Expediency and the Greater Evil

 

Looking at the photo of FDR, Churchill and Stalin as he was constructing his last blog post, Mad Dog was struck by a discomforting thought: Here were the warriors for the great and good cause--the defeat of the monstrous Hitler--sitting amiably next to another monster, Stalin.

Here we  had the leaders of two democracies sitting next to a dictator,  who imposed famine on Ukraine and whose crimes are now well enough known to send angels shrieking from the room.

But that monster was helping the democracies defeat the more immediate threat: Hitler and fascism. 

Expediency, incarnate.

Without Stalin, the enemy of our enemy, Hitler would certainly have won the war against England and America.

So FDR sat next to Stalin and used him as the situation required.

Eric Arthur Blair (aka George Orwell) tried to get his book, "Animal Farm" published in 1943, in the middle of the fight against Hitler, but no English or American publisher would touch this polemic against Stalin and the Russian revolution. They knew Britain and the US needed Stalin. They were not going to spit in the eye of an essential ally.

Now we have the revolting spectacle of Trump shouting in the face of a truly brave and righteous man, "You don't have any cards without us!" For Trump, it's all a game, a protection racket, a gottcha moment.

President Zelensky knows he is in the position of Poland circa 1939--He's got Russia attacking on one border and from the other side he's got Trump, like Hitler and Stalin, two tyrants salivating to carve up his country.

Be practical, Trump says. You're dead meat without me. Putin is now an essential ally as Trump sees it. We can be indifferent to Europe, but Trump wants to play along with Putin, maybe to profit from that relationship.

Zelensky now knows it's the frying pan or the fire.

The Strange and Instructive Case of Carole Hooven of Harvard

 

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said at the hearing, "Carole Hooven an evolutionary biologist, was forced to resign, because she stated that a person's sex is  biological and binary...and so, President Gay, in what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech, but a belief that sex is biological and binary isn't?"

--Congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus. Question to President of Harvard, Claudine Gay, who could not answer it, and resigned shortly thereafter. 

Carol Hooven is not a name I knew before the February 23rd issue of the Boston Globe, which carried in its "Ideas" section an article by her called "Don't Let Anyone confuse You: There Really Are Only Two Sexes."

Professor Hooven, Formerly of Harvard

I began reading with the usual bias I carry to all newspaper articles about this topic I know from my own longstanding academic involvement, expecting to get more and more annoyed as I usually do, but as I progressed through the paragraphs, I became more and more excited: Here, finally, is an article by someone who has thought this stuff through.

Imagine that: an article in the newspaper by someone who actually knows what she is talking about!

Professor Hooven explored the different meanings of the words "sex" and "gender" and their uses, and explored how whether a person harbored sperm or eggs had been used to assign sex or gender, and the role of the Y chromosome and the cases where the sex chromosomes are present in unusual combinations or numbers.

She also alluded to Clownfish who can change sex and make sperm from testes and later eggs from ovaries. But she notes, among mammals there are no examples of sexual plasticity like this. 

So, by the end of the article, she had me. 

Until I read her little identifier at the bottom: She is fellow at the American Enterprise Institute! How did a mind so supple and open wind up at a place like the AEI?

Well, Professor Google to the rescue: In her article "Why I Left Harvard," Professor Hooven walks you through her experience on campus with chairmen of various departments and committees running for cover, trying not to get dragged down with her, defending her remarks that sex, as we define it for medical purposes, really is binary.

Did you know there are committees at Harvard there are central DEI offices, complete with staff, headed by the Chief Diversity and inclusion Officer (CDIO) whose mission is to create a "campus climate that is welcoming, inclusive, respectful, and free from bias and harassment?" And each department has DEI committees staffed by faculty, staff and grad students? Diversity: a goal for the department of engineering? 

But how "welcoming" is Harvard to a professor who questions whether biologic sex really is as plastic and fluid as current Transgender Clinics would insist?

To question has been raised whether transgender patients, suffering from "gender dysphoria" (the feeling you have been born in the wrong body if you are a woman but feel like a man) are more like homosexuals or more like patients with anorexia nervosa. The man who raised this was Dr. Paul McHugh at Johns Hopkins, when he suggested perhaps Transgender Clinics were taking the wrong approach by simply agreeing with patients that they ought to be castrated and have mastectomies and given mega doses of testosterone. For his troubles, Dr. McHugh was ostracized and medical students (MEDICAL STUDENTS at Johns Hopkins!) refused to speak to him.

