THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: EXIT THE TARNISHED HERO

Maverick John McCain is a maverick no more, having fallen in line behind Gauleiter Von Trump and sampled the heady Trump wine that takes you to a world that never was and never will be. Yesterday, echoing his new master, the one-time Navy hero told reporters President Obama was “directly responsible” for the 49 murders in Orlando because he pulled American troops out of Iraq instead of attacking ISIL in Syria.

That stunning statement from the former pilot and chief of the Straight Talk Express soon brought another reporter forward with a follow-up question: Did he really mean President Obama was “directly responsible” for the tragedy?

Senator McCain, appearing edgy and irritated, doubled down on his earlier charge, and blamed the President for not intervening in the Syrian Civil War. (On which of the many sides, he did not say.) Not prudent, apparently. Rather quickly McCain tweeted that he had twice earlier “misspoke.” “To clarify, I was referring to Pres Obama’s national security decisions that have led to the rise of ISIL, not to the president himself.”

Oh, that almost clears it up. Instead of deciding as Obama did, he should have done what in Syria? Your usual solution? Invade a broken, chaotic state? American boots on the ground?

No time or space here to lay all the blame for what is arguably the greatest foreign policy failure in the nation’s history, the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS. But a few obvious facts should be noted.

1. McCain voted for President George W. Bush’s Iraq War; Obama did not.

2. Bush was president, not Obama, when the Status of Forces Agreement was signed that called for American troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. Our presence was up to them, and they said get out. And Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the ignorant Shiite hardliner Bush assisted in leading a fractured Iraq, could have had some American troops remain if he had the courage to convince his own parliament of the need.

3. ISIL, an offshoot Al Queda of Syria, did not exist in Iraq before Bush’s invasion of 2003; Saddam Hussein would not allow an Al Queda presence. Saddam’s defeat, and the retreat west of angry, well-armed, disenfranchised Sunnis toward already turbulent Syria, provided a ready-made fighting force to humiliate the inept Shiites at every turn.

4. Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, was born in America of Afghani parents, and not known to have had any formal connection to any terrorist group abroad, though he saluted them all at his inglorious end...perhaps trying to earn some kudos after the fact.

The question that remains unanswered is why McCain called attention to himself in such a clumsy way, doubled down, and then backtracked? Is Trump rattling him, as he has so many other Republicans? Is he losing what Trump never had—a mind? We’ll soon know. (I am going out on a limb and predicting an upset in Arizona this November: Anne Kirkpatrick over the tarnished hero.)

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEAN-UP: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

I’ve been a political junkie for a long time. The beginnings might even trace back to a cold November day in 1940, when I was seven. We had had an early snow in East Cleveland that year, and I was feeling the chill as I trudged with a trail of other urban scholars toward my second grade class at St. Joseph’s. As we approached Five Points, I saw ahead two big guys who were forcing the little kids into a single file, asking them something, then letting them pass. What they were asking I learned when they stopped the boy two in front of me.

“Who are you for? Roosevelt or Willkie?” they asked.

“Roosevelt,” he said. He walked on.

The kid in front of me was asked the same question, and gave the same answer. He could pass.

“Roosevelt or Willkie?”

I was a timid kid and had kind of figured out the right answer.  But for what reason I don’t know (maybe because I had heard my mother was born in the same Indiana town as Wendell Willkie, or maybe it was the first showing of a future rebellious streak), I said, weakly or defiantly I can’t remember, “Willkie.”

Next thing I knew I was on the ground getting my face “washed” with snow—that days-old grainy kind that rubs your skin red and raw. I was still crying when I entered my classroom.

Humiliating! But I had learned my lesson. That was the last time I chose a Republican for president. 

The party shift was not sudden, however. My first voter-eligible election was in 1956 when an undergraduate student at UCLA. Adlai Stevenson was the Democrat and I liked what he stood for. But the incumbent was Dwight Eisenhower, and I had served under him during the Korean War; and I admired him greatly.

I dithered, went back and forth, couldn’t make up my mind, and wound up not voting. Shame on me! I vowed never to let that happen again. And I haven’t.  In fact, every four years I celebrate every presidential campaign and election as a time of great pith and moment, high drama engendering high hopes and great fears. While each election brings its own interesting oddities, anomalies and ironies, those high hopes and great fears are rarely warranted, and once the voting is behind us things revert to not much different than before.

Not this year. Let me join my fellow political junkies and say this year is different; we are truly in uncharted waters—or at a critical crossroads, if you prefer keeping your metaphor grounded. So what’s so different?

As has been made obvious by the nation’s headline-writers, we have for the first time nominated a woman for president. (Some wags have wondered out loud why it took us so long, since Britain, Israel, Germany and Norway have already done that successfully; yep, point well made.) Hillary Clinton pulled off some major surprises election night in New Mexico (where her margin of victory for days was reported as a baffling 52-49), South Dakota (51-49), and a surprisingly easy win in California (12 points at latest count). Clinton in her primary election night speech touched on one of the oddities I mentioned. (Or is it an irony? Let’s call it an “irodity.”) She noted that her June victory came on her mother’s birth month in 1919, the same month the U.S. senate ratified the Nineteenth Amendment that gave women voting rights.

Of more substantive importance than reaching another progressive milestone is that both major American political parties are currently undergoing major insurgencies that threaten their viability...or very existence. Socialist/Independent Bernie Sanders has mobilized a far left movement of passionate young voters in his cause for economic justice; Hilary has felt their pull from the left but still holds to left of center on the political spectrum, with foreign affairs experience strength. At the moment reconciliation seems to be in the works, but egos and tempers being what they are, healing could always give way to a further split.

The divisions on the Republican side are even more severe. The Establishment’s “principles,” which have remained the same over the decades, no matter how life on earth changes, contrast sharply with their insurgent candidate, whose policies (if they can be called that) seem to change or blur daily. GOP officials and office holders denounce their candidate for president, Gauleiter Von Lumpen Trump, also daily, yet continue to voice their support for him even as they condemn him for his blatant racism. Hard to understand? Yes, it’s known as supporting party over country.

Indeed, some savants have seen the rift as so deep and divisive that the very existence of the Republican Party as we know it is at stake.  Its demise is not an impossible outcome. Political parties come and go just as the folks who form them do. Remember that in the tumultuous 1850s the American Whig Party died, as did the so-called Know Nothings (they called themselves the American Party) who were anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, Nativistic. (Sound familiar?) The Republican Party rose from their ashes with a radical agenda under Abraham Lincoln that has gradually lost its mojo and direction over time.

Which brings us back to this equally unsettled time, with its high stakes. And they are?

Global warming.

Future composition of the Supreme Court.

Control of the Senate.

Control of the House of Representatives.

Security in a troubled, insecure world plagued by terrorism.

Syria and Isis.

Our economic future in a competitive world marketplace.

War with Iran?

Nukes for Saudi Arabia?

The thousand natural shocks our flesh is heir to.

Is there any upside to be found in this singular election season?  Well, we are told that Trump and Sanders have brought millions of new voters into the electorate. Wouldn’t that be nice for the world’s self-advertised greatest exporter of democracy to turn out in respectable numbers for a change? Practice what they preached? That would be one positive. I think.

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEANUP: WHERE ARE THE REPUBLICANS OF YESTERYEAR?

