And No We Won’t Surrender – Song
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Kamala – The Song
Why Trump Won’t Win
A central part of Trump’s personality is that he overvalues himself and devalues others.
Mind you, that tendency exists in most human beings but, if unexamined and unchecked, it grows to become a big problem.
In Trump’s case it comes across as grandiosity. ‘Look at me, I am the one!’
In a recent question/answer session with Black journalists, he stated that he had been the best president since Abraham Lincoln. He had done more for Black folks since Lincoln.
In his excesses, Trump is so obnoxious that sometimes he’s even funny, which has helped him keep his followers around.
The layer of overvaluing himself and devaluing others goes hand in hand with his divisiveness.
It does not take much to have people unwilling to think a little to be sucked in by Trump’s talk that all our nation’s problems lie with Democrats.
Republicans, in contrast, are flawless.
Trump’s song has that riff down.
But sowing division will not help our country find common purpose, which is essential to better use our resources in a world heavily influenced by dictators (Putin, Xi Jinping, Iran’s clerics).
Along with Trump’s divisiveness come his love to stir up toxic masculinity.
The effect of that led to the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6th 2021.
But toxic masculinity hurts us the most in the attitudes of many men toward women, the way our nation chooses to deny women the right to control their bodies.
It takes time to wake up from a historical slumber.
Women did not wake up when Hillary Clinton ran against Trump in 2016.
But now they’re getting a second chance, and this time it will be a Black woman confronting the White dude.
Trump’s already making every effort to demean Harris. ‘I didn’t know she was Black, I thought she was Indian (East Indian)’.
But it won’t work.
Kamala Harris is, first of all, a strong woman, and her appeal among other women is growing steadily, for she is sparking in them the reality that one of their own will soon be president of this country – 248 years after the nation declared its independence. That’s a hell of a long wait.
I say that Trump won’t win because he’s already sensing that Kamala Harris is better put together as a person than he is. And that hurts.
It doesn’t have to be that way, if he were kinder to himself, a little more introspective, and chose to learn from his mistakes, but he has trouble doing that.
Trump won’t win because his essence is clear to most Americans. He makes little effort to hide his flaws and instead prefers to tout them. There is no embarrassment in him. He thinks of his faults as assets instead.
And because he doesn’t change, it will be easier for most people to reject him as unsuited to be our leader.
Kamala Harris offers us something very different. An intelligent and ambitious woman eager to learn, joyous in the pursuit of her goal, willing to seek advice, and proud to be an American willing to fight the forces of the opposition in the name of all of us.
Will mail to Biden and Harris.
95 days to ballot day.
My short books ‘Putin’s Revenge – The Final Days of Yevgeny Prigozhin’ and ‘Letters to a Shooter,’ are out on paperpack and eBook. Go to Oscar Valdes Author Central (Amazon)
Black Woman Against White Man
Hello America!
We’re getting a chance to see how much we’ve evolved.
Are we really where we think we are racially and sexually?
To hear the Trump side, women should know their place. At home raising children. Mind you, that is a most honorable choice, but women in this country have been fighting for parity for a long time.
They only gained the right to vote in 1920, with the passage of the 19th amendment, two years behind England and 27 years behind New Zealand, the first nation to allow it.
Kamala Harris was born in 1964, only a year before the Civil Rights Act passed in 1965, outlawing discriminatory voting practices.
All these years in between it’s been a hard slog for women.
They’re still having old White men decide if they can have an abortion or not.
So, yes, it’s high time for women to form a solid block and beat Trump and all that he stands for.
Kamala Harris will be standing for all women this November 5th. Democratic women and Republican women and independent women. Women from the right, the left and the center.
Yes, because a woman president will open a different kind of dialogue for American women.
‘Baby, you know what it means to be one of us,’ they will be saying to Kamala as they march to the polling booth or make their contributions to the campaign.
Will Harris be a catalyst for parity in the workplace? Yes, she will.
Will women stand a chance to push up the so called glass ceiling? Yes, they will.
It will be most interesting to see leaders of industry (mostly male) having to speak to a woman president to try and gain favor.
