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

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.

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.

This is a Cult

Okay, the level of crazy during the Trump presidency has always been high, but boy in the last week or so, it’s been upped a couple of notches. Some of the highlights:

Lindsey Graham claimed that the witches of Salem were treated better than Donald Trump has been during the impeachment investigation. He’s talking about women accused, imprisoned and sometimes hung because some of their neighbors acted hysterically. Until I see Donald Trump on a scaffold with a noose around his neck (which for the record I do NOT for a moment wish to see happen), I’m going to say it’s Lindsay Graham who’s acting hysterically. And ahistorical. Graham belongs to a cult.

Tucker Carlson admitted that Trump did indeed lie about how many people attended his inauguration. The president lied to the American people on Day One. But, Carlson basically says, this is okay because Trump is a “salesman” and, as we all know, salesmen lie all the time. My take-away from this is that we should never trust anything Trump says. Of course, this has been my conclusion for years already, but now Carlson has given his Fox News audience permission not to believe anything Trump says. In fact, they would be foolish to do so. Carlson belongs to a cult. Or else Carlson is just cynically playing to his most devoted fans, who do belong to a cult.

A recent poll shows that 53% of Republicans think that Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln, the man who led America through a civil war. This is mind blowing. This is mass delusion. Next, they’ll want to put Trump on Mount Rushmore. These people belong to a cult.

Donald Trump retweeted a picture of his head photoshopped onto the muscular body of a boxer (Sylvester Stallone from the movie “Rocky”). Juvenile and not exactly presidential, if you ask me. What’s worse, when the Washington Post -- stating the obvious -- mentions that the photo was “doctored”, the Trump reelection campaign hits back, accusing the Post of having no “evidence” the photo was doctored. As if, without some proof to the contrary, we are expected to believe the body of a 73-year-old obese man looks just like that of a 30-year-old champion boxer. This is a cult.

Law and Disorder: Criminal Distraction

Public hearings in the Trump impeachment have now started, something sure to keep me the edge of my seat for the next couple of weeks. 

In the lead up to all this, one thing I’ve found especially exasperating is how Donald Trump and his followers obsess so much on the whistleblower, as if the whole case against impeachment hinges on whether an investigation sparked by  complaint from an anonymous source is legitimate. Unsurprisingly, this argument makes no sense. Here’s an analogy of the way I look at it.

Let’s say Jim lives down the street from a 7-Eleven. His son Billy runs in to say the neighborhood bully Jack just cold-cocked Mrs. Bailey, a local retiree, from behind in the 7-Eleven parking lot. Jim didn’t see it, but he trusts his son. He's sure it happened. Jim, here, is the whistleblower. 

Jim assumes the police have leads and will immediately arrest Jack, but when that doesn’t happen Jim decides to inform the authorities himself. It's true he biased against Jack, but he's also biased in favor of Mrs. Bailey, a nice old lady. He's also biased against assaulting old ladies. He calls an anonymous tip line because he doesn’t want to give his name. He’s had trouble with Jack’s family before and wants to avoid retribution. Who could blame him?

The police start checking up on Jack, find some people who hang around with him. Some of them saw the whole thing, and one or two are willing to confirm the attacker was indeed Jack. They also like Mrs. Bailey and agree Jack crossed a line in hitting her. The witnesses, in this case, are Alexander Vindman, Gordon Sondland, Jennifer Williams, etc.

Jack is arrested and prosecuted. At this point, the DA doesn’t care who left the anonymous tip. He has eye-witnesses now and other evidence uncovered by detectives. The DA is the House of Representatives. The detectives are the three committees investigating Trump’s dealings with the president of Ukraine. The whole House is the Grand Jury that will hear the evidence and decide if there’s enough to indict Jack, I mean Trump.

To stretch the analogy out further, half of the jury (the Senate) hearing the case against Jack (Trump) happens to be opioid addicts and loyal customers of Jack's backstreet  painkiller retail business. Despite the undisputed evidence, they refuse to find him guilty. Judge G. O. Patterson declares a mistrial, and Jack goes free.

He is still tainted with an arrest record, but no conviction. In the end, he’s an unrepentant scoundrel, but one who’s admired by enough of the townspeople of Dipshitville that they even elect him mayor. To celebrate, Trump (I mean, Jack) goes out on Fifth Avenue and shoots someone. And no one cares. Jack is special. 

