2018 - It's a Wrap

What a wild year it was.  Among other things I got accomplished, I stuck to my goal of posting weekly to my blog.   Some weeks were better than others, but I plan to continue this into 2019 and hope to write more interesting posts, or at least write about pedestrian things in a more interesting way.  I was very pleased with a few of my posts, which were of professional quality and I have attracted a nice little core of regular readers.  My goals are to post weekly, revamp my blog a bit, and not disappoint.  

Anyway, here are my thoughts on the best of 2018, and here's to a Happy 2019 to my readers.

Music

Live

I did have an opportunity to see a fair amount of music this year…and a great deal of variety, from rock to jazz to classical and sacred music, a bit of country and folk, and even a fusion bluegrass and rap group called Gangstagrass.   I opted mostly for smaller venues, although I did take in a few concerts at Ravinia (ZZ Top).   I saw a lot of tribute bands--- Brit Floyd at the Chicago Theater was wonderful and almost indistinguishable from Pink Floyd.   Deacon Blues, a Steely Dan tribute band is quite good and features the talented niece of Koko Taylor in the chorus. Time Traveler, a Moody Blues tribute band was also quite good.   Schola Antiqua, a choral group that sings music of the Reformation is a can’t miss.

But my favorite performance of the year was Eddie “the Chief” Clearwater, who played with Ronnie Baker Brooks at Evanston Space on his birthday in January.   I had a front row seat and Eddie, at 86 could still play.  I was able to snap a photo (featured) which I have titled “Two Boys Having Fun.”  I loved this performance and I loved this photo as it captured these two musicians in a moment of pure joy.  Brooks gushed with praise for Eddie as his mentor and sadly Eddie passed away in June.  I was happy to be able to see one of his last Chicago performances.

New Artist

Greta Van Fleet.   This band caught my attention right away.   There have been some new performers that I have liked (Arctic Monkeys, Cage the Elephant, Florence + the Machine), but none that can deliver classic rock.  Greta Van Fleet is what you would get if Led Zeppelin were reincarnated.  The lead singer sounds astonishingly like Robert Plant and the rhythms, although original are unmistakably Zep influenced.   It is sobering to see a YouTube video of them and see how young they look.   I hope they have staying power for they are fresh faces playing some classic licks.

Books

Fiction

My fiction book of the year is not going to go to a contemporary writer.   Much of the fiction I read this year was good, but didn’t wow me.  The Friend by Sigrid Nunez about a woman who adopts a Great Dane left behind by a friend and former lover that committed suicide won the National Book Award and I liked, but didn’t love it.  Lake Success by Gary Schteyngart.   None of them knocked my over, though (my librarian said I just didn’t read the right ones and shoved 4 more in my book bag).

My best read this year goes instead to My Antonia by Willa Cather.   2018 was the 100^th anniversary of the publication of this novel about Bohemian immigrants adjusting to life on the Great Plains.  It is even more relevant now because of the current political turmoil over our immigration policy and the difficulty people from a distant land have adapting to a new life.  In Cather’s novel, Mr. Shimerda simply cannot adjust and commits suicide.   I loved this novel because of Cather’s talent in describing place as well as character.  I read her novel at the same time I read Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser --- the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, so I was immersed for some time in the harshness of pioneer life on the prairie, especially for women.   I did write an email to the Willa Cather Foundation telling them how delighted I was to discover Cather’s talents a bit late in life and received a nice email back from them. 

Pressed to name a contemporary novel that I liked best, I would go with Gary Schteyngart’s Lake Success. Schteyngart has a knack for creating a little sympathy for otherwise unsympathetic characters.  Lake Success does just that and rolls elements of The Great Gatsby, A Man In Full  and On the Road into a dark, sometimes comic novel about a deeply flawed character whose successful, but fragile life comes unglued.

Nonfiction

Bad Blood by John Carryrou was absolutely my favorite.  Bad Blood is the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, and is more fascinating than the Madoff affair.   Bad Blood is actually two stories wrapped into one.   It is the story of how this driven young woman fooled a host of seasoned investors, board members, and directors.  People like George Shultz, Jim Mattis and senior executives at Walgreens got snookered.  But it is also a story of the tremendous courage and persistence of the Wall Street Journal writer John Carryrou himself, who uncovered the fraud and risked his career to pursue the story.

Film and Television

The paucity of quality film coming out of Hollywood this year left me with few recommendations.   I liked A Quiet Place, although it received some criticism.   I also kind of liked The Death of Stalin, although  this comedic take on the Stalin terrors was a bit weird and quirky.  My favorite film of the year was Leave No Trace, which I reviewed last summer. (http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2018/07/best-summer-film-leave-no-trace.html).

I have even less authority to recommend television programs, but I do like The Last Alaskans.   It is a reality show that portrays the handful of people that were grandfathered into living in an Alaskan wilderness area.   They show depicts their day-to-day lives and it is probably the last group of individuals living as pioneers depicted by Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  There is something about this show that brings me peace.