The word elite had a different meaning when I grew up during the Great Depression. For those from my lower middle class origins it elicited a low-grade envy of those it described, not much more. Further, the word almost always had a modifier, such the “financial elite”—presidents of local banks or those who owned a second home, preferably in the mountains or on the seashore. Then there was the social elite (often doubling as members of the financial elite as well), whose faces appeared on the local daily’s “Society” pages, their rites of passage reverently recorded with full proper names carefully checked for spelling, accompanied by black and white photos of the handsome subjects in their Sunday best. We might have occasionally heard of an “intellectual elite,” but they dwelt in a far distant land, their names about as familiar to us as a stele of Egyptian Pharaohs.

I mentioned that this word “elite” elicited in us only a mild envy. Let me correct that slightly. For some, it was more than that. The elite tended to be our employers, after all, and our livelihoods were subject to their whims. Often as not, they were our landlords as well, and eviction could turn on a fickle turn of fortune, like getting laid off from your job, or a death in the family.

Who were these elites? Their provenance? Upper middle class...or aspirants thereto. WASPS mostly, largely from the higher sects from the Calvinist legacy, self-disciplined hard-working descendants of driven Puritans who bore at least some internal doubts about whether they were among “the elect.”

In retrospect, and in sum, I remember them as relatively gentle masters and mistresses, committed to good and clean government, intellectual inquiry, science pressing forward, and at least a hesitant tip of the tri-cornered hat to those wayward arts. Their women saw to city beautification, ran the libraries, anonymously sent food baskets to the needy in holiday seasons; the men served on philanthropic boards, supported the local symphony orchestra by buying the expensive choice seats, then doubled their generosity by passing along the tickets to “those who like that sort of thing.” Inner-directed good citizens all, largely eschewing the sensual pleasures—even the showy display of wealth—for a steady rigor, their essence encapsulated in Calvinism and Chautauqua.  Yes, they were Republicans, believe it or not, heirs of Lincoln and TR and Ike and...well, more recent names fail me.

In their place we now have Gauleiter von Trump (AKA John Miller or John Barron), the Tea Party (Babbitt’s children?) and Evangelicals impatient for End Times, all apparently united in their opposition to science and social progress.

I kinda miss the old Republicans.

DERBY ALIBIS

So nobody’s perfect. I had the top two picks reversed. And you have to admit, Exaggerator had to be checked on the turn for home, and even then made up ten lengths on Nyquist in the stretch. Otherwise, I would have not only had the winner, but I would have hit the exacta. OK, another woulda, coulda horseplayers' alibi. Guilty as charged.

The ponies are near impossible to beat, in large part because the track and the state take out well over 20% from the parimutuel pool. That’s why I’ve shifted my gambling ways to the stock market, where you get a fairer shake.

And yet, I love thoroughbred horses still. Love to look at them, watch them run, muscle’s rippling under the glistening lather. They are Keats’s “thing of beauty, a joy forever.” Over my years as an admirer, I’ve twice been moved to verse to salute two of my three favorites.

HOMAGE TO NATIVE DIVER

Black blitz horse!
How you ran like wind
That sweeps the desert clean.
Bobbing brute head hooked with pride,
First out and name to call,
Tail streaming back and heels out,
Beyond the close of tigers in the lane!
You were that honest working stiff
Who took the gold without pretense.

The devil had a hoof in you
Through your mother’s line,
A dark streak of spirit
That forced an early gelding.
Your father gave you gait and gate-impatient legs
That years made stronger as your heart grew great.
Like old wine you were,
Mellowed with age and matured to distance,
Leaving old rivals
Gone bad
Or to stud.

Not for you.
No stallion’s privilege,
No managed lust
Nor pensioner’s meadow graze
To fatten away the empty days.
No.
But
Cut-off
With a cough;
Stopped
On top,
To vanish fresh with victory!

(September of 1968)

PRAISE JOHN HENRY

What minus times to have no hero but a horse,
Yet what a horse to have for times
That won’t allow a human hero,
When comfort’s the end,
Leveling the way,
Greed media vice
Momentarily bored with golf
The governor of all mediocrity.

But here’s a no-class beast
Out of the blue-collar basement,
Old and angry still they cut him,
So all he does is bite and beat
His betters at horse age 75.
They will say no matter the course,
Here was a steel-drivin’ horse.

(1982)

One day I hope to have the Muse Calliope goad me into praising the greatest horse I ever saw run—Swaps. In the summer of 1956 I saw the weight-burdened colt set three world records at Hollywood Park, a compact flame-colored chestnut who seemed to dance above dirt or turf far out front, with Willie Shoemaker always easing him across the wire. What a radiant spectacle to fix in memory!

EXAGGERATOR? YOU BETCHA!

Now that von Trump has won the Republican nomination for president, it’s time for another break from the maddening world of politics to focus on the most exciting two minutes in sports, upcoming this Saturday, namely the 142nd Run for the Roses. You remember? The first Saturday in May? At Churchill Downs, Lexington, Kentucky? Where the pretty ladies wearing big hats and holding mint juleps weep to Stephen Foster’s song about that old Kentucky home and the staffing problems they’ve all endured ever since Mr. Lincoln went to Washington?

Yep, I’m back, fresh from successfully launching the Major League Baseball season, now to see you through Derby Day. As both your servant, and a veteran railbird, I will guide you through the etiquette expected at your local neighborhood Derby Party, then provide you with the winner. (I’m assuming you’re not actually going to Lexington for the big do beneath the twin spires; but if you are, and don’t know how to behave, just look around at all the mush-mouthed drunks shouting their picks...they’re indistinguishable from the rest of what Huck Finn used to call “the white quality.” Do as they do.)

Now, manners and nomenclature for the neighborhood bash. Then the selection to make you some money. 

When the hostess greets you at the front door and proffers you a Mint Julep, take it with a forced smile and slowly, unobtrusively inch your way to the nearest WC, where you deposit the liquid into in the lower porcelain receptacle in the room; that’s where all good bourbon deserves to go to disappear. Wait! Don’t flush the mint or added garni, lest you are willing to risk backing up the plumbing and being a literal and figurative party pooper. Instead, wrap it in TP and put it in your pocket or purse for later disposal.

Now slip out into the mix of partygoers and scout about for where the cab or chardonnay is stashed. Pour and scan the assembled. The host or hostess will no doubt have some contest going where you draw or choose the name of a contending horse and vie for a prize when the race is run. Newbies to the sport of kings, of course, will prefer the draw and take their chances on chance. If you are supposed to pick your own horse, you can be sure all the best bets have been taken by the time you get to choose. By whom? See those grumpy-faced folks crowded closest to the telly who look like they’ve been kicked in the groin by a horse (and have, figuratively, many times)? They’re the players and they are here to win. Give them space.

Don’t say in their presence, “Nyquist? Didn’t he run in last year’s Derby?”

The Kentucky Derby (May, 1 ¼ miles), the Preakness (Maryland, May, 1 3/16 miles, and the Belmont Stakes New York, June 1 ½ miles)-- -America’s so-called Triple Crown) are restricted to three-year-old colts (a colt is a three-year or younger un-cut male horse), three-year-old fillies (a filly is a four-year or younger female horse; at five they become mares), a three-year-old gelding (a castrated male horse), or a three-year-old ridgeling (a male with one or two testicles that have not descended). In other words, you get only one chance to run in the Derby.

Don’t volunteer that you liked riding horses as a girl...every Sunday afternoon, when your dad dropped you off at the stable. A horse to these flint-hearts is a thoroughbred horse, 900 to 1200 lean-muscle pounds of high-strung, often nasty, brittle beast bred and inbred to run fast (over 40 mph) on dirt, grass, or composition, and win. Unfortunately, there are six to 14 of them contending in most every race, and, much to the chagrin of steed and punter alike, there can be, save for a dead heat, only one winner.