P.S. Someone in the DA's office illegally reveals Jim's name to the local paper as being the anonymous tipster, and naturally Jack gives him a horrible beat down. So much for anonymity. So much for justice. 

Bottom-Line Valor?

I don’t normally note Veteran’s Day, since I’m a liberal, and liberals tend not to valorize the military the way conservatives do. And by “valorize”, I mean the kind of conspicuous virtue signaling of patriotism that American conservatives love to plaster across their social media. Flags, eagles, that sort of stuff.

However, to make a blatant political point, I thought it might be interesting to talk about the veterans who are currently running for president. What makes this especially relevant is the recent publication of a book by Donald Trump’s son Junior, titled “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us”. (The very long subtitle kinda gives away the plot, doesn’t it?) 

In this book, out just in time for Veteran’s Day, Don Jr. recalls visiting Arlington Cemetery just before his father’s inauguration and how the rows and rows of graves of fallen soldiers movingly reminded him of all the business opportunities his family was sacrificing by coming to Washington, all the revenue they have foregone for the country. Call it “bottom-line valor”. Crass and tone deaf doesn’t even begin to describe it. 

You would think a political family with no history of military service whatsoever would shy away from making those kinds of comparisons. Donald Trump famously avoided the Vietnam War thanks to student deferments and a bogus “bone spur”. What’s more, neither of his sons have served in the military. That’s not surprising, of course. The only prep-school scions of the American elite who join the military are those who really want to (I’m thinking here of John Kerry, Robert Mueller, etc.), as opposed to lower-class folks who have fewer economic options. 

So, I wondered how do the other candidates stack up? 

Let’s start with the Republicans. And, yes, there are some besides Trump, namely Mark Sanford, Joe Walsh, and Bill Weld. The first two were born in the early 60s, and thus too old for any major war event that you might expect would inspire people to join up, like Pat Tillman did. Tillman was the NFL player who retired at the height of his pro ball career to join the Army in response to 9-11. He died in Afghanistan in 2004. He was basically the same age as Don Jr. Hmmm. 

Back to the candidates. Bill Weld was born in 1945, a year before Trump, so he, like Trump, was of a prime age to fight for his country. He did not. Just like Trump. 

On the Democratic side, there are currently 16 candidates. No, 17. I know, it’s hard to keep track. Five are women. I hope it’s not sexist to say women aren’t normally expected to serve in the military, so no one would look askance at Elizabeth Warren not having military credentials to flout. 

The punitive frontrunner Joe Biden, born in 1942 which makes him a bit older than Trump, was in his mid 20s at the height of the Vietnam War. He stayed out of the war with the help of deferments and a history of asthma. His son Beau joined the National Guard as a JAG officer in 2002 at the age of 33. Obviously, that’s serving part-time in the military, though he did serve one year in Iraq. He remained in the Guard until his untimely death in 2014. Younger brother Hunter also joined the service, the US Navy Reserve in the case, somewhat late at the age of 43 (it’s not too late for the Trump boys!), but was discharged after only a year after testing positive for cocaine. Hunter, it seems, is turning out to be a problematic child. 

That leaves 11 other male candidates. Bernie Sanders, even older than Biden, could have served in Vietnam if he’d really wanted, though no one would expect a young leftist political activist who took part in anti-war protests at the time to volunteer to go kill Viet Cong. In fact, Sanders applied for conscientious objector status, which was ultimately rejected, though by that time he was too old to be drafted anyway. 

Tom Steyer is about my own age, too young for Vietnam, too old for the next war. Not that you have to wait for a war. Joe Sestak, who I admit was not on my radar at all, went straight from High School to the Naval Academy, following the example of his father. He graduated as an ensign in 1974, just after the Paris Peace Accords ended the US involvement in Vietnam. Sestak spent 31 years in the Navy, rising to the rank of Vice Admiral and commanded an aircraft carrier battle group operating in Persian Gulf during the Iraq War. 

John Delaney, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, and Cory Booker were all children of the 60s. That put them well into their 30s during the Iraq War and borderline “too old” even for the Gulf War a decade earlier. On the other hand, Booker was only 22 when Norman Schwarzkopf led the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, though the whole thing was over so quickly, Booker would not likely have seen combat even if he had rushed to join up. 

Julian Castro, Wayne Messam, and Andrew Yang were almost 30 when George W. Bush launched his unnecessary and cursed invasion of Iraq in 2003. Again, a bit too old to take part in any case. 