Best Lecture

I was fortunate enough to attend a number of very high quality lectures and presentations this year of fascinating people in a variety of fields, and had the opportunity to have lunches with economist Deirdre McCloskey and historian and Middle East expert Daniel Pipes.   In addition, I heard interesting lectures by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, Frederick Douglass descendant Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., New York Times religion columnist Ross Douthat on the state of religion in America, economist Martin Feldstein, author Stuart Dybeck, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on the Great Recession and back to back lectures on free expression by Jason DeSanto of Northwestern and Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago.

But the most interesting lecture was by Jordan Peterson.  As I  wrote in my blog post of May 10,   Jordan Peterson (http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2018/05/jordan-peterson.html) may be the most influential public intellectual since William F. Buckley and he is focused more on social rather than political or economic issues.  Peterson is also part of the Intellectual Dark Web, a group of independent thinkers and writers such as Eric Weinstein, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Camille Paglia (see NYT article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html).  These are thinkers that abhor the notion of an intellectual safe space.

The Silenced Voices

Many publications have their tributes to those that have passed during the year, and I would like to call out two voices that I will miss the most—Aretha Franklin and Keith Jackson.  Aretha, of course, was the Queen of Soul.  Keith Jackson was the Voice of College Football.  Both were sui generis.   Who could forget Aretha’s performance of Think in the film The Blues Brothers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vet6AHmq3_s) and who will forget Keith Jackson’s signature “Whoa Nellie!” after a long touchdown run.  I was fortunate enough to attend Aretha’s final Chicago performance at Ravinia at the end of the summer of ’16.   It was a great sight to see a number of fathers dancing to Respect with their little daughters on the lawn—a sight I won’t ever forget.   I will miss these two great voices.

On Second Thought

Last week, I wrote a strong rebuke of Trump’s policy in the Middle East.  A sudden withdrawal of troops in Syria led to the abrupt resignation of General Mattis and drew harsh criticism from both the left and the right.  Moreover, the decision lent credence to the narrative that he is an impulsive, out-of-control president that is unfit for the office.   Mattis was tremendously popular and many conservatives were lined up against Trump on this one.

But slow down a minute.  Is his decision to vacate Syria and Afghanistan a monumental strategic blunder?  I’m not sure it’s as clear cut as it appears.

First of all, in Syria, we are putting troops in the crosshairs of Russian and Turkish forces.  There is risk that U.S. troops would come into contact with either Russian or Turkish forces.  Once Obama invited the Russians in, it was going to be damn near impossible to get them to leave.   As in Afghanistan, there is also a risk of mission creep and that our troops would be there indefinitely.  While I am sensitive to the plight of the Kurds, and do not take that aspect of it lightly, the purpose of our troop deployment was never to protect the Kurds.

It is timely that I just finished John Mersheimer’s book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.  Mersheimer’s central thesis is that “American policymakers would be wise to abandon liberal hegemony and pursue a more restrained foreign policy based on realism and a proper understanding of how nationalism constrains great powers.”  Further, he asserts, “Under Presidents Bush and Barack Obama, Washington has played a key role in sowing death and destruction across the Middle East, and there is little evidence the mayhem will end anytime soon.”  The Iran-Iraq War should have been a lesson for us.  Those two countries were two busy beating the heck out of each other to be too bothersome to anyone else.   Especially now that we are not dependent on the Middle East for energy, minimizing our involvement might be the best option.   We have spent trillions and thousands of lives for little benefit.  Twenty eight years later, we must conclude that our successful intervention to eject Iraq from Kuwait was an exception rather than the rule and George H.W. Bush was correct to leave as soon as that was accomplished (despite the moral tug of leaving the Kurds at the mercy of Hussein).

Assad is not going to go.  Obama set that as a policy goal, but if there is one thing we should have learned from our experience in the second war in Iraq and the Libya intervention, that what follows may be much worse.  Assad, like his father, and like Hussein, is ruthless and bloodthirsty enough to deal with the Islamists and terrorists.  With the Arab world’s posture toward Israel somewhat fractionated, Assad might be the least bad option.  Other than Israel, there are no good guys or dependable allies in the Middle East.

Trump campaigned on ending these wars, as did Obama.  Not only did Obama not end Middle Eastern wars, he promptly repeated Bush’s mistake in Iraq in Libya (albeit at a lower cost).  Obama’s America was at war during the entire stretch of his two term presidency and Americans are weary of it, especially when the goals are not clear and there is no end in sight.

Finally, as to Mattis, as much as I admire and respect him, generals do not make policy.   And Mattis himself has had mistakes in judgment.  As I noted in my prior post, he supported Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.  Theranos is liquidating and Holmes may go to prison.  He warned that moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would inflame the Arab world, and that has been a big nothingburger.  We would do well to remember another popular and revered general--- George S. Patton.  At the end of WWII, Patton wanted to keep our forces in Europe,  take on the Russians and drive them out of Eastern Europe, rationalizing that we would have to fight them sooner or later and that he believed that our goal was to make ALL of Europe free.  That goal had some appeal and we ended up with a 45 year period of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.  But a military confrontation with the Russians would likely have cost millions of lives and we were  war weary.  Not following Patton on policy may have been the least bad option.

