Mr. Trump is outraged, just OUTRAGED! that Ms. Clinton asserts ISIS is using videos of Donald Trump as recruitment tools. ISIS proclaims Islam is at war with America and Donald Trump's expostulations--"Keep Muslims out!"--and, according to Ms. Clinton Trump's statements and insinuations are all they need to demonstrate this.
"Where are these videos?" asks Mr. Trump. "Where is the evidence?"
Donald J. Trump demands an apology from Mrs. Clinton. He wants to see the evidence. How can you make such an accusation without presenting the evidence? Mr Trump wants to know.
Well, we have found them. Those videos are in the possession of the thousands of Muslims on roof tops Mr. Trump says he saw in New Jersey, celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
It is wonderful that Mr. Trump, who has claimed that vaccines cause autism, that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, that a majority of American Muslims want to be governed by Sharia law, that Hispanic immigrants are not the best Hispanics, are rapists and murderers, that Hispanics love him because he gives them jobs, that every trade agreement between China and the United States is injurious to the United States, that Ms. Clinton was the worst Secretary of State in the history of the country, that Ms. Clinton lied about Whitewater and lied about Benghazi, that she has lied about everything her whole life, that Muslims by the thousands cheered from the rooftops in New Jersey watching the Twin Towers collapse has new found a new respect for evidence.
As Christopher Hitchens noted, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
Mr. Trump has a strong aversion to the practice of marshaling evidence to bolster his arguments. He simply says it is so, and his audience goes wild. Carl Sagan once noted extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but that was science he was talking about, not Mr. Trump.
As Bertrand Russell once noted, "The fact that an opinion is widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd."
And that is where Mr. Trump finds himself on each of the opinions he has voiced above. He has exploded in righteous indignation to find that his tactic has been expropriated by a rival.
The pot has called the kettle black.
One of my sons told me about this great thing: You can go on line and pull up Der Spiegel or Le Monde or any foreign newspaper and if you are on Google Chrome, you can hit the translate tab and peer in to what Germans are reading and writing. It's wonderful, a sort of legal, shameless peeping Tom into the life of another nation, an ocean away.
So, the first news item I saw was about this bus in Kenya, stopped by al-Shabaab Muslim cut throats. They stormed on the bus with their attack rifles, and demanded of the Muslim passengers that they identify the Christian passengers. The Muslim passengers refused to do this, and the Christians escaped. The Kenyan Muslim passengers said, "Kill us all together or let us go."
What I love about this story is none of these Muslims who protected the Christians at risk to their own lives would be admitted by Donald Trump to the United States, even on a tourist visa.
The other thing is these decent human beings who protected people who were likely strangers, fellow bus riders, were Kenyans. You remember the Kenyans. That's what Donald Trump says Barack Obama is.
President Obama has denied he is a Muslim from Kenya.
Donald Trump says Obama owes him an apology.
So a staffer from Bernie's kids stumbles into a website with proprietary Hillary information and now: 1. The DNC is closing down Bernie's campaign by closing down his access to the small donors (2 million of them) who have contributed to his campaign 2. Hillary has not said, "Oh, this sounds like a lower level misstep; let's move on."
This is how Hillary repays a magnanimous opponent, who has kept his debate with her on an admirable level of substantive argument and respectful disagreement.
The Democratic National Committee has acted as if it will brook no challenge to the chosen front runner, as if spirited debate will somehow hurt the Democratic campaign for Presidency in 2016. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has done the bidding of unknown, unseen power brokers who limited debates to a paltry 5 and placed them in spots which ensure a small viewership.
This is exactly the bitter, small minded pettiness which her critics have found unattractive about Hillary Clinton, and if she benefits from these injustices to her rivals rather than speaks out against them, well, I know a few Hampton Democrats who will not simply vote against her in the primary but who will find better things to do with their Saturdays in the Fall of 2016 than to go canvassing for Mrs. Clinton.
