These two methods are how I’ve been coping.  Both are necessary for me to keep functioning during these hard times.

     First, protest.  This is valuable both personally and communally.  Personally, because it feels great to be doing something to combat Trump’s growing authoritarianism; communally because it’s wonderful to be taking action among like-minded people.

     The largest demonstration I’ve been to so far was “Hands Off” on April 5th.  Here in New York, so many people gathered that I couldn’t get into Bryant Park where it began.  We all marched down Fifth Avenue to 20th Street and whenever I looked forward or backward I saw an unbroken sea of people.  Many carried the “Hands Off” signs that had been handed out; other posters were individual and creative.  Among my favorites were “The Elephant in the Womb,” “Don’t Call Trump A Cunt – He’s Not Warm Enough or Deep Enough,” and “God Must Love Gays or He Wouldn’t Have Made Us So Cute.”  Everyone was friendly and helpful and of course we all were on the same side.

     I’ve been to two smaller demos this spring.  Both were downtown in Foley Square and both attracted a lot of participants.  The first was to champion academic freedom, as Trump had recently attacked both Columbia, which caved, and Harvard, which didn’t.  (I joked to friends that I never thought I’d be on the same side as Harvard.)  Participants were either young college students or old faculty as it was held during working hours when many middle-aged people were employed.  The second went from 5 to 7 p.m. and many more people attended.  They were not only of all ages, but also all ethnicities.  There were excellent speakers and for the first time, I heard AOC live –- she was terrific!

     My next protest, which I hope you will join, is No Kings Day on Saturday, June 14th.  This is Trump’s birthday and he’s planning to have a military parade to honor him in Washington which will cost millions of dollars.  There are hundreds of demonstrations against this folly planned throughout the nation.  You can easily find one by typing its title into your computer.

     For me, balancing these political actions requires escapism.  I need just to be frivolous for a while.  My two favorite methods are reading and television.  I read mysteries (which always turn out to be solved) and rom-coms, which display humor and love in equal doses.  On tv I adore “The Great British Baking Show,” which has nothing to do with my actual life.  They tried to do this program in the U.S., but Americans are too competitive;  in Britain, the bakers are so nice to each other.  I also loved “Madame Secretary,” which stars an empathetic female Secretary of State who (spoiler alert) eventually becomes President.  I also watch tv mysteries as well as Antiques Roadshow, which for me is the perfect soporific: I never take a sleeping pill; I just watch this show.  So this is how I cope and I hope these tactics help you as well.     

     For my longtime subscribers, my apologies for not having written a blog recently.  I was busy crafting a book proposal for Verso to publish my memoir, A Broad View of History: My Feminist Life.  This was quite difficult, as they wanted each chapter condensed to a short paragraph.  I kept remembering an adage of Benjamin Franklin’s that I used to tell my classes: “If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter.”  The first publisher I sent my proposal to was, of course, the Feminist Press, but their portal asked for books by young, non-binary, women of color, so three strikes for me.  If you have any other suggestions of where I should send it, please let me know.  Thank you.

     I foresee two possible scenarios.  In one, Trump will continue to do whatever he wants.  Although his margin of victory was very narrow, he still proclaims that he “won big.”  This hubris has been compounded by the Supreme Court’s outrageous decision that a president is immune from prosecution for any acts performed while in office.  (The founding fathers would have denounced this decision, since they did not want “another king,” but rather that “law be the king,” as Thomas Paine wrote.)  Trump will continue to use Elon Musk to eliminate departments he wants gone and to fire whomever he wishes.  He will ignore court opinions condemning his actions.  So far, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate have completely supported him.   If this success continues, Trump may well serve a third term, as he has said he wants.  The rule of law will be overthrown as will the Constitution.  The United States of America will become a true dictatorship, with the army gunning down those who disagree with the government.  Police forces will act the same way.  The goal is to “Make America Great Again,” as the MAGA forces proclaim.  This means eliminating women, Blacks, gays, etc. from all public life and authority.  White men, especially old white men, will rule.  Recently, to give just one horrible example among many, Ira Hayes, one of the two soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima in the famous 1945 photograph, has been purged from the government website because he is Native American.

     However, I don’t think all this tyrannical success is a likely scenario.  Right now, members of Congress are on leave, going home to face their constituents.  There is already tremendous opposition to their and Trump’s corrupt and self-serving policies.  These politicians have been denounced and booed.  Some refuse to hold meetings or insist that all those who oppose them are Democrats.

