President Trump Versus Trump Voters

Donald Trump became President because millions of Americans believed him when he promised to protect their financial health. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid keep the budgets of most Americans, especially the elderly, above water. Trump promised over and over again not to cut them.

He did this loud and clear, as a way of differentiating himself from other Republicans. Even before he officially announced his candidacy, he told the conservative “Daily Signal” in May 2015: “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid. Every other Republican is going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do.” His announcement that he was a candidate the next month included “Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it.” In July 2015, he said, “The Republicans who want to cut SS & Medicaid are wrong.” In October 2015, he said, “I am going to save Medicare and Medicaid.” In February 2016, he said, “We're gonna save your Social Security without making any cuts. Mark my words.”

Trump’s promise not to cut Social Security included explicit statements that he would not raise the retirement age, as he said in the Republican debate in March 2016. “And it’s my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is. Not increase the age and to leave it as is.”

In fact, that was never his intention. In his book “The America We Deserve” in 2000, Trump compared Social Security to a Ponzi scheme and suggested that the retirement age be raised to 70. In a private conversation with Paul Ryan after he won the nomination, Trump responded to Ryan’s plans to cut Social Security: “From a moral standpoint, I believe in it. But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”

And that’s what happened. Trump convinced voters he would protect government programs which insured that average Americans would be able to get health care and retire with some financial dignity. Once he was President, he returned to his “moral standpoint”, the exact opposite of what he had promised.

As soon as he was elected, he appointed former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert as his Social Security advisor. Leppert is in favor of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney also favors privatization.

In May 2017, Trump’s budget plan for 2018 proposed drastic cuts in Medicaid. In June, he supported the Republican Senate health care bill, which made big cuts to Medicaid.

Now the White House has released a new Trump budget, which makes huge cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Under the heading “Reform disability programs”, Trump proposes cuts in Social Security programs which support poor and disabled Americans, totaling $9 billion over the next four years and $72 billion over the next ten years. On the issue of how people will be affected, nobody could be clearer than budget director Mulvaney. When asked in the White House press room, “Will any of those individuals who receive SSDI receive less from this budget?” Mulvaney replied, “I hope so.”

Funding for Medicare will be cut by $266 billion, mainly for patients who still need care after being discharged from hospitals. Medicaid will be cut by $1.1 trillion over ten years, by putting a cap on how much will be spent on individual patients.

Other cuts in Trump’s budget: Meals on Wheels, home heating assistance, and teacher training. He wants to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.

Every poll shows that most Americans are opposed to cutting Medicaid, Social Security, and the other welfare programs that Trump wants to cut or eliminate. So why is Trump ditching his promises not to cut these programs?

A poll of voters before the 2016 election showed that Republicans, even more than Democrats, said they wanted a leader with honesty, and that was most true for voters with incomes under $50,000 a year. After the election, over 90% of Republican voters believed that Trump was “a strong and decisive leader” who “keeps his promises”.

It is hard to imagine a leader who is less honest than Trump. He has broken his promises about issues which hit Americans right in the wallet and pocketbook. It does take a “strong and decisive” person to repeatedly promise Americans that he will protect their interests in order to get elected, when he had no intention of doing so.

Will Trump’s so-called “base” ever wake up? Does he have to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue before his supporters recognize who he is? Or was he right that even that won’t hurt him?

Steve Hochstadt                                                                                

Berlin, Germany

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, February 20, 2018

A Divided America is a Weak America

I always root for Americans at the Olympics. I’ve never heard of most of the American athletes at these Winter Games, but I want them to beat other athletes I’ve never heard of, who happen to come from other countries. The German TV commentators we are watching root for German athletes. The Berlin paper writes about every German athlete who does well. It’s a crude but harmless form of nationalism that infects people across the world.

The modern Olympics were conceived as a way to reduce nationalism, to promote peace through sport. They haven’t worked out that way, but nevertheless every two years the opening Olympic ceremonies hopefully proclaim the ideal of world unity.

The opening ceremonies at PyeongChang in South Korea last Friday were marked by spectacular special effects under the title “Peace in Motion”. Peace is particularly important in Korea, whose Cold War division constantly threatens to explode into war. The South Koreans decided to make peace the symbol of these Winter Games, with dramatic images of white doves everywhere. Lee Hee-beom, president of the PyeongChang Organizing Committee, said, “We hope that the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 will spread that message of peace around the world in the coming weeks.”

The decision by the two Korean governments to field one slate of athletes was an unexpected effort at unity through sport, the most hopeful sign in decades of a possible reduction in hostilities. Athletes from North and South Korea carried a specially designed “unification flag”, displaying the entire Korean peninsula as one unit. Four Korean singers covered John Lennon’s ode to peace and unity, “Imagine”.

Olympic symbolism can only temporarily obscure reality. A half century of Korean division and the wild threats to world peace made by the North Korean dictator will not disappear because North and South Korean women play some ice hockey games as one team. South Korea’s President reacted hesitantly to the invitation extended by North Korea to visit the North for talks after the Games. In a poll last week in South Korea, only a minority approved of using the unification flag.

Outside of the Olympic venues, the world is bitterly divided. The Cold War between the communist East and the democratic West is only a memory, but a new cold war is developing within Western democracies between a resurgent populist right and the democratic center. Democratic norms long thought to be beyond criticism are being repudiated by extreme conservatives with increasing popular support. Right-wing parties with fascist overtones are challenging democratic structures across Europe.

