The New Cincinnatus

Listening to a podcast on the history of Rome last week I ran across a bit of information totally new to me (of course, most information about ancient Rome is new to me). It was the story of Cincinnatus the Roman Dictator.

A Dictator was an official in the Roman Republic chosen to lead the Romans through a crisis. He was given absolute power, but only temporarily, to do what was necessary in troubled times. There had been Dictators before Cincinnatus, but he was the first who came of age after Rome had thrown off the monarchy and became a republic.

That meant he didn’t have any memory of the tyranny of the last Roman king, which still haunted the older generation of Romans. With no memory of life under a tyrant, Cincinnatus might have been tempted to hold onto power after his dictatorship was over. Instead, he did the right thing.

He was first appointed Dictator after an enemy tribe trapped the Roman army. He mobilized fresh soldiers, rescued the besieged army, and then -- giving up the power of Dictator after only 15 days -- he returned to his farm.

He was 81 years old the second time he was called on to be Dictator. He handled the crisis and again gave up his absolute power, as was his duty, after only 21 days. Because of such strict adherence to the rule of law, Cincinnatus became a role model of Roman civic virtue.

And a role model for America’s Founding Fathers. One of them created the Society of the Cincinnati during the Revolutionary War. The society was made up of officers of George Washington’s Continental Army. Washington himself was the society’s first president, which was fitting, as he was later called “America’s Cincinnatus” because he had refused the role of a king and had voluntarily stepped down as president to return to Mount Vernon. He thus established the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power that the next 43 presidents would faithfully follow – until one didn’t. Can anyone guess who that one was? 

A hint: he’s running for president again while a different president instead agreed to make the difficult decision to step aside for the sake of the country. Some will argue he was forced to do so, and to be sure he was heavily pressured. That said, doing the right thing is still doing the right thing, even if reluctant at first. Thanks, Joe!

Cincinnatus, at Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna. 
Credit: Maclemo

Day 87

Day 87 of Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. It’s been a busy week for Finland. On Monday the Finnish parliament debated NATO membership for 14 hours. How much debate there was, is itself debatable, since when the vote was held the next day there was overwhelming support for the move, with only 8 parliament members voting against it (out of 200), mostly from the Left Alliance party.

Following the vote, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, declared that Finland and Sweden joining NATO doesn’t really matter to the Kremlin after all. Which begs the question: if a neighboring country joining NATO is no big deal, then what was all that rigamarole about Russia having no choice but to invade Ukraine because a neighboring country even contemplating joining the western alliance could not be tolerated by Russia.

The following day Finland, along with Sweden, formally delivered its application to Jens Stoltenberg, general secretary of NATO and fellow Nordic. The day after that, Finnish president Sauli Niinistö traveled straight from Sweden, where he was making a state visit (prompted by the NATO application), to Washington to meet with Joe Biden. Sauli’s been busy. 

And he did manage to talk by phone to Putin last week, expressing his view of Finland’s situation in a clear and straightforward manner. Putin, in turn, told Niinistö that Finland would be making a mistake by joining NATO. Which seems to fly in the face of what Lavrov said.

The Russians are saying a lot of things. Someone on Russian state TV explained that the USSR never invaded Finland in 1939, but rather merely “moved our borders deeper into Finland”. Defense Minister Shoigu also said last week that Sweden and Finland’s membership in NATO would force Russia to create 12 army “units and division” in the military district bordering Finland.

As of 7:00 this morning, Russia shut off the pipeline supplying natural gas to Finland. Luckily, Finland is not very dependent on gas in general, and the government has just signed a 10-year contract with an American company to lease the ship Exemplar, a “floating storage and regasification vessel” to help Finland import gas from other sources.

A small brewery in Savonlinna, not that far from the border that the USSR "moved" in 1939, is now marketing NATO-inspired beer, called "OTAN", which happens to be the French acronym for NATO and the Finnish word for "I take", commonly used when taking a good, hearty swig of beer. The Olof Brewing is planning to ship some samples to Joe Biden and Jens Stoltenberg. No word whether they will send some to Putin. 

Recently, I happened to notice that our cable TV package now includes, along with CNN, BBC, etc., the Nickelodeon cartoon channel – in Ukrainian. Unexpected. The only explanation I can come up with is that it’s for the benefit of Ukrainian children who are now in Finland as refugees. Though it’s true that, even before the war, Ukrainians has made up a large part of seasonal labor force in Finland. Whether there will be fewer Ukrainian strawberry pickers this summer due to men remaining in Ukraine to fight, I have no idea.  

Day 74

Day 74 of Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine. This past week the Finnish army was holding its annual mechanized war exercises (which I guess means using tanks, etc.), named Arrow 22. This year, units from the American, British, Latvian and Estonian armies were taking part. Such a joint exercise with four NATO militaries at this particular moment, of course, doesn't go unnoticed. It's even gotten the attention of the international media, with CNN at least doing a segment on it. The British defence minister was onhand to watch the exercises in person. He pledged that Britain would definitely come to Finland's aid in the case of a Russian attack.

Meanwhile, also this past week, a Russian helicopter encroached 4 kilometers into Finnish airspace, though nowhere near where Arrow 22 was taking place.

Neste, Finland's partly state-owned oil company, will take delivery of its last shipment of Russian crude oil in July, replacing it with North Sea oil. The Helsingin Sanomat has reported that before the war started an average of six tankers a week delivered oil from Russia, supplying two-thirds of Finland's crude oil imports. Now that's been reduced to just one tanker a week.