     I don’t think these tactics are going to succeed.  Too many well-established and supported groups oppose them, from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to Indivisible, to people who oppose making abortion illegal.  To give just one example, states outlawing abortion have seen doctors and businesses leave their states and increasing numbers of women proclaiming their injuries.  I believe that opposition to dictatorial, high-handed policies is growing.  Recently, courts have ruled that the government can’t just ship immigrants to Central America, expel anyone who supports Palestinian rights, or deny funds for health care and research to both government bodies and universities.  As Trump’s government continues its outrageous policies, I believe that this opposition will grow. 

     Much rests inevitably on the Supreme Court.  Chief Justice Roberts just proclaimed that Trump’s desire to impeach the judge who ruled against his policy on immigrants is wrong.  The only legitimate way to change this decision is to go through the courts.  Will Americans support overturning our entire judicial system?  I don’t think so.

     Of course I might be wrong.  As a historian, this era reminds me most of the United States just before the Civil War.  Then, a large minority of the nation opposed basic liberties and rights.  It took a bloody war to stop them.  I don’t think this struggle will come to war in our own day.  Here’s hoping I’m correct.

This blog is based on a wonderful essay by Masha Gessen, published as the main opinion piece in the New York Times for February 17, 2025.  In it, Gessen argues that Trump has floated a series of “terrible ideas,” and claims, I think correctly, that this tactic is “standard autocratic fare.”  “Bad ideas do a lot of the work of building autocracy,” the piece continues, “by forcing us to engage with them” they not only dumb down discussions, “they plunge us into an anxious state in which thinking is difficult.  That kind of anxiety is key to totalitarian control.”  Gessen, who was raised in Russia, concludes that the solution is not to debate these horrible ideas, but instead to present our own beliefs about democracy.  We should portray our vision of how a democracy can and should work to create a genuine government for the “demos” –- the people-- rather than a king, which is what Trump aspires to be.  (Most recently, when he attempted to overturn congestion pricing in New York City, he concluded by proclaiming “I am the king.”)

     These sentiments were of course at the fore during the creation of this nation.  The men who founded our government were keenly aware that they opposed a traditional monarchy which would execute them for treason if they lost.  One of their best defenses of democracy comes from James Madison.  Writing in the Federalist Papers to convince his fellow citizens to ratify the Constitution, Madison wrote “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

     The chief means of getting government “to control itself” was the system of checks and balances.  By dividing government into three branches –- legislative, judicial, and executive –- government would be forced to work collectively, rather than for an individual monarch.

     Most of us learned these basic American lessons in school.  Trump has currently thrown them overboard.  Claiming government “waste” and “disfunction,” he has commissioned the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk, to fire and hire, to ax government departments and agencies, to do the work of a tyrant for him.

     There is of course waste and disfunction in our government –- no system is perfect.  But those facts should not allow democracy to be curtailed or discarded in favor of the president’s tyranny.  Gessen concludes that this will not be easy: “because it calls for clear thought and inspired vision just when the onslaught of bad ideas, and the anxiety they engender, make it so difficult to think clearly and envision a future.”

     But that is exactly what we must do now.  A few nights ago, I attended a meeting of the Brooklyn branch of the progressive group Indivisible.  It was wonderful.  We broke into small groups and discussed what we could and should do now.  There have been a number of recent, powerful demonstrations in New York: a large march in Manhattan on President’s Day, a big gathering outside Sen. Shumer’s Brooklyn residence to urge him to combat Trump more vigorously.  At the meeting’s end, we were told to phone our representatives rather than email them, as they count phone calls and that matters.  It helps a great deal to join with others in this endeavor.  Please join me and many others in doing so to help to save our democracy.

My title is attributed to Mark Twain, but there’s no evidence that he actually used it. This ambiguity reflects the saying’s meaning: that although events never repeat exactly, they often resemble each other. I’m working with that concept in this blog. There are events in the past that I believe enlighten happenings today and I’m going to use them to understand contemporary politics.

First, I want to return to the fourteenth century. By that era, the republic of Venice had become an empire, controlling the eastern Mediterranean. Venice was ruled by a Doge – a leader from the reigning oligarchy, that is a government by a small, select group. He (and all officials then were of course male) was elected by a committee of 41. The Venetian oligarchs had great wealth. Their currency prevailed throughout the region and all trade had to be conducted in Venetian ships. Politics and financial power went hand-in-hand. “They were about all money people,” writes Jan Morris in her history of Venice, “Pride and profit were inevitably mingled.”

