Why People Distrust Government

                                                         By David K. Shipler 

            This is a story about high-handed Maine state officials proposing to jeopardize island residents’ emergency access to mainland hospitals. It is a local outrage, small in comparison to the sweeping outrages that are uprooting global security and undermining American democracy. But its significance is immense, because it’s a case study in how anti-government sentiment can be generated among good citizens who depend on key services. Nationwide, that disaffection has been a key element in the country’s dramatic political shifts.

            The issue is straightforward. For 65 years, since the state launched car ferry service, the boats have docked overnight on four islands, which don’t have hospitals but are populated year- round and have a surge of summer residents. So, the Maine State Ferry Service provides sleeping quarters on the islands for the crews, who can be roused if there’s a medical emergency in the middle of the night. An island ambulance drives onto the ferry and drives off on the mainland.

That system might be scrapped for three of the islands in two or three years, if the state has its way. The commissioner of transportation, Bruce Van Note, and the director of the ferry service, William Geary, say they’re considering docking the ferries overnight on the mainland. They are in the Democratic administration of Governor Janet Mills, whose press secretary, Ben Goodman, did not answer my emailed request for an explanation of her position.

Under the proposal, there would be no transportation by ambulance between the last ferry run of the day and the first the next morning. I’m biased, because I spend four to five months a year on Swan’s Island: I’ll try to arrange my stroke or heart attack in the daytime.

            There are other ways to get off the islands. LifeFlight has highly equipped helicopters, but only five for the whole state. If there’s one available, it can fly in at night, but here’s the catch: not in thick fog, which is endemic in Maine.

            Lobstermen and other island residents have boats, of course, and when things get tough, people step up to help. The Coast Guard might come, and state officials have mentioned small rescue boats as an option. But an ambulance couldn’t drive on to any of them. Getting a stretcher-bound patient down a steep ramp to a floating dock and onto a mostly open boat is a dangerous, tricky exercise, especially on an icy winter night with rough seas and freezing wind. And outside an ambulance with medical equipment and trained emergency volunteers, a patient in an acute condition runs a high risk. Watch this video of the transfer of a patient via lobster boat from the island of North Haven.   

             North Haven, Swan’s, and Islesboro would lose their overnight boats under the plan. The fourth island, Vinalhaven, is served by two boats, so one could still spend the night there. (Two other islands, Frenchboro and Matinicus, get only infrequent runs by state ferries, and boats have never berthed there overnight.)

            The state cites two reasons for mainland docking: First, it would save money on crew quarters because workers could live at home and commute. But many crew live too far from the mainland terminals to make daily drives, and some have told islanders that they’d quit—this during a shortage of able-bodied seaman qualified to staff the boats.

            The second argument holds that new boats will be hybrid diesel-electric, whose batteries cannot be charged on islands, which get electricity via submarine cables and have insufficient power infrastructure. Can’t that be upgraded? Let’s pretend we’re living in the 21^st century!

            Aside from the medical issue, islanders are worried about their children, many of whom commute by the first morning ferry at 6:45 to high school on the mainland. Some students board with families on the mainland instead of going home every night, which might become unavoidable under the state’s docking plan.

            Friction between island communities and the state ferry service is longstanding, mostly about rising fares, breakdowns, and missed runs because of crew shortages. But what might be even more important than the nuts-and-bolts of particular disputes is the sense of powerlessness among folks utterly dependent on a distant agency that seems to listen to them reluctantly, if at all. The state ferry service is essentially a monopoly, and it’s not fun when you have to mobilize to obtain basic respect for your dignity.

On the other hand, the ferries are heavily subsidized by the state government, and no private company could run them at the existing fares, which don’t cover the rising costs of fuel, wages, and maintenance. You don’t hear rhapsodies of gratitude for this fact on the islands, though, because the fares are high enough to cause pain. The state raised them by 15 percent last summer and wants another 15 percent increase this year. Summertime roundtrip rates for a passenger to most islands would be $23 for a 40- to 60-minute journey, and $55 for a vehicle and driver. That means $78 to take a loved-one for chemo, for example, a hardship for a good many islanders.

The ferry service holds hearings, as the law requires, but some legislators listening to the uproar from their island constituents aren’t taking any chances. A bill requiring nighttime docking on the islands has been introduced by eight state legislators—four Democrats and four Republicans—in a region that is politically divided. Swan’s Island, for example, lies in a district that gave its one electoral vote to Trump (Maine splits its electoral votes), and yet is represented by a Democratic House member in Washington, DC.

Ferry schedules are but one assault on people’s well-being. Health care in Maine and elsewhere is being damaged more broadly by Republicans in Washington. The cuts they are considering to Medicaid, the insurance program for low-income citizens, would hurt everyone, not just recipients. Because many rural hospitals and clinics rely on Medicaid payments, some would have to reduce services or even close. And the Trump administration’s sudden, chain-saw halt of medical research into antiviral drugs, cancer, heart disease, and the like will cause long-term harm to the nation’s future health.

