Without the Infestation, Where Would Trump Be?

Absent from the public space is a revelation of intent on "Border Security:"  Republicans who have drawn their most ardent support from the boogeyman of dark skinned immigrant invasion, "infestation" by caravans of Spanish speaking people who will poison the blood of this white nation, do not want this invasion or the daily videos to stop. 

Speaker Mike Johnson wants to kill off the last remaining glimmers of hope for a bipartisan immigration compromise to emerge from Congress this year. The House will move ahead next week with its drive to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, and demands that Congress embrace either an immigration crackdown bill the House passed last year or an equally severe measure.

--New York Times

It's their best bludgeon with which to beat the Democrats.

For decades the southern border has festered and Congress,  the only branch of government having the power to fix it--if any branch has the power, and it's not clear there really is a fix--has refused to act because acting would take courage, study, steadfastness and would likely have no political gain.

But only now are the Republicans acknowledging publicly what Democrats have said all along: Republicans, (most especially Trump) do not want to fix the border because without that border in upheaval, Trump might not get elected. Trump and his party need that border cauldron to keep boiling.

It would be as if Hitler suddenly discovered all the Jews had left Germany. Where then is the urgency for electing the Nazis?

Without that coming infestation, invasion, what is the Republican party?

These are the "replacements" which so terrify the Trump base, which motivated those January 6th insurrectionists. 

Trump openly called Speaker Johnson to tell him that.

So we will elect Trump, who will string up barb wire, build walls to tunnel under and scream about the poisoning for as long as it plays. 

None of this is new, of course. Hitler and Goebbels knew it and used it, and generations of American politicians did to. In fact, Bob Dylan wrote a song about it, which he performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1963: Only a Pawn in their Game. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSmkeb_7uq0

The weak minded manipulated. 

Who Are These People? It's Not Just Guns and Religion

 

The big question about Donald Trump is not Donald Trump. 

It has always been: who are these people who love him so?

Why did he know what he said from the very beginning? "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue, and it wouldn't matter. They'd still vote for me."

We all know people who love Trump and we know there are many different roads to perdition, but a study from the University of Chicago's Richard Pape has illuminated some surprising things about those who committed insurrection his behalf on January 6, 2021, which may be a distinctive group of Trumpsters.

It turns out those 420 men (nearly all men) who were arrested at the Capitol were not living in their parents' basements, unemployed, isolated, but the were mostly owners of their own businesses or CEO's or professionals with extensive connections in their communities. These men had something to lose; they were not loser, drifters. What they shared was they mostly came from counties where the demographics had shifted, where Biden won, counties which had shifted from deep Red, and these mostly white men saw their power and privileges were being displaced and "handed" to non whites. They were the "we will not be replaced crowd."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xuvdU2flSE&t=140s

They were straight out of Charlottesville.

"I would have thought," said Terrence O'Rourke, running for Congress in New Hampshire, after Charlottesville, "That with all the divisions in our country, all the deep differences of opinion, there would be one thing we could all agree on: There is no such thing as a very fine Nazi." (Which is how Trump described those torch carrying throngs in Charlottesville--"some were very fine people.")

Apparently, not.

This is not Bible thumping Iowa evangelical stuff. 

This is more the Thomas Friedman resentment from "What's the Matter with Kansas?" As Friedman observed, "All claims on the right...advance from victimhood." 

But how could these men, successful in so many ways, feel victimized? In this crowd, apparently, it wasn't resentment of being down, but the fear they were headed down.

For most Trump supporters, who are wage earners or tradesmen, not business owners, Friedman's 2004 book is still true: "Ordinary working class people are right to hate the culture we live in. They are right to feel they have no power over it, and to notice that it makes them feel inadequate and stupid."

But the group at the Capitol was more the "officer class" of the Trump Orcs.

Both groups have a right to be offended. 

I can see it myself, in my own experience, although none of this would ever push me into Trump's camp.

