A Proposal for Modesty

We all make mistakes, so don’t feel too superior if you find yourself in a discussion over the holidays with a 2016 Trump voter. We all thought Trump would improve his behavior after winning the election, maybe even ‘pivot’ after taking office. Most of his voters probably expected that he would move from provocative to productive, once in power. Even the many who considered him deeply offensive expected him to moderate his rhetoric and try to unify a larger slice of the electorate.

So, admit it, you were probably also surprised (proven wrong) as Trump’s behavior went from bad to even worse. Nobody expected his lying to actually accelerate. Nobody expected him to withhold aid to an ally, in a shooting war with our enemy, in seeking personal political advantage. Nobody expected him to besmirch our long-standing allies and befriend some of the most undemocratic despots. Nobody expected him to blow up the deficit (ok, strike that, many did). Even those who wanted stronger enforcement of immigration laws did not envision the inhuman cruelty of separating children from parents. Even those who wanted to get tough with China did not plan on arbitrary tariffs, withdrawal from beneficial trade agreements, and self-inflicted economic damage with no end in sight.  Even those who think our military is overextended did not expect us to abandon noble allies to suffer the revenge of Syria, Turkey, and Russia.

How do you persuade your interlocutor to change their vote in 2020? Stating the simple truth, that they behaved foolishly and should ‘wake up’, or something like that, won’t produce a pleasant conversation or the outcome you desire. Instead, first try to find something praiseworthy in what motivated them to vote as they did – maybe a general feeling that ‘things are heading the wrong direction’, be it wealth disparity, climate change, trade imbalance, budget deficit… find something. (Presupposing they are not outright racists, acolytes of Ayn Rand, or anti-vaxxers, in which case they are probably allergic to logic or common sense so just quit). Then point out, as gently as possible, how disappointing the last 3 years have been and how unlikely it is to improve. If that doesn’t work, ask them what distinguishes steadfast from just plain stubborn?

Moronge

tRump is the orange lying moron with a bad comb-over.  Superficial does not capture the deep falseness of this creep. How far our country has fallen from the honorable, "cannot tell a lie" Washington and "Honest Abe" Lincoln to the dishonorable "cannot tell the truth" tRump.

Moronge

"America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves". -- Abraham Lincoln 

Traitor tRump is doing his utmost to hollow-out our nation, degrade it, make its people lose their decency and honor.  

Foreign "Entanglements" of Recent Republican Presidents

Eisenhower was an excellent president.  With quiet tact and diplomacy, he had successfully led the largest foreign engagement ever, the allied reconquest of Europe.  Like U. S. Grant before him, he knew that war is hell and that almost any 'other means' are better than sending countrymen to hell.  Nevertheless, the Republican Party went straight to hell after him.

Nixon betrayed US peace plans to end the Vietnam war, promising better terms to South Vietnamese President Thieu. This occurred before Nixon was President, making it not only a violation of law but treasonous. Nixon later forced Thieu to take the same deal. The war raged for almost another decade, killing tens of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and costing hundreds of billions of dollars.

Nixon, along with unindicted co-conspirator and war criminal Henry Kissinger, secretly and illegally expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos, causing the deaths of tens of thousands, destabilizing Cambodia, and leading directly to the horrors of the ‘killing fields’ of Khmer Rouge.

Reagan re-started the cancelled B1 bomber program, costing a cool $100 billion. The bomber was never needed in war, having been supplanted by the stealth B2 bomber, but it helped the arms industry of Reagan’s home state of California. Reagan also imagined a missile defense system that was developed at a cost of billions but still, even after decades and hundreds of billions of dollars, certainly isn’t reliable and may not work at all.

Reagan sent Marines into Lebanon with no mission. They soon were withdrawn, but not before hundreds were killed in a bombing of their barracks. Reagan was the anti-Teddy Roosevelt: teaching terrorists in the middle east that Americans “talk loudly and carry a limp stick”. This fiasco cost mere hundreds of millions of dollars but also the lives of more hostages and hundreds of Marines.

Reagan encouraged a Marine Colonel to break laws prohibiting arms trafficking to the Contras of Nicaragua. This lowly White House staffer arranged secret sales of missiles and warplane parts to Iran, breaking our own embargo. The sales were intended to curry favor with the Mullahs, but no hostages were released and, predictably, new ones were taken. Money from sales (minus fees) secretly bought arms for the Contras, who were essentially right-wing terrorists opposing the democratically-elected Nicaraguan government. Providing arms was explicitly prohibited by Congress. The cost of this “neat idea” in lives and dollars were relatively light but our reputation as a democracy functioning under rule of law, not subject to the whims of a petty politico-military clique, was tarnished.

Bush (the elder), as VP under Reagan, was responsible for overseeing the arms-for-hostages-and-Contras deal. He could never remember what meetings he attended or what was discussed or decided. He apparently misunderstood his ‘oversight’ responsibility, thinking it was advice to overlook, instead of to stop, malfeasance and illegality.

