Set aside for a moment (1) the alternate reality and fan fiction perpetrated by the platform-poor Republican National Convention, a.k.a., the hagiographic veneration of Donald Trump, and (2) the shameful, death-inducing White House pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to approve an untested treatment and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce Covid testing. While the lies and insults emanating from the forked tongues at the GOP convention podium were dominating the airwaves, there was something even more ominous going on.
 
Marjorie Taylor Greene, an openly racist, anti-Semitic, QAnon conspiracy monger and professional hater won a Republican congressional primary in Georgia and earned President Trump’s high praise. Another candidate who openly hates Muslims and people of color prevailed in Palm Beach County, Florida, home to Mar-a-Lago, and Trump was once again all in for her. In all, 21 Republican congressional nominees who have secured a place on the November ballot have publicly supported or defended the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and its preposterous tenets, e.g., that the government is rife with Satanic cannibals who run a child-sex ring when they aren’t eating the children they have enslaved, and that Trump is the champion battling against them. At least 20 Republicans running for state legislative seats have also bought into these dark QAnon fantasies.
 
By the time the primaries are past, it is likely that more of these fascist fearmongers may find a way onto general election ballots this year. At least four additional Republican House and two Senate candidates are still in the running.  No fewer than 50 QAnon followers competed unsuccessfully for congressional nominations. Welcome to the new Republican Party, a formerly respectable organization that has now gone off the deep end of the political spectrum into Nazi-like paroxysms.
 
Because a number of these fanatics are running in deep red districts, they are likely to win and be seated in the next Congress. And what do Mitch McConnell and the other sorry excuses for Republican leaders do in the face of this lunatic fringe takeover of their party? Nothing. These fiends are the logical, albeit alarming outcome of almost half-a-century of Republican efforts to trample on the less fortunate while undermining government and rendering it helpless to function.
 
The FBI says QAnon is a domestic terrorist threat. Trump, however, has retweeted QAnon baloney at least 251 times at this writing and recently said: “I understand they like me very much. I heard that these are people that love our country.” In response to a reporter who asked: “QAnon believes you are secretly saving the world from this cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Are you behind that? Trump responded: “Is that supposed to be a bad thing? We are actually. We are saving the world.”
 
It is hard to believe that a president of the United States not only buys into this rubbish, but actually endorses it publicly. Aside from his countless other failings, this one stands out. We the people—and I mean all of the people—cannot allow someone this reprehensible, inept and irresponsible to hold the highest office in the land.
 
The choice this November is simple: the candidate and party of hate, fear and fascism vs. the candidate and party of decency, democracy, dignity and truth. Four more years of sinking into the darkness vs. striving for the light of reason.
 
You decide.
 
Dick Hermann
August 28, 2020

​Now is the time to fight to preserve what remains of our tattered democracy. Donald Trump’s latest assault on the Constitution, the rule of law and the sacred right to vote, his admitted effort to starve the U.S. Postal Service of the means of processing mail-in ballots, is voter suppression, nay prevention, writ large. He and it must be stopped and reversed.
 
The massive national pushback against Trump’s latest (and surely not last) attempt to subvert the election compelled Postmaster General/Political Hack Louis DeJoy to say that he is suspending his anti-post office efforts until after the election. He cannot be trusted, however, to reinstall the 671 sorting machines and thousands of mailboxes he has removed, among other initiatives to slow down the mail (including Social Security checks and life-sustaining medications).
 
The Trump façade camouflaging his anti-democratic war against mail-in voting is that the Postal Service needs to be run like a business, a philosophy that no other nation subscribes to, mindful that delivering the mail is a “public good” that should not be beholden to the profit motive. Moreover, if run like a Trump business it would be guaranteed to fail (six bankruptcies and numerous collapses—see, for example, the Trump Shuttle, the United States Football League, Trump Ice, Trump American Pale Ale, Trump: The Game and many more),.
 
