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OPINION
Mountain Views News Saturday, August 29, 2020
PLEASE SHARE MY
ELATION
STUART TOLCHIN
MOUNTAIN
VIEWS
NEWS
PUBLISHER/ EDITOR
Susan Henderson
PASADENA CITY
EDITOR
Dean Lee
PRODUCTION
SALES
Patricia Colonello
626-355-2737
626-818-2698
WEBMASTER
John Aveny
DISTRIBUTION
CONTRIBUTORS
Stuart Tolchin
Audrey Swanson
Mary Lou Caldwell
Kevin McGuire
Chris Leclerc
Bob Eklund
Howard Hays
Paul Carpenter
Kim Clymer-Kelley
Christopher Nyerges
Peter Dills
Rich Johnson
Lori Ann Harris
Rev. James Snyder
Katie Hopkins
Deanne Davis
Despina Arouzman
Jeff Brown
Marc Garlett
Keely Toten
Dan Golden
Rebecca Wright
Hail Hamilton
Joan Schmidt
LaQuetta Shamblee
After a 2 . hour discussion with the
editor of this newspaper I have been
invited to submit weekly interviews
with selected persons in addition to
my regular articles.
As such, it is my plan to interview
the type of regular people whose
concerns, hopes, and beliefs seldom
reach the printed page.
Of course I will be hampered by the
coronavirus limitations which prevent
me from leaving the house.
Absent that ability I am going to
utilize my iPhone to contact parents
struggling with what is best for the
children at this difficult time.
I plan to telephonically interview
doctors about their current
experiences and their vision of the
future including speculation about
medical breakthroughs. I will ask if
they are happy with their choice of
profession or now wish they were
doing something else. I will ask those
physicians if they would like to see
their children follow in their footsteps
and what kind of encouragement and
direction are they providing to those
children.
It is also my plan to interview
undergraduate and graduate student
about the way their lives have been
impacted by the virus and if it has
changed their future plans.
Similarly I hope to interview
professors, teachers, and scientists
regarding how they made their career
choices and how their plans have been
affected.
I want to talk to essential workers like
mailmen, police officers, firemen, and
service workers about what it’s like to
continue to work even at the risk of
losing their lives. I wonder if they feel
appreciated or wish they could afford
to stay home.
I also plan to question people
quarantined by themselves or with
their significant other to determine
if sheltering in place orders have had
any effect on their stability. It is my
experience that just staying calm and
not taking out my stress on my wife
has become increasingly difficult. I
wonder if other domestic couples
share these difficulties and if there
are any helpful suggestions that might
make this all a little easier.
I plan to contact ex-clients of my
own who have recently been released
from prison to learn how they are
coping with this new unexpected
world. In the legal field I hope to
contact attorneys working with drug
and alcohol rehabilitation programs
to learn how successfully these
programs are operating and if there
are any helpful suggestions.
Of course I plan to contact
local small business owners to see
how their businesses and plans for
expansion have been affected.
Additionally I plan on contacting the
campaigns of political candidates and
to enroll in their training programs
and phone banking efforts in order
to contact potential voters, perhaps
gaining some insight into how the
coming election will be affected.
I have a few friends living on different
continents and in different parts of
the United States and will inquire as
to how our struggles are viewed and
what their present lives are like.
I could go on describing my potential
inquiries but I want to clarify my
intent.
First I think it will be of great
benefit to learn something about the
lives of others whose voices are rarely
presented to the public. I believe that
by doing this I will be of assistance
to make the world a little more
understandable to everyone.
We are not alone, even though it may
feel that way now and, in fact we are
all connected.
Frankly, I admit that this opportunity
allows this retired old lawyer believe
he still has something to contribute,
something that may make a difference
in other people’s lives and
I hope you, my loyal, perhaps only
imagined readers, are able to join in
my elation. Be prepared these new
interviews will, with a little luck,
begin next week.
Please take care and do the best you
can.
Mountain Views News
has been adjudicated as
a newspaper of General
Circulation for the County
of Los Angeles in Court
Case number GS004724:
for the City of Sierra
Madre; in Court Case
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Madre, California, 91024.
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Views News and may
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PETER FUNT
DICK POLMAN
FEAR IS ON THE BALLOT
THE NEW REPUBLICAN PLATFORM:
‘I’M WITH STUPID!’
More than 16 hours of political conventions over two weeks
boiled down to a single word: fear.
Democrats spent most of their time stoking their brand of
fear – appropriately, in my view – about the damage a second
Trump term would cause.
Republicans in turn focused almost entirely on the threat
posed by Joe Biden – with the president saying Biden will “demolish our cherished
destiny” and “give free reign to violent anarchists who threaten our citizens.”
Conducting conventions in a pandemic was bound to be unorthodox. But what
Americans got over these two weeks was positively surreal.
Beyond partisan fear-mongering, the only other issue of significance at both conventions
seemed to be the pandemic itself. Democrats reminded us of the horrific
death toll and the Trump administration’s blunders in dealing with the coronavirus.
Republicans, on the other hand, acted as if the pandemic had passed and staged a
non-socially-distanced celebration on the South Lawn of the White House, with
few masks in view.