But consider my son, who applied to the same medical school from which my brother and I both graduated. Now this particular college  was for more than half a century a bastion of WASP privilege on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Classes consisted of 90 men and 4 women, all white and no Jews. Sometime in the early 60's they started admitting Jews, but my class had only one Black man and one Black woman. Many of the students had uncles, fathers, grandfathers who graduated from the same school. Then, in the late 1990's, someone decided this was not a good thing and the class shifted to over half women (likely a good thing) and more non whites than whites. So when my white son applies, he never gets an interview. It didn't hurt him, he was promptly accepted at the rival medical school across town, which, truth be told is likely a little better school, so no harm, no foul, right?

Well, maybe not. You can never know about school admissions, but from where I stood, he could not attend the school he deserved, because his spot was reserved for someone else who fit more desirable demographics. 

Then there is the case of the white man who applies for a faculty position at the University of California and asked on his application how hiring him would serve the goal of diversity at the university and what plans he had to foster diversity (and equity and inclusion) on campus. The guy taught engineering. He said, "I felt like I was being asked to take a loyalty oath."

And then there is the topic which causes my female friends to threaten to kill or castrate me or do the one before the other, whenever I talk about it: Campus sexual assault. 

Anyone who has ever gone to college since the 1960's knows that young women, in a variety of settings, are sexually assaulted, or at the very least, have sex forced on them after they have said, "No."  Some of these women have gotten inebriated, gone to the bedroom of the man, got naked and then said "No," but the argument is, "No means no, whenever it is said." 

The problem is, on most campuses if the man is accused he has no due process rights. The university courts do not operate by state court standards. Neither the man, nor his lawyer, are permitted to cross examine the accuser. He has no right to face or challenge his accuser. That cherished Ivy League spot he competed for since age 7 crashes and burns. 

But that is liberal orthodoxy: "No means no! Believe the Woman!"

This, too, is liberal orthdoxy.

And transgender athletes who went through male puberty, only to transition to female, and then win all the glittering prizes in women's swimming or track, that too sets aflame the liberal house of straw.

During the Weimar Republic, Berlin became a cauldron of experimentation, free love, gay love, sexual expression and the non urban population was appalled by this "liberal" revolution, this Sodom and Gomorrah. 

As the republic unraveled, 500 assassinations of political officer holders undid political stability--all but about 20 were assassinations of liberals. 

During the 60's assassinations took the Kennedy brothers, and Martin Luther King: liberals.

"Why aren't these conservative firebrands ever assassinated?" people asked. (Well, eventually someone shot George Wallace, but that was just some crazy, with no political agenda.)

Because, we all knew, the whole idea of conservative authoritarianism is power, control and violence to maintain all that. Liberals do not do violence; they abhor violence.

Which brings us back to the January 6 rioters. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, the man said. 

Archie Bunker is someone few people remember, but from his loins have sprung the Trump crowd today. 

 Archie Bunker : If your spics and your spades want theirrightful share of the American dream, let 'em get out thereand hustle for it like I done. Mike Stivic : So now you're going to tell me the black manhas just as much chance as the white man to get a job? Archie Bunker : More, he has more... I didn't have no million people marchin' and protestin' to get me my job.Edith Bunker : No, his uncle got it for him

Archie Bunker:
If your spics and your spades want their rightful share of the American dream, let 'em get out there and hustle for it like I done.

Mike Stivic:
So now you're going to tell me the black man has just as must chance as the white man to get a job?

Archie Bunker:
More, he has more... I didn't have no million people marchin' and protestin' to get me my job.

Edith Bunker:
No, his uncle got it for him.

Public Funds for Church School: The Ghost of JFK

 

"I believe in an America where separation of church and state is absolute, where no public funds are ever granted to any church, or to any church school. Today the finger of suspicion may be pointed at me, but tomorrow, it may be at you. Until the whole  fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

--John F. Kennedy

Hampton Union Publicity 

Yesterday, the Hampton Union published an article about the fight over a Hampton warrant article, voted in every year, which sets up an account ($55,000 this year) from which bills are paid, after being presented by the Sacred Heart School (parish school of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal) to the SAU treasurer. 

