R.W. Emerson D.J. Trump Inconsistency and the Folly of Transcendentalism Audio
Yes, I know, the title of this week's essay is a bit off-putting and cumbersome. But please, do read on; the essay is hopefully better than the title. Back in 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the father of American Transcendentalism, published an essay entitled Self-Reliance, best known for the line "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . ." Self-Reliance contains the most thorough statement of Emerson’s emphasis on the need for individuals to avoid conformity and false consistency, and instead follow their own instincts and ideas. Although not nearly as well known, that which follows "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . ." provides the clarity one needs to better understand what Emerson was getting at:
". . . adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
One has to wonder what Emerson, "The sage of Concord," would have made of '45, the "Emperor of Inconsistency," - the man who takes great pride in being both inconsistent and unpredictable. Would Emerson have put a giant disclaimer at the beginning of Self-Reliance . . . something to the effect of "What follows is both well and good for the likes of Socrates, Copernicus, Newton and the gang but definitely not when it comes to Trump?" Or would he simply have given up entirely on Transcendentalism - the philosophy which emphasizes the inherently unknowable character of reality- and do something totally inconsistent . . . like become, say, a wino?
'45's penchant for inconsistency and unpredictability were on full display during the European leg of his recently concluded 10-day foreign jaunt. In his address to NATO, '45 pushed around leaders of the 28-member nations on their contributions to the trans-Atlantic alliance. Besides demonstrating a lack of understanding as to precisely how the 68-year old alliance works (member nations do not make payments to the United States), '45 returned to the "America First" meme he used to great applause (or consternation) and acclamation ( or stupefaction) during the presidential campaign. One will recall that during the campaign, the future POTUS repeatedly stated that NATO was "very obsolete," and then, once he had spent a mere 82 days in office, declared NATO rehabilitated. Moreover, he took credit for transforming it into "a modern, cost-sharing, terrorism-fighting pillar of American and European security." Last month, when '45 hosted António Guterres, the new UN Secretary General, he announced “I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.” And yet, in his speech in Brussels the other day, in addition to chastising the 27 other leaders for not spending enough of their national budgets on defense, made the historic, unpardonable mistake of not explicitly endorsing Article 5 of NATO's founding document. (n.b. The article, known as the collective-defense clause, stipulates that an attack on any member is an attack on all. It was invoked for the first - and only - time in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.)
Needless to say, this went over like the proverbial lead balloon. Grading '45's Brussels appearance, one international relations specialist noted: "Diplomatically, the speech was inept at best and deliberately insulting at worst."
Then, there was the issue of climate change. Meeting in Taormina, Sicily, leaders of the G7 - the world's most exclusive geopolitical club - issued their 2017 declaration pledging commitment to the 195-nation Paris accord on climate change. In an announcement that one reporter said "hearken[ed] to a characteristically reality TV cliffhanger," '45' issued a Tweet in which he stated "I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!" Former Goldman Sachs executive - and current chief economic adviser - Gary Cohn told reporters that the president "continues to study" the Paris agreement. Throughout the presidential campaign the future '45 threatened several times to pull out of the Paris climate accords, a groundbreaking agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. All along he has been fairly consistent in calling steps to cut climate-warming emissions bad for business. He’s even called climate change a Chinese hoax “to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” But as of yesterday - according to his latest Tweet - he isn't sure precisely what he's going to do. One wonders who he's going to be speaking to and what he's going to be reading in the next couple of days in order to make up his mind. If, as expected, '45 pulls the U.S. out of the climate accord, we will then become one of just three countries on the planet who don't care about saving the planet - the other two being Syria and Nicaragua. Such an exclusive club!
Taking "a couple more days" to study up on climate change prior to making a decision fraught with consequence for both the future of Planet Earth and America's global leadership is akin to cramming for a final exam consisting of precisely three "no-brainer" questions:
To pull out of the Paris Accord would be tantamount to answering :
About the only constant in 45's life of inconsistency is the pursuit of wealth and celebrity. Towards those ends, he has spent a lifetime associating almost exclusively with the hyper-wealthy (witness the president's Cabinet). For '45 and many of his ilk, the question of climate change - like those of healthcare, the defunding of education and much of the social safety net and being accountable to such "inanities" as the law and the federal tax code - is based on their peculiar worldview:
Two things, however that no amount of wealth can defend against are catastrophic illness and a seriously deteriorating global climate. And yet here, our notoriously inconsistent president seems to be horribly consistent: wealth is the best - indeed the only- safety net against reality. In this one instance, Emerson was correct: a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
For everything else concerning '45 and his utter love affair with inconsistency, Emerson may well want to rethink the entire self-reliance-is-at-the-heart-of-Transcendentalism school of thought and admit - at least in this case - its total folly.
'45 is definitely no Socrates . . . nor Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo, or Newton. And without question, he is absolutely no "pure and wise spirit."
Just a rich, aging man-child who is whistling in the dark.
129 days gone, 1,328 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Oh For the Life Of a Sardine! Audio
Unbelievably, there was a time – and not so very long ago – when one could get through an hour or a day, not to mention a week or even a month or more without benefit of some earth shattering political crisis upending our personal, psychological and civic equilibrium. Ah, those were the days; periods of halcyon innocence! Weeks without feelings of looming doom! Most lamentably, they are no longer part of our reality. And whether or not these times of relative calm will one day reappear is a question that not even the wisest of the wise would dare attempt answer.
Ever since that fateful day when the man-child of Manhattan descended upon his gilded escalator to announce his candidacy for POTUS, we, the political- and news-junkies of America, the reporters, essayists and pundits of the world, have become afflicted with a case of communal gastric reflux. And, to make the condition even worse, it carries numerous comorbidities including tachycardia (rapid heart rate), hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure), prime-time sweats, insomnia and what we shall term fóvo papoutsión (Φόβο παπουτσιών) - roughly speaking, "the fear of the next shoe dropping." It all adds up to what the Germans call weltschmerz - a feeling of dread, melancholy and world weariness.
The question before us is whether or not there is anything we can we do to save ourselves from all the depressing inanity and insanity currently enveloping us. Well, occasionally ungluing oneself from the 24-hour news cycle can be beneficial. For many, addiction to the latest breaking bulletin - which, predictably, will be endlessly diced, sliced and repeated ad nauseum - is as strong as the tug of muscatel to a wino or texting to a teen. An occasional breaking away from persistent information overload is a good thing, and can act as a palliative - a medicine which helps relieve pain without actually dealing with the cause of the condition. Everyone - up to and including God in heaven - deserves an occasional "time-out" from the woes of the world. The Bible informs us (Gen. 2.2) that even The Almighty takes a shabbos schluf - a Sabbath nap - one day in seven. Perhaps then, an act of Imatatio Dei - imitating The Divine and removing oneself from all the sturm und draang (storm and stress) of '45, Lavrov, Flynn, Comey, Sessions, Kushner et al can be a good and necessary thing.
Perhaps a bit of laughter is called for . . .
I know that when this political news junkie gets overwhelmed, my thoughts turn to home - Hollywood - and comedy . . . especially Sir Charles Chaplin. Why? Well, the man's movies make me laugh -- and cry and think and give me hope. Sir Charles (1889-1977) was arguably cinema's first and greatest genius. Coming from an English boyhood of almost Dickensian poverty, he rose to become the complete cinematic package: actor and writer; composer and editor; producer and director. It is said that at his peak, he was the best-known, most beloved person on the planet. And, unbeknownst to all but the most fanatic Chaplin maniacs, he was quite a philosopher. Among his most thoughtful statements, several are forever in my mind:
Not at all bad for a man who had no more than a 2nd grade education. And yes, apropos of Sir Charles' last statement, he was quite political. One need only view his 1940 masterwork of anti-Nazi satire, The Great Dictator, to get an idea of just how political he was. Partly as a result of making this movie - in which he played a Hitler lookalike named "Adenoid Hinkel, Der Phooey of Tomania" and a lookalike Jewish barber - Chaplin, never particularly popular among moralists, prigs, anti-Semites and conservatives, became the subject of a toxic witch hunt which would eventually lead to his being exiled from the United States. (n.b. Although moralists accused Chaplin of being a child-molester and anti-Semites railed against him for being a "dirty gutter Jew," he was, in fact, neither When asked in a 1915 interview if he was indeed a Jew, he famously answered "I have not that good fortune.")
At the precise point when the witch hunt against Chaplin was reaching its apex, he was engaged in the making of his final American-produced film, Limelight. , His most autobiographical cinematic work, Limelight is the story of Calvero, a once famous British Music Hall performer, now aged and well down on his luck. With the help of a suicidal ballerina (played by the luminous 20-year old Claire Bloom), Calvero does manage to make a comeback, where he reprises some of his most famous set pieces - including a hilarious bit with a pair of "trained" fleas and several silly songs. Which brings us to this essay's title, Oh For the Life Of a Sardine! This is the title of a brief ditty Calvero sings towards the end of both the movie and his life:
Chaplin Sings Oh For the Life of a Sardine
When I was three my nurse told me
About reincarnation
And ever since I've been convinced,
Thrilled with anticipation
That when I leave this earth
It makes my heart feel warm
To know that I'll return
In some other form.
But I don't want to be a tree
Sticking in the ground -- I'd sooner be a flea.
I don't want to be a flower
Waiting by the hour
Hoping for pollens to alight on me.
So when I cease to be
I want to go back, I want to go back, I want to go back to the sea!
Oh for the life of a sardine!
That is the life for me!
Cavorting and spawning every morning
Under the deep blue sea.
To have no fear for storm nor gale.
Oh to chase the tail of a whale!
Oh for the life of a sardine!
That is the life for me!
No matter how I'm feeling, this song always makes makes me laugh, always picks me up. It, like just about everything Sir Charles ever filmed, acts as a much-needed palliative. That he could write, compose and perform such a piece during a time when personally, society's moralists and the House un-American Activities Committee were running him to ground is a testament to the importance of taking a "time out." Time-outs, to pilfer a bit of Shakespeare, " . . . are such stuff as dreams are made on."
And so, dear reader, instead of obsessively awaiting the next dropped shoe, take a bit of a time out, watch Blazing Saddles or Monty Python's The Life of Brian; read some P.G. Wodehouse or Dave Barry; listen to a song by Tom Lehrer . . . or contemplate living the life of a sardine. It will put the roses back in your cheeks and prepare you to get back in the fight. For as Sir Charles wisely noted:
““You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down.”
122 days down, 1,335 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
"What an arrant rascally beggarly lousy knave . . ." Audio
Another day another disturbing headline; another week another heretofore unthinkable act. This past week began with the firing of FBI Director James Comey.' 45's initial explanation for this bizarre – though perfectly legal act – was that "he had acted on the recommendation of Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein," who had harshly criticized Director Comey for the way he had handled the Hillary Clinton email kerfuffle this past July and then again just days before the 2016 presidential election. Two days later, in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, '45 "undermined his own alibi," flatly stating that he had determined to ax Director Comey long before receiving Rosenstein's memo. Furthermore, in addition to smearing Comey ("he's a Showboat, he's a grand stander") '45 so much as admitted that he was motivated by concerns about the Russian scandal. According to many legal authorities and (Democratic) members of Congress, the President' s statements could lead to serious legal charges and challenges . . . the most onerous of which would be obstruction of justice. (n.b. It will be remembered that both Presidents Nixon and Clinton were charged with obstruction.) Things have progressed so far and so quickly that just yesterday, in a piece he wrote for the Washington Post, Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe called for '45's impeachment.
Add to this '45's reported request that Comey "pledge loyalty" to him and the clear indication that A.G. Jeff Sessions - who had publicly recused himself from anything concerning the FBI Trump/Russia investigation - nonetheless ordered DAG Rosenstein's memo to the president . . . and you have both a political and Constitutional hornet's nest of historic proportions.
But wait: there's more . . . and more.
In the hope of diverting attention away from the entire Comey/Russia investigation/obstruction of justice debacle, the President decided to breathe life back into the phony issue of mass, nationwide voter fraud. He did this by launching a commission on 'election integrity' to be co-chaired by Vice President Pence and Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach, who has been described as "an architect of restrictive voting and immigration laws around the country." It will be recalled that shortly after his inauguration,' 45 began insisting that "3,000,000 to 5,000,000 people voted illegally." (Besides being demonstrably untrue, the reality is that one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter-impersonation fraud in the United States.") Ironically, since '45 began to claim “rigged” elections and millions of illegal voters, public support for the idea of widespread fraud actually has dropped. A recent Politico-Morning Consult poll showed that 43 percent believe fraud is very or somewhat common — down from 64 percent in a 2015 CBS News poll.
If all this weren't enough, over the past 24 hours, the Dutch television documentary program Zembla (Dutch for "new land") ran two exhaustively researched bombshells entitled The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump - part one subtitled The Russians, and part two, The King of Diamonds. Shockingly, what these two classic "follow the money" documentaries have painstakingly unearthed is an extraordinarily complex international web of interconnecting corporations, shell companies and international holding firms in which the Trumps and Kushners are active participants. What they all have in common are ties to the so-called "Russian Oligarchs" - the multi-billionaires who, at the time the Soviet Union fell apart, divvied up all the regime's assets - oil, coal, land, buildings, minerals. These oligarchs are, in essence, leaders of the so-called "Russian Mafia." They have been cited for crimes ranging from money laundering and murder to dealing in Angolan "blood diamonds" and human trafficking, not to mention prostitution. Since day one, whenever '45 has been asked about his ties to the Russians, he has flatly stated “I have nothing to do with Russia – no deals, no loans, no nothing!” One thing the Zembla documentary makes crystal clear is that, the press has been asking '45 the wrong question. Instead of asking "What investments have you made and/or business dealings do you have in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union?" they should have been asking "What investments and/or business dealings do the Russians have with you?" According to the investigative journalists from Zembla, the answer is "a staggering amount." Do yourself a favor: check out the two Zembla videos and get to know such shadowy figures as Tevfik Arif, Felix Sater, Sam Pa and Lev Leviev as well as such shadowy firms as "Bayrock," "KazBay B.V." and "88 Queensway Group."