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| Dumb and |
One of the eternal problems of mass communications is the perceived need of appealing to the lowest common denominator. The vote of the most ignorant, mentally limited citizen counts exactly the same as that of the most educated and intelligent citizen.
It is up to the politician to appeal to both.
This is not a huge problem when you are discussing simple concepts, but when the problems and their solutions are complex, then you get the candidates sounding like morons in an effort to find something simple even the most simple minded will agree with.
In England, the style has been for politicians to speak up to the electorate; in America it's always speaking down the electorate, following H.L. Menken's admonition nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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| Dumber |
So you have Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz all trying to boil down our very vexing problem with terrorists who carefully plan an assault with attack rifles and pipe bombs, and who knows? Maybe Saran gas or a dirty bomb is being planned.
These Presidential wannabes want to formulate a zinger or two even the most cognitively challenged citizen can remember, so it becomes: It's all President Obama's fault. He isn't scary enough to the terrorists. All we need is a winner (Trump) a guy who is so tough he scares them (Cruz) not "feckless" (Christie) not a disaster (Rubio) and all the terrorists will run shrieking from the field of battle and stop building bombs in their garages or apartments.
In the case of the San Bernadino shootings: Obama shoulda caught those two. None of the blame can be laid on the Congress, for limiting data gathering after Snowden, and none can be laid on the difficulty of identifying malignant people who are intent on being invisible to whatever radar we might construct.
It's not like the terrorists are robbing banks. Banks you can fortify, and you can arrange for quick response teams alerted by buttons at every teller's station. These terrorists choose places more or less randomly--who woulda thunk a building housing case workers for local health and social workers in San Bernadino?
The fact is, what makes terrorists so difficult to stop is you cannot simply bomb the "shit" out of them because you don't know where they are, and you cannot "carpet bomb them" for the same reason and you cannot simply make the sands glow, attractive as that image may be.
Flexing your muscles and growling in a manly way will not intimidate them or send them fleeing for the doors.
It's interesting: Neither Trump, nor Cruz nor Rubio nor Christie nor any of the tough talkers has ever actually done anything in their lives which requires actual toughness, to my knowledge, like put on a uniform and having a bullet fired at them in anger, or served in a trauma unit handling cases of wounded, or, for that matter, hiked the Appalachian trial, kayaked down the Potomac, run a marathon or completed an Iron Man competition. These flaccid wimps are calling President Obama a weakling.
Certainly Ted Cruz never stood in that White House Situation Room and given the order for Navy Seals in helicopters to attack a compound in Pakistan, knowing full well what happened when Jimmy Carter tried to send in the helicopters across an Arabian desert.
Far as I can see, not a one of them could last ten minutes on a basketball court with Barack Obama. So where do they get all this tough talk?
I remember guys like this from high school and college, who were blow hards, but if you got right in their faces, stood about two inches from their noses and said, "You want a piece of me? I'm right here," well, then they got all jovial and backed off with aplomb born of lots of practice at retreating.
When did we get to the point where nobody calls the bully's bluff in politics?
If we had more prime time Democratic debates, we could have Hillary and Bernie and Martin lacing into the simplicity and saying all the things we want to hear about, but for now, by default, the only voices on the airwaves, the only images are of the thundering herd from behind the podiums.
"How quickly we forget. One generation passes, two [generations pass] and suddenly we don't remember where we came from. And we somehow suggest that there is 'us' and there is 'them,' not remembering we used to be 'them.' On days like today, we need to resolve never to repeat mistakes like that again."
President Barack Obama, December 15 2015
Today, President Obama welcomed newly naturalized citizens in a speech at the National Archives, the building in Washington, D.C. where they keep the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence under pressurized, humidity controlled glass cases.
The building is one of my favorites in Washington, with the words: "What is Past is Prologue" etched in the stone facade above the entrance.
But the assault on the Constitution we must fear and guard against is not of the physical variety, of humidity or mold--it will always come in the form of action and ideas.