A similar fate awaited Professor Hooven at Harvard. Like McHugh, she found that free expression of opinion, questioning the prevailing orthodoxy was fatal to career longevity at an academic institution. The very place where ideas are meant to be examined and questioned, turned out to be no better, and perhaps worse, than a religious order.

Life at Harvard, at least as Professor Hooven depicts it, makes the Inquisition look like a pub crawl.

I still do know know enough about Professor Hooven--I'll have to watch her interviews on FOX NEWS and listen to her on Joe Rogan. There may be more to her story. But at least at first blush, she seems to be just one more nail in the coffin of the notion that Harvard is a place of superior intellect. 

Mad Dog's Grand Scheme for Europe and Ukraine

 Something's changed, it's not that I fear, but

Maybe it's that I took care of you too many times

And you grew weaker for a kindness

And sometimes kindness from a friend can break a man

--Rickie Lee Jones

Mad Dog has a plan which ought to make everyone (except maybe Putin) happy.

#1 NATO votes the USA out of NATO.

#2 NATO makes Ukraine a member of NATO

#3 The European Union forges a deal with Canada and Mexico to include them in a sort of EULite organization, allowing these countries to send their oil and lumber and avocados to European.

#4 The EU imposes 50% tariffs on US goods and services.

#5 The EU pursues cooperative ventures with China, including joint electric vehicle manufacturing.

President Trump ought to  be pleased because now the Europeans are finally paying for their own defense. All those US military bases in Germany, England, Belgium and where ever can be closed and that overhead written off the books.

Europe can stop freeloading on America, and that is good for both countries, as Rickie Lee Jones noted, sometimes kindness from a friend can break a man, or a country. 

How does the war game play out on this one?

Well, NATO forces from Finland to Poland to Ukraine move their troops to the Russian borders and they ready their nuclear arms. 

Russia can then either withdraw from Ukraine or fire off some nuclear missiles: most likely target Ukraine.

NATO forces sweep across all the borders and warn Putin if he fires another nuke, they will fire their missiles.

Then either Putin backs down or we have nuclear Armageddon. 

But, as Clemenza told Michael in "The Godfather," --this sort of thing happens every so often. Sort of clears out the bad blood. But you know, they shoulda stopped Hitler at Munich.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_bnxuxtYQI

Picture Worth A Thousand Words

 With Donald Trump, who lives, like Max Headroom on TV, whose world is pictures and TV, perhaps the most appropriate response is pictorial.

It has been said that the undoing of Senator Joseph McCarthy was television, that once the American public got a load of what the guy looked like, on TV and this was juxtaposed with the images of people he attacked, McCarthy's downhill slide began.

So, here in the interest of making an argument with images rather than words, is a gallery.

Here is the man with whom Trump is enthralled:

Look Ma! I'm important now!

A little man with little man syndrome, determined to restore the greatness of the Russian empire.

And here is the woman he would ravage:

And here is the guy who wants to make a deal, who tells President Zelensky either his brains or his signature will be on that paper.

My Fans Love My Big Red Tie!

One of Putin's toadies,  Dimitry Medvevev, who called Zelensky an "insolent pig [who] finally got a proper slap."

Somehow, looking at Zelensky, that horse doesn't trot.

On the other hand, if we are comparing people to animals...

And Zelensky, himself, who had the temerity to show up at the Oval Office without a tie, the Churchill of his time, sitting in the Oval Office where Trump placed a bust of Churchill, Zelensky made Trump and Vance look very small, a giant among pigmies, when you compare souls.

And where are the ties on these guys?

What I want to know is where Trump and Vance got all the courage to confront President Zelensky without Musk at their side, or, as it usually is, with Musk dancing around like Gollum behind them.

Although some have said Gollum is not Musk, but his master.

But sometimes, an image tells more than we hear from the man himself.

Proud to Be A New American!

Now where is Lee Greenwood when you need him?

Just when Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in the White House without even a shirt and tie--such disrespect to the Oval Office--sitting in front of the Resolute Desk of all things, being, you know, well: Resolute! You know, when everyone said Ukraine would fold in three days, Zelensky stayed in Kyiv and when offered an escape from the onslaught, he said, "I don't need a ride. I need ammunition." And the Russians sent out their assassins and were looking for a third floor window to push him out of, but he just kept fighting and he rallied his people, who elected him, in a landslide,  to carry on the fight.

