Uberfremdung

 

History does not repeat itself; but it  often rhymes.

--Attributed to Mark Twain (among others)

Watching the debate, like most people I know, I could only focus on the mouth agape, frozen faced, tongue tied Joe Biden, and hardly noticed Donald Trump, who was, after all, just saying what Donald Trump always says. It was like that classic psychology demonstration where the professor puts a glass bowl on the table in the front of the room and then an outraged student appears and begins a shouting, remonstration and the professor attempts to calm this explosion in the front of the classroom, but meanwhile another student slips in and runs off with the glass bowl and the professor turns to the class and asks, "What happened to the bowl?" And usually not more than one or two out of fifty can say. Everyone else was focusing attention elsewhere.

The power of distraction.

So that was me and the debate, but somewhere in there, I managed to notice the thief who would steal the bowl: Donald Trump launched into his diatribe about all those horrible, no good, very bad illegals crossing our Southern border: insane asylum escapees, escaped convicts, rapists, murderers every last one of them.

Obadiah Youngblood

That got no attention from the moderators asking the questions, and certainly Joe Biden was in no shape to respond: Wait, the fact is immigrants, even those, especially those awaiting hearings, commit crimes at a vanishingly low level. Yes, there is that occasional horrific crime committed by an immigrant here illegally, but that is the exception that proves the rule.

Christopher Isherwood

Reading "Weimar Germany" by Eric Weitz, you hear Hitler, among many others, used the word "Uberfremdung" to signify the poisoning of the pure Aryan blood of the German folk by Jews, Poles, Slavs and other undesirables. All those "races" who had slipped across German borders and contaminated, poisoned and otherwise defiled German blood, pure German women in particular.

The Real Sally Bowles

Trump does not vilify Jews; he seems to exempt them. And he is careful not to vilify Blacks--although he doesn't have to, because his white supremacist cant is satisfactory to the Confederate and Mountain states so he doesn't have to get too explicit about who exactly is poisoning America's pure white blood.

Obadiah Youngblood

Reading about the 20 year Weimar Republic is so fraught with headlines which have been written about today, it is downright spooky. 

I've now imbibed "Weimar Germany" (Eric Weitz),  "Before the Deluge" (Otto Friedrich), "In the Garden of Beasts" (Eric Larson), "Good-by Berlin," (Christopher Isherwood, on which "Cabaret" was based), "Weimar Culture" (Peter Gay) and the excellent, mesmerizing "Babylon Berlin" now in season 4, available only on MHz-Choice, a $7 subscription worth every penny. 

These descriptions of Germany between 1919 and 1939 are a mirror to today's America. We recognize the characters, the types, the arguments. The language may be German but it sounds American.

One of Eric Weitz's observations is that the Nazis were not just street thugs, although there were plenty of that type, but they came from the universities and industry and the professions. J.D. Vance's story would have been tucked seamlessly into any of these books.

Reading Vance's book, "Hillbilly Elegy" it is abundantly clear Vance came from one of those Appalachian families which wasn't a family at all, with an absent father, a mother constantly disappearing off with her latest boyfriend, and the children left to the care of grandparents who served some parental functions but had their own limitations. The first time Vance got anything like a family was when he joined the U.S. Marines, which he seems to forget is a part of the federal government. So he owes his only true family experience to the most socialistic entity in America: The federally funded Unites States military.

The pathos of his going home on a leave with enough money (Marine money) in his pocket to take out his siblings and grandparents to Chilis for dinner is supreme. It's the first time in his life he could be proud. He had made enough money to treat his family to dinner at Chilis. You had to feel for this guy, but then he turns around and rants about how the federal government is nothing but an unmitigated evil.

Obadiah Youngblood 

And this is true of so many of the Nazis during the rise of the Third Reich: the most meaningful experience of their lives was in the military. 

