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.

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.

Valeuutiset?

As part of my ongoing struggle to learn Finnish, I have now and then tried reading various books suomeksi. One of these I recently took a stab at (once again) is “The Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf” by the legendary 19^th century naturalist and conservation evangelist John Muir. It’s the account of his walk from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867, just after the Civil War.

One passage I ran across about a man he encountered along the way struck me as surprising resonate to today:

Matkasin muutaman mailin vanhan tennesseeläismaanviljelijän kanssa, joka oli hyvin kiihtynyt juuri kuulemistaan uutisista. ”Kolme kuningaskuntaa, Englanti, Irlanti ja Venäjä, on julistaneet sodan Yhdysvalloille. Voi, se on kamalaa, kamalaa”, hän sanoi. ”Taas on sota alkamassa, ja vielä näin äkkiä oman ison tappelumme jälkeen. No, ei kai sille mitään voi, enkä mä voi muuta sanoa kuin eläköön Amerikka, mutta parempi olisi, jos mitään kärhämää ei tulisi.”

”Mutta oletko varma, että uutiset pitävät paikkansa?”, minä kysyin. ”Kyllä vaan”, hän vastasi, ”sillä mä ja muutama naapuri oltiin kaupassa eilen illalla, ja Jim Smith, joka osaa lukea, luki tän jutun sanomalehdestä.”

I traveled a few miles with an old Tennessee farmer who was very excited about news he had just heard. “Three kingdoms, England, Ireland and Russia, have declared war on the United States. Oh, it is horrible, horrible,” he said. “Again, war is coming, and yet so soon after our own big fight. Well, I don’t suppose anything can be done about it. The only thing I can say is hooray for America, but it would be better if there were no squabbles.”

“But are you sure that the news is correct?”, I asked. “Sure,” he answered. “Me and a few neighbors were at the store yesterday evening, and Jim Smith, who can read, read the story from the newspaper.”

Needless to say, no such war had been declared. Ireland? Really?

In today’s environment -- where reality itself seems to be in dispute at every turn and what you think really happens in the world will depend on which media you consume -- the farmer’s falling for a 19^th century version of fake news somehow feels familiar.

From this you might be tempted to think Muir's account shows that, in this regard, there’s nothing new under the American sun. But, still, you can’t blame an illiterate farmer for trusting his friend Jim’s recitation of an erroneous newspaper story. It’s not as if he could Google “Ireland declares war”!

Today’s Americans, with so many ways to receive and double-check the news, have no such excuse for falling for stories that are demonstrably false (like Trump's claim that at least 3 million illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in the US election, depriving him of a popular-vote victory), while at the same time crying “fake!” every time they encounter legitimate news (such as Russia’s election meddling) that goes against their politics. 

But that doesn't stop many from doing it anyway. 

Small Lies or Big Delusion?

Once again I’ve been astounded this past week by how fact-challenged Donald Trump is.

First up – the leaked transcript of phone calls. I agree with a lot of people (both Republican and Democrat) that leaking these kinds of presidential phone conversations is not good. But, boy, do they ever reveal some things about Trump.

In one of the calls Trump tells Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto that the state of New Hampshire is a “drug-infested den” (no doubt, now the new state motto!) and for this reason Trump won the state.

To be fair to Trump, we can assume that he’s NOT saying that he was especially popular among the addicted-voter segment (though that might explain a lot). Instead, perhaps he meant that the concern over the opioid epidemic was an issue that worked in his favor – though I don’t know if that’s true, either.

The more interesting fact about Trump’s (mis)statement is that he did NOT “win” New Hampshire. Clinton did, though it was very close. You would think Trump would remember this. Someone should set the record straight with Peña Nieto so he doesn’t accidentally embarrass himself by bringing up this impressive “fact” about Trump at, for example, some cocktail party.

“Did you know,” he would say confidently, “That my good friend Donald Trump won New Hampshire?” while his better-informed companions stare into their drinks in awkward silence.

Anyway, perhaps Trump is thinking of his big GOP primary win in New Hampshire, the surprise victory that set him off on his journey to the White House. Maybe that looms so large in his mind that he confuses it with actually winning the state in the general election nine months ago.

