnett, M.D., is emeritus professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan. He lives in Springs.
In response to the attack on science, many lawsuits have ensued together with many new organizations including Defend Public Health and now a new organization , Stand Up for Science, composed of NIH Staff. Consider contributing and engaging with this effort. Action: Work through existing organizations (Defend Public Health, Stand up for Science; Ask Nurses and Doctors and others) to fight back. We can succeed! Recently Trump/NIH paused for now termination of grants; some grants in fact, because of successful court cases, will be reinstated..
The next few days may very well decide the fate of Medicaid and many aspects of our health care system. Our health system is already under tremendous stress – I see that every day with my patients (I am an internist). But House andSenate bills will significantly worsen the situation not just for Medicaid but also private health insurance, the Affordable Care Act and Medicare. So this is an all hands on deck situation. Hospitals and, yes, even Catholic Nuns have gotten involved. Thus far it would appear that Republicans Senators simply do not care about people dying. According to Punchbowl,Senator Mitch McConnell said about the One Big Horrible Bill: “Failure is not an option…I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they will get over it.” According to the same Newsweek articlethe bottom line impact on this giveaway bill to the already rich is: “The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the House’s version of the bill would reduce Medicaid spending by $793 billion over 10 years, resulting in 10.3 million fewer people enrolled in Medicaid by 2034, including 1.3 million individuals with Medicare.” The impact on overall private health insurance together with economic losses/ closures of healthcare facilities is incalculable – the CBOhas already calculated that “states would be forced to reduce provider reimbursements to cope with the Medicaid cuts.” The Hill reports that 16 House “moderate” Republicans wrote that the (already draconian) House bill is the only bill they are willing to support. Action: contact your legislator today preferably via advocacy groups (Indivisible; Protect our Care; Caring Across Generation, ourselves) who can testify to the health and economic losses of this Big Horrible Bill.
Trump and RFK Jr.’s impact on our vaccine system is another train wreck that is happening in .real time. On June 25 RFK Jr handpicked advisors held the first meeting of the CDC vaccine panel (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP) that decides on vaccine approval leading to insurance coverage; this despite Senator Cassidy encouraging him to postpone the meeting. At the meeting as predicted anti-vaxxer’s held sway. The Federal government is poised to destroy our vaccine system as we know it. As Kaiser Health News reported, RFK Jr and Trump are cutting even legitimate efforts to understand vaccine side effects. Bottom line in response, scientific societies, state health officials, and others are fighting to preserve access to vaccines. Action: If you are a health professional please contact your state professional society and offer your services; lay people please contact your State Health Department to express your concern.
Some Democrats say Trump’s comments, directed at a Christian audience, signaled his plans to be a dictator. His campaign says he was talking about ‘uniting’ the country, and experts point to his ‘deliberately ambiguous’ speaking style.
Democratic lawmakers and Vice President Harris’s campaign joined a chorus of online critics in calling out remarks Donald Trump aimed at a Christian audience on Friday, arguing that the former president and current Republican presidential nominee had implied he would end elections in the United States if he won a second term.
At the conclusion of his speech at the Believers Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., Trump said, “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
Democrats and others interpreted the comments as signaling how a second Trump presidency would be run, a reminder that he previously said he would not be a dictator upon returning to office “except for Day One.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is running for Senate, shared the clip of Trump’s speech on X, writing, “This year democracy is on the ballot, and if we are to save it, we must vote against authoritarianism. Here Trump helpfully reminds us that the alternative is never having the chance to vote again.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called Trump’s comments “terrifying.” And Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said, “The only way ‘you won’t have to vote anymore’ is if Donald Trump becomes a dictator.”
The Trump campaign, however, says the comments, made at the event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action, were about how Trump would unite the country. Asked to clarify what Trump meant, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement on Saturday that the former president “was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”
Trump, who has continued to assert without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged against him, preceded his comments about not having to vote again by telling the audience that Democrats “don’t want to approve voter ID — that’s because they want to cheat. But until then, Republicans must win. … We want a landslide that’s too big to rig.”
The Harris campaign is calling Trump’s remarks “a vow to end democracy.”
“When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it,” Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a news release on Saturday. “Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results. This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America.” (Project 2025 is a think tank document outlining policy priorities for the next Republican president. Many Trump allies and former administration officials were involved in drafting the document, but his campaign has sought to distance the former president from it.)
Trump’s comments also drew some concern among those on the Christian right.
David Lane, an organizer of conservative Christian pastors, said in a text message that Trump “may have gotten a little over his skis” with what he said because it could discourage conservative Christians from shaping the outcomes of future elections.
“Evangelicals in 2028, 2032, and 2036 must raise their civics game to a new level if America is to return to the Judeo-Christian heritage and Biblical-based culture laid out by the founders,” said Lane, the founder of the American Renewal Project, whose mission is to help elect more Christians to office. He added that “somebody’s values will reign supreme in the public square,” and if Christians don’t vote, their values will not be reflected in their elected officials.
In front of a different Christian audience last month, Trump made a similar suggestion about Christians not needing to vote after this year’s election.
At a Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Washington, the former president said Christians “don’t vote as much as they should.”
“Do you know the power you have if you would vote? … You’ve got to get out and vote, just this time. I don’t care — in four years, you don’t have to vote, okay? In four years, don’t vote,” he said. “I don’t care by that time, but we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different.”
But if Democrats were to come into power, he said at the time, “they’ll ruin it [and] we’ll have to do this all over again.”
Erica De Bruin, a professor of government at Hamilton College whose research focuses on civil-military relations, civil war and policing, said, “Trump frequently makes these kinds of deliberately ambiguous statements that can be interpreted in multiple ways.”
But she added that “to understand what another Trump presidency would involve, I think it is more useful to look at his past behavior than to attempt to parse what might be the ‘true meaning’ of any individual set of remarks he makes.” She pointed out that the last time he was in office, “he attempted to subvert the outcome of an election and remain in power longer than the American public voted to keep him there.”
Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University, and co-author of “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” also said that while he didn’t think Trump’s recent comment was “indicative of an organized plot to end elections in the United States,” it did represent yet another sign that “the guy has got authoritarian reflexes.”
“Over the course of 10 or 15 years,” Levitsky added, a growing number of Republicans “convinced themselves that they weren’t going to be able to win elections in this new, multiracial America. I’m not so sure that’s true, but they were deeply fearful that was true. And so Trump, I think more than anything else, he senses… where they’re going and they’re feeling.”
Christian conservatives — White evangelicals, specifically — make up a substantial part of the voter base that Trump has been courting since his 2016 campaign.
In both 2016 and 2020, a third of Trump’s support came from White evangelical Protestants. So 1 one in every 3 votes Trump received came from White evangelical Protestants, a group that the Public Religion Research Institute estimates constitutes 14 percent of the population.
Levitsky’s co-author, Daniel Ziblatt, also a professor of government at Harvard, put a finer point on the significance of Trump’s comment. “I can’t think of a major candidate for office in any democracy on Earth since at least World War II who speaks in such overtly authoritarian ways,” said Ziblatt. “Not Victor Orban in Hungary, not Recep Erdogan in Turkey. Nowhere.”
Jennifer Mercieca, a communications professor at Texas A&M University and author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” said in an email that she interpreted Trump’s comment as an attempt to address the “double bind” that supposed “strongmen” leaders face.
“They narrate a world of chaos and promise that they are strong enough to fix it in order to win elections, but they frequently don’t actually solve the problems that they’ve said that they could easily solve if given power,” said Mercieca, whose research focuses on the relationship between democracy and American communication practices. “I think Trump is here promising Christians that he will actually solve the problems that he has promised them he’ll solve (a full abortion ban … and various ‘culture war’ issues) and so with all of the problems solved, they won’t feel like the world is so chaotic that they have to vote to save the nation.”
“It’s a big promise,” she added, “and he doesn’t give specific details here.”
By Maegan Vazquez is a politics breaking news reporter. She joined The Washington Post in 2023.
By Sarah Ellison is a staff writer based in New York for The Washington Post. Previously, she wrote for Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, where she started as a news assistant in Paris.
Yes, these are extremely difficult and painful times. People are demoralized.
The presidential debate a week ago Thursday was a disaster. Trump lied, lied, and lied. Biden did not successfully defend his record or expose Trump for the fraud that he is. Further, he did not bring forth a strong agenda for his second term.
Trump told us that “everybody” wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Lie! More than 60% of the American people disagreed with that horrific Supreme Court decision.
Trump told us that illegal immigrants are destroying Social Security because of the benefits they receive. Lie! Illegal immigrants do not receive Social Security benefits. In fact, they put some $10 billion a year into the program that they do not benefit from.
Trump ignored the question on climate change. Maybe it’s because he has the unique and insane view that climate change is a “hoax” created in China.
Trump refused to answer the question about whether he would accept the election results if he lost. Maybe that’s because he won’t, and because he doesn’t believe in democracy. In the last election, he told the world that the only way he could lose that election was if there was fraud—to be determined by him. His views haven’t changed.
Friends, I do not possess a crystal ball, and I have no brilliant political insights as to what the campaign might look like over the next few days or weeks.
But this I do know: Democrats will not win this election, for the White House or Congress, unless they focus on the very real and pressing concerns facing working families. Yes, the president has established and should defend a good record during his first term. But much, much more needs to be done to address the economic, social, and environmental crises facing the working class. That agenda must be articulated NOW. The policy contrasts with the Republicans must be made clear.
Republicans are proud to have overturned Roe v. Wade. We must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade and guarantees women the right to control their own bodies.
Republicans think climate change is a hoax. We must create millions of good jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel.
Republicans want to cut Social Security. We must strengthen and expand Social Security by lifting the cap on taxable income.
Republicans want to cut Medicare. We must expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision.
Republicans want to give tax breaks to billionaires. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we must make the wealthy finally pay their fair share.
Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage to a living wage. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage—at least $17 an hour.
Republicans ignore the crisis in low-income and affordable housing. We want to end homelessness and build millions of units of affordable housing.
Republicans want to make it harder for workers to join unions. We must grow the trade union movement, end illegal anti-union actions, and pass the PRO Act.
Republicans want to spend even more money on the military-industrial complex, as though $1 trillion were not enough. We must stop defense companies from war profiteering and, like every other agency of government, run the military more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Yes, I, and I suspect many of you, have had significant disagreements with the Biden administration. But I do know that time and time again he has been willing to support and sign progressive legislation … but only if we were able to get it to his desk.
So our job this November is clear: First, we must defeat Donald Trump, the worst president in modern American history.
But we must also elect as many progressives to Congress as we possibly can so that we can get legislation to the president’s desk that will improve the lives of working people.
That is what I intend to focus on between now and November, and I hope you will join me in that fight. During the past few weeks, we’ve had great meetings in Ohio and Wisconsin. And that’s just the beginning.
A note from Anna Skrenta (Democratic Party of East Hampton):
From: Anna Skrenta Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 11:55 AM Subject: [EXTERNAL] Avlon wins Primary with 70% of the vote!
Thank you so much to everyone for your hard work and enthusiasm!! John told me last night that he is extremely grateful for it and we are working on finding a time for him to come and celebrate with us and thank you all in person. I’ll keep
Thank you so much to everyone for your hard work and enthusiasm!! John told me last night that he is extremely grateful for it and we are working on finding a time for him to come and celebrate with us and thank you all in person. I’ll keep you posted.
The results last night proved that our fears about the impact of Nancy’s negative ads and mailers was unfounded. Bob Wick – you called it! John won with an unheard of 41% margin of victory. Total landslide!