Title 18 U.S. Code § 594, “Intimidation of voters,” makes it a federal crime to interfere with the right of any person to vote. By falsely claiming that mail-in voting is rife with fraud and undermining the Postal Service to aid his re-election, Trump is interfering with the right of millions of Americans to vote in a time when a pandemic makes going to the polls dangerous. Trump is escalating his efforts to steal an election he cannot possibly win fairly and honestly. This is the lowest depth to which a president has ever sunk in our history. His criminality must not be allowed to prevail.
 
The punishment if found guilty is a fine or imprisonment for up to one year or both. While the Justice Department is of the opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted, this has never been adjudicated. Because a federal crime can generally only be prosecuted in a federal court, a federal grand jury and U.S. Attorney would need to indict the president. The only one in a position to bring such an action is likely Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, currently the only non-Trump appointee among the U.S. Attorney population.
 
In addition, virtually every state makes interfering with the right to vote a crime. That means that state attorneys general could also prosecute Trump. At this writing, 20-plus state AGs are considering suing to stop the attack on the Postal Service, but that would fall short of the criminal action that should also be on their priority list.
 
Reliance on the slow-moving engines of justice may not be enough to stymie a corrupt, criminal president. The people need to make their voices heard, loudly, as well. It is shocking that Trump’s felonious attempt to overthrow the process by which we choose who leads us has not generated the level of outrage it warrants. After almost four years of incessant daily scandals, distractions and deflections perpetrated by him and his corrupt cronies, we tend to normalize his sleaze, venality and depravity as par for what we have come to expect from the most unethical person ever elected to national office in our history.
 
Every American should be up in arms about Trump’s decimation of democracy and the rule of law. If there was ever a time to rise up and challenge an abuse of power that exceeds anything we have ever experienced, this is it.
 
The day after Trump’s inauguration, a million women converged on Washington to protest his misogyny and racism (an additional 3.6 million demonstrated across the country), which they rightly feared would mark his tenure in office. Now, with our very system of government under siege and a potentially stolen election staring us in the face, a nationwide protest is needed more than ever. In the absence of any congressional backbone to rein him in, it is up to the people to protest and proclaim that we will not tolerate the theft of the most important civic activity in which we engage: the vote. Trump must know that there is a line in the sand beyond which he cannot tread.
 
Dick Hermann
August 21, 2020

​In less than four years, Donald Trump has largely demolished the post-World War II foreign policy construct so carefully put together over 75 years by 12 presidents.
 
In so doing, he has recklessly withdrawn the United States from three of the five nuclear arms control agreements he inherited, the result of 70 years of painstaking work: (1) the Iran nuclear agreement, which slowed down that country’s drive to develop nuclear weapons; (2) the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a centerpiece of European security since the Cold War; and (3) the Open Skies Treaty, which reduces the risk of war by allowing Russia and 31 western nations to conduct observation flights over each other’s territory. Moreover, Trump has also threatened to pull the U.S. out of the two remaining nuclear arms agreements—New Start, which limits U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons and is due to expire in February 2021 if not extended, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. has signed (observing a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests) but not ratified. He will likely abandon these last two if, God-forbid, he is re-elected, thus leaving us and the planet in the incredibly dangerous position of being vulnerable to a Russian arms buildup and heightened nuclear threat.
 
Trump’s precipitate and unthinking dismissal of these critical agreements that made the world a much safer place is in addition to his equally imprudent bailouts from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Relief and Works Agency, and his multiple threats to pull out of NATO. Each one of these thoughtless moves harms America in ways both immediate and long-term. Ditching the TPP, for example, a trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim countries, not only greatly disadvantaged U.S. businesses and workers, but also opened the door to China, paving the way for it to be the arbiter of Asian trade rules and the dominant Pacific power.
 
The damage Trump has done and continues to do to America’s position in the world is deadly serious and may not be able to be easily undone should Joe Biden become president next year. Our allies no longer trust America and, while they will likely be greatly relieved should an individual with an understanding of the global balance of power succeed Trump, are not likely to discount him as an anomaly. Their great fear is going to be that, if someone who knows and understands nothing could be elected president, then all bets are off regarding to whom this country might turn in the future. If a Trump intent on upending years of carefully constructed and complex alliances could come to power in 2016, why not someone equally awful in 2024 and beyond? Convincing our allies that we have returned to “normalcy” will not be easy or guaranteed.
 
