Weakness of the Left

Listening to NPR on the way to work, it dawned on me that as much as I love NPR, there is something every bit as aggravating about the assumptions of liberals as the assumptions of the Right.

The story about the Tunisian guy who demolished a crowd with a big truck in Berlin revealed this man had come on the flotilla across the Mediterranean, got stuck in an Italian refugee camp, where he was jailed for burning down part of the camp, was released because the effort to deport him back to Tunisia floundered when Tunisia, a dysfunctional state, did not provide papers to do this. So he hung out among the large Tunisian community in Northern Italy, where many are known to be radical Islamists, then hopped a train to Germany, crossing borders as easily as we travel from New Hampshire to Massachusetts, and then mowed down some Christmas shoppers in Berlin.  Last Christmas in Munich, Turkish and Syrian men fondled blonde German women in a square because, well, it was okay to do that sort of thing where they came from, sort of like Tahrir Square in Cairo.

When Donald Trump looks at that, he responds viscerally and says, "Send them all back!" and "Bar them from entry."

And the response from liberals, who value offering sanctuary to the oppressed, who want to welcome the tired, the poor, the wretched refuse of the teeming shore is what, exactly?

When a trans sexual, who has testicles and a penis, refuses to use a locker room specially set aside for him (or her, as he wants to be called) because he/she wants to use the girl's locker room to strip down and change and does not want the stigma of being made to feel different, what is the liberal response? (As if we have made him/her feel different!)

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When the man who cannot afford his insulin because his health insurance will not cover that cost learns his neighbor gets it for free through Mass Health, the state run program for low income people, how does the liberal explain why this unemployed man seems to get a better deal than the working man who pays the taxes to support Mass Health gets, how does the liberal explain that?

When a Muslim transit worker in New York City is accosted by someone who screams she should go home to her own country and a group forms which teaches concerned citizens how to intervene in behalf of this unfortunate Muslim and the teaching is to approach the Muslim and ask how this assault has made her feel, has the liberal, tolerant approach been of much use?

What this country needs is an effective liberal radio show, a sort of liberal Rush Limbaugh, who is better than Radio Free America was, which is more muscular than Rachel Madow or any of those well meaning nerds on MSNBC, which is more present than Trevor Noah or even Jon Oliver, which takes up several hours every day, predictably, right across the time slot from Rush and which can fight fire and lava flow with fire. 

We sure don't have it now. 

Resistance

In the dark days of the Civil War, when the outcome was in doubt, Grant was pushing South with his armies and his generals, facing Robert E. Lee, a general commanding an army which seemed to never blink, never lose, despite all odds against them.

Attack. Do not worry about what your opponent will do.

As is true today, people on the right side of history expressed fear and dismay, and these were commanders fighting armies of slavery, racism, dedicated to inequality and aristocratic rule. And yet these righteous warriors expressed fear of failure; they were daunted by the victories of their opponent.

Grant told them:
"Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

And this is what I feel like roaring, every time I read an article in the New York Times or on Huff Post about what Donald Trump has done, or will do, how he's appointed a destroyer to each Department he seeks to undo, at  Health and Human Services, HUD, Energy and the EPA.

Let us now dedicate ourselves and highly resolve to stop worrying about what Trump is going to do to us, but let us think about what we are going to do to him and to all those who sail with him.

 For starters,  let us simply speak the truth to our neighbors, in letters at every opportunity, to say, "You know, Dr. Ben Carson is clearly in the early stages of Alzheimer's and Trump has appointed him to wreck HUD by simple incompetence. And if he does this,and if  public housing in New York City collapses and 700,000 people in Public Housing find themselves homeless, then it is Trump voters who have done this. This is a population the size of Boston. Is this what you voted for?"

I will make the people of Georgia howl.

Let us not worry about documenting, building a case, fact checking. Let us simply set aside the things we learned in school about argument and as we face new challenges, so we must think anew about how to respond. 

Simply state the truth as we see it:  Mr. Price wants to kill Medicare and Social Security. Trump promised not to do this but he has spoken with this decision to put Price in charge with a clarity nobody can doubt. The Republicans  tried to murder Medicare in its cradle and now they are trying stiil.

With our backs against the wall: Our finest hour.