And there is a difference between Trump and the pullulating Nazis of the Weimar: Trump sneers at the suckers and losers who had nothing better to do than join the Army ("Join the Army if you fail") and he dismissed John McCain as a loser because he was captured by the Vietnamese. "I like the guys who were not captured," Trump famously remarked.

And no, American folk are not enduring the deprivations of the early years of the Weimar--hyperinflation--but that doesn't mean they don't harbor resentments. 

So despite evidence that the federal government saved them from COVID--with vaccines developed by scientists using science (which the right denigrates) and rescued America from another great Depression, by spending money on Americans, American businesses and schoolchildren, President Biden and the federal government get no thanks at all. 

Americans will still send Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz back to Congress.

Hitler, it must be remembered was sentenced to 5 years for treason in jail for his part in the Beer Hall Putsch, an insurrection. The judge was sympathetic, so he did not get life in prison. But he served only 9 months, owing to a sympathetic judiciary. 

And now we have Trump's Supreme Court saying if Trump is re elected, nothing he does can result in jail time. He really can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not fear punishment--as long as he claims that shooting was an official act, even if he shoots Joe Biden or Jamie Raskin or Melania's latest lover. 

Oh, I don't need to duck for cover,

For shooting Melania's lover,

For me the law does not have to budge,

Because I know the judge.

Fourth of July Story

 

People from many countries think they are a chosen, special case. Surely Russians think so, and the English often have. The Chinese and Japanese will make their own cases. You can go down your own list.

But if you're looking for some celestial sign, you need look no further than July 4, 1826. It was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. 

In Virginia, at his plantation, Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, who had written the Declaration, lay dying in his bed and hearing some indications of celebration, he asked, "Is it the Fourth?" And told it was,  he smiled and died, 50 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration.

A little over 500 miles to the north, outside Boston, on July 4th, 1826, that very same day, John Adams, second President of the United States, the man who with Jefferson arguably did as much or more to win the Revolutionary War for the American colonists as Washington, was also lying in his death bed, and feeling death close in, his last words were, "Jefferson survives."

(No Facebook or texting then.)

Adams

Both of these men knew what the most important achievements of their lives were, and that dated back to July 4, 1776 and the 5 years which that day unleashed.

The Declaration spoke of the self evident truth that all men are created equal, but of course, Jefferson did not believe all men are created equal, as he held slaves, unless you argue he did not see Africans as men. 

And Adams signed the Alien and Sedition act which allowed for the arrest of any citizen criticizing the President, First Amendment be damned.

So neither was perfect. 

But, they both knew one big thing and stuck to it: asserting that they were equal in God's eyes to the King of England.

 And participating, as both did, in the war to deny the King of England had any right to govern his countrymen, those steps were radical and revolutionary enough for these men to carry with them to the grave the importance of the objections they made. Franklin observed, as the Declaration was signed: "We had better all hang together, for surely, otherwise, we'll all hang separately."

They pledged their fortunes, their lives, their sacred honor to the Declaration and the revolution it declared.

Three Stalwarts & 6 Monarchists

Now, facing a nation restructured by the Supreme Court, a nation which, in the words of Justice Soto-mayor writes in her dissent, the Supreme Court has now made "the President a king above the law," and now  we can understand just how important and revolutionary Adams and Jefferson really were. The ease with which kings can be created, the fragility of our American constitutional guarantees are today, more than ever, apparent, as the work Jefferson and Adams did now lies shredded upon the floor of the Supreme Court at 1 First Street, NE, Washington, DC. 

We can say, as our nation lies on its bed July 4, 2024, "The Constitution Survives," but we'd be as wrong as Adams. 

Brain Worm: The Lab Leak Theory

 

Did SARS COVID-2, the COVID19 virus originate in a lab, and if it did, why would that matter?

Dr. Paul Offit

If it came out of a lab in China, then that opens a cascade of conspiracy theories, that the work in the Wuhan, China lab was funded by Tony Fauci at the NIH in cahoots with President Xi to cause a pandemic to bring down Donald Trump and crush the 2nd amendment and enslave the White world...

