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Insanity

February 17, 2023

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."

- Eric Hoffer 1902-1983


This Presidential election cycle begs the question of whether the American public has become dumber or, more charitably, more cynical about elected officials, or even how we select our leaders.


On the one hand, the democrats have fielded a whip smart woman, perhaps too smart, a veteran of many years of public service, the wife of a former President, a former US Senator, a Secretary of State with impeccable academic credentials, a speedy and learned individual who invites vitriol from her opponents, adulation from her supporters, and intense scrutiny from a 24 hour unrelenting news cycle, but with a penchant for secrecy.  Some of our past Presidents had secrets also, including some of the great ones. Franklin Roosevelt, who kept his severe health problems and paralysis under wraps and later on during the final years of World War II his skyrocketing blood pressure and heart failure, ultimately to kill him. JFK kept his Addison's disease secret as well as his addiction to painkillers and women.  They and many other Presidents did not have to deal with CNN and FOX News and Matt Drudge. On the other hand, Donald Trump has to deal with a retinue of bloodhounds and his faults have become readily apparent to all who choose to see him for what he is. The facts are out there for Hillary also.


In 1861, the newly elected Abraham Lincoln snuck into Washington in a disguise, and changed trains in Baltimore fearing that angry southern sympathizers would assassinate him.  In the years leading up to his election, Senators and Congressmen battled each other in the capitol, beating each other on the head with canes or whatever else was handy over the issue of whether states should be admitted to the Union free or slave. Lincoln himself bore ideas about the racial inferiority of black men, and even supported their migrating to a colony in Africa. The essential point at the time was not slavery, but the balance of new states entering the Union as free or slave. The dichotomy, if you will, of two clashing economies and more importantly, two different cultures. One agrarian and one industrial. The two were incompatible. We can draw some parallels from this lesson of history. Now America is faced with four other cultures: the relevantly educated and the unskilled, the religious and the increasingly secular.  The theory that if one is born into great wealth, they will remain in this caste system. Those who wish to protect the status quo are delusional.  People who are disabused of the notion that they can succeed when they cannot without more education, more relevant skills by voting for a quack will find no answer.  Those who fight inclusiveness in our society of Twitter, Facebook and an incessant news cycle are tilting at windmills, and not the ones that are generating power. The religious are confronted with supporting a man with no religious values because they perceive Hillary as abortionist lying she-devil. The religious right is seeing their society disintegrate before them, lost to a secular tidal wave.


Polarization is rife.


150 years ago, Lincoln had engaged in a series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas over slavery and the composition of the expanding Union, which had just stolen mucho land from the Mexicans (who else?). This debate was settled by an enormous bloodletting and 700,000 dead, mangled and maimed. No other war in our history was so costly in blood and treasure. No other war cast brother against brother, family against family.  Lincoln, in his speech at Cooper Union, before his election, had emphasized that the nation could not permanently endure half slave and half free. Southerners knew where he stood. The Lincoln-Douglas debates settled that ending in civil war.


History repeats itself. Now our culture war roils between the rich and the increasingly disappearing middle class. Between the coasts and the heartland. Between the educated and the not. Between a new mélange of white, colored, brown, and yellow. Between angry white religious fundamentalists and a country which virtually overnight embraced gay marriage and LGBT rights.  Things are happening very fast, perhaps too much so. Cultures need time to adjust.


The middle class is the lifeblood of America. The class that built the great factories that produced 303,000 airplanes between 1939 and 1945 a to win the war. The class that once enjoyed a car, a home and the implied promise of the benefit of hard work paying off with the thought that its children would have a better life if it worked hard and obeyed the rules seems a distant cry, a despairing denouement to the American dream. Is this class inevitably succumbing to the existentially threatening global forces of cheap labor, robotic manufacturing and technology? Some think not, that people can be retrained to do more skilled work; some think that we can restore our economy to where it was 50 years ago, or at least tell people it can to get elected. Others think that we can resolve the deep seated education deficit of children who cannot read, cannot do math, and certainly cannot do computer coding. Poor people watch television and think that the life on reality tv will be theirs for the taking.