The other thing that struck me this week is what Trump said at a campaign rally in West Virginia (a state he actually did win, bigly). Concerning the Department of Justice investigation into Russian meddling in the election, he assured a throng of cheering coal-industry supporters that “The Russia story is a total fabrication. It’s just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics.” Greatest loss in the history of American politics.

Only, it wasn’t. Trump LOST the popular vote by almost three million votes. He did win the electoral college, but only by 34 votes, the narrowest margin since George W. Bush and in no way a “great win”. (Obama won by 95 and 62 votes.)

It just goes to show that if you repeat an untruth over and over, maybe you start to believe it’s true. Seems to be working for Trump. He’s probably hoping it works for his audience too.

Cutting Off Your Nose

There has been a lot of talk, and controversy, about President* Donald Trump's proposed budget for 2018 which was published a couple of weeks ago. Much of the controversy has rightly focused on the unprecedented cuts to many federal departments and programs, especially the ones highly prized by liberals and loathed by conservatives. 

These include the Environmental Protection Agency (hated for its supposedly job-killing regulations), the National Endowment for the Arts (hated for supporting weird, artsy-fartsy high-brow culture), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (hated for its "socialist" TV and radio programming, such as Sesame Street). 

Then there's the elimination of the 21st Century Community Learning Center program, which funds before- and after-school programs for almost two million, mostly impoverished, American school kids. This is a service that in Finland is available for almost all first- and second-grade schoolchildren. Our own kids definitely benefited from it. But it's clearly a luxury that the world's greatest and richest nation cannot afford. Obviously.

Another part of the federal government on the chopping block is the Appalachian Regional Commission, which Trump plans to completely abolish. The ARC is a nation-building agency that provides federal money to help develop the large swath of the United States that is sometimes called "Appalachia". 

That name has taken on a slight derogatory tinge, you might say, bringing to mind cultural and economic backwardness. But, the inescapable fact is that the region around the Appalachian Mountains has been historically slow to develop. 

To alleviate the region's persistent economic disadvantage, the ARC was set up in 1965 to funnel federal money into 420 mostly rural counties in 13 states, including my home county of Gilmer in North Georgia. Among these areas are strongholds of Trump support such as West Virginia (voted 69% for Trump) and Kentucky (63%). It is were much of his "base" is based.

By the way, this is federal money provided by taxpayers in blue states such California, because states such as West Virginia and Kentucky are net takers of tax money, and La La Land is a net giver.

One concrete example of an ARC development program is the four-lane highway that passes by my hometown of Ellijay. Built as part of the Appalachian Development Highway System, the highway certainly cut the travel time to and from metropolitan Atlanta and, judging by the giant shopping plaza, featuring a Wal-Mart, a Starbucks, even a Japanese restaurant, among many other businesses clustered along the highway outside of the town proper, it has generated some conspicuous economic activity. 

Anyway, out of curiosity, I checked to see what kinds of ARC programs would currently be affected by Trump's drastic budget cut. According to the list here, there were around 25 such projects in 2016 funded in large part by the ARC, mostly related to health care and infrastructure. As far as I could tell, none had anything to do directly with Gilmer County.

Examples of these programs, which might well lose their ARC funding in the future, were “North Georgia Healthcare Center Telemedicine Lab Unit”, “Bobby Brown Park Master Plan”, "Cartersville Downtown Water System Improvements", “Georgia Northwest Technical College Chemical Lab Equipment”, and so forth. 

Say good bye to free government money for beakers and test tubes, you lazy moochers at Georgia Northwest Technical! Let Georgia tax payers pick up the tab from now on. Cartersville, it's time you stopped looking to Uncle Sam to help improve your water system!

One of the bigger items in 2016 was $300,000 for “Trion Wastewater Treatment System Improvements”. I’ve never even heard of a town called Trion. I think it’s made up. A fake town used in a scam to spend California tax payers’ money. The perfect con! 

Of course, I'm joking and find it all ironic. It's a prime example of someone, or to be more specific millions of Trump voters in Appalachian states, cutting off their noses to spike their faces. 