            Nevertheless, tampering with islands’ lifelines to hospitals has an immediacy that everyone across the political spectrum can understand. If Democrats want to win back rural, working-class voters, this would be a good place to start. That includes you, Governor Mills, wherever you are.

Moscow on the Potomac

                                                         By David K. Shipler 

            Back in the bad old days of Soviet Communism, a dissident in Moscow was summoned for interrogation by the KGB, the secret police. As the agent ticked off a list of charges, the dissident rebutted each by citing one guarantee after another in the Soviet Constitution, which protected free speech, privacy, and other rights. “Please,” the KGB agent interrupted. “We’re having a serious conversation.”

            I have treasured that story since I heard it decades ago. It dramatized the difference between the Soviet and American systems, between a constitution of fictional rights and one of actual rights. When an American political scientist, Robert Kelley, taught for a semester at Moscow State University, he used to tell his students that if the United States had a state religion, it would be constitutional democracy.

            No more.

            President Trump and his zealous aides do not blatantly mock the Constitution in words, but they do so in actions. They are ignoring some of its central principles, particularly the separation of powers, defying both the legislative and judicial branches. And while I’m always diffident about drawing parallels since no analogy is perfect, I am feeling an uneasy sense of familiarity as Washington spirals down into a darker and darker place. Trump and his allies—plus Americans who are capitulating in their businesses, politics, and universities—would have fit comfortably in Moscow, where they would have survived and prospered.

            The essence of the American idea is the din of ideas, exactly what Soviet leaders found distasteful, and what American leaders are now trying to muffle. There was a way of thinking in the Soviet Union, which continues today in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, that eschewed pluralism and imposed conformity. Only a single truth was tolerated. Disagreements and debates were considered antithetical to the historical progress that Communist theory envisioned. Political irreverence might be heard quietly around the kitchen table, but elsewhere it was punished.

            That compulsion to dictate obedience was more about holding power than upholding Marxism. In authoritarian structures, the high perch can seem so precarious that legitimate disputes below look dangerously anarchic. Therefore, political loyalty is a prerequisite for key positions, which is Trump’s demand and erodes expertise. An American scientist who grew up in Moscow told me recently that Trump’s assault on academia reminded him of the Soviet Union in the 1970s, when “scientists were replaced by political appointees, which led to Chernobyl among other disasters.”  

Even such loyalty can be empty. Being accepted into Communist Party membership was more careerist than communist; without that party card, you couldn’t be an editor, history professor, factory manager, hospital director, and the like. As a result, cynicism prevailed. “Nobody believes in anything,” a 17-year-old girl told me in 1978. She was right. Soviet ideology had become a hollowed-out shell that could not keep the country from disintegrating in 1991.

            Russia’s autocracy soon returned, though; its long authoritarian history prevailed. The United States is only at the beginning of this chapter, which marks either an episode or a turning point, depending on how devoted to democracy Americans prove to be. So far, it doesn’t look good. In merely weeks since Trump’s inauguration, committed ideologues with dogmatic views  have penetrated most government agencies, operating under a personality cult unique in the American experience. Like most dictators, Trump covers his thin skin with toughness. He has forged an amalgam of lust for personal authority, revenge toward his opponents, white supremacy, and a totalitarian mindset that seeks a much broader remaking of America than is conventionally understood.

What is important to grasp—something the mainstream press has mostly missed—is that the belief system reaches far beyond government spending cuts. It seeks to saturate the entire society with a set of worldviews, as outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Harnessing the investigatory power and funding leverage of multiple agencies, the Trumpists are using government to dictate behavior and speech to universities, businesses, and law firms, and are gearing up to pressure news organizations, social media, secondary schools, and the arts.

All that was easier for Soviet officials, because the government owned every institution and means of production—every college and school, every newspaper and broadcaster, every store and restaurant and mine and factory. The Kremlin could turn off citizens’ phones, deny them travel abroad, fire them from jobs, and ultimately imprison them.

American society is not as easily tamed unless Americans allow it. But the goals are similar, and the US government turns out to have more intrusive power than many citizens realized over universities dependent on federal research grants, theaters reliant on arts funding, law firms depending on security clearances, businesses surviving on government contracts, hospitals kept afloat by Medicaid.

Trump’s zealots, who had four years out of office to prepare for this opportunity, are pulling those levers effectively, curtailing funds in one area to get changes in another. They threaten funds for learning-disabled children in secondary schools to force anti-historical teaching on race. They cut off medical research funds to force universities to suppress freedom of speech and to abandon programs that combat anti-minority discrimination. They ominously demand detailed data on minority and LGBTQ+ hiring at law firms. They sift digital files for the use of certain words by federal employees, contractors, and immigrants, just as certain terms are avoided by Afghans under the Taliban.

These and many other Trump actions are such obvious violations of the Constitution’s various protections that multiple federal judges, nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents, have peppered the administration with adverse rulings. There have been blatant violations of the Article I empowerment of Congress, the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement for due process, and the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel. None of the cases have yet reached the Supreme Court for substantive judgment.

Undermining an independent judiciary is a key step in dismantling a democracy, as seen in Hungary, Venezuela, and elsewhere. And Trump seems intent on doing that. He and his officials have railed against judges, called for their impeachment, and ignored most of their rulings.