Georgie Porgie and Tweedledum, Safe in Their House, with an actual Hero

And he never even said "Thank you," for all the money the US of A  has given Ukraine, so they could do the fighting and dying for us, and for everyone else, while we said it's not worth starting World War III over Ukraine, but if we give you some anti tank weapons and some drones, good luck defending the idea of democracy, and the right of a nation to live free and die.

Your Brains or Your Signature Will Be On This Contract!

What you have to really love is the bust of Winston Churchill, which Trump got for the Oval Office--Churchill who carved his place in history by refusing to capitulate, by promising to fight tyranny and despotism and aggression on the beaches, in the fields and to never surrender and there is Trump who thinks there's nothing worth doing any of that for--it's better to sell out your allies and make a deal.

And J.D. Vance finally let slip the real reason Trump and all the Trumpies can't abide Zelensky: He spoke at a Kamala rally in Pennsylvania! So disloyal! The Don should have sent him to sleep with the fishes first thing. 

So here's the updated song, if we can just find someone to sing it. Maybe Lindsay Graham or Jim Jordan? Or how about the two of them plus J.D., in three part harmony?

Oh, I thank my lucky stars

To be living here right in this time.

'Cause the flag once stood for freedom

And they dragged it through the slime 

And I'm proud to be an American

Where  I know how to bend the knee

And I won't forget the mob who sells

Whatever rights might be!

And I'll gladly hide right behind you

And laugh to see you bleed

'Cause there ain't no doubt

I'll sell you out

Just as soon as I can do the deed

It's the reason I love this land

Where there's no morality

Only do what turns a profit for you and for me!

It's the new American way

God Bless the USA!

Trump Goes Full Luca Brasi: Offer You Cannot Refuse

 

Trump got his true start on TV and he now plays a mafia Don on TV, straight out of the Oval Office.

Volodymyr  Zelensky visits the White House, putatively to sign a deal in which Trump buys "mineral rights" for Ukraine's rare earths and other extractables, in return for the United States sending Ukraine armaments to fight the war Vladimir Putin launched on February 24, 2022. Yes, that war. The one Mr. Trump has said was launched by Ukraine, by a dictator named Zelensky.

Ukraine Fighter

So, we are no longer in the mindset of, "Oh, this is a democracy being attacked by a dictatorship and we back the democracy." No, we are in the, "I might help you, but first you got to make a deal with me. This is not about democracy. This is about the money."

Trump's New Bff

And Mr. Trump wants Zelensky to kiss his ring, to be "grateful," which the lapdog Vance says is only right--Zelensky should be "respectful."

"Dictator" Doesn't Want a Ride. Wants Ammunition

Trump has made Zelensky the classic offer he cannot refuse: He holds the gun to Zelensky's head and says either his signature or his brains will be on the paper, Luca Brasi style, as Michael Corleone explained to his girlfriend in "The Godfather."

A Real President. A real patriot.

That's how things now work here in America.

Brought to you by MAGA. 

We have voted for the slimeball. What does that make us?

Ain't we proud?

One True Thing

 “The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt. At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens. The American people registered their verdict on the bloated, corrupt federal bureaucracy on November 5, 2024 by voting for President Trump and his promises to sweepingly reform the federal government.”

--Memo from Trumplings to the Federal government

The animating base gospel of Trumpism, as it was for Reaganism, is contained in the email sent out by Trump's co conspirators printed above.

This is the old Reagan: "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem." AKA "The ten scariest words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." And then there was the Reagan riff on the infamous "welfare queen" who is out there driving around in her Cadillac, living at her luxury hotel, spending cash and talking trash and all on those welfare checks sent out by a feckless government, while hard working taxpayers struggled to meet their bills every month.

Despots, cranks, goons and simpletons all need a simple core fantasy: For Hitler it was the Jews, who stabbed the German army and the German people in the back and lost Germany World War One and brought brought economic collapse after that war. For Joe McCarthy, it was the Communists, who he claimed had infiltrated the American government and were poised to take over.  For Trumplings, it is that hoary, "Waste, Fraud and Abuse," or rearranged, "Waste,Abuse and Fraud," or WAF.

Truth is no government, no human organization functions with perfect efficiency, not even a National Football League team. 

But compared to most private companies, most creations of the human species, the American federal government is pretty efficient, wastes relatively little and subject to remarkably little fraud or abuse. 

It's the government is the problem goons who are the problem. Not the government.