Want Ad: Achilles. No Wimps Need Apply

Much as I love the "New York Times" and Timothy Eagan, I beg to differ about his assessment of our current state of affairs, in today's column he asserts:

 You know we're in trouble when the only reasonable voice in a week of capital chaos is a man whose nickname is Mad Dog.
--Timothy Eagan, "The New York Times"

I tried to not take this personally, but really, my fans in Ukraine will not be pleased. 
It is nice to know there are others out there who are seeing through Mr. Trump, with whom you can nod in silent agreement. Gives one a sense of community.

That idea of "Fahrenheit 451" keeps rising up: a group of enlightened people memorize the great books, each one reciting his or her own favorite, while walking about in the woods with other like minded people, keeping the faith alive. But the greater society, the silent majority, are just fine with the absence of books, and with firemen  rallying to the scene whenever a book or a library is discovered so the firemen can burn the books. 

The idea of a group of like minded souls, talking to each other, keeping the faith alive, is stirring, but ultimately, when those people die off, or lose their memories, the books are gone. 

No, what those woods wanderers needed was some effective strategy for opposition. They needed someone to emerge who could effectively take down the big guy or guys. When Hector is on the field, you need Achilles. 

The McCarthy era must have been similar, but worse. In the case of the Senator from Wisconsin, who did not simply accuse people of being over rated or a failure, an opponent was immediately labeled a Communist, a "fellow traveler" and job loss, ostracism or jail followed.

So the problem we have with Mr. Trump is not all that.

Ever the showman

The problem we have with Mr. Trump is not just one problem but several:
1/ The first problem is  identifying what he says.  Actually, this is not as easy as it sounds because he says so many things and there are so few ideas in his stream of consciousness obviating, you need a recorder to sort through it all.  A coworker stopped me the other day to rail about what she had heard him say but she couldn't recall exactly what it was. She was just sputtering.  People often begin with he said, "something about."

2/ Then you have to say, "No, that's not right and here's why." Actually, in the new Trump era, you really don't have to say why. Evidence is out of style. Vide Infra.

3/ Figuring out who is audience is and what you could possibly say to persuade them.  It is a bit like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." His fans look outwardly normal. They are not straight out of a zombie movie, staggering around. They have no diagnostic physical features. So you have to put something out there which will penetrate their cell walls and cure them.

Can you convince this voter?

Bernie Sanders seemed to be able to do this. He seems to do it instinctively. He is a street fighting man.  Maybe he's just a Brooklyn boy who knows how to handle schmucks from Queens.  He is every bit as entertaining and effective as the Donald, but whatever it is he's got, he's like those woods wanderers--too old, and even if he weren't he seems to have disappeared from the national stage.  

Too bad he never got on the same stage as the Donald

Why do we not see Bernie Sanders replying, every time the Donald says something? 

We've got Meryl Streep and a legion of offended, hurt sounding spokesmen--actually they are usually women--decrying Mr. Trump as dangerous, wrong and unkind.  What we need is Bernie Sanders, or better yet, someone new, making him look ridiculous.

Who has the spear and knows how to use it?

"For Donald Trump global warming is a Chinese plot."  Stuff like that.
Here are some golden oldies from Bernie: "I don't know what his relationship with women has been, but he's recently discovered women go to the bathroom, and it's been very upsetting for him."

"Here's a billionaire who thinks wages are too high."
"Trump comes along and you're scared and you're angry and he says, it's that Black guy over there. That's the guy." 
"A few months ago we were supposed to hate Mexicans. Now it's Muslims. That kind of crap isn't going to work in the United States of America."
"If you take everything else away, what does Donald Trump have the nobody else has? Five million bucks."
"What we are saying to the American people is this: No, Donald Trump is not right. No, a Mexican worker making 8 bucks an hour is not the reason the American middle class is disappearing."

When the boys come out to play...

But, you know, Bernie said all those things on the campaign trail.  He got air time then. 
But now where is he? 
Does CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, PBS and all the rest not know his address at the Senate? Do they not have his phone number? Are no camera crews available at the Capitol?

Much as I love Al Franken, he's just not succinct enough.
Elizabeth Warren has her moments, but she is, frankly, too soft. Her voice carries too much hurt.
We don't need wounded, offended, hurting people.
We need someone who can deal in the same currency as the Donald.
That seems to be the only stuff people in the Rust Belt seem to crave.