Resist telling them about your only trip to the racetrack when you saw a horse wearing a polka-dotted saddlecloth that looked just like your Aunt Ida’s kerchief, so you bet $2 and it won and you got $97.40 back. They probably won’t believe you, but if they do they’ll yell something like “have a nice life” but not really mean it.

When you hear your fellow guests refer to a horse as a “maiden” (as this year’s post position #1 Trojan Nation is), know that it has nothing to do with the horse’s sexual experience. It signifies that it has never won a race.

If you hear the words “blue grass,” comment not. It’s not about what you think.

Remember that a furlong is an eighth of mile. The Kentucky Derby is 10 furlongs long. That’s a mile and a quarter, considered the classic distance in American racing. When players refer to a sprint race they’re usually referring to a six-furlong race or less.

If you’re of an egalitarian turn of mind, you may be turned off by your fellow race-watchers throwing around words like “breeding” and “class.” Don’t. They are quite appropriate in thoroughbred racing parlance.

OK, enough, get on with it, reader Dan Post says. Who’s going to win? And what are your credentials for telling us, anyway?

Well, fresh as I am from my from recent success in my pix to click in baseball (how about those Cubbies!), you would not be surprised to know I was quite a handicapper in my day. I realize that begs the next question. So if I know so much, why am I not rich? Well, picking the ponies is one thing, smart betting on them is quite another, as every player knows. Let’s move on to the task at hand.

This year’s Derby fields twenty horses (barring scratches) in a very competitive race, 20 horses, 16 of them colts, two geldings and two ridgelings. (No fillies this year.)

And the order of finish is?

  1. Exaggerator (If the track is muddy, double your bet.)
  2. Nyquist
  3. Mor Spirit
  4. Longshot Pick: Danzing Candy

Soon after the race is run your party will likely break up. The losers need to be alone to lick their wounds. We won’t. I’ll just linger in front of my telly and flash you a long-distance smile that winners wear, sipping my chardonnay. No you don’t have to thank me. Just spread the word. And remember me in your will.

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEANUP: SENATOR, YOU ARE NO JACK KENNEDY, PART III

I conclude my fair and balanced comparison of Ted Cruz and John Kennedy here, noting that the living senator’s fortunes have slipped badly in the last two Tuesdays, from high hopes to on the ropes. Why? Perhaps voters are finally learning what he really stands for and what he doesn’t. That, at least, is the message coming out of the Northeast.

So back to our comparisons, which Cruz, for reasons unfathomable to the rational mind, has asked for. Ted Cruz says man-made global warming is a hoax, disagreeing with 97% of the world’s scientists—those presumably not employed by the fossil fuel industry. (Did Ted manage to dodge his science requirement while an undergraduate at Princeton?) Kennedy, on the other hand, the man most responsible for sending humans to the moon, was a lover of science and scientists.

Proof? Who can forget his April 29 1962 dinner honoring Nobel Laureates, where his ever-present wit was on display in his welcoming remarks to his guests:

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Ted Cruz cites JFK’s tax cuts of 1962 as evidence of his true Republican nature, echoing such other lightweight minds on the right as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Lawrence Kudlow who have made similar whole-truth-allergic claims.  What they don’t tell you is how much he lowered them, who benefited by the lowering, and why he felt it was good policy for those times. Last to first: Truman and Eisenhower had kept tax rates high after World War II to pay off its costs and fund reconstruction; (we actually paid for the wars we waged in those days, though apparently no one ever told W); Kennedy thought the time was right to stimulate the economy with a tax cut and he lowered the top bracket from 91% to 65% (it is now 39%); more important, perhaps, in defense of JFK’s liberal credentials, the bottom 85% of the payers got 59% of the savings; the top 2.4% got 17.4%. Compare that with recent aid-the-rich tax cuts. Don’t even dare bring up that supply-side canard. And face up to what history has already shown; John Kennedy was a Keynesian through and through.

Cruz pushes a flat tax of 10% and abolishing the “death” tax, not to mention eliminating the IRS entirely. Look beyond the much-ballyhooed simplicity of filing your tax return on a postcard and see another giveaway to the rich. (By the way, I’ve yet to hear a dead person complain about paying that death tax; apparently it don’t hurt too much.) Some questions that JFK might have asked: Acknowledging that the idea has been around a long time, if the flat tax is such a great idea, why hasn’t it been tried before? Other than in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? And how did that work out? A word of caution. Before widespread adoption of the flat tax, let’s have Kansas try it out first. They like to play Russian roulette with the tax code.

Ted Cruz is opposed to abortion without exception-- rape, incest, life of the mother, Zika virus, etc. He’s not a great fan of contraception, either. I can find no specific words JFK had on the subject because it wasn’t in his day the issue it is now.  We may assume he himself was no stranger to contraception. And I assume his response to abortion would have been nuanced, given his commitment to individual freedom and equality for women.

Cruz rants against Obamacare (more properly the Affordable Care Act) and repeatedly claims he’ll repeal it immediately upon assuming the presidency. What will he replace it with? For a year or more he didn’t have a coherent answer. Now he claims to, but it has made little impression on the public; it includes the dubious remedy of “health saving accounts.” Isn’t the problem that many folks don’t have the money to fund those accounts?

So where did JFK stand on health care? The narrow defeat of his “Medicare” bill in 1963 was, to him, his most frustrating failure. Ironically, his tragic death that year helped Lyndon Johnson get it passed in 1965. You might say his bloody shirt gave us what every American now gets at age 65. And is grateful for.

Cruz likes to bait and switch on the subject of civil rights; with him “civil” morphs into “religious” rights, specifically the “unequal” rights of Christians in the U.S. who are persecuted by secular democrats. He would scapegoat Muslims instead, have police patrol their neighborhoods, keep them under observation. As for non-Cuban Hispanics, should they stay or should they go? Depends on today’s political weather. Otherwise, Ted is rather consistent in civil rights matters: he opposes amnesty for illegals, opposes same-sex marriage, opposes gay pride parades; opposes affirmative action; opposes any gun control measures because citizens then would not be able to protect themselves against government tyranny; opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act; dodges the equal pay for women question.

Cruz on foreign policy.... hardly are those words out than a vast fear rising out of memory troubles my mind. Let’s reverse the order of attention here and start with JFK. Why? Because JFK’s skill in foreign policy is the primary reason we’re all alive and able to even discuss the matter. You doubt it? Maybe you weren’t around or paying attention back in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world held its collective breath, which could have been its last, while nuclear war hung in the balance. Facing CIA and senior military officers’ pressures to bomb the Soviet Union, and Republican criticism for having the nation in a dire situation inherited from them, John with his brother Robert finessed our way back from the brink, gave his famous, conciliatory American University speech, and launched his peace-through-strength campaign for the brief time he had left. Those efforts are trickling out through recently released documents, including an intent to pull out of Vietnam early on, and an even earlier feeler through back channels seeking rapprochement with Castro’s Cuba. First contact was apparently made a few days before the shooting in Dallas...and thereby came to naught. Cruz, incidentally, has condemned Obama’s recent gambit to repair relations with Cuba after 57 years of greater or lesser hostility.

There! Now we’ve gone and done it. Finally reached the point of no return in facing the horrors of Cruz’s foreign policy, which even many arch-conservatives think more dangerous than Trump’s. Cruz has already cozied up to some of the world-class, off-the-charts, far-far-right Islamophobes, including Frank Gaffney, Elliot Abrams and John Bolton, for foreign policy guidance. No doubt they will help him explain the wisdom of picking a fight with two billion-plus Muslims that is bound to turn out badly for all concerned.