We should likewise keep in mind that we do not have good options available to us in the Middle East or Afghanistan.  Trump’s position may not be entirely irrational at all.

Wrong Turn

I have been generally on board with much of Trump in matters of foreign policy.  I didn’t mind him calling out European leaders for not living up to their commitment on defense spending (just as they haven’t lived up to their Paris Accord commitments).  I was not adverse to pulling out of JPCOA—the idea of giving Iranians cash (to finance terror) and having sites off limits to inspectors was repulsive.  Inflicting some pain on the Chinese was appropriate (I will have more on that in a later post).  After 8 years of treating Israel like dirt, I was pleased to see Trump recognize Jerusalem as its capital.  His speech in Saudi Arabia on his vision for the Middle East and his speech in Poland were both visionary and magnificent.  While North Korea has not disarmed, I thought his efforts were worthwhile.  He was softer on Russia than I would like, but I see focusing on China as a more important long term strategic problem.

But events this week have caused me to re-examine my views.  The abrupt announcement that we are pulling forces out of Syria and Afghanistan along with General Mattis’s resignation are serious blunders in judgment—so serious that my entire view of Trump has been tainted.

My view of Trump has been as a Chief Restructuring Officer.  In business, when a company is failing, a chief restructuring officer (CRO) is sometimes appointed.  The job of the CRO is to shake things up, sometimes rather dramatically.  He or she is necessarily a transitory figure.  CRO’s are not good at managing things in a steady, happy state.  They either manage chaos or intentionally create it to reset the gameboard.  And everyone hates the CRO.  They are often brash and obnoxious, blunt and discourteous, because the company simply no longer has the luxury of business as usual.

I initially thought that my analogy to a CRO fit pretty well.

But now I see I may have been mistaken.

A better analogy might be that sexy, somewhat crazy boyfriend/girlfriend you dated just after college and before you got married (hopefully, you didn’t marry him or her).  He or she was fun for awhile, tremendously fun and exciting because their id overrode their superego a lot.   When you are 24, that’s fun for a bit, until about the 5^th time they go off and do something insane and/or betray you.   Then you decide you just can’t put up with it anymore.

Now, there is a case to be made for curtailing U.S. military involvement generally.  John Mersheimer makes a cogent case for a more realistic foreign policy in his recent book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.  In it, Mersheimer argues that we have been engaged militarily more or less constantly since the end of the Cold War with little to show for it.  Committing troops is especially counterproductive when we engage in nation building, which expensive in blood and treasure and almost never works.  He argues for a much more constrained foreign policy.  This point of view is adhered to by many libertarians, including Rand Paul, Deirdre McCloskey, and John Stossel.  That was the position that Obama actually campaigned on, yet failed to execute.  For all his carping about Bush in Iraq, he did exactly the same thing in Libya – regime change without adequate follow through (albeit at a lower cost).   And it was never made clear what the goals were in Afghanistan or Syria.  In Syria, U.S. troops were originally dispatched to liberate Raqqa from the Islamic State, and gradually troop strength increased to 4.000 and controlled about a third of the country.   There was increasing risk of engagement with Russian or Turkish troops, which could have dire consequences.

But Trump never made a strong case for withdrawal, at least not strong enough to convince General Mattis and others.  Of course, it is possible that the generals are wrong.  It certainly was the case in Vietnam, and General Mattis, while well respected, does not have perfect judgment.  He backed Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes and even served on Theranos’s board of directors.

But the weight of things weighs strongly against withdrawal in Syria.  If you have Jim Mattis, Victor Davis Hanson, Jack Keane and Daniel Pipes pushing back at you and Vladimir Putin cheering you on, you are probably doing it wrong.  As every Catholic knows, a practice of premature withdrawal does not always have the consequences that you expect.

As we learned to our chagrin in Afghanistan, Islamists don’t go away.  They disappear into the woodwork until the coast is clear and then they re-emerge.   Our intelligence agencies are telling us the same thing will happen in Syria.

Another compelling reason for maintaining some force in Syria is to support and protect the Kurds.  They have fought side by side with us against ISIS, and I understand U.S. forces are demoralized and sorrowful over leaving their allies in the lurch.  They are tough, brave and resourceful fighters and we have repeatedly turned our backs on them, beginning with the aftermath of the first Gulf War.  Abandoning them again to be cut up by Erdogan is immoral and sends a signal to any nation or group about our commitment to our allies.

The argument of Mersheimer and the libertarians has some appeal and some force to it.  The flaw in their argument is that technology coupled with our leaky borders means that nonstate actors and less powerful states can reach and hurt us.  9/11 proved that a handful of guys with limited technology can inflict tremendous casualties and North Korea has demonstrated ability to potentially kill millions of Americans.  Denying them territory and constantly harassing them may be a better path than leaving them to plan and operate operate unmolested.  As Ben Crenshaw stated (or restated George W. Bush), “We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

In the ensuing Twitter explosion, the most common comment about Mattis is that “he made us feel safe.”  Given Trump’s lack of experience in government and foreign affairs, he very much needs to rely on the steady voices of experienced and reliable professionals.   Losing Mattis is a tremendous blow to an administration that badly needs credibility.   If you have lost Jim Mattis, you have probably lost me.