Finland is proceeding fast with its plans to join NATO. You might say Russia is not happy about this. One concrete threat already made by Russia is that the Saimaa Canal might be closed if Finland follows through joining the western alliance. The canal, half of which runs through Russian territory, gives Finland's massive Lake Saimaa freshwater system access to the Baltic Sea at the former Finnish city of Viipuri. Last summer, we watched a Russian freighter pass through the Mälkiä lock, the first lock on the voyage down the canal from Saimaa.

The canal was built over 165 years ago when Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia, and has been operated by Finland since 1963. Finland holds a lease on the Russian part of the canal until 2063. A lot of industry in eastern Finland uses the canal for international trade. Towns deep inside Finland, like my wife's hometown of Varkaus, historically a big paper-making center, have benefited from the ship traffic the canal makes possible. It's clearly more important to Finland than to Russia. There was a danger that EU sanctions against Russia would put a stop to use of the canal when it reopened after the usual winter break. But then it was decided that ship traffic between Finland and Russia via the canal does not fall under the sanctions.

The war is having some effect anyway. While the canal officially opened for the 2022 traffic season on 28 March, actual ship traffic had to wait for the ice to melt enough by itself, without human help. Normally, sea-based ice breakers would have cleared the ice-bound sections of the canal with the opening of the season. But the operators of the ice breakers decided not to this year due to the risk of the canal being shut unepectedly, preventing their return back down the canal to the sea. Ironically, the ice breakers could have become stuck in Lake Saimaa in the summer. Now the Russia Duma is warning that Finland's 50-year lease on the canal could be "revised" if it joins NATO, a clear threat to close the canal.

Tomorrow is May 9th, Victory Day in Russia. There were reports that Putin wanted to have the whole military adventure in Ukraine wrapped up by then in order to put on a huge Victory Day celebration. Now, it seems he might use the occasion to officially declare war on Ukraine (not just a special military operation). As if things could get worse. Or maybe they can.

A Modest Proposal

With the leak of the Supreme Court draft decision concerning abortion, it is now clear that Roe v. Wade will soon be overturned and abortion will become illegal in many states. Many people are upset by this. Many people, no doubt, are celebrating. It is a divisive issue. I have some thoughts. And a possible compromise solution. A modest proposal.

The goal of Pro-Choice folks is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The goal of Pro-Lifers is to prevent abortions. If you think about it, both goals can be achieved (for the most part) by tightly regulating pregnancies.

Why do pregnancies occur? Because of sperm. The woman’s egg also, of course, but without the sperm there is no pregnancy. It takes two to tango.

The easiest way to do this is through vasectomies. All males could be required to have a vasectomy before reproductive age, say at the age of 13. No exceptions. It could even be seen (maybe ironically) as a ritual of manhood. “Now you are old enough to have sex, young man.” without the worry of getting the girl pregnant. The demand for abortions then largely disappears (except in the cases where there are risks to the mother in continuing a pregnancy).

The vasectomy would be reversed only when the man is ready to become a father. Of course, the man could still cause unwanted pregnancies at that point by having unauthorized sex through rape, incest, or adultery.

But this could also be easily controlled (the technology exists) by taking DNA samples of every 13-year-old boy getting a vasectomy – which would be all boys turning 13). It would be part of the ritual. The resulting DNA database of all American men of reproductive age could be compared to the DNA of every baby born to determine exactly who the father is. In the of case rape or incest, they would be castrated. In the case of adultery, they pay child support or be castrated.

There are still some details to brainstorm, of course, but I think this could work! And it would put most abortion doctors out of business, just like the conservatives on the Supreme Court want.

Day 61

Day 61 of Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine. The Finnish parliament began debating NATO membership last week. Russia already warned over a month ago that Finland joining the Western alliance would “require retaliatory measures” on its part, with Sergei Belyayev, head of the Russian foreign ministry’s European department, promising “serious military and political consequences”.

More recently, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said Russia would be forced to increase its military presence in the Baltic. He went so far as to threaten ending the “nuclear-free” status of the region, which surely means at least deploying nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad. (Whether they have been there all along is another question.)

A week or so ago a video was shared on social media supposedly showing Russia military equipment moving along a highway toward the Finnish border. That turned out to be from some years ago, so in no way evidence of a recent threat.

In fact, a Finnish expert estimates that Russian forces normally based near Finland have been “severely degraded” since the war in Ukraine started. So, maybe Russia is less of a threat now than before.

Military equipment is going the other way, however. Finland has now shipped a third wave of arms and military supplies to Ukraine. Unlike in the first wave, the government has not revealed specially what was included in the more recent shipments.

Meanwhile, Finland is reducing its dependence on Russian energy. Starting yesterday, Finland has started cutting back on the electricity it imports from Russia, which is reportedly about a third of its electricity imports and 10% of its total consumption. Luckily, much of the shortfall from the loss of Russian power can be compensated by Finland’s fifth nuclear reactor when it finally comes fully online soon.

Until a mere two years ago Russia was Finland’s only source of natural gas, via a cross-border pipeline. That one has now been supplemented by an undersea pipeline from Estonia that can supply up to a third of Finland's LNG needs. We are otherwise not as dependant on Russia as are Germany or other countries anyway, since natural gas accounts for only 6% of energy consumptions here. 

In any case, Finland will stop all gas imports from Russia and turn to other sources to replace it, which means importing via tanker ships -- despite currently having no LNG terminals where to offload the ships. As a temporary solution, it has agreed with Estonia to share a floating LNG terminal to be used to supply both countries with non-Russian gas.

Reducing dependence on Russian crude oil (70% of Finnish oil imports) and coal (about half of imports) is also underway. While existing contracts are still being honored, no new ones being signed. The Finnish state railway company is also being pressured to stop transporting Russian coal through Finland for export to other countries well before the EU sanctions deadline of August. 