These two YouTube videos are not your run-of-the-mill tin hat conspiratorial garbage; they are works of utterly serious investigative journalism . . . works which over the past 24-36 hours have quickly gained both traction and viewership around the globe. For anyone who has had the gnawing suspicion that the current administration is quickly turning America into nothing more, nothing less than "the family business," this two-part documentary is a must.
And yet, despite the welter of facts, evidence, Tweets, and bouts of foot-in-mouth disease, '45 still has a solid hold (at least for now) on his base and the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress. Find it hard to believe? Asking yourself how in Hell anyone could not find grave fault in the firing of James Comey, the manner in which '45 carries himself or his flagrant lying? Well consider this:
The reasons for this ungodly disconnect are many, and require delving into the fields of abnormal and political psychology, as well as epistemology (the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion) as well as psycho-history. Regrettably, we have neither the time nor space for what amounts to a cross-disciplinary doctoral dissertation. Suffice it to say that long before '45 took the oath of office, what is now known as the "alt-right" began retraining a large segment of the American public fervently disbelieve anything said, written or concluded by mainstream sources like The New York Times, Washington Post, network television or academicians. They have trained their minions with an almost Pavlovian predictability to see anything going against their predigested beliefs to be the product of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Shades of Joseph McCarthy . . .
So where are we headed? To an impeachment? How about an authoritarian takeover? Or maybe a revolution? Sorry, but ever since my crystal ball came back from the cleaners, it's been on the fritz. Although impeachment at first sounds great and may well happen if enough Republicans begin putting patriotism ahead of party, remember that the next two people on the Constitutional totem pole are named Pence and Ryan; the former an unreconstructed "prayer warrior," the latter a devotee of Randian Objectivism.
There are no end of nasty words to describe the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; characterizations of who he is and what he is doing to our country. Lamentably, I wasn't raised to be readily comfortable with profanity. However, having learned a fair amount of Shakespeare as a lad, I do know a few turns of phrase which, if translated into modern English, are about as filthy as one can get. And so, we conclude with Fluellen's (that's him in the picture above) base assessment of Michael Williams (whom he believes to be engaged in a traitorous relationship with the French Duke of Alençon) in Henry V, Act IV, Scene 8:
"What an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave . . ."
If the shoe doth fit . . .
117 days down, 1,340 days to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
LIFE Is a Pre-existing Condition Audio
This past Thursday, '45 and a couple of dozen Republican House members gathered in the White House Rose Garden to celebrate passage (by a single vote) of their greedy, sadistic and dangerously sophomoric "American Healthcare Act." To call their celebration premature or overblown would be kind, for in truth, it was tantamount to breaking open a case of champagne because your team scored a run on an inning-ending double play in the top of the first of the first game of the season. But then again, '45 does relish victories, no matter how small or pyrrhic. And if there is a God in the heavens, this 217-213 vote victory will be of the pyrrhic sort – the definition of which is "Coming at far too great a cost to have been worth it all." There's no question that the Democrats – none of whom voted in favor of this atrocity – fully understand the meaning of "pyrrhic victory." Moments after the vote tally was announced many of them began singing Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" to their colleagues across the aisle. They were, of course, referring to the 2018 mid-term election . . .
One wonders how many of the 217 Republicans who voted for this bill (20 voted against it) had read – let alone –understood just how nasty, misguided and hardhearted a piece of legislation their party gurus had crafted. For indeed, the American Healthcare Act guts some of the most widely supported aspects of Obama care, such as:
Who knows? Perhaps a lot of the Republicans voting in favor of this bill really didn't support it, were betting that the Senate version would eliminate its most egregious clauses, but nonetheless felt they had to walk in lockstep with their wealthiest donors, most of whom are more concerned with the enormous tax advantages coming their way than with the health of the American public.
For make no mistake about it, the House version of this bill has as much to do with putting hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans than with making sure that all Americans can afford health insurance. The Republicans were in such a hurry to keep '45's campaign promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare that they couldn't even wait for the Congressional Budget Office's cost analysis - which would have provided an estimate of how much the bloody thing will cost and how many millions of people will likely be losing their insurance. According to the Tax Policy Center, the bill would cut taxes by about $765 billion over the next decade. The lion's share of the tax savings would go to the wealthy and hyper-wealthy. The top 20 percent of earners would receive 64% of the savings and the top 1% of earners (those making more than $772,000 in 2022) would receive 40% of the savings. Additionally, this bill would allow insurance companies to charge older customers up to five times more than younger customers — up from a maximum 3-to-1 ratio under the current health law.
And yet, '45 and his merry band continue to proclaim that the AHCA will provide better coverage for all at a greatly reduced cost (unless one is poor, un- or under-employed or has a pre-existing condition). Truth to tell, most all of us have some sort of pre-existing condition. For under terms of the AHCA, pre-existing conditions include - to name but a few - Acne, allergies, anxiety, asthma, basal cell skin cancer (a type of skin cancer that doesn't tend to spread), depression, ear infections, fractures, high cholesterol, hypertension, incontinence, joint injuries, kidney stones, menstrual irregularities, migraine headaches, being overweight, restless leg syndrome, tonsillitis, urinary tract infections, varicose veins, and vertigo.
In other words, life itself is a pre-existing condition, which means that an awful lot of people are either going to be without affordable health insurance, or else shoved into into pricey (and grossly underfunded) "high-risk pools" where coverage will be beyond their means. And then hospital emergency rooms will return to being the healthcare destination of first - and last - resort for the un- and under insured. By law, emergency rooms must tend to anyone who walks through the door. This fact has long served as both a talking point and rationalization for anti-Obamacare conservatives. "No one is denied medical attention," they declare; "all they have to do is get themselves to an E. R." While this is technically true, an E.R. can do next to nothing for an uninsured person walking in, telling a nurse or doctor they simply don't feel well, going through a battery of tests, and then being diagnosed with, say, Crohn's disease, glioblastoma (an incredibly aggressive cancer) or Multiple sclerosis, all of which require rigorous long-term care. For those without insurance, the diagnosis is tantamount to a death sentence.
So now the American Healthcare Act act goes over to the Senate, where it's most politically lethal aspects will be amputated, rewritten and likely rehabilitated. This is going to take weeks, if not months. And then, following the vote on whatever the Senate comes up with, it goes back to the House of Representatives. Whether or not that House and Senate can reach a rapprochement is anyone's guess.
Unquestionably, healthcare is going to be the central issue in the 2018 midterm election. Those House members who voted in favor of the AHCA will be wearing a bull's-eye on their political backsides. If the Democrats play it smart (and frequently they do not) they will not only aim their arrows at these bull's-eyes, but make a clear-cut and audacious case for universal health insurance. Moreover they should continually make the case that affordable healthcare is not a privilege, but a right. Yes, the Republicans will continually and breathlessly brand this audacious proposal with a label reading "Socialist" . . . But so what? Isn't it time that America stop being the only developed nation on earth (there are 33 of them) without some sort of universal healthcare - whether it be Single-Payer, Two-Tier, or Insurance Mandate?
President Theodore Roosevelt started pushing for universal healthcare way back in 1912 – the same year Norway instituted their system. FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and even Richard Nixon all pushed for some form of national healthcare. After 105 years, isn't it about time? The American Healthcare Act – whatever its final form may be – must be rejected by the American people. For if life itself is a pre-existing condition, it must be covered.
After all, doesn't the Declaration of Independence affirm that we are all endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable, Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Note well that "Life" comes before both "Liberty," and "the Pursuit of Happiness."
109 days down, 1,348 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
There used to be a time when the term “gridlock” referred to an irksome traffic jam on a rush-hour roadway, not a systemic malignancy in the American body politic. Waxing nostalgically, I greatly prefer the former to the latter; at least with the former, one always has the option of either taking an alternate route or simply waiting for the traffic jam to ease up. In the latter case however, there is, generally speaking, no alternate route to take; that's the nature of political gridlock. And what’s worse there is no guarantee that the political hornet’s nest will ever ease up.
By now, most of us are pretty well conversant with the nature and reality of political gridlock; rarely does anything of significance ever get done because one side spends the lion’s share of its time and energy blaming the other side for all the inaction. Those who are hopeful idealists seek that "alternate route" which will permit ultimately legislation to be enacted; for progress being made. That "route" involves compromise, reaching across the aisle, and forcing partisan political orthodoxy take make way for real progress. Remember when politics used to be defined as "The art of the possible?" Today, alas, the reality is that political factionalism and feuding have become roadblocks to "the possible" - to keeping even the most obvious and necessary pieces of legislation from ever being enacted. It has also given rise to a whole gaggle of candidates who run on promises of "Draining the swamp," "Reaching across the aisle," and "Seeking to find common cause for the commonweal." Of course, once these folks get elected – assuming they ever do – they become just about as partisan and case hardened as the people they replaced.
Feuds - and not just the political sort - are nothing new. It took the Bible all of four chapters to introduce a blood feud into the world - that of Cain and Abel. History is replete with feuds, such as those between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England. And of course, Shakespeare gave the literary world the ultimate fictional family feud between the Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet. In more modern times, Hollywood has manufactured feuds between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and sisters Olivia De Havilland and Joan Fontaine in order to stimulate box office grosses.
The reasons why families, political factions and religious sects engage in feuds are as numerous and varied as the feuds themselves. How and why some last but a few years while others flourish for decades, centuries, and even millennia is a whole other story. Why, as an example, are Shiite and Sunni Muslims still engaged in mortal theological conflict after more than 1,400 years; that's difficult to understand without a reasonable grounding in Islamic history. The original schism, which I explained in brief nearly a dozen years ago in an essay entitled Shiites and Sunnis: The Schism That Will Not Heal, put forth the "why" behind their mutual antipathy but did not - indeed, could not - come close to explaining why the feud was as powerful today as it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammad's death way back in the year 632 C.E.
At the same time, the question of why congressional Republicans - who up to 100 days ago were incredibly unified, speaking mostly with a single voice - are now as factionalized as a coalition of Israeli politicians; that's actually pretty easy to explain. Generally speaking, when a party controls both houses Congress and the White House it begins devouring itself by devolving into ideological factions, each of which finds it next to impossible to work with those who are not in 100% agreement with their worldview. (The same thing occurred with the Democrats in the early years of the Obama administration when, controlling both houses of Congress and the White House they were the ones who had a hard time agreeing on many issues – especially healthcare.) Just as the Republicans were unified in their opposition to Barack Obama during his two terms in office, so too are Democrats (mostly) unified in their opposition to '45 and the Republican agenda.
What is perhaps most maddening (though not terribly surprising) about the political gridlock which has been afflicting Congress for years is the blatant finger-pointing that passes for progress. In other words, just as Democrats blamed the Republicans for being obstructionist during the Obama administration, it is now the Republicans' turn to put the mark of Cain on the Democrats. Although not terribly surprising, it is, as mentioned above, most maddening. Why? Because both parties show themselves to be more engrossed in the folly of feud then in the art of the possible. Compromise is next to impossible when one is engaged in a feud; the "other side" is no longer a mere competitor – he or she is your mortal, immoral enemy.
Is there a solution to gridlock and political feuding (both inter- and intra-party)? Can it be solved merely by "throwing the bums out," "draining the swamp," or some other puerile slogan masquerading as political strategy? I for one believe there may well be, but it's going to take a new generation of political animals who are accustomed to taking the long view -- who understand that real progress not only takes a long time, but patience, professionalism and the knowledge that compromise and capitulation are two vastly different words bipolar opposites.
In reality, both sides know they are full of it. It is not merely a case of "We're going to get back at you for what you did to us." Both sides know that they are individually and severally responsible for the gridlock. They build houses of straw and then are amazed when the slightest breeze causes the structures they've erected to collapse. Or, in the words of the great Sir Walter Scott, "We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt."
100 days down, 1,357 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
"An Obsession (un)Worthy of Munchausen Griffith or Palissy" Audio
This coming Saturday, April 29, 2017, marks a dubious historic milestone: '45's first One Hundred Days in office. And unlike the first One Hundred Days of FDR - or JFK, LBJ, GWB or the rest of the presidential gang - '45 will have next to nothing to show for it -- save the confirmation of a new Supreme Court Justice which is, in his inimical terminology, simply yuuuge. Absenting this one achievement - which never would have happened without a historic, ill-considered change in Senate rules - absenting this, what do '45 and his administration really, truly have to show for their first One Hundred Days?
