Old Friend

Contact

I heard from an old friend the other day.  He was “lost”, a casualty to the political “wars”. Our differences were so great and divisive, that there seemed no way to civilly communicate.  So I “blocked” him on social media, and cut off all contact with him.  It’s been years.

But, in our current “electronic” world, there’s always a way around the blocks.  And I got a message from him the other day.  He’s still reading some of what I write (there’s always a way beyond Facebook; my essays also are on “X” and can be directly accessed on my website).  And I see that as an honor:  after all of the vitriol he’s still “listening”, even if it probably makes him feel like swearing – but I bet he doesn’t.  He is a sincerely religious man, and his faith is so strong, I bet he doesn’t allow the venial sin of profanity.

The essay he responded to was one of the series on Justice Alito and the flags.   I suspect my friend knows all about the pine tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag that the Justice flew at his beach house.  But his response wasn’t directly about that.  He asked the following:

      “I would love to hear your insights on the disaster at the border and the guilty verdict in Trump’s trial”.

I suspect this is a “gotcha” question, designed to point out the weakness in the current Democratic Administration.  But that’s alright.  It’s important to explain the vulnerable issues, the “gotcha” problems, as well as crow about the unemployment rate, the infrastructure plan, the stock market, or the economic miracle of the “soft” Covid landing.  So here goes:  my old friend, this one’s for you.

The Trial

I haven’t said anything about the Trump trial yet – May and June is a busy time for a track official/pole vault coach (ask Jenn!!). But it all seems pretty straight forward to me.  I watched and listened to as much as the coverage as I could.  The premise of the trial was simple:  Trump paid for Stormy Daniel’s silence so that his dalliance wouldn’t become public information at a critical moment in the 2016 Presidential campaign.  IF it had, in an election that hinged on a 77,744 votes, we might have dodged the entire Trump era. (Go ahead, click on the link.  I wrote an essay on the subject back in 2017, one of my earliest).  

But that’s not what was against the law.  Trump then went through a series of financial maneuvers to hide the payment of what was essentially a campaign expense.  As the old Nixon adage goes:  the coverup is worse than the crime.  And that’s what the Trump trial was all about:  the coverup to hide the expenditure.

Twelve New York jurors were convinced that Trump intentionally committed the crime of falsifying documents to hide the expenses, and they convicted him of thirty-four felony counts.  It’s a hallmark of American Justice; even a former President, even an avowed billionaire, even Donald Trump, can be held to justice by a jury of his peers.  And, before you say it, the same is true about the Hunter Biden case – though that former addict isn’t running for President of the United States (as opposed to Bobby Kennedy, a former addict who is).  A jury of his peers found him guilty.  Agree or disagree:  the system worked.

A Solution

The border is a more difficult problem.  But, first thing first; the border problem had a solution, authored by both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress.  It had broad support from both sides, including the Biden Administration.  That solution was on the verge of passage, a huge accomplishment in this age of partisan warfare.  There was a strong majority in the House of Representatives, and more than the sixty Senators signed on in support of the deal.  It would have strengthened the border, added more agents and judges, provided more aid to migrants, and been the first substantive legislation in decades.

Only one man stood in the way of this momentous step:  Donald Trump.  It was a bill that, actually, his Administration could have authored, not particularly “progressive” at all.  But Trump wanted this issue to campaign on, the same issue he started with in 2015 at the bottom of the “golden escalator”.  So he muscled the Republicans in the House, and ultimately the Senate, to vote against the measure.  When he did that, he lost all creditability on the subject.  He doesn’t care about the border, he cares about the campaign issue.  God forbid (sorry) that the Congress actually had a substantive solution.  So credit where credit is due:  Trump killed the deal, and left the real answer to the border crisis dead on the table.

Politics on Both Sides

And the politics of the border don’t end at the Rio Grande.  Mexico also was in the middle of an election, and migrants are as much or more of a problem for them as they are for the United States.  So keeping thousands of migrants on the Mexican side, or strengthening the Mexican borders with the Central American countries is a “hot potato” there as well as here.  No one in Mexico wanted to step in before the votes were counted.

So the Biden Administration took the action they felt appropriate, really duplicating an action from the Trump days.  They restricted access to legal migration, basically squeezing the border to a trickle, in order to control how many were “in line” for asylum requests.  Meanwhile the line is still so long, it will take decades at the current rate to resolve all the requests.  That was one of the issues the “deal” would have resolved:  blame Trump for that failure, not Biden.

Migrants or Workers

And there is one  other point to make here.  The United States is in job shortage situation.  There are more jobs available then people to fill them.  So two things happen.  First wages are going up (usually a good thing, though that’s also a driver of inflation).  Second, the lowest wage jobs are often left unfilled.  Here in Pataskala it’s easy to see:  why work fast food at $15/hour when you can go down the street to Amazon for $22?  So maybe we could use some of those waiting migrants, looking to come to the US for work, to ease the shortage.  

Again, the “deal” would have helped resolve this issue as well.  And again, the “deal” failed:  blame Trump for that failure, not Biden.

So, old friend, that’s my response.  I suspect it won’t satisfy you, and I’d be happy to continue a “civil” debate, but not a civil war:  your turn.