The Zeitgeist

Inside the Basket of Undecidables: Millions of Americans Choosing “None of the Above.”

Note: This appeared originally on The Huffington Post on October 26, 2016

About a dozen Uber drivers in Florida and New York have told me they’re not planning on voting for a presidential candidate and neither are most of their friends and family. Ditto with the ladies at the dry cleaners. Most of the personal trainers at my gym either aren’t planning to vote at all or not vote for President. Many of the checkout people at the supermarket? Not interested. Then there are my business and professional colleagues who have been wringing their hands so hard that it’s amazing they can still use their fingers. Anecdotal to be sure, but everywhere I go, people from all walks of life, of all genders and ages tell me they hate the choices for President and aren’t planning on voting for either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton.

Most people who tell me they are planning to vote for a presidential candidate are so markedly unenthusiastic you’d think they were being forced to swallow some horrible tasting cough medicine. Never in my lifetime (and I’m 57) have I ever seen so much ambivalence less than two weeks before a presidential election.

There is a huge “basket of undecidables” – people who either can’t choose or are determined not to choose a presidential candidate. A significant percentage of the everyday folks I talk to are planning to vote for Senatorial, Congressional and other races, just not for President. And I make it my business to ask folks about the election to see what people are thinking.

What so many Americans are thinking is that they’re being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils and the problem is that the lesser of two evils is still evil. A lot of folks actually feel that President Obama looks good by comparison to who’s running now, thereby conclusively proving Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

The first Billboard number one single of the 21^st Century was Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me,” (2000) wherein the Jamaican pop-reggae singer relates how when caught by his girlfriend in flagrante delicto with another woman decides to outrageously, vociferously and repeatedly deny everything by saying “it wasn’t me,” despite clear visual evidence to the contrary. (https://youtu.be/Qv5fqunQ_4I). That’s how a lot of the Undecidables feel about Hillary Clinton. A lot of prevarication. A lot of shenanigans with missing emails, personal servers and bald-faced denials in the face of Wikileaks visual proof. Many of these people are former Bernie Sanders supporters who also are uncomfortable with the millions she and her husband made to essentially peddle influence and access along with her close ties to the Top 1 Percent.

Then there is Donald Trump. For fans of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ seminal take on plutocratic excess, one can’t help but recall that when the character Charles Foster Kane (while running for Governor) was caught having an affair he opted not to do the honorable thing and withdraw from the race but tough it out even with the specter of horrible defeat looming before his eyes. A newspaper magnate, he has front pages prepared with the huge headline “Fraud at the Polls” if he didn’t win. Trump’s railing about the election being “rigged” while having no shame whatsoever about his verbal and physical treatment of women is life imitating art incarnate.

Trump also has that “Il Duce” thing going on. Ron Chernow in his bestselling biography “Alexander Hamilton” asserts that “Hamilton’s besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth popular shibboleths to conceal their despotism.” At the Constitutional Convention held during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia Hamilton said that “demagogues are not always inconsiderable persons. Patricians are frequently demagogues.”

The clergyman at the house of worship I attend gave a sermon a few months back asserting that often “societies get the leaders they deserve.” The choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump says something about America in 2016. In many quarters the qualities of both honor and shame have disappeared in equal measure. The very fabric of our civil society seems to be unraveling before our very eyes and this is why so many people who yearn for a time when things were better, when America was better and who want America to be better (not necessarily “great”) again have found a comfortable spot in the Basket of Undecidables and are proudly supporting “Nobody in 2016.”

My prediction is for low voter turnout at the top of the ballot as a protest “none of the above” non-vote on November 8^th to send a signal to our country’s political leaders that today’s choices are unacceptable.

The Zeitgeist

The Race for President: I’m With No One.

Stuck in the Middle with You, Wondering What It is I Should Do.

This column appeared originally on The Huffington Post on August 1, 2016 and in several newsppaers around the country that week.