This system reminds me of the new government dominated by billionaires. Trump’s cabinet collectively owns 3.2 billion dollars. (In contrast, Biden’s had 118 million.) Moreover, Trump has designated two of his closest associates: Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man with 425.2 billion dollars, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who has “only” 1 billion dollars, to head a new government branch that they’re calling the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The entity is supposedly named after Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin that enables people to pay each other directly through an online system. It bypasses all national currencies. Trump intends to create his DOGE as a “presidential advisory commission,” rather than an actual government department, as that would require the approval of Congress. DOGE plans to severely reduce both the government’s workforce and its spending. No one knows exactly what will be cut, but Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have been mentioned. All this is supposed to be done in a single year. We are about to be governed by a new oligarchy.

This system was caricatured by Ann Telnaes:

The relatively new owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, the head ofAmazon who has a personal fortune of 241 billion dollars, prevented the paper from publishing this cartoon. Earlier last summer Bezos refused to let the newspaper endorse Kamala Harris and also fired hundreds of employees. Musk did the same on Twitter, which he re-named X. The site has done poorly under his ownership.

Oligarchies succeed when the majority of a population supports them, as voters did by electing Trump in 2024. They fail when the general population turns against them. We can see a similar happening in Germany of 1933. After Hitler was elected by gaining the largest percentage of votes (but well under half of those cast), the big-money boys clustered around him. They figured that they could control him and have him act in their interest. We all know how that turned out.

But what can we do now? To begin with, although Trump claims to have won by a landslide, he only gained 1.5% of the vote over Harris. We need not only to keep such facts in mind, but to proclaim them. I also think we need to publicize how the Republican party conducts itself. So far, it hasn’t done well. It was going to shut the government down and failed. The MAGA faction and more traditional Republicans are vying with each other. Most commentators argue that Trump won primarily because of economic reasons: many voters thought they were poorly off. If Trump succeeds in gaining two of his stated goals – creating tariffs and kicking out immigrants — our economy will plummet. Those of us opposed to his government need to keep on keeping on: by emphasizing reality, criticizing their actions, and acting when we can. I believe that Trump’s new government will fail spectacularly and so will lead to Democratic successes in ’26 and ’28.

Perhaps then we can then replace this new oligarchy with a democracy.

     As those of you who read my blog know, I really thought Harris was going to win big.  Since last night, I’ve been thinking about why I and many other Democrats were so wrong.  The best answer I can give comes from the work of a wonderful historian, Robert O. Paxton.

     Paxton, who is now 92, was a professor of mine decades ago at Columbia.  His first book argued that Vichy France was not a nation of resisters to Nazi fascism, but rather contained many enablers and collaborators.  Since then, he has written primarily about fascism itself.  Paxton argues that to understand fascism, you need to look not at its leaders, but its followers.  What made Germany and Italy go fascist in the inter-war years, while France and Britain did not?  He concludes that the most important factor in bringing fascism into being is having a majority of the voting population believe that the current system is not only not working for them, but is actively rigged against them.

     I think this is what happened here.  A majority of white, non-college educated Americans swung the vote to Trump.  In addition, young people, most of them male, staggering under debt and unable to live on their own earnings, voted disproportionately for Trump.  So did Hispanic men, who come from a culture that has embraced patriarchy, to the point of providing the word “machismo.”  I thought abortion would win the election for women.  Instead, a number of states voted in favor of abortion rights, but against the female candidate.  I know that misogyny, which I hoped had decreased since Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, was a definitely a factor, but I find that too depressing to think about today. 

     What now?  Obviously, the Democratic party has to re-group and re-invent itself.  Meanwhile, I remember Benjamin Franklin’s warning in the 18th century: “A republic” –- by which he meant a government that was not a monarchy –- “if you can keep it.”  We must work now to keep it.  And to keep on keeping on.

Just after Trump was elected president in 2016, I emailed my German Women’s History Study Group and said he was a fascist.  They reacted as historians, asserting that it couldn’t be fascism because there was no such political party here, that the context was different, etc.  Today, most of them agree with me.  What has changed?

     Fascism, defined as “a populist political philosophy…that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition” has, under Trump, come to characterize the MAGA movement.  Republicans who don’t toe the line have been expelled from the party.  Trump and others continually speak of “the enemy within,” meaning journalists, Democrats, and generally everyone who doesn’t agree with them.  Trump’s continuing attempts to insist that he won the 2020 election, in the face of facts and the decisions of over 60 courts, show both his contempt for the U.S. Constitution and his fascistic authoritarianism.