It seems clear that Finland will likely never return as the good customer it was for Russia's energy business, even after the bloody war in Ukraine finally concludes.

Wolf traps and steppe quagmires

We recently sold my mother-in-law’s apartment in Varkaus, my wife’s hometown in the heart of the Finnish lake district 200 miles from Helsinki. It’s been over a year since my mother-in-law moved to a nursing home, so it was high time we did something with the apartment that we use only occasionally on visits to Varkaus. Selling the apartment, of course, required emptying and cleaning the place, which means discovering the kinds of random personal items and keepsakes accumulated over the years by a long-married couple. One of these little items was a lapel pin, with a distinctive emblem and the obviously German word “Rüsselsheim”. 

I was curious why my in-laws would have such a obscure little thing. The word “Rüsselsheim” said nothing to me, and I found the symbol on the pin a little unsettling. Then my wife informed me that Rüsselsheim, Germany, is a sister city to Varkaus. Obviously, this was a trinket handed out to promote friendly international relations at an excruciatingly local level. Varkaus, after all, is not a big place. 

Rüsselsheim am Main is about three times larger, according to its Wikipedia page, from which I also learned about the symbols on the lapel pin, the Rüsslsheim coat of arms. The zig-zag, Z-shaped symbol is a “Doppelhaken” (double hook), sometimes called a “Wolfsangel” or “wolf’s hook”, due to the gruesome fact that it resembles a metal hook used in Germany in medieval times to trap wolves. It was literally used like a fishhook to snare a wolf unlucky enough to take the bait of raw meat surrounding the Z-shaped metal. 

There must be something intrinsically appealing about the stylized rendering of this instrument of death, maybe something in its simple esthetics, because over time the Doppelhaken became associated with magical powers and strong symbolism -- which maybe not surprisingly led to it being widely adopted by the Nazi Party. For this reason, Doppelhaken symbols are now banned in Germany, except when used – as in the case of the lapel pin we found in Varkaus – as part of a traditional coat of arms. Outside Germany it is sadly still used by some far-right movements, such as the Azov Battalion in Ukraine. 

(Interestingly, the Finnish word for swastika is “hakaristi”, or “hook cross”. Also, Varkaus’ own coat of arms features an actual arm holding a different kind of hook, an anchor.) 

The coat of arms of Varkaus.

Anyway, I say there must be something appealing in the simple esthetics of Z-shapes, because it is remarkable how quickly the letter Z has been adopted in Russia as the symbol of patriotism in less than two weeks following Vladimir Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine. And this only because the Russian army painted the Z-symbol conspicuously on many of its tanks. Clearly, the image of Russian tanks marked with Zs inspired somebody to turn that simple symbol into a new patriotic fetish. And this despite many of those Z-marked tanks now seem ingloriously to be bogged down in the mud of the Ukraine steppes, or otherwise destroyed. But the Russian public doesn’t see those images. 

It seems many folks in Russia are now rallying around this new symbol of Russian pride, a letter that does not exist in the Russian alphabet, by displaying it with the same zeal that Trump supporters in America banish their “Make America Great Again” hat or “Let’s Go Brandon” flags. To drive the point home even further, Russians are also combining the Z with the another widely used “virtue signal” of Russian ethnonationalism, the St. George ribbon. I had noticed those orange-and-black-striped ribbons tied on car rear-view mirrors everywhere in St. Petersburg the last time we were there – which, as things are going now, might well be THE very last time we visit St. Petersburg. 

So, now all “right-thinking” Russians – like Germans under the Third Reich – are enthusiastically embracing a symbol that harkens back to medieval times based solely on the fact that the Russian army invading Ukraine painted Zs on their tanks, rocket launchers, and other modern instruments of death. What a strange world we live in.

Russian children presenting their country's newest patriotic fetish.

Unvaxxed Nation Wipe Out

The number of new COVID cases in Finland, as in many places, are rising as we enter the pandemic’s 4^th wave. Despite that, it feels like things are going well.

Or maybe it just feels that way personally for me, since I’m now fully vaccinated, and soon (two weeks after the second dose) can travel again outside Finland, at least to certain counties. Estonia is one place we might visit before summer is over.

Looking on the bright side, there have been only two COVID deaths in Finland in the past two weeks, only five for the entire month of July. Hospitalizations are still lower than at the beginning of the 2^nd wave. People are going to restaurants, theaters. In some sense, things seem to be getting better.

Especially compared to the US, the land of my birth, where it seems the whole country has gone bonkers, even if it has a decent full-vaccination rate of almost 50%. That is admittedly higher than Finland’s 31%. (One explanation for Finland’s lower rate is that, facing a shortage in the supply of vaccine, Finland spaced out the two doses 3 months apart, compared to 3 weeks in the States. There is a lag here in the everyone getting the second dose.)

I think Finland will catch up with the US soon. While doing a better job at vaccination at the outset, progress in US is now stalling. It’s clear why – right-wing politics. Of the 30 states that have administered vaccinations below the national rate (below 50%) all but four of voted for Donald Trump. All of the remaining 20 that have done better, vaccinating over half their populations, were Biden states. Nothing could be plainer. For many, failure to get vaccinated is a political act.

And there are consequences. Three states now account for 40% of all new COVID cases: Florida (48% vaccination rate), Texas (43%), Missouri (41%). Those states make up only 17% of the US population, so they are obviously are punching above their weight when it comes to helping the spread of the delta variant.

The consequences are also deadly. Unvaccinated Americans now account for some 97% of COVID deaths. That shows the vaccines are working. Vaccinated folks are much, much less likely to die from COVID. Given that fact, it’s baffling why anyone without genuine medical reasons would refuse a free, safe way to lower their risk of infection. Baffling, but these folks are, of course, powerless against the right-wing media machine that has been fueling vaccine skepticism. 