Damn, it will be good to see that.
So Republican men who are casting their lot with Trump need to rethink their positions.
We don’t need testosterone to manage our nation. We need brains, empathy, imagination, moral strength, a commitment to the freedom of all human beings.
It’s time, fellows. If you’re falling behind in earnings, don’t blame in on women. They have as much a right to earn what you do. If you have the greater capacity, then you earn more.
If not, you earn less. And work on it if you want better.
The beauty of a woman running for president is that it puts all prejudices on the table.
So we can better deal with them.
It’s high time we did it. It will be good for us. Damn good, in fact.
I’m reminded of something the distinguished poet and writer Erica Jong once said about the feminist movement. I was in the audience when she said it. That the feminist movement had helped men become better fathers. And how right she was.
So, yes, the lack of barriers to women’s advancement ends up being better for all of us.
For we will be freer and wiser as a result.
So onwards, American women, this is your moment. Seize it, damn it.
Don’t let it slip away like you did when Hillary Clinton ran in 2016.
The world has been waiting to see tangible proof of your full powers. So, go for it.
And yes, Joe Biden made this moment possible when he chose Kamala. So thank you, Mr President.
My short books ‘Putin’s Revenge – The Final Days of Yevgeny Prigozhin’ and ‘Letters to a Shooter,’ are out on paperpack and eBook. Go to Oscar Valdes Author Central (Amazon)
99 days left to election day in the US
It’s Harris’s Moment
And she’s having a ball.
Flush with excitement, she addressed the crowd at her first rally in Wisconsin and earlier at campaign headquarters in Delaware and each time she exuded confidence.
‘People, I’m doing this and we are going to win!’
And she smiled broadly, her eyes sparkled and right in front of the cameras she went up to Doug, her husband, and gave him a big kiss in the mouth. And they both loved it.
She’s acting like’s she’s already won.
‘Fellow Americans, we got this!’
And news had gone out that in a 24 hour period, she’d raised 81 million bucks! Now that’s a lot of cash, folks. Lots of money to persuade the undecided that going Democrat is the only way.
By contrast, Trump is already depressed.
Angry, sensing that something is slipping away from him, he can’t take it. He’s bitter than the spotlight is not on him.
‘Where’s the love?!’ Trump is saying. ‘Goddammit, I took a bullet for all of you! Have you forgotten so quickly?’
And yes, Mr Trump, we very much regret that you were the target of an assassination attempt and are very glad that you are alive and there for your loved ones. But that doesn’t get you the election.
But Trump cannot resist.
Knowing that campaign funds allotted to Biden would now be transferred to Harris, he instructed his lawyers to file a suit with the FEC (Federal Elections Committee) to block the transfer arguing that it was illegal. It is not.
And then he heard that Musk was now changing his mind and that he would not be putting out 45 million dollars a month into a super PAC to help his campaign. And Musk added something about his not being into the cult of personality. Ouch! That had to hurt Trump when he heard it.
But it goes to show the impact Biden’s decision and Harris’s enthusiasm had on Musk. And I hope Republicans read that because, yes, you still have time to change your minds and vote Democrat. We welcome you, brothers and sisters. You know we love you.
And, secretly, Republican women are wondering, why in hell can we not have a woman be a candidate for President?
And they shake their heads and seem puzzled. It’s not like they haven’t had bold women step front, it’s that they have not got support. There was Margaret Chase Smith in 1964, Michele Bachmann in 2012, Carly Fiorina in 2016. Pioneers, all of them, ahead of their times. But ignored by most Republicans.
And while Trump stews in his frustration, envious of the energy and enthusiasm that Harris is showing, angry that all Americans are not thrown into fits of ecstasy when they hear him or see him show up, President Biden has quietly found his peace.
Biden can say to himself, ‘I picked Kamala Harris to be my vicepresident and she became vicepresident – the first one ever – and now I’ve endorsed her to be president and she will become president – the first one ever.’