After having watched both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions I’m solidly convinced that the political world has been sent to a paradoxical dimension not tethered to any of the familiar signposts of the past 80-plus years.

Just as the Internet and mobile devices have disrupted traditional media, traditional shopping and even traditional dating and social mores, the brave new world created by technology seems to be having a tsunami effect on every aspect of American life up to and including presidential politics.

Millions are reached with withering tweets in nanoseconds that obviate the impact of hour-long speeches and lengthy policy analyses. Tens of millions of dollars are raised from millions of donors almost in real time with the touch of fingers on a mobile screen that obviates the need for big money from big donors. And we are now in the midst of a presidential campaign that would have been unimaginable even four years ago.

Hillary Clinton gave the speech of her life on Thursday night, July 28^th to end the Democratic Convention. Up until that speech I harbored a solid and visceral hatred for this woman. Now, thanks to her oratory I now only have a solid ambivalence – which is progress because there are millions of Americans out there just like me.

The gradual transformation from hate to ambivalence is possible partly because the Republican standard-bearer is so utterly repugnant to me in just about every which way. Donald Trump does not represent my morals or mores. His predilection for Don Rickles-esque insult and endless pejorative politics is repugnant to my sense of civility and decency. (And, please, I don’t mean to insult Mr. Rickles who does put-downs in jest, not with intent as does Mr. Trump). He attacks people’s wives. His business practices don’t jibe with caring for the working man. His impulsive temperament and thin skin and his complete inability to accept criticism scare me witless. He’s the first Republican since 1940 to run on an isolationist platform. He wants to eviscerate global free trade which could cause a worldwide recession and who knows how much military tension, especially with China.

He wants to undermine NATO and he’s an enabler of Vladimir Putin’s adventurism and he goes on “ABC This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, July 31^st and lies about his Putin relationship, contradicting a half dozen video clips from the past three years of him saying the opposite. He wants to raise taxes. He has no plan to cut the deficit. He actually takes the National Enquirer seriously. Hardly anyone of any consequence in the GOP backs him. Still.

Hillary Clinton also makes me queasy. I don’t like her poor judgment with her emails while Secretary of State. I don’t like that she lied for a full year about the emails. I really don’t like that she went on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace on July 31^st and lied about it again, to the point that The Washington Post gave her performance “Four Pinocchios.” I don’t like what she and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz did to Berne Sanders and that Hillary hired Wasserman-Shultz immediately on her resignation as Chair of the DNC.

I don’t like that she and her husband knowingly raised tens of millions for their foundation from foreign interests while she was Secretary of State and the lush speaking fees they both got personally over the past eight years. I can only imagine how much fruit will be shaken from the trees by Bill if Hillary is elected President. I don’t like that the worldwide radical Islamist terror epidemic is given low priority by the Democrats; that she was part and parcel of the massive pressure on Israel which went so far as to interfere in Israel’s elections on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents. I don’t feel the Iran nuclear deal will keep the world safe because the Iranians have been flouting their violations of the agreement in the world’s face day in and day out. She also fails to take the federal deficit seriously. It’s blossomed to $19 trillion and growing.

She absolutely came across as more human and less power-hungry in her acceptance speech and made some good points but like many Americans I don’t completely trust her and the sound of her voice is like nails on a chalkboard, so the likeability factor is sorely lacking. That she is the pro-NATO anti-Putin candidate as a Democrat is the world put upside down.

I’d probably have voted for Bernie Sanders had he won the Democratic nomination even though I disagree with most of his policies, primarily because he’s likeable because of his honesty, integrity and consistency. (For me and millions of Americans character does matter).

So, like many Americans, right now I’m at “none of the above,” meaning I can’t vote for Trump and I’m not ready to vote for Hillary. This will be a wild ride over the next three months leading up until Election Day. It may be that voter turnout in November will be very low owing to so many Americans’ discomfort with either candidate and many will just sit on their hands and stay home. Right now, many of us are in limbo with nowhere to go – so I’m stuck like so many folks I know in the void for the first time since I started voting in 1980.