Bush sent the armed forces to capture Manuel Noriega, a former ally and CIA source.  Seems his buddy had gotten a little greedy in profiting from drug trafficking and was named in a US court.  Hundreds of Panamanians were killed.  It would've been so much easier to just invite his buddy up for a drink and arrest him.

Bush was ‘surprised’ when erstwhile buddy Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, though his ambassador, forewarned, had said "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait". Bush, goaded by Thatcher to ‘man up’, formed a coalition of the ‘willing and the billing’ to recapture Kuwait. Then he encouraged opponents to rise up in revolt against Hussein. When they did, Bush declined to risk the coalition and allowed Hussein to use his aircraft and tanks to crush the rebellions. This debacle cost the lives of thousands, hundreds of billions of dollars, and further eroded our reputation.

Bush (junior) ignored explicit warnings that terrorists sought to fly ‘airplanes into buildings’. On 9/11, terrorists did exactly that. Bush went AWOL (again), flying off on Air Force One, leaving VP Cheney to start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush, Cheney and the Defense Secretary Rumsfeld all dodged the draft during Vietnam but were eager to send the army overseas in a ‘permanent war’ against terror and terrorists, with unclear or unobtainable goals. Soon, employing torture (enhanced interrogation), kidnapping (rendition), and imprisonment without trial (Gitmo), we had become what we professed to fight.

Bush and Cheney lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and about his links with Osama bin Laden. Their contrived war against Iraq cost thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars. 

Trump, another draft dodger, seems also eager for war with persistent tough talk and saber-rattling. “Conventional” war is not good enough, not big enough for this dotard, he wants to go toe-to-toe, nuclear conflict, with whomever (except the Russians who are so helpful with cash and probably not the Chinese who produce Trump stuff)…but North Korean, Iran…

You could look it up. 

Odysseus & Penelope – a meeting of wiles

This classic story keeps on giving. Emily Wilson has given us not only a new translation of the 3,000 years old “Odyssey”, the first by an American woman, but also an introductory essay in the New Yorker. In the intro, she addresses several aspects of how women were treated in ancient Greece and specifically whether Penelope can be viewed as an ‘empowered woman’.

It is hardly surprising that women were frequently and casually abused back then, behavior codified in law and societal norms, as they have been mostly up till the present day. The fact that ‘gender-fluid’ Athena (as Ms Wilson describes her) was powerful and successful in protecting her pet Odysseus should, I think, count little in this situation; Athena was a god, and what gods do is not relevant to mortals (though their status may reflect an ‘ideal’ condition not fully acknowledged by the mortal author and admired and honored only unconsciously by the listeners and readers).

So what about the trick? No, not the trick Penelope pulled on the ignoble suitors, keeping them waiting for her ‘hand’ (actually, her dominion) while she wove a burial cloth for her husband during the day and unraveled it at night. The real ‘trick’ was when she fooled ‘wily Odysseus’, her husband, into revealing his feelings about her. Odysseus had kept his cool through a couple decades of war and travel. But when Penelope hinted that their bed’s post, a living olive tree, had been cut, he had a melt down! He gained control of himself after a few sentences, but those were enough to let her know he cared about more than just reclaiming his land: he was also claiming her.

Perhaps by some modern standards, that may not earn her the badge ‘empowered woman’, but by god that was a pretty empowering and ‘wily’ trick – and probably reminded old Odysseus more than anything elso of just why he had praised like-minded (“homophrosyne”) couples and found her so attractive way back when, and now. Pretty empowering stuff.

Another fascinating aspect of this new translation/interpretation is the killing of the suitor’s ‘consorts’, female slaves who had consorted with the suitors. I must admit that the unfairness and the especially the brutality of their killing, practically a slow strangulation, had eluded me before now. The observation that Penelope was told by her son to 'shut up', according to the expert translators, is overdramatized, I think (FWIW), because she was empowered amply to practically order the that the bow be put into Odysseus' hands, which led to the ultimate 'show down' in the Ithaca corral.

The GOP will Impeach Trump!

After Trump has assumed the presidency, the long knives will come out.  Many of his ideas, insofar as they can be discerned and distinguished from mere posturing and off-the-cuff remarks, run contrary to long-standing GOP positions.  He has personally insulted almost every Republican stalwart. They suffered the indignities because they are not as skilled at schoolyard bullying.  They had little choice but to allow Trump to become their nominee and then back him, albeit half-(or less)-heartedly.  However, once they have seized the presidency, Trump becomes largely a liability to their usual program: free trade, deficit reduction, counterbalance to Russia.  They can impeach Trump secure in the knowledge that Pence, a toadying conventional conservative, is next in succession.  A palace coup by legal means.