Pete Buttigieg, the youngest candidate, joined the US Navy Reserve at the age of 27, retiring as a lieutenant after eight years. I guess Reservists, like National Guardsmen, are mostly “weekend warriors”, and for his monthly stints of duty Buttigieg was assigned to a post on Lake Michigan, within driving distance of South Bend, Indiana, where part of that time he was mayor. He did take a break from running South Bend to ship overseas to Afghanistan for a six-month tour as a naval intelligence office and armed driver for his CO. 

Another Democratic candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, is the only female vet running for the White House, maybe the only one who ever has. She joined the National Guard just weeks after the opening “shock and awe” of the American hostilities against Iraq. She continues to serve, currently with the rank of major. She served a year-long tour in Iraq in a medical support unit and a second tour in Kuwait in an MP (Military Police) unit. I’ll leave the question as to whether she’s a Russian asset to another time. 

So, for folks keeping score... 

The current president and his three GOP challengers: Zero military service, though when two of them where of draft age there was a rather hot war going on. 

The 17 Democratic candidates: Of the 12 men running, seven came of age between the Vietnam and Iraq wars, during a time of relative peace. Of the remaining five men, two did serve, one as a career Navy man. Of the five women candidates, one is currently still serving in the military. That’s a total of three vets. 

It’s a good thing Republicans don’t look for military experience in their leaders. Otherwise, they’d have to switch parties. Or maybe that would be a good thing.

Law and Disorder: Special Stupidity Unit

Defense attorney: "Your Honor, while it is true that my client was present in the 7-11 on the night of the 24th and that he did point a loaded revolver at the cashier while requesting him to empty the cash register, I'd like to point out that -- as the surveillance video from the store has clearly shown -- my client did not ONCE say to the cashier that this was an armed robbery. He did not once use the words 'armed robbery', and therefore, Your Honor, he cannot be charged or convicted of the CRIME of armed robbery."

Judge: "Very well. Case dismissed!" 

This seems to be the way Trump followers think about the words "quid pro quo" or "abuse of power".

What Would Trump Do?

On the local Finnish radio this morning they had a long segment (for some reason) about the time John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

I remember there was a backlash over that, especially in the South, with folks burning Beatles records with the same kind of enthusiasm that some people used to burn Tyndale Bibles (sorry, couldn't help that -- been reading "Wolf Hall" and thinking about all the Christian-on-Christian hatred that was going on back in those days when Henry VIII decided he wanted a new and better queen).

Anyway, I got to wondering how Trump's supporters would react if Trump said he was more popular than Jesus. (And judging by the actions of Trump's base, he probably IS more popular than Jesus with those folks.)

I wish some reporter would ask that question. Are you now more popular than Jesus? I would love to see him stumble over his answer. He might understand that the "correct" answer is no. But he might also be so happy with the comparison that he might flip into Trump-mode and say something idiotic. "Look, they say Jesus walked on water, but I'm building the wall. Jesus never would have done that, what I'm doing. He wouldn't keep those immigrants out."

Old-Timey Camps and Wagon Trains

It’s often interesting to take a step back and look at recent events through the lens of history. And, boy, is this ever true today in the US when it comes to the illegal immigration issue. A couple of examples come to mind. 

Take the reaction of some conservatives when confronted with the harsh conditions in which the US government is holding young migrant children along the southern border. I’ve seen some of these supposedly good Christians on social media trying to blame the immigrant parents for putting their children at risk by making a dangerous trek through Mexico to find a better life in America. We shouldn’t feel bad about children sleeping on concrete floors, they would say, because it was their parents’ choice to put them in harm’s way! What kind of parent would subject their child to an arduous and dangerous journey like that? 

And then we have the wagon train. 

By that, I mean the groups of American settlers crossing the continent by ox-drawn wagons in the 1840-50s to start a new life in Oregon or California. For the sake of safety during this 2000-mile trip, these emigrates formed groups that today might be called “caravans”. Sometimes they paid “wagon masters” to lead them across the plains. Maybe we’d call them “coyotes” or “people smugglers” today. 

The first major trek of this kind was the Great Migration of 1843, in which a thousand-odd emigrants traveled the Oregon Trail, a legendary route that all American schoolchildren learn about. Years ago, on a family road trip to Yellowstone National Park, I insisted on making a detour to South Pass, the relatively low swag in the rugged Rockies that gave Oregon-bound emigrants easy passage over the mountains. 