When Donald Trump calls for the exclusion of immigrants and even tourists because they are Muslim, that is what tears at the fabric and soul of the American Constitution. But what really sets fire to that document is the response by Americans who think themselves patriots and winners, as they respond to the purveyors of fear and tacit loathing with cheering and mindless joy.
We are so lucky to have as President a man who can write and speak among the best politicians we have ever had. Lincoln was one of the best writers in the 19th century. Since Lincoln, we have only rarely been blessed with a President who has risen to the level of Obama. Roosevelt could inspire, finding just the right words in a very dark time.
Reagan could deliver the lines prepared for him by his script writers, but the ideas contained in those lines, the disparagement of government, the facile sloganeering, the idea that government is the problem not the solution were poisonous to the body and soul of government and the nation.
Oh, how I will miss President Obama. I already miss him, even before he has left office, just thinking with a mild revulsion at those characters on the Right who might well replace him.
Oh, my. It's happening again. Huck Finn has come under attack.
The book which Ernest Hemingway claimed is the well spring from which all meaningful American fiction emanates has been stricken from the curriculum, this time not from a public school, but from a private Quaker school in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which just goes to show, public schools are not alone in their sad impotence to really educate young minds.
The problem is, the principal explained, the use of "the N word" and the depiction of Black slaves made some students uncomfortable.
Isn't that the point of education?
First, allow me to say the "N word" is "Nigger." We should be brave and bold enough to use that word in polite company to face the ugly truth. Very religious Jews would not speak the word for "God" because they felt even giving the name a human voice would violate the reverence man should have for the supreme being. Now we have the same sort of thinking, in reverse. "Nigger" is simply too vile a word to be used by sensitive souls.
If the use of the word "Nigger" were the worst offense, one might say you are missing the most disturbing things. The fact is, slaves were thought of as children, with intelligence roughly the level of a very smart poodle, and Jim, the slave, is fairly infantile in his superstitions and in some of his fearful behavior.
Of course, the climax of the book arrives when Huck, who has treated Jim with the casual contempt white boys of that time and place were wont to do faces the great choice of the book: Jim, it turns out, has a family, a wife and child and if he can get to freedom, to a free state, he can work and then purchase their freedom, or maybe arrange for them to be stolen out of slavery. Huck and Jim arrive at a divide in the river, and if Huck helps Jim take the branch to freedom, Huck will violate the most serious rule of white Southern life--you keep the slaves down.
Huck struggles with this choice. He knows what "right" is here: Return Jim to his rightful owners. But he has also gotten to know Jim as a human being, that is, he has seen the undeniable humanity in Jim and that is the real sin in Southern culture. Finally, Huck says, well, then, I will go to Hell. I always knew I was headed there, so this will do it for sure.
It turns out, of course, Jim's owner had died and in her will set Jim free, but neither Huck nor Jim knew this. Tom Sawyer knew this, but did not tell either, until he had milked all the fun out of Jim's ignorance, proving the true venality of Mr. Sawyer.
This is one of the most subversive books in American literature. Written as if it comes from the heart of the South, embracing the most hideous of Southern core values, but exposing the most basic problem with those values--the denial of one people's humanity by another people's arrogance and willful selfishness.
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| Central Friends School |
None of this will be discussed at the Friend's school in Pennsylvania. The students there are too delicate to face the cruelty and the lessons buried deep within.
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| Lincoln and Stowe |
The thing about a Republic is it can be manipulated by a small, excited minority.
Clearly, the Republican Party is currently being driven by a minority segment which feels aggrieved, aggrieved about "Radical Islam" shooting up Americans and Parisians and Western white people, aggrieved about having a Black man as President, aggrieved about the very thought someone from the government might want to take away their guns. These people will show up, which as Woody Allen once noted, is 80% of life, not to mention politics. They will go to rallies and cheer and vote.
But, I am told, they are actually only about 40% of the 300,000 million Americans who the President represents.