We already know from his threats to carpet bomb Isis that Cruz likes channeling World War II Britain’s “Bomber” Harris (the RAF called him, “Butcher” Harris), proving, I guess, that war criminals and their wannabes are to be found most everywhere most any time. But untested Ted lacks the basic military sense to know that “area bombing” (Harris’s term) won’t work. He wouldn’t be bombing a Hamburg or Dresden—large cities in a modern organic state of concentrated industrial power—where you can exact a tremendous loss of art and life (including probably a baker’s dozen future Nobel Laureates in the hard sciences). He would only further pulverize to powder hapless Syria’s dry sands with little harm to the Caliphate. ISIS doesn’t deploy panzer divisions. They’ve deliberately decentralized, scattered their holy warriors with their Toyota pickups and rocket launchers for waging hit-and-run jihad and seeding terrorist cells abroad.

Other policy follies from TrustTed? Ever more military spending for hardware not needed in the asymmetrical wars of the future. And by all means build that wall—maybe he can go in halfsies with Gauleiter Trump?-- to protect Texans from those illegal aliens who once owned Texas before today’s Texans took it from them. But jaw-dropping wonder of wonders is Ted’s promise, always delivered with passion, to rip up the nuclear treaty with Iran on his first day as president. Strangely, this folding of a winning hand is echoed by other GOP candidates for the presidency; after all it took to get the treaty, including agreement not only from allies France and Britain, but you can-be-sure one-time-only assent from Russia and China, you wouldn’t consider waiting for Iran to break the treaty first?

Hey Ted! Guys! I know you’ve been working hard over there at the Tortilla Coast....Why don’t you have one last Margarita, knock off early, and drop by a friendly little poker party me and my friends hold monthly. I understand you have some familiarity with the game, Ted. We’ll save a seat for you...and your like-minded marks...uh...buddies. We can accommodate them, too. As I said, it’s a friendly little game, you know, table stakes, pot limit.

I have found that in my quest to find similarities and differences between Cruz and Kennedy, I’m best served by going on-line to study their words...the quotes they wish to be remembered by. My utter favorite by Cruz is this one:

"If we go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany—look, we saw it in Britain.  Neville Chamberlain told the British people: Accept the Nazis. Yes, they will dominate the continent of Europe, but that is not our problem. Lets appease them. Why? Because it can’t be done. We cannot possibly stand against them."

Yes, a jumbled, ungrammatical, incoherent historical mishmash that gets just about everything wrong. First, let’s give this a timeline. Hitler came to power in 1933. Neville Chamberlain (a Conservative, by the way) went to Munich in September 1938 to preserve “peace in our time” by agreeing to German annexation of the Sudetland from Czechoslovakia. World War II officially began September 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. The German siege of Dunkirk took place in May 1940. WWII ended in Europe in April-May 1945.

First off, Ted, I’d advise an apology to the memory of Neville Chamberlain and to the British people. They did not turn their back on Europe, as you claim; they suffered more than 68,000 casualties at Dunkirk alone, not to mention more than 200 ships lost there and a massive amount of armaments the British Expeditionary Force left on the continent for Field Marshals Gerd von Rundstedt, Erich von Manstein and blitzkrieg master “Hurricane” Heinz Guderian to collect.

As for quailing before German military prowess, which you, Ted, seem to doubt was necessary, and/or condemn Chamberlain for, there was good cause for choosing the path of peace over fighting a war; Britain was totally unfit to fight, and knew it. Indeed, I’m surprised you didn’t already know that, since your new Republican idol JFK wrote about it in his first book, Why England Slept. You know, his senior’s thesis he wrote at Harvard, published in 1940, that became a bestseller?  In Kennedy’s analysis, democracies by their very nature are at a disadvantage to totalitarian states in going to war, what with needing public consent and all. And JFK is sympathetic to Chamberlain’s plight. What? You haven’t read the book? I thought all you sons of crimson hung out together? You know, Ted, I’m starting to think you know as much about the Nazis and world history as I know about the true state of Schrodinger’s cat.

But don’t despair. In going back to your quotes immortalized on-line, I think I’ve found your problem:

“I am blessed to receive a word from God every day in receiving the scriptures and reading the scriptures. And God speaks through the Bible.”

Contrast that with JFK who said:

“The human mind is our fundamental resource.”

Ted, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re reading too much scripture! You gotta branch out! But there’s hope and help close by. You can start with humble old me. (Sure, maybe I’m sucking up...maybe angling for a cabinet position appointment...state if it’s open...I love to travel.) But wait, I must beg off. I hear you’re a stickler for credentials...something of a snob, really, about schools and such, and who you’ll deign to study with. Humble me, a humble product of the humble University of California, Los Angeles, far from that ivy league of eastern gentlemen. Probably not worthy. Besides, you have more qualified help close by.  Your law degree I read is from Harvard, where you are said to have been magna cum laude. (For me that seems a stretch, but...standards are slipping everywhere I guess.)

Yes, your place is at JFK’s school, Harvard ...and atheist-pragmatist philosopher George Santayana’s school, Harvard...and the school also of philosophers C. S. Peirce and William James, founders of America’s mainstream philosophy pragmatism, which as we were taught even at UCLA also happens to be the bedrock of American liberalism, which also happens to be anathema to—Omagosh! Candidate Cruz! That explains another nugget I recently mined from the quotable Cruz that just might shed new light on who you really are:

“Going to school on a campus where the faculty overwhelmingly disagrees with you, and where the student body overwhelmingly disagrees with you, is challenging. If you go in without a firm foundation, it can undermine what you believe.”

You’re talking about Harvard, aren’t you? And Princeton before that where you did your undergraduate work? But wait a cotton-pickin’ moment! Isn’t that why we seekers of truth go to universities? To test our beliefs against those of others and see how they hold up?

Yours apparently did hold up, but at what cost? To live as a fundamentalist Christian absolutist in a post-Einsteinian universe is to the wrap yourself in comfy cotton swaddling of half-remembered and certainly distorted experience and old tried and untrue dogma, which in turn may foster a certain comforting narcissism and nourish delusions of grandeur. But ignoring the last century-plus of advancements in science and philosophy doesn’t do you much honor or get you much respect in thinking circles--not among serious pilgrims on the trail to learn why we’re here, where we’re going, and what it all means.

Truthfully Ted, if your mission was to snare the uneducated and cognitively limited and those folks rightly frightened by being alone on this darkling plain where evolution has dropped us all, and you reassured them the grave is not all there is, and they will see their children again in paradise...or somewhere, then I would respect you for that. But I detect no such Christian purpose in your cowardice. Rather, from what I hear and read, you are widely disliked. A man whose moorings and motives remain suspect. A poseur. What does Ted want?

What is he after? At least a small majority of those who have asked themselves those questions think your beliefs are flexible, that you’re a careerist after power, a power that you know you would likely squander, but most of all—the romantic always—you long for a revered place in the conservative pantheon. (Frankly, I personally prefer you when you’re playing your usual crafty role of Iago to those dramatic ventures into “statesmanship” or leading the faithful out of Egypt.)

While your biography overflows with praise given and awards won for debating skills and knowledge of constitutional law, it falls far short for where you long to go. Yours remains a vertical intelligence, a skill set that provides your resume with several serviceable bullet points. It may also suit your personal need for a security blanket and a following, but it has no relevance to the rest of us living and thinking in the modern age. We continue down the long hall of existential mirrors, always ready for the answer that is never there, getting instead the answer that begets more questions, their answers always deferred until the next time, the next inconclusive fact found, the next spurt of quest, and then without warning we exit, and there is no next time, exit cogito...farewell sum. 