SJWs Are Winning

Whatever your position in the political divide, one thing is clear, the Social Justice Warriors are taking the fight to conservatives and are winning hands down.   The SJW’s have successfully instituted two sets of standards for what is acceptable and what is not, and who will be forgiven and who will not.

The usual “war on Christmas” has intensified and has been attacked by the #metoo crowd, the third wave feminists and the trans and gender neutrality mob.  Several radio stations have banned “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” complaining that the song connotes date rape.   Never mind that that the woman suggests consent “maybe just a half a drink more” and the original Dean Martin song is sung in harmony.  Seduction, persuasion and romance have no place in our new world.  Likewise, the SJW’s attacked Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for not being inclusive enough.  Never mind that in the end, Rudolph overcomes and becomes part of the gang.  Finally, as I write this, Twitter is ablaze with suggestions that Santa Claus should be gender neutral.  Never mind that there actually is a Mrs. Claus.   Yes, this all sounds quite silly, but the fact that our traditions and myths are under attack means that Judeo-Christian traditions have to be constantly defended. 

On top of the assault on Christmas songs and traditions,  Dr. Seuss was criticized as racist as was Peanuts.   Laura Ingalls Wilder was demoted and had her name stripped from the children’s book award medal for her depiction of Native Americans.   Writer Lionel Shriver was dumped from the panel that selected the best short stories because she objected to the emphasis on “diversity” over literary talent and otherwise pushed back against the SJW’s.  Apparently only devotees of Ta-Nehisi Coates are welcome in literary circles these days.

The SJW’s successfully shamed astronaut Scott Kelly into apologizing because he quoted Winston Churchill in a speech.   Referring to the single man who is credited with saving Western Civilization from the Nazi juggernaut, Kelly incredibly tweeted, “Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill.  I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support.”   Kelly really doesn’t get it.  To the SJW’s, apologizing is red meat.  And further, the SJW’s believe that Western Civilization is the root of the problem, so should not have been saved. 

In the gender wars, the trans and gender-neutral movement made great strides.  In addition to the attempted neutering of Santa Clause, one of the lead competitors in the Miss Universe pageant is a trans-woman, Victoria’s Secret is under attack because it has not yet featured a trans model, and girls’ womens’ sports are in complete disarray because transgendered individuals are now allowed to compete and are cleaning up, thereby reversing all of the gains of Title IX that have accrued to girls and women.  But not genuflecting to 0.06% of the population will get you labelled as a bigot, so girls best go back to playing with Barbies. 

The Boy Scouts caved into pressure and began to admit girls and permitted girls to achieve Eagle Scout designation.   The move drew a lawsuit from the Girl Scouts and now it seems that the Boy Scouts will soon file for bankruptcy (diluting your brand + sex abuse claims will do that).  One of the last bastions of formation for young men will likely be gone. 

And to ensure compliance with the SJW rules, you may be punished severely for things you posted as a teen.  Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray was publicly shamed for a “homophobic” tweet he posted when he was 14.   On what should have been the proudest day of his life, Murray was busy defending himself against charges of bigotry.

Perhaps what is most puzzling to me is how a swath of corporate America has jumped on board.  Several banks denied gun sellers’ access to payment platforms.  Dick’s stopped selling “assault” type rifles and bumped the minimum age to buy a gun to 21.   While government can’t infringe on the 2^nd Amendment, parts of corporate America has decided that they will.  The market responded and Dick’s sales declined, forcing a closure of some 35 stores.   Ben & Jerry’s introduced a Pecan Resistance ice cream, featuring none other than anti-Semite Linda Sarsour in their introduction photo.  Why would a company knowingly affiliate its brand with a hate monger too far left for the Women’s March?  Recall that last year, Nike introduced its “sport hijab” with much virtue signaling.  I would like to know exactly how many Nike has sold and whether that product line has made a profit.

Our social norms are changing much faster than we realize, and the SJW’s have the upper hand.

Goodbye to an Era

This week, we said goodbye to George H.W. Bush.  Unlike John McCain’s funeral, which was a veritable Trump bashing conference, Bush’s memorial was about Bush.  George W. and James Baker delivered appropriate and emotional eulogies.  Perhaps the most poignant moment came when 95 year old fellow war hero Bob Dole had an assistant help the crippled Dole to his feet so he could salute the former president.

It was quite an emotional few days and I think that in addition to mourning Bush, the nation mourned the end of an era.  Bush presided over “a new world order” that lasted almost 30 years. 

 He oversaw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union and managed it with real aplomb.  With James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, there was no high fiving as the former Eastern Bloc broke away from Moscow.  He built a coalition to forcibly eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in a spectacular show of U.S. led force that mercifully had less than 200 casualties.   Bush wisely broke off hostilities after the mission of ejecting Iraq from Kuwait was accomplished (I admit I was wrong and Bush was right as I criticized Bush for not going to Baghdad and getting rid of Hussein).  Bush’s popularity soared at the end of that war and I remember Bob Dole chirping, “Bush has a 90% approval rating and the other 10% don’t know who the president is.”   In a few short months, America had seen redemption after Vietnam.  But alas, after the war, the economy weakened, Bush’s popularity evaporated quickly and he was voted out of office.  

