tl;dr

By any account, the upcoming November election should not be close, yet it is. On one side stands an incompetent, criminal grifter without a hint of personal integrity. On the other, the sitting vice president with a record of achievement. Yet we teeter on the knife’s edge of re-electing the person widely regarded as the worst president to ever serve. His track record alone should be disqualifying. Something more profound must be at stake to enable this paradox. The answer lies in a deep, long-standing sense of broad-based dysfunction permeating society. The country feels in crisis and in desperate need of a new direction. Americans are poised to change course, even if that change proves suicidal. It is essential to chart a new path that leads to a better future.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Why the Question?

Every morning for the past couple of months, I’ve awakened to the genuine terror that Donald Trump might be re-elected president. Trump was an atrocious president before, judged by many historians as the worst in American history. He is a man devoid of morality, capable of constant lies and criminal conduct. His money and political power have been the only barriers between him and prison. Still, he has been adjudged a felon for covering up his misdeeds, lying to avoid taxes and secure credit, and committing sexual assault. He is the very definition of a grifter. In addition to his mendacity, he is a committed anti-intellectual.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov

If the prospect of this king of morons being president wasn’t enough, we have Project 2025 to terrify us further. Trump is allied with people who envision a future America as a neofascist state ruled theocratically. All of this should make Trump unelectable. Choosing Trump as president is tantamount to societal suicide. Indeed, many of his followers see Trump as the man who crashes the plane, like Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. They literally view Trump as the figure who will destroy the system of government. To me, this sounds like treason. Trump has even acted treasonously, fawning over dictators like Putin. Again, he should be unelectable; yet he is not, and he may very well win.

With all of this said, there is even more to oppose Trump. His entire movement is predicated on minority rule. It goes beyond the structural elements built into the Constitution (electoral college, Senate, gerrymandering, etc.). The movement is devoted to voter suppression and denying people access to the ballot. To top all of this off, Trump’s direct actions exceed these factors. We have January 6th and the attempt to overturn the result of an already minority-skewed election. It was criminal and treasonous. All the while, half the electorate ignores this. Trump’s disregard for protecting national secrets further damns him. It is criminal and irresponsible. As someone with more than 30 years of experience working with national secrets, I am disgusted. If I had done a tenth of what Trump did, I would expect to be in prison for most of my remaining life. Yet he receives no punishment from the law or the electorate.

On the topic of the law, one can look at the courts. Chiefly, you have the Supreme Court stacked by the GOP. They are corrupt and horribly out of touch with the public and any rational reading of the Constitution. They started by flooding the political environment with money through the appalling Citizens United ruling. Lately, the awful decisions have continued with multiple murderous rulings allowing guns to permeate society. Citizens and children are slaughtered in the wake. The Dobbs decision removed the right to abortion from women and returned the matter to the states. It is notable that states’ rights are only used by the GOP to deny people’s rights, never to expand them. People should shudder at the thought of what comes next. Finally, we have the presidential immunity decision. This may well be the worst Supreme Court ruling in more than a century. Trumpism is marked by an incompetent, corrupt, and out-of-control judiciary.

This is a phenomenon that must be understood.

How Can Anyone Vote for This Monster?

It’s crucial to comprehend what motivates Trump voters. The initial reaction is one of disbelief: How can anyone vote for such a horrible man? Even if you’re a hardcore conservative, it’s obvious that he is a vile, despicable person. Yet somehow, he exudes a charisma that charms these people. There is a core of Trump voters who are themselves despicable racists, sexists, and violent, awful people. This group comprises something like 20-30% of the population. They are the true deplorables Hilary mentioned.

The real key is understanding what animates the rest of his support. I strongly believe this stems from a core of anti-establishment sentiment. My neighbor, a rabid Trump supporter, seems to be a genuinely good person. Thus, it feels curious that he can support someone so atrocious. In conversation, a clue emerged: a deep hatred of the establishment. This idea is grounded in a lot of reality. The issue is that Trump won’t fix the establishment; he will just destroy it. It is this anti-establishment sentiment that the left needs to harness.

One of the real problems is the force that animates politics. In the last five elections, two people have defined the outcomes. In 2008 and 2012, Obama dominated the election. He was charismatic and a once-in-a-generation talent. Being a biracial Black man drove insanity on the right against him. That racism is the same force that pulled Trump into politics. His birtherism lie was founded in racism and began his voyage to the center of politics. Once you strip away the political talent and identity, Obama becomes quite ordinary. He was a center-right president who accomplished a fair amount. In the view of the right, he was a Black man and, as such, a socialist. Seeing him as anything other than middle-of-the-road and a force of the establishment is fiction.