Prosperity Theology: No More Pie in the Sky

Really, you have to love Donald Trump.




Did you know of the 6 ministers he's inviting to pray at his Inauguration, 4 are preachers of "Prosperity Theology?"

A message with broad appeal: Worship money

As I understand this, from Professor Google--and I will have to do my own research on this by watching some of these guys on TV--this is a school of evangelical ministers who preach some version of these beliefs:
1/ Wealth on earth is a blessing from God, which means it is the visible sign of God's will that a particular individual should be rewarded, presumably because of a pure soul or for some other worthy reason. Or maybe just because.
2/ The fact that a particular prosperity minister is rich and lives in a mansion and drives expensive cars is the worldly evidence of God's blessing on that individual.
3/ Some ministers add a twist:  While some believe you cannot know why God favors you, others believe you can purchase God's favor.
If you send that preacher money, God may be pleased with you, because, after all, you are endorsing that person he has special affection for, and your reward may be that God will make you rich right now, right here on earth.


In other words, worshiping God is a contract--you send his preacher money, and God returns your investment several fold.

Got that?
When I was in college, freshman year, some professor assigned Jonathan Edwards, who wrote that there was an "elect" among human beings and you were elect not because you had done good things or thought pure thoughts but just because. No reason given. God loved you and made your life good and took you into Heaven for reasons of his own, and none of us human beings down here on Earth need know why. That's just the way it is.

J. Edwards:  Some are simply chosen

I could not understand why the professor would have assigned this reading by someone who was clearly a lunatic, but I eventually understood the idea was look, people believe or have believed all sorts of things.  We have to be aware of these beliefs to be liberally educated.  Among these beliefs is the belief that rich people, kings, have wealth and power for a reason that transcends earthly comprehension, but inasmuch as it is God's will, we humble human beings here on Earth should accept this.

The Chosen One: God's Will Manifest in Money and now Power

So now, Donald Trump is opening my mind. He is rich because God wants him to be rich. He is President because God wants him to be President.


Send your envelop stuffed with whatever cash you can get your hands on to "God: c/o Donald John Trump,  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500






PS: Caught a little time on TV-- during which I was exhorted to join the TV church and to tithe 10% of my income to the church. And I was given a story about a woman who was earning only $35 a week and she couldn't see how she could afford to tithe, but she did anyway, and miraculously, God gave her a new job at a higher rate and so she tithed more and then another lump of money fell into her lap, and so on and now, she's rich! Yikes! These guys prey (pray) on the poorest among us. Those who can least afford it. They take a fool and his money to new heights.

Dwarf Russia

President Obama remarked, in his offhanded, no drama way, that Russia is not really a major threat to the place of the United States in the world. 
They are a much smaller country than us, he said, which shocked me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxalXlBx9x0

Professor Google confirmed President Obama's numbers: Russia has less than half the population of the United States. Of course, it's land mass looks much larger, or at least longer--it covers 11 time zones. 
I was always accustomed to thinking of the Russians as vast.  They lost 20 million in the second World War. But  now Russia has roughly 144 million people to our 320 million.

Still a big guy?

President Obama went on to say: 
1. Russia doesn't innovate.
2. They don't make much of anything.
3. The only thing they have to sell  is oil and gas. 

Hell, Saudi Arabia does that. Is that all Russia's got?

Putin remarked, as he annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, that Ukraine really isn't even a country, by which he meant, Ukraine is really just part of Russia. But, even if he could grab Ukraine, that  still would not reconstitute the Soviet Union. And, while I cannot know from this distance and with my limited knowledge of Ukraine, there is some reason to believe at least the Western half of Ukraine is populated by people who do not think of themselves as Russians. They don't even speak Russian as their first language. Ukrainian, apparently, is not Russian. I'm not even sure there's much affection for Russia in Ukraine or in any of those "Stan" countries. Not at all clear they'd send troops to Russia's aide.

Hope fulfilled 

The Russians do have lots of ICBM's with nuclear warheads. But North Korea has nuclear war heads on missiles and that remains nothing but a backwater and a bizarre anomaly. 

But the idea of Russia overwhelming Poland, Germany, France and England with a huge Red Army is just no longer in the cards. 