But Bush took the loss as the individual he was, and left Bill Clinton a magnanimous note and sunk into the background as American ex-presidents are supposed to do.  Bush passed off to Clinton a growing economy that was ushered in by Bush, along with a military that the world was in awe of, and a Cold War that had been brought to a successful conclusion.

Bush was an understated, gentle man, an avuncular, yet firm person that had a difficult job—following the giant of a beloved and enormously popular president—Ronald Reagan.  As someone once said, “I never want to follow a legend.  I want to follow the guy that follows the legend.”  Yet Bush did it quite well and in his own style.

It is fitting that the Bush tributes ended just as the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack began.  Bush was part of that Greatest Generation.  With all our present turmoil and divisions, one wonders if the American people could today do what they were asked to do in 1941-45.

The passing of George H.W. Bush also invites the contrast with our current president.  Although attacked by the media, Bush was reserved in his response.   His 73 year marriage contrasts with Clinton’s escapades with Monica and Trump’s multiple marriages and his Stormy troubles.  A lookback at Bush’s character—selfless service in WWII, a lifetime of public service, an enduring marriage begs the question of whether we will ever see a leader like him again or whether our politics have gotten so divisive and nasty that we are doomed to living in a Maury Povich era, where only the nasty sluggers survive.

Yet another question of George H.W. Bush’s legacy leaves some unanswered questions.  John Mersheimer’s new book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities argues for a more restrained U.S. foreign policy, that U.S. ambitions to “democratize” the globe have dragged us into near constant wars since the end of the Cold War.  Did Bush’s intervention to liberate Kuwait and the lightening victory lure us into more than we could do?  What if Bush had simply fortified the Saudi oil fields and considered Saddam’s adventure to be a regional matter? Did Bush kick off a series of unwinnable conflicts?   Donald Trump definitely has more isolationist instincts.   We know that his moral fiber does not measure up to Bush’s, but I am going to be a bit contrarian and assert that we will see if Trump’s foreign policy approach is more beneficial to Americans in the long run.

Why I Worry, Pt. 2

I have heard a number of speakers of national import live and in person—Condi Rice, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Austan Goolsbee, writers Walter Isaacson and Gordon Wood and several Nobel Prize winners.  A few months removed from their remarks and I rarely was able to recall much of anything that was said. Their remarks are often as bland as dry toast, cliché filled, and unremarkable (although Goolsbee can be witty).

But one surprisingly did.   I never cared much for former Congressman Dick Gephardt while he was in office, but his speaking engagement a number of years ago was surprisingly good.   Among the points he made, one stuck with me.  He said that it was his view that what separated America from most of the rest of the world was that the losers accepted the results of elections.  They may not like it, but they accept the outcome.  He went through example after example of other countries where that is not the case.  But it was always the case here, even in the most bitterly contested election.

Sadly, that is no longer the case here.  Within hours of Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016, the Democrats were accusing Trump of colluding with the Russians, cheating Hillary out of her pre-ordained coronation.  Hillary had barely conceded when cries for impeachment went out.  And two years on, we have an independent investigator still trying to come up with enough evidence to remove Trump from office.  Alternatively, the Democrats were complaining that the electoral college was outmoded and needed to be done away with (although no serious effort has been under way to change that).  The upshot is that nearly half the country still has not accepted the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency.

Likewise, several of the midterm elections in the South were challenged.   Stacey Abramson, in her failed bid for Georgia governor refused to concede and then filed suit.   Radical socialist Andrew Gillum likewise was reluctant to let go, even after the Broward County election commissioner Brenda Snipes magically “found” ballots and Hillary Clinton’s legal team was dispatched to sway the election.

These are very troubling developments for our republic, especially the attempted overturning of the 2016 presidential election by Robert Mueller.   Accepting the results, vowing to run a better campaign next time has been replaced by challenge the legitimacy, change the rules and do more recounts until you get the result you want. 

The nonacceptance of the results of elections is troubling enough, but it has been coupled with the demonization of the other side, along with violent expressions and images.   And the demonization is not limited simply to the other candidate, but to all that voted for him or her.  It began with Barack Obama’s comment about people who “bitterly cling to their guns and religion,” and continued with Hillary Clinton’s disparaging “basket of deplorables.”   The demonization of politicians is nothing new, but what is new is the demonization of entire groups of people.  Just last week, Barack Obama said that  America doesn’t embrace his energy policies because “we are still confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues.  You know, we are fraught with stuff.”  The New York Times hired Sarah Jeong as a senior editor despite her long and documented antipathy toward white men documented in her Twitter posts.

