The Vestiges of Hatred

We cannot change history, but we can change the way we deal with it. We can write about it, talk about it, or memorialize it. In every case, our dealings with history change as time passes. An event is an event, but consideration of it years later can swing greatly.

The vast majority of monuments are honorary. The confederate statues honor Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and a number of other defenders of a slave-driven economy. Should they be honored? Perhaps this comparison is a bit off the wall, but, to make my point, would we welcome a statue of Adolf Hitler in the middle of Central Park? The confederates given statues, and those with army bases and schools named for them, were trying to maintain slavery. Not honorable by any measure.

While confederate flags have been removed from state buildings, it’s troubling to see the stars on cross-bars still being waved by white nationalist groups — not only in the South, but the North as well.

Removing the symbolic vestiges of that most tragic time in our history is important. But dealing with those who still espouse it, as well as with those espousing other forms of religious and national hatreds, is critical. 

An Outrageous President

 

 

I’ll begin this brief take on Bob Woodward’s book “RAGE” with the last sentence of his epilogue: “When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

His word “wrong” is wrong. But I don’t think there’s a single adjective that would be right. Saying Trump is wrong is like saying Willie Sutton was wrong to rob banks. It’s true, of course, but “wrong” is inadequate both for Sutton and for Trump.

The extensive quotations in the book — all recorded with Trump’s approval during 17 interviews — reveal a man who is incoherent, paranoid, vengeful, contradictory and deceitful. I guess you could say he really is the wrong man for the job.

Most of those adjectives we’ve already experienced during Trump’s nearly four years in office, but the odd thing about him that we never saw was his attitude toward Woodward and the book he was going to write. Trump knew it wasn’t going to be positive, but he not only welcomed Woodward into the Oval Office, with the recorder on the desk between them, he called Woodward at home many times during all hours of the day, and talked incessantly! And this after Woodward had written an earlier book about him, “FEAR,” which he reviled!

The book gave me the impression that Trump considered Woodward an alternative to a psychiatrist. All his character flaws were poured out during those interviews. And the other thing that became clear — although I had suspected it before I read the book — that despite his stated negativity toward the media, with its “Fake news,” he has a love-hate relationship with it. It reminded me of that comment, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” He knows that the more he vilifies the media the more they’ll cover him. His narcissism is of such a degree that only his name and his face matter, however negative the words printed or spoken.

As bad and dangerous a president as Trump is, the unwavering support he receives from white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups, and the misguided support he gets from good people, are most frightening.

I hope he recovers from the coronavirus he contracted — most likely out of carelessness related to his politically-motivated cavalier attitude toward it. But comes Nov. 3, assuming he doesn’t succumb to the virus, he must be defeated at the polls. Typically, he will call the results fraudulent. But, as I said in a previous blog, the margin of his defeat must be wide enough so that he will lose the aid he would need to subvert the results.  

 

The Trump Syndrome

Years ago I read a short story about Napoleon, “The Curfew Tolls,” by Stephen Vincent Benét. Its theme was that Napoleon’s fate would have been different had he been born fifty years before his actual birth. In Benét’s story, Napoleon is a major of artillery who dreams of greatness, but the times were not ripe for his true fate, and he dies young without having achieved renown or power.

Today we have the spectacle of Donald Trump as president of the United States, despite his 2016 campaign platform of arrogance, racism, lies and insults instead of rational argument.

Why then was he elected? The answer lies in the moment: We were stuck in militarily-engagement in the Middle East; the threat of “terrorism” dominated our political discourse; a widening economic disparity infected a recovering economy. It was a moment when a bellicose bully outside the so-called “political establishment” could insert himself into the political process and be embraced by a sizeable swath of the population — the vast majority of whom, against their own self-interests, were white male members of the working class.

You hear the pundits say that Donald Trump has captured the Republican Party. Not so. The Republicans were on the road to Trumpism years before he stepped into the ring. The keynote to their sharp right turn was the statement by Mitch McConnell during the early days of Barak Obama’s administration. He said openly and before microphones that the Republicans will do everything possible to prevent Obama from serving a second term.