But it gets better. Biden can say, ‘I was essential to Kamala’s political development. I chose her to be my running mate after she’d dropped out of the race in 2016, then I nurtured and guided her all these years she’s been at my side. And she learned what she had to learn, and I transmitted to her the joy of being the leader of this country, the profound satisfaction and honor that is to work hard on behalf of the American people. She learned fast and I know she will not disappoint. She is my legacy. So I now can breathe easier and accept that though my time to lead is coming to an end, I can be proud that I lent a hand in the making of our next president.’
Biden recognized that he had got stuck for a moment after criticism of his performance against Trump in the June 27th debate.
But then he fell ill with covid and he got away from the lights and the public attention that come with being president. And being alone as he isolated to recover from the virus, he reflected at length on his role as leader of the United States.
And he recognized that he had done his work and he was proud of it.
He smiled as he thought about it, feeling relieved. He enjoyed seeing the enthusiasm Harris radiated when she spoke to people about the tasks ahead.
And he knew that she was ready and she would become the 47th president of the United States.
And he remembered a little private moment she had with Harris a few months before the debate had triggered the events that followed.
They were alone in the Oval office, Biden and Harris, talking about something and he had had a rough time sleeping the night before and so he paused and looked at her, ‘Kamala, do you have trouble sleeping?’
And smiling, she said, ‘I sleep like a baby. But every now and then, I may have a little difficulty, and I will just get up and read something and then go back to sleep. You know how they say that it’s not good to stay in bed if you can’t sleep. But if I’m having trouble falling asleep and I turn and see that Doug is awake, I then ask, ‘baby, will you read me a story?’
‘Sure, honey,’ he answers. And when he reads to me, I just relax and five minutes later I’m sound asleep.’
Biden laughed.
‘And the funny thing is, it works for him, too,’ continued Harris, ‘because he tells me, “the moment I see you fall asleep, I put the book down and I fall asleep, too.”’
Good night, folks.
My short books ‘Putin’s Revenge – The Final Days of Yevgeny Prigozhin’ and ‘Letters to a Shooter,’ are out on paperpack and eBook. Go to Oscar Valdes Author Central (Amazon)
104 days left to election day in the US
No On a Two State Solution
Negotiations are under way to end the conflict in Gaza. But the conflict won’t end. It never does.
Why should Israelis live under the constant threat that Palestinians will violate any agreement they make and attack them again?
Since Israel’s independence in 1948 there have been many efforts to establish treaties calling for peaceful coexistence.
Sometimes they have come close, but the initial agreement always breaks down.
Repeatedly, it’s the Palestinians who initiate the attacks on Israel or beat the drums of war.
The Palestinian strategy is familiar. Kill Israelis, take hostages and then wait for public opinion to come to their rescue.
Just as Palestinians have failed, so too the other Arab nations.
All share a history of ganging up against Israel and yet the small nation, with the smaller army, always beats them back.
To try to force Israelis to accept a two state solution does not make sense any more.
I am sure that, as a people, Palestinians have many talents and capabilities. As a nation, however, they have deferred again and again to leaders bent on inciting rage and enmity against Israel.
From the start Israel has had a right to a piece of that land. The stories of their peoples have been profoundly intertwined. The Bible and Qur’an speak of their common origins. And yet, Palestinians have seen no need to compromise.
We can blame their atrocious leadership for it but the people themselves also bear a measure of responsibility for their unending calamities.
Palestinians have become a failed nation who’s unwilling to face the fact that a neighbor they despise has thrived and become a first rate country. A first rate country that is also superior to any of the other current Arab nations.
That has to hurt.
Rather than try and improve their conditions, Palestinian leaders keep stirring those resentments.
Other nations, eager to help (never mind China, Russia or Iran who only want to stir the animosities for their own benefit), should not underestimate the importance of such emotions. They are unlikely to go away.
Still, Gaza must be rebuilt. But Hamas should not be allowed to wield power. They’ve proven themselves incapable of leading their people.
One alternative would be for the United Nations to step in and govern that land until such time – decades from now – when Palestinians, freed from the toxicity of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, will rise to take the leadership of a modern state.