Trump says that coal miners are going to get their jobs back.  They will not.  Trump says that increased tariffs on imported goods will create new jobs in America. Respected economists think otherwise. They think that Trump's plans will throw our nation into a new recession, making goods more expensive to buy and making it harder for the poor to survive. Trump's prevarications and salesmanship, reminiscent of PT Barnum, appeals to a large segment of American voters. He stands outside his carnival tent beckoning people to come in with a disingenuous siren call. His character is well demonstrated by his behavior.


On the other hand, sometimes character is not the sine qua non of a politician. Many of such individuals who have succeeded for a little while, but then have fallen victim to their own hubris.  Some of them have been Presidents of the United States. Richard Nixon, for example. Nixon perverted the constitution, created an enemies list, broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, covered it all up and lied about it. He ultimately fell because of his own paranoia.  He secretly taped oval office conversations and they incriminated him.  Lyndon Johnson did as well. But Nixon opened the door to China and Johnson passed monumental civil rights legislation, Medicare and transformed the lives of millions of Americans.  Lyndon was crass also, he did not have the patrician elegance of FDR or Jack Kennedy, but he sure knew how to work with congress.


Throughout the 1930s, during the great depression, in the years leading up to World War II, America firsters fought against immigrants and other perceived threats from abroad. People lined up at soup kitchens, pitched tents on the Mall in Washington, and General MacArthur brought in troops to evict them.  These were far from pleasant times.  Trump claims that our country has never been in worse shape. Coal miners will get their jobs back and a wall will keep rapist Mexicans away from our women, believe me. The nation is not in as terrible shape as he says. We have been through much worse.  Could the Republic survive a Trump Presidency? Probably.  But we could also survive bubonic plague. Why bother?


Our history has played host to other demagogues--Huey Long, Father Coughlin, George Wallace, among others. who preyed on fears and the psychology of victimhood.  They were going to cure everything and no one else could. Wallace claimed that the south would never desegregate. Passions inflamed by these predators harmed our country by invoking a primitive tribalism that should have been rejected long ago, but has now been reawakened by Donald Trump. He even appeals to evangelicals, who are in a real dilemma.  Vote for the evil abortion supporting Hillary, or Donald Trump despite his three wives, misogyny and his own serial infidelity. He has sent out his surrogates. Chris Christie, the GW bridge facilitator, Newt Gingrich, married thrice, and who informed one of his wives, suffering from cancer that he was leaving her while she was in her hospital bed. And let's not forget Rudy Gulliani, who called a press conference to inform the public that he was getting divorced without even telling his wife, Donna Hanover.  These surrogates now threaten to expose Hillary to the slings and arrows of Bill's unfaithfulness.  Good luck with that strategy.


The first Presidential debate matched an experienced, polished politician against an unprepared Bulgarian. Surprisingly, Americans, judging from the polls, are not dramatically changing as a result of Hillary Clinton's superior performance.  People are prognosticating that Trump will be better prepared for the next debate.  According to Tony Schwartz who ghostwrote "The Art of the Deal," Trump has an attention span of 30 seconds, so his next performance, if that be true, will be no better than the last. Will people still be fooled by his bombast? Will the American voter overlook Hillary's perceived untruthfulness and secrecy be convinced that she is the lesser of two evils? Or will they understand that her length of time in the public eye lends itself to exaggeration of her flaws. Because no one inhabits that space of perfection, (except Donald).


How can we elect a man who wants to "renegotiate the national debt," (as though it were a shopping mall) have the Mexicans pay for his wall, encourage nuclear proliferation, cozy up to Vladimir Putin, not release his tax returns, evince secret plans on how he will defeat ISIS, deport 11 million immigrants, start a trade war with China, blow Iranian ships out of the water, call our military a "disaster," punish women who want an abortion, disband a health care program that now has 30 million signed up, call women pigs and slobs, fat-shame a former Miss Universe contestant, have a history of discriminating against African Americans and other minorities, know nothing about economic policy or foreign policy, scrapping 70 year old NATO alliances that has kept European peace under an American umbrella if they do not pay more to us, talk about winning as a function of his own ego, stiff his workers and go through serial bankruptcies, and says "that is business," complain about roads and infrastructure, but pay no taxes? "That makes me smart," he says. Other endearing items include bullying, coarseness, and even embarrassing his own political party. Many leading conservatives have abandoned him including George Will, Bill Kristol and Colin Powell.