And so we were saddled with the emergence of the Tea Party and the House’s Freedom Caucus, and the Congressional reign of obstructionism the likes of which we had never seen before. The resulting Republican-driven stalemates in Congress soured segments of the population on “Washington,” and provided a perfect moment for a Donald Trump to step in with his slogan “Make America Great Again.”

You may recall that in the 1930s there was another rabble-rouser who took advantage of his country’s political and economic instability, becoming its leader and leading it to military aggression and eventual devastation. He too had a slogan, similar to Trump’s: “Deutschland Uber Alles.”
Though the Republicans failed in their efforts to prevent Obama from winning a second term in office, they succeeded in blocking many of the reforms his administration put forward. His most notable achievement, the Affordable Care Act, muscled through because the Democrats held a majority in the Senate during his first two years. But the obstructionism of Newt Gingrich in the House and McConnell in the Senate took their toll during Obama’s tenure as president.

As with that Benet story, conditions have to be ripe for notable or notorious events to occur. Trump’s election may have been aided by the Russians, and by Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, but his unlikely nomination over those of “establishment” politicians came about because his bombast suited the mood of Republican voters who were tired of the roadblock in Congress. Why not give this guy with the funny hair a shot. And so they did.

I suspect that Trump’s nomination and election came not only as a surprise to McConnell and company, but they were fearful that he appeared to be a loose cannon, coarse and vulgar, and perhaps not manipulable enough to be in the forefront of their right-wing agenda. But they quickly learned that feeding his ego, despite his craziness (“Mexico will pay for the wall,” “Keep out all Muslims”), would go a long way toward helping them do their dirty work. As for the frequent accusation that the Senate Republicans lack spine, the accusers have the wrong part of the human anatomy. They lack the thing that beats in the chest.

What the Republicans and their titular leader didn’t count on was a virus with no political agenda. Its only aim was to infect and kill as much of the world’s population as possible. More than any other cause for President Trump’s unraveling, and for his incompetence and deceit to be felt and witnessed, it was Covid-19.

The election is only weeks away. The damage Trump and his willing enablers in Congress have done is enormous — domestically and internationally. When Trump is defeated — and, hopefully, the Senate is once again led by Democrats — it will take time and effort to rectify most aspects of that damage. Unfortunately, we will still be faced with the viral scourge that at this writing has taken over 200,000 American lives, many of those because of a president who chose political expedience over public safety.

The Bolton Book

 After reading John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” I’ve concluded (1) he considers himself to have been the ablest person in the Trump administration, (2) that every negative thing we’ve seen and heard from and about our president is true, and then some, (3) that he, Bolton, never met a pact or a treaty he liked, and (4) his unwillingness to testify at the impeachment hearings was because he considered them to be “impeachment malpractice,” even though his book reveals that the charges against Trump in the Ukraine matter were true. 

Bolton maintains that Trump was acquitted by the Senate not because of the well-established belief that the Republicans were going to acquit Trump no matter what arguments were presented, but because of the “partisan approach” to the impeachment by House Democrats. Without his customary venom, he mentions the fact that the Republican majority allowed no witnesses to testify, but that, if subpoenaed, he would have testified. Translation: He knew he wouldn’t have to testify. 

The book makes clear not only the horrors of the Trump administration but that Bolton, who even calls himself a “hard-liner,” is a dangerous person to be in government during the nuclear age. 

I didn’t enjoy what I read. Rather, I came away from it more frightened than before I opened it. I am now reading “RAGE,” Bob Woodward’s book based primarily on his extensive interviews with Trump. I’m nearly finished. Stay tuned.

Faith vs Fact

I was surprised to learn that Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a devout Catholic. According to Bob Woodward, in his book "RAGE," Redfield prays every day. He even prays for Donald Trump. (Oh well, prayer can't hurt.) 

If there's one field of endeavor in which fact, not faith, is the bedrock, it is science. A scientist does not merely wish things into existence, or attribute phenomena to anything other than nature. He or she investigates the rudiments of our world and the universe to uncover their secrets. I'm not suggesting that Redfield's religious beliefs make him any less of a scientist, but when he asks himself the scientist's basic question, "How did this happen?", a recognition that every phenomenon has a cause, he must apply that same scientific standard to the question, "How did God happen?" 