A humiliating withdrawal of their signature "repeal-and-replace" health care proposal? An abysmal fracturing of the GOP? A passel of Executive Orders - the lion's share of which are meant to bend, fold, spindle and mutilate Obama's legacy? Picking fights with the very people whose support he needs? A whole bunch of policy about-faces? A series of incomprehensible phone conversations with various world leaders? A record number of weekends playing golf in Palm Beach? The telling of more fables, lies and outright bullsh*t than ever attributed to the real or fictional Baron Munchausen (that's him above, as imagined by Gustave Doré)? Not precisely the kind of First One Hundred Days historians are going to remember favorably.
In the midst of all this wibble-wobble, there are precisely two things '45 has maintained a rock-solid, obsessive consistency about: increasing the nation's military budget by no less than 10% and building his cockamamie wall on America's southern border. Of course, where he originally promised ad nauseum that Mexico would pay for that piece of useless architecture, '45 is now pruning every last dime he can out of the federal budget so that we, the taxpayers, can pick up the tab . . . until the time when he, Mr. "Art of the Deal" can finally, finally convince our neighbors to the south that it is in their best interest to pay back the $12 - or $20 or $50 billion - this monster will wind up costing. And of course, '45 is obsessively, compulsively constant in his insistence that the purpose of this wall is to preserve American lives, protect American jobs and defend American honor.
Two of the most egregious and dangerous cuts being made in order to pay for '45's Maginot Line are those aimed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The proposed N.I.H. cuts amount to 20% of the agency's $30 billion budget, while the proposed FDA cuts amount to 21%. The N.I.H. helps fund breakthrough medical research, creating new drug treatments, medical devices, and therapies for an unbelievably wide range of diseases and medical conditions. Without adequate financial backing from NIH, projects researching various forms of cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, heart disease, autism, diabetes, infertility and tens of dozens of other potentially fatal medical issues and conditions - including so-called "orphan diseases" (such as Acromegaly, Tourette Syndrome and Job Syndrome - will have the scientific carpet pulled out from underneath them. This doesn't even begin to take into account all the scientists, doctors, statisticians and bio-engineers who would be out of jobs. This is a horrifying prospect - especially in light of just how close the medical community is to discovering actual cures for many heretofore fatal diseases, syndromes and conditions.
Without adequate FDA funding, that agency will have to cut hundreds - if not thousands - of positions, which will inevitably lead to a severe lessening of regulatory oversight. In truth, this is precisely what '45 and his billionaire buds want; a "streamlining" of the regulatory process for new drug applications. This streamlining, they argue, will "prove to be beneficial in reducing the end consumer price point on new therapeutics and drugs, decrease the cost of research, thereby effectively bringing new products to market much sooner."
The question is, at what price? Writing as one who has spent nearly a quarter century vetting somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 medical research proposals, I wish to state a truism learned through experience: that while FDA rules and regulations may tend to slow down progress a bit, it is both well and good. Jumping through FDA "regs and hoops" helps insure that the risks-versus-benefits ratio inherent in any clinical trial puts the safety, efficacy and tolerability of new medications and therapeutics ahead of the needs and perquisites of industry. Simply put, it places people and patients ahead of profits.
For the past many years I have spent, on average, two days a week vetting medical research proposals -- that is, making sure that the research in question is ethical and then turning medical terminology into understandable English. The goal is to insure that those who become test subjects in various medical research programs fully understand what they are agreeing to. This is the process known as "informed consent." Its origins go back to the "Doctors Trials" held in Nuremberg in 1946. This trial considered the fate of twenty-three German physicians who either participated in the Nazi program to euthanize persons deemed "unworthy of life" (the mentally ill, mentally retarded, or physically disabled) or who conducted experiments on concentration camp prisoners without their consent. As a result of the trial's findings, it was determined that from that date forth, no one would ever again participate in medical experiments without their knowledge and written consent. For the past 70 years, those who practice medical ethics (myself included) take this very, very seriously. A significant cut in the FDA budget puts this process - informed consent - in serious jeopardy.
And for what? To insure putting aside several billion dollars with which '45 can fulfill his obsession with increasing the military budget and constructing his own Great Wall? History records the exploits of any number of obsessive-compulsives who went to insane lengths in order to fulfill their dreams. Back in the 16th century, French Huguenot potter Bernard Palissy became so obsessively committed to recreating ancient Chinese porcelain that he burned his furniture and even, it is said, the floor boards of his house in order to feed the fires of his furnaces (That's him, depicted burning his furniture above). Then too, 102 years ago, movie director D(avid) W(ark) Griffith spent, borrowed and mortgaged every dime he could find in order to create a film called The
Birth of a Nation. Although it did earn tens of millions, it eventually bankrupted him. (n.b.: That movie's star, Lillian Gish, would become my mother's mentor. That's a newspaper photo of mom and Miss Lillian from 1939 or 40 at left).
Griffth's and Pallisay's obsessive compulsive manias may have been considered both insane and excessive in their own time, but at least led to immortal works of artistic brilliance; the products of their obsessions have a place of honor to this very day. One wonders whether '45's obsession - denuding the federal budget in order to build a wall between Mexico and the United States - will be applauded a century from now . . . not to mention in the midterm elections of 2018.
'45 really, really ought not to defund the NIH or FDA. If he really, truly wants to preserve American lives, protect American jobs and defend American honor, he couldn't do better than fully funding ethical medical research. Erecting a wall of medical research between fatal diseases and good health will save many more lives than building one constructed of concrete.
And who knows: perhaps one day medical science will discover cures for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Pseudologia fantastica (also known as "Munchausen's Syndrome").
94 days down, 1,366 to go
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
"The Son-in-Law Also Rises" Audio
Of the myriad of cretinous, contradictory, incomprehensible and downright prevaricating things #45 has said in his rather brief political career, there has been, believe it or not, one stellar statement of ultimate clarity and truth: the time he told Fox News' Chris Wallace "I want to be unpredictable." With these five words, #45 came about as close as he ever has - and perhaps ever shall - to defining a coherent, all-purpose "Trump Doctrine" - equally applicable to the realms of foreign policy, health care, "America-First" populism versus globalism or Wall Street versus Main Street and a whole host of conspiracy theories. By now, a clear majority of the populace are fairly well inured to all the shucking and jiving #45 has done on issues ranging from NATO, military involvement in Syria and China-as-malevolent-currency-manipulator to standing up against the myrmidons of Wall Street and, of course, "draining the swamp." And this does not even begin to speak about all those things he was going to accomplish on "Day One," let alone his first 100 days in office. We're getting ever so close to 100 days and here's a list of all #45's legislative accomplishments . . .
If the Obama highway could be likened to a well-paved, well-plotted interstate, "Route 45" is a pot-holed turnpike filled with stupefying detours and GPS-defying U-turns. Nowhere is all this unpredictability on greater display than in the internecine warfare going on between #45's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his Chief Strategist, Stephen Bannon. Not so very long ago, Steve Bannon was a first-among-equals with a seat on the National Security Council. As recently as February 2nd of this year, Time Magazine ran an article asking Is Steve Bannon the Second Most Powerful Man in the World? Now, #45 claims - with a straight face - that he did not even know his erstwhile political guru before naming him campaign chief executive in the summer of 2016. It would seem that Mr. Bannon and his alt-right, Breitbart-fueled populist politics are on a downward spiral, while the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner's stock is on the rise. (Hence this week's tongue-in-cheek title The Son-in-Law Also Rises*.) Many argue that a Bannon inspired #45 would never have fired 59 missiles at that Syrian airbase, dropped a "Mother of All Bombs" on the lunar-like terrain of mountainous Afghanistan or suddenly stopped referring to the Chinese as pernicious currency manipulators. But a Kushner inspired POTUS likely would . . . and did.
If this is true - that #45's son-in-law's stock is on the ascent - it likely means that the battle for #45's ear is more cause for - than symptom of - all the unpredictability, flip-flops, u-turns and otherwise inexplicable changes currently going on before our eyes. This in-house war raises a terribly crucial question badly in need of an even more terribly crucial answer. To wit: is this to be an alt-right administration whose policies, practices and world-view are shaped by the forces of Bannon, Breitbart, Fox News and right-wing radio, or is it to be a family business shaped largely by the president's 36-year old son-in-law whose portfolio now requires a portmanteau? Will the next four years be as revolutionary and "finger-in-the-eye-of-politics-as-usual" as anyone has ever experienced, or will it increasingly become just another standard Republican administration - sometimes maddeningly conservative and others middle-of-the-road? And most importantly, regardless of whomsoever the POTUS is listening to, will he ever stop campaigning and get around to governing?
Eerily, Jared Kushner - whose personal and family proclivities have always tended Democrat - has, if possible, even less political knowledge or experience than his father-in-law. The one thing he does have going for him - in addition to being, like his father-in-law, a multi-centimillionaire real estate tycoon and having no previous governmental experience - is that he's married to #45's daughter Ivanka. And yet, despite his glaring lack of credentials, today he is his father-in-law's senior advisor, heads the president's newly created Office of American Innovation, and travels the world as a sort of personal emissary/ambassador without portfolio.
#45 is by no means the first POTUS to appoint family members to positions of responsibility; presidential nepotism has been around since this country's earliest days. As far back as 1798, President John Adams named his son, John Quincy Adams, minister (Ambassador) to Prussia. Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, was also his son-in-law, married to Wilson's youngest daughter, Eleanor. John F. Kennedy famously named his brother. Robert Frances, Attorney General and his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to head the newly-created Peace Corps. The difference with these - and many other such appointments - is that both the presidents in question and the family members granted positions - were possessed of both political and governmental experience. The same cannot be said for either our current president or his son-in-law.
The fact that Jared Kushner's sole qualification for being at the epicenter of the #45's administration is being the president's son-in-law is actually a plus in some parts of the world. In many Muslim countries, being a close relation to the leader is really all that counts. Remember, Islam is a religion whose most important fault line rests with the ancient argument over what the single-most important qualification for succeeding the prophet Muhammad would be. Either:
Precisely how much influence Jared Kushner can and will exercise over his father-in-law is anyone's guess. Precisely what advise he will offer - and whether it will have any recognizable coherence - is as yet unknown. The one thing which is clear is this: that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue needs someone (or indeed, a group of "someones") who can hold him in check, keep his fingers from Tweeting, and teach him the difference between bluster and reality.
85 days down, 1,375 days to go.
(* The expression The Son-in-Law Also Rises is, alas, not my creation. It goes back to 1930, when Hollywood wunderkind David O. Selznick married Irene Meyer, the daughter of MGM mogul Louis B. Meyer. Upon announcing the pending nuptials, one Hollywood wag (Dorothy Parker?) famously quipped "Ah, the son-in-law also rises!" Jared Kushner should study the life of Selznick, who would go on to produce such classics as David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and most famously, Gone With the Wind. Jared Kushner might learn what Selznick learned from working for his father-in-law: alpha males don't cede their power - even to other alpha males. Sons-in-law can rise . . . but they can also sink.)
85 days down, 1,375 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
King Solomon and the Magic Coin Audio
What a week! From Senator McConnell's "nuclear option" and the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch to Bannon's banishment from the NSC and the missile attack on Shayrot Air force Base in Syria - not to mention the state visits of Egyptian President Sisi, Jordanian King Abdullah II and Chinese President Xi Jinping - the past 168 hours have been a monumental handful. I for one am exhausted and quite unable to decide what to write about; call it an overabundance of op-ed riches. And so, taking the coward's way out, this week's piece is based on one of the many ancient parables I've translated and reworked. There's a great thing about ancient parables; the lessons they teach never go stale . . . they are ever fresh and prescient; prescriptions from the ancient past still imparting essential wisdom.
This one's entitled King Solomon and the Magic Coin.
Solomon, the wisest of all kings, so we are told, had 700 wives and more than 300 concubines. And yet, he only had 3 children: two daughters and a son. At the time this tale takes place, his son Rechavam, was 14 or 15 years of age. Sadly, so we learn, the boy suffered greatly from what today we moderns would call “depression.” Solomon, his father, recognized the condition and understood its origin: the boy felt that no matter who he was, what he thought or what he might accomplish in life, he could never be anything like his father. And this depressed him.
Considering his son’s predicament, Solomon realized that it would not suffice to merely tell the boy: “look, you don’t have to be as smart, as wise, or as beloved as me. It doesn’t really matter. I will always consider you special no matter what.” This, the king realized, could never act as a tonic for his son’s shattered self-image. What was needed, the king reasoned, was something truly special – something that would permit his son to hold his head up high and feel his uniqueness. Solomon gave the situation many weeks of serious thought, and finally came up with a plan. Once he had decided how the situation with his son should best be handled, he set the royal minter upon the task of coming up with a unique gift – a specially engraved two-sided coin made of sapphire and lapis. When the coin was at last delivered into Solomon’s hand he called for his son.
“My son,” Solomon said to the boy, whose eyes were cast toward the ground, his shoulders bent forward,” I have a gift for you – something that no one will ever possess. It is just for you.”
“Thank you father,” the boy responded without much overt enthusiasm. “What is it?”
“A very special coin that teaches a lesson that no one else in this family truly knows.” And with that he placed the coin in the boy’s left hand. Looking at the coin, the boy managed a wan smile, and looking at his father, he asked: “what is the value of this coin?”
“Its value?” King Solomon said, rising from his throne, “why it is absolutely priceless. Its value, by the way, does not lie in the sapphire and lapis with which the coin is minted, but in the wisdom that is imprinted upon it. It is a coin that will make you wiser than anyone.”
“Wiser than anyone?” the boy asked, his eyes beginning to show signs of life. “What does it teach?”