Here’s how it all breaks down. The unofficial results from the Board of Elections this morning show that with 100% reporting from all 561 election districts, John had 19,026 or 70.26% of the vote and Nancy had 8,053 or 29.74% of the vote. District wide, 27,079 out of 182,886 eligible voters cast their ballot (14.81% turnout). In East Hampton, 1985 of our 9500 registered Democrats voted with 1708 of them voting for John. This is a 21% turnout. We would have liked it to have been higher but given that turnout was low statewide for this election and that it was ~15% for all of CD-1, I’m very pleased with our 21%.
John is an exceptional candidate and his campaign has a lot of momentum and energy going into the general election but we can’t take anything for granted. This is going to be a tough fight. Cook Political Report has CD-01 in the Likely Republican category of their list of competitive House races. With the new redistricting lines, the 1st District tilts slightly right, with 185,377 registered Republicans against 182,699 registered Democrats as of last month, according to the Board of Elections. However, there were 165,001 unaffiliated voters, or “blanks,” which is the largest number of independent voters in any of the state’s 26 congressional districts. And this is where John can really shine. As a moderate Democrat with a broad range of support from progressive democrats to Independents to Anti-MAGA Republicans, he is very well positioned to win a good portion of those Blank voters and I remain cautiously and stubbornly optimistic.
This Covid outbreak is on the decline but Long Covid is here with documented impact on children. We have failed our older people: “In the last week of 2023 and the first two weeks of 2024 alone, 4,810 people 65 and older lost their lives to covid. Consider that this number of persons would fill more than 10 large airliners. But the alarm that would attend 10 large plane crashes is notably absent. During the same period, the flu killed 1,201 seniors, and RSV killed 126. Note: we have trouble getting Paxlovid for Covid patients. “As Leanna Wen quotes: “Why can’t you take a covid test at the pharmacy and have the pharmacist confirm the diagnosis and dispense Paxlovid?” We need to plan now for the next pandemic and not pretend all is fine. We need to enact better global approaches to vaccine access instead of protecting big pharma.
Other than issuing statements, health professional trade associations do not use their lobbying muscle (see below for what lobbying muscle means for tobacco company Juul). Until that happens, especially Republicans will chip away at public health measures.
For example Ft Myers/ Collier County, Florida ended fluoridation, a proven public health measure to decrease tooth decay: Commission Chairman Chris Hall said the issue is “all about health freedom” and “We don’t trust the white coats anymore.”
Washington Post: Two health professional organizations pushing Covid misinformation, Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors, went from receiving $1 million in donations when they were formed in 2020 to $21 million in 2022. Organized medicine spends almost nothing to fight against this tragedy.
Washington Post: “What if we had medications that cost 5,000 times less than Ozempic (used for weight loss) and are better at preventing heart attacks and strokes? And what if only 1 in 5 people who need these medications get them? That’s the situation with drugs to treat high blood pressure”. We need a national push including health professional organizations.
We need many more graduates from overseas to cover our depleted health professional ranks. But that only robs health professionals from desperately poor countries as recently reported: “Entry level nurses in the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) start with a £28,407 ($35,660) annual salary. A well-paying nursing job in Nigeria may offer 150,000 naira ($100) monthly but even that is typically a scarce job.” Typical nursing wages: $20/ month.
According to Rachel Kleinfeld: “A widely-circulated analysis documented that the ideological gap between men and women is growing. Over the past fifteen years, men across the globe have voted for radical right-wing parties at much higher rates. More than one in ten men in their prime aren’t working at all. Nearly three in every four deaths of despair—largely from opioids and suicide—are male. These deaths became so common that they were causing a decline in life expectancy for American men even prior to COVID-19.”
According to The Hill, At least 8 in 10 voters said it was “very important” for the 2024 presidential candidates to talk about inflation and the affordability of health care. Adults also said they care more about affording unexpected medical bills than routine expenses such as gas, utilities, food and housing costs. Christian nationalism, abortion, drug price control, and preservation of Medicaid that increasingly includes help with food are all at stake this November.
In response, AND (Ask Nurses and Doctors) is continuing to expand its network in swing states. We are focused on 3 equally important initiatives. Our next monthly call of “seasoned” and young activists in dialogue will be March 4, 8-9pm – with Bill Fletcher and Nadi Kaonga. . Please sign up below. Register in advance for this meeting:
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. April 5 will feature Don Berwick and medical student activist Austin Vaughn. On May 6, Dave Fleischer and Andrew Goldstein will focus on Deep Canvassing. All from 8-9 pm.
For health professionals, 5 minutes is all it will take to record a message of support for Biden on the issue of abortion (see 1st attachment for details on how/where to send). Please copy me when you send in the recording to the Biden campaign.
We will soon start posting on the Ask Nurses and Doctors website brief policy documents with actionable steps for any activist anywhere in the country. See 2nd attachment describing the effort. Your involvement is welcome!
There are few Americans alive today who remember Hitler, the details are lost to the mists of time. But Donald Trump is bringing it all back to us with a fresh, stark splash of reality…
The Nazis in America are now “out.” This morning, former Republican Joe Scarborough explicitly compared Trump and his followers to Hitler and his Brownshirts on national television. They’re here.
At the same time, America’s richest man is retweeting antisemitism, rightwing influencers and radio/TV hosts are blaming “Jews and liberals” for the “invasion” of “illegals” to “replace white people,” and the entire GOP is embracing candidates and legislators who encourage hate and call for violence.
Are there parallels between the MAGA takeover of the GOP and the Nazi takeover of the German right in the 1930s?
It began with a national humiliation: defeat in war. For Germany, it was WWI; for America is was two wars George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied us into as part of their 2004 “wartime president” re-election strategy (which had worked so well for Nixon with Vietnam in 1972 and Reagan with Grenada in 1984).
Hitler fought in WWI but later blamed Germany’s defeat on the nation being “stabbed in the back” by liberal Jews, their fellow travelers, and incompetent German military leadership.