The Hampton Union quotes an attorney parishioner, who claims that despite the clear language of the New Hampshire constitution saying, "But no person shall every be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination," state supreme court decisions say otherwise. No response to that assertion was solicited or elicited by the reporter, Max Sullivan. The fact is, despite what Ms. Nevins (who always identifies herself as "attorney Nevins") says, this is by no means settled law. Mr. Sullivan simply quotes her, but never investigates whether or not this is true.

Beyond that, Ms. Nevins allowed that the 1969 decision public funds may go to religious schools "if sufficient safeguards are provided," and clearly there are no safeguards with respect to this tithe to the school. The treasurer of the SAU, Mariah Curtis, has on several occasions admitted she has no idea what the bills for supplies are used for, although "everything is audited."  As opponents have suggested molding clay may be used to fashion crucifixes for classroom walls, and computers may be used to stream religious services--there is no safeguard at all. Ms. Curtis admits in all the years she's been presented invoices from the church school, she's never once refused to pay for an invoice

The history of this warrant article is reported to date to a time when public schools were crowded and diversion of students to the church school was seen as a way of saving money, but the reporter failed to say that is no longer true in Hampton, and, in fact there are empty seats at Hampton public classrooms, and the SHS award diverts needed funds from public schools. That $55,000 could pay for a desperately needed school custodian.

The principal is quoted as saying this is all about educating Hampton students, whose parents pay taxes in the town, but she does not say that only 25% of the students at the school are from Hampton; the rest are from out of town. 

So what the taxpayers are really paying for is to support families from anywhere who want to educate their kids in the Church.

This phrase, "It's all about the kids," particularly galls opponents because it says really, "it's only about the kids," which of course is not true. It's also about separation of church and state. Not to mention there is something so sanctimonious about saying "I am all about the kids'" as if you are more about the kids than the opponents of the article, who feel they are just as much "about the kids."

The warrant article process is, of course tainted by a state law which requires that the School Board and the Budget Committee vote to either recommend or to not recommend voters vote for the article and those recommendations are printed right below the article and right above the checkboxes "yes" or "no" where the voters marks their ballots.

One might ask why the state wants these boards to put their thumbs on the scale so flagrantly, but one look at the 20 page "ballot" and you know why. Voters are allowed to vote based on what the authorities in town recommend, authorities who have presumably given more thought to the article than the voter who has only thought about it for a minute.

This year, Mr. Sullivan tells us, the School Board voted 2 in favor to 0 against to 3 abstentions to recommend. He tells us two of the 3 who abstained abstained because they were parishioners. He does not mention these two parishioners voted public funds to their own church last year when the warrant article vote came up, but this year they were called out for that at a public School Board meeting, and they abstained rather than being accused of doing what they had done in the past--voting for public funds to their own church. 

The 3rd abstainer, Wendy Rega, had voted against the article last year, but this year she thought it would be defeated only if she abstained, because if she voted no, then a majority of the Board would have voted, (i.e. 3 out of 5) and it would be carried as a 2-1 vote. But with her abstention, it was a 2-0-3 vote and that meant the majority had not voted. It was a tactical move. Mr. Max Sullivan reported none of that.

He also did not mention that Ginny Bridle Russel, the chairperson of the school board voted for the warrant article as a School Board member and again as a Budget Committee member, so she got to cast deciding votes twice.

He did not mention that the Budget Committee voted 4-3 to recommend, and it is not known how many of those 4 voters were parishioners. And he did not report what the three No voters had said to explain their votes. Sullivan explained why the abstainers abstained--but he did not give equal space to those who voted against the article.

So, according to the Hampton Union, the fight over separation of Church and State is over in Hampton.

As Justice Sotomayor has noted, with the current United States Supreme Court it may be that separation of church and state is now unconstitutional. It certainly is in Hampton.