“Hold the coin in your hand, sapphire-side up, and close your fist,” his father commanded. This the boy did. “Now,” the king gently said, “you know those feelings you get that make you sense that everything is down, every attempt is doomed to failure, the world is a vicious snake pit, and every time you turn toward the right you should have turned toward the left?"
“Without question,” the boy responded with a derisive laugh. “That’s my normal state of mind. What in the world can the coin do to help me?”
“When I tell you, open up your fist and read what is etched upon the coin. It contains a kernel of wisdom that will lift your spirits, straightened your shoulders and give you the ability to deal with the world in a state of joy and gladness.” The boy looked first at his father in disbelief and then at his closed fist.
“Please, open your hand and read aloud this profound truth,” Solomon said.
Slowly opening his fist, the boy looked at the red side of the coin. Casting his eyes upon his message, he read aloud the words גם זה יעבור (gahm ze ya-ah-vor) – “this too shall pass.”
“You see," Solomon said, ”this side of the coin tells you that everyone has times when every white is black, every up is down, and every good is evil. The coin teaches that this condition is only temporary. Do you understand?” he asked
“Yes father, I do,” the boy answered, beginning to stand just a bit straighter. “I never for one moment thought that the way I feel could have any ending except death. Are you sure that this lesson is true?”
“Without question,” his father said. “Now, once you climb out of your despondency, which I know you shall, everything will start going quite well with you. In matter of fact, things will start going so very well, that you will actually begin thinking that your previous condition was all a chimera – a figment of your imagination. You will undoubtedly come to feel that any direction you take will be the proper one, any act you attempt will turn out successfully, and every day will be better than the last. It is at such a time that you should look at the blue side of the coin. Now, turn it over and read its secret wisdom out loud.”
Turning the coin over, the boy looked at what was etched on the lapis-side of the coin. “What does it say?” his father asked.
“Why it says the very same thing גם זה יעבור – (gahm ze ya-ah-vor) -- this too shall pass,” the boy said in astonishment. “But what does it mean?”
“It means,” Solomon gently said, that in order to get through this life, you must understand the lesson of balance. Nothing is forever. No streak of bad luck is infinite. No time of good fortune lasts forever. Balance: that is the key. And believe me, that is a true gem of wisdom that virtually no one else shall ever possess. I command you to keep this coin upon your person from this day forth. And even when you have carefully memorized and taken to heart its words and meaning, you must keep it with you. It shall then serve as a perpetual lesson for you in all times – both the good and the bad. It will, in short, make life far more livable.”
“Thank you so much father,” the boy said, smiling a broad honest smile for the first time in Solomon’s recollection. “I cannot think of a better gift or a better lesson. And now, if you will excuse me, I think I will go out and walk in the sunshine.”
“But it is a cloudy day,” the king said with a trace of humor in his voice.
“Yes, I know,” his son said. “But for me, the clouds have parted and the sun is shining. May I go?”
“Certainly, my son. Enjoy the sunshine.” The son departed.
And from that day forth, his depression, like the clouds in the heavens, began to part, for he had learned the vital lesson of balance: גם זה יעבור gam ze ya-ah-vor – “this too shall pass.”
And so, pay great heed: this is a lesson not just for Rechavam, the son of Solomon, the son of David. It is a lesson for each and every one of us for all time. We may be going through unbelievably difficult times, feeling like Rechavam at his lowest but . . . as the coin teaches, גם זה יעבור gahm ze ya-ah-vor . . . this too shall pass.
78 days down, 1,382 to go . . .
(אגב: לכל הקוראים היהודים שלי, בבקשה לקבל איחולי חג פסח שמח, בריא וכשר)
Copyright© 1999, 2010, 2017 Kurt F. Stone
(The widely publicized, contentious and almost Kafkaesque issue of Donald Trump, his campaign and administration's relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin has made instant celebrities out of the House Select Committee on Intelligence's chair and ranking member. The two men, who both represent California districts are, respectively, Committee Chair Devin Nunes and ranking member Adam Schiff (not to be confused with the fictional D.A. played by the late Steven Hill on TV's "Law & Order"). Nunes was a member of the Trump transition team who has achieved public recognition - or notoriety - for reporting intelligence to the White House (which he may well have received from the White House) and then the press, without first notifying either his ranking member or anyone else on the committee; Schiff for being the voice of reason and political professionalism. Without question, Nunes is the alpha to Schiff's omega: San Luis Obispo State versus Stanford and Harvard Law; career politician versus prosecutor turned member of the House of Representatives.
Personally, I have had the honor of knowing Rep. Schiff and his family for many years. His parents, Ed and the late Sherrie, were students of mine at Florida Atlantic University. I presided over Sherrie's unveiling, and have written extensively about their son and his older brother Dan in my book The Jews of Capitol Hill. I've even read Adam's and Dan's literary works - which are astoundingly good.
What follows - with a bit of updating - is what I wrote about Rep. Schiff back in 2010. Adam is a man who should be closely watched, for he has, in my humble opinion, the brains, the understanding and the drive to become a future Secretary of State, Director of the C.I.A., or - dare I say - President of the United States . . )
When Adam Schiff entered Stanford University in 1978, he was uncertain if his ultimate goal was to become a doctor or a lawyer. As a result, he wound majoring in both pre-med and political science. Upon graduation, he was accepted into both medical school and law school. Although his parents, Ed and Sherri Schiff urged him to become a doctor, their youngest son chose to attend Harvard Law, from which he received his J. D. in 1985. “All of my doctor friends say I made the right decision, and all my lawyer friends say I messed up,” Schiff once noted. “Now that I’m in politics, everyone says I messed up!” Schiff is likely joking, but being one of the Congressional Minyan’s straightest of straight arrows, who can ever know for sure?
Adam Bennett Schiff, the younger of Edward and Sherrill Ann (Glovsky) Schiff’s two sons, was born in Boston on June 22, 1960. His family had been in New England since the turn of the century. On his mother’s side, the earliest folks came from Eastern Europe, originally settling in Laconia, New Hampshire. On his father’s side, Grandpa Schiff, who was born in London (his father being from Vilna), came to America in 1906 and settled in East Boston, where he became a butcher’s assistant. The Glovsky’s, the future congressman’s mother’s family, owned Sherrill’s Music in Boston. Both families had originally been strictly religious. As a result, by the time Ed and Sherrie came into the world, their families were “somewhat rebellious toward Orthodoxy.” Nonetheless, Ed was educated at a Conservative synagogue, and is proud of the fact that as a bar mitzvah, he was able to read tanach – the Hebrew Bible.
Ed Schiff, served in the United States Army just after the conclusion of World War II, then graduated from the University of Alabama. Ed and Sherrie met when a friend of his brought her to a party; they married in 1956 and settled in Framingham, Massachusetts. Two years later, Daniel Mark, the first of their two sons was born. Two years after that, Adam Bennett came along. Ed and Sherri’s was a “mixed marriage” – he was a Democrat and she a Republican. According to the Washington Post, “Schiff credits that background for his own moderate politics.”
While living in Framingham, Ed Schiff provided for his family as a traveling salesman. When Adam was 10 and brother Dan 12, the family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona where they lived long enough for their elder son to become bar mitzvah. In late 1972, the Schiffs picked up and moved once again – this time to Alamo, California, where Ed had purchased a lumber yard. (Alamo, an unincorporated community in Contra Costa County, is located in the “East Bay” region of San Francisco.) Adam became bar mitzvah in nearby La Fayette in 1973.
As mentioned above, Adam Schiff majored in both pre-med and political science during his four years at Stanford. Upon graduating, he decided to opt for law because, “He thought it would provide a better launching pad for a political career.” Upon graduating from Harvard Law in 1985, Schiff moved back to California, where he spent a year clerking for a federal judge. In 1987 he joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, where he spent the next six years making a name for himself as a criminal prosecutor. During his tenure, he achieved a perfect conviction record. In his most notable case, Schiff prosecuted the first FBI agent ever to be indicted for espionage. At one point the U.S. Attorney’s Office sent him to Prague where he helped the Czechs reform their criminal justice system. When Tom Umberg, a colleague in the U.S. Attorney’s office was elected to the California Assembly, he became Schiff’s inspiration for getting into politics. “I wanted to deal with the root causes of the problems I was dealing with as a U.S. attorney,” he later said. Schiff’s years and experience as a federal criminal prosecutor came into play when, as a four-term member of the House, he was named to the House Appropriations Committee, a post which traditionally requires the representative to give up all other committee assignments. Uniquely, Schiff was permitted to remain on the House Judiciary Committee, where he served on subcommittee s dealing with Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. During his nine terms in the House, Schiff has also served on several other prestigious, high profile committees: Appropriations, the House Select Committee on Benghazi and, as of 2009, the committee for which he has become a daily presence on the news: the House Select Committee on Intelligence. For the past several years, he has been that committee's ranking member.
In 1993, 8-term California Assemblyman Pat Nolan pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering, and was sentenced to 25 months in federal prison. Nolan (1950- ), who had been elected Assembly Minority Leader in 1984, was one of 14 public officials convicted as part of an FBI sting operation called “Shrimp Scam. As a result of his conviction, Nolan resigned his seat, thus necessitating a special election. (After serving his time, Nolan became active in former Watergate figure Charles Colsen’s “Prison Fellowship Ministries.” He went on to become a Commissioner of the federal government’s National Rape Elimination Commission, described as a “bipartisan panel aimed at curbing rape in prison.” In 2008 Nolan’s friends and partisans urged President George W. Bush to issue him a pardon before leaving office. Nolan was not pardoned.)
Adam Schiff decided to enter the special election for Nolan’s Assembly seat despite the fact that the 43rd District (and its various predecessors) was highly conservative and had rarely sent a Democrat to Sacramento. Schiff and six other candidates ran in that election, which was won by James A. Rogan, a local prosecutor who at age 33 had been appointed by Governor George “Duke” Deukmajian to be judge of the Glendale Municipal Court. Schiff finished with 26% of the vote to Rogan’s 54%. The Los Angeles Times noted that “Rogan’s strong showing surprised most political observers who expected him to finish first but not with a majority of the vote.”
Six months later, Schiff ran against the now-incumbent James Rogan in a rematch. This time, Schiff, raising and spending $300,000 to Rogan’s $468,000, though once again losing, bettered his share of the vote: 53.7%-42.9%. Rogan, who was quickly becoming recognized as a rising star in the state party, was elected Majority Leader of the California State Assembly in his freshman term.
Two years later, Schiff was back at it. This time, he ran for the 21st state Senate seat of Newton R. Russell, who was barred by term limits from seeking reelection. The 21st District, which served the Arroyo Seco region of metropolitan Los Angeles, included many of Los Angeles’ most historic neighborhoods, as well as many of the metro area’s businesses, including many movie studios. Its three primary cities were Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena. Winning the Democratic primary with ease, Adam Schiff faced Republican Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland in the November general election. Boland was not that well known to voters in the 21st District.
Raising more than $3.2 million between them, the race hinged largely on Schiff’s assertion that Boland – who was term limited out of her Assembly seat – had merely moved from the San Fernando Valley to Glendale in order to “continue her efforts on behalf of the Valley – the kind of advoca[cy] the incorporated cities don’t need.” For her part, Boland attempted to paint Schiff as a “tax-and-spent liberal.” The Boland campaign began using a phone bank, making calls to voters in the district attacking Schiff for what his record would be if elected to the Senate. One such call backfired: it came in to the Schiff household. At the time, the candidate’s mother was visiting. As Adam tells the story, "My mother was incredulous that someone could really be doing this. She thought it was me. She said, ‘Adam is this you?'” When the nonplussed caller said no, Mrs. Schiff hit back with, "Well, that's my son you're talking about!" Sherrill Schiff would go on to become her son’s “secret campaign weapon,” For years she walked precincts, ringing bells and knocking on doors for her son’s campaigns. In 2006, Congressman Schiff told The Hill, “To this day, I’ll be riding in a parade, and I’ll get someone hollering, ‘Hey, I haven’t gotten a call from your mom lately!’”
Schiff wound up defeating Boland by the not insignificant margin of 51.8%-44.1%. At age 33, Adam Schiff had become the youngest member of the California state Senate. Schiff served one four-year term in the Senate. In his first two years (1996-1998) he authored “dozens of measures that Governor Pete Wilson signed into law.” These included “landmark school textbook legislation.” He went on to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Select Committee on Juvenile Justice and the Joint Committee on the Arts. He also passed the first significant patients’ “Bill of Rights” in California.
Meanwhile, James Rogan was serving in Congress, having been narrowly elected in November 1996 to replace the retiring, 12-term Carlos Moorhead. In his first Congressional race, Rogan defeated Democrat Doug Kahn by the not overwhelming margin of 50.2%-43.2%. As a member of the House, Rogan served on the Judiciary Committee, where he became one of 13 House managers in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, State Senator Schiff was paying keen attention to 27th District voters, and their representative. He came to the conclusion that the third time could be a charm; that he could defeat Jim Rogan. After his narrow victory over Doug Kahn in 1996, Rogan managed only a 51%-46% victory against longtime (1988-1995) Screen Actors Guild president Barry A. Gordon. Schiff correctly surmised that Rogan’s relatively close margin of victory was due in large part to his high-profile role in the Clinton impeachment. (Barry Gordon, the candidate Rogan defeated is best known for playing Jason Robard’s sardonic nephew “Nick” in the 1965 film “A Thousand Clowns” and social worker “Charlie Harrison” on the TV series “Fish.”) Looking at the election results, and not wishing to run for a second four-year term to the state Senate, Schiff decided to make Rogan a target. Schiff’s polling showed that a clear majority of voters in the 27th District were in disagreement with the Clinton impeachment.