“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.” ― John F. Kennedy

The last three Democratic candidates have not been inspiring. The energy in voting for all of them is largely grounded in fear and revulsion of Donald Trump. The Democratic message is not compelling. It is largely pro-establishment. So we have had three elections driven by the character of Trump. There are the people who are Trump fans, who are mostly hopeless, lost, angry people. There are those attracted to his anti-establishment message. Then there are the hardcore Democrats combined with those disgusted by Trump.

The Bernie Sanders movement was the Democrats’ chance to grasp an anti-establishment message. Sanders lost to Hillary in 2016, and the Democrats became the establishment party. This became the moment when the stasis of American politics ossified. The ability to end Trump and MAGA’s stranglehold on reality could have been found if the Democrats had embraced some anti-establishment message. This is the path forward for a better future. My core belief is that the right wing cannot fix our problems. Their solutions are grounded in accelerating the forces undergirding our dysfunction. Many of these are associated with the way business and corporate governance are oriented.

The View from My Life

I am someone who sees huge problems within the nation. Our institutions are in distress. The establishment is failing the nation. The issue with Trump is that he won’t fix any of this; he will only make things worse. Trump will trash institutions and destroy or enable many of the forces that are already creating havoc. For example, Trump will only exacerbate the inequality in the nation. He will institute cruelty and hate as vehicles for change. He will enable the worst elements in society to find new depths of depravity. This will not make America great, it will only diminish the Nation.

I have worked for leading scientific institutions my entire professional life. Over the course of my career, these institutions have consistently declined into shells of their former glory. I have watched the edge the USA has in science and technology fade away. Today, it is arguable that we have lost our advantage. If we haven’t lost it, we will very soon. Our government and leaders have been the vehicles of this destruction. The destruction is quite bipartisan. In different ways, the trust my labs were granted by the nation is gone. Part of it is lack of funding and general suspicion of science from the right. There is a continual stream of investigations into efforts that makes the labs risk-averse and incapable of the failures needed for progress. Both the left and the right have contributed to this. From the left, we have lots of regulation and focus on things unrelated to science. They also have their own suspicions of certain areas of science.

The end result is the hollowing out of competence and the destruction of science. This has become a huge threat to our national security. We have also seen a rather perverse belief that the labs should be run like businesses. The right has been quite eager to do this, and the left has assisted. This is patently absurd. The principles that work for business are absolutely not the way to run a research lab. The new corporate governance has been a catastrophic failure. All it has done is accelerate the decline of the labs. As I will note later, the corporate approach has other issues too. These have also led to the Lab’s decline.

“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” ― Malcolm X

We Have Big Problems

The key to capturing the anti-establishment vote is to appeal to the desire to fix things. In the absence of a fix, people move toward destruction. These days, the prospects for fixing anything seem remote. This is especially true given our divided government and structural blocks. The start toward solutions begins with admission that the problems exist. Virtually every American sees the problems as obvious and profound. Most of the problems are not amenable to half measures.

The key difference is whether one sees Trump as a solution or simply as making everything worse. In my view, he will make things much worse. The foundation of our problems is our corporate environment and vast inequality. We are approaching a level of disparity close to that of the gilded age, which is socially unsustainable. Trump will exacerbate this with tax cuts and policies that increase corporate greed. Our regulatory overreach is a direct result of the lack of corporate responsibility. A corporation will poison its own children to make a buck. They are regulated because they have no morals or ethics. Fixing this imbalance will not happen under Trump. He is the definition of greed and corporate graft. Corporations will be unleashed to gut the Nation and abuse the population.

Another cornerstone of our societal issues is the lack of trust. How can someone who lies reflexively, is selfish, and is a career criminal going to improve that? He won’t! The acceptance of Trump is based on the lack of trust and only amplifies it. His voters simply accept his rampant corruption as the norm. Trump has normalized a whole raft of behaviors that used to destroy any politician. He is a misogynist who generally treats women as sex objects. This includes his own daughter! He has been judged as a rapist. Many other women have accused him of sexual assault. He even admitted to touching women without consent on tape. Trump is the destruction of trust where the country needs repair.

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.” ― William S. Burroughs

Finally, the country needs to recover competence. Trump was an incompetent President. He was constantly embarrassing. He sucked up to dictators, groveling in Putin’s presence. He does not read and has a minimal attention span. He utterly and completely lacks curiosity. All of these things are the hallmarks of incompetence as an executive, much less the top executive. Someone like this will not instill the competence in governance that the country badly needs. He will only further accelerate our decline into a shell of our former glory.

The Republicans are Trying to Hold onto a Past That is Gone

“I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. … These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.” ― George Carlin

The greatest argument against Trump is found in their slogan “Make America Great Again.” They are looking to a past where America was the leading light in the world. This greatness was largely founded on our intact industrial base in a World destroyed by World War 2. The USA ruled because the rest of the World was in ruin. The MAGA people also fail to note that this era was racist with Jim Crow alive and well. Women had a shadow of their current rights. LBGTQ people were all in the closet. The greatness was largely enjoyed by white men, and the rest of the population was discriminated against. Thus the greatness was quite tarnished.