A host on Newsmax recently floated the idea that vaccines in general go against nature by preventing “a certain amount of people” from being wiped out, like that was a bad thing. It’s true, of course, that vaccines do that, but that’s the point of vaccines. We want them to stop nature from wiping people out.

Considering that the Americans being wiped out are predominately the unvaccinated -- you could say, predominately Trump-supporting conservatives -- you would think hosts on Newsmax and other right-wing outlets would want their prime target audience protected. Apparently, you would be wrong.

Self-destructive antivaccination fervor is nothing new.
Cartoon from the 1930s. 

 

Meanwhile, in the Real World

Last week we saw the six-month anniversary of Joe Biden's inauguration as president. Leading up to that event in January, I saw some MAGA folks on Facebook predicting that Biden would not "last six months". They were very confident. They had no doubt about this. They didn’t specify, however, why they thought Biden would not make it this far in his presidency (I asked one – they chose not to explain).

So, I was left to speculate. I think there were 3 possible scenarios those folks on FB were implying:

1) The Plausible. Biden was so old and feeble that the pressure of being president would kill him. In other words, these MAGA folks had bought into the “Geriatric Joe” narrative peddled by Trump and his supporters. Strangely, Biden has not dropped dead.

2) The Sinister. By this point, Biden would have been killed by some righteous Trump-lover unable to abide the abomination of Biden illegitimately occupying the White House. Maybe some of those MAGA fortunetellers secretly (or not secretly) half-hoped this would happen.

3) The Even More Sinister, Plus Insane. Biden would be “bumped” off by forces aligned with Kamala Harris as part of a Democratic ploy to install the extremely radical Harris in the White House by first winning the election with a more-acceptable candidate (Biden). You have to be deep in the Qanon rabbit hole to believe this, but many Trump supporters are really that deep in that hole.

Needlessly to say, none of these Trump-cult fever dreams have played out. Maybe MAGA folks have conveniently forgotten that they ever predicted Biden would NOT be president by this time. Or maybe they have just moved on to now pinning all their hopes of the expected “reinstatement” of Trump on August 13th. That’s only a couple of weeks from now.

Luckily, we won’t have to wait a whole six months to see those high MAGA hopes dashed on the rocks of reality, you know, here in the real world.

Helsinki Tainted

When it was announced that Joe Biden would be meeting with Vladimir Putin during Biden's June trip to Europe, there was some speculation that the meeting would take place in Helsinki. Hearing this, my wife and I looked at each other and after a moment said, “No way. That won't happen.”

Since 2018, Helsinki has been forever tainted as a meeting place between American and Russian leaders. No American president in their right mind would want any reminder of that disastrous meeting here three years ago to cloud their own. That’s Trump’s legacy. He ruined Helsinki for US-Russian summits. It’s like the disgrace associated with Munich after Neville Chamberlain’s trip there in 1938. At least, Trump didn’t promise Sudetenland to Putin. Or did he?

A week ago Trump issued this ridiculous "statement", doubling down on his taking Putin’s side over the US government’s. He’s even proud of it. So refreshing to think that it's Biden meeting with Putin in Geneva today, and not that embarrassing game show host who shamelessly kow-towed to the Russian leader just a few miles from where I live.

Coke, unruly tourists, and plastic bags of gas

Here in Finland, warm weather has finally arrived and so has the summer home improvement season. There’s lots to do, a LOT to do, so I’ve been trying not to pay as much attention to the crazy stuff happening back in the States. Except...you can’t really ignore all the crazy stuff happening in the State. Here’s what caught my attention recently.  

Joel Greenberg, the wingman of frat boy Matt Gaetz, has entered a plea deal, in which he will supposedly turn state’s evidence against Gaetz. There is speculation that Greenberg will testify how Gaetz snorted coke with a hooker who had a no-show government job. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Of course, this will not hurt Gaetz’s reputation with Republicans one bit, since they love this sort of thing.

There’s a video circulating of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who the good people of Georgia’s 14^th District (the one next to my own) saw fit to elect to Congress, bent over, screaming through the mail slot of AOC’s door like a mean-girl cheerleader. Again, the GOP loves this kind of behavior.

Meanwhile, Andrew Clyde, the congressman from my own district (we sure know how to pick ‘em) has finally broken into the national news for the first time ever to my knowledge by explaining in calm terms how the mob of rioters who swarmed the US Capitol on January 6^th, breaking through windows, beating up policemen, and sending lawmakers scrambling for secure tunnels (not to mention looking to lynch Mike Pence) were nothing more than your average tourists visiting a famous landmark in our nation’s capital. In the same spirit, I’ll remember to toss some rocks through the windows of that gold museum in Dahlonega next time I’m there.

Kevin McCarthy, who once set up a sandwich stand in the corner of his uncle’s yoghurt store before launching a life-long career in politics, forces very conservative Liz Cheney out of her leadership position because of her habit of speaking the truth about the last election. Also, he mocks Joe Biden for requiring at least five hours of sleep a night, unlike über-mensch Donald Trump, who can toil all night long tweeting out thought-provoking wisdom like “covfefe”. No, wait, he can’t. He’s banned, unlike Joe Biden.

Mitch McConnell, as always seeking ways to reach greater levels of bipartitianship with Democrats, confirms to his buddies that 100% of his focus is stopping the Biden Administration from doing anything. If he didn’t have such a conciliatory nature in the name of bipartitianship, that focus would be 200%.