     Recently, Marine General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s White House Chief of Staff from 2017-19, declared that he now believed that “Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, who would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the rule of law.”  After years of silence, he decided to speak out because he thought Trump’s recent talk about “the enemy within” was truly dangerous.  Near the end of his presidency, Trump stated “I need the kind of generals Hitler had,” according to two people in the White House.

     So we can now consider him a fascist and a would-be Hitler.  What about the Alzheimer’s?  It’s “a brain disorder that destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out daily tasks.”  In recent years, Trump has mixed up Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, confused Milwaukee with Madison, Wisconsin, and bad-mouthed Detroit to a Detroit audience.  Recently, his confusion has intensified.   He stopped speaking and instead danced silently for 40 minutes at a Pennsylvania rally.  His staff has prevented him from participating in interviews and debates, almost certainly to shield him from criticism.  A few days ago, at a rally, he riffed for 15 minutes about the golfer Arnold Palmer, ending by referring to the size of his penis.  After that, he called Kamala Harris “a shit vice president” and attacked mail-in voting as the rally’s tv screens urged his supporters to cast absentee ballots early by mail.

     Admiring and wanting to be like Hitler is bad, but being a Hitler with Alzheimer’s is even worse.  Please spend these last few days before the election working to support Harris and other Democratic candidates!

Like many Democrats, I was deeply depressed after President Biden’s debate with Donald Trump on June 26.  It did not seem like a “bad night,” as the president said, but rather a steep cognitive decline connected to his age.  I wrote him the following letter:

Dear Pres. Biden,  

     I voted for you in 2020 and have been sending you $25 a month for the last year.  But I now think you should not run for a second term.  You've done an excellent job.  But I'm old now myself (81, like you) and I know how age has diminished me.  I'm a retired history professor from the City University of New York.
     Your performance at the debate scared me.  To me there is no worse fate for the nation than Trump becoming president again.  And, despite all his lies, he won the debate.  Sadly, I don't think that's the only time you're going to be incoherent like that.   I'm sure you want to run again.  But please balance that desire (and ego) against the good of a nation you have served so well. 

I, and many others, were extremely pleased when he decided not to continue to seek a second term three weeks later.  Despite what I said in my letter to him, I was delighted that he endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to succeed him.

     In 2020, I did not care for Harris.  I found her very smart, but she possessed no charisma.  She reminded me of Hilary Clinton, whom I supported but did not work for.  I was pleased Biden selected Harris as his vice president, but more because she was a black woman and had been a state district attorney and U.S. senator than for her personality.

     But that has changed.  I think she has grown tremendously during her years in office.  She’s learned how to speak very effectively.  She’s now known for her laugh, for her quick wit, and for her ability to charm a crowd.  I was delighted that the Democratic Party rapidly united behind her on August 6th and even more pleased when she chose the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, as her running mate.

     I’d never heard of Walz until then.  I was hoping she wouldn’t pick Josh Shapiro, both because I thought he needed to remain governor of Pennsylvania, a swing state, and because I didn’t think a ticket of a black woman and a Jewish man could win.  But Walz is a terrific choice!  He’s a veteran, a coach, a family man and has supported causes like gay groups in the schools, IVF, which he and his wife, also a teacher, used to create their two children, and also supplied menstrual products to high school bathrooms.  And it was he who coined the successful and accurate term “weird” to describe their Republican opponents.

     There’s a joke going around that the most successful item the Democrats possess is J.D. Vance.  Unlike Harris and Walz, he and Donald Trump have been unremittingly negative and nasty.  Vance’s disparagement of “childless cat ladies” plus his subsequent “correction” that he “had nothing against cats” has gone viral.  Trump’s attack on Harris for “starting out Indian” and then “going Black” has done the same.  Suddenly now, Trump is the old candidate –- some have taken to spelling his first name “D-o-n-o-l-d” –-and he is making increasing numbers of errors in his few speeches.  In contrast, Harris and Walz are speaking daily to larger and larger crowds.  They’ve declared they plan to continue doing this and that they “can rest when they’re dead.”  Trump has been forced into at least one debate against Harris after she called him a coward for declining to debate her when he had eagerly fought for another debate with Biden.  I think she will cream him.  As will Walz against Vance. 