The question that must be asked is why are his poll numbers so high if he is so clearly unqualified to be President?  Is it because Hillary is perceived as untrustworthy? Is it because we are failing as a nation? Are we in decline? Is it the dumbing down of the electorate? Is it the fact that people are uninformed? Are we suckers for a candidate whose positions are not worth a warm bucket of spit? Is it that the world is transitioning to a different economy? Is it the loss of innocence? What about the disintegration of a respect for intellect? People who run for office are told that they must communicate on a 5th grade level to reach the electorate. Donald does that very well. Why do people fear elites? Elites founded our nation. Why is our discourse sunk so low? 


Most importantly, what are the reasons that gave rise to such an unqualified candidate? We need to learn the truth.


Disconcertion over these issues is not easy to overcome because it is a reflection of where we are as a society. Are we less racist? Are we more tolerant? Have we lost all sense of reason? Or is it that the public is incurably stupid? 

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GOP Hypocrisy at its Highest

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
So the Supremes, appointed by Republicans, Bush I, Bush II, and three justices appointed by the Donald, who lost the popular vote by 3 million voters and who probably will soon be indicted in Georgia for election fraud, and maybe Federally for a failed coup d’état, have decided that 50 years of precedent be damned, that there is no constitutional right for a woman to make her own reproductive choices. Never mind an entire generation of women who have grown up under Roe. So let’s socially engineer by judicial fiat, what has been law for generations.N Let’s face the facts. The “justices” make up their own minds, and then build a constitutional rationalization to support their position from an infinite variety of decisions throughout the centuries of common law. And by the way, Bush II, like Trump, was also a minority president, except in the anti- democratic electoral college, designed originally to allow slave states to remain so. Our Constitution also ensured that woman and black people could not vote. So all you originalists and textualists can go back to where we were before Roe v. Wade, to that wonderful mid 20th century where segregation ruled, or the early 19th century where slavery ruled. Why not overrule Brown v. Board of Education to keep America white and segregated Justice Alito, that righteous avatar of Catholic abortion dogma rests at one of the pinnacles of governmental power, believes that American women should be the victim of state gerrymandered legislatures, representing a minority of the American polity. When Thomas Jefferson said famously, “keep the preachers away from government,” he surely should have included Alito. Let’s not forget the notion that the court is or should be not politicized. That train left the station in the early 20th century. When FDR’s National Recovery Act was shut down by the conservative Court, a court packing threat from the Democrats in congress caused the conservative majority to back off from shooting down the progressive programs that were to help the nation out of the great depression. The problem is now that there are not enough votes in the Senate to do any such thing because of successful Republican moves to suppress the vote; instead packing the court with ideologues, the most notable of whom is the handmaiden herself—Amy Coney Barrett, whom the Donald picked to fill the seat of a progressive giant, RBG. Never mind the hypocrisy of dissing Obama’s selection of Merrick Garland, not even given a hearing thanks to Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants, including Chuck Grassley, who should be in a nursing home feeding on double doses of Prevagen. Mitch at the helm has seen to our current “Justices”, helped by disinformation emanating from Rupert Murdoch’s FOX news, a money-grubbing Australian oligarch, no better than the Russian ones. Mitch’s net worth has increased ten-fold since he was elected and not on his Senate salary for sure, his wife benefiting from Chinese largesse to and from her uber wealthy family. Oh, and don’t forget Clarence Thomas, a black man who hates his own people, abetted by his wife, Ginny, encouraging the rioters to storm the capitol, sending emails to insurrectionists and GOP party leaders to stop the certification of the vote by the Senate. Thomas is all bent out of shape because of the dastardly leak, impugning the “integrity” of the court. But he will probably not recuse himself on Trump’s appeal if he is convicted of felonious conspiracy to precipitate an insurrection. Other dramatis personae include the repulsive Ted Cruz and the vituperative Josh Hawley, who voted against the purely ceremonial certification of a lawful election, necessary to enshrine the vote. Also, lets not omit a Bronx cheer for Bret Cavanaugh, the beer swilling frat boy, credibly accused of waving his penis in Christine Blasey Ford’s face at his fraternity house, assaulting her. While admittedly a college escapade, it does not speak well to his character. But no matter, he has absolved himself by joining in this sadistic exercise of Republican misogyny. “I like beer, Senator Klobuchar, don’t you?” Cavanaugh hubristically asked the Senator whose father died of alcoholism. No matter, there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, says the red spider veined nosed icon of the religious right. Now, poor women who live in Texas, Mississippi, or other places of enlightened Republican legislators will have to book an airplane flight or drive to a place where it is legal. But wait! They do not have the money to do so, instead they can carry them to term and drop their newly born at the nearest police station or underfunded Mississippi or Texas childcare facility. Thanks a lot, Amy. Perhaps you want to adopt some more children. This whole sordid episode of “Making America Great Again,” curdles the blood even of the most casual observer.