No weapons should be allowed in Gaza.
Arab nations may not want to help in rebuilding Gaza, whatever their reason, but they bear a good deal of historical and moral responsibility for having encouraged anti Israeli sentiment and its ghastly consequences.
If you have the time, go to the website for Freedom House and look at their interactive world map where nations are ranked by how free they are.
In the region, Israel is the only democracy. A little speck of land in the midst of autocracies and despotism.
No Arab or Muslim nation in the area has yet developed the capability to form and maintain a democratic government.
Wonder where Israel gets its strength from.
Still Hamas Does Not Surrender. Why Not?
Because they have innocent civilians in Gaza shielding them. Because they’re counting on world opinion restraining Israel’s determination to defeat them.
Israel belongs in Palestine. So do the Arabs. But reckless leadership has kept the flames of enmity and violence alive in Arab hearts and minds for more than a hundred years.
And the cost has been enormous. Not only in lives lost but in opportunities missed.
Jews never conquered the vast territories that Arabs did in times past when they reached into North Africa and Spain which they held for centuries.
Arab minds and their creativity gave us enormous advances in the sciences and humanities. But then the lights dimmed and other peoples took the lead.
Why shouldn’t Israel be in Palestine?
Both Arabs and Jews have inhabited that land since the beginning of recorded history.
Jews have migrated all over the world, and they have faced hatred and persecution in nearly every place they have gone.
All the while they longed to return to Palestine.
The migration back to Palestine started before WWI and then grew steadily, even against opposition of major powers like England. Then came the Holocaust and the horrors of it hardened Jewish resolve to return to their ancestral home.
When the United Nations consented to the creation of Israel in November 1947, borders were drawn that allowed for Jews to coexist with their Arab neighbors. But such was the resistance of the Arab world that immediately after Israel declared itself a nation in May of 1948, the surrounding Arab nations attacked it. And it hasn’t stopped.
Yet every single time Jews have beat back the Arabs.
It’s going to be 76 years this next May, and still the Arab world doesn’t step up and say, ‘Let Israel live!’ ‘We will strive for peaceful coexistence. We renounce violence.’
Is there any oil in Palestine? No. Arab countries have the oil riches.
And yet Arabs look at Jews with envy.
What Jews have done is affirm themselves in a way contemporary Arabs have not been able to.
Jews took what land they hand and made it cultivable. They toiled and invented and transformed themselves into a leading nation. All the while the surrounding Arabs watched in astonishment. Maybe they were asking themselves, ‘there must be something magical about that land that Jews have prospered so much. We need to get back in there.’
But that’s not it.
What Jews have is a determination to succeed that Arabs have not found in themselves. They look back on their history and know it’s in there, somewhere, but they just can’t find it at this time. They look to their leaders but they don’t get answers.
Arabs are ruled by kings and dictators but not by elected representatives. And so until the Arab peoples embrace democracy, there will not be peace in the Middle East.
The Arab world’s tolerance of the existence of Hamas is a sign of how much they need to grow politically. They seem unable to publicly reject the group’s violence toward Israel.
And so Israel must keep affirming its right to exist and keep prospering.
And the West will keep supporting them.
Israel has work to do also. They should veer more to the political center.
Coexistence with a Palestinian nation is possible, so long as that nation is demilitarized. This must be done because of the long history of attacks on Israel.
Israel has had great leaders but a man like Netanyahu is toxic. The other day he said that Palestinians should be relocated to the Congo. Yep. It made front page news.
He has yet to explain how come Israel’s military vigilance did not anticipate the Hamas attack.
Fortunately, Israel’s Supreme Court came out against a Netanyahu inspired rule to weaken the court’s power and so give himself more.
The fight for the survival of democracy is constant. Here in America we now have a candidate who wants to diminish our system. I speak of Donald Trump, who incited an attack on Capitol Hill on January 6th 2021, aiming to overturn the results of the election that defeated him.
But America will beat Trump. And his supporters will have to reconsider how to better deal with opposing views.