It may be, as is whispered in the wings, that you are a closet Dominionist whose real mission is to impose a Christian theocracy on the United States from the top down. Certainly there is some cause to believe so. After all, your insane father is one. And the crank David Barton, your trusTED advisor, is one. Are there more? 

As for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, he remains what he was. A liberal. A democrat. A pragmatist. The very definition of the charismatic man.

Whatever you turn out to be, Ted, you are certainly no John F. Kennedy. Not even close. Nor is he you. After diligent comparison we must conclude that the only likeness between you was that you are bipedal members of the same genus and species. Otherwise, you’ve got a cephalopod claiming to be a tiger.

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEANUP: SENATOR, YOU ARE NO JACK KENNEDY, PART II

Ladies and Gentlemen.  We are convened here today to consider the similarities and differences between John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a deceased U.S. president and self-described liberal, and Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz, a self-described conservative, and a current candidate for president of the United States.

You will recall that last week I vented my anger on Cruz for trying to don John F. Kennedy’s mantle, strip him of his self-determined personae as an American liberal, and rebrand him a conservative Republican of today...much like Ted himself.  (Yes, the bile rises in my gorge whenever I hear the claim, or I hear a phrase or a paragraph or an idea that Cruz has cherry-picked out of context to advance his sophistry and trumpet himself as the messenger bringing all revealed truth. His pious treacle turns my stomach and sends me rushing for the Tums.  No, I just can’t see Ted, as he seems to see himself in his self-adoring delusions, as a hero in some Miltonian or Shakespearean drama.  Talk about pathos devolving into bathos!  Maybe, after his crash to earth this November, his punctured vanity will settle for a Fox biopic on the small screen.   Maybe he can get Adam Sandler to play the title role. Oops, I see I have strayed from my fair and balanced inquiry addressing the similarities and differences between Kennedy and Cruz.  My apologies.)

Let us then proceed with the compare and contrast process. 

Kennedy was a war hero in World War II, saving the lives of 11 crewmen after his PT boat (PT-109) was rammed by a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands in 1943; he was awarded the Navy and Marine Corp Medal for gallantry in action.  Cruz never served a day, but has a plan to carpet bomb Isis.

Ethnically, Kennedy was all Irish, the extensive family firmly planted in Massachusetts.  Cruz, with a Cuban father and an Irish-Italian mother, was born in Calgary, Canada, but now lives in Texas, for which he is the junior U.S. Senator.

Kennedy was a Roman Catholic.  Cruz is a Southern Baptist   While relations between the two beliefs have seldom been cordial, Cruz has taken a public stand in protecting the religious liberties of the Little Sisters of the Poor... it has to do with the federal government forcing nuns to pay for birth control in their health insurance plans.

Kennedy was athletic, fond of touch football and sailing.  Cruz prefers more cerebral exercises, like marathon readings of Green Eggs and Ham to his Senate colleagues.

Kennedy was popular among his fellow senators, even those who were thought to be his ideological opposites, like Barry Goldwater.  Cruz, not so much.  Senator Lindsay Graham (R, South Carolina) said, “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was held in the Senate, you wouldn’t be convicted.”

Kennedy was an original and eloquent speaker.  Cruz agrees, and has decided that rather than develop a voice of his own, he will quote JFK often...though sometimes he gets John confused with his brother Robert and makes a fool of himself.

Kennedy was celebrated for his sharp wit.  Cruz, a collegiate debate champion, is far more serious, concerned with advancing the absolutist dogma of the religious far right.

Kennedy and wife Jacqueline moved socially in the international jet-set circle, numbering many international artists, intellectuals and diplomatic social fixtures as friends.  Ted and wife Heidi are not invited to traditional Republican white folk socials for the rich and powerful, for some reason.   But they are very popular at Tea Bagger barbecues where they prefer country music to rock because it is more patriotic.

Kennedy was widely considered handsome.  Cruz is a Squidward Tentacles look-alike.

Enough of these generalities.   Let’s now close in on specific beliefs and policy differences between the two.  We pretty much know where Kennedy stands or would stand on issues that have become prominent since his death; just re-read his definition of, and belief in, liberalism in the previous blog entry.   Then infer.  What about Cruz?

Oops again.  I see I have run over my time and space.  So there will have to be a third part to this entry, coming up later this week, that will address such major issues as global warming, foreign policy, health care, gay marriage, and, of course, taxation.

See you then.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: SENATOR, YOU ARE NO JACK KENNEDY, PART I

Twice now I’ve heard Ted Cruz on the telly try to insinuate himself into the aura of John Kennedy’s legacy.  Once in Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts and once in neighboring New Hampshire---New England of all places! —he’s quoted JFK as though they were ideological mind mates and he even tried to imitate Jack’s accent with actor-wannabe failure.  More preposterous, he claims Kennedy would be a conservative Republican if he were alive now.  Really? Can you picture two politicians more polar and unlike in every way? 

Not a fair question, I realize.  Most of you probably were not even of voting age when JFK was with us.  I was.  And I met him.  Once.  Our encounter was less than five minutes in length, but long enough for me to recognize the walking embodiment of charisma.  It was May 1960.  JFK, then a Senator from Massachusetts, was campaigning for the presidency; I was a graduate student in UCLA’s School of Journalism and assigned by my editor at the department laboratory paper, the California Sun, to interview him.  (I had fewer than five interviews under my belt, none of them great successes.)

Kennedy arrived in mid-afternoon at old Kerckhoff Hall (long since gone) and stepped out of his limo with a faint and guarded smile.  I was there among 10 or so students to meet him, steno pad and Lindy pen in hand.

His savvy eyes settled on me, expectant.  “Senator, what do you think of the U-2 incident?” I asked, referring to the hot story of the month, in which Francis Gary Powers’ spy plane had been shot down over Russia, and Khrushchev had scuttled a summit in Paris with Ike.  About as dumb an opening question as I could have come up with.

“What do you think?” he shot back with the hint of an engaging smile.

“Well I would...” and I blabbed on how I feared we were courting a nuclear war for the five minutes it took us to reach Royce Hall, where he was to speak.  He nodded goodbye.  I looked at my pad.  Nada.  I had blown the assignment.   I walked away wondering what explanation I would give my editor for my total failure.  (Later I was told that Kennedy mentioned student concern over the U-2 incident in his address.)

On the positive side, I had a new hero, not to mention heartbreak not far off.

When I think on it now, at 83, part of me—the optimistic part of me—died on November 22, 1963, when I was thirty.  The sense of loss still painfully remains of what might have been.  It’s been a race to catch-up with hope ever since.  Which explains why I react with anger to a far right-wing Cuban-Canadian Baptist Narcissist from Texas pretending to have an affinity with my hero, who was Cruz’s opposite in virtually every way.

I can’t refute Cruz in a column this size, so I will dig deeper into his nonsense here next week, when I have the space and time.  In the interim, what better way to counter Cruz’s crazy claim than have JFK speak for himself?

This is excerpted from his memorable defining speech of September 14, 1960:

“What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label ‘Liberal?’  If by ‘Liberal’ they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of liberal.  But if by a ‘liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties—someone who can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘liberal,’ then I am proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal’....

“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas.  It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith.   For liberalism is not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform promises as an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood all human life deserves.

“I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and so creative and so free and so responsible, that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind.  I do not believe in a superstate.... But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities.  Government is an art and a special obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it.  And this requires not only great ends, but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.”