If fighting this new administration requires lawyers, then let us lawyer up. If it requires demonstrations, then let us demonstrate. If it requires making movies or TV dramas or puppet shows or youtube videos, let us do that.  If it requires protest songs, let us write, disseminate and sing those.
We may not win immediately. It may take time to prevail, but let us take the first steps.

Resist 

But let us not quake and quail. Let us fight them on the beaches. Let us fight them in the fields, but while there is a single one of us left, the righteous and the true left,  never surrender.


  

Trump and Meaning

"I feel like I don't belong to any world which even fucking matters."
--Jimmy McNulty, Police detective, Baltimore, MD, "The Wire"


After his dinner with the woman who is a political consultant, Jimmy McNulty goes back to riding around Baltimore in his raggedy unmarked car, watching hoppers and corner boys call in orders for drugs and watching drugs sold and he is trying to work up the chain of command to the ultimate drug kingpins.  The feds refuse to divert even the most minimal resources to the drug wars; their new focus is on terrorism.

The feds will not tolerate localities legalizing drugs, but they will devote absolutely no resources to help local cops chase the drug dealers.


Local people are being told, in one way or another, whether they are cops or the dealers the cops are chasing, that their world is unimportant.


As one police sergeant tells a detective who is working on a murder in West Baltimore, "Well, the thing is, he died in a zip code that don't matter." And the sergeant pulls the detective off that case and assigns him another. Nobody cares whether people in that zip code live or die, not even the police.


Then you have a billionaire flying in on his own 747 with his name on it, a new, American king, telling his subjects he cares about them, whether they live in Peoria or rural Pennsylvania.

The life of the citizen in Hatfield, Pennsylvania or West Kingston, Rhode Island, or Buford, Texas is often one of rejection, disappointment and hopelessness. Heroin or Fentanyl may offer some escape, but where politics are concerned, a woman who got chosen for fancy private schools, who married a guy who became President, who played the meritocracy game and won is someone these losers are going to hate, a priori.


Part of the problem may be the experience of so many who feel the very idea of meritocracy is corrupt, a rigged game.  Part of the reason for this is examined by people like Andrew Hacker, in "The Math Myth" in which he examines the way math has been used in perverted ways to deny people from getting qualified from a wide range of jobs as veterinary assistances to electricians, and these experiences engender life long bitterness.

There is nothing more alienating than being told you will have a fair shot, then being given a test which is anything but fair or relevant and being told you failed. Multiply that experience by millions and you have a recipe for discontent, restiveness and outrage.


There were many streams which fed into the raging current which became Trump, but surely alienation from a rigged system of awarding the prizes in this economy has got to be an important stream.

The War Against Government: Who Needs the Feds?

If there was ever a war against Christmas, it was nothing compared to the war against the federal government of the United States Donald Trump is waging. He promised to drain the swamp and he is going at the federal government by appointing men to head departments and agencies who have as their singular, distinctive and qualifying qualification a stated intention to destroy the departments they have been appointed to head.

This is what the voters voted for.
It may not be what they wanted.
It may not be what they will want six months from now, but it is definitely the change Donald Trump promised and then some.
Personally, I'm looking forward to it.
After years of Republican bombast about the evil of the federal government, I'd like to see just how correct they have been.
I really do not know exactly how bad things would be without the federal government. I can't bring to mind all the things it does. It's one of those things which may be so big you can't even really imagine life without it.

Margaret Bourke White

For example, I listened to the guy who runs the public housing for New York City who noted these housing units house 700,000 people, a population the size of Boston, within NYC, which is largely dependent on federal government funding. So if public housing in New York City collapses, how many of those 700,000 will go on the streets? How many will simply leave the city and cause no problem for the city? Can New York do without public housing? And that's just one thing Ben Carson can find out by destroying HUD.

How about Mr. Price at HHS, when he kills Obamacare and Medicare and Social Security?   If he does a good enough job, one can only imagine the effect on families when their sick parents have to move in with them. They voted for it. Hey, enjoy it. It is always possible, none of that will happen and we'll live happily without health insurance, or social security. Maybe the Republicans are correct. Maybe we'd be better off without these government programs. Let's find out.

And who needs an EPA or a department of Energy?

And really, if the State Department shuts down, what's the loss? No more visas for Muslims trying to get into the country. That great Trojan horse kept outside the city. We might all feel safer.

Really, this could be salutary. We may find without our enabler, the federal government, we have to be strong, to stand on our own. That's what the Republicans have always told us.

Lets find out!