Up until 1992, the 27th, a relatively affluent district, had consistently voted for Republicans. But it also voted for Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996, and was picking up a lot of new Hispanic residents – residents who tended to vote Democratic. This did not bode well for Rogan who, in 1999 was given a rating of “A+” by the Christian Coalition and was an advocate of the teaching of creationism in public schools. On many occasions Rogan had stated that to his way of thinking, “evolutionary theory lacks empirical evidence.”
The 2000 Schiff-Rogan rematch became the most expensive House race in American history: more than $11 million. Entertainment mogul – and Clinton friend – David Geffen vowed to raise a minimum of $1 million to defeat Rogan, which he did. As much as Schiff was banking on the voters’ negative response to Rogan’s role in the Clinton impeachment, the election did have other issues. The candidates disagreed on a whole host of issues from health care, abortion and gun control to taxes, trade and evolution. Rogan depicted Schiff as a tax-and-spend liberal who would “run through the Treasury, spending everything he can.” The “Traditional Values Coalition” printed up flyers proclaiming that Schiff was a “Champion for the homosexual agenda," and accused him of voting for one bill in the state Senate that “requires California public schools to teach children that homosexuality is a normal and positive lifestyle,” and another that “provides money to send children on ‘tolerance’ field trips to homosexual organizations . . . promot[ing] homosexuality at the public expense.”
For his part, Schiff scored Rogan for calling abortion a “Holocaust” for the African-American community and saying that the KKK “couldn’t do a better job on committing genocide on African Americans.” As noted in The Almanac of American Politics, “They also battled for the support of more than 67,000 local Armenians.”
California’s 27th District was the home of America’s largest Armenian population. Rogan had been the lead sponsor of a House resolution commemorating the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1923 by Ottoman Turks. Despite being promised a floor vote on his resolution shortly before the election, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert reneged “after phone calls from Clinton and his foreign policy appointees.” For his part, Schiff had cosponsored a state Senate resolution declaring “a day of remembrance of Armenian genocide,” and secured $400,000 in taxpayer money to produce “a documentary about Armenian issues.” Moreover, Schiff learned enough Armenian to be able to deliver a whole speech in the language – one syllable at a time – and to conclude each speech with Կեցցե Հայաստան (pronounced "Getzyeh Hayasthan!") – “Long Live Armenia!” His continued support for legislation recognizing the fact of Armenian genocide became the focus of a 2006 BBC-produced documentary film entitled “Screamers.”
Despite being outspent by nearly $7 million, Schiff nonetheless emerged victorious by the surprisingly large margin of 53%-44%. Adam Schiff was correct: the third time is a charm.
Since entering the House in January 2001, Adam Schiff has been busier than just about anyone in his freshmen class. First, he was elected by his colleagues to be their freshman class president. He joined the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, and co-founded several House groups: “Freshmen for Reform,” meant to build support for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation; and “The Democratic Study Group on National Security.” Schiff co-founded this group in 2003, along with classmate Steve Israel and Georgia Representative David Scott. Its purpose is to explore “. . . the necessary components of a smart national security strategy against evolving threats.” The group holds “regular meetings for the Democratic Caucus” and brings in “renowned speakers on a wide range of national security issues such as terrorism, military transformation, Iraq, homeland security, non-proliferation, Iran, Korea, the United Nations, and missile defense.” In 2006, Schiff co-founded the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press. This “bipartisan, bicameral group” has as its aim “To advance press freedom around the world by creating a forum to combat and condemn media censorship and the persecution of journalists around the world.”
Originally given seats on International Relations (where he was assigned to its subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia) and Judiciary, Schiff, as mentioned above, was moved on to House Appropriations at the beginning of the 110th Congress. Adam Schiff has been regularly and easily reelected 8 times. He is one of those incumbents who can likely keep his seat virtually as long as he chooses. Just how long he will choose to remain in the House is anyone's guess. With his newfound national visibility as ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, he may find new doors opening to him in the future.
During his years on Capitol Hill, Adam Schiff has been one of the main Democrats trying to “remake the party’s image on national security issues.” At the same time, he has moved steadily from the political center toward the more moderate-to-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. As an example, upon taking his seat in the House in 2001, Schiff was one of but 28 Democrats who voted in favor of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. Two years later, he voted against the next round of cuts, saying it was “fiscally irresponsible” to enact additional cuts at a time when the nation was at war and “racking up large annual deficits.” He then went on to oppose both the 2004 corporate tax package and the 2005 tax cut extensions. In 2001 he sided with the Bush Administration nearly 40 percent of the time; by 2003 his support for Bush had fallen to 16 percent. He initially voted in favor of the Patriot Act and for the use of force in Iraq, though, as noted in The Almanac of American Politics (2008), “He later criticized intelligence gathering,” and, along with then-Representative (now Senator) Jeff Flake (R-AZ), “filed a bill to revise domestic surveillance procedures.” In a June 2005 article entitled “Congressman is Gaining a Name in Foreign Affairs,” Los Angeles Times staff writer Johanna Neuman noted that Schiff was “carving out a position as a leader of a centrist Democratic national security bloc.”
Among Schiff’s signature successes have been passage of a bill making “identity theft” a crime; fostering the use of “DNA analysis in criminal investigations and . . . expand[ing] the national DNA database”; and promoting early childhood education. In both 2003 and 2004 he successfully organized opposition to proposed cutbacks in Head Start, saying that the GOP-backed legislation would “close the door of the Head Start program to tens of thousands of deserving children and their families.”
Adam Schiff is married to San Diegan Eve Sanderson. Their first child, Alexa Marion, was born in 1998. When “Adam and Eve” were about to become parents to a son in July 2002, they had what writers for The Almanac of American Politics called their “biblical moment;” namely, what to name him. Helpful well wishers suggested either “Cain” or “Abel.” Instead, they named him Elijah Harris.
In 1986, then-attorney Adam Schiff joined “Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles.” When asked how he would feel about having an African American “little brother,” he said he would be fine. He was then given three applications to look over. He chose 7-year old David McMillan because of an answer he gave to the question asking for “three wishes.” The youngster’s first wish was for a big brother. The second was for a puppy. The third answer – the one that cinched it for Adam Schiff – was for “a beautiful world.” “It was pretty amazing,” Schiff recalled years later; “for a [seven year old] to use one of his wishes for something so intangible.” Adam and David have been together ever since as big brother/little brother. David wound up graduating from both Yale and from film school at University of Southern California. Adam attended his graduation from Yale, and David was one of Adam’s groomsmen when he and Eve married. David went on to become a writer for the television show “Judging Amy.” Schiff, who is on the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America sponsored and passed a Congressional resolution recognizing the second century of the organization that brought the two together. Adam Schiff is a triathlete who also runs marathons. In 2010, he was the only member of Congress to participate in the inaugural Washington, D.C. Triathlon. In 2014 became the first Member of Congress to participate in the AIDS/Life Cycle, a seven-day charity bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise awareness and funding to fight HIV and AIDS.
Adam Schiff is a man with a future; he'd better stay in good shape, for he is likely going to continue standing at the epicenter of what is already turning out to be the most chilling and sordid scandal in all American political history.
I bet that by now, President Trump and those closest to him wish that Adam Schiff had chosen to go to medical school . . .
71 days down, 1,389 to go . . .
Copyright© 2010, 2017, Kurt F. Stone
Now that #45 and the Republican-led House have failed to deliver on their sacred oath to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care act, they can turn their politically weakened attention to other matters such as tax reform, immigration and infrastructure, the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch for a seat on the Supreme Court, and, one of the heaviest of all lifts, the 2018 budget. Last week's essay, The Codification of Cruelty, portrayed this blueprint with fairly broad brushstrokes. This week, let's engage in a serious bit of pointillism, honing in on an ultra microscopic subatomic speck of that budget: funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which in turn funds both the Public Broadcast Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR).
In fiscal year 2017, public funding for NEA and NEH amounted to $145 million a piece; CPB $445 million in public funding. Combined, these three organizations received a grand total of $735 million in public subsidies which, in a budget of $4 trillion amounts to a Lilliputian-sized .00018%. Or, considered by another metric, a $4 trillion budget means we are spending $456,621,004.00 every hour on the hour, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year (there are 8,760 hours in a year). The $753,000,000 allocated for NEA, NEH and CPB take up just a little over 90 minutes worth of those 8,760 hours. By a final metric, and, to put this into even greater perspective, the combined cost to every single taxpayer in America for NEA, NEH, and CPB is a mere $1.43 a year.
Oh the humanity!
For many years conservatives and deficit hawks have argued that federal funding for the arts, humanities and broadcasting is, in the words of Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson "welfare for rich liberal elites." They have derided the funded art as being obscene, the news coverage as dangerously one-sided (liberal-to-radical) and the non-news programming appealing only to a minor handful of elitist urbanites. Well I'm here to tell 'ya that I know a lot of non-wealthy, non liberal, non-elite folks who love NPR's A Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk and Ask Me Another, as well as All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Story Corps. Then too, there are tons of regular working-class folks who tune in to their local PBS station to watch Austin City Limits, Antiques Road Show, and This Old House as well as Washington Week in Review, PBS News Hour, Masterpiece Theatre and my personal silly favorites, Keeping Up Appearances, Fawlty Towers and the incomparably hilarious Are You Being Served? And of course, where-oh-where would at least two generations of children be without Sesame Street?
NPR has long been home to some of the very best - and most moderately-paid - journalists on the planet. And when I say "journalists," I mean it. For the Nina Totenbergs, Elearnor Beardsleys, Tamara Keiths, Mara Liassons and Sylvia Pogiollis are not "infotainers"; they are unbiased reporters and correspondents stationed all over the globe covering daily events and fast-paced breaking news in ways that would make Cronkite, Lehrer, Russert, Murrow and Sevareid glow with pride.
Precisely what percentage of the NPR and PBS operating budgets are provided by the federal government is unknown - precisely because it varies depending upon the source. While Fox News claims the percentage to be greater than 25%, NPR insists that no more than 9% of their operating funds come from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting. Whatever the true figures are, the overwhelming majority of funding comes from corporations, foundations and the public at large. Nonetheless, for the feds try to eliminate all funding for NEA, NEH and CPB (which ultimately affects both PBS and NPR) it is wrong, short-sighted and distinctly un-American.
How so?
During the Great Depression, FDR's New Deal provided funding for the arts. Its "National Theater Project" was the godparent of tens of dozens of new plays, hundreds of new theater companies and tens of thousands of performances for people of all ages and races. (The poster above advertising "Man Eats Hat" was created under auspices of this program. This delightful farce was created and directed by the then 21-year old Orson Welles, and starred Welles and the as yet unknown Joseph Cotton. Another program, the Public Works of Arts Program put artists and muralists, painters and sculptors to work creating works of art. In the first four months of 1934 a;one, the PWAP hired artists who in turn produced 15,663 paintings, murals, prints, crafts and sculptures for government building around the county. Today, many can be seen in museums or adorning the walls of Depression-era post offices, train stations or now crumbling civic edifices. (At left is but one of the thousands of paintings, Baseball at Night, by Russian-born Morris Kantor (1896-1974), many of whose works can be found at the Smithsonian.
My good friend Carlos Pagan, a brilliant producer of PBS programming reminds me that art - whether it be broadcast, performance or multi-media - is part of what makes America a great nation. Without it, we are diminished; our aesthetic selves malnourished and unchallenged. We simply cannot let CPB, NEA, NEH and NPR go without funding. Oh, they will continue to exist, but quite possibly as shadows of their former selves. For #45 and his minions to defund these vital and valuable resources is to proclaim that as Americans, we have, no right to bear arts . . . only arms. (Here, I must fess up. This catchy slogan is not mine; I borrowed it from my friends at the Creative Coalition.) Nonetheless, it is true: a government that goes out of its way to defund art, creativity and clear thinking is not worthy of approbation or respect.
In the days since the American Health Care Act was pulled from consideration, many fingers have been pointed among Republicans as to who was chiefly to blame for its failure . . . just as many Democrats have stood up and crowed over their victory. What has been lost in all this is the real reason why the AHCA failed: because We the People banded together and said NO! The same power exists for We the People to make sure #45 and his Congress know we want - nay, demand - that we have a right to bear arts.
For all those who agree, my friend Carlos Pagan and I urge you to log on to Protect My Public Media and sign their petition. It's because of us that the ACA is still the law of the land. And it will likewise be because of us that public media - that which reports and challenges, entertains and educates - will continue being funded - at least in part - by our tax dollars.
In the words of Henri Matisse, "Creativity takes courage."
We all have the right to bear arts.
64 days gone, 1396 days to go . . .