Similarly, Trump’s predilection for cozying up to dictators, while reversible in the short term, does not mean that history cannot repeat itself down the road. Our allies know that and rightly fear that America could once again go off the rails and elect a clueless fool who has no comprehension of the importance of maintaining the delicate balance of global order and stability.
 
The task that Biden will confront, if elected, will not be as straightforward as the one Barack Obama inherited when he succeeded George W. Bush and was faced with rehabilitating American foreign policy after the Iraq misadventure. This time, it will be a much harder slog.
 
Dick Hermann
August 14, 2020

​President Trump resumed his daily Covid-19 briefings in mid-July with an about-face on mask-wearing and the gravity of the pandemic. However, a few days later he was back to his abnormal comfort zone. He retweeted a video of a physician, Dr. Stella Immanuel, who proclaimed that masks don’t impede the virus. She also said that Hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that clinical trials show has no effect on treating the virus, but has some potentially serious side effects, has cured hundreds of her patients. This is the same doctor who attributes medical conditions such as endometriosis, fibroids, and cysts to demons that have sex with women while they sleep, and who claims that “alien DNA” is being used in human medicines. Not only did Trump retweet this nonsense to his 87 million Twitter followers; he also endorsed the doctor as a respected authority before hastily seeking shelter when reporters’ questions put him on the defensive.
 
Can you imagine if any other president spouted such claptrap? The country and the Congress would be in an uproar, desperate to find a means to rein him or her in and get them far away from the levers of power. But not Trump. After 42 months of stupidity, loutish behavior and utter madness, this is just another in a series of daily inanities and dangerous drivel that spews forth from this president’s forked tongue.
 
The other theme of his resumed daily briefings is his constant refrain of self-pity and whining. “How come Dr. Fauci is more popular than I am?” “How come nobody likes me?” “Wah, wah, wah.” It’s always about him, the eternal victim instead of who he really is, the victimizer whose criminal negligence has meant the death of 160,000 Americans and the impoverishment of millions more.
 
When the coronavirus loomed, all he had to do was act rationally, as many of his peers around the world did. The viral curve could have flattened and a staged reopening of the economy could have been possible. But even that simple, obvious path was beyond his capabilities. Instead, he spouted lies (“the virus is a Democrat hoax;” “It will disappear.”), buried his head in the sand, and encouraged red state governors to act recklessly in prematurely reopening their economies, foolhardiness that their citizens are now paying for with their lives.
 
Black’s Law Dictionary defines criminally negligent homicide as [occurring] when the perpetrator acts in a reckless, dangerous, or negligent manner which causes the death of another person. By this definition, Donald Trump, once he leaves office, could be indicted for more than 160,000 counts (and counting) of criminally negligent homicide.
 
I supported President Ford’s pardon of disgraced Richard Nixon for his Watergate-related crimes, believing that the country did not need to endure more of the Nixon nightmare. Now, however, I believe that Donald Trump needs to be brought to justice for the nation to be able to move on from the travesty and tragedy of his aberrational and monstrously destructive presidency. He may be able to pardon himself from paying for his federal crimes. However, in every state where a person has died due to Trump’s criminally negligent homicide, no self-pardon is possible.
 
In closing, I need to apologize for a statistical error I made several weeks ago. I wrote that Donald Trump was responsible for 98.5 percent of the Covid-19 deaths that have resulted from his inaction and lies, and his stupid, cruel and incompetent response to the pandemic. I was wrong. Last week more than 1,000 healthcare professionals wrote an open letter to our national leaders—“Shut It Down, Start Over, Do It Right” in which they said that “We could have prevented 99 percent of America’s Covid-19 deaths. But we didn’t.”
 
Dick Hermann
August 7, 2020