The thought of a gas pipeline being shut down for a few days struck so much fear into the hearts of some Americans that they panicked and started hording gas, pumping it into anything they could get their hands on, open containers, trash cans, even plastic shopping bags, which – as we all learned in school -- are super, super safe for transporting and storing volatile fuel), to the point where stations ran out of gas across the South. Hope no one got incinerated on their way home, though it’s not for lack of trying.

Anyway, that’s what’s happening in American. Here in Finland, on the other hand, the birch trees are leafing out on schedule (barely), we just took the kayaks out from storage and are hoping to spot again the eagle we saw the other day. We are not hoarding plastic bags of gas.

Pressing For A Presser

It seems that MAGA folks are obsessing over the fact that Joe Biden hasn’t stood at a podium and taken questions from the media some 50 days after taking office. I don’t think it’s because they are so eager to hear from their new president. Nothing like that. They are annoyed that Biden (as they see it) is escaping scrutiny from the same press that gave Donald Trump such a hard time throughout his presidency. Of course, that doesn’t include Fox News, which was always a safe space for Trump.

Or, maybe more likely, they think Biden is being prevented by his press shop from making a fool of himself by talking unscripted in front of cameras, since Biden (as they are convinced) is borderline senile, a fact that will instantly be obvious to even hard-core Democrats once he has to field real questions from a real reporter. He’s hiding, they would say, in a way that a "real" president like Trump would never to.

They like to point out that Trump wasted no time in getting before the cameras to spar with the media by holding his first solo press conference on Feb. 16^th after only 27 days in office. He didn’t hesitate, they would say, to face the press and deliver any unscripted remarks that happen to pop up in his head, not holding back, putting on full display his scattershot thinking on any number of topics. They see this as a feature, not a bug.

And Trump willingly took reporters’ questions, they would point out. He happily defended and justified the actions of his administration, they would say, and explained the intricacies of his policies to a hostile media. As if. 

Recollections may vary, as Queen Elisabeth might say. I remember that first press conference as a hot mess. To remind myself exactly what it was like, I took a look at the transcript (a whopping 13,000 words long). Some things stand out. First, Trump starts by announcing the nomination of Alex Acosta as Labor Secretary (94 words) and the confirmation of his pick for head of Office of Management and Budget, Mike Mulvaney (43 words), which Trump whines was “weeks late”, “weeks, weeks late”. Biden’s choice for that spot had to withdraw due to the hurt feelings of Republicans and Joe Manchin, so that now even weeks later than for Trump, it remains unfilled. Haven't heard Biden whine about it yet.

Then Trump goes on to talk (91 words) about how, Paul Singer, a GOP donor, had just visited the White House, and how Singer, who had been a Never Trumper, has now gotten onboard the Trump Train, a hopeful is a sign as Trump saw it of the kind of unification (abject loyalty?) that he inspires in people. When I first read it, I thought Trump was referring to Singer as Mulvaney’s predecessor, so unclear was Trump's unscripted way of speaking.

Next, he says “I think I’ll say a few words and take some questions.” Some 3150 words (!) later, he takes the first question, which is about Mike Flynn, the National Security Advisor he had just fired for lying to Mike Pence and the FBI, one of the first scandals of his administration. Flynn was in the job a mere 24 days. Here’s how Trump responded to the reporter’s question:

“Mike Flynn is a wonderful person, and I asked for resignation, he respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence, who’s with us today, and I was not happy with the way that information was given. He didn’t have to do that because what he did wasn’t wrong. What he did in terms of the information he saw. What was wrong was the way that other people, including yourselves, in this room, were given that information. Because that was classified information that was given illegally. That’s the real problem.

“You know, you can talk all you want about Russia, which was all, you know, ‘fake news’ fabricated deal to try to make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it. In fact, I saw a couple of the people supposedly involved with all of this. They know nothing about it, never in Russia, never made a phone call, never received a phone call. It’s all fake news. It’s all fake news.

“The nice thing is I see it starting to turn where people are now looking at the illegal — I think it’s very important — the illegal giving out classified information, and let me just tell you, it was given out so much.

“For example, I called, as you know, Mexico. It was a very confidential classified call, but I called Mexico, and in calling Mexico, I figured, oh, well that’s nice, I spoke to the president of Mexico, had a good call, all the sudden it’s out there for the world to see. It was supposed to be secret.

“Supposed to be either confidential or classified in that case, same thing with Australia. All of the sudden, people are finding out exactly what took place. The same thing happened with respect to General Flynn. Everybody saw this.

“And I’m saying, the first thing I thought of when I heard about it, is how does the press get this information that’s classified? How do they do it? You know why? Because it’s an illegal process, and the press should be ashamed of themselves, but more importantly, the people that gave out information to the press should be ashamed of themselves. Really a shame.”

Whew! That was a long-winded way (380 words) of saying it’s the media’s fault that I fired Mike Flynn for lying. I especially like, the bit “He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence”. Seems he has trouble expressing himself. Anyway, this is the performance that MAGA folks hold up as a shining example of how presidents should talk to Americans. 

It’s worth noting that Trump was so stung by the negative response to this presser, he didn’t hold another one for almost a year. That long dry spell must have been pure torture for those folks now losing their minds over Joe Biden's heart-breaking absence from the briefing room. 

Bonaparte Wannabe

Joe Biden has been president for a week now, and it is certainly refreshing to have what seems so far to be a normally competent administration in place. Even more refreshing is not having Donald Trump in our faces every day non-stop. Suddenly, one day – like a miracle – it disappeared.