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Audio to The Codification of Cruelty
There is an old Hollywood legend . . . perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not and known to virtually every Hollywood Brat (including yours truly) - that Groucho Marx was denied membership in the all-Jewish Hillcrest Country Club because he was simply too crude, too lewd to fit in amongst the likes of the more staid Louis Mayer and Irving Thalberg (MGM), Jack Warner (Warner Bros.), Harry Cohen (Columbia) and Al Jolson. After having been turned away at least three times - so the legend goes - Marx was finally granted membership - which he summarily turned down, saying, in typical "Marxist" fashion, "I'd never join a club that would have me as a member." In truth, Marx eventually did become a member of Hillcrest, and, true to form, spent many a day "punishing" his fellow club mates by being . . . well, Groucho Marx: lewd, crude and downright rude. Groucho made a career - both in reel and real life - of essentially "punishing" and being "cruel" to all those who supported him. This was Hollywood's version of perverse "Marxist" lunacy.
In a strange sense, we are experiencing perverse - though decidedly non-"Marxist" lunacy once again with #45. "What in the hell are you talking about?" I can hear you ask. Well, in looking over #45's first budget blueprint - with all it's overwhelming cuts (and $54 billion increase in defense spending) - we find that, like Groucho of old, those whom this Randian budget would seem to be punishing the most are precisely those who supported and believed in him the most - his so-called "loyal base." Taking a brief gander at some of what's in this budget blueprint, we find it:
Those this proposed budget would hurt the most are #45's loyal base, such as:
And on and on and on . . .
Despite White House budget chief Mike Mulvaney's assertion that this budget really, truly displays "great compassion for taxpayers," it would appear that what #45 and his colleagues have presented is, in fact, a document which if passed in its present incarnation, would serve to codify cruelty. For it is a highly ideological document which gives the richest of the rich even greater tax cuts, lines the pockets of defense contractors with tens of billions of dollars and places unimaginable stumbling blocks in the path of those who, strangled with feverish anger against politicians and "politics as usual," bought into the promise that a billionaire reality show host best understood their plight, and would make their world - their America - his first priority.
How much actual input did #45 have on this budget blueprint? Although one cannot be certain, it is likely the answer is "precious little." For the man who now sits in the Oval Office (when he is not lounging about Mar-a-Lago) is not what one could call a detail kind of guy. Rather, as with his hotels, golf courses, vodka, suits, ties, bottled water and even toilet paper, he merely puts his brand on the product and then either collects the royalty checks or files for bankruptcy. His personal and business history shows that frequently, he leaves those who dug the trenches and performed the grunt work (precisely those who made him the man he is today) holding the bag. I doubt few of them voted for him in 2016.
In a truly sad repeat, it would appear that once again, #45 is set to stick it to the very people - his ardent base - who made him POTUS. It's almost as if Groucho - who, by the way, was a lifelong ARDENT liberal Democrat - has come back to inhabit the soul of #45, making sure that those who granted him membership in the most exclusive of all clubs, will live to regret it.
Except in Groucho's case, it was all good clean fun. Hillcrest is still alive, still prosperous (oil was discovered on the golf course in the early 1950s), and its members still regaling one another with their hilarious recollection of Marxist lunacy.
58 days down, 1,402 to go . . .
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Audio Link to You Break It You Buy It
The Affordable Care Act - better known as Obamacare - was originally, in part, the brainchild of the conservative Heritage Foundation. That flawed, though game-changing legislation was passed without the support of a single Congressional Republican . . . despite the fact that included among its original cosponsors were Senators Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley. That bill, by the way, came in at just about 2,700 pages, and took more than two decades to come to fruition. Now 2,700 pages sounds like an awful lot - until you start looking at some of the other legislation Congress routinely deals with. That said, the Affordable Care Act was larger than most bills to begin with, but considering the scope of healthcare reform, that was quite understandable.
From almost the moment of its birth, Obamacare became both an epithet and a vile symbol of all that was diabolic and treasonous among Democrats. To Republicans, Obamacare became the Wolfsbane they hoped and prayed would destroy the werewolves of the left. History records that during the Obama years, the Republican-controlled House - and eventually Senate - voted no fewer than 5 dozen times to eliminate it, all the while scaring the pants off a segment of the American public with talk of "death panels," "socialized medicine," and "government making decisions about your health." During the 2016 election, the alliterative "Repeal and Replace" became a rallying cry - despite the fact that no one, including Donald Trump - had the slightest idea what the replacement would look like. Just that it would be better. And just last week, the so-called "American Health Care Act" - coming in at a sleek 67 pages - was unveiled. Within 24 hours, Freedom Caucus members started calling it "Obamacare Lite," "RINO Care," and "D.O.A," while a handful of Republican heavyweights said they would not vote for it. Turns out, what took Democrats 20 years and 2,700 pages, took Republicans a couple of weeks and less than 6 dozen pages . . . of which nearly 10% took up the question of what to do about a Medicaid recipient who receives a lump sum or large payment from winning the lottery. (Answer: they are to be kicked off of Medicaid.) Imagine that: 10% of the American Health Care Act took up an issue that affects at most about 100 people a year!
Although the AHCA does keep many aspects of the ACA (children being able to remain on their parents' policy until age 26; no penalty for preexisting conditions; no lifetime caps), it relies heavily on tax credits and ultimately would take upwards of $400 billion away from state Medicaid programs in the first 10 years. No wonder both the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association have come out against the plan. Sure, with lots of people no longer having insurance, hospitals and doctors will see fewer and fewer patients, which means a drop in income. Then again, hospitals and physicians take an oath to "first, do no harm'; fewer insured Americans means fewer healthy Americans and far more Americans using emergency rooms as their only source of healthcare. Additionally, hospitals employ lots and lots of people; the smaller the town, the higher the percentage of those gainfully employed. In other words, with fewer and fewer dollars going into Medicaid on a state-by-state basis, the fewer employed. And do remember, the American Hospital Association and AMA have ginormous lobbying operations on Capitol Hill that are going to do everything in their power to see that AHCA never sees the light of day.
The use of tax credits and health savings accounts is something near and dear to the hearts of most Republicans. It assumes, of course, that individuals and/or families making, say $16,000, $25,000 or $40,000 actually have dollars they can put into these accounts or will benefit from being able to write a certain amount off on their federal tax bill. It is often in these kinds of debates that we find out just how far out of touch legislators can be:
Take House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz as an example. A couple of days ago, Chaffetz (R-Utah) said the Republicans' new healthcare proposal will offer Americans at all income levels the opportunity to afford health insurance. Said Chaffetz: “Well, we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said that they don't want. And you know what? Americans have choices. And they've got to make a choice, and so maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care. They've got to make those decisions themselves." Mr. Chairman: while iPhones do cost a couple of hundred dollars, that's just a drop in the bucket when it comes to paying for health insurance. And giving people a $2,000-$3,000 tax credit won't come close to doing what the ACA did for poorer, younger and older Americans who now are insured.
Then there was Speaker Ryan's complaint that "The fatal conceit of Obamacare" is that young and healthy people are subsidizing care for sick people. Well, yeah . . . that's the way insurance works. Think about automobile insurance - which is mandatory: the vast majority of those insured never need use their policies, because they don't get into accidents. Their unspent premiums are used to pay the bills of those folks who do get into accidents. Mr. Speaker: you really should take a 101 course in insurance.
How's about Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) who, during a committee discussion with Democratic Representative Mike Doyle, laid out some of his problems with the Affordable Care Act, including the requirement that health-insurance plans cover certain basic health benefits like hospital and doctor visits. “What mandate in the Obamacare bill does he take issue with?” Doyle asked Shimkus. To which Shimkus replied, “What about men having to purchase prenatal care?” As the room started to buzz, Shimkus added, “I’m just … is that not correct? And should they?” Tell me Rep. Shimkus: do you think women should help fund men's prostate exams or ability to purchase Viagra?
And of course, virtually no one engaged in the healthcare debate - whether on Capitol Hill, the White House or K Street - are without first-class health insurance . . .
Even without a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (which President Trump and Congressional Republicans have preemptively rejected as being biased), it seems clear that the AHCA will lead to millions of Americans losing their insurance coverage - especially older people living in rural America . . . a huge chunk of whom are devout "Trumpeters." Makes one wonder how all these folks are going to react when they wake up to discover that once again, they're uninsured and must, once again, resort of emergency room care. I don't think they're going to jump up and wave "Trump: Make America Great Again!" signs.
Many of us remember going into toy stores as kids and seeing an ominous sign which read "You break it you buy it." Well, the same goes for healthcare, President Trump. Those of us on the opposite side of the political aisle are going to make sure that people get used to hashtagging this proposal #TrumpCare. In that way, when (God forbid) you dismantle Obamacare, you will have to take complete ownership of its disastrous, heartless replacement. And that won't be good for you, for Republican governors (many of whom have already come out against it) and for Republican members of Congress . . . all of whom have gotten a taste of what it's like to face angry, angry constituents out there in the American heartland.
You may well want to heed the words of Texas Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) President Trump. For just the other day, in announcing his decision to withhold support for t he AHCA, Senator Cotton said, Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences of that vote. If they vote for this bill, they're going to put the House majority at risk next year."
You break it you buy it; you buy it you own it!
51days down, 1,409 to go . . .
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Audio Link to "Honest Bullshit"
In his remarkable 1864 novella Notes From the Underground, Feodor Dostoevsky, a writer not particularly known for humor or irony, puts into the mouth of his narrator a most memorably whimsical statement: "Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too." To my way of thinking, Dostoevsky has, within a mere 61 words, given us the first - and perhaps best - example of what we shall call "honest bullsh*t." Yes, I know, honest bullsh*t does come across as a first-rate oxymoron - a marriage of opposites. And yet, considering the time and temperament of the age in which we live, it does carry a certain je ne sais quoi - an almost illusive, indefinable quality.
By now, it is an almost toxic truism that many public people and sources - from our current POTUS and his advisors to alternative truth purveyors and peddlers of hate are rarely on speaking terms with the truth. But referring to all of them as perpetual or pathological liars misses the mark by several important degrees. Donald Trump is not a liar; Breitbart News does not lie; Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are not liars. Rather, they are world-class b.s. artists - horses of a different and vastly more more pernicious color.
So what is the difference between a lie and bullsh*t - or between a liar and a bullsh*tter? Fascinatingly, the best answer comes neither from a late-night TV pundit nor a standup satirist. Rather, it comes from the pen of Henry G. Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton University, who, in 1986, published an essay entitled On Bullshit in the prestigious Raritan Quarterly Review. In 2005, Princeton University Press issued it as in a small hardback edition; it quickly became a New York Times bestseller - - due mainly, I would imagine, to its most unique title. In his 67-page book which is really an extended essay on communication, Professor Frankfurt posits that lies and bullsh*t are both about deception, but while lying is a conscious act of obscuring the truth, bullsh*tting has no interest at all in the truth, “An indifference to how things really are,” is the way Frankfurt puts it. Examples of #45's penchant for bullsh*tting include him furiously insisting that, contrary to what Meryl Streep ("the most overrated actress in Hollywood") said at the Golden Globes, he "never mocked a disabled reporter," even though there is widely circulated TV footage of him doing just that. He has also insisted he can't possibly take responsibility for the number of racists who have supported him or committed crimes in his name, having apparently forgotten about the times he made racist remarks himself. Jump ahead to just the other day, and we have the POTUS claiming - without a scintilla of evidence - that President Obama ordered the bugging of Trump Towers during the 2016 presidential campaign. Without question, #45 knows whether this statement is true or false; the fact is, he simply does not care. That is the mark of a b.s. artist . . . or what our British cousins would refer to as a hoofwanking bunglecunt.
In these, and dozens of other cases, the president is interested only in his own self-promotion; he is not lying, because for him an objective truth isn’t even a consideration – he is bullsh*tting. Fascinatingly, when any of these things are pointed out by the professional press, Trump and his chosen team cry out "elitism" - billionaires all standing in front of the golden doors of Trump Tower. By now, we have gone well beyond a time in which facts matter. Indeed, we have even moved beyond a "post facts" period of time. Today we find ourselves in a reality in which its all about bare-faced denial. This is the culture of bullsh*tting in which expertise is both denigrated and spat upon. Why? Because expertise can actually provide a bulwark against nonsense. Today, it matters not a whit to the grossly, professionally uninformed that scientists have proven life existed billions of years ago or that global warming is a clear and present danger. To the purveyors of b.s., what the experts have concluded through rigorous and scientifically verifiable research is shund (Yiddish for "trash").
Today, we live in a blog/Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat culture where it’s pitched as a triumph of democracy that everyone can claim authority, which means anyone who says that, actually, there is an objective truth (i.e. 2+2=4) is condemned. Feelings rather than facts are what matter, these purveyors of bullsh*t claim, and the success of this, as Tom Nichols writes in his new book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, represents “the full flowering of a therapeutic culture where self-esteem, not achievement, is the ultimate human value, and it’s making us all dumber by the day.” No wonder America's elected a celebrity as President, rather than a seasoned public servant. Believe me: I grew up around a ton of celebrities and public people; once the lights and cameras go dark, they are about as insecure a group as God ever created . . .
The Republican Party was birthed by a man known as "Honest Abe." Its latest leader is a fellow who, in the words of Roald Dahl, might be best described as the "Oopma Loompa."
There is such a thing as objective truth. So far as "honest bullsh*t" goes, it is about as ephemeral and lacking in reality as Dostoevsky at his most ironic . . .
43 days down, 1,417 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Audio Link to "Heard the One About the Literate Rabbi and the Dipso Nobel Laureate?"