     At this point, the Republicans are offering a dark and scary vision of America.  They are trying to avoid the subject of abortion, the fascism of Project 2025, and the increased jobs, infrastructure, and international support created by the Biden administration.  In contrast, Harris provides a hopeful and generous vision based on these genuine accomplishments.  She is completely comfortable advocating abortion –- much more so than Biden, who could barely speak the word.  I think the issue of abortion alone is going tilt voters towards the Democrats.  Her laugh and sense of humor, which Trump has attempted to denigrate, are winning.  When has Trump ever laughed?  The best he can manage is a smirk.

     So hooray for these developments.  I haven’t felt this hopeful since Obama ran in ’08.  May this campaign have the same successful result!

     A short while before the Russian attack, a friend declared that Ukraine should not fight because it would surely be defeated.  I replied, “I couldn’t disagree more.”  As a historian, I know how important motivation is in wartime.  The Ukrainians were fighting for their homes; the Russians were fighting because they were ordered to.  And whether or not the Ukrainians win, surely their struggle has been impressive.  Using what is available, they have slowed the Russian advance to the point where the Red Army is running out of food.  The Ukrainians have, for instance, used glass beer bottles from the Russian brand to make Molotov cocktails, re-inscribing the labels to read “Fuck you, Russians.”  They’ve removed all road signs and written the same on them.

     As a result of their endeavors, most of the world supports them.  Russia has become a pariah nation, shut off from banking, air travel, supplies, sports, and musical groups.  There’s a saying that goes back to Ancient Greece: “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”  No one person has proved this more than Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine.  Before the current events, I remembered the Ukrainian support of the Nazis in World War II.  But now they have a Jewish president and what a president!  Asked if he wanted a trip out of his embattled nation, he said, “I want ammunition, not a ride.”  There another old saying – that “God hates a coward.”  Both Zelensky and the Ukrainians have been heroic rather than cowardly.

     That is more than could be said for a number of Republicans, most notably Donald Trump, who asserted that Putin was “a genius” when he invaded Ukraine.  For a while, some Republican commentators, like Tucker Carlson, supported him.  So have Senator John Hawley of Missouri, and Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Rosendale, and Thomas Massie, all of whom voted in Congress against support for Ukraine.  Now the Republican Party is back-peddling as fast as it can – except for Trump.  It may loosen his grip on the GOP.

     But regardless of U.S. politics, I believe that a Russian invasion of Ukraine cannot ultimately succeed.  Suppose they occupy that nation.  Will opposition and protest completely stop?  I don’t believe it will.  The cost of keeping innumerable Russian soldiers there, often against their will, plus the damage done by the other measures NATO and the United States have taken, have caused the ruble to plummet and the Russian stock market to close. 

     From its beginning to whatever its conclusion, this is a war fought with internet participation.  The Russians cannot be secretive any longer.  When it was revealed that the oligarchs who support Putin still had their yachts, those yachts were taken away.  Russia has alienated most of the world and the Ukrainians have won its support.                    

I’ve always hated winter, and the older I get, the more I dislike it.  Part of the reason is how long it is – much longer than the other seasons.  The Chinese divide winter into two seasons: Early Winter and Late Winter.  And this year, unlike last, we’re having a “real” winter.  Tomorrow the high is supposed to be 19.

     All this is compounded by Covid.  I was exposed by a friend last Monday and I’ve been lying low ever since.  I have no symptoms at all.  The testing sites here are jammed, and therefore quite dangerous, so I’ve opted to wait before I use the one test kit I have.  I’ll do it this Friday, before I have a scheduled massage.  My masseuse asked me to test before I saw her.  New kits should arrive on Saturday.  It’s been very hard to find them anywhere.

     In addition, there’s politics.  I found the anniversary of January 6th very difficult.  As a historian, I have to go back to the War of 1812 to find a similar event — when the British invaded and burned the Capitol to the ground.  The Confederacy never reached Washington, D.C.  The first time Confederate flags were raised in the Capitol was on January 6, 2021.

     But I’m very glad Biden finally spoke out.  His speech, where he continually referred to “the former president” but never used his name, was excellent.  I especially liked when he said, “He’s not just a former president, he’s a former defeated president.”  However, it continues to be shocking that almost every Republican in Congress, regardless of how they themselves were menaced, continues to downplay the event and support Trump.  Hopefully this will change.  The rate of people getting, and dying from Covid is far higher in Republican districts than in Democratic ones.  The Republicans’ platform now consists of opposing vaccinations, opposing voting, and opposing women.