And it's too bad, really.

What was that "finger of suspicion" JFK was talking about? Well, in 1960, I well recall being told by my neighbors, "Oh, you can't vote for a Catholic to be President. You may as well move the Pope into the White House. Your taxes will go right to the Church."

JFK promised that would not happen and he kept that promise. It is his legacy, his sacred legacy, that nobody ever asks if a candidate for high office is Catholic anymore.

I've met plenty of people who do not even know Joe Biden is Catholic. Never comes up. John F. Kennedy did that for us. This abstract notion, separation of church and state, which elicits nothing but dull stares and slack jaws from so  many, has very real, practical consequences.

So, when the voters at the Deliberative Session on February 5th, mustered out to vote for the warrant article, to support their Church and their faith, they will actually be doing just the opposite.

They will be voting to destroy the legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which allowed Catholics to fully participate in the politics of their nation, without that ugly "finger of suspicion" pointed at them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CClNXNeYBIw&t=7s

Sympathy for the Enemy: In Need of Some Restraint

 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith


Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game


I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank


I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made


So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

--The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"

Sir Max Hastings wrote a history of the American war against Japan called, exquisitely, "Retribution."

That is what that war was about, at its core. Of course, there were many things that fed into that war, but some wars, like our own Civil War, have one clearly definable cause, which ascends above all others--for the Civil War, it was, as Lincoln famously said, slavery--"These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war." 

For Roosevelt, it was Pearl Harbor. "The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation...No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. [We]will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us."

This, of course, is what the Prime Minister of Israel said after the October 7 attack from Palestinian Hamas warriors. Hamas cannot be allowed to ever endanger us again.

The parallels go further: The Japanese attack was launched after America had embargoed oil and other war materials from Japan, which was in the process of over running China, Indochina and much of the South Pacific. We sought to limit Imperial Japan's ambitions. The Japanese islands had little to no oil, limited capacity to produce food enough to feed itself and a burning ambition to replace European powers as the masters of the Far East. The Palestinians, of course, have been confined to something which conjures up images of the Warsaw ghetto, while Palestinians on the West Bank are expelled from their lawfully owned homes by Israelis who claim that land as Lebensraum, "living space."

In the process of pursuing revenge, the American military effectively strangled Japan for resources. A modestly small submarine force sank enough Japanese transport ships to deny the Empire enough fuel to power its industry, its Navy and its air force.  

Unlike Germany, Japan was safe from American airpower, protected by great distances of the Pacific ocean, and so the Americans embarked on an island hopping campaign to obtain island air bases from which to attack Japan. Iwo Jima was one of those islands. But the Marianna islands, Saipan,  proved all that was actually needed. 

As Hastings sees it, and as many American military and State Department officials said at the time, Japan lost the war as soon as the American blockade tightened.

But the Japanese refused to accept this. And Japan was ruled and motivated by a military class governed by the "bushido" (warrior) code which did not allow for surrender, which generated Kamikaze attacks, which caused civilians, mothers with their children on Saipan, to leap from cliffs rather than surrender to the advancing Americans.

Horrific acts of Japanese brutality, beheadings, immolation of prisoners, were well know to the American public which had no sympathy for that devil.

Japanese routinely shot their own wounded soldiers rather than leave them to be captured by Americans. Cruelties, both individually and by policy, were incomprehensible to Americans and it sparked a ruthlessness which had not occurred in any widespread way in the European theater. 

So the bombings began. Curtis LeMay developed the idea of fire bombing which killed untold numbers of Japanese in their wooden and straw homes, at the very least 100,000 in Tokyo, before the bombs were ever dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hastings' meticulous, detailed descriptions of the results of the fire bombing on Japanese in multiple cities makes John Hersey's famous "Hiroshima" look like bedtime fairy tales. The destruction in Gazza pales next to what the American B 29's did to Japanese cities.