What does it say about two conventions when the best speeches are given by women
who have never run for anything: Michelle Obama and Melania Trump? Both
spoke calmly and effectively, in from-the-heart style. Of course, as non-politicians
they weren’t expected to make campaign promises. Judging by this year’s conventions,
both parties are too frightened to articulate many actual policies.
This is unfortunate because Democrats actually have a platform. It’s detailed in
a single-spaced, 92-page DNC document that voters aren’t hearing much about.
Included are such things as expanding unemployment insurance, a $15 minimum
wage, 12 weeks of paid family leave, universal background checks on gun purchases,
and free public college for students whose families earn less than $125,000 annually.
The DNC platform also calls for abolishing the death penalty and granting
statehood to the District of Columbia.
Yet, in their eight precious hours of TV time, Democrats barely mentioned any
of these important reasons to support the Biden-Harris ticket. In fact, neither Joe
Biden nor Kamala Harris spoke about them at all. Biden’s speech, for all its rave
reviews, was devoted to, “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot.
Decency, science, democracy…”
Is it wise for Democrats to run a campaign that steers so clear of specifics? As for
the Republican National Committee, its members cared so little about an agenda
that they voted to simply skip having a platform.
But with the advantage of going in the second week, Trump seized on the fact that
Democrats had offered little substance. He used some of his 71 minutes Thursday
night to lay out a few second-term goals. He promised more tax cuts, more police,
more energy development and “a new age of American ambition in space” that
lands the first woman on the moon.
For all their split-screen Zooming, why didn’t Democrats devote a bit of convention
time to actual policies? In Biden’s acceptance speech, other than pledging to close
tax loopholes he mentioned only one specific new policy: “We’ll have a national
mandate to wear a mask.”
Those of us who hoped the conventions would provide a meaningful start to real
campaigning in this pandemic-plagued election will now have to wait for the first
of three presidential debates on Sept. 29. Surely Trump and Biden will get beyond
fanning fears about each other when they meet face to face, right?
During eight nights of conventioneering, the two men actually agreed on one thing.
Said Biden, “This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for
a very long time.” Said Trump, “This is the most important election in the history
of our country.”
Neither man dwelled on chickens in every pot. Only fear at every kitchen table.
–
Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at
Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com.
Aw, gee. The Trumpist Republicans have broken their
promise. Who could have ever seen that coming?
They vowed to stage an upbeat, optimistic convention
– to offer, in the words of chairwoman Ronna
McDaniel, “an aspirational vision toward the next
four years.” But what we got instead on the first night was the apocalyptic
message that Donald Trump is all that protects us from the radical left
anarchist rioting Godless commie socialists who aim to torch the decadent
cities and lay waste to the Caucasian McMansions of suburbia.
If nothing else, Trump’s crew knows how to stay on message no matter
what. The 2020 Republican National Convention opened with their
post office lackey being grilled by a House committee, the news that their
top evangelical fanboy (Jerry Falwell Jr.) watched his wife (a Women for
Trump board member) have sex with the pool boy, and a recording of
Trump’s own sister saying the president has “no principles.” Oh, and 27
ex-Republican lawmakers and 73 ex-Republican national security officials
announced their endorsed Joe Biden.
It was downright Orwellian to hear them hail Trump as the sworn enemy
of communists, given the fact that Trump has spent his tenure licking
the shoes of a former KGB agent and writing love letters to the commie
of North Korea. It was similarly weird to hear them hail Trump as the
peerless savior who rescued us from the virus, given his track record of
quackery and denial, and an ever-escalating death toll that has torn apart
families and humiliated us worldwide.
But that’s what happens when a party stands for nothing except a cult of
pathological personality.
The GOP, which once stood for small government and limited executive
power, is now nothing more than a malleable instrument of der leader’s
whim. Its apparatchiks decided – for the first time since the party’s founding
in 1856 – not to draft a platform of party principles. You read that right,
there is no platform.
Instead, they resolved to “continue to enthusiastically support the President’s
America-first agenda.”
In other words, “I’m with stupid.”
Even the conservative National Review was appalled, writing in an editorial
that “the Republican Party should stand for something.”
Policywise, we did get a few Trumpist bullet points, but they read like they
were scrawled on a napkin in a Vegas bar at three in the morning. “Protect
our veterans,” “return to normal in 2021,” “provide school choice,” “teach
American exceptionalism,” and my personal favorite, “cover all preexisting
conditions.” That one is odd, given the fact that Trump is currently in
the courts trying to kill off Obamacare, which protects people’s preexisting
conditions. And remember, a month ago, when he promised to unveil
a health reform bill within two weeks? There’s nothing about that on the
Vegas bar napkin.
This is not a party anymore. It is a cult hooked on power, determined to
scare the bejesus out of people for the sole purpose of sustaining power. As
veteran congressional Republican aide Brendan Buck told Politico journalist
Tim Alberta, the Trump party’s ethos can be summed up thusly: “Owning
the libs and pissing off the media. There’s really not much more to it.”
The big question is whether the cult’s paranoid doomsday message, amplified
hourly by right-wing “media,” will resonate with enough voters to
renew the freak show for another interminable season.
As Trump is fond of saying, “We’ll see what happens.”
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in
Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@
gmail.com
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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com
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