You sign on to all that, Ted?

(To be continued in the next blog entry.)

 

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEANUP: AVOID CLEVELAND IN JULY

Last week I celebrated the joy of baseball’s official return.  This week I crash back to grim earth, where domestic politics seem to have taken another ugly and menacing turn.  Veteran political hit man Roger Stone, friend and confidant of Donald Trump, declared publically last week that “the fix is in” by “the kingmakers [who] go all out to cheat, to steal, and to snatch the nomination from the candidate who was overwhelmingly selected by the voters...." 

Stone means to do something about it.  He’s urging wronged Trumpsters to descend on Cleveland en masse in July to confront the conspirators and duplicitous delegates.  “We will disclose the hotels and room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal,” Stone told a Freedomain radio audience.  “We urge you to visit their hotel and find [the culprits]."  Anyone who has seen any Trump rallies on television knows the potential for sudden violent outbreaks when the mob and the mob leader are in sync and a perceived enemy is present.

Are these fears without merit? Am I taking these threats too seriously?  I think not.  We all hear accounts of how “Lyin” Ted Cruz has been rounding up delegates on the sly, taking advantage of the political novice Trump’s incompetence in tending to his ground-game.   And we can’t help but read of the desperate measures being considered by the Republican Establishment to halt Trump’s destruction of “their” party.  Add to that last Friday’s release of Paul Ryan’s remarkably sane and civil video touting compromise and your suspicions soar; Ryan keeps insisting he is not a candidate for president, but then he was not a candidate for Speaker of the House either, until he finally gave in to his party’s wishes and reluctantly (?) accepted the position.  Might he not be the perfect stealth candidate for an establishment GOP with a depleted bench?

Adding to the gathering cloud of unease, a shadowy group called Americans for Responsible Open Carry have petitioned (with over 45,000 signatures at last count) to bring weapons to the Grand Old Party’s party in July.  The Secret Service has balked, banning the bringing of any guns to the Quicken Loans Arena.  (Another attempt by Obama to take our guns away?) 

The ban may apply inside the convention hall.  But what about delegates’ hotel rooms and other public places?  Then again, when I really think on it, I don’t see why the conventioneers should have their Second Amendment rights suspended inside the convention hall.  I would only add one proviso: if you bring a gun, be prepared to use it.

I am thankful my beloved losers, the Cleveland Indians, will be on a road trip during the July 18-21 convention, well out of the line of any fire.  They’ll be in Kansas City getting hammered by the World Champion Royals.  As for me, I’ll be vacationing in New Zealand...or maybe Kwajalein.

Picks to Click

I’m back!  Back with the dope I promised you. Yep, the octogenarian student of the divine game offers his select audience his prized picks to click in the 2016 baseball season.  

True, I’m starting to get static about calling it a divine game.  Nix on the sales campaign is the feedback.  Let me just say that I welcome back the Boys of Summers for another spectacle of chess and ballet performed on a stage of green grass.

Without further ado the final standings for 2016 are:

 

NATIONAL LEAGUE                  

WEST                            CENTRAL                      EAST

San Francisco                                    Chicago                                               Washington

**Arizona                                            St. Louis                                              *N.Y. Mets

L.A. Dodgers                                      Pittsburgh                                           Miami

Colorado                                             Cincinnati                                           Philadelphia

San Diego                                            Milwaukee                                          Atlanta

 

AMERICAN LEAGUE                 

WEST                            CENTRAL                      EAST

Texas                                                Kansas City                                             Boston

**Houston                                        *Cleveland                                              Toronto

L.A. Angels                                       Detroit                                                     N.Y. Yankees

Seattle                                               Minnesota                                               Baltimore

Oakland                                            Chicago                                                   Tampa Bay

 

*Denotes First Wild Card Team

** Denotes Second Wild Card Team

 

You can take it to the bank.  Or to Las Vegas, if you’re so inclined.   Now you’ll no doubt want to know who among these powerhouses of the enchanted diamond will meet in the World Series?  And who will be crowned World Champion?  Prepare yourself for a shocker.  The Chicago Cubs will face the Cleveland Indians in the World Series!  And the winner is?  I can’t help you there.  How do you pick a winner between two habitual losers?  Flip a coin.

Oh, didn’t I tell you?  End Times have arrived. Make plans accordingly.

By the way, these selections are guaranteed.  If they all do not finish in the order predicted, I will provide you picks for next year free of charge!   (Provided there is a next year, of course.)

Be sure to reserve the largest U-Haul truck available when you arrive in Vegas to collect your winnings.  You’re welcome.

PLAY BALL!

April is the kindest month, raising from the ashes of a spent winter the promise of first green and the return for their annual debut the Boys of Summer.  Yes, baseball is back!  Politics is banished if only for a few days.  Glory Halleluiah!

I realize not everyone feels this way.  But those who do know precisely what I mean: For us, America’s own game borders on religion, a game unlike all others, evoking our pastoral past, when a kid met challenges of all kinds alone with a leather glove or stick of wood or horsehide-covered nine-inch ball on a green field of play that theoretically includes an eighth of the Newtonian universe.  Ou sont les jours d’innocence?

It is said that baseball fever is a lot like prostate cancer.  You usually don’t die of it; you just die with it.  I would agree as one doubly afflicted, having got the baseball bug back in the summer of 1938 when my machinist dad took off from his WPA Depression day duties of leaning on a shovel and took me to League Park in Cleveland for my first Major League game.

Love at first sight.  I don’t remember who the Indians played that summer day.  All I know is I came out of the encounter a fan of Roy “Little Thunder” Weatherly, Bruce Campbell and Hal Trosky--names as familiar today as a roll of Nubian queens.  As my father took me to more games, I soon showed signs of becoming a more discriminating fanatic, idolizing Bob Feller, Lou Boudreau and Jeff Heath, and listening to the grainy radio voice of Jack Graney on those lucky days when I was sick (or faking it) and home in bed from school to listen to their feats of daring done.

 I also remember the suspense of waking to the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer where a line drawing of Chief Wahoo would signal the results of the day before. If the smiling Chief had a scalp in his hand, the Tribe had won; if he had a black eye, we’d lost; if he held a scalp and had a black eye, we’d split a double header, if he had two black eyes, well, you know....

 It all came to a glorious end in 1948 when Cleveland won the American League Pennant in a one-game playoff with the Boston Red Sox (Lou Boudreau was the hero) and then went on to defeat the Boston Braves four games to two in the World Series.  I was not among the celebrants in city streets then, for my father had already moved his family to Southern California, where I rejoiced by myself, my addiction sealed.

I used the word “end” above advisedly.  The Indians have not won a World Series since, partners in ignominy with the hapless Chicago Cubs.  That said, I remain a lifer among Indian fans.  Try as I might, I can’t kick the habit.  Each spring brings hope anew; by most mid-Junes the Indians are struggling, and by August they’re out it.

Have I ever returned to Cleveland, you might ask.  No.  Why should I?  I’ve got no one there.  And as Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, who did some brief time with the Tribe as a first baseman, is reputed to have said, “Cleveland is the only city where it’s better to have a plane crash flying in than taking off.”

The defense rests.  Of course, if by some chance the Indians should finish in....

I’ll have my picks for the season in the next post for you to check out before you go to Vegas to place your bets.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: GAULEITER'S END?