While some American State Department officials and generals questioned whether this wholesale and indiscriminate bombing of Japanese civilians was justified or even necessary, no higher civilian authority, neither FDR nor Truman, ever intervened to stop it.

Hastings found a record of one Japanese housewife, Yoshiko Hashimoto, who, having lost her home and her parents said, "Who did I blame for it all? The Americans? The Japanese had done the same thing to people. It was the war. Mine is the generation which allowed the war. We did nothing to stop it."

In all the reporting from Gazza, I have never seen or heard a single Palestinian say anything of the sort. Every single Palestinian voice and face on American TV claims to be an innocent victim of a ruthless, unwarranted Israeli attack.

After the war, especially after Vietnam, when Americans once again burned babies in villages where the only offense was being Vietnamese in a zone thought to be controlled by the enemy, the next generation of Americans recoiled from the idea of group punishment, of indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians.

Now, we look at what the Israelis are doing in response to a day of infamy and we take the moral high ground. 

But our parents' generation, when faced with that bushido, "warrior" implacable enemy, reacted much as Israel is today. 

The problem of an enemy in tunnels was solved by filling the tunnels with a mixture of salt water and gasoline, then set afire. One wonders if Hamas took hostages to prevent just this tactic.

In fact, after the 9/11 attacks on New York City, Americans were not too fussy about identifying actual culprits but simply invaded an Arab country looking for retribution.

The problem, as Ms. Hashimoto said, is with the whole idea of "war," unrelenting, total war.

Sir Max Hastings

When I emailed Sir Max Hastings asking whether the Israeli response to October 7, the indiscriminate bombings sounded like the American response to Japan he responded: "The same utter ruthlessness in play."

The Fall of Claudine Gay

 

Whatever you may think of Henry Kissinger, and I try to not think of the man too often, he likely had an insight when he said, "The reason academic politics are so vicious is there is so little at stake."

The truth is, presidents of universities can, if they choose, do nothing more than address commencement ceremonies and then disappear for a year. Two college presidents passed the baton while I was in college and if neither of them had ever set foot on campus, it would have made not one iota of difference to my college education. 

Nor would it have mattered much to the college itself, even in the long run, as far as I can see.

Some of the deans made a difference to me, but only because I was a student in their classes.

Ira Magaziner, a classmate, made a difference to the college, because he seized the opportunity presented by the closure of college campuses in 1968 to get a radical "new curriculum" passed in 1969, just before we graduated. This curriculum virtually eliminated grades and requirements for students to major in different departments.

Twenty years later, the owner of the Washingtonian Magazine who also owned a wide newspaper empire, told me he would not hire graduates of my college because he didn't know what their grades meant--it was all fun and games at that college he said. He was on the Board of Trustees of Cornell University.

I replied, accurately I believe, the loss was his, not those alumni he turned away from his enterprises; from the notes in my alumni magazine, I could see graduates were finding plenty of openings at the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. The fact is, ever since the new curriculum went into effect at the college, the competition to get in soared, and the applications soared, the quality of the students flocking to campus improved by any measure,  placing it just behind the big three-Harvard/Yale/Princeton--as a status symbol. 

In fact, for the first time, some students chose the college over acceptances at the big three.

So, when Claudine Gay finally resigned as President of Harvard, I had to shrug. 

So what?

Who cares, apart from Ms. Gay herself, and some members of the Harvard Board of Governors really cares? 

One has to ask, why should anyone on the Harvard Board, or any Harvard alumni actually have any say about who is "running" Harvard?

As an alumnus of a college, I realize I do not really know what is happening on campus in any substantive way, and even if I did know, why should my opinion matter?

Thomas Jefferson wrote about the idea that succeeding generations should not be captive to ideas of his own generation; as times and the needs and issues of the future changed, so too  would the rules and beliefs of new generations have to change. Lincoln picked up that thread, saying that as the issues of his own time were new, his own generation had to be willing to think anew.