While Americans might come together for two weeks to root for our athletes in PyeongChang, after the Olympics are over, we will return to an angry partisan political confrontation at home. Negative feelings about the other political party have been growing in the US for a long time. The proportion of both Democrats and Republicans who feel “very negatively” about the other party has tripled since 1994. A majority of voters from both parties believe the policies of the other party are a threat to the nation. Most Americans recognize these tensions. Two-thirds of both Republicans and Democrats say the conflicts between partisans are “very strong”, a significant increase over the past 5 years.

It would be wrong to characterize our division as right versus left: triumphant conservatives in the wake of Trump’s victory are attacking the American middle. Led by Trump himself and cheered on by what used to be a weak and mostly despised right-wing fringe of KKK fans, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, conservatives are assailing our fundamental democratic institutions: a free press, law enforcement, higher education. A Fox News poll last August showed that two-thirds of Republican voters believe the news media are a bigger threat to the US than white supremacists. Most Republicans believe that American universities have a negative effect on our country.

Trump’s constant vilification of our nation’s basic structures and his demonization of anyone who does not support him contribute to the growing partisan divide, but are not its major cause. American conservatives have been drifting into opposition to the society we live in for years. Trump’s labeling Democrats as “un-American” and “treasonous” for their opposition to his policies merely echoes the name-calling of prominent conservatives like Ann Coulter and Alex Jones, and publications like the National Review and Breitbart News. Those ideas used to be on the wacky fringe of American politics, along with Nazi worship and white nationalism. Trump has brought them into the White House, and he uses his speeches and Twitter account to push this polarization ever further.

Across the country, extreme rightists have become louder, more visible, and more demanding. A report from West Point showed how violent attacks by the far right have increased since 2000.

America has become a battleground. Our political leadership deliberately stokes the fires of partisanship and hatred of all those “others”. Building walls is more important than building roads.

Olympic nationalism will temporarily cover up the war among Americans. We can not hope to be a great nation if we are so divided against ourselves.

Steve Hochstadt

Berlin, Germany

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, February 13, 2018

Homer Tobin-Hochstadt 2008 - 2018

Dogs don’t usually get an obituary. I may think that Homer was an extraordinary dog, but every dog owner believes that about their dogs. Obituaries are mainly for people who knew the deceased, and many people were acquainted with Homer, and many more know of our family’s obsession with Boston terriers. So this is for them. And for me.

Homer had the best doggy life we could provide. Homer spent every day with his brother, Hector. In fact, nearly every minute. They went everywhere together, inside and out. They slept on the same bed, usually touching, sometimes with one’s head on the other’s body. They came with me to my office every day. On the few occasions they were separated, for example when one went to the vet, the other was confused, hanging near the door. I don’t know how Hector will deal with Homer’s absence.

That’s another reminder that our understanding of our pets is limited. We may be able to predict what they will do, but we can’t penetrate their little minds. Unless they display their emotions with sounds or actions in some obvious way, their thinking is a mystery.

Dogs’ minds are much simpler than ours, but they certainly do think.  They decide what to do in the situations that they confront. They obey our commands, not like robots, but more like little children, who wrestle with the conflict between what they are told to do and what they want to do.

Every dog wants to jump up and this is one of the most important things to teach a dog not to do. Our dogs’ jumping was always about being friendly. While it may be fine for the family, jumping up on children, the elderly, or people who are worried about dogs is not good. We always trained our dogs not to jump, but they still did it, especially when someone crouched to pet them. I have witnessed many amusing moments, when someone leaned down to pet one of our Bostons, who then raised up and licked them in the face. Very friendly, but not always welcome.

We have lived with four Boston terriers and none of them barked. Our first two, Hermes and Ajax, never barked. I mean that literally – I don’t think Hermes ever barked and I believe that I heard Ajax bark once. Not much good as guard dogs, but very peaceful. Neither Homer nor Hector barked for their first 7 or 8 years, then started occasionally to bark when someone came to the door. These barks were not aggressive – as soon as anyone came in the door, both dogs would wag, greet, lick, and sometimes jump up.

Like people, as dogs get older, their behavior changes. Some changes represent learning. Homer learned that when we let the dogs out in the backyard, and then forgot about them while watching TV, he could come around to the front of the house and put his paws up on the window sill. Barking here might have helped, but see previous section about barking. Homer also learned how to tell us that he was desperate to go out. He would sit down in front of us and stare silently for as long as it took to get our attention. It took us a while to figure out his meaning, but this was an unmistakable signal about what he wanted. People can train dogs, but dogs can also train people.

One change in Homer’s behavior became a problem. At age 8 or so, he began to get aggressive, a trait that is unusual among Boston terriers. He would occasionally nip at dogs who crowded him, or came near his food or his bed. Homer and Hector had always engaged in play fighting, accompanied by fearsome noises and bared teeth, but never with any intent to harm. Recently Homer seemed to be less playful in these doggy arguments.

Worst of all, Homer began to nip at children. Our earlier Bostons were delightful with little kids, but Homer and Hector entered our lives when our children were grown, and therefore rarely encountered babies or toddlers. That became a problem when babies began to appear in the lives of our children’s generation. Homer did not like animals his size other than Hector crawling onto his bed or getting near to his face. It’s hard to know what he thought about babies. Did he think they were other dogs? Was he trying to send a message about keeping a distance?

He didn’t growl or bite, just nip. But nipping a baby’s face can be dangerous and is completely unacceptable. He nipped our nephew’s son and our daughter’s friend’s son. Both of our children now have babies who will soon be crawling around. He began to nip at other dogs. Sometimes he seemed unfriendly to Hector.

That brought a painful decision, but a necessary one. We tried neutering Homer, but it had no effect. It seemed to us that there was only one alternative. Biting dogs, in my opinion, have no place in human society.

How will Hector react to Homer’s disappearance? He may be even sadder than we are.

Steve Hochstadt

Berlin, Germany

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, February 6, 2018