Or something.

Enter the New York Times, or the "Failing New York Times" as Dear Leader Trumpsky calls it, whose editors saw fit to publish a full page "opinion piece" by a molecular biologist, Dr. Alina Chan, who wrote a book saying it was a lab leak and then the opinion piece giving 5 arguments for this possibility. 

Even Dr. Fauci has said it's best to keep an open mind about the possibility, but he adds the preponderance of evidence is this virus, like almost all viruses which have become epidemic or pandemic, is derived from nature, from bats most likely, conveyed to other animals and then leaping into human beings.

Semmelweiss

The anonymous editors at the New York Times saw fit to publish Dr. Chan's piece, complete with artwork, without publishing a response from anyone else who might know this field substantially better than Dr. Chan, who though a PhD, does not apparently know much about virology, epidemiology or public health.

Why the NYT decided to leap into the National Enquirer arena, as if possessed by the spirit of "Men In Black," is known only to God and the lost souls on the editorial board of the New York Times.

Paul Offit, of the University of Pennsylvania, who does know a lot about virology, vaccines, the sequencing and structure of viruses, has published a point by point rebuttal, which the NYT should have requested and published side by side with Dr. Chan's article. It is linked below on Substack in written form, or you can watch it on youtube.

Dr. Offit provides everything you will ever need to know when you are at the barbecue this holiday and some blow hard starts bloviating about the lab leak theory.

Basically, what Dr. Offit says is the viruses at the Wuhan lab are well known, gene by gene, and look nothing like the COVID 19 virus, could not have been changed into that virus and the COVID 19 virus was found in blood on the stalls which contained the animals at the Wuhan market, after the Chinese government swooped in to cull all the animals there. The Wuhan lab released the genomic sequence quickly after it was isolated, allowing for the astonishingly swift production of an effective vaccine which saved millions of lives worldwide, before the Chinese government laid the iron fist down on the scientists in a hamhanded way sparked by a  paranoid fear they would be blamed for the virus, which happened anyway.

As Jonathan Swift noted: "Falsehood flies; the truth comes limping after." 

For me, there will always be people like Alina Chan, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Aaron Rodgers, who claim public attention, to scream about bizarre stuff, the Area 51 syndrome,  and I waste little energy getting agitated about them.  For me, it's the people who you thought well of, like the NYT folks, who, inexplicably, behave to support and enhance those who should be ignored, dismissed and denigrated. 

That is the real mystery and exasperating thing here.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. once observed, "In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Watch Dr. Offit on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukv9H6iAn7A

Or read his Substack article

https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/lab-leak-mania

The Hidden Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Power

 

Do you know these names?

• Mike Donillon
• Ron Klain
• Valerie Owens
• Symone Sandler
• Steve Ricchetti
• Anita Dunn
• Cedric Richmond

One thing about Donald Trump, you know he is not a puppet on strings controlled by others. He is his own enfant terrible, whose tantrums control others.

But in Joe Biden's case, there are people behind him, propping him up, propelling him forward you never or only rarely see, who will keep him in this Presidential race because if he drops how, their lives are ruined.

I caught a glimpse of these folks when Joe Biden arrived at the Community Oven, a capacious Pizza restaurant in North Hampton in 2020, in the midst of the New Hampshire primary. (He left days before the voting, in 5th place, to go to South Carolina.)

I arrived there with my long time guide to New Hampshire politics, with whom I frequently canvassed for votes, and she had met Biden in some previous New Hampshire primary, when he was likely four or even eight years younger, and still had an eye for the ladies, and he told her as he worked his way down the line she had gorgeous eyes, which is still true, but which I'm not sure he can even notice any more.

We had listened to him try to get through audience questions, as he lost his way, and by the end of every sentence had lost track of the original question, words drifting off on clouds of distraction, often unintelligible, slurred and non sensical.