Nuclear weapons struck me as a good thing, when you considered a massive Soviet army overwhelming Western Europe and nuclear weapons were what stood as a wall against that,  but now that Leviathan is gone.

How little I know of Russia today. Just stories about their head of state ordering the murders of a defector in London with some radioactive cocktail, ordering the murder of journalists, of a woman dissident. They jail girl bands in Russia. As if "Pussy Riot" were a serious threat to national security. They cheat systematically by running Olympic athletes through doping programs. As if winning Olympic medals mattered enough to cheat like that. 
And their winter Olympics, where they could not even get all four Olympic rings to light up--why was that spectacle so important to them? For Hitler, in 1936, he was trying to showcase his ideas about the Master Race, but what was Russia trying to prove at Sochi?
 It's a sort of bad boy state.  
I will do what I want to do because I am big and strong and can get away with it.
Sort of a drunken frat boy, who wakes up naked and wonders why people don't respect him.

It's the classic small man syndrome: I will show you. I will make you respect me.

Never occurred to me Russia may be struggling with an inferiority complex.  Russia always seemed so big. It's amazing how you can listen to news programs so often, for so long, and never hear such a basic idea. 

I'm guessing President Obama said these things because he no longer feels constrained to follow a rule which says you don't belittle another country or another country's leader because you're just asking for trouble and why court trouble? But now. what does he have to lose? He can say whatever he wants.  

And what he's saying is Mr. Putin does not rule a superpower. He rules a second rate country. 

Japan makes great cars and lots of computers.  Germany makes cars and lots of highly engineered manufactured goods. France makes lots of high end stuff--food, clothes, the Citroen which has the world's best car seats. Britain has the City of London stock market and makes good movies, not to mention Downton Abbey.  Italy makes fashion, art, and entertainingly dysfunctional governments.  Even Finland made Nokia cell phones. Portugal makes Port and generates 100% of it's power grid by wind and solar some days. Iceland makes great sweaters. 

What does Russia make? Okay, Vodka, but really: a country with 11 time zones and the best it can do is vodka? Hell, the state of Kentucky makes moonshine, but that doesn't mean it's worth more than a bucket of warm spit.

So, great, you can murder people. Is that so admirable?

All Russia  makes, when you get right down to it,  is mischief. 

Trump: Fresh Communicator

Just caught a glimpse of Trump's press conference.

In some ways I had the same sensation I had listening to Ronald Reagan, years ago: This guy is different.


What I heard was the government is buying some new fighter and it will be a bargain, a great price and it will be a better airplane than what the Obama administration had planned for.


Reagan was fun to listen to because he had some great lines, which were clearly written for him but he delivered them with gusto.  "The problem cannot be solved by the government; the problem is the government."  Or, "The nine scariest words in the English language: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

Had to laugh.

Try not to think too much about what he was saying but you understood.

Much as I loved President Obama, listening to him, with the pauses while he searched for just the right word, was not fun, not like with Reagan.

His Inaugural Address was so unemotional, so business like, it was simply not uplifting. The only time he was truly an inspiration speaker was at his 2004 convention speech. Oh, and his astonishing speech in Grant Park the night he won the Presidency for the first time, "If anyone ever doubted that in America, anything is possible..."The rest of the time he was admirable, rational, reassuring and ultra competent, but he took great pains not to appeal to your emotions. He was saying, that's not what I'm about.

Certainly, Hillary tried to appeal to emotions, but they were warm and fuzzy emotions, mostly, not stand up on your chair and shout emotions. Bernie did that.


Most of the politicians, when you watch them, you can see the wheels turning in their head, you can see them trying to avoid saying certain phrases which they've been warned will get some constituency angry, or which may be heard by a labor union or a Black advocacy group, or a policeman's union and they are trying to parse a sentence which will offend none of these people. So a Black man gets shot in the back by a white police officer and you get a sentence like, "We all deplore the loss of life, but we have to reserve judgment about this particular incident until we have all the facts and can determine if the officer discharged his service weapon in a manner which was justified by the circumstances."


Say what?

The last time, other than Bernie, I can remember a really liberal thinker appealing to emotions effectively was Martin Luther King. And that was 50 years ago.

Here's a challenge for you: Write a liberal manifesto, a speech, which appeals to the gut, to the soul.

Any topic, you choose.