A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
"A house divided against itself, cannot stand..." - Abraham Lincoln From California to New York, from Oregon to Florida, a frightening division has descended upon our country. From rural to urban America, people wonder whether the nation and its institutions can survive this polarity. There have been times in American history that the nation was divided, never more so than in 1860. Throughout that history, there had been bitter partisanship and division. From the heat of the constitutional convention in steamy 1787 Philadelphia, the founders fought bitterly to a compromise that actually welded two nations into one in a constitution which just ninety years later devolved into a insanely bloody civil war, brother against brother, father against son, family against family. A partisan press with countless newspapers and pamphleteers spewed hatred and vituperative allegations against their countrymen both at the founding and throughout the years leading to the Civil War. Twitter has nothing on them. A rural south, an industrializing north, both parts of which employed slavery, regarded Negroes as inferior, abetted involuntary servitude and a racist ethos, challenging even the most enlightened of our citizenry. During the time between the founding and the Civil War forged compromises kept the Union together. The Missouri compromise (1820) and the Kansas-Nebraska act (1854) failed as attempts to reconcile admission to the Union of new states as either slave or free. The Constitution itself had slavery baked in to its original ratification (Article 4 sec. 2.3) imposing that, " No person held to Service or Labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any Law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due," Later, the Fugitive Slave act of 1850 imposed the duty on citizens and officials of the individual states themselves to return slaves to their owners or face civil fines, and that persons harboring slaves to criminal penalties. Slave catchers roamed the North, collecting bonuses for bringing slaves in; captured slaves were not permitted a jury trial. Sound like a rickety Constitution? Of course, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments cured some of that, but still, it took the bloodiest war in the history of the Republic, 700,000 dead and wounded to get the amendments passed and only in the last few years was the Confederate battle flag removed from South Carolina government buildings. The Civil Rights act of 1964, race riots in Los Angeles, freedom riders, political assassinations of civil rights leaders, and a frothing George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door shouting "segregation forever!" interceded in the 1960s, almost 100 years after the end of the war and ten years after the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education outlawed segregation in the public schools. Well, that same Constitution has given us the Electoral College, a Federalist exercise in balancing the interests of the various states, and which now presents us with a highly undemocratic underrepresentation of large populations, California for instance, with its 40,000,000 people and North Dakota with its 500,000 each carrying two senators. Do the math on fair representation. Yes, I know the House is supposed to do that, but with present gerrymandering, the Democrats are obliged to win by much bigger majorities than Republicans. With Republicans dedicated to disenfranchising voters in Florida, for example, contrary to the will of the voters, Democrats must win votes in far greater numbers than Republicans to achieve a working majority. We now have entrenched minority government. With an unleashed president, sociopathically bound to his vindictive agenda, extreme anxiety pervades the Democratic Party, fearing that this president will be re-elected, boasting that "he alone" is claiming responsibility for the booming economy, acquitted from his misdeeds by a kangaroo court, comprised of quaking GOP senators afraid of tribal banishment to an ignominious gulag of GOP opprobrium, losing their congressional health plans, positions, prestige and power andthe ultimate loss of the dignity which they inartfully tried to preserve. Instead, they have lost it anyway by their surrender to political expediency. We need either a constitutional convention or a huge movement among voters to recognize that the divisions among us are not the result of a political agenda, but instead, tribal cultism. Many of the policy agendas result from identity politics, rural against urban, wealthy against poor, a displaced working class losing out in the battle against inevitable technological displacement, climate change and nuclear proliferation, the greatest threats to the world. A leader who can heal these divisions and create forbearance and a spirit of compromise is what we need more than ever. A president of either party who can understand reality, not phantasmagorical narcissism. It is said that great crises manufacture an FDR, a Winston Churchill, an Abraham Lincoln. Where may he or she be?