"Oh," my guide said. "This is not the same man." 

That was 4 years ago, 2020.

But what fascinated me was watching Joe Biden outside, in the parking lot, after the event, as he waited to be loaded into a limousine SUV, standing there with older women and men I did not know, but who were clearly his "handlers."

Some of them may be the folks named in that list at the top of this post. 

Whoever they were, they were clearly guiding Joe, at his elbow, behind him, and he looked very much like an addled old man being guided by others, as if he would simply have remained chatting with random citizens had they not guided him into his car.

He particularly seemed to enjoy hearing stories of distress from wounded people on the receiving line, telling them to give their names to his people so he could call them back, to be sure they got the help they needed, as if a President should be someone who personally helps a half dozen people in a small New Hampshire town.  More a parish priest consoling the flock than a man who wanted to be President, who needed to rule from the top and get big forces in motion which would provide help to legions of wounded.

He was incapable of connecting with words with a crowd, so he was trying to connect with individuals.

And I thought of Obama, on that rainy Chicago night in Grant Park, his election just won, walking out on that stage and saying to the crowd: 

"If There Is Anyone Out There Who Still Doubts That America Is a Place Where All Things Are Possible... Tonight Is Your Answer."

The cameras panned across the crowd--found Ophra Winfrey with tears streaming down her cheeks, and other anonymous souls weeping for joy.

If Joe Biden was ever capable of that sort of stagecraft, that time is long gone. 

The debate was not, of course an aberration, a single bad night, it was the confirmation of what we had all been seeing for some years. Sure, even people with dementia have lucid moments, but the obvious decline in President Biden is there for all to see.

It is only this inner circle, who see their own jobs and fates circling the drain if Mr. Biden withdraws, as he surely ought to do--it is only this inner circle, this cabal, which is keeping the country on tenterhooks.

Beating Charisma with Charisma

 Charisma:  Compelling attractiveness or charm inspiring love or devotion in others

--Oxford English Dictionary

Charisma is generally spoken of as a good attribute possessed by a good person, but there have been some pretty unappetizing people who succeeded by charisma: Hitler being the most obvious example. We think of Hitler today as being repellent, but to many Germans he was irresistibly attractive in a time when Germans felt Germany was flat on its back and Hitler offered supreme competence and reassurance.

Trump, too, is a candidate of charisma. For 60% of us, he may be repellent, but for that core 40%, he, like Hitler, is irresistible.

As Hillary Clinton and the entire Democratic party and all its elected officials have discovered, you cannot beat Mr. Trump with policies and discussions. You have to beat him on the ground where he makes his bloody stand: the colluseum of personality, humor and shouting. You do not debate Mr. Trump--you enter a World Wrestling Association ring with him.

Now, you will say Democrats have charismatic leaders: Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Jamie Raskin, J.B. Pritsker. But the fact is, if they were to enter the race now, the Republicans' disinformation/oppoisition research machine would quickly launch its swift boat attacks.

And, fact is, none of them are famous enough. Nor have they the kind of fame I'm talking about.

No, what Democrats need is a candidate of charisma who has such a long presence in the national consciousness he cannot be swifted, or swift boated.

This candidate must be already famous and unimpeachable and widely loved.

But who can fill that bill?

First the categories: Eliminate from consideration any politician, elected office holder. All too vulnerable and nobody with national standing.

Eliminate academics for reasons too innumerable to enumerate.

Consider sports stars: Tom Brady, Caitlin Clark, Aaron Rodgers. Nope, nope, nope. Brady's a Trumpie; Rodgers is a lunatic, anti vaaxer and Caitlin is too young to run.

So that leaves entertainers. Only this group has people who are known from Birmingham to Boston, from Providence to Peoria, from Oregon to Oshkosh.