     I believe this is a losing strategy.  People have voted under even more arduous conditions than those the Republican states are creating.  I hope that the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe v. Wade.  In addition to stare decisus (the principle that the court not reverse long-established policies), Chief Justice Roberts cares that he has a good reputation.  He does not want to preside over a court that makes political rather than juridical decisions.  Let’s hope his view prevails.

     Also, this outbreak of Covid may decline as rapidly as it arose.  It did that in South Africa, which does have a much younger population.  But we can hope that it will diminish within a month or so here. 

     Finally, with regard to Covid, politics, and the weather, remember the end of the quotation with which I started this piece.  Shelley wrote, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind.”

The concept of “the big lie” comes from the German general Erich von Ludendorff, but was publicized by Adolf Hitler. Ludendorff argued that “Jews and Communists” had blamed Germany’s defeat in the First World War on him — a position that came to be known as the “Stab in the Back Legend.” In Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), published in 1925, he repeated Ludendorff’s argument. Ludendorff and Hitler became and remained close political allies and helped bring the Nazis to power.

Hitler defined the big lie as a lie so colossal that no one would believe that anyone could “have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” His most influential use of the concept was his assertion that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany’s misfortunes and so should be exterminated. In their 1943 assessment of Hitler, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (a predecessor of the C.I.A.) maintained that “people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” This big lie was the major justification for the Holocaust, which killed at least 6,000,000 Jews.

While it is difficult to believe that a United States politician would use a Nazi tactic for his own ends, this is exactly what Donald Trump did in 2020. Immediately after the presidential election in November, Trump began asserting that the election was a fraud, that if he lost, it was only because of foul play, and that any loss by him should be reversed. He kept asserting these falsehoods up to and including January 6, 2021, when he incited a mob to storm the Capitol building to try and seize the government. While this attempted coup most closely resembled the Confederate South’s attempt to undermine Pres. Lincoln’s election of 1860, the Confederacy never conquered Washington, D.C. The event closest to January 6 occurred during the War of 1812, when the British did occupy Washington, D.C. and burned both the White House, then called the Presidential Mansion, and the Capitol Building.

Trump’s attempts to undermine a free and fair election, in which the results of both the popular and Electoral College votes were not even close, did not end on January 6. His supporters tried to deny the results and Trump is still proclaiming that he “really” won. This Big Lie must not prevail. Many Democrats now argue that it is reason enough that he be convicted in the Senate of his second impeachment. May it be so.

     The power to pardon is older than Western Civilization.  In Ancient Babylon, when kings came to the throne, they issued general pardons.  In Ancient Greece, the monarch Thrasybus issued a pardon in 403 B.C.E.  In Ancient Rome, kings issued clemency – that is, pardons for groups rather than individuals.

     In medieval times, both the Roman Catholic Church and local rulers issued pardons.  By the 1500s, pardons were in the hands of the monarch.  When the United States was founded, this was one of the functions transferred to the Executive Power.  Article II, section 2 of the Constitution gives the president “the power to grant Reprieves or Pardons for offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

     That exception vastly limits the president’s pardoning power.  In 1787, founding father James Madison wrote “…if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.”  This view was expanded in the twentieth century.  By then, the truism that “No one may be judge in his own case” had taken hold.  The U.S. legal scholar and Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein supported and expanded this view. 

     In the 1970s, when Richard Nixon was indicted for the Watergate conspiracy, the Department of Justice ruled that “The President cannot pardon himself.”  That position holds true today.  In order to pardon himself, Pres. Trump would first have to admit that he did wrong.  He is unlikely to do this.  Summing up, former president Theodore Roosevelt declared “Patriotism means to stand by the country, it does not mean to stand by the president.”

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was both timely and untimely.  Timely, because she was 87 and had been battling severe cancer for many years, and untimely because she died while Trump was in office.  Breaking with their own statements when Obama was president and Republicans prevented even a hearing of his candidate for a year, the party decided to push through a new candidate for the court in a few short weeks.

         Given this situation, what can Democrats and their supporters do?  The most important action, I believe, is to try and convince some Republican senators not to go ahead with their party’s maneuver to control the court.  Here are the phone numbers of five Republican senators who might support a delay.  All of them go to voice mail, so if you call, you do not need to talk to anyone.

• For Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, dial 202/224-2523, ext. 1

• For Sen. Corey Gardner of Colorado, dial 202/224-5941, ext. 1

• For Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona, dial 202/224-2235, which will go directly to voicemail

• For Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, dial 202/224-6665, ext. 3

• For Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, dial 202/224-5251, ext. 1        

         I think it is worth phoning these senators even if they have already announced that they will support Mitch McConnell’s attempt to rush through an appointment.  As McConnell himself declared, this issue is political, and if these senators receive enough calls asking them to desist, they might.