* A "so-called" president in my mind, since Trump applied that label to a federal judge who has at least as much legitimacy for the office he holds as a president who lost the popular vote by some three million.

Trump World: The Electoral College Margin

One of the highlights of Donald Trump's bizarre press conference on February 16th was the fact that a reporter actually called Trump out on one of his favorite falsehoods. It was a very welcome turn of events.

Trump had claimed that he won the election by the biggest electoral college margin since Reagan (Trump got 306 electoral votes). This is a dead-easy thing to check. And it’s similar to the claim Trump made repeatedly soon after the election that he won by a “massive landslide”.

Obama got 365 electoral votes in 2008, and 332 four years later. Bill Clinton got even more. George H. W. Bush got 426.

FACT: All those numbers are bigger than 306.

When confronted by the reporter over this fact, Trump first countered that he meant the biggest electoral college win of any Republican president. 

FACT: George H.W. Bush, who followed Reagan, was a Republican president and his electoral college win was 120 higher than Trump’s.

When the reporter confronted Trump with this last point, his response was: “Well, no, I was told. I was given that information. I don’t know... Actually, I’ve seen that information around...”

So, my takeaway is that:

1) Trump isn’t responsible for what he says, since in this case “someone” gave that fake fact to him, or because he saw it “somewhere”.

2) If the “someone” feeding him this fake fact is a member of this staff, Trump should be pissed off because one of his comms team is making Trump look foolish by giving him fake facts that are easily disproved. That, to me, doesn’t sound like a well-tuned machine.

3) Alternatively, Trump knows it’s a fake fact and doesn’t care and is willing to say anything to fool this base and bolster his delusion that he won a great victory.

Of course, this dovetails perfectly with Trump's cavalier approach to the truth, as has been demonstrated over and over. It doesn't matter, of course, since his supporters don't care. And that is again a sign of what a weird world Trump has ushered in. 

Transfer of Power, 2017

Today, Donald Trump will be sworn in as America’s 45^th president. He enters office under a cloud, a huge cloud, a cloud like no one has ever seen before. Believe me.

His approval rating has dropped to around 37% (according to Fox News), unprecedentedly low for an incoming president. For Obama in 2009, it was 80%, more than twice that of Trump.

Trump lost the popular vote by three million, and still became president, which might be a bit difficult to understand for folks in Finland, where one vote equals one vote.

He won the Electoral College by 77 votes (34 over the 270 required to win). He likes to claim this as an historic landslide, despite the fact that Obama won the College by a margin almost three times higher (95 votes). Bill Clinton’s was even higher.

Trump also won after a divisive campaign that included allegations of interference by Russian-sponsored actors. There are reports this week that three of his associates are under investigation by the FBI for inappropriate dealings with the Russian government during the campaign. There may still several shoes to drop before this over.

Winning by the thinnest of margins, Trump is now pushing the most ideological agenda we have seen in since Reagan, who truly did win by a landslide. No matter how you look at it, Trump won with support of only half the country who bothered to vote, yet he’s happy to pretend he has a mandate to ignore the other half (plus some 3,000,000) who voted differently.

The GOP Congress, encouraged by having a nominal Republican in the White House, is preparing to tick off some items on a long-held conservative wish list. Two such items, selling off public lands and dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts, are just two of the most recently reported actions Congress is gearing up for, with the assurance that Trump will sign whatever congressional Republicans want.

I have my doubts that Trump really cares about much of what the Republican Congress has in mind for America, other than repealing Obamacare, building a wall, and perhaps sparking a trade war in the name of “bringing back jobs”. The rest he could care less about.

I suspect he’s made a bargain, if you will a “deal”, with Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell that they can “run things”, pass the laws they want and he’ll sign them. In return, he gets to bask in the glory of being THE PRESIDENT. The alpha male. The Boss.

I’m not happy about any of this. Trump will be president. Sadly, a perfectly legitimate president. I don’t see any reason to doubt he was duly elected, though I do think the FBI and the Russians contributed to his success.