Trump cheered on Bush’s invasion of Iraq, but later lied and claimed he’d opposed the war. Both blamed the nation’s humiliation on the incompetence or evil of their political enemies.
The economic crisis caused by America’s Republican Great Depression had gone worldwide and Hitler used the gutting of the German middle class (made worse by the punishing Treaty of Versailles) as a campaign issue, promising to restore economic good times.
Trump pointed to the damage forty years of neoliberalism had done to the American middle class and promised to restore blue-collar prosperity. Hitler promised he would “make Germany great again”; Trump campaigned on the slogan: “Make America Great Again.”
Both tried to overthrow their governments by violence and failed, Hitler in a Bavarian beer hall and Trump on January 6th. Both then turned to legal means to seize control of their nations.
Hitler’s scapegoats were Jews, gays, and liberals. “There are only two possibilities,” he told a Munich crowd in 1922. “Either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.”
He promised “I will get rid of the ‘communist vermin’,” “I will take care of the ‘enemy within’,” “Jews and migrants are poisoning Aryan blood,” and “One people, one nation, one leader.”
Trump’s scapegoats were Blacks, Muslims, immigrants, and liberals.
He said he will “root out” “communists … and radical left thugs that live like vermin”; he would destroy “the threat from within”; migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”; and that under Trump’s leadership America will become “One people, one family, one glorious nation.”
Hitler called the press the Lügenpresse or “lying press.” Trump quoted Stalin, calling our news agencies and reporters “the enemy of the people.”
Both exploited religion and religious believers. Hitler proclaimed a “New Christianity” for Germany and encouraged fundamentalist factions within both the Catholic and Protestant faiths.
Every member of the Germany army got a belt-buckle inscribed with Gott Mit Uns (God is with us).
Trump embraced rightwing Catholics and evangelical Protestants and, like the German churches in 1933, has been lionized by their leaders.
Hitler made alliances with other autocrats (Mussolini, Franco, and Tojo) and conspired with them to take over much of the planet. Trump disrespected our NATO and European allies and embraced the murderous dictator of Saudi Arabia, the psychopathic leader of Russia, and the absolute tyrant who runs North Korea.
Both Hitler and Trump had an “inciting incident” that became the touchstone for their rise to illegitimate levels of power.
For Hitler it was the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, by a mentally ill Dutchman. For Trump it is his claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and the martyrdom of his supporters after their attempted coup on January 6th.
Hitler embraced rightwing Bavarian street gangs and brawlers, organizing them into a volunteer militia who called themselves the Brownshirts (Hitler called them the Sturm Abeilung or Storm Division).
Trump embraces rightwing militia groups and motorcycle gangs, and implicitly praises his followers when they attack people like Paul Pelosi, election workers, and prosecutors and judges who are attempting to hold him accountable for his criminal behavior.
While Trump has mostly focused his public hate campaigns against racial and religious minorities, behind the scenes he and his administration had worked hand-in-glove with anti-gay fanatics like Mike Johnson to limit the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
His administration opposed the Equality Act, saying it would “undermine parental and conscience rights.” More than a third (36%) of his judicial nominees had previously expressed “bias and bigotry towards queer people.” His administration filed briefs in the landmark Bostock case before the Supreme Court, claiming that civil rights laws don’t protect LGBTQ+ people.
His Department of Health and Human Services ended Obama-era medical protections for queer people. His Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, took apart regulations protecting transgender kids in public schools. His HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, proposed new rules allowing shelters to turn away homeless queer people at a time when one-in-five homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+.
German Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem begins with, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” But, in fact, first Hitler came for queer people.
A year before Nazis began attacking union leaders and socialists, a full five years before attacking Jewish-owned stores on Kristallnacht, the Nazis came for the trans people at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin.
In 1930, the Institute had pioneered the first gender-affirming surgery in modern Europe. It’s director, Magnus Hirschfeld, had compiled the largest library of books and scientific papers on the LGBTQ+ spectrum in the world and was internationally recognized in the field of sexual and gender studies.
Being gay, lesbian, or trans was widely tolerated in Germany, at least in the big cities, when Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, and the German queer community was his first explicit target. Within weeks, the Nazis began a campaign to demonize queer people — with especially vitriolic attacks on trans people — across German media.
German states put into law bans on gender-affirming care, drag shows, and any sort of “public display of deviance,” enforcing a long-moribund German law, Paragraph 175, first put into the nation’s penal code in 1871, that outlawed homosexuality. Books and magazines telling stories of gay men and lesbians were removed from schools and libraries.
Thus, a mere five months after Hitler came to power, on May 6, 1933, Nazis showed up at the Institute and hauled over 20,000 books and manuscripts about gender and sexuality out in the street to burn, creating a massive bonfire. It was the first major Nazi book-burning and was celebrated with newsreels played in theaters across the nation. It wouldn’t be the last: soon it spread to the libraries and public high schools.
The conservative elite of Germany, particularly Fritz Thyssen, Hjalmar Schacht, and Gustav Krupp were early supporters of Hitler, as he promised to crush the German labor movement and cut their taxes.
Without the support of rightwing billionaires funding Cambridge Analytica and Trump’s campaign he never would have won the electoral college in 2016.
Hitler couldn’t have risen to power without the support of the largest outlets in German media. Some treated him as “just another politician,” normalizing his fascist rhetoric. Others openly supported him.
After his failed beer hall putsch, he was legally banned from public speaking and mass rallies but, in 1930, German media mogul Alfred Hugenberg — a rightwing billionaire who owned two of the largest national newspapers and had considerable influence over radio — joined forces with Hitler and relentlessly promoted him, much like the Murdoch media empire and 1,500 billionaire-owned rightwing radio stations across the country helped bring Trump to power in 2016 and still promote him every day.
Hitler’s first major seizure of dictatorial power was his use of the Weimar law Article 48 which, during a time of crisis, empowered the nation’s leader to suspend due process and habeas corpus, turn the army’s guns on people deemed insurrectionists, and arrest people without charges or trial.