         Finally, even if this new appointment goes through, there is a powerful remedy.  In this nation the Supreme Court does not make laws, except in constitutional issues.  Congress does.  If, for instance, the new conservative court out laws abortion, congress can pass a law making it legal.  So I believe it is now even more important for Democrats to vote in large numbers, hopefully to give Biden a mandate as well as control of both the house and the senate.  It is the only force that can stop the degradation of this nation which Trump and his corrupt attorney general, Barr, have engineered in recent years.

Suprem

          A short while ago, a white woman in her thirties told me, “It it’s Biden, I’m not going to vote.”  I tried arguing with her, saying that Trump was much worse than Biden, but I got nowhere.  She maintained that both of them supported corporate capitalism and that if Biden were president, nothing would change.  I was very upset with her, but then I remembered that I had done exactly the same thing she was advocating.

         Back in 1968, I could not bring myself to vote for the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, to be president.  Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president, had supported the Vietnam war, which I’d marched against for years.  Nor did he repudiate the dreadful police riots in Chicago against peaceful demonstrators at the Democratic Convention.  So I voted for Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther who ran on the Peace and Freedom ticket.  Cleaver had no chance of winning, but this action made me feel righteous.  However by doing it, I helped make Richard Nixon president – an outcome I deplored. 

         I felt guilty about this action of mine for years.  I never believed that Humphrey was nearly as bad as Nixon.  Nixon’s presidency was a national disaster, culminating in Watergate.  Nor do I believe that Nixon was nearly as bad as Donald Trump is, although there are interesting parallels between them.  In both Watergate and Trump’s attempt to get the president of Ukraine to give him dirt on Biden, the cover-ups are almost worse than the actions. 

Just as Humphrey was superior to Nixon, so Biden is far better than Trump.  Equating the two, for whatever reasons, is a false and dangerous identification.  It could make Trump president for a second term, further eroding democracy in the United States.

         Some people believe that evil-doers should be allowed to obtain power, because then voters will see how dreadful they are and revolt against them.  This tactic was tried in Weimar Germany in the early 1930s.  Some members of the powerful German Socialist Party advocated this strategy against the Nazis, calling it “Socialist Defeatism.”  I think we all know how that turned out.

         In conclusion, it’s vitally important to vote – even if the candidate isn’t your favorite, even if you object to some of their views or positions, even if you don’t like him or her.  The alternative is so much worse.

For me, it began during the presidential campaign when Trump mocked and imitated a disabled reporter. I thought, “How could anyone vote for him after this?” It continued during the debates, when he stalked Hillary, tromping around the stage and looming over her. Although she was a weak candidate, I was shocked when he won and depressed that so many Americans voted for him. Yet again, I deplored that the Electoral College gave the election to someone who had lost the popular vote.

Crazy Town continued during one of his early cabinet meetings, when everyone in the room, led by Mike Pence, groveled and tried to outdo each other in sycophantic praise for Trump. I had never witnessed anything like it. Despite this, seemingly endless firings and replacements followed over the next two years, with one hireling after another running afoul of an irrational power freak. As George Packer wrote in the September 24th New Yorker, “A coarse and feckless viciousness is the operating procedure of his White House, and the poison spreads to everyone. Only snakes and sycophants survive.”

My dismay has increased as it has become clear that the Republican Party, in both the House and the Senate, has followed this corrupt lead, betraying its long-held values. A balanced budget? Let the deficit sky-rocket as we give more tax breaks to the wealthiest among us. Suspicion of Russia? Let it disappear as the president meets privately with Putin and praises him to the point that many of us consider treasonous. And now, the Supreme Court. The hypocritical claim of “Let the people decide” used in an unprecedented blocking of Pres. Obama’s right to appoint a justice, has now been trashed. Attempting to rush Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation through before the November elections, the scant Republican majority in the Senate allowed less than 10% of his papers released, dismissed any objections to his evasive answers, and now seems not to have done its basic homework. Three and perhaps four women have come forward claiming he sexually harassed them. All have asked for FBI investigations of their charges, something they would be extremely unlikely to do if they were just trying to “smear” him, as he claims.