 

Until we have something to say, someone to say it, we'll have Mr. Trump and his crowd.


The people want circus. Where's our circus?

Right To Work Law In New Hampshire

Aren't the Republicans masters of phrasing?  The "estate tax" becomes the "death tax" and an effort to destroy unions becomes "the Right To Work."  I mean, isn't everyone for the right to work?

Who is against telling a man or woman they have a right to work?


But, of course, what the law before the legislature in Concord, New Hampshire aims to do is to destroy unions, because, well, Republicans are the owner class, the bosses, and they hate unions.


The problem for Democrats is they have not been able to come up with a reasonable sounding answer to the anti union argument, which has been framed not as an anti union argument but an argument for freedom, for personal freedom to choose not to join a union.

If I am a man who wants to work in a super market but I grew up being repulsed by Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters' Union or if I currently hate the police union because they protect murderous, racist cops, why should I be forced to pay union dues?


All I want to do is to go to work and draw my pay. I don't want to join a movement. What's wrong with that?


The answer, of course, is you do not live your life in splendid isolation. You cannot ignore others around you. You are part of groups whether you want to be or not.

If the government fights a war, that requires a group effort. You can get drafted.
If you want to go to public school or send your kids to school, you have to be vaccinated against measles, because, much as you might want to just be left alone, you carry viruses which can threaten the health of those around you.


You benefit from the union contract, even if you do not join the union, because the union has done a lot of work negotiating with the owners to get the best wage and the best health insurance package, and since the union has done all this labor for you, you should not get a free ride. If you decide to undercut the union, to work for a lower wage, you have not taken that action in isolation, you have affected the market value of that job.


The bosses would be very quick to come down on any competitor to their product who undercuts their price--just look at all the hew and cry over China "dumping" steel in the U.S.--but when you undercut the wage package, well then you are a hero as far as the bosses and their Republican tools in the legislature are concerned.


But I never asked the union to do anything for me. How do you know I couldn't have negotiated with the boss for a better wage than what the union got?


The bosses, of course, would love you to think that. In fact, I worked for a corporation which in its employment contract forbid me to discuss my salary or benefits with any other worker. That was a firing offence. Why? Because the bosses knew they could keep wages down if they could prevent one worker from finding out another worker, doing the same job, was getting paid more.

There are some businesses which simply cannot run without human beings doing labor--everything from hospitals, to bus companies to super markets. True, technology is replacing workers in many businesses, but as long as the business needs human beings to do business and to make a profit, the workers are part of the cost of doing business and the owners and stock holders live in opposition to those workers every day, to the extent the wages paid are part of the overhead which gets subtracted from income to yield net profit.


But back to the "Right to Work" laws, which say the union can exist but it cannot ask workers who do not join the union to pay for the work of negotiations which those workers never asked the union to do for them.  Doesn't that sound fair?


The argument is, well, before you arrived, we had a union which got agreement for a pay scale, open to all, and every year since you've been here, you've benefited from that pay scale. You may not have asked for us to do the work, but you've benefited, so you have to pay your fair share.

You never asked the government to build the road you use to get to work, but you use that road and it needs upkeep, so you have to pay the tolls, the gasoline taxes used to support maintenance of that road. You can say, "Well, but I never asked for you to build that road," but as long as you benefit from it's presence, you pay.


You can say, well, that's different, because I can choose to use that road or not, but I can't choose to pay or not to pay those union fees.  But, actually, if you choose to work for a business which is kept going by the labor of its employees, you have chosen to benefit from the efforts of the union, which keeps the business going by insuring a reliable work force.


What you are really arguing in refusing to pay your dues is you want to live off the grid, you want to be unconnected to others while still benefiting from the work others do.  Some would say you want your cake and to eat it too.


All the benefits without any of the costs.

In fact, you learned to read and write at public schools and you paid property taxes for that. That made you more valuable to the business which employed you. You showered and used your home toilet before getting to work, more infrastructure you paid for. But when you got to work, suddenly you claim to be unconnected to the other workers keeping that business going. You are the lone cowboy, riding the range, the independent, self reliant man who needs nobody else in the world.


In the practical world, of course, if you allow some workers to opt out of paying union dues, then, especially when things get tight, more and more workers may opt out of paying dues and eventually the union collapses for lack of funds.