The gigantic egotism of the members of the Harvard Board flickers through so many of the articles about their role in President Gay's removal. These are heirs to the Tootsie Roll fortune, investment bankers, hotel fortune heirs, people who, for the most part, started life rich and got richer. More money than brains types, one suspects.

And as for Ms. Gay--well, it's not her fault she was picked for all the wrong reasons, and she could be no better than she could be. Far as I can see, she is not a nasty person, and she values kindness, tolerance and open minded discussion. Nothing wrong with that. 

But she had to navigate an environment where, as Brett Stephens observed, values of "social justice" ousted those of excellence and the words "Equity, diversity and inclusion" appear on banners around campus, where Jewish students were said to no longer "feel safe" on campus.  Where nobody could actually say what "free speech" means or what "hate speech" is. 

Now, I like the idea of "diversity" if it means people from different parts of the country, from different sorts of families, the sons and daughters of coal miners mixing with those of hotel chain heirs, and maybe even some who look different, say Black or Asian are as prevalent as whites. But the Benneton advertisement aspect of different colors all mixing is not a goal, but an outcome, I would hope, of "diversity."  And what does "equity" mean? Does that mean there will be as many kids with low test scores as those who score high? And "inclusion"? Well, I like the idea that any kid on campus can be included in any club, sport, class or dining hall and nobody excluded because of social status or race. But when you have a dormitory for African Americans or a Greek fraternity which is all white, is that "inclusion"?

Young Harvard grads have for decades, spoken about "dropping the H bomb" into conversations, on first dates, or job interviews or simple chats in the country club locker rooms. They meant that as soon as they revealed they had gone to Harvard, the perception of who and what they are changed and simple folk looked on them as some kind of mystical royalty, someone who had drawn the sword from the stone. 

Or, at least, that's what these Harvard grads thought was going on. 

For my part, I knew kids who went to Harvard from my own high school class, and I was not overwhelmed by this nascent royalty. The only thing different about them was they had straight A's, but they were by no means the brightest members of the class. In fact, I felt sorry for them. There were 3 in my class and 4 in the class ahead of me and I knew them all and they all seemed socially stunted, sadly repressed and spiritually dull.

The Harvard grads I met in medical school and as a house officer in my training program in medicine, were uniformly bright and confident, but mediocre performers, uninspired, people who knew how to put number 1 first and who were not the folks I'd want on duty if my sister were admitted, late at night, to their wards.

So, the fact is, Harvard--and in fact--throw in Yale, Princeton and Stanford, are places where a lot of smart people flock and bless them. 

But there are, in absolute numbers, way more equally bright and talented people living, working and contributing to the forward push of progress outside those hallowed halls than in them.

Recommended Votes in Hampton, NH: Live Sly or Die

The old tradition of town meetings in New Hampshire has been replaced by a curious practice called "warrant articles." 

With a population of 20,000, the town of Hampton can no longer simply gather its citizens together to consider questions important to the running of the town, like what the school budget, now close to $21 million, should be, or whether or not Mrs. Johnson should be allowed to plant her petunias on the far side of the sidewalk, on land belonging to the town, but in front of her yard. 

All these things get placed on "warrant articles" which fill well over 20 pages and which the average citizen has little insight about. Most people go to the high school cafeteria in early March are handed a thick packet and they mark off "yes" or "no" in the boxes at the bottom of the article guided by a rectangle which says, "Recommended by the School Board" or "Recommended by the Budget Committee." 

Just imagine if the New York Times reported that ballots for the Russian or for the Nigerian presidency contained a little rectangle just above the voting box which said, under Vladimir Putin's name, "Recommended by the Presidium" or simply, "Recommended."

What a cynical howl would arise from American throats if ballots contained such endorsements. 

"Sham elections!"

But in Hampton, New Hampshire, voters are told an article granting public funds to a church school has been recommended by both the School Board and the Budget Committee and then, once the votes are counted, everyone says, "Well, that's democracy. The voters voted for it!"