Its American equivalents are the State of Emergency Declaration and the Insurrection Act, both of which Trump has promised to invoke in his first days in office if he’s re-elected in 2024.
Once Hitler had seized full control of the German government, he set about changing the nation’s laws to replace democracy with autocracy. His enablers in the German Parliament passed the “Enabling Act” that gave Hitler’s cabinet the power to write and implement their own laws.
Trump promises to use the theoretical “unitary executive” powers rightwing groups claim the president holds, but has never used in our history, to have his new cabinet rewrite many of our nation’s laws.
Hitler followed the Enabling Act, six months later, with the Act for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which authorized him to gut the German Civil Service and replace career bureaucrats with toadies loyal exclusively to him. It was the end of any semblance of resistance to the Nazis or preservation of democracy within the new German government.
In his last three weeks in office, Trump issued an executive order called Schedule F that ended Civil Service protections for around 50,000 of America’s top government officials, including the senior levels of every federal agency, so he could replace them all with political appointees (Biden reversed it). The Heritage Foundation is reportedly now vetting over 50,000 people to fill these ranks if Trump is reelected and, as promised, reinstates Schedule F.
The last bastion of resistance to Hitler within the German government was the judiciary, and Hitler altered the German Civil Service Code in January 1937, giving his cabinet the power to remove any judges from office who were deemed “non-compliant” with “Nazi laws or principles.”
When Judge Jon Tigar of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Trump’s new rules barring people from receiving asylum in 2018, Trump attacked Tigar as “a disgrace” and “an Obama judge.” He added that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is “really something we have to take a look at because it’s not fair,” adding, “That’s not law. Every case that gets filed in the Ninth Circuit we get beaten.”
Because the German Supreme Court was still, from time to time, ruling against Hitler’s Gleichschaltung or Nazification of the German government and legal code, and he had no easy legal mechanism to pack the court or term-limit the justices, in 1934 he created an entirely new court to replace it, which he called the People’s Court.
Trump packed the US Supreme Court with rightwing ideologues, many of whom are heavily beholden to oligarchs and industries aligned with Trump and the GOP. If they continue to go along with him — and there’s little to indicate they won’t — he won’t need to create a new court.
When Hitler took over the country in 1933, the military leadership was wary of him and his plans. While they shared many of his conservative views about social issues, most still held a strong loyalty to the German constitution.
It took him the better part of two years, with heavy support from his Brownshirts (who he’d by then integrated into the military) to purge the senior levels of the Army and replace them with Nazi loyalists.
The night before January 6th, newly-elected Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville joined Trump’s sons to help organize the coup planned for the next day. As the Alabama Political Reporter newspaper reported at the time:
“The night before the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville and the then-director of the Republican Attorneys General Association met with then-President Donald Trump’s sons and close advisers, according to a social media post by a Nebraska Republican who at the time was a Trump administration appointee.
“Charles W. Herbster, who was then the national chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee in Trump’s administration, in a Facebook post at 8:33 p.m. on Jan. 5 said that he was standing ‘in the private residence of the President at Trump International with the following patriots who are joining me in a battle for justice and truth.’ …
“Among the attendees, according to Herbster’s post, were Tuberville, former RAGA director Adam Piper, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, adviser Peter Navarro, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and 2016 deputy campaign manager David Bossie.”
Tuberville is now holding open the top ranks of the US military, presumably so if Trump is reelected he can pack our armed forces with people who won’t defy his orders when he demands they seize voting machines and fire live ammunition at the inevitable protestors.
When Hitler took power in 1933, he quickly began mass arrests of illegal immigrants, gypsies, union activists, liberal commentators and reporters, and (as noted earlier) queer people. To house this exploding prison population, he first took over a defunct munitions factory in Dachau; within a few years there were over a hundred of these camps where “criminals” were “concentrated and separated from society.” He called them concentration camps.
The New York Timesreports that Trump is planning to “build huge camps to detain people,” and “to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget.”
How many people? “Millions” writes the Times. And not just immigrants: Trump is planning to send his enemies to them, too.
Will he succeed in getting around Congress? He did the last time, with money to build his wall taken from military housing.
So far, that’s as bad as it gets: what he has already promised. But these are early days.
Hitler was unbothered by the deaths of German citizens, and was enthusiastic about the deaths of those he considered his enemies.
On April 7, 2020 all three TV networks, The New York Times and The Washington Post all lead with the breaking story that Black people were dying at about twice the rate of white people from Covid. The Times headline, for example, read: “Black Americans Bear the Brunt as Deaths Climb.”
As an “expert” member of Jared Kushner’s team of young, unqualified volunteers supervising the administration’s PPE response noted to Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban:
“The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”
It was, after all, exclusively Blue States that were then hit hard by the virus: Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And there was an election coming in just a few months.
Trump even invoked the Defense Production Act and issued an Executive Order requiring mostly minority slaughterhouse and meatpacking employees go back to work. It led to a half-million unnecessary American deaths and to this day neither Trump nor Kushner have ever apologized.
In the final years of the Third Reich, Hitler authorized his “final solution to the Jewish problem” that included building death camps in countries outside Germany to methodically exterminate millions of people. These were different from the hundreds of prisons and concentration camps he’d built within Germany for “criminals and undesirables,” although at those camps people were often worked to death or slaughtered when the war started going south.
So far, Trump and his people haven’t suggested the need for death camps in America, although Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott seem particularly eager to see immigrants die either from razor wire or gunshot.
But, then, the Nazis never officially announced their external death camps either; like Bush’s criminal “black sites” overseas where hundreds of innocent Afghans and Iraqis were tortured, often to death, they figured they’d never be found out.
There are few Americans alive today who remember Hitler, and for most of us the details of his rise to power are lost to the mists of time. But Donald Trump is bringing it all back to us with a fresh, stark splash of reality.