Do I believe them? You bet I do. I worked as a rape crisis counselor at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village for fourteen years. In all that time, we had only one false claimant — a con-woman who went from city to city and was easily caught. We even had a pamphlet titled “I Never Told Anyone,” since this was so common. Look at the harassment Christine Blasey Ford, the first accuser, has experienced: death threats to her and her family, hacking of her email, etc., etc. It remains far more difficult for women to come forward with charges than for men to deny them.

And now the eleven Republican men on the Judiciary Committee are pondering whether to question her themselves or to hire a female attorney to present a better picture. She of course is not allowed to have her attorney present, nor to bring in corroborating witnesses. The echoes of the Senate’s base treatment of Anita Hill many years ago are deafening. And the context for all this is Trump’s own boasts about “pussy grabbing,” his infidelities, and his own sexual harassment of women. If you elect a clown, expect a circus.

The Constitution of the United States very carefully delineated what constitutes treason, as all the founding fathers were acting as traitors to Great Britain.   Treason "against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. "  I, and many others, believe that Donald Trump's press conference with Vladimir Putin on July 16, gave "aid and comfort" to Russia, especially when the president declared that he believed the assurances of the Russian leader over his own intelligence services.

      The Constitution is even more careful about a conviction for treason -- it requires "the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."  Neither seems likely to happen, although I found Rachel Maddow's reportage last night on the Russian spy, Marina Butina, intriguing.  Maddow asserted that the prosecution's papers included the charge that Butina had successfully influenced Trump not to appoint Mitt Romney as Secretary of State, but to choose a figure more acceptable to Putin.  Rex Tillerson, the ultimate choice, had been given a medal by Putin.  (It was Tillerson who later called Trump "a moron.")

     Even in the darkest days of our republic, charges like this are virtually unheard of -- the only exception is just before the Civil War, when some previous presidents were accused of siding with the Confederacy.  We are indeed living in interesting times, which a Chinese proverb considers a curse.  It will indeed be interesting to see what happens.

     In 1887, near the end of her long life, Ernestine Rose declared that "For over fifty years, I have endeavored to promote the rights of humanity without distinction of sex, sect, party, country, or color."  She herself experienced discrimination not only because she was female, but also because of her "country" -- she had been born in Poland.  Although she lived in the United States for 33 years and was integral to the U.S. women's movement, she remained its only non-native born member and was always called a "foreigner."  Even worse, during the 1850s, the anti-immigrant American Party arose.  It demanded limits on their entry, a 21-year residence period before citizenship could be applied for, and the restriction of all political offices to the native born.  The party's members said they "knew nothing" about it, giving rise to its nickname of the Know Nothing Party.  A number of Rose's fellow participants in the women's movement voiced their agreement with its views in her presence.

     As a historian, I'm leery of making comparisons between different eras, but the Know Nothings' tenets are amazingly parallel to those of Donald Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions.  In his recent speech rescinding DACA, which gave persons brought here as children the right to stay for two years if they had not committed a crime, Sessions harked back to the distant past.  He did not invoke the Know Nothings, but rather the severely restrictive 1924 Immigration Act.  Designed by a congressional eugenicist, this bill sought to keep the United States "Anglo-Saxon" by outlawing the entry of most Jews, Italians and other southern Europeans, as well as all Asians.  In 2015, then Senator Sessions, disparaging the prediction that in a few years "we'll have the highest percentage of Americans non-native born since the founding of the republic," praised this act since it "slowed immigration" and "created the really solid middle class of America."  (Thanks to Rachel Maddow for this information.)  Sessions also argued falsely this year that DACA was "unconstitutional," that it would take jobs from "hundreds of thousands of Americans," and that it would work against "national security" and "public safety."

     After she left Poland, Ernestine Rose lived in Germany, France, and England before coming here.  In London, she met Robert Owen, the industrial-turned-radical, whose expansive view of human rights became her own.  "We have been told that Robert Owen was a dreamer," she asserted at a celebration of his life, "and what glorious dreams he dreamt!....It is said that he did not succeed.  But where he did not succeed in the past, he will in the future.  He shook the foundation of the old system, and left it to time to do the rest."

     I believe that time is on the side of those of us who oppose the racism and prejudice exemplified by Trump and Sessions, but our Dreamers, as DACA recipients are called, cannot wait since they will be deported in six months.  New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, has already brought a lawsuit arguing that since almost 80% of the Dreamers are of Mexican origin, its rescinding is based on the anti-Mexican discrimination Trump expressed so often during his campaign.  The rest of us must continue, as Rose so often urged, to "agitate, agitate" for the causes we believe in, starting with the protection of these involuntary young immigrants.