The basis of all science, as we know it, is that nothing can come from nothing. The Bible has a simple answer in its first sentence: "In the beginning God made the heavens and the Earth." Think about the word "beginning." If there's nothing before the beginning, how was it able to begin? That sentence alone should turn off a scientific mind as to the Bible's credibility.

Scientists have tried to address this dilemma for centuries. One theory they've come up with they've labeled the "Big Bang." Someone will have to explain to me how you get a big bang out of nothing. Dynamite has a big bang, but it couldn't do its thing if it weren't composed of nitroglycerin and ammonium nitrate. My unscientific conclusion astounds me: there was no beginning. Yes, there may have been a Big Bang, but only as one of the developments in the universe that occur because of the constant movement and interaction of everything from atoms to giant stars. In short, the only way I can conceive of a beginning in which there was nothing that began it is that there was no beginning, that the entire universe and everything it contained was always there - changing, moving, colliding - and, a bow to Darwin, evolving.

Call me crazy, but if you think I am then you'll have to answer the unknowable: How did God begin?

Yes, the universe and everything in it is awesome. There are those who believe that only a superpower, the likes of which we can't imagine, could create the magnificance we behold. (The painters of the Renaissance gave God a human form, simplifying matters.) But along with the magnificence we also have disease, pestilence, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and all the other misfortunes we are forced to cope with. And in the vastness of space there are stars that explode, "black holes," meteorites that strike moons and planets with devastating force.

Faith may be a motivating force, but it's no substitute for facts, which are the only ingredients in truth.

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Mourning in America

The streets we walk,

the stores we shop,

the schools our children attend —

even our havens of worship —

have become the scenes of untimely end.

Students, African-Americans, Jews —

the body count grows.

We are a nation in perpetual mourning.

We wear no garments befitting our sorrow,

but those are only brief shows of grief.

Ours is a recurring theme

that will play again tomorrow.

We boast of our freedoms

to do as we like, go where we will,

hard-earned freedoms we cherish.

But mayhem shatters our peaceful pursuits

and we mourn for those who perish.

Where’s the security our heritage boasts?

There is no law, no regulation

that assures us life and liberty.

The scourge we face is stirred by those

whose rule is hate and hyprocrisy

supported by profiteers.

How do we weigh the tons of guns

against our weightless tears?

An Itch About North Korea

I've got an itch that this piece is going to help me scratch. It's about North Korea.

There's been a big hullabaloo about North Korea's nuclear ambitions, most pointedly about its ICBM that would be able to reach Seattle. Nuclear weapons are a threat to mankind — whether they're in the arsenals of the United States, Russia, China, Israel, or North Korea. But the hype about the North Korean ICBM is ludicrous. Can you imagine what would happen if Kim Jong Un had the audacity to send its missile our way? That would be the end of North Korea.

To justify the fear being instilled in us about the danger to Seattle, Kim is being incessantly portrayed as a monster with no regard for human life. He may be as bad as he's being portrayed, but I have a few questions: (1) Have we ever heard a speech, much less a word, by Kim? (2) From every scene of North Korea that reaches our TV screens, most of which are of a military nature, we are meant to get the impression that it's a failing country bolstered only by its military might.

I'm not suggesting that Kim is being given a bad rap, only that it's a rap not supported by anything from his own mouth. And if, as implied by Western reports, that the North Koreans are miserable under the dictatorial whims of Kim Jong Un, we have not seen any evidence of it.

While I feel that nuclear proliferation must be stopped, It seems evident to me that North Korea considers its nuclear weaponry a defensive plus, just as we do our own nuclear stockpile.

We are living with the greatest irony of all time: that keeping the peace depends upon possession of the most destructive power ever created. The danger lies not that the leadership of civilized nations — including North Korea — will use atomic weapons, but that this power may fall into the hands of terrorists who are only too willing to blow themselves up along with everyone else in the misguided notion that that is the true path to heavenly bliss.

We must find a way to deal with North Korea as we would with any other nation. Not doing so is more dangerous than the portrait we're painting of it.