When I lived in Germany I worked with several Germans who had been in the Hitler Youth. One met Hitler. Another, Armin Lehmann, became a dear friend over the years and wrote a book about his experience as the 16-year-old courier who handed Hitler the news the war was lost and stood outside Hitler’s bunker room as he committed suicide.
They were good people, children at the time really, and were (they’ve all died within the last two decades) haunted by their experience.
It can happen here.
We’ve been sliding down this slippery slope toward unaccountable fascism for several decades, and this coming year will stand at the threshold of an entirely new form of American government that could mean the end of the American experiment.
To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice for our democracy to rise or fall will be in our hands.
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While Dave Calone and Ed Romaine have presented themselves as county executive candidates, a closer examination of their records and policy positions makes it evident that Dave Calone is the right leader for us here on the North Fork and for all of Suffolk County.
Dave Calone, having worked in both the private and public sectors, brings a fresh perspective and a vision for a more prosperous and sustainable Suffolk County. As a result, his approach to addressing the county’s most pressing issues aligns with the evolving needs of our county in general and the North Fork in particular.
We all must understand that we are a coastal people, and when climate change poses a growing threat to our region, Suffolk County needs a leader committed to taking bold steps to combat this crisis. Calone’s emphasis on innovative environmental practices, clean energy initiatives and environmental sustainability demonstrates his commitment to preserving the natural beauty and ecological integrity of Suffolk County.
Economic development is another area. Calone understands the importance of fostering innovation and small businesses as a successful entrepreneur and investor. Additionally, Calone served as chair of the Suffolk County Planning Commission for eight years. Calone’s experience gives him a unique perspective in solving the vexing issues the next county executive will face. Calone’s economic platform is far better aligned with the diverse and dynamic needs of Suffolk County today and tomorrow.
Lastly, Dave Calone represents a departure from the status quo, crucial for the county’s progress. His innovative ideas and fresh perspectives are precisely what Suffolk County needs to confront the complex issues and opportunities that lie ahead.
Suffolk County needs a county executive with a fresh vision and a bold plan to lead us into the future. History shows that one cannot explore new worlds with old-world maps, and Suffolk County’s future depends upon choosing someone who can plot a course and steer us in a new direction, a brighter future. Dave Calone’s vision, environmental commitment, focus on economic growth, and innovative leadership make him the best choice to navigate Suffolk County into that future.
For me, the choice is clear. It’s time to elect a leader who will inspire progress and shape a brighter future for Suffolk County. I will vote for Dave Calone for Suffolk County executive on November 7, and I hope you will, too.
Nick Antonucci
Southold
Antonucci is a member of the Southold Peconic Civic Association board and a trustee of the Southold Free Library —
Access to reproductive health care should be a right and not dependent on what state you’re living in. Research shows that U.S. women of reproductive age are sicker, more stressed, die younger, and have the highest rates of maternal deaths compared to women in other countries. Black women are nearly 3 times more likely to die than white women – all largely due to a lack of adequate reproductive health care.
Incredibly, 26 states have either completely taken away a woman’s right to a safe abortion, are waiting for judges to lift a block, or have imposed gestational limits when most women don’t even know they’re pregnant. Idaho wants to make it a crime with a 2-year imprisonment, if someone helps a person leave the state for an abortion. Not having open, adequate health care is putting people’s lives at risk every day, every hour, and every minute.
We need to message the issues at risk: birth control, safe and legal abortions, and open discussions with providers to ensure safe protocols are in place to protect a mother’s life. More than ever, the importance of getting out the vote during this upcoming election is crucial for women’s health, autonomy, and our very lives.
By Susan Salinger
Mr. LaLota (congressman for NY CD-1) voted for Mike Johnson as speaker of the house. Johnson is an extremist on the issue of choice: an adamant opponent of abortion, he holds that life begins at fertilization and favors a total ban on abortion, which he has described as “a holocaust.” In the past, Mr. Johnson threatened “hard labor” for doctors who perform abortions. VOTE HIM OUT.
It’s the 2nd day of early voting in Southold town. About 1000 people have voted on each day. These are record numbers. The poll workers explained: “People are really into politics these days.”
OK: it is an “off off” year. Based on past results we can expect about 25% of voters will come to the polls. Only the so-called “base”. Those of us who are really upset. So here is why that might include YOU.
Are we heading into a major conflict in the Middle East?
Should we continue to fund Ukraine‘s struggle against the Russian invaders?
Does the election of MAGA firebrand Mike Johnson light your fire?
2024 Presidential Election: The speakership comes with broad powers. Could Johnson’s elevation to the role allow him to succeed in 2024 where he failed the last time?
BTW our congressman LaLota voted for Johnson…and you can do something about that in 2024
What about inflation?
What about women’s control of their own bodies? (see next post)
What about climate change: Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognize… a global health emergency.
The list goes on…
These questions are existential. Therefore we all want and need to, weigh in. We need to VOTE! Even if it is an “off-off” year and even though you might ask yourself whether local officials really matter? They do. Just consider local MAGA Republican, Manny Vilar, running for the position of Bridget Fleming, as a county legislator. Choose Ann Welker instead.
I don’t know if you all know this, but the “new” Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill uses vastly more electricity than any other building on the East End of Long Island.
You all know that it has a vast roof!
Years ago, when we learned of the Parrish’s energy use (based on a meeting with GreenLogic Solar and representatives of the Parrish), and we tried to convince the museum to install solar on that roof but got nowhere because, apparently, the trustees and architect objected to the effect solar panels would have on the building’s aesthetic.
Well, the Parrish now has a new director and we have decided it’s time to try this again. This time, though, we’d like to have as much community support behind us as possible. I will send a letter to the new director below, requesting a meeting to discuss the solar possibilities. Will you agree to be a signatory to this letter? We would love to gather as many signatures as possible – from museum members and patrons, artists and architects, and community members in general. (You wouldn’t need to physically sign anything. I would just add your name to the list.) Also, if you agree, will you forward this request to everyone you know on the East End who might be sympathetic?