It is somewhat comforting to know Trump’s hidden away, almost in exile down in Mar-a-Lago for now, though I hear Palm Beach may be take legal action against him for breaking the agreement he made not to permanently reside there (and not stay more than seven days at a stretch) when he turned the place into a resort in 1993. I’ve also heard that some paying Mar-a-Lago residents are abandoning the resort because of the “dispiriting” atmosphere that descended after Trump moved in. Maybe can’t blame them.

It must be torture for Trump not to be in the public eye, which is surely what drove him to form the so-called Office of the Former President. As if he is THE former president, neglecting the four other former presidents who didn’t feel the need to create a fake “position” when they left office. At least he admitted he’s a *former* president.

I can almost imagine him brooding down there in Florida like Napoleon in exile on the Isle of Elba. With that in mind, it’s a little disconcerting also to remember that Bonaparte eventually escaped from Elba, raised an army on the mainland and marched on Paris to rule for another 100 days. (We once drove along part of Napoleon’s march on our way from the Riviera back to Geneva. Scenic route, to be sure.) Trump may dream that he too has such an army awaiting his return, but if so, it might be a bit reduced – some 150 of the insurrectionists he sent off to storm the Capitol have now been arrested, with we can hope more to come.

Trump might well be disillusioned with them anyway. Or at least their appearance. After all, he reportedly called them “low-class” after seeing them on TV rampaging through the halls of Congress. (Has he NEVER met his most ardent grass-roots MAGA supporters? Maybe not, since I doubt many would be allowed to set foot within the confines of Mar-a-Lago.)

So perhaps he can’t count anymore on that motley camo- and fleece-wearing “army” of rioters. But they’re not his real army anyway, not the one that will do him any good. That would be the jacket-and-tie-clad clan in Congress (well, in the case of “Gym” Jordan, made that "no jacket") who, by refusing to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, seem determined to give him another shot at the White House in four years. They have no morals, no scruples, no backbones – in other words, just Trump’s kind of guys.

Napoleon's second exile on the island of St. Helena.
Perhaps Trump's next one will be on the island of Rikers.
(painting by Franz Josef Sandmann)

Biden vs. Trump: The Soft Punditry of Debate Expectations

It is an article of faith among Trump and his followers that Joe Biden is too old, feeble-minded, and physically weak to be president. (File this under “pot calling the kettle black”.) I see MAGA folks saying this all the time, and maybe they believe it, but I’m not sure Trump himself believes it. In this case, he might just be more cynical than delusional, using anything he can to cast doubts about Biden’s fitness.

Of course, Biden is all-too aware of Trump’s attempts to paint him as an old geezer (a whopping three-and-a-half years older than Trump!). At public events, Biden seems to make a point of jogging out to the podium. Trump never jogs, Trump lumbers onstage.

I can’t ignore the fact that Joe is an old guy and he apparently does sometimes say goofy things. But it’s hard to be greatly disturbed by that when the alternative is a man who has made incoherency a defining feature of his persona, virtually a trademark – Covfefe ®. Many people note that Trump’s slandering of opponents is a form of projection, basically accusing his rivals of the very thing Trump is guilty of. I think it certainly applies here.

In any case, it seems like a weird strategy for Trump to be downplaying Biden’s mental state, especially before a debate. Normally, politicians play the “expectations game”, stressing how sharp and capable their opponents are and how tough it’s going to be going up against him (or her). You set the expectations low, so that when you outperform them, if only by a little bit, it looks like a big win for you. Trump isn’t doing that with Biden, and he may regret it if it turns out Biden appears NOT to have one foot in the grave, as Trump has been promising.

You almost think Trump’s followers truly expect Biden to totter around the debate stage, confused, disoriented, drooling, literally drooling. This is what they have been led to believe in their MAGA echo chambers. And if Biden comes off as alert, well-informed, coherent, even presidential (as I hope he does), then Trump’s followers will have some conflicting feelings to deal with.

Or not. They may, rather than admitting they have been misled, simply refuse to believe their eyes. Or they may make excuses for a good performance by Biden, excuses which Trump and his allies have already helpfully provided beforehand with accusations such as Biden will be "fed" the questions before the debate or that Biden is taking drugs to sharpen his mind. 

You would think the first claim would be harder to make for the first debate, which is being hosted by Fox News. But I'm already seeing folks on social media hinting that Fox moderator Chris Wallace will be teaming up with Biden to rake Trump over the coals. It's as if they see the writing on the wall and are bracing themselves for a dismal performance by Trump, which will be (in their minds) entirely no fault of his own. Of course. 

The anti-dementia drug claim is also a little desperate and especially telling, since many people see signs of abuse of the cognitive enhancing drug Adderall in Trump’s own behavior, with some people even accusing him of “snorting” the drug. That could explain the chunks of white stuff that came flying out of his nose on camera recently. Pieces of Adderall, perhaps? Or maybe it was just snot. He is, after all, almost as old as drooling Biden.

Anyway, I guess we’ll be able to judge all this for ourselves in the debate tonight.

Trump Care BS Overdrive

So, after almost four years as president (and decades of hard work by Republicans before Trump), Trump finally announced the big GOP healthcare overhaul to replace Obamacare. It seems basically to consist of:

1) a promise to cover pre-existing conditions (after first ensuring the SCOTUS takes that coverage away). No details of how that promise would be fulfilled, what laws would be enacted to force insurance companies to take all comers. But no worries. As we all know, you can take a "promise" from Donald Trump to the bank!

2) a one-time redistribution of $200 to everyone on Medicare to help pay for prescription drugs (because Trump couldn't manage to force drug companies to reduce their bottom line and lower the price they charge for drugs). The fact that this payout will happen just before election day is only a coincidence, surely. I mean he could have done it Jan. 21, 2017, but I guess it wasn't a priority then.