The enemy of Arabs in the Middle East is not Israel. It is despotism and dictatorship in their own lands.
To find their voice, Arabs must fight against those who suppress it.
Not having a voice means not thinking clearly and allowing others to choose your fate.
Which is why so many Gazans have died.
Hamas, surrender now!
The Immigrant and America
In Europe, nations are paying countries in Africa to hold back immigrants. To not let them pass.
And still they pass.
Here in America they get through. Not all but a good number.
But the newcomers are often seen as a source of distress.
Trump said the other day that they were ‘polluting’ America’s blood.
And yet, his current wife and mother of his youngest son is an immigrant.
He left that out.
In fact, his first wife and mother of his first three children was an immigrant also.
He didn’t forget that, he just didn’t think it was necessary to mention.
Of course, there are different classes of immigrants.
I’m reminded of a statement made by a white man from one of our northern states who said, ‘Why can’t we get immigrants from Scandinavia?’ or something like that.
So, yes, there’s a clearly racial issue that complicates the matter of immigration. Here and in Europe. Anywhere.
As Trump implied, it has to do with racial purity.
If you’re dark you’re impure.
That didn’t stop the boards of Google, Microsoft and Adobe, huge multinational companies, from appointing immigrants to lead them. Dark ones, too.
And it didn’t because they found value beneath the skin of those folks.
And those folks had to have a lot of value to get those jobs, because there surely were a lot of lily white people lining up to get the gig.
On the other hand, I can definitely see how a settled community does not want to see itself disrupted by having to accommodate a newcomer. But a country like Italy, which pays Libya money to keep immigrants from getting in boats to cross the Mediterranean, could use a little disruption in their ways of thinking because they’re not doing that well.
Yesterday, I saw a photo of a line of Italians waiting to get a taxi ride and they put up with it. Here in the US you just call Uber or Lyft. So something is wrong in Italy that they’re coming up short of ideas to generate economic opportunity.
Maybe some of the dark colored people trying to get in may have a clue as to how to improve things. You just never know where good ideas may come from.
I believe that something gets ossified and stunted when a nation becomes obsessed with keeping people of different colors and shapes from coming into the country.
And just like disruption is important to rejuvenate an economy, by bringing in new ways of doing things, socially, the disruption of letting in other people opens new ways to relate to each other.
In America, the South, which relied heavily on slave labor, lost the productivity war against the North in the years leading up to the Civil War. Industry was far more developed in northern states. They still had racism, but they were more open. And that made the difference.
Countries that have lots of their people leaving them are failed states in one way or another.
So it makes sense to try and help them out so they can keep their population. But adventurous folks will always try to go beyond their borders to see what they can do.
Not all immigrants will be a plus to the receiving country. But the majority will.
And the world will keep changing as it must.
To avoid rigidities.
To keep challenging ourselves.
To open our minds.
To grow.
When countries don’t do that they get leaders with limited imagination.
They get people like Viktor Orban in Hungary, or Trump here in America.
Or Putin in Russia.
Grieving the Loss of White America
In an hour or two, the second Republican debate will take place.
I won’t see it but will take a look at the highlights from it in the newspapers.
I hear that Trump won’t show up. Again. Apparently he was planning to meet with auto industry strikers instead. Good luck.
He’ll need it because he’s getting bad advice, while making a mistake in believing the polls that put him ahead of Biden.
In today’s debate no one will say that the rage that Trump is stirring in his followers is a sign of the grieving of the loss of White America. They won’t say it because they’re afraid of the added rage it will ignite. But that’s the core issue driving his followers.
Lamentably for them, America is turning Brown and there’s no stopping it.
The other day Trump said that, once in office, he’d order the ‘greatest mass deportation’ the nation had seen. Right. In his dreams.
Too bad that White America has fallen for a man without the capacity to deal with their grief.
Had he been able to, after he was elected in 2016, he could’ve started the greatest education effort the nation has ever seen.
But he didn’t do that. Instead he settled for building a Wall in our southern border and the lowering of taxes for the already wealthy. He took the easy choices.