Among this group there may be many worthies, but the most obvious would be a man who has played a gay lawyer, a hero with autism, an Army officer who saves a soldier who was the last surviving son in a family, a bereft widower seeking love on the internet, a man washed up on a deserted island, the conductor of a magical train to the North Pole on Christmas eve.

THAT guy could walk away with the 2024 election.

But first, people in power would have to understand all this, would have to defer their own ambitions, would have to put country (and democracy) above personal reward.

I'm not sure our party or our government is up to this challenge.

But it's comforting to know there's a solution out there: If only we will reach for it.

And if the Democratic Party is not up to the challenge, well, as in the days of Weimar, perhaps we deserve everything which is headed our way with the Storm Front.

The Audacity of Hanks

 

We have two lovely people living in our small town who are not just well connected, politically, to both state and national Democrats: They are Democratic power in these parts. On their living room and study  walls are photos of one or the other of them standing next to, sometimes touching sometimes just smiling alongside every big time Democrat you can name who has ever made it to New Hampshire in the last 40 years, and most of them have passed through New Hampshire, because, you know, the New Hampshire primary, we once had here.

A couple of days after the debacle debate, I found myself riding my bicycle on a route which took me near their house--I'm not sure it was an accident I took that route, or fate or magnetic pull-- and there they were out working in their yard.  

Mrs. Democrat waved at me and called out my name with a question mark--I was wearing my helmet, protective riding glasses--and I waved and said to her: "Well, I think we saw the real final episode of West Wing the other night. The one written years after the TV show ended."

She had no idea what I was talking about. She is an ardent fan of "West Wing" and can recite Aaron Sorkin lines at will, as if it were Shakespeare or the Rocky Horror Picture show. 

"I mean, you know. The President has this debilitating disease but his wife and others in the White House are covering it up, but in this case, they can't hide it because it becomes so visible during the debate."

"Oh, that," she said. "Well, one bad night. Presidencies aren't really about debates. And very few people watched it. The lowest viewership of any debate ever."

Oh, I thought, I had just heard these lines from Christine Pelosi on the podcast plugged into my right ear I had been listening to riding over here.

"But everyone on social media will be seeing the most dismal clips. It's all gone viral," I told her.

"Well, it's too late now," she said. "The nomination is settled."

"But nobody knew who the nominee was going to be when JFK went to the convention and he won."

"There's no one else, even if the President decided to throw in the towel."

"Tom Hanks," I said. 

Both she and her husband spontaneously laughed. 

"Oh, how could I have forgotten Tom Hanks?" she said.

They thought, of course, I was joking.

But I was not joking.

Because:

1. Joe Biden's performance was not just one bad night. It was the culmination of suspicions he's in decline and the many clips showing his debate in 2020 to the 2024 debate showed a different man. The debate was supposed to show the real Joe Biden--the State of the Union Joe Biden and what we got was a frozen, incoherent Joe Biden, who, as Trump said, "I don't think I know what he's talking about. I don't think he knows either."

2. We cannot beat Mr. Trump, who is now on his victory tour, with any standard politician. 

One of the things I hear every day up here in small town New England is politicians are all corrupt, in it for themselves, making themselves millionaires by trading on inside information. Donald Trump won on that theme. He is so rich, he is incorruptible. And he was not from the Washington set. Trump got voted in for not being part of the ruling class, for not having worked his way up, for not being entitled or anointed.

That was part of Obama's appeal as well, at least to some segment of voters. 

Trump was famous for years before he ran for President, having had no political or governmental experience.

So is it really so audacious to recommend someone who has held no prior political office?

Is it not possible that someone with a clean slate is better situated to run for President now than someone from inside Washington?

Is suggesting that the most famous, trusted, beloved man in the country, namely Tom Hanks, more audacious than suggesting we nominate a man whose middle name is Hussein and who looks Black and who held office only one term before being nominated for President?