The Zeitgeist

Star Trek: Above and Beyond. Third Film of New Generation Delivers.

I first started watching Star Trek in the fall of 1966 on what was our family’s only TV – a 19-inch black and white Zenith that sat on a metal rolling cart in the living room of our two bedroom apartment. (It wouldn’t be until at least 1970 that we first got a color set even though NBC was running shows in color way before ‘66.) I was eight years old during Star Trek’s first season and that my parents tolerated my fascination with this show that aired after my bedtime is something which I’m most grateful for all these years later. As a kid and then a teenager the thing I wanted most to do in this world was to pivot at warp factor two and bring all photon torpedoes to bear. So, you could call me a lifetime Trek fan.

For the uninitiated, Star Trek is the story of the Starship Enterprise, a giant battleship in space on a peaceful five year mission to explore the galaxy and go where “no one has ever gone before.” Getting to the outer limits of space is made possible by traveling beyond the speed of light at “warp speed.” At the helm of the Enterprise is Captain James T. Kirk, an all-American boy from Iowa. William (“Priceline Negotiator”) Shatner originated the role of Kirk 50 years ago and played the character both in the series and a slew of movies from 1979 to 1994. Kirk’s main sidekick is an alien officer from the planet Vulcan named Mr. Spock, played from 1964 (in the very first pilot) until his recent death by Leonard Nimoy.

In 2009 due to the graying and gradual demise of many key cast members (and also to remake the epic for a new generation) Paramount Pictures relaunched and rebooted the original Star Trek crew with a whole new cast playing the old familiar characters. Star Trek from 2009 was a huge gamble – could the original Trek characters be replaced by new actors like the Superman, Batman and Spiderman franchises? The answer at both the box office and from fans was a resounding yes.

Which brings us to the newly released Star Trek Beyond. This is the third film in the new generation of the original reprise and it’s pretty safe to say it’s the best of the three so far. (Not that the first two were anything less than very good). Directed by “Fast & Furious” Justin Lin, Beyond moves at breakneck speed and at a breathless pace but doesn’t feel exhausting or overdone. The special effects are outstandingly creative and majestically executed so that not only are they awe-inspiring but 90 percent of them have plausibility as being technologically possible – which was one of the key effects hallmarks of the original series from the ‘60s.

Starting with the 2009 reboot, producer J.J. Abrams assembled a terrific ensemble cast. Nearly everyone in the crew clicks together and feels like the children or the clones of the original cast. Chris Pine as Kirk does an amazing job playing a 1967 William Shatner while at the same time bringing a millennial sensibility to the role, a tough combination to pull off. Zachary Quinto nails Nimoy’s Mr. Spock and truly outstanding in his cloning is Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy. You’d think they injected him with the late DeForest Kelly’s DNA. Beyond in addition to nonstop action also features full-out Trek humor with the Spock-McCoy banter as spot-on as if it were Nimoy and Kelly on the old Desilu sets in ’68.

The supporting cast of Simon Pegg as Scotty, Zoe Saldana and Uhura and the late Anton Yelchin as Chekov all hit the bullseye as well. Pegg was also the principal writer of the film. Idris Elba as the villain du jour (Krall) is sufficiently mad and menacing and truly a delight is Sofia Boutella as a stranded woman warrior and Kirk ally, Jaylah.

Without being a spoiler, Beyond features a lot of derring-do, suspense and danger for the Enterprise crew but knowing full well that a sequel must certainly be in the offing, you know the galaxy and the Federation will be saved, evil will be eradicated and hope restored with a bright future for humanity, but you’ll have a great time watching the heroes from Star Fleet bring it all home.

Beyond is probably one of the three best Star Trek movies produced since 1979 and if you like Trek, science fiction or action films, this is very much well worth the price of a theater admission and absolutely should be seen either in 3-D or on a really big screen.