The key thing to realize is that there is truth in the USA’s decline. We are less than we were. I can see the decline clearly where I work. I’ve worked at two of the USA’s greatest government labs: Los Alamos and Sandia. Both labs are shadows of their former greatness. I have seen this decline throughout my entire career. It is also clear that the decline started back in the late 1970s. If you look at what triggered the American decline, one person stands out: Ronald Reagan.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

The “Reagan revolution” was the start of America’s decline. It was largely a reaction to the changes of the 1960s and the embrace of the evangelical movement by the right. In addition, we saw the embrace of the current corporate culture combined with animosity toward workers. Reagan accelerated the attack on the worker and laid the foundation of the homeless crisis. The neoliberal view of corporate greed took hold, and the engine of vast inequality went into overdrive. Reagan also marked the beginnings of a racist backlash and the culture wars. All of these elements have metastasized in MAGA. Trump is greed, culture wars, and racism personified. Reagan didn’t make America great; he began to dismantle greatness.

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.” ― Frank Herbert

The path to greatness lies in moving forward. MAGA simply looks backward. It also looks backward through a lens that is quite distorted. Technology isn’t going away. We need to learn to deal with it. We need a corporate culture that cares about the impact on society as much as profits. We need a corporate culture that cares about the well-being of its employees. The harms of unbridled greed are everywhere in society. We need a more equal society where care and compassion rule. Today we have an unequal society where cruelty is tolerated. Reagan started the march toward inequality and the acceptance of cruelty. Trump simply takes this to a new level. It is time for a different trend to take root.

The Democrats Aren’t Trying to Solve Things

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

How do we get out of the electoral impasse?

The Democrats (or more properly the liberal progressives) need to start looking to solve the obvious national problems. This means they need to stop simply being the anti-MAGA, anti-Trump party. They need to stop supporting our failing institutions and approach to governance. If you are liberal, you believe that we need to be governed. We also need to be governed well. Being governed well means an efficient government. It means a competent government that is a good value for the money. Today we do not have that.

A big part of our inefficient government is the regulatory state. As noted above, the foundation of regulation is the overreach of corporate greed. Rather than run businesses in a way that is good for society, corporations only look to profit. They will do all manner of damage to society for profit. It is in how they are managed; they are only about maximizing shareholder value. Regulation is the societal response to this. Instead, we need corporations that regulate themselves for the good of society.

This requires new laws and new governance. We need to change the accounting of corporations to make them responsible to their communities and workers too. Take the way Meta’s products harm society and especially children. In the name of maximizing value, they have created platforms that harm politics, children, and society. Nothing except bad press stands in the way. Instead of holding back a little for the good of society, they maximize profit and damage. Right now, regulation is the only answer. Regulation is horribly inefficient. Efficiency comes from the corporation doing the right thing and removing the need for regulation.

I will just note that the GOP’s answer is just removing regulation from the picture. This will enable profit. It will also enable corporations to further damage society. They will be allowed to pollute. They will be allowed to treat workers poorly. It will just fuel more inequality and all the problems we already have. The Democrats need to offer something better; something better than ex-post-facto regulation. A legal framework that rewards and encourages corporate social and societal responsibility.

We need to build trust across society. Empathy and compassion are key building blocks for trust. We need to tear down inequality. Trust comes from people relating to each other. Inequality makes people desperate and divided. We need to bring people together. GOP policies generate cruelty and meanness that undermine trust. Their tax and corporate policies generate more inequality. This generates lack of trust. As long as we can buy our way out of justice, people will not trust the law. Trump has used money to buy his way out of justice and accountability for his whole life. He is an unrepentant criminal as a result. He epitomizes the reasons no one trusts.

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.” ― Mark Twain

Finally, the Democrats need to fully embrace competence. This means turning away from bureaucracy. Nothing is less competent than a bureaucrat. We need to reinvigorate science and education. Trump is fueled by the lack of education. His popularity is a continual indictment of our educational system. This means adding robust vocational education. Colleges and universities need to become affordable. Right now, higher education is simply a vehicle for debt and a way for corporations to prey on people.

We need great laboratories. Over the past 40 years, we have allowed our great science labs to be destroyed. First the DoD labs, then NASA, and now the DOE labs are falling. They need to be built up. Bureaucracy needs to be removed. The current incompetent corporate-minded governance of the labs needs to go. It needs to be replaced by excellence in science. We need to empower scientists to fail, learn, and innovate. Today, none of these are really allowed. We have lots of rhetoric about these things, but the management really does the opposite.

“If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

― John F. Kennedy