Another storied mountain pass in American lore is Donner, along the California Trail in the Sierra Nevada. That is where a party of emigrants, taking to the trail too late in the season, were stranded in an early snowstorm and -- as everyone in America, maybe even Donald Trump, surely remembers -- had to resort to cannibalism to survive. 

Okay, that was an extreme form of hardship, but it’s fair to say that the typical trip for these families looking for a better life wasn’t a walk in the park. It’s estimated that one out of ten died along the way. They were trudging across desolate stretches of land, passing through hostile territory, always on the lookout for Indians who didn’t take kindly to Europeans invading their land. And the environment itself could be unforgiving. I’ve heard that, as sensational as Indian attacks on the open, treeless plains could be, more emigrants died from lightning strikes than from arrow strikes. 

When I was growing up in the US, these wagon trains still held a special place in the popular imagination. There was a hit TV show about them when I was a child. In my youth, a highlight in my hometown of Ellijay, Georgia, was the yearly “Wagon Train” festival, where dozens of people, often in cowboy getups, rode horses and wagons across Fort Mountain from the town of Chatsworth. I believe they’ve long since stopped doing that, but it was a feature of our lives for many years. 

In short, white European settlers putting their children through the ordeal of a five-month journey in dangerous circumstances in order to reach a new and better home is celebrated – even cherished -- in American pop culture. It no doubt warms the hearts of those conservatives who get nostalgic over John Wayne Westerns. Meanwhile, mestizo Central Americans doing the same today are to be condemned, demonized. Could it be there is a double standard at play here? 

The other example I had in mind was “concentration camps”. This is how some Democrats have been referring to the detention centers along the southern border where migrants -- children as well as adults -- are being incarcerated, often in deplorable conditions. Conservatives have taken umbrage at any suggestion that these overcrowded facilities can be compared with the notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Others have argued that using the term “concentration camp” outside the context of the Third Reich somehow insults the memory of Holocaust victims. 

A side note to this issue is the little history lesson that some folks have provided, namely that the term “concentration camp” was in fact coined some decades before the Nazis, during the Boer War in South Africa, an ugly enough episode of history where different tribes of white Europeans fought each other over the empty Veld. This factoid was even mentioned in the BBC-HBO miniseries “Years and Years”, about a Trump-like figure rising to power in a post-Brexit dystopian Britain of the near future. I highly recommend it. 

The term “concentration camp” may be modern, but the concept is not, and my own historical connection to it is the fact that my hometown in Georgia was the site of a real, actual concentration camp, Fort Hetzel. This was in 1838, when the state of Georgia, with the help of the US Army, was undertaking a gigantic land grab, a campaign of ethnic cleansing. 

Up until then, Ellijay, located in a shallow valley surrounded the Southern Appalachian Mountains, was part of the Cherokee Nation, which had been doing its best to assimilate to the invading Europeans by, for example, adopting Christianity and a US-style of government. Not that it did them much good. 

By 1838, whites had already been settling on Cherokee land in Georgia, even more so after gold was discovered there, sparking America’s first Gold Rush. Pressure had been building for the Cherokee to give up their homeland in exchange for a reservation in faraway Oklahoma. One faction of Cherokee leaders did eventually agree to this, but against the will of most of their people, who had to be removed from their farms under threat of force. Those rounded up in the mountains surrounding Ellijay where brought to Fort Hetzel, to be gathered there, or “concentrated” if you will, until time for their forced migration west. 

As far as I know, there is no historical plaque in Ellijay commemorating this event. Nothing marks the site of the stockade where over a thousand Cherokee men, women and children, forced off their land, forced to abandon their fields and livestock, were imprisoned in a confined space for months. 

Growing up in Ellijay, my only real source of information about this tragic event was "The Annals of Upper Georgia: Centered in Gilmer County" a chronicle written by a local amateur historian (and husband of my second-grade teacher) George Gordon Ward. Here’s a passage from that book about the roundup of local Cherokee: 

“Touching incidents were common during removal. An unnamed Indian mother, her violent protestations evidently having been unheeded, was driven into camp at East Ellijay, then Fort Hetzel. Her frenzied condition continued but the white soldiers could not understand her. 

“Then they called an interpreter, who translated the startling fact that when she was seized and forced from her home, some of her small children, in a panic of fear, had fled to nearby thickets and were probably still there.” 

Desperate children separated from parents being held against their will in a concentration camp. Sound familiar? 

According to Ward’s account, the soldiers returned to the woman’s home with her to locate the children. The family was reunited – in the concentration camp. No word on whether they all survived the forced march to Oklahoma. 

It goes without saying that the Removal is a particularly dark stain on American history, which isn’t that pristine to begin with. As events of the last week have shown, things haven’t necessarily gotten better.

Nothing Is New Under The Sun

A couple little books that have often occupied my nightstand (my dusty nightstand) for at least twenty years or more are Colin McEvedy’s history atlases, published by Penguin Books. I have read (and often re-read -- I have trouble retaining information, it seems) these brief summaries of Western history accompanied by simple maps that help to illustrate the constantly shifting geopolitical jigsaw puzzle of Europe from the Stone Age to the times of Napoleon. 

Every so often reading about the complicated history of Europe, I run across a passage describing long-forgotten leaders or world events that, well, seem to resonate with  leaders and world events of 2019. 

Here is one such passage from McEvedy’s “The Penguin Atlas of Modern History” describing Louis XI, King of France from 1461 – 1483. 

“Because he was both treacherous and successful, his admirers have called him Machiavellian, but his intellectual abilities were strictly limited, his natural impulsiveness poorly controlled and his qualities, good and bad, really those of a peasant. His strongest suit was tenacity, and the only modern quality of this otherwise credulous mind was a recognition that money was the measure of power.” 

Sound familiar? I highlighted the parts that reminded me of the current, and thankfully momentary, leader of the US. Notice, I didn’t highlight “successful”. 

Another such passage concerns Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty of Roman emperors. Nero’s reign (AD 54 - 68) suffered from thorny conflicts in Britain and Palestine and a disastrous fire in Rome (the folk-legend of which has Nero blithely fiddling away while the flames raged). But, apparently, beyond these calamities Nero had personal shortcomings that meant he was not up to the job of Emperor. 

“His position," according to McEvedy, "required of him little more than the appearance of gravity, yet this was a role that Nero, the self-declared actor, was never able to sustain.” Again, sound familiar? 

After various missteps of mismanagement by Nero, the Roman governor of Spain had had enough and marched on Rome. With the tide turning against him, even his Praetorian Guards would not defend Nero, and he had no choice but to die, in McEvedy’s words, “by his own shaky hand”.  

Of course, throughout history, violence has often been the method of unseating unsuitable and unpopular rulers. The Founding Fathers of the United States, throwing off the legacy of undemocratic monarchies, devised a more civilized and humane way of replacing such leaders who are, without question, wholly corrupt and unfit for their high office. And that method is impeachment. 

I’m beginning to wonder, why on Earth, are we not using that civilized and humane method today? 

Swearing by Trump

An interesting little detail from Donald Trump’s rally in Greenville was the fact that during his speech, Trump twice said the word “goddamn”. 

That may not seem like a big deal, but in the Southern Baptist household I grew up in, one of the worse things you do was take the Lord’s name in vain. I remember as a boy admonishing a friend who had said “Goddamn”, telling him that he would go to hell talking that way. Once a family member called me out for saying “Mein Gott” (“My God” in German – I was showing off.) This was long before “Oh my God” became such a ubiquitous expression that no one bats an eye. OMG.

Anyway, surely most presidents have used “goddamn” frequently enough, at least in private. They are, after all, men of the world. There are tapes of Nixon doing so. LBJ for sure. Obama likely. Jimmy Carter might be the only exception. I can’t imagine him doing it. 

But Trump is no doubt the first US president to utter that blasphemous word in public. You can be sure Obama never did. And if you ask me, it’s about goddamn time. Trump is just talking the way grown people talk, saying what he thinks, no holds barred. He's not afraid to tell it like it is, without worrying about offending someone’s tender sensitivities. Just imagine politically correct Obama throwing out a "goddamn" here and a "goddamn" there! No goddamned way!

As someone who says goddamnit a lot myself, I find it refreshing that Trump has now, in a sense, given license for the rest of us to feel comfortable enough swearing in public. I’m sure all his followers, from Franklin Graham to Lindsey Graham (and any other Grahams in between), fully agree. Goddamn right!