Hello all. This is a general missive I am forwarding in our efforts requesting the new Parish Art Museum in Southsmpton to install s solar array on their huge southern roofs. Currently they consume @ 2 Megawatts of power which is @ 25% of the total electricity shortfall East of the Hampton Bays Canal– @8 Megawatts shortfall. If interested please consider contacting myself or Sarah H. and simply tell us if you are willing to add your name to our letter below to the museum. We will include it in our letter.
And please feel free to forward this off to anyone you think might be interested.
As many of you know, yesterday Gov. Hochul nominated Justice Hector LaSalle, one of the most conservative judges in New York, to be the state’s next Chief Judge—and the backlash was swift and powerful. In under a day, eight Democratic senators had already announced their public opposition, the AFL-CIO and CWA had put out statements of opposition, and many other organizations did the same, including the Working Families Party.
We have an incredible opportunity to block this awful nomination within the next few days. Please join us in the fight by taking the following actions today:
Ask all elected officials and organizations that you have relationships with to put out statements of opposition to LaSalle immediately.
You can scroll CCA’s Twitter feed for statements that have already been released, as examples.
While only state senators will get to vote on the nomination, statements of opposition from other elected officials are also helpful—as are statements by any organizations.
Direct as much outreach as you can today to all senators who have not yet announced public opposition to LaSalle, demanding that they state their opposition—publicly and immediately.
As of right now, the senators who have publicly announced opposition are Rivera, Jackson, May, Salazar, Brouk, Brisport, Hinchey, and Gonzalez. Several other senators have told us privately that they are opposed. We do not doubt their sentiments, but what is needed right now are public commitments that put them on record and help convince others to come forward too.
Every other senator should receive overwhelming outreach ASAP—until they put out a public statement of opposition.
To contact your senator and Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, you can use this tool or call/email/tweet at them directly. This tracker document lists phone numbers and Twitter handles, and email addresses are listed at nysenate.gov.
Pass along this information and these requests to anyone else who can take these actions and help put out the call to action.
Let me know if you have any questions, and thank you all for all your support in this
Peter F. Martin
Director of Judicial Accountability | Center for Community Alternatives, Inc.
We know you’ve been besieged with requests for political donations and, like us, you are probably suffering ‘donor fatigue’. However, there’s one more challenge before we can quit: Reverend Warnock NEEDS OUR HELP in Georgia. Contrary to rumor, Reverend Warnock’s run-off campaign is NOT awash in $$$, but there is a tsunami wave of GOP money flooding Herschel Walker’s campaign. There are only two weeks left before the December 6 run-off, and there are a surprising number of undecided Georgia voters. PLEASE JOIN US IN MAKING ONE MORE DONATION: to Reverend Warnock’s run-off campaign. This 2022 election has gone a long way toward restoring our faith in democracy and in the correctness of our cause – let’s give the Senate Democrats a little more room to continue sound policies like historic Climate Change legislation, capping prescription drug prices, and finally rebuilding the American infrastructure.
Many thanks for all you have already done!
Now, join us, with your contribution to Reverend Warnock’s run-off Georgia campaign.
A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) recently found that New York State is home to the highest concentration of extreme wealth in the United States. New York State also has the greatest income inequality in the United States. By both of these measures, New York is the most unequal state in the nation.
The Fiscal Policy Institute’s latest brief, Inequality in New York and Options for Progressive Tax Reform, details ITEP’s findings as they apply to New York State, reviews additional research and data on New York State’s income and wealth inequality, and lays out their implications for New York State tax policy.
Key findings include:
New Yorkers worth over $30 million collectively own $6.7 trillion in wealth. These ultra-rich New Yorkers are just 0.4 percent of the state population.
New York’s ultra-rich also hold about one-fifth of the total wealth held by all ultra-rich Americans — the highest concentration of wealth in any state.
Of the $6.7 trillion held by ultra-rich New Yorkers, ITEP estimates that $3.1 trillion consists of unrealized capital gains. Much of this wealth will never be taxed under current law.
New York State tax implications include:
New York’s current tax system, taken as a whole, is regressive: the wealthy pay about the same combined state and local tax rate as the bottom 40 percent.
Because of the substantial overlap between high income earners and owners of extreme wealth, increasing the progressivity of the existing Personal Income Tax would help to address extreme inequality.
At a minimum, the state should not allow the current PIT rates on high earners to expire, as they are currently set to, in 2027.
New York can further address extreme inequality, and increase the overall progressivity of its tax system, through a number of tax policy options, including:
Increasing tax rates on long-term capital gains for high-income taxpayers
Taxing unrealized capital gains on a mark-to-market basis for wealthy taxpayers
Increasing taxes on business profits, such as those earned through pass-through entities such as LLCs, and targeting the profit-shifting of multinational corporations
Taxing inherited wealth, or fixing the estate tax by lowering the exemption threshold and eliminating step-up in basis
Revising the state constitution to permit a direct wealth tax
This will be relevant after December 6, 2022, when “Invest in Our New York” establishes its strategy/agenda for the legislative session.
It looked like success just weeks ago for the midterm elections, based on polls,…well the tide has now turned in favor of our opponents. How do we make a difference?
(1) I have been donating $$ via Force multiplier.
They figure out where the money is best spent and where your money is most likely to make a difference. https://www.forcemultiplierus.org/
Just days ago I received urgent personal emails from Dem volunteers in PA. Probably because in years past I had volunteered to canvass and to watch polls (2020 for example). NB Force multiplier also organizes volunteer activities in PA:
canvassing door-to-door
Many of our candidates are looking for volunteers to go door-to-door in these last weeks of the midterm elections. The greatest impact you can have is knocking on doors in the district. And it’s fun! Campaigns provide training.