And when you get to work, you function in splendid isolation, with no desire to bond with your coworkers.


Congratulations: You need nobody in this life. You are strong enough to stand alone. Gary Cooper in "High Noon."

The Republicans want to frame this as an argument for personal freedom for that lone cowboy, that self reliant man who doesn't need the help of his co workers to fend for himself. Guy probably carries a gun, too, cause he don't need no police to protect him.  Truth is, that cowboy needs other people or he wouldn't be working for a pay check.

But if you want that job, where others work to support you, you have to pay.
You want to open your own business, work without others supporting you. Go right ahead. You want a pay check which has been enriched by the work of others, pay your damn dues.

Mutual Meddling: US and Russia, Nothing New

History is one long argument. Having little formal training in it, the best I can do to understand the past is to read and watch TV.  In that, I suppose I'm not much different from  my fellow citizens in those Blue Wall states.

1870 cartoon in New York Daily Graphic 

Lately I've been reading "Reilly: Ace of Spies" by Robin Bruce Lockhart and the more widely marketed, but far less compelling book on Reilly by Andrew Cook. 
And I've been watching "The Americans" on Amazon, and David Lean's version of "Dr. Zhivago," (a film made by a Brit, starring an Egyptian in the title role and an American actor as the chief villain.)

Sidney Reilly the real article 

From all of these sources the underlying concept I've formed is America (and Britain and France and most certainly Germany) have been reaching into Russia and trying to manipulate Russia for at least 150 years. We've had our hands up Russia's skirt so often, it is small wonder the Motherland is quick to slap us, and to want to return the favor.

TV version of Reilly

As early as 1870, at least some in America recognized Russia as a colossus we would have to deal with on a global scale. Britain orchestrated Russia's defeat and the loss of its Navy in the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century and its agents (including Reilly) tried to overthrow Lenin when Russia pulled out of World War One. 

Brits tried to remove this guy

The first World War was a revelation for many in Russia, as the true meaning of the word "decadence" surfaced in the terrible suffering of the many owing to the indifference of the rich few.  

As Lockhart observed, Russia's "gallant but inadequately equipped army was being mauled by the Germans while in the cities and towns the people starved in the bread queues. In Petrograd, the aristocracy and rich bourgeoisie continued to live an orgiastic existence in which champagne, caviar and bedding their coachmen's daughters and their neighbours' wives were the main ingredients. The Russian nobility was an intellectual superfluity lost in artificial life, in sensual pleasure and in unbroken egoism. They had reduced love for women to a kind of voracious gourmandise."

If the Russians did try to "influence" our 2016 election, one has to say, "So, what else is new? We've done the same and worse many times over to Russia."

And the fact is, Democrats have tried to blame their losses on the Koch brothers, and now the Russians, when, in fact, the truth lies closer to home. As the Koch brothers have noted, if money and the TV ads it can buy were sufficient to win an election, they would have been more successful in electing their candidates to office.  In fact, Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump five to one in most states she lost and and nine to one in some. The money, the Citizens United case, none of it made a difference. 













If the Russians somehow managed to actually hack the voting tallies, actually managed to turn a Clinton electoral victory into a computer hacked defeat, well, then we'd have a case of Russia succeeding in doing something the Americans have apparently never succeeded in doing, but which the British most certainly tried, i.e. actually placing in power their man as opposed to the man the local population voted for.

Like the best spy stories, the truth will never to known about the particulars. But the truth about the greater story is obvious:  The United States tries to control Russia and the Russians would like to do the same to us.

Maybe this image isn't photo-shopped 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had mostly forgotten about the Russians. They were mostly a bogey man I didn't really believe in growing up during the cold war, but then they faded and were replaced by the undeniably vicious and rabid Islamic fundamentalists. 

Enough Endless War

The new problem for me is our own FBI.  Looks like we've got the Republican FBI and the Democratic CIA/NSA.  We used to laugh at the Russians and the Germans who had politicized their national police, and saw the various organizations fight among themselves.

Now look at us.

Donald The Joffrey: Let Your Eyes Feast on the Truth

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what are these two pictures worth?

"How godlike, how immortal is he?...But the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself that is which determines or rather indicates, his fate."
--Henry David Thoreau

Of course, Mr. Thoreau never knew Mr. Trump.

Trump Hisownself