We are learning how little muscle the courts have to enforce their decisions. In the Soviet Union, judicial powerlessness was sardonically called “telephone justice,” meaning that the judge would call the local Communist Party secretary for instructions in key cases.

In the US, the tactic is outright disobedience. That might produce a different form of acquiescence, one that evades confrontation with an executive branch that seems intent on defiance. As in most power relationships, the American rule of law has depended on an unwritten compact of willing acceptance of judicial authority between the courts on the one hand, and citizens and officials on the other. That voluntary relationship is being shredded by Trump and his apparatchiks.

Acquiescing to the new authoritarian norms, higher courts could rule on narrow grounds: that those who brought the suits don’t have standing, or that the administration based its action on a legal basis different from the one the lower judge considered. Or, in certain areas, right-wing justices might give Trump victories, large and small, either because they agree to a so-called “unitary executive” with extensive authority or simply because they want their ruling obeyed.

Outside the myriad lawsuits, Americans have not shown much courage so far. Currying favor has emerged as a tactic in the private sector. For example, Columbia University, attempting to get Trump to restore $400 million in funds suspended because of antisemitism and anti-Israel protests, has agreed—at least on paper—to regulate demonstrations, combat antisemitism more firmly, enlarge the campus police force with the power of arrest, scrutinize and derecognize student groups for unspecified behavior, and increase the “intellectual diversity” of the faculty—which probably means hiring more conservatives.

Some lawyers have also caved. Under authoritarian regimes, it’s hard to find lawyers willing to defend the victims, and so Trump is intimidating firms that represent his opponents or sue the government. He has issued a memorandum to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States.” He has removed security clearances and access to federal buildings from some firms, which have lost important clients as a result. One of them, Paul, Weiss, agreed to do $40 million worth of pro bono work to support Trump’s agenda.

            Giving in reinforces autocracy. Without broad resistance, the day could come when an American citizen complains to an official about a violation of the Constitution, and the answer will be: “Please, we’re having a serious conversation.”

Gaza: Facts on the Ground

 

By David K. Shipler 

            In the late 1970s, Israel’s former general Ariel Sharon used to call Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories “facts on the ground.” As agriculture minister then, he provided the roads, wells, and power lines that made settlements possible. They would anchor the Israeli presence, he argued, making it hard to dislodge.

            He was accurate as far as the West Bank was concerned. Those settlements, proliferating over the decades, have balkanized the land that would be the heart of any Palestinian state.

But he himself dislodged the Israeli presence from the Gaza Strip. He still had a general’s mindset as he later became defense minister and then prime minister, and by 2005 had come to see the densely-populated territory as more liability than asset. His most notable and controversial act as prime minister was to end the occupation by withdrawing the army and sending Israeli soldiers to forcibly evict Israeli Jews from Gaza settlements.

The resentment and backlash by Israel’s religious right, combined with the area’s rapid takeover by Hamas militants, demonstrated the limitations of pure military calculations, which rarely consider politics, emotions, or the human quest for dignity. Israelis’ willingness to consider a Palestinian state was virtually obliterated by Hamas rockets.

Sharon was known for brutal retaliation, so if he were still alive and in power, he would surely be decimating Gaza as thoroughly as Israel has done since the intimate atrocities by Hamas fighters during their invasion of Oct 7, 2023. The resulting “facts on the ground”—some 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings destroyed or damaged, the bones of tens of thousands in the earth, a health care system and infrastructure in ruins, systematic sexual violence, over 2 million traumatized Palestinians struggling to survive—define a new reality not easily dislodged.

Save the Neutral Panama Canal

 

By David K. Shipler 

            PANAMA CITY, PANAMA—If President Trump takes over the Panama Canal, a wish he keeps pushing, he will be able to disrupt a significant chunk of global trade at his whim, rewarding and punishing countries he happens to like or dislike, as he has done with various measures in his first few weeks in office. The canal’s neutrality, enshrined in a US-Panama treaty, would be in jeopardy, and this shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would be compromised.

            On a trip through half the canal’s length last Sunday, and in subsequent research in two museums, I learned how easy it would be to weaponize the vital waterway. While most cargo through the canal is part of US trade, Trump could force long waiting times on certain other vessels, impose different fees for different countries, or even bar passage to ships transporting goods to or from disfavored nations.

That is, he could add the canal as a tool in the global and domestic protection racket that he has already devised with on-and-off tariffs, interrupted military aid, funding cuts to schools and universities, sanctions against lawyers who oppose him, and the like. Nothing in his behavior, even toward his own citizens, suggests that he would respect the Panama Canal’s universal accessibility, which served 170 countries last year.

Although Trump has railed against what he calls the high transit fees charged by Panama, it’s a good bet that his long-term desire is less about money than political leverage. His method of political leverage, based on bullying, would risk a popular backlash in Latin America, especially in Panama, and undermine US standing in the region.

Furthermore, the canal has water problems that only Panama can address from outside the strip that Trump wants to own.