Contact Esther Kaplan at DestinationDemocracy@gmail.com if you’re interested in any of these. She’ll help you make plans + introduce you to campaign staff.
(2) GOTV in East Hampton
Anna Skrenta (East Hampton Dem Party) is hosting a ZOOM this Thursday at 7:30pm
Topics to be covered:
1. GOTV materials
2. The importance of early voting
3. Canvassing – 2 final GOTV weekends
4. Issues – how to push back against the GOP attacks
Together with P, I have canvassed in the Springs. We reached about 25% of the voters on our MiniVAN lists. We had 2 lists with 100 voters total, easy to canvass one list per day.
Everyone was “definitely going to vote”, “are you kidding?“. We had D (democrats), I (independents) and U (unaffiliated) voters on our lists. For those not home, we left a funny postcard with a few handwritten lines on the back:
Something like: “Sorry we missed you. Hoping that you will support Bridget Fleming and the Dem line. Early voting starts on Sat Oct 29th at 10 AM. More info here: VOTE EARLY! https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov/“ Your neighbors D & P
Card for VOTERS not at home
4) Feedback
This is important. It gives us hope that someone is actually noticing our efforts and actually reading the literature we drop off! Below is an email conversation (omitting sender names):
Hi David. Thanks for that voting reminder – great photo! It would be hard to forget to vote, given the state of things now! I hope all’s well with you, best, A
Thanks so much! We knocked on about 100 doors in your neighborhood. Your response made it all worthwhile. from D
To David: Nice of A to write that. At least we’re not hearing from people complaining and saying “stop littering”! from P
Hi David: That makes me so happy (unlike politics, which usually do not). You are great to be doing this. All the best, A
We used to have weekly lunch meetings for R&R folks. With soup! Then came Covid. Today my friend Bob treated me to homemade lentil soup at his place. We discussed the state of the world! Are we heading towards armageddon? Nuclear war? What about the political swings to the far right wing? It seems to be happening globally. So, I wanted to share a couple of thoughts.
But in spite of this mankind has grown exponentially:
Life expectancy rocketed after about 1800 with the industrial revolution: from about 30 years to over 75 years. And that is in spite of 2 world wars. But, the rate of population growth is now declining:
There have of course been huge strides in healthcare, nutrition, sanitation and science. In spite of wars and violence and periods of “the dark ages”, mankind has survived. Now, however, with the nuclear option, the outcome may be less certain.
(2) “Progress is bumpy” This was a frequent thought in Obama’s speeches. And I went back to check:
Importantly, he says that we can “bend the arc of progress” by activism. That is phone-banking and canvassing! And that is where we come in. I have been canvassing in the Springs with my friend Peggy and it has been a very positive experience. Contact one of these folks for a list of voters and instructions:
(3) another topic of conversation was Lee Zeldin, a perennial bad weed that can not be exterminated it seems, he is now running for Governor of NY State! My friend asked for a LIST of Lee Zeldin’s votes and why he would be a disaster for all of us. It is the sort of thing you might want to give to an interested voter:
(4) What’s with the distrust of experts? Why is it that so many folks distrust scientists? Some folks even slander real super-experts, like Tony Fauci! Overnight (it seems) these lay persons become experts on vaccines or they become anti-vaxxers. No one distrusts their auto-mechanic when they are told that their car needs a new alternator or another part, for example. I am puzzled and I don’t have a good answer.
Weddings are well-known high-risk events for Covid. Guests schmooze, they laugh (emitting microdroplets), they kiss.. contacts are often prolonged, longer than required for transmission of SARS CoV2 (10 min). The newest Omicron variants are even more infectious than their precursors. With meals pre-wedding, at the wedding, and post-wedding, and guests necessarily unmasked, the risk is obvious. Add singing in a church or otherwise…more microdroplets.
No wonder weddings have been canceled at high rates during the pandemic. But they are coming back. As a younger relative explained to me, the best remedy was alcohol, especially Scottish Whiskey! Yes you guessed right, I attended the wedding of my nephew in Edinburgh. In a Scottish castle!
We tested for Covid by PCR prior to getting on the flights from the US and from other European countries. All were negative. Then there were daily parties: (1) an indoor cocktail party to introduce the families, no masks, (2) a romantic outdoor party around a bonfire, no masks, (3) a formal dinner at the castle, hosted by the grooms family, no masks, (4) the chapel service, the wedding dinner, and dance party, no masks, and (5) post-wedding brunch and parties, no masks.
The first of us with symptoms, including high fever, became sick the night of the wedding. In rapid succession 4 others became sick. 4/5 had sat and dined at the same table, not once but twice! One had shared the backseat of a car for 45 min while on our way to a hiking destination.
While it seemed pretty clear how the virus had spread within the wedding party, no one knew where it had come from. The overnight Delta flight from New York to Edinburgh? Any of the numerous persons serving and preparing for the wedding events? The possibilities and wild theories abounded!
Of course, we went into quarantine (5 days minimum). Thank you so much to my brother and sister-in-law for hosting us! Their home became a Covid sick ward. Flights were canceled and rebooked at considerable costs. Job-related meetings were canceled. Etc.
In hindsight, I ask, what would I do differently?
MASK, MASK, MASK
Avoid in-flight meals
Avoid all indoor wedding events or at least attend heavily MASKED – no indoor dining events…. that is a hard one to impose on the wedding couple.
PS1: this was my 2nd bout with Covid and far worse than the first one. Like all of us who got this virus in Scotland, I was fully vaccinated and boosted although not yet with the latest Omicron vaccine which we could not get scheduled in time for the wedding.
PS2: on our way home via Toronto on West Jet, a Canadian company, the attendant happily announced that Canada was canceling their on-flight compulsory MASK policy as of Nov 1, 2022. The cabin erupted in applause. I am genuinely nervous about the upcoming winter season for Flu and Covid.
R&R - Reachout and Rebuild 