The problem is, they are the ones animated, while the rest of America is busy going shopping, going to their kids' soccer games, going out to restaurants and bars, watching the Patriots, thrilling to Steph Curry, buying new cars, mowing lawns, raking leaves, redoing kitchens and bathrooms, and doing all the things which have nothing to do with listening to Donald Trump blame Muslims and President Obama (not necessarily in that order) for everything wrong with the world today.
This morning, I heard the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania blame President Obama for Donald Trump! Wow, that was a neat trick. If President Obama had only been more emotional during his speech from the White House after the San Bernadino attack, then Trump would not have been able to step into that vacuum.
Oh, I get it. Mr. Obama's cerebral, cool style is just no match for the white hot Trump and so all the oxygen in the room is sucked up by Mr. Trump. Got it.
When the war between the states broke out, the cerebral Mr. Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe at the White House. In what may be an apocryphal story, the over 6 foot President bent down to shake the hand of the diminutive author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and said, "So, this is the little lady, who wrote the book, that started the great big war."
I love that story, and don't really care whether or not it is true--it is true in its point. Without the white hot passions of the anti slavery movement, there would have been no Civil War. Until enough people could be pried away from the concerns of their daily doggy lives in New Hampshire and Minnesota and New York to care about the great wrong that was slavery, no regiments could be mustered.
Think about that. Men from farms in New Hampshire left those shires to enlist in a huge bureaucratic, undemocratic organization to go fight in South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, all over. That took some motivation. Likely, there were many who joined for the adventure, for dreams of glory, because they were unhappy with life at home, but they were animated by something.
And one thing you can say for Mr. Trump: He animates people. So did Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, the Emperor of Japan, and Genghis Khan. Drove those crowds into a frenzy, did these guys.
Lincoln gave wonderful, thoroughly thought out speeches about slavery and the Union. His debates with Stephen Douglas were thoughtful, powerful, but intentionally dispassionate in passionate times. In the midst of the Civil War, speaking before a multitude from the Capitol building, he delivered his Second Inaugural address which could have been a rousing call to arms, but was, instead, a thoughtful, reflective statement of the events leading up to the war and the reasons to continue fighting it.
Of course, his best known address, at Gettysburg, would have left Ted Cruz and Donald Trump snoring. It had ringing phrases and deep understanding but it was understated and given the circumstances, dispassionate. That the war would be pursued to prevent a government of the people, by the people, for the people from vanishing from the face of the earth spoke to people who had attention spans beyond that of the average flea. Not sure it would have rung so loud today among the people who rally for Mr. Trump. What the children want who Mr. Trump thrills are apocalyptic visions of the coming onslaught, a sort of invasion of the zombies, to which Mr. Trump, being a tough guy, will play the super hero. Oh, we'll all be so proud with all the winning.
Lincoln knew he could not motivate passions the way Stowe had. In fact, he was trying to cool down passions, but emotion ruled the day. His smile and wink to Ms. Stowe, if it happened, would have carried a measure of rebuke--here I was trying to calm everyone down, talk them back from the precipice and you got them all inflamed and we got war.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz and Ms. Fiorina all invoke images of Radical Islamic nasties beheading people, slaughtering innocents and they raise the alarm with their Jeremiads. In the midst of real threat to the existence of the Republic, Lincoln did not stoke fears.
But maybe Harriet Beecher Stowe was right. We need some emotion to provoke action now and then.
Perhaps what we need now, to provoke the somnolent masses to go out and vote against the hucksters of hysteria is a new Uncle Tom's Cabin about the logical consequences of Mr. Trumps ascension to the Presidency, a world in which Muslims are relegated to ghettos, with ID cards and a data base to track them. A world where high school students pack guns in school (and shoot each other while waiting for the Radical Islamic terrorists to show up), where eleven million immigrants are rounded up and deported, where a 1,000 mile wall of reinforced concrete is built along the Mexican border, where health care collapses.
If we had that, maybe we'd have the war we need, to get the complacent masses who might actually not hate, fear and loathe Muslims to get off their couches and go vote.