Trump is trying to appease enough Republican constituencies to avoid this fate.  Nominating Goldman Sachs bankers to financial posts, an anti-union CEO to labor, an anti-school crusader to education, an anti-Palestinian to Israel, a fossil-fuel enthusiast to energy, are just a few examples of currying favor.

If Trump follows-through on his promises of massive spending – he tossed off a figure of $1Trillion for infrastructure and defense – and cuts taxes, the deficit will explode. Such spending might well have been beneficial in 2009, when it was proposed by Obama in the depths of the Great Recession but vociferously opposed by the Republicans, because unemployment was soaring above 10% and interest rates were threatening to go sub-zero.  Now, however, with unemployment very low and inflation/interest rates stabilized, such a fiscal stimulus will dramatically increase inflation and create an enormous debt with a relative high interest payments, constricting future leverage.  What will Speaker Paul Ryan and other opponents of deficit spending do?

If he follows-through on promises of stopping illegal immigration and deporting illegal immigrants, many businesses will suffer labor shortages and wage increases.  This will be opposed by many business owners, a group that is a mainstay of the GOP.

If he follows-through on closer relationship with Russia, and reduces our ties to our NATO allies, countries in eastern Europe will be pressured into a functional new Russian Empire.  This will be opposed by inter-nationalists and small-d-democrats, including many Republicans, who believe the US must counterbalance such ambitions.  

If it were just the deficit, no problem because Republicans in the past have ignored their ‘principles’ in similar circumstances, going along with Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s spend-don’t-tax programs and the deficit doubled each time.  But they were ‘real’ Republicans.  And it is not just the deficit but several key Republican positions.

But nobody knows whether Trump will even try to keep any of the promises he made.  Many are contradictory and early signs are many will simply be ignored. He just now appointed a serious deficit hawk to lead his own budget office, suggesting that he does not intend to follow-through with significant infrastructure spending, or tax cuts, or both.  We must become accustomed to a President who evidently cannot formulate coherent or even consistent thoughts.

The Cause of, and Cure for, the Trumpocalypse

What passes for “elites” in the US electorate (some college) looked at Trump’s history and behavior and concluded that he is a charlatan, a fraud, a con-man, a liar, a demagogue. Oh, and unfit to be the US President. But “the people”, no college, “low information” voters, convinced themselves that he would do the most important things for them: remove the low-wage job competitors (AKA undocumented workers). Similar voters elected GW Bush in 2000; he was grossly unprepared and consequently we suffered 9/11, were pushed by Chicken hawk neocons into Afghanistan and Iraq, then dragged down in the Great Recession.

Trump is even less fit than W for the presidency. It is a small blessing that VP Pence does not have the turpitude or twisted malevolence of Cheney. But the other deplorables that Trump is herding into his administration are failures desperate for a return to any sort of prominence: Rudy Giuliani (a gnome, a noun, a verb, and 9/11), Chris Christie (a bridge too far), and Newt Gingrich (amoral moralist). Instead of #DrainTheSwamp its’s #FeedTheCrocs. Not promising.

Trump voters can hardly complain if he fails to implement incoherent or even inconsistent policies. Bringing back many manufacturing jobs would be hard, slow, maybe even impossible work, not suited to an evanescent attention. And making America great “again” in some voters’ minds would entail turning the clock back a half century. But his voters will be upset if simple promises are broken. Simple promises like “build the wall” or “lock her up”. He can finesse who’s paying for the wall or what charges to bring. But Trump has already backed away from or explicitly renounced these promises. Will we “dig coal” or not? How long before his supporters feel like the #TrumpChumps they are?

On the other hand, Trump has selected a woman who was his strong critic to represent the US at the UN. Our allies the Germans say that because of the uncertainty Trump brings, they will increase their defense spending, maybe even up to the 2% of GDP that they’ve promised but never met. The Danes whimper that spending even 2% would break their social system. (Did all the real men leave Denmark when the Vikings went to England a millennium ago?) For the past 4+ years Obama has begged the Euros to pay their share. Maybe it will take a loose cannon to get some jobs done.

Nov 8, 2016: The end of Democracy as we know it?

--> [written Sept 1, 2016, posted Nov 9] 
If Trump wins in November, at least historians will have a date-certain for when the American experiment in democracy returned the definitive null result.  That differs from the ends of the Roman empire (too many choices with civil wars and goths) and the British (when is a crumbling empire finally toast).  Although the end was abrupt, like the death of some elderly people we can note in the late US empire a history of increasing frailty.  We recall an abrupt personality change, toward meanness (1968), thankfully transient, a return to decency before a fall (1980), compromised intellect and onset of dementia, again a recovery and compos mentis ('92) then a hard fall with serious injury (2001) that produced delusions of grandeur and power, then a final, brief remarkable lucidity and partial recovery (2008) before the terminal plunge into madness, self-absorption and fantasy (2016).

We hail our new vulgarian Overlord.