Our favorite fascist may have missed his rendezvous with destiny and instead stumbled out the buffoon’s exit from the nation’s political stage.  Yes, Lumpen von Trump managed in one day to spook men, women and those in between, far and wide.  First, he told MSNBC’s Chris Mathews (what he has told others) that nuclear weapons were still “on the table as an option” should he be handling the Middle East or Europe as president.  He also welcomed admitting Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia into the Nuclear Club so they could defend themselves with nuclear weapons.  These radical utterances rattled the world’s sane and sober diplomats who have been trying to force the genie back into the bottle since we let it out in 1945.  Much sleep will be lost in the world’s capitals.

In his second attention-getting announcement, von Trump declared that women who get abortions should be punished, though he was unclear what the punishment should be.  Later, after getting blowback from near everywhere, he backtracked into a fogbank, where it is not clear where he settled, except that the states should decide if abortion is a crime, and doctors should be prosecuted for the crime because women are “victims.”  (Thanks, Dad.) 

In any case, his poll number lead in the important upcoming Wisconsin Primary is suddenly slip, slip slippin’ away, according to Marquette University.  In February it was Trump 30, Cruz 19 and Kasich 8; now it’s Cruz 40, Trump 30, and Kasich 21.  Look out below!

Has The Donald finally gone too far even for a proven Carney barker showmen selling gold bricks to restive dull-normals?    

We’ll soon know.   In the meantime, I’m going to take a break from Clash of the Clowns and watch me some healing baseball.

MONDAY'S POLITCAL CLEANUP: KEEPING SCORE

The bogus debate goes on.  Should Obama have left his seat beside Raul Castro at the baseball game in Cuba and flown straight back to Washington to condemn the Isis attack on Belgium? Interrupt his diplomatic mission to Cuba and Argentina to express his condolences to the Belgians in the same old boilerplate nations keep in the can for such sad occasions?  Every Republican I’ve heard on the subject says “yes, absolutely.”  Said angrily, with censure and scorn.  Out of their enduring hatred of Obama? Or are they just faking their outrage to score political points?

Who knows? Some 57% of these same folks deny that humans evolved from lower life forms; 52% believe global warming is a myth.   Half-time Score: GOP 2, Science 0.   Moving on, some 54% believe that Obama is a Muslim, and 68% believe in demonic possession.  I can’t help you there.   You’ll have to consult your local priest, preacher, rabbi, mullah or guru for the final score.   

Schooled in the American Pragmatism of Peirce, James and Dewey, I say it’s all bullshit—a trumped up imaginary conflict of Lilliputian dimension to further confuse the muddled minds of voters.  I also believe acting to gain a desired and tangible end (in this case, a peaceful reconciliation with Cuba) is infinitely better than trite cries of shared grief that achieve nothing.

Hats off to John Kerry.  Our Secretary of State shined needed light on the contrived controversy Saturday.  When asked on Face the Nation how he responded to those who criticized the president for watching a baseball game in Cuba on the day of the attack and dancing the tango at a state dinner in Argentina the next day, Kerry said “the president’s schedule is not set by terrorists.”  He “has to engage other countries...to build a relationship and achieve some of our goals with respect to human rights, with respect to Cuba and elsewhere.  Life doesn’t stop because one terrorist incident takes place in one place.”

Amen.  By the way, here’s one final score I can give you.  The Tampa Bay Rays 4, Cuba National Team 1.  I think I saw on the telly Obama needling Raul about that.

FRIDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: FEAR AND TREMBLING

Reactions to the Isis bombings in Brussels continue to come in from our presidential candidates.   Some are sane and reasonable (Clinton, Sanders, Kasich); and some are terrifying and make you shudder, if not duck and cover (Trump, Cruz). How did the latter two, taking time out from comparing the physical gifts and shortcomings of each other’s wives, react to the terrorist attack?  Carpet-bomber Cruz, who never went to war, said we should deploy police patrols in our Islamic neighborhoods for surveillance work.  Herr Trump, who never served in any military, was not to be outrun in the race to the far right.  He countered by reiterating a promise to harden our border security, ban Muslims from entry, curtail visa issuance generally, and keep open the option of using nuclear weapons on Isis.  Clearly, the pair’s pace toward fascism is quickening and cannot end well for the rest of us.  Fascism.  Yes, that term is thrown around willy-nilly by our politicians who either don’t know what they’re talking about (most of them), or are cynically smearing opponents with a vague, but decidedly damning libel.

I do know what I’m talking about.  I have lived in a fascist state. (Portugal under Antonio Salazar in 1955 while serving in the U.S. Air Force.)  More to the point, I had the privilege of taking courses in political philosophy at UCLA in 1956 with the illustrious philosopher Hans Meyerhoff.   And Professor Meyerhoff was certainly qualified to teach fascism.  A German Jew born in Lower Saxony, he fled his homeland in 1934 after the Nazi edict that denied Jews entrance to German Universities and he wound up a student at UCLA.   There he distinguished himself in the 1930s as Teaching Assistant to world renowned Visiting Professor Bertrand Russell, and then as one of the first three PhDs in philosophy granted by the university.  

In 1943 he joined the legendary OSS, predecessor of the CIA, and parachuted into enemy territory, engaged them in the Battle of the Bulge and was at the liberation of Dachau.  In 1948 he rejoined the UCLA Philosophy Department faculty.  So what did Meyerhoff teach us were the traits and practices of Fascism?  (Not all need be present to identify its presence, but a critical mass was easily reached.)  First, in Fascism the state is conceived as organic, not mechanical; it is supreme, a whole, more than the sum of all its parts, a spiritual substitute for God.  Those assumptions dictate certain needs and outcomes for a nationalistic authoritarian regime to survive; to keep citizens in line you must come down hard on those who dissent, which almost always leads to scapegoating racial, political, religious or ethnic minorities for whatever state failures occur.  You beat the drum for patriotism and glorify the military.  By defending your nation from real or invented external enemies, you keep the arms makers busy, your economy humming and your workers employed.  Corporate interests are always favored over workers rights, unions are to be snuffed or controlled, crony capitalism rules, and corruption is de rigueur.

Fascism is a man’s world.  Masculine values dominate. Gender roles are rigid; homosexuality and abortion are suppressed, while religions are often absorbed by the state into a subservient partner to further “protect family values.”  Contempt for the arts and academics generally comes just as naturally as patriotic fervor.  Control of the media is a must, both to silence opposing views and to propagandize your own.   If censorship isn’t enough to stem dissent, you can always spy on citizens, suspend liberties, rig the legal system, hold show trials, imprison, summarily execute, and torture.  Yes, sounds like a police state.

Heard anybody sound like they might sign on to that lately?  Somebody running for president?

Here’s another question and a broad hint.   Can you imagine either Gauleiter Lumpen von Trump or the Cuban Canadian Narcissist Baptist from Texas with the nuclear football in their hands?  

What’s wrong with us?  Do we really deserve this country?

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEANUP: FEELING THE BURN

Last Thursday in this space I confessed to feeling some personal guilt for discovering that in my modest retirement portfolio some firms Ihold have moved abroad to avoid taxes.   Patriot that I am, I condemn this, what is deceptively called “tax inversion.”  It is tax avoidance, un-American, and shifts the burden on the rest of the citizenry.  Of course, a simple Act of Congress could change that, but as we all know, Congress doesn’t act anymore.

Believe it or not, the very the next day I got an e-mail from Bernie Sanders that began with the intimate salutation, “Larry, I want to tell you about something that encapsulates so much of what is wrong with ... our corrupt political system.”  Bernie went on to tell me that the venerable drug firm Pfizer was merging with a company in Ireland and could avoid as much as $35 billion in corporate taxes due here in the United States.