Running from Ennui

By Engage Team • February 17, 2023
Passion seems to be bestowed as a blessing on few people but seeking it is a not inconsiderable chore conferred on the many. I am not officially retired, but it seems that way. The clients call less and the work I did as a trial lawyer has become less and less appetizing. Business has diminished, not only because I am seventy-nine years of age, but because I have zero desire to market myself like a snake oil salesman. I leave that particularly odious practice to well-funded and battle stationed Morgan and Morgan and others, whose legions of paralegals, investigators, paid experts and well-staffed soldiers battle with insurance companies, and “fight for you,” its overworked lawyers all the while complaining to their colleagues and family that they hate what they do. Fifty years at the bar, and I do not mean Flanagan’s, is enough, so I leave the task of transferring wealth from one party to another and taking a piece of the action the alleged passion of the many. I do still consult with clients, if I can be of help them. I wonder if I can achieve a modicum of mastery the piano, considering that when I took violin lessons as a youth, the bandleader working at my dad’s upstate New York hotel, a Catskill fiddler by the name of Billy Rogers (nee Rosenberg) who, admittedly, was not a music teacher, told my father, that I was the “dumbest, most tone-deaf child he had ever met.” But then again, he was no Isaac Stern nor even a music teacher. Music teachers do not scream at their beginning ten-year-old students. The sole reason Dad asked him to teach me was because a guest had left a violin in one of his hotel rooms. Before my dad’s discovered violin aspirations for me, I had expressed neither the interest nor the inclination to play the most difficult, annoying instrument, or torturing everyone within hearing distance. “Press the strings until your fingers bleed and you develop callouses,” said Billy. I do not recall what happened to the violin or Billy, although he was aged in 1952. Dad either sold the violin or most likely, gave it away. Another serial disappointment from his son, I guess. After becoming a lawyer, I decided I would learn to play tennis. And I loved it. I was addicted. I became reasonably competent, starting at the age of 35, and playing regularly until I hit 70 and had spine surgery laying me up a few years. I was never the best, but I was pretty good, had a good serve and tried to play again a few years ago, losing to a younger fellow who had been playing just a few years. I had beaten him soundly before. Never fast on my feet, my molasses-like movements said, time to hang up the sneakers. Life is a series of things being taken from you. At 55 I had taken up golf. I think I have a pretty good swing, but athletically, I needed time to learn, ( a nice way to say I am a slow learner) and time is running out. Although that would not stop me, if I had some agreeable companions with whom to play. Many of the friends whose company I enjoyed have died or fallen away. There is nothing worse than spending 18 holes with someone monumentally annoying. “Nice putt,” they said, as my ball sped past the hole. Plus, most golfers do not share my politics and, inevitably, an afternoon of enjoyment turns into a dumpster fire. Most players who are Republicans, cheat. The shoe wedge or miscounting the score is a frequently insufferable habitude of the right-wing selfish, individualist, “let them eat cake” crowd. Now, when my days are not consumed by interminably long doctor’s visits or some new ailment appears, I am seeking something to do with my spare time. Going to the hospital or delivering goodies to the ill and infirm is too depressing, since I already am depressed about most people walking past me as though I did not exist. I have become irrelevant and invisible, both not particularly enviable results of my wrinkles and weathered skin and increasingly whitening hair. A grey ghost. I suppose I should take comfort that a geezer like Joe Biden could be president, gaining inspiration from him. But he seems so delicate, so frail now, that a stiff breeze would blow him over or he might stumble coming down the stairs of Air Force One. It is frightening to behold. Still, Joe beats the alternative--the orange-colored crook who is still peddling the big lie. The country is in the worst crisis since the great depression, and Joe is not FDR.  Which brings me back to the piano. I asked a neighbor who is a music teacher at an exclusive private school, “Is learning the piano at 79 doable?” He replied, “definitely, it will be good for your mind. Always keep two hands on the keyboard and learn musical notation.” I replied that I had purchased a book that said I will be able to play a Bach prelude within six weeks if I practiced 45 minutes per day. Encouraging. I guess I will find out if it can be my new passion.
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