His followers would’ve been much better off if he had been honest with them. Sat down and said, ‘folks, I will do everything in my power, to help you become the most skilled workers you can become. So you won’t have to fear anybody, no matter what their color, because you will have developed the ability to continually adapt and the unquenchable thirst for self improvement.’ All of which entails a good bit of hard work.
But he couldn’t say that because self improvement is a foreign – yes, foreign – concept to him.
When he looks at himself in the mirror he sees a finished product, and a ‘terrific’ one, while the majority of us have to keep trying every day to improve our abilities.
Take the Russo-Ukrainian war as an example. It is a complex affair that has caused immense pain, but Trump comes up with the notion that he can settle the conflict in one day.
Yes, he said it.
If you believe that, then you likely were tempted to join the rioters that stormed the Capitol building on January 6th 2021, and truly believed you could change the will of the American electorate. If you resisted the urge to join, congratulations, you preserved your freedom.
I you did take part, you now must face the stark reality that you were duped.
There will be no one to pardon you because Trump will not win the next election. He will not even be the presidential candidate for the Republican party because sober, level headed party members, know that something is deeply wrong with the party and that reelecting Trump is a big step back for our nation.
Those level headed party members are not the ones making the most noise these days, but come election day they will march straight up to the poll booth and cast their voice for the future of the nation, not for a man who’s lacking the depth to tell his followers, ‘develop your abilities and rise to be the best you can be. And you will embrace other peoples because doing so enrich us and broadens our humanity’.
Aging and Performance
Aging and Performance by Oscar Valdes 8/31/2023
Yesterday, Senator McConnell had another episode of going blank before the cameras as he answered questions from reporters. It’s happened in public at least once before.
During the spell, his brain stops taking in information or putting it out.
Surely he’s had expert medical attention already, undergone state of the art testing, and given the best advice.
And yet the senator – now 81 – has chosen to carry on with his duties. His term ends in January 2027.
I worry that he may have a stroke in front of the cameras. Worry that the stress the job carries will work against him and precipitate the stroke.
But they’re all adults in his team and they’ve weighed the pros and cons.
And then, maybe, the senator loves what he does so much, that he doesn’t want to give it up.
The advances in medicine keep extending our lives and we want even more of them.
And why not?
Who can speak with assurance that after our last heartbeat we’ll enter a different stage of being. If you’ve worked that out, good luck.
Senator Feinstein – at 90 – has had her share of ailments, too, and there she is, hanging on to her job. She’s up for reelection soon – her term ends in January 2025 – so the voters will have a say on the matter.
So why does she hang on to the job? Maybe she really loves what she does also.
Which brings me to President Biden, who’s now 80 and turns 81 on November 20.
He’s at risk of having any of the ailments that have afflicted McConnell and Feinstein.
But his body may prove stronger and he may have no significant illnesses, and instead sail through the remainder of this term and the next one without any major issues.
And that is what I wish for him and for our nation because he, definitely, loves what he is doing.
Biden has done a good job and will likely repeat his performance.
So let us be ready for the inevitable failings of age and ready for them to happen in prime time, when he’s in front of the cameras or in the middle of a world summit or in a G7 conference.
And not be ashamed of their occurrence.
Advanced age raises the unpredictability factor for all of us. But that doesn’t mean we should go into hiding.
The tremendous stress that comes with the job of president does not make it any easier.
I voted for Biden and will vote for him again.
We should not deny another human being, man or woman, their wish to push themselves as far as they want. Biden wants to be President again and he will likely get reelected. We should celebrate his desire.
Let us just be ready for that moment when infirmity will come. And accept it with serenity and wisdom, thanking the person who’s chosen to push themselves to their limits, for their courage.
Much is made about retirement. But do people who love what they do, retire? Did Picasso stop painting? No. They’re having too much fun.
Mind you, if you’re a ball player, you retire because you can’t run the bases anymore.
Some jobs have requirements that advancing age will not meet.
I don’t think Biden is in that category.
If we can do what we love, please, let’s do it.
And put off retirement until the after life. If you’ve worked that out to your satisfaction.
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