I was triply stunned.  First, how did Bernie know who and where I was?  We’ve never met or corresponded before.  Then it dawned on me:  He must have read my blog!  But still, how did he know I held a hundred shares of Pfizer? That info wasn’t in my blog.  Does he have a spy in my household?  Did he think I had a hand in the scam?

Thirdly, $35 billion a year dodged?  That’s a major heist and got me boiling mad.   In a fighting mood, I did what I always do when I’m hot; I turned to poetry. 

I also turned to another poet patriot, the illustrious Scot Sir Walter Scott.   Together with Sir Walter’s ghost, I amended and updated this excerpt from his 6th Canto of The Lay of the Last Minstrel:

 

     If Corporations Are People,
Pfizer....

Breathes there the firm with soul so dead,

Who never to itself hath said,

“This is my own, my native land!”

Whose greedy selfish heart ever burned

To take its gain away from the healing hearth and

Friends in need and leave the homeland spurned,

Just to set up shop on some tax-escaping Irish strand?

If such there breathe, go, smear it well:

For it no local minstrel raptures swell,

High though its titles, proud its name,

Boundless its wealth, as Pfizer will surely claim;

Despite those titles, power and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit all renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the corporate dust whence it sprung,

Unwept, dishonored, and unsung.


There!  Take that Pfizer!  It’s all out.  My real feelings dressed up in the elegant if edited words of Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet.

And Bernie, you keep reading my blog; and pass the word.   You might even want to advertise.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: GUILT DEFERRED INDEFINETLY

My worst subject in college was economics.  I just never got the hang of it.  My professors called it a science, but why then did economists seldom agree on what’s known about the subject?  As they do agree in chemistry or physics?  Even the practitioners of the “dismal science” had their reservations.  My favorite was John Kenneth Galbreath, the famed economics scholar and diplomat, who said “economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”

I found a temporary balm for my bruised ego in those words. And in words that have been attributed to him: “There are two kinds of economists,” he is alleged to have said.  “Those who don’t know; and those who don’t know they don’t know.”  Loved it.  But one still has to make a living if you’re not born wealthy.  Right?  You get a job to stay alive, live paycheck to paycheck, and look for a way to get a little ahead.  That is, save.  When I was in the Air Force, I played poker and cribbage well enough to bank winnings that financed my first two years of college. Once discharged, that source of income was legally closed to me, and I am a moral and law-abiding person.  So I tried playing the ponies. That turned out to be unwise.  Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar were lovely workplaces, but my pick of those magnificent thoroughbreds let me down...and almost out.    

Next I tried Certificates of Deposit at various banks and S&Ls.  No progress.   Inflation ate the meager gains.  Finally, after half a lifetime, I got ahead enough to cautiously enter the stock market where my cribbage luck returned...modestly, to be sure.  I invested long term in some good securities and my worth steadily waxed.  How rewarding it was to think of myself as leaving the ranks of the chronically near -poor to where I could talk in public about “my portfolio.”   Wow!   Respectability at last.

Alas, Nemesis does follow Hubris.  Recently I ran across an article on Bloomberg’s “QuickTake” discussing Tax Inversion.  You know, that’s where moving your corporate headquarters abroad enables you to avoid paying taxes in your own country, your homeland—a scam that is unpatriotic and shifts the revenue burden from giant corporations to the ordinary taxpayer. I got an uneasy feeling.  Could it be that some stocks I held were profiting from this execrable tax trick?  Was I complicit in this un-American activity?  (Unintentionally, of course.)   I looked deeper into where my holdings were anchored.   Some were in Bermuda.  Some in Ireland.  And....  Ouch!  Nevertheless, my conscience instructed, me this tax dodge must be outlawed, pronto.   

Of course, that would take Congressional action.  Ha, Ha.  You know as well as I when that will happen. When the Chicago Cubs face the Cleveland Indians in the World Series.  After elephants and donkeys fly...together.   I guess I’ll have to live out my days with my possibly ill-gotten gains, never knowing whether I’m innocent or guilty in how they were got.   I hope it doesn’t trouble my sleep.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: PROMISES, PROMISES

He said it on Monday.  Yep, I heard it on the telly.  Donald Trump said he had a secret plan to destroy Isis.  “Fantastic!” I thought.  “Tell us how you’ll rid us of this menace to civilization.”  Crickets in the graveyard.  The Donald, as is his wont, never gives away his method for working miracles, lest they be revealed to lesser beings with less money.  But how would he do it?  I wondered.

A Voice from the Past Came Back Like a Hairy Hand in the Dark

And then it all came back to me in a rush   I had heard a similar promise before, from another aspiring candidate to the presidency of the United States.  That was back in 1968 and Richard M. Nixon was vying with Hubert H. Humphrey to succeed Lyndon Johnson as president; the Republican challenger promised to end the conflict in Vietnam.  War-weary Americans, disheartened by the Viet Cong’s recent Tet Offensive, were in a receptive mood.  So was I, a newly appointed editor of a monthly magazine, ready for peace.  But I was skeptical.  Nixon and I hailed from the same little quiet Quaker town of Whittier, California, though I did not share the town’s justified pride in the rapid political rise of our native son.  Perhaps I had been primed by my union-member democrat father’s words whenever Tricky Dick’s name—first as our congressman, then our senator—came up: “He’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg,” he would automatically declare.  More likely it was the mandatory high school assemblies I attended in which our congressman, then our senator spoke to us with a dour frown through those chipmunk cheeks, ever the stern-voiced scold berating us for wasting our time on high school foolishness when we should be out killing commies.

The Blackmail Paid Off

Nixon won the 1968 election narrowly without divulging his secret plan.  Indeed, the next year he and his foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger launched a clandestine air war in Cambodia and sent U. S. Marines into Laos—an expansion of hostilities exposed by the New York Times that enraged Nixon and would set the stage for the Watergate Drama shortly to unfold.   Many Americans felt they had been duped.  I was one of them; to me it seemed a devious form of blackmail the president plied.  Nixon through Kissinger continued with the Byzantine back-channel peace talks in Paris begun in 1968, and Nixon himself went to China to make peace in 1972, in time to earn points that propelled him to an easy reelection victory over George McGovern that fall.  Meanwhile, after four-plus years of fruitless negotiations and frustrating stalemate, Kissinger and North Viet Nam’s Le Duc Tho formally signed the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, bringing open hostilities to a merciful end.   Four days earlier President Nixon had announced to our nation that we had achieved “peace with honor.”   “Peace” yes, which will allow President Barack Obama to visit our former foe in May this year.  “Honor” is more debatable, and has been since April 30, 1975, when the last Americans barely escaped the fall of Saigon, and North Viet Nam claimed victory in their decades-long war of independence and unification.

Guilty As Charged

You may be wondering if I’m trying to tie Nixon’s perfidy to Trump’s unshared plan and promise to eradicate Isis.  Well, uh,  uh...yes, I guess I am...guilty as charged.   You see, I’ve made a count of the number of American military lives lost between Nixon’s 1968 promise of peace and the actual end of hostilities.  It exceeds 20,800 dead.  (That does not include our wounded, or the ARVN’s, VC’s, or NVA’s dead and wounded.)  Will somebody please volunteer to count the Isis-caused deaths between now and Gauleiter Lumpen von Trump’s ascension to the most powerful office on planet earth?  Thanks.  I may not be around.  And even though Nixon had the edge in political experience, military service and commonsense, I still doubt as many senseless deaths will rest on Trump’s cushioned orange pate as the departed Dick’s.  For history’s nerds like me, it’s important to get a count..  Let me know somehow the final numbers in the after-life.  Which seems increasingly to me like a better place to be.