The problem the Democrats have is the powers that be are powers because they have done things the safe, expected way. Can we expect Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, even Bernie Sanders to set aside their own rigidities or ambitions to get behind an entertainment hero? Are elected officials, Washington insiders even capable of thinking straight on this one? 

If I had the entire Democratic caucus sitting in front of me in some room in the Capitol and gave my 30 second pitch on why it was better to nominate the guy who saved Private Ryan to save our country, would they not react the same way my Democratic stalwart fans of West Wing reacted: With a dismissive laugh?

When Amy Klobuchar visited New Hampshire running in the primary for the Democratic nomination Biden eventually won, I asked her how she intended to run against a candidate of charisma (Trump) as she tried to be a candidate of policies. She was stunned. Clearly, in all the events she had done, nobody had ever asked her that question. She knew all the questions, having done innumerable events like this one. She stopped, thought a minute and then said brightly, "Well, I think I have plenty of charisma!"

Not a bad try, but, unfortunately not true enough.

None of the Democrats in power seem to have thought about this question in all the years since Amy struggled with it in 2020. 

And now, once again, I'm posing a proposition which none of them have given any thought to: What about going for pure charisma against Trump? The most respected, beloved American we've got.

But who ever heard of a Hollywood actor running for President anyway?

And don't tell me about being the Governor of California. That's not an advantage running for President. Just ask Gavin Newsom.

P.S.

You know Mr. Trump's nickname for Mr. Hanks will be "President Gump." And you know Trump would be scared to death of standing on the same stage as Mr. Hanks.

I'd bet biggly on Gump beating Trump.

One Bad Night or West Wing Comes to Life?

 One of the story lines of West Wing was the President develops a debilitating, or potentially debilitating illness, which his wife and his staff conspire to conceal from the public. 

Now, we have, over several years, people comparing Joseph Biden's performance in prior years to what he showed Thursday night.

The BBC played tapes of Biden responding coherently, and with devastating effect to Trump in their 2020 debate, and then played his incoherent, incomprehensible efforts from the most recent debate.

What Mr. Biden has to show voters was that the main worry about him, that he is in swift cognitive decline, is not true.

The day after his dismal debate, he appeared vigorous and coherent at a North Carolina rally.

But, as everyone who has a family member with dementia knows, there are lucid days and bad days, and then more and more bad days.

From afar, the mask like facies, the stiff walk, the petit pas (small steps), the President looks like he has Parkinson's Disease, which is harder to conceal than Josiah Bartlett's multiple sclerosis was in West Wing. And some patients with Parkinson do develop a dementia as part of the process.

Nancy Pelosi's daughter, a Democratic operative went through a list of other candidates who flopped on debate night: Obama was among them during his first debate with Romney. But:

•  Being President isn't about debating skills she said.
• And over riding the votes of all those primary voters would provoke widespread resentment.
• And he's done a great job which Trump would undo
• And who is in a better position than Biden to beat Trump?

But Obama was not in the position of having to prove he was compis mentis. His wonderful presidency was truly wonderful--he did the most with what he was given--but that was then and this is now. And everyone who has watched him over the past 10 years has seen his decline and the fear is that curve is headed toward a crash landing.

The easiest thing to do is to call it just one bad night and continue to support the guy who has the nomination wrapped up by primary votes, to deny Thursday night was the climatic night of reveal of Mr. Biden's frailty and to say we have no other viable options.

To change course is always harder than just plowing ahead.

Every pro, every party regular will predictably fall in line and march by Mr. Biden's side.

And it is true that only if Mr. Biden steps aside, releases his delegates can an open convention happen.

When I mentioned Tom Hanks as a reasonable prospect to the two most connected, experienced and sophisticated Democrats in town, folks with photos on their walls of them posing with every Democratic President back to Clinton and may even Carter, they just laughed.

It was just an absurd notion: An actor running for President? 

Really?

Get serious.

But is digging in the heels, head planted firmly in the sand any less absurd?