Russians Aren't the Problem. Losers Are.

Listening to all the clamor about the Russian attempt to influence American voters has exposed one thing: How completely effete Donald Trump's opposition is.

No problem with a guy who likes pussy

For 18 months, the Democrats failed to appreciate that Donald Trump was speaking to a part of our population which is not offended by profanity, expressions of sexual avarice, or frat boy humor, and was more concerned to find a champion who would get in the face of whoever it was who was responsible for their loss of old line factory jobs, coal mine jobs and the general loss of status of households headed by white males who never got past high school.


I watched the woman who is the current head of Health and Human Services explain why killing the legal requirement for everyone to buy health insurance would kill the provision which assured nobody can be denied insurance for pre existing conditions.


She sounded like your third grade teacher, smiling, patiently explaining the connection between the two things. 


She did not say, "Look, how smart do you have to be to understand if you are going to require insurance companies to lose money by paying out for a lot of sick people with expensive illnesses like cancer and diabetes, you got to find them some healthy people they'll make money on, people who will pay for insurance they'll never need? You got to find people the same way Medicare finds healthy people, by taking money out of paychecks for years from healthy young people, so you can pay for them when they get old and sick. That's the way commercial insurance works: You exploit large numbers of the healthy, selling them something they don't need, so you can cover your expenses for the sick people. and still make a profit. It's about money. You don't like that? Suck it up. Or just shove the commercial insurance model aside and go to universal Medicare. At least we know that works. But no, the Republicans are all whining about more choice, more private enterprise. You want private, you got yourself pre existing conditions 'cause no businessman is going to sell insurance to anyone who actually needs it."


But no, she couldn't put it bluntly, hit 'em between the eyes, because she is part of an administration which is civil and kindly and wants to avoid turning off the ladies who go to church every Sunday and the PTA mothers and all those folks who love President Obama because he is such an overtly kindly man, who loves his daughters and his wife and who nobody can even conceive telling an off color joke.

Not afraid to offend

Listening to some former head of the CIA on the radio, I'm hearing a man using words like "very scary" and "unprecedented" and "heedless" as if that is supposed to worry me about Mr. Trump. 


Fact is, no matter how much dirt, or how many lies the Russians may have put out there, there is no way you will ever convince me or the majority of Americans, this disinformation resulted in Trump's win.

Not shocked by bombing the shit out of them

Trump won because he looked tougher than Hillary. That much was true.
He looked tough because he was unconcerned about details and logic--all he cared about was what he wanted, and that was putting Americans first, bringing jobs back to idle factories and screw the wusses who talk about trade wars and precedent.

Not the leader we need

Why did so many Democrats love Bernie? Because he sounded tough.
We need to find a tough sounding Democrat.
Everyone is sick of kind and gentle.

Trump's Landslide

I heard Donald Trump on the radio today. He said he won a landslide victory.

He said even Bill Clinton voted for him.
He said he heard illegal Mexicans and even some legal ones have been packing up to leave the country before January 20th.
Even more good news:  Radical Islamists have started committing suicide.
Visa requests from Muslims hoping to enter the country have fallen by 150%.
Muslims have been taking off by hot air balloons from rooftops in New Jersey, headed for Canada. Donald saw that himself.
And he just negotiated with U.S. Steel and Carrier and General Motors to bring back 2 million jobs to American factories. 
The old jobs, not the new ones running robots.
And the coal miners are are going back to work to mine clean coal which will actually cleanse the air and reduce CO2 emissions as power plants burn it. And the polar ice caps are reforming just hearing that news. 

Polar bears are celebrating. Really great parties up there in the Arctic. 
And driveless cars will not be allowed on interstate highways because that would throw cab drivers out of work. 
And good news for infants everywhere: No more vaccinations, which the Donald heard causes mental retardation.
Obamacare is dead. But Blue Cross/ Blue Shield is going to insure everyone for really great prices. It'll be great. Everyone's a winner.

Also he's replacing Comey at the FBI with Hillary Clinton, in a gesture of magnanimity but don't worry about Comey, who will head the Miss Universe pageant and will be a consultant to "Celebrity Apprentice."
And Maria Bartiromo is going to host a Christmas pageant on the new Trump Channel, and she's going to wear that great red dress with those gold earrings.
 Everyone's a winner. 
Wow! This is going to be a great Christmas, after all. 
Wonder what he's got in store for New Year's?