What is most worrisome is the acceptance by our society of violent words and images.  That comes mostly from the entertainment crowd but is starting to be used by politicians as well.  From Kathy Griffin holding up the bloodied head of Donald Trump to Peter Fonda wishing that Baron Trump would be put in a cage with pedophiles to Bette Midler’s recent tweet that she hoped the Mueller team would hang ‘em high,  violent words and imagery have become commonplace in the entertainment world.  But it is going further.  Maxine Waters who openly incited people to chase down and harass anyone employed by the Trump administration and in Illinois, Democratic representative Stephanie Kifowit said she wanted to pump a lethal broth of Legionella into the home of a political opponent.  Democratic representative Eric Stalwell suggested nuking gun advocates.  So now we have U.S. politicians talking of using WMD’s against their own countrymen that disagree with them.  Even if hyperbolic, this is a troubling development.

Our divisions are deep and it is difficult to discern whether they are so deep that “this time is different.”  The failure to accept election outcomes, the demonization not only of political opponents but of entire groups of people and the lack of inhibition about using violent words and imagery suggest that it is a legitimate thing to worry about.

Why I Worry

In May of 2017, after the bombing of the concert in Manchester, UK, where teen girls were killed and maimed by an Islamic terrorist, I wrote a post Our Children (https://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2017/05/our-children.html).  That post was my most read post on my blog.  In it, I asserted that a civilization that lacks the will to protect and nurture its children is in deep trouble.

My fears have not been allayed, and rather have gotten much worse.  The very institutions that have been set up to protect children have either been hijacked to exploit them, or have enabled their exploitation.  

First, in a stunning decision, a Detroit judge ruled that a federal law under which Muslim doctors were performing female genital mutilations were prosecuted was unconstitutional, stating “as laudable as the prohibition of a particular type of abuse of girls may be, it does not further the goal of protecting children on a nondiscriminatory basis.”  Of course, the defense attorneys in that case argued their position on 1^st amendment grounds --- freedom of religion.  In Judge Friedman’s eyes, not discriminating against a barbaric religious practice trumps the protection of these girls.  The judge relied on the commerce clause to throw out the charges, reasoning that their practice did not involve interstate commerce that could be regulated by the federal government.  But some of the girls were brought in from Minnesota, and if growing wheat on your own land that you sell in state (Wicker v. Filburn) is interstate commerce, how can your business of disfiguring girls from another state not be?  This decision is yet another instance of our legal system bending over backwards to accommodate this most barbaric and medieval procedure practiced in some corners of Islam.  Ironically, the ACLU teamed up with Maine Democrats to defeat a measure which would have made female genital mutilation illegal in Maine, arguing that it was already covered by federal law.  So much for that.  This most misogynist practice must be driven from our land, utterly, entirely and without question and citizens who engage in its practice need to be jailed and noncitizens deported. 

Also this week, former Michigan State president Lou Anna Simon was charged with 2 felonies and 2 misdemeanors for lying to investigators in the Larry Nassar abuse case.  It will be recalled that Nasser sexually abused dozens of young female athletes at MSU while serving as a team physician.  Last May, the university reached a $500 million settlement with the 332 victims (the Wall Street Journal reported that a bankruptcy filing was considered to deal with the claims).  Simon knew.  Other people working in the athletic department knew (including a gymnastics coach that was also charged.  Many of those are still working at MSU. 

The primary purpose of a university is to educate and shape young people so they can flourish in adult life.   The entire structure at MSU failed to protect these young female athletes from this monster, who will now carry the scars of Nassar’s abuse for the rest of their lives.   Most infuriating about this whole sick episode in higher education is that it was a female leader of an institution that enabled the exploitation of young women.

Finally, the Vatican is at it again.  Months after Cardinal McCarrick resigned amidst the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and the grand jury report concerning the Pittsburgh Archdiocese was released, the Vatican blocked an effort by U.S. bishops to put forward a plan to curb abuse, ordering them to wait.  Wait for what, exactly?  A better plan by a Vatican that honored Cardinal Law?

Worse, in Chicago, Cardinal Cupich downplayed the furor by arrogantly dismissing it, “We have a bigger agenda than to be distracted by all of this.”   Again, what bigger agenda?  What could possibly be more important and urgent than protecting our children?

I do not wish to take on the role of Chicken Little, but you can see that our societal structures whose MOST IMPORTANT PURPOSE is to protect young people are failing them miserably, and indeed have become vehicles through which they are being exploited and abused.

If this corruption is not addressed, it does not bode well for us.

Home and Abroad

I had an interesting couple of days back to back last week as I attended small gatherings to hear former Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee and Middle East scholar Dr. Daniel Pipes speak.

I first came across Daniel Pipes as an undergraduate at The University of Chicago.  Pipes taught World History with the great William H. McNeill (who recently passed away) and is the son of Richard Pipes (also recently deceased), Soviet expert and former Reagan advisor.  Daniel Pipes gained notoriety after 9/11 as he had been sounding the alarm bell over radical Islam long before.  Indeed, the person that introduced Pipes opined, “If the world had listened to Dr. Pipes, there may not have been a 9/11.”

Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum, an “activist” think tank, devoted largely to Middle East politics and social developments and Islamism.  Soft spoken, understated, and very academic, Pipes contrasts sharply with Goolsbee and probably gets less media attention as a result.  His quiet voice forces one to listen carefully and in our case, was even sometimes a little hard to hear over the clatter of the servers serving lunch.  