History is replete with odd couples. Besides the eponymously obvious - Felix and Oscar, consider John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot, and Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe . . . to name but a few. One of my very favorites, who shared a most productive - and financially rewarding - partnership were Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and rabbi/author Lewis Browne. The Lewis/Browne friendship was about as odd as that between composers Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. On the one side was Sinclair Lewis, the Midwestern atheistic drunk who, whenever he included a Jew in one of his novels, resorted to base stereotypes; on the other side was Lewis Browne, the scholarly London-born, Portland, Oregon-raised rabbi who, before turning to novel-writing, was one of the nation's premier religious writers and lecturers.
In the early 1940s, the two joined together and went out on the national lecture circuit, where they were accustomed to speaking before crowds of 3,000 and more, each attendee paying anywhere from 55¢ and $1.10. Without fail, their lecture topic was entitled "Can It Happen Here?" The Lewis/Browne lecture debates were based on novels they had published in the years between 1935 and 1943: Sinclair Lewis' far more famous (and bestselling) It Can't Happen Here, and Rabbi Browne's regrettably long-forgotten See What I Mean? Both novels dealt with the same topic: the scary prospect of America being taken over by Fascists. In Nobelist Lewis' dystopian work, the weak-kneed, highly malleable protagonist, a mild-mannered nobody named Buzz Windrip, is led to create a "League of Forgotten Men," and manages to get himself elected POTUS as head of a benign "Share the Wealth League" movement. Then, with breathless abandon - and before any but the most civically-engaged realizes it, has turned America in a Fascist Corporatist state. Likewise, Lewis Browne's See What I Mean?" centers around one Clem Smullet, a failed Hollywood p.r. guy who, needing a job, joins forces with the leader of a fledgling anti-Semitic movement called "The Crusade." Imprisoned, Smullet reveals The Crusades' true intention: to rouse anger and fear, and designate enemies of the state. One of the things that Lewis and Browne found most troubling and dangerous, was the "America First" movement.
Sound familiar?
Both It Can't Happen Here and See What I Mean? are available for reading. I cannot strongly enough urge everyone to read these two classics for, truth to tell, they are as important and hauntingly prescient today as they were more than eighty year ago. And while I am sorry to offend anyone who really, truly believes #45 has already shown himself to being well on the road to becoming the best POTUS in all American history; of being the one President who in his first month has kept all his campaign promises and even more, I must strongly, stringently and sonorously declare that they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Like Sinclair Lewis' "Corpos," (the group which brutally and systematically carry out their leader's orders) #45's bare-bones administration has set the wheels in motion for a government that is of, for and about the truly wealthy. Their overarching concern and purpose, as so clearly announced by #45's chief political strategist/amanuensis Steve Bannon, is "the deconstruction of the administrative state." What in the hell does that mean? Basically. the dismemberment of the entire Federal Government; especially when it comes to any regulations dealing with the rights and perquisites of big business, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the medicines we take, the jobs we work at, the social safety net we have long relied upon or the myriad other protections which have tended to keep the "haves" from swallowing up the "have-nots."
One thing you've got to give Steve Bannon: he is direct and deadly honest. Speaking this past week before the Conservative Political Action Conference, he described himself as a "Leninist," saying that the Soviet leader “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” In other words, Steve Bannon, late of Breitbart News - the godfathers of "alternative facts" - wants to take the Federal Government back to the days before Theodore Roosevelt, when the government first began adopting the role of defender of the defenseless, the one entity whose job it would be to protect the rights and privileges, the health and safety, of the common clay. To Steve Bannon, the opposite is the case. As he told the perfervidly right-wing gathering at CPAC, “If you look at [our] Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction." In other words, to eliminate the very cabinet departments they were selected to head.
What makes Steve Bannon far, far more dangerous than #45, is that unlike his putative boss, he is an ideologue who really, truly believes what he says and does. #45, on the other hand, seems to believe precious little; his main joy comes from applause and the certain knowledge that he is loved by the people to whom he speaks. I do not believe #45 is an anti-Semite. But Steve Bannon is. I do not believe that #45 has given much thought or consideration to what badmouthing Mexico, Germany, Britain or Australia means in the long run. But Steven Bannon has. I cannot see #45 giving a tinker's what bathroom an LGBT youngster uses. But Steve Bannon certainly does. Simply stated, Steve Bannon is #45's puppet master; the maniac who pulls the strings and puts the words into the mouth of his creation. #45 wants to be loved, admired and venerated; Bannon wants to change the course of human history. This is both frightening and potentially fatal. It smacks of fascism. And this is precisely why people who oppose this administration cannot let their guard down. We are not paid agitators; we are patriots.
I cannot tell you how many people have justified their supreme trust and support for #45's whims and flights of Twitter fantasy, by the simple statement "He's fabulously wealthy; he's single-handedly created a fabulous international business empire; he obviously knows how to get things done." Well my friends, let me remind you that for many decades, the person who single-handedly ran the most successful, most lucrative business empire in America was Al Capone. (His reputed $129,000,000 income in 1929 would be worth more than $1,820,000,000.00 in today's dollars.) What #45 and his henchmen are steering us toward is the world feared by the "odd couple," Sinclair Lewis & Lewis Browne; a world in which the press is "the enemy of the people"; tax breaks for the rich are precisely what the middle- and lower-classes must support; a gross increase in military spending precisely what the nation needs; and good old fashioned hypertensive fear the currency which will purchase the future so devoutly craved by the few.
Do read It Can't Happen Here. Likewise, if you can find it, do read See What I Mean? The two will give you that uncomfortable feeling which in the long run, is a far, far more valuable currency than anything #45, Bannon or their gaggle of amateur billionaires could possibly imagine.
Sinclair and Browne may well have been the odd couple, but their fears and worries should be our fears and worries.
37 days down, 1,423 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Audio Link to "Visiting With G. Washington on Presidents' Day"
An introductory note: Today is Presidents' Day, 24 hours which are supposed to be in celebration and remembrance of, and reverence for, our two finest Presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Alas, for what I fear is the vast majority of twenty-first century Americans, Presidents' Day is nothing more than a one-day holiday in which many go shopping, having been lured to the local mall by Washington and Lincoln, acting in their contemporary incarnations of mercantile hucksters and hustlers. As such, what we have lost over the years is an awe-filled appreciation of these two giants and what they accomplished in both giving birth to, and saving the very life of, this monumental experiment in self-governance.
And so, in honor of Presidents' Day, I've decided to take a break and let President Washington do both the writing and speaking. What follows is one of the most amazing and prescient documents in all American history: Washington's Farewell Address. Yes, it is rather long and the language not easily accessible to the modern reader. Nonetheless, please give it a try, sit back and ponder his words and admonitions and reflect on how far we've come . . . and how very far we have yet to go.
Friends and Citizens:
The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.
I beg you, at the same time, to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country; and that in withdrawing the tender of service, which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.
The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence, impelled me to abandon the idea.
I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety, and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that, in the present circumstances of our country, you will not disapprove my determination to retire.
The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied that if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.
In looking forward to the moment which is intended to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country for the many honors it has conferred upon me; still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me; and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by services faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.
Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.
Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.
The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.
While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured ? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?
To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.
How far in the discharge of my official duties I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them.
In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my proclamation of the twenty-second of April, I793, is the index of my plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice, and by that of your representatives in both houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or divert me from it.
After deliberate examination, with the aid of the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take, and was bound in duty and interest to take, a neutral position. Having taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain it, with moderation, perseverance, and firmness.
The considerations which respect the right to hold this conduct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right, so far from being denied by any of the belligerent powers, has been virtually admitted by all.
The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.
The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With me a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.
Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.
Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.
Geo. Washington.
Audio Link to Avoiding Concussions Is Essential For Your Health - and the Nation's Future
By now, it has become, at an absolute minimum, a thrice-daily commonplace: "45" or his press spokesman Sean Spicer or his advisor Kellyanne Conway or someone else from the West Wing, will tweet, claim or give voice to an outrageously obvious lie (i.e. murders at their highest rate in the past half century; America is in dire danger of a terrorist attack; there were between 3 and 5 million illegal votes in the 2016 election). In other words, we are now living in a country where no more than 25% of the citizenry really, truly believe the most unbelievable, factually rebuttable things. And for those who wonder to what this figure - 25% - refers, permit me to enlighten you with a fact: 25% represents the percentage of the American electorate that voted for the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (or, to be honestly inclusive, against Hillary Clinton). Yes, you read correctly: about 1 in 4 eligible voters in the USA actually cast their ballot for "45." That's bad enough. But what's worse - far, far worse - is that this percentage - which amounts to just under 58,000,000 out of a total voting-age population of 231,556,622 in a nation of 326,474,013 people - also represents the only group "45" really, truly cares about. For he senses that no matter what he says or does will be just fine with them.
Now, truth to tell, most of the readers of this blog don't have all that much daily contact with members of the 25%. We all tend to live in our own concentric circles of interest, divided by income, demographics, education and a whole host of other factors. As such, most of us spend far more time surrounded by folks whose political outlook - not to mention likes and dislikes - are pretty close to ours rather than with people who will give you an angry earful about how great "45" is, how corrupt President Obama was, or how Hillary Clinton is shortly going to be moving from Chappaqua to Sing Sing.
For most of us, it is both clear and axiomatic that "45" is a pathological liar; a potentially delusional monomaniac who is woefully unfit to serve as POTUS. But having written all this, most of us also have a "crazy Uncle Bernie," an upstairs neighbor or a chappie at the gym (where, for reasons unknown, most locker room televisions are set to Fox News), who, as mentioned above, are rarin' to show you the error of your ways; to counter facts with fiction and heartfelt questions with toxic bromides. Indeed, for those who believe that the better armed with facts we are the greater the likelihood of "converting" a Trumpeter into a progressive, guess again. Many have been carefully tutored into "knowing" that the facts we counter with are mere products of the conspiratorial, utterly mendacious mainstream media.
For me, it has long been a daily must to spend almost as much time reading, listening or watching Fox, Breitbart, Limbaugh or News Max as it is the New York Times, National Public Radio or The Daily Kos. Why? Well, despite the fact that the former are frequently no better than bitter emetics, they do keep one abreast of how the 25% thinks, what they believe, or give one insight as to how to best deal - or not - with them.
(A hint: whenever you read an online pro-progressive, fact-checking op-ed piece, make sure to read a sampling of those responses which have the highest number of negatives. It's a real eye-opener. Case in point, an op-ed piece by Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker entitled "Trump's Two-Year Presidency." In it, Ms. Parker, who is politically right-of-center, makes the case that "45" just might face impeachment proceedings before too long. In one paragraph, Ms. Parker writes, "Once ensconced, it would take a Democratic majority approximately 30 seconds to begin impeachment proceedings selecting from an accumulating pile of lies, overreach and just plain sloppiness. That is, assuming Trump hasn’t already been shown the exit. Thus far, Trump and his henchmen have conducted a full frontal assault on civil liberties, open government and religious freedom, as well as instigating or condoning a cascade of ethics violations ranging from the serious (business conflicts of interest) to the absurd (attacking a department store for dropping his daughter’s fashion line). And, no, it’s not just a father defending his daughter. It’s the president of the United States bullying a particular business and, more generally, making a public case against free enterprise."
Ah, but the comments are well worth the price of admission. One writer responded with an attack on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "It was Hillary who lied. Remember "There was no classified info in the emails! Then when that was proven to be a lie it was "None of the email was marked classified!" which was a lie and irrelevant. Remember when she said "I only used one device for email." and that was a lie also." Another, which likewise didn't come close to defending "45" attacked Barack Obama: "It's funny to watch you Progressive Fascists run around like chickens with their heads cut off. Your pretending to be worried about our president, but you were happy to blindly support our worst president ever, Tyrant Obama the Liar. He violated the constitution, lied, failed at everything he did."
In total, this one op-ed piece drew more than 5,800 responses, about a quarter of which (yes, 25%!) were scathing denunciations, rather than heartfelt defenses. So what to do? How do we respond in our daily lives to people who are incredibly pro-"45"? People who will endlessly tell you "He is a tremendously rich, successful businessman; he knows what he is doing? Sorry friends, but facts won't cut it. Rational arguments cannot keep a charging bull intent on doing what comes naturally. In my experience, in political debates, the less one knows, the more certain they are, the more impervious they are to reason, and more likely to become angry, cutting and dyspeptic. (Sorry to say, this also goes for people reasonably well-armed with facts.)
So why even try?
Stone's first rule of politics has long been "Trying to convert a person on the other side of the political fence is akin to banging one's head against a wall. It's painful, damaging and can only lead to a potentially lethal concussion. So unless you're truly in love with concussions, don't even try." This is to say that instead of trying to disabuse Trumpeters of their prideful certainty that he is going to stand up to our enemies, bring all exported jobs back home, build a "beautiful wall" and make Mexico pay for it, etc., etc., etc., why not take that time, effort and energy to instead find new, heretofore untapped supporters? There are more than 90 million people who did not take the time to vote in 2016. These are the people we should be talking to - not those who are charter members of the "Don't try to confuse me with the facts" club.
Medically speaking, concussions are bad for one's health; just ask any number of former NFL players. Civically speaking, concussions - the kind which come from continually banging one's head against the wall of political argumentation - are bad for the nation's future. Engaging in us-versus-them debates and disputes won't change anyone's mind, and can regrettably make enemies out of friends and outlaws out of in-laws. It is far healthier to recruit from the roughly 42% who did not vote than from the 25% who think "45" is just the answer for what ails American politics.