America's Soft Landing

A friend and colleague, a man who was in my on call group which covered weekends,  died years ago, at age 56,  from Alzheimer's. He was first in his class in medical school, a guy who could acquire new information easily, and he used his deep trove of knowledge smoothly, bringing new concepts and new data to bear on every problem. He looked beyond the obvious explanation and asked, "Ah, but what if we have neglected to consider this?"  
As his disease closed in on him, I started getting phone calls from the other doctors in the group, who said he was no longer capable of practicing--patients would call and he would promise to call in a prescription, or to call another doctor,  and then forget. 

I asked him how weekends were going for him and he remarked, "It's all so easy now. Really, hardly any effort at all."

I was reminded of him when I saw Donald Trump on the stage, throwing jibes at Hillary Clinton for taking time off to prepare for the debate. Trump found the debates so effortless. No preparation required. All so easy.

I'm reading a wonderful, enlightening book by Bernard Lewis, "The Middle East" written in 1995, in which he outlines the almost continuous conflict between the Muslim governments and caliphates in what we now call the Middle East, and the Western European nations and Russia and the Far Eastern civilizations, a story of conflict, invasion, accommodation and more conflict,  which has been going on almost unabated for centuries, but most particularly since the 18th century. 
I had not appreciated how constantly and thoroughly Russia has been involved and invading places like Aleppo and Turkey and Crimea. Reading Lewis today is almost spooky--in telling history he predicted the present so thoroughly.

One thing Lewis said rang out:
"As always happens in such changes, the beginnings of the new order are discernible long before the dramatic events which first made it apparent. Similarly, much of the old order continued to function long after its apparent abrogation. All such 'turning points' are in varying measure arbitrary and artificial--a device of the historian, not a fact of history."

It made me wonder whether the election of Donald Trump, a man who cannot keep details in mind, who cannot recall what he said just a few moments earlier, for whom everything is so easy, in short a man who may be in the early stages of dementia, embraced by an adoring public, who sees in him, in his shrugging off of details, someone like themselves.
He's one of us! But what does that mean? 
Do you want to be led by someone you love, rather than by someone you admire?

We have voters who honestly admit they rejected Hillary Clinton's solution of retraining them for new jobs because they did not think they could learn new jobs. They wanted their old jobs back, in the coal mines, on the assembly lines, where they could function mindlessly. And what does that say? 

As Lewis notes, some things in a declining society headed toward oblivion feel fine: There will be parts of our society--Wall Street, Silicon Valley--which will continue to function, continue to be energetic, dynamic and to surge forward, but the crumbling middle of the country, the Rust Belt, the South, the Mountain West, they may be too far gone to save. The best we might hope for for them, and for the nation, is a "soft landing" at the bottom.

When Donald Trump spoke of withdrawing from Korea, telling Japan to provide for its own defense, withdrawing our troops from Japan, from Europe, and backing away from NATO, I agreed that time has come.  He said we had to do this to put America first and to stop being suckers for all the freeloaders in the world who do not have to spend their money on their own defense, and I agreed, knowing I might be too ignorant to understand why we haven't done that before.   

When Mr. Trump, asked what he would do about ISIS,  said simply he would "bomb the shit of them," the crowd, the American crowd, roared.  And I thought, "Now why didn't anyone else ever think of that?"
When he looked at the tumult in Germany, France, the Netherlands, England over immigrants, mainly Islamic immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, and said simply, they are a Trojan horse, a form of invasion to be repulsed, that seemed to contain a sort of truth. Complexities are so difficult. 

When Alexander the Great, faced with the Gordian knot, suddenly unsheathed his sword and cut through it in a single stroke, was that not a stroke of genius, out of the box thinking?  Did he not deserve to conquer the world for his willingness to risk a rash solution? 

So many brilliant men had tried to unravel the knot, had thought hard and struggled, but Alexander took a different tack. If the problem is to unravel the knot, is slicing it to pieces, not unraveling it?  Simple, direct.

But not all problems can be solved by simply re framing them and taking a new approach. Cutting through all the problems with Obamacare by destroying it with a single stroke leaves a lot of mess on the ground.

Thinking through hard problems is actually difficult, hard work.  That's what made being on call some weekends an exhausting experience. But for those in decline, sometimes, everything is all so easy, like sliding down a water slide, toward the bottom and the end of the ride.