Here is a brief summary of Dr. Pipes’s insights:

• ·        The furor over the murder of journalist Khashoggi will die down and will have minimal effect on U.S. Saudi relations.  Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian regime and MBS is instituting reforms that will take time to implement.
• ·        Turkey is lost.   Pipes called it Iran 2.0 and said that he can travel to Iran without fear but if he traveled to Turkey, he would be immediately arrested.   Erdogan made some good decisions over the first 7 years of his tenure but has made mistake after mistake over the last 7.  He has completely shut down all freedom of speech in that country and schools have now become Islamist.
• ·       “No one is paying attention, but South Korea is falling apart, but that is a topic for another day.” Pipes dropped that bomb but did not elaborate.
• ·     While they need to improve, the former Eastern Bloc countries are “generally moving in the right direction.”  While the MSM has criticized those governments as anti-democratic and far right, Pipes refers to them as “civilizationist,” protecting their sovereignty and culture.
• ·       As to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Pipes asserts that the Islamic world is fractured in their approach to Israel.  As to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, he believes Israel should adopt a “Israel wins, they lose” approach.  Wars end when one side stops the fighting, and not before.  He blames the Israeli security establishment for the current state of affairs as they are not willing to take the aggressive steps needed to end the conflict and win.  “They supply their enemies with food, electricity and fuel [during the fighting].  Who does that for an enemy?”
• ·        Pipes also noted that the left in America has become pro-Palestine while the right is pro-Israel.  This is causing problems among American Jews since they vote 80% Democratic.  Indeed the new Muslim congresswoman, celebrated by the MSM waived a Palestinian flag at her victory party and announced that she was representing the Palestinians.
• ·      The Middle East Forum has been attempting to bring Tommy Robinson to the U.S. to speak, and assisted in gaining his release from prison.  Robinson, it will be recalled, was jailed for speaking out in front of a British courtroom regarding the Muslim “grooming gang” members that were on trial.

As if on cue, just a couple of days later, the MSM criticized the Polish Independence Day parade as being too right wing and too nationalist and rockets began raining down on Israel from Gaza.

Goolsbee is almost a mirror image of Pipes, less scholarly, more flamboyant, and funny ----his timing is perfect.  Goolsbee was Obama’s economic advisor and is a regular on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox.  He is a perfect foil for Hannity and Hannity even lets him talk from time to time.

Goolbee is no fan of Trump’s but admitted that his forecast for growth was off.  He believes the growth spurt is temporary as the stimulative effect of the business tax cut and deficits run their course.

On politics, he believes that it is possible that Trump and the new Democratic House can work together to get an infrastructure bill done, but if the Democrats start to lawyer up and commence lawsuits and subpoenas, nothing will get done for two years.  The House also has the power to drag Trump’s agency heads in for endless hearings.

Perhaps Goolbee’s most interesting insights related to the Federal Reserve, the labor market and local conditions.  He said that the unwinding of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet in addition to the rate increases will, at some point, become too much for the economy to handle.  Most recessions are caused by overly aggressive Federal Reserve rate increases and that the Fed unwinding adds 35 to 50 basis points to the already increasing rates.

As to the labor market, Goolsbee believes that the unemployment rate is outmoded and artificially low.  During the recession, record numbers of people simply exited the labor market and went on disability.  With a 3.7% unemployment rate, we should have started to see wage increases but we haven’t yet.  He posits that it is because workers are still “coming off the bench” back into the labor market.

Finally, on the local level, Goolsbee said that despite our debt, he did not believe that the U.S. has become Greece.   However, he said that “while the U.S. is not Greece, Illinois might be.” 

So, I had a fascinating view of the economy and the world, compacted into 24 hours from two excellent commentators that come from different ends of the political spectrum.  It was most gratifying to reconnect in person with Dr. Pipes after sitting in his class so long ago.

Words and Phrases- Language of Postmodernists

One of the skills that the Left has acquired (and which Donald Trump is equally or more adept at) is branding and framing via the use of a short word or phrase.   That technique is useful because with a single vacuous utterance, you are able to destroy a more analytical evaluation and you put your adversary on the defensive.  Trump demonstrated his acumen at this during the 2016 campaign with “Crooked” Hillary, “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” and “Low Energy” Jeb.   And it is one of the reasons liberals despise him.

The Left has developed a series of these monikers that are highly effective  and, like barnacles, they stick for awhile and it takes some effort to scrape them off.  “Privilege,” especially “white privilege” is the most prevalent.  Never mind that many of us know lots of white people that hardly had privileged lives.  They are all swabbed with the same mop.   “Toxic masculinity” is another.  Never mind that good old fashioned raw physical masculinity comes in real handy in real desperate straights as wonderfully depicted in the film The 15:17 to Paris, when a group of toxically masculine young men thwarted an armed terrorist.   In less extreme cases, toxic, undeterred masculinity is useful when you get a flat in -below zero weather on a dark highway and the grizzled guy from the service station shows up with his jack.