While he may be legitimately elected, you have to wonder how long this erratic, ignorant, entitled, bully will remain in office. There may be grounds already to impeach him, if the Republican Congress so wished to do so, if at some point he becomes a liability or outlives his usefulness. Or, maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

In the meantime, I have no choice but to recognize that he’s becoming president today. A legitimate one, which is a courtesy Trump refused to extend to the 44th president for nearly a decade. Trump will be president, but don’t ask me to celebrate it. 

One Man's Political Correctness...

Listening to news and analysis following the shocking election of Donald Trump last week, I heard someone suggest that the number-one fatal mistake that Clinton made was that she used the word “deplorable” when referring to Trump supporters.

Never mind that she was talking about one subset of Trump's supporters, for example, those from the alt-right who have a habit of gleefully sharing Internet memes featuring Pepe the Frog or monkey caricatures of Obama.

That distinction, of course, got lost, and it seems every last Trump supporter felt insulted by her remarks. No doubt that was not Clinton’s intention, but it did open herself up for misinterpretation. It was political malpractice in the extreme, so the commentary went, to use such a derogatory term for any voter.

That got me to thinking. Looking at it that way, it was political in-correctness that did Clinton in. She applied an offense, impolite term to a large group of people. She painted a lot of folks with the same broad brush. She forgot to be politically correct.

This is hugely ironic, of course. Folks who constantly warn that America is endangered by “political correctness”, folks who shrug off the notion that there’s anything wrong with Trump calling illegal migrants “rapists and murders” or Syrian refugees “terrorists” or women “fat pigs”, these same folks take offense, YUGE offense, when called “deplorable” by Hillary Clinton. And, oh yes, “irredeemable”.  

Should they take offense? Maybe so. Actually, who could blame them? Should hard-working undocumented workers from Mexico take also offense being called “rapists” by Donald Trump? Well, heavens forbid no, because that was just Trump speaking his mind, and as we all know “speaking your mind” is the highest form of expression. Clinton, on the other hand, was just being condescending and rude. 

Logical, right?

The thing that has bothered me for so long about the right's obsession with the “political correctness” boogieman and Trump's willingness to give it the middle finger is this: using measured language and holding back your most primal thoughts might actually serve a purpose in a society where not everyone is a clone of yourself. It might help moderate the temperature of personal interactions. It might help maintain social harmony. It might help people get along.

Maybe you desperately want to tell the guy sitting in the pew next to you in church that he’s an “asshole”, because deep down inside that’s what you think he is. Maybe you're dying to tell your wife to for God's sake please lose some weight. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be like Trump and throw off the shackles of political correctness and just say out loud what’s on your mind?

Such liberating free speech can have consequences, however. Your fellow congregant might stand up and punch you in the nose. Your wife might exact revenge in unspeakable ways. American voters might discover more reasons to despise Hillary Clinton. And Donald Trump might succeed wildly and get himself elected president.* Things work differently for him, it seems.

Last week on Facebook, I called Trump supporters “gullible” and was promptly told to “shut up”. Maybe I deserved that. What I said was insulting, especially if his supporters didn't really believe his endless casual lies, but supported him for purely cynical reasons. 

But it was what was on my mind at the time. I was just saying what I thought. I wasn't holding back. 

Well, that's not entirely true. What was really on my mind was far worse. So, now I have a dilemma. In the future, should I be more politically correct and refrain from saying anything remotely insulting about anyone who voted for Trump. Or should I take the less politically correct road traveled by Donald Trump himself and call many of them ignorant (as opposed to merely "gullible"), or even racist? 

I always thought I was much more comfortable with the first option, but maybe I should get with the times and go with the other one.

* By the Electoral College, not the popular vote. 

Net Stupidity - The Voter Fraud Edition

A few weeks ago, I saw on the Internet one of those provocative memes about all the voter fraud that supposedly took place in the 2012 presidential race.

At the top of a list of "very suspicious" voting "irregularities" was the fact that in 59 districts around Philadelphia, not a single vote was cast for Mitt Romney. Not even one.

This, the "author" of the meme informed the Internet universe, was a "statistical and mathematical impossibility". 

Now, I'm pathetic at math (ask my wife), but even I realized that that was a dumb statement. "Impossibility" is a strong word. The rest of the list of alleged Democratic transgressions was even more sketchy.

I really don't understand why people who are trying to make a point have to resort to making stuff up. I guess it's because the facts, in some cases even reality, are otherwise not on their side. Sad.

Radical Islam

I keep hearing conservative critics lambasting President Obama again and again over his refusal to say the words “radical Islam” when talking about terrorism. 

The phrase has become a talisman of the right, a magic charm that if uttered, so it seems, would alone deal a huge blow to Daesh and its brainwashed followers. For me, it's hard to imagine how that particular combination of words coming from Obama’s mouth would strike a lot of fear into the heart of bloodthirsty miscreants in Raqqa. Seriously. It seems drone strikes would be more effective.

Anyway, I saw in a comment thread somewhere on the Internet recently what I thought was a very insightful comment (not “incite-ful”, which is rare for the Internet).

The commentator pointed out that the word “radical” in “radical Islam” can be seen as either a descriptor or an intensifier. As a descriptor, it clarifies what kind of Islam we’re talking about, as in the same way “fundamentalist Christianity” denotes a more conservative form of that diverse religious belief. "Radical Islam" is thus differentiated from, let’s say, mainstream Islam.

On the other hand, “radical” used as an intensifier is a whole other kettle of fish. In this sense, it highlights some essential nature of the word that follows.

The Internet commentator offered an example from the Cold War, a time when many conservatives in the US railed against “Godless Communism”. By using this choice phrase, the John Birch Society and its ilk certainly didn't intend to single out the unbelieving Communists for abuse, compared to those saintly Christian Communists. “Godlessness” was understood to be an inherent part of Communism, baked in to the Marxist cake, so to speak. Tacking on the word “Godless” just ensured that no right-thinking American overlooked this little detail.

The astute Internet commentator went on to say he or she suspected that folks who are most obsessed with the term “radical Islam” are using it like the McCarthite reactionaries of old did. That is, they see all Islam as radical by definition, and they want to make sure everyone knows it. 

Judging by how much anti-Islamic blather I see on the Internet scoffing at the very existence of “moderate Islam”, I have to think the commentator is onto something.

No wonder President Obama wisely declines to play along with that game.

Trump's Sacrifice

In the curious case of Donald Trump’s fight with Khizr Khan, the Muslim American who lost a son in the Iraq War, Trump keeps digging in his heels, and digging himself deeper into a hole of nastiness.

In response to Mr. Khan’s assertion, in his passionate speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, that Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one” for America, Trump tried to claim that his hard work and “tremendous success” in building his business was somehow comparable to giving the life of your son.

Who knew that making tons of money could be both fabulous and a horrible misfortune. Should the US bestow a medal on Trump for his brave, opulent sacrifice? Something in the shape of a gold-plated toilet fixture perhaps?

Anyway, in his supreme cluelessness Trump has completely blown his response to the Khans. He’s shown no understanding, no empathy, no magnanimity. He has, however, shown his true character.

Or maybe not entirely. I suspect Donald Trump isn’t saying what he really thinks about the whole thing. I suspect that, even as uninhibited and unfiltered as he normally is, maybe in this case he understands enough to know he can’t express the one thing that, deep down inside, he truly feels about the Khans losing a son while his own family remains untouched by war.

This is what I imagine Trump really thinks in his heart of hearts:

“Too bad for you, Khizr Khan, but only chumps allow their children to go off and fight in a stupid, useless war. And I, Donald J. Trump, am no chump. You lose, I win. I always win.” 

National Colors

On Sunday, I went running in the nearby woods with my wife, only the second time since last summer. 

When I say “running”, I mean “jogging”, at a pace that would barely qualify as a brisk walk, until my lungs can’t stand it anymore and I am forced to walk for a bit until I can manage to “run” again, all the while my wife, just to keep her pulse up, runs (actual runs) back and forth past me, like a deft crow again and again swooping past a slow gliding hawk.

She likes the company, I suppose, though I am by no means the ideal running companion.

This half-an-hour of cardiovascular hell was nicely timed to finish just as Finland’s latest matchup in the World Hockey Championship got underway, although I had to spend the first ten minutes of the game recovering on the porch collapsed in our Adirondack chair before I could come in to watch.

When I did, I immediately started rooting for the wrong team. I cursed when an aggressive attack by some strong skaters failed to score against…Finland. What? Huh? 

Credit: realismadder

It took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t the Slovakian goalie who was working mightily in front of the goal to keep the puck from going in. It was the Finnish. I was confused, and not only because my senses were dulled by my near-death experience on the running path.

The reason for my mistake was the color of their jerseys. On the TV screen before me were two teams whizzing over the ice at supersonic speeds, one in white jerseys, one in blue, both national colors of Finland. I’m somehow more used to Finland wearing white jerseys, but in this game the team wearing white was Slovakia, a country which shares Finland's national colors, in addition to one other, namely red. As in red, white and blue. On closer inspection, I could make out a small red stripe on Slovakia’s jerseys, hardly noticeable.

Of course, both teams have the right to wear the colors of blue or white on their uniforms. Still, with three colors to choose from, unlike Finland, I’m curious why Slovakia didn’t use red uniforms instead. Why use a color that could also be used by the opposing team when you have another color all your own? (And, yes, I do have too much time on my hands.)

I’ve noticed the same when Finland plays the USA. I don’t recall Team USA charging out on the ice in mostly-red jerseys. I think they’re usually blue.

Anyway, this got me thinking about why the colors red, white and blue are used by so many countries, some 30 in fact, including such diverse nations as Chile, Taiwan, France, or for that matter, Cuba, Russia, and North Korea.

The list also includes many of the Commonwealth nations such as Australia and New Zealand (neither of which, I’m told, is an exceptional powerhouse in ice hockey), nations that apparently came to use the red, white and blue national colors in the same way as America did – they adopted them from the Mother Country.

It’s kind of funny when you think about it. It appears the leaders of the American Revolution weren’t so revolutionary when it came to colors. They could have broken with the past completely and created an entirely new color scheme for a completely new nation, say, orange, green and yellow. Instead, while they did go for a radically different flag design, they retained the old colors of the hated enemy Britain. Go figure.

The Bolsheviks did much better. Seizing control of the Russian government in the October Revolution and installing a government of “workers, solider and peasants”, the followers of Lenin tossed the historic red-white-blue flag of Tsarist Russia onto the dustbin of history.

To replace it, they created, in the vein of centuries-old socialist tradition, a simple red flag, with some tasteful Communist symbols in yellow -- the flag of the Soviet Union. It was a clear signal that this was no longer your dedushka’s Russia. Of course, that didn’t last.

I can’t finish without making a snarky observation about some other anti-establishment political hijinks that are much more recent. The most unavoidable symbol of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been his “Make America Great Again” cap. Trump, no slouch when it comes to marketing and branding, dreamed up this Average Joe headwear early in his run for the White House as a way to spread his insipid campaign slogan.

The caps seem to come in only two colors, red and white, no blue. (Okay, there’s also a camouflage version, but that’s just seems to be an afterthought.) The omission of blue has led someone in the media, maybe John Oliver or just some random Internet wag, to speculate that Trump is confused in thinking that he’s running for president of Canada. Or Japan. Or some other red-and-white country. Poland, maybe? Indonesia?

Why no blue? Does Trump have something against blue states, perhaps? Could be. Or maybe Trump, in a rush to cash in on a campaign that was never meant to last, simply forgot about the color blue when ordering up a consignment of chauvinistic merchandizing. I doubt we’ll ever know.

One quick aside: a Finnish correspondent in the US has reported that he was unable to order a Trump cap for himself because he is a foreigner. That seems to be true, as customers aren’t “buying” a cap, but rather “contributing” to a campaign (for which they get a cap), something that only citizens or legal residents can do.

Illegal residents are, therefore, excluded from buying a Trump cap of their very own. Presumably Muslims, as such, still can.

I can’t imagine either one of those groups would want to anyway. I know I wouldn’t. 

Trump in his cap, showing his colors (no blue!).
Photo: Gage Skidmore

Jan from Chattanooga

In a recent version of Slate’s excellent Trumpcast podcast, the host Jacob Weisberg interviewed a listener, Jan from Chattanooga, about why he supports Donald Trump. It was interesting to hear Jan’s views. 

Here’s what struck me the most about what he had to say.

1. Jan is angry about the bank bailouts of 2008. He thinks that Trump might have done the bailouts just the same, “for the good of the country”, but that Trump would have been able to leverage more government “oversight” of the banks.

2. Jan is concerned about illegal immigration and wants it under control. At the same time, he isn’t sure that the wall Trump wants to build is a good thing (and doesn’t actually believe Trump will build it).

3. Jan doesn’t agree with Trump’s idea of deporting 12 million illegal aliens. Instead, he thinks law-abiding illegal immigrants already in the US should be “given some way to become Americans, or at least have a legal working status”

4. Jan isn’t worried that Trump is now starting to take campaign contributions, because he trusts that Trump won’t allow himself to be “owned” by anybody politically.

On point 1, Jan could almost be a Sanders supporter. On points 2 and 3, he rejects two of Trump’s major policies. He’s not in favor of “the wall” and is in favor of amnesty. On point 4, he seems to trust Trump not to be corruptible for no other reason than he’s Trump, or rich, or something.

Otherwise, the main reason he supports Trump is his promise to stop US jobs from going overseas. There again, he sounds to me like a Sanders supporter.

All that said, I don’t see why Jan, who sounds like an intelligent guy, would support Trump over one of the more moderate GOP candidates, or even Bernie Sanders. I don’t get it.

Net Stupidity – The “What Do I Know” Edition

More than anything, Donald Trump seems to be a creature of new media. He is a reality-TV show star turned presidential candidate who engages with the public using Twitter and seems to glean his understanding of the wider world mainly from “the Internet”.

It’s the gleaning of the Internet that I find the most troubling and scary. 

A case in point involves the protester who tried to jump on the stage where Trump was speaking on Saturday, before being stopped by Secret Service agents. For the record, it was a stupid, completely unconstructive act of protest. It was a stunt that did nobody any good, certainly not anyone who hopes Trump doesn't become president.

Still, it did serve to reveal something truly bizarre, and pernicious, about Donald Trump.

Trump immediately afterward referred to the protester, Thomas Dimassimo, as probably being “an ISIS supporter”. This was apparently based on a video of Dimassimo that was crudely edited by someone to make it “look” like Daesh propaganda.

That is, if the editing had been done by Eric Cartman. 

Someone took a video of Dimassimo (who happens to be originally from Georgia, like me)  at an earlier anti-flag protest, then simply added a weird Daesh graphic at the beginning and overlaid it with authentic Daesh music.  

While people who know something about these things declared the video to be a hoax, Trump jumped on it as one more reason Americans should be scared out of their minds (and, based on the level of support for Trump, apparently they are).

Now, what scares me more is this: someone who might be soon be president promptly labels a random, though more energetic than average, protester as a jihadist terrorist, based solely on a half-assed hoax video posted on some fringe website (it might have well been this one).

That was Trump’s first instinct, to elevate a ham-fisted protest act into a terror threat. That is not a sign of a calm, measured, stable temperament, the kind of temperament you’d want in someone controlling the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Or even its postal system, for that matter.

Not only that. When confronted with the fact that the video Trump had overreacted to had been a hoax, he explained his rush to judgement this way:

“And, supposedly there was chatter about ISIS. Now, I don’t know. What do I know about it? All I know is what’s on the Internet.” (Emphasis mine.)

Yes. All he knows is what’s on the Internet. And, if it’s on the Internet, well, there must be something to it then. Right? Like the thousands of cheering Muslims he imagined seeing in New Jersey on 9/11. Or, the Birther conspiracy that President Obama was born in Kenya.

Now, maybe he’s completely cynical and doesn’t believe any of this. Maybe his actual first instinct is to know what kind of nonsense will rile up his supporters, truth be damned, and then stoke it for maximum pandering effect. Maybe there’s some comfort in that notion.

But if not, and he really is so gullible as to chase almost any scary-sounding Internet conspiracy down a rabbit hole, then heaven help us all if he does become president. 

Dumpster.

(Photo: Niteowlneils)