So where do we find and engage the 42%? A couple of suggestions:
Many have erroneously suggested that what's happening in the country these past several weeks is merely a leftist version of the 2008 Tea Party phenomenon. It isn't: the Tea Party was created and galvanized by Koch Brother money and Carl Rove cunning. What's going on these past few weeks is a definite "people's movement." Become a part of it. No concussions here; perhaps a sense of giddiness . . .
Join the movement. Keep your cool. Do a lot of listening. And above all remember: concussions are both painful and potentially lethal . . .
23 days down, 1,437 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Readers of a certain age will likely remember the early '60s TV show That Was the Week That Was - better known to cognoscenti as "TW3." Originally created by the late Sir David Frost for BBC television and then imported to the U.S of A., TW3 was an incredibly creative, sassy and on-point lampooning of the week's political events. The American version was home to such gifted writers as Buck Henry, Calvin Trillin, Herb Sargent, Saul Turtletaub and Tom Lehrer, the "Salinger of Satirical Song." Then too, those who appeared in front of the camera weren't too shabby either: Bob Dishy, Tom Boswell, Allan Sherman, Steve Allen, and even Woody Allen. Alas, despite its tart sauciness, TW3 only ran from January 1964 to May 1965 - a mere 24 shows. And yet, it is fondly remembered as a groundbreaking showcase for some of the best, brightest and most perceptive talents in contemporary entertainment.
One wonders what a contemporary, Trump-era version of TW3 would be like. Unbelievably, within the span of a single week, Trump & Co. have provided enough fodder for at least 40 hours of satire and lampooning. Consider that within the past week (168 hours), the president and his people have:
And this doesn't even count the president's move to gut Dodd/Frank so that financial planners and brokers don't have to put their clients' interests above their own, and the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in a manner more akin to announcing a winner on The Apprentice than the naming of a Justice to the nation's highest court.
Indeed, were TW3 back in business, not only would its producers have to hire 200 additional writers and scores of additional actors; they would have to amend their tagline. Perhaps they could steal the one the late, lamented Westinghouse Broadcasting used: "All yuks all the time. You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the weird." And, they would have to be on at least 5 hours a day, 7 days a week just to cover the most egregious, most satire-worthy acts and statements of this new administration.
Now I know there are still millions of Americans who continue supporting President Trump, believing most - if not all - of what he says, does, thinks, tweets and proposes; who trust him to make the right decisions and surround himself with only the best, smartest and least politically correct people imaginable. These are the ones who continually command that the rest of us "Give him a chance!" Sorry, but as the old saw goes, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." Donald Trump is the way he is; what you see is what you get. And what we get is a man-child who is anything but presidential; an unlettered egomaniac who is in thrall to a malevolent Geppetto named Bannon.
At the same time, he and his crew are worthy of vicious satire . . . as well as petitions, protests, phone calls and acts of intelligent defiance.
For those missing the barbs, wit and outright tomfoolery of TW3, might I recommend their closest incarnation? Do become acquainted with The Capitol Steps . . . the people who put the mock in Democracy.
16 days down, 1,444 to go.
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Audio Link to The Closing of Gates . . . The Opening of Doors
This past Friday, January 27, was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Gatherings and services were held around the globe, perhaps most notably in Warsaw, Berlin and Tirana, Albania, were an olive tree was planted during the inauguration of a downtown garden commemorating Albanians who saved Jews during the war. In Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump commemorated the day by issuing a statement which bewildered some and infuriated many others. Why? Because the president's contained nary a word about Jews. Anti Defamation League (ADL) head Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted "@WhiteHouse statement on #HolocaustMemorialDay, misses that it was six million Jews who perished, not just 'innocent people.'
It should be noted that last year at this time, then-President Barack Obama's statement made explicit reference to Jews, declaring, in part "We are all Jews." Ah, but Donald Trump is a great friend of Israel and the Jews; Barack Obama, despite being the first and only POTUS to have an ordained rabbi in the family, he is an Israel-hating anti-Semite. To further trivialize International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mr. Trump chose this very day to issue an Executive Order barring all refugees from entering the United States for four months — and those from war-ravaged Syria indefinitely. In signing the Executive Order, the president defended it as being absolutely necessary to prevent “radical Islamic terrorists” from entering the nation. Trump further said the halt in the refugee program was necessary to give government agencies time to develop a stricter vetting system. One wonders if he and his team are even aware of how strict the vetting system employed during the Obama years already is; under it's terms, it can already take up to 2 years (or more) for an applicant to receive permission to enter the U.S.
It would seem that being POTUS has not done a whit for Donald Trump's tone-deafness; it is as obvious as ever. And despite Reince Priebus' best attempts at diffusing or deflecting the matter of failing to mention Jewish victims of the Holocaust, members of the rational public are becoming increasingly strident in their denunciation of a president and an administration that has only occupied the White House less than a fortnight.
In an interview with CBN News, the president said persecuted Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status. "We are going to help them, the president said. "They've been horribly treated." Yes, this is true, but what about Yazidis? Sufis? Shi'ites living in Sunni-majority countries or vice versa? When it comes to endangering the lives of whole communities based on their religion or ethnicity, we are all Jews; we are all Copts, Yazidis and yes, we all Muslims.
Strangely, while the travel/entry ban is most stringent when it comes to Syrian refugees - a heck of a lot of whom are in a relocate-or-face-death situation, it does not include any Islamic countries where the Trump Organization has business interests. The president's order makes no mention of - among others - Turkey (where Trump-branded home furnishings are manufactured); the United Arab Emirates (where Trump has licensed his name to a Dubai golf resort, as well as a luxury home development and spa), Indonesia (the world’s largest majority-Muslim nation, where there are two large Trump-branded resorts underway); and Saudi Arabia (the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists where The Trump Organization had incorporated several limited liability companies in preparation for an attempt to build a hotel).
For many, the logic behind President Trump's Executive Order - which is already fomenting chaos and uncertainty around the world - is clear: if the order keeps even a single potential Islamic terrorist out of the country and saves even a single life, it will have been worth it. This, it seems to me, is but a reification of the old Barry Goldwater bromide that "Extremism in the face of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." By this logic, if by enacting laws which would keep all assault weapons and multi-round clips out of the hands of the American public even a single innocent life is saved, wouldn't it be worth it? Unfortunately even if the logic may be unassailable, there is one big difference: Muslims don't have a well-heeled, deep-pocketed lobby; gun-owners do. Muslims aren't in a position to buy politicians - or put the fear of losing the next election in them; gun owners do.
As we have seen over the past 24 hours, push-back from the public and the courts has been both vehement and successful. Already, the Trump administration has been backing down on terms of this executive order.
Meanwhile, Israel's actions vis-à-vis Syrian refugees and Holocaust Remembrance Day is a horse of a different color - despite how much closer the reality of terror is there than here in the U.S . . . and the fact that a technical state of war exists between the two neighboring countries. For Israel announced that for the first time it would open its doors to 100 Syrian children who have been orphaned as a result of that country's six-year civil war. Additionally, Israel has admitted more than 2,600 refugees from Syria for medical care. Unlike Donald Trump's America - and virtually every other country in the Middle East - Israel is distinguishing itself by extending a welcome hand to orphaned refugees in need. Unlike sgain, unlike Donald Trump's America and all other Middle Eastern countries, Israel is choosing to save the lives of the most vulnerable victims of the terrible Syrian Civil War and offer them a new chance for life. Tiny Israel, which is vilified by a vast majority of the planet for being apartheid-loving, racist, bloodthirsty and dictatorial is, when all is said and done, far more humane and compassionate than her enemies would have it.
This is the way great - though admittedly imperfect - countries are supposed to act:
They open their doors, rather than close their gates.
Are you paying attention President Trump?
10 days down, 1,450 to go.
Copyight©2017 Kurt F. Stone
Audio Link to "Can Knowledge Be More Dangerous Than Ignorance?"
OK. Donald Trump has taken the oath of office, attended the inaugural balls, asked for God's Divine assistance at the National Cathedral and uttered his first presidential whoppers. (Among these were having his new Press Secretary Sean Spicer falsely claim that his inaugural gathering was "the largest in history," and then take no further questions. We witnessed the new POTUS gleefully informing CIA agents "I am so behind you" while at the same time bashing the daylights out of the media for any reports to the contrary. Indeed, it wasn't a whit different from his campaign; high on demagoguery, low on truth . . . or as Kellyanne Conway now refers to them, "alternative facts." This, of course, is her way of saying "blatant lies." Sorry Kellyanne, you can't put lipstick on that pig. On the bright side however, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the press is no longer interested in giving President Trump and his mouthpieces a free ride; they are finally, finally challenging their lies. This is a good, positive and hopeful sign. But at the same time, one is tempted to ask "What in the hell took you so long?"
Welcome to the "Trump Era"; he's now officially the nation's 45th president. Already, there have been nationwide protests attended by far, far more people than came to watch him place his hand on (somebody's) family Bible, take the oath of office, and deliver one of the shortest, most caliginous inaugural addresses in memory. To listen to the nation's new Commander in Chief, one would think that America looks like Dunkirk after all the buzz bombs; is the chaotic, dystopian Hill Valley of Back To the Future 2 - a place filled with crime, drugs, destroyed cities . . . a rusting hulk of its former self. And yet, most statistics point to an America which has come a long, long way since both the terror of 9/11 and the fiscal horror of 2008.
Historically, inaugural addresses have been known for soaring rhetoric:
( I for one did not watch a minute of the inauguration; rather, in protest - and doing my small part to keep the TV ratings low - I kept one television on Turner Classic Movies, the other on the Animal Planet. I did, however, watch his address on You Tube several hours after its delivery. Click the link for highlights of his 16-minute address.)
Besides the words "American carnage," which really gives me the willies, I was particularly stupefied to hear the term "America first" used as a rallying cry. These two words immediately brought to mind Charles Lindbergh's infamous 9/11/41 speech in which he accused the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt Administration of pushing America into war against Germany. It was a notorious speech which even drew the ire and opprobrium of publisher William Randolph Hearst - to be sure, no admirer of FDR. Lindbergh portrayed Jews as being a bunch of dangerous liberals and Marxists who controlled the media, the banks and Hollywood; people who were the very antithesis of those who put "America first."
I quickly Googled "Lindbergh+speech+America+first" and came up with an audio capture of that speech. To say the least, it was more than obnoxious and reminded me of why members of my family never mention "Lucky Lindy" without spitting. But what really shocked me were the comments on the webpage containing the audio. Reading through them, it seemed as if someone had opened the gates of Hell, thus permitting Jew haters and Holocaust deniers to emerge into the haze of a new day. And these, mind you, were not comments written years ago; most were less than a week old. One fellow wrote "USA should have stayed out of the war and the so-called holocaust is a hoax." After reading several-such posts, I had to add my two cents: "How in the world can you call yourself a human being? There has never been a more exhaustively photographed, filmed and documented event in all world history than the Holocaust." Among the many responses, one came from a fellow who calls himself "Alexander Solzhenitsyn": "Kurt Stone Actually that is not true, there is no evidence for the gas chambers whatsoever. The chambers we see today were built after the war by the Polish FACT." Another, who signs on as "Applied Logic" smarmily responded to my post "I have forgotten more than you will ever know. People like you know a lot about nothing and nothing about a lot." The thread ended abruptly with my riposte: "If you would "apply logic," you would realize just how illogical your statements truly are. Any time you want to meet and compare knowledge and education, please let me know. I'll provide the Earl Grey, you bring your AK47 . . ." (OK, this probably wasn't the smartest thing to write, but I was just that ticked off . . .)
Obviously then, when President Trump talks about "America first," some people hear it far differently than others. One wonders whether Mr. Trump has any idea of what kind of dog whistle these two words are for anti-Semites, racists and Holocaust deniers. If he does not, then he is ignorant and unlettered when it comes to American history. Perhaps he doesn't know anything about Charles Lindbergh, America Firsters, anti-Semites and how incredibly close America came to staying out of World War II. Heck, even David Duke used "America First!" as the slogan for his recent failed Senate race in Louisiana - and you had better believe he knows its historic background. If President Trump knows none of this, then shame on him.
But what if he does know what "America First!!" means? What if he is perfectly cognizant of what repellent hopes, dreams and schemes those two words represent? That would be even worse. For if he is blowing that bilious dog whistle in his inaugural address - just as he had during the campaign - it means that he has no problem roiling the waters of hatred, conspiracy and gutter-level nationalism. It means that he and his team - most notably alt-right conspiracist Stephen Bannon - have no intention of unifying the nation; of bringing us together in common cause.
Already, we have seen an ominous spike in anti-Semitic activities all across the country. Even my alma mater, Hebrew Union College - the nation's largest and oldest rabbinic seminary - was spray-painted with anti-Semitic graffiti (a swastika) the other day. "America First!" indeed . . .
If our new POTUS does indeed know what "America First!" means, it is a worrisome case where knowledge could turn out to be far, far more dangerous than ignorance.
And that, my friends, is not an "alternative fact."
3 days down, 1,457 to go . . .
Copyright©2017 Kurt F. Stone
I am an ordained rabbi who spends most of his time as a writer and college lecturer, teaching courses in political science, American history and cinema. I have published two massive histories of the United States Congress which can be found in just about every library in America. For the past 20 years I have also worked as a medical ethicist; first for the Cleveland Clinic Florida and currently for Schulman Associates IRB.
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