An Unsurvivable Storm Surge of Corruption

This administration has been the parable of the frog in the pot of water on steroids.

Beginning during the campaign with refusing to release tax returns, faking medical records and colluding with Russia to influence the election — and continuing unabated over the last nearly four years — the head of the Trump Family Crime Syndicate has systematically ignored and violated one norm, custom and law after another ... gradually turning up the heat in the water of our democracy until last night it hit a boiling point with this blatantly illegal show of oligarchical narcissism on the grounds of what is supposed to be the sacred civic space of “the people’s house.”

To be clear about something we shouldn't have to be clear about: the Hatch Act is a law. Not a recommendation. Not a suggestion. Not a libtard snowflake hoax. It's a law. Adopted in 1939, its longer title is "An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities" and it explicitly prohibits civil service employees in the executive branch of the federal government from participating in partisan political activity. 

The unprecedented exploitation of the White House as a backdrop for the Republican National Convention is a clear violation of both the spirit and the letter of the law and is yet another indication of the contempt with which the current resident of the White House holds the rule of law which is a foundational tenet of our fragile democracy.

To use another metaphor, our nation is facing a potentially unsurvivable storm surge of corruption. Vote November 3 like your life depended on it. Because it arguably does.

Biden Harris 2020

Still managing PTSD from 2016, I refused to get emotionally invested in who our candidates were going to be in 2020. Since the stakes are too high for any option other than victory, I just kept saying “get the ticket together so I can support it 110%.” Oh, I had opinions and preferences — but I internalized the “vote blue no matter who” mantra, kept my head down and avoided polls.

Biden was not my first, second or third choice candidate but he is our candidate and so I’m all in. And ... I didn’t realize how much I was holding my breath until I exhaled yesterday with the announcement of Kamala Harris as his VP pick.

Kamala Harris has been my AG and my Senator. A stalwart defender of equality in general, she was an active advocate for marriage equality here in California in specific. She was "ahead of the curve" during the Prop 8 battle and never wavered in her support, she took on the big banks after the housing crisis and her take down of Bill Barr in congressional hearings was a thing of legends.

And then there is her fierce capacity to prosecute the case against oppression in all its forms. If ever we needed that prosecutorial skillset unleashed on our body politic it is now. It reminds me in some ways of the great covenant lawsuit in the Hebrew scriptures with the prophets prosecuting Israel for where it has fallen short of what God called it to be. With our aspirational values of liberty and justice on the line, we need her passion, her energy and her commitment to call us to the nation we have the possibility to become.

81 days. Let’s do this.