3) a promise to stop doctors from charging for services not covered by a patient's insurance policy, in other words "surprise billing". It's about time the government stepped in and controlled what doctors bill for services or insurance will cover. Can we hope to have complete price controls on all medical services eventually? Anyway, it’s a good first step, though it does seem that all Trump is doing now is “investigating” how this might work. I guess we need to give him for time to figure it out.

Maybe that's why he needs another four years. It took four years to come up with an outline of plan. With another four years he and the GOP can come up with the actual plan. Maybe just before election day 2024.

Not a History to Bragg About

Lately some folks in the US (especially in the South, you could even say the Old Confederacy) have become outraged over the idea of renaming military bases that have been named after Confederate military officers, such as Fort Bragg or Foot Hood. Often these folks equate such removal of CSA-related names as “erasing” or “ignoring” history.

This has even gotten the attention of Donald Trump, no doubt an aficionado of the Civil War (in addition to his many other intellectual pursuits) – no, I’m joking, he doesn’t even seem to know who won that war. Still, Trump has weighed in on the issue, declaring he will NOT allow the honor of men who fought against the United States to be desecrated in such a way. His press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, went so far as to evoke the horror that renaming Fort Bragg would bring to soldiers who were based there and later died in combat, as if being dead wasn’t torment enough.

This is, of course, closely related to the dreaded "cancel culture" and the controversy over removing statues of CSA generals from prominent public spaces, again an attempt (as some people see it) to prevent modern-day Americans from learning history. They have a point, of course, because the best way to learn about Civil War history is to stand before a statue of Robert E. Lee and stare at his visage in bronze, or lead, or stone, or whatever, just stare and stare at that image of a man on horseback long enough until suddenly all the details of his life, his battles, his strategy come flowing, like a beam of invisible light from the past, straight into your brain and, boom!, you’ve learned something about history.

Maybe that’s the way some people do it. Normally, I read books. Or Wikipedia. So, naturally, all this fuss about renaming Fort Bragg made me turn to my main source of book-learning on the Civil War, James McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom”, to find out more about the man Fort Bragg is named after. Because, honestly, before all this controversy erupted, I can’t remember ever hearing anything about Braxton Bragg unlike, for example, Stonewall Jackson.

Turns out Bragg was not a stellar general. He was hot-tempered, constantly fighting with his subordinates, not an inspiring leader. He’s best known for leading the Army of Tennessee in a failed invasion of Kentucky, followed by inglorious retreats from the Battles of Perryville and Stones River, an evacuation from Chattanooga, a less than decisive victory in the Battle of Chicamauga, and then a decisive (even humiliating) defeat in the Battles of Chattanooga. It was the last one which opened the door for US general William T. Sherman to begin his March to the Sea through Georgia and for Bragg to be relieved of command of his army. McPherson labeled him a “bumbler”.

And for this legacy, this heritage of not only treason against the United States, but also incompetence in military execution, Bragg gets a major military installation named after him, an installation that’s supposed to inspire pride in the fighting men and women associated with it? Honoring Bragg this way in 1918, forty years after his death, was surely a form of consolation to politicians in the Jim Crow South butt-hurt over losing the war, which amazingly many modern-day politicians still seem to be 155 years later.

Bragg was a losing general for the losing side in a war against the United States, and this is the guy whose heritage Donald Trump -- not known for admiring losers -- is happy to preserve, as long as that’s what his supporters in the Old Confederacy want. Maybe if he actually knew some of the history, he'd change his mind. 

Sorry, joking again -- no chance that would happen. 

Gen. Braxton Bragg, loser extraordinaire.

Unknown author, restoration by Adam Cuerden.
Copyright US Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division.

April Foolishness

A couple of things I picked up from the news from yesterday. 

-- Trump is threatening to "adjourn" Congress because it's not confirming his nominees for various offices. First of all, I didn't know a president could do that (if it's even true). Secondly, why didn't Obama think of that? It would have simplified things for him. Thirdly, that will come in handy for President Biden. 

 -- A key part of the Trump brain trust, Kellyanne Conway, thinks that COVID-19 is named that way because it's the 19th strain of the virus. Doesn't her husband, George, explain to her things like how the "19" comes from the year it was discovered? 

 -- Trump said that the US is past the peak in number of new cases of COVID-19. Mark that date, because yesterday there were 40,000 new confirmed cases. If that number doesn't go down today or tomorrow, then the US is not past the peak, and it's all just part of Trump's world of wishful thinking. 

Meanwhile, it snowed in Helsinki today. April 16th.

Happy Good Friday?

Today is Easter Monday, the end of our four-day Easter holiday. Normally, a four-day holiday on the cusp of vaguely spring-like weather is a Godsend for most Finnish families, often a good opportunity to get out of town for a while or even an end-of-season ski trip to Lapland. Of course, this year in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it's different, with all restaurants, bars, theaters, swimming halls, sports events, churches, you name it, closed and deserted, and even the possibility of non-essential travel outside the Uusimaa province where Helsinki is located forbidden by law.  There was no trick-or-treating this year. It hardly felt like Easter.

After I moved to Finland many years ago and was adjusting to the social norms here, one thing I learned was the proper way to give Easter greetings. With a lot of holidays here, you use the word “hauska” (which means “fun”). You say “Hauskaa joulua!” (Merry Christmas), “Hauskaa vappua!” (Happy May Day), and “Hauskaa juhannusta!” (Happy Midsummer). So, it seemed natural to me that you would say “Hauskaa pääsiäistä!”, (Happy Easter). After all, in the States we say “Happy Easter”. Seems normal.However, I was quickly corrected that the proper usage is “Hyvää pääsiäistä!” (literally, Good Easter).

The reason was, of course, that Easter is supposed to be a solemn holiday, not a fun one (remember “hauska” means “fun”). In English, "Happy Easter" does seems to work, since the Easter story ends with Jesus rising from the tomb, a happy ending. To think of it as a “fun” happy-go-lucky ending is perhaps to diminish the gravity of the event.

Good Friday is another matter, however. Most Christians probably don’t think of the execution of Jesus as a “happy” event -- well, maybe no one except Donald Trump. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, “Happy Good Friday”. Even though the execution was necessary for the rising, I think most Christians think of it as a sorrowful event. (I haven’t gone to church in decades, so maybe I’m wrong about that.)

Of course, now that Trump has set the example by tweeting that exact greeting, I’m sure it will be quickly adopted by all his followers. Next year, no doubt, MAGA folks will be sending out “Happy Good Friday” cards.

Tainted Landmarks

I was recently reminded of a part of Helsinki with a very colorful name. It's one very small part of South Harbor, where the big ferries from Sweden dock, a mostly enclosed "basin" not much bigger than an Olympic swimming pool, with only a narrow passage out. Next to the busy Kauppatori open-air market square, and the site of the yearly Baltic Herring Market, it is at the epicenter of Helsinki tourism, despite a very un-touristy name -- the Cholera Basin. 

For these 30-odd years I have vaguely known the place's name without really knowing the genesis of that name. Wikipedia to the rescue! As the story goes, a ship master from Nauvo in the Turku archipelago died from cholera while in Helsinki for the Baltic Herring Market of 1893. Rather unadvisedly, his bodily fluids (use your imagination) were dumped overboard into the basin. Obviously, this was quickly recognized as not a good thing to do. As a precaution, all the herring boats were towed out of the harbor and guards were posted on the quayside to prevent anyone from helping themselves to the basin's disease-ridden water. 

As far as I'm aware, it worked and no one contracted cholera from the cholera basin. At least, I hope so. Yet the basin was forever tainted with the name, which might say something about the dark humor of the Finnish people and their willingness to embrace an unpleasant episode from the past. Or, at least not gloss over it. 

It's impossible to think about the Cholera Basin incident now without being reminded of current events, the spread of the new coronavirus (seven confirmed case in Finland at the moment) and the actions different nations are taking to control it. From police on the quayside to self-quarantines and entire cities locked down in China, people's lives will always be disrupted now and then by tiny life forms (or in the case of viruses, barely life forms), even if only mercifully few people suffer from the horrible illness those pathogens cause. 

Let's hope the final impact of the COVID-19 disease on life in Finland -- and the world --  is minimal and not long-lasting. Somehow I don't see anyone commemorating it by naming some place in Helsinki "COVID-19 Square" or "Coronavirus Corner". But there is this bar...

The Cholera Basin in a serene mood.
Photo by Matti Paavonen

The Art of Retail Gaslighting

Trump boasts that this year’s 3.4% increase in holiday retail sales is the highest in US history, somehow ignoring the fact that only last year those sales increased 5.1%. You would think a very stable genius would understand that 5.1 is a bigger number than 3.4. You would think a president would have advisors who could explain this to him. Apparently not.

The 3.4% number comes from a report on holiday shopping published by Mastercard, which also revealed that online sales make up a record high share (almost 15%) of overall sales.  Trump likely latched onto the word “record” in media reports, like the one from Reuters whose headline read “Record online sales give U.S. holiday shopping season a boost.” Maybe Trump fixated on the word “record” and completely missed “online”. You can’t expect him to read every word, after all.  (A very plausible alternative theory is that Trump knows exactly what he's doing and willfully ignored the finer points of the report to suit his purposes.) 

So, perhaps without knowing it, Trump touts a record holiday season for e-commerce -- which, let's face it, ain’t nothing, and is obviously the undisputed and unstoppable trend in the retail business. Good for the likes of Amazon (which pays no sales tax, and incidentally is run by Jeff Bezos, whom Trump hates). Good for those communities where e-commerce firms operate (for example, just seven locations in Georgia, in the case of Amazon).  

Meanwhile, sales in brick-and-mortar stores, located in every community in America, didn’t look nearly as rosy, rising only 1.2%. But Trump doesn’t brag about that. Actually, it’s nothing to brag about.

Vindication Denied?

I suspect that many Trump followers are not well served by their preferred media, which have led them to believe wholeheartedly in various scandals that haven't panned out, even after much investigation, like Benghazi, while not believing in other scandals that are real and unfolding before our eyes. 

A steady diet of Fox News leaves these MAGA folks ill-prepared when the "scandal" of the moment turns out to be a nothingburger. Of course, they will never admit to this.

One of the scandals that may not pan out in the way the Trump cult hopes is the origins (or "oranges", as POTUS might say) of the FBI investigation into Russian election interference in 2016.  

For months, Sean Hannity has been touting that the FBI  Inspector General's internal investigation into the matter will deliver earthshaking revelations into the Bureau's corrupt role in the Russian "hoax", breathlessly promising proof that the investigation was illegitimate from the beginning. Sweet, sweet vindication of a sweet, benevolent prince.  As if anyone not on the Fox payroll could imagine Trump that way. 

The IG's report comes out tomorrow, and already there are signs that Hannity's flock will be disappointed in the report's main findings. I'm crossing my fingers that their expectations will be dashed. Sean has even been hinting at such in his recent radio broadcasts. Guess we'll see. 

Anyway, the lucky thing about having a conspiracy-minded mentality is you always have a ready excuse when things don't turn out like you expected -- namely that the oh-so-deep-state is at it again. If your main source of news is the likes of Sean Hannity, you can hardly think any other way.