But no other vacuous phrase is quite as insidious as “of color,”  which is used to categorize any person of non-caucasian ancestry.   To the Leftist postmodernists, the term “of color” automatically connotes someone who, through their heritage, has been oppressed and is at a structural disadvantage in our society, and therefore, those individuals deserve special treatment to level the playing field.  It lumps together Hispanics and African Americans on the opposite side of whites and is the companion phrase to “white privilege.”  It obliterates the old descriptive terms- “White,” “Hispanic,” “Black” or “African American,”  “Asian,” “Native American,”  which were perfectly functional when necessary and instead puts whites on one side and lumps African American and Hispanics on the other.

The term “Person of Color” is a sneaky, divisive term concocted by the Left to further identity politics and should be wholly rejected.  It adds nothing to our society and culture and unnecessarily builds walls between us.

The underhanded appearance of this term became clear to me after I heard Kenneth B. Morris, the descendant of the great Frederick Douglass speak last summer.  Morris spun out stories and his family connection to Douglass, told anecdotes of his escape, reminded us that African slaves were inhumanly beaten, abused, and hunted down like animals.  Mr. Morris reminded us that the existence of black slavery was not that long ago, really.  Those were his people.  That was his heritage.  It was awful and remains a dark spot on American history.

But the working class neighborhood I grew up in consisted largely of Eastern European and Mexican.  And many of the parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts of my peers were Poles and Lithuanians that escaped from the Stalinist Eastern Bloc.   The best friend of my best friend’s father was shot in the head in front of him at age 17.  He himself escaped by hiding in sewers and ditches for weeks.  Another friend’s parents escaped one of Stalin’s concentration camps in Lithuania and were hunted by Russian thugs with guard dogs.  My neighborhood was replete with those first hand stories of Communist oppression, and are most vividly captured in Ruta Sepetys’s novel Between Shades of Gray. Those were my people.  And that is my heritage.  Mr. Morris and I have more in common than at first appears.

The Lithuanian and Polish immigrants share a great deal more with African American than with Hispanics.  To be sure, they were oppressed at different times by different people.  But if you are suffering the terror of chased through the woods by people with guns, truncheons, and dogs with your heart racing, those experiences are quite the same whether it is a plantation owner or a Stalinist thug..  None of the Hispanics suffered oppression of that nature at all.  They simply migrated up here and took blue collar jobs and scratched out a living like the rest of the neighborhood.

That is why I utterly reject “Persons of Color” as an artificial, unhelpful and damaging construct.  It gets the categories completely wrong, unless you want to have a discussion of skin pigmentation. But if you wish it to connote the actual experiences of a peoples, it is meaningless and misleading.

The photo above is of a Soviet work camp.   Looks pretty similar to a 1850’s Georgia plantation, doesn’t it?

Projection

As we head into the midterms this week, another phenomena has me puzzled and disturbed—the blatant racism and antiSemitism manifested by the Left.   And this is not just an isolated incident.  It is occurring across all fronts—in academia, the MSM, social media and among politicians.   It is as if the Left has been granted a license to engage openly in this kind of thing.  And all the while accusing Trump and anyone that voted for him racist and bigoted.

I first raised this issue last fall when the New York Times published a repulsive op-ed by Ekow Yankah entitled “Can My Children Be Friends With White People?”  In it, Yankah says he’s going to teach his children not to trust white people.  Breathtaking in its blatant racism, the essay was utterly contrary to all of the messages of the great Martin Luther King.

But fast forward less than a year, and the same New York Times hired Sarah Jeong as an editor, whose social media posts included such as “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men” and “#cancelwhitepeople.”

Just a few weeks ago, Georgetown law professor Christine Fair tweeted out that “white GOP senators deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine. Yes.”

Last week, Don Lemon of CNN claimed that, “the biggest terror threat is white men.”

It’s pretty clear that the Left believes it has a license to demonize and categorize white men in ways that we have never seen before and in ways that would not be permissible to do to other segments of our society.

But it doesn’t end with white men.  Last week, in a flippant attempt at a “joke,” when an interviewer confused Eric Holder and Cory Booker, exclaimed, “they all look alike.”  As Freud asserted, “There are no jokes.”  Such a statement would get any other person banished from the airwaves.

And when Kanye West showed signs of getting too cozy with Trump, CNN commentator Bakari Sellers said, “Kanye West is what happens when negroes don’t read.”

Most insidious and dangerous is the antiSemitism that has crept into our culture under the cloak of the “free Palestine” movement, and has been embraced by the Democratic party.

Just a few months ago, Democratic icon Bill Clinton appeared on the same stage with antiSemite Louis Farrakhan.  Photos have emerged of the grinning jackass Farrakhan with Eric Holder and Barack Obama.  Farrakhan recently referred to Jews as “termites” and has a long history of making vicious antiSemitic statements.  Yet no Democrat has condemned him and while Twitter suspended more benign commenters such as James Woods and former Reagan assistant secretary Paul Craig Roberts, Farrakhan is able to send his sick messages out with impunity.

But the license to engage in racism and antiSemitism is not limited to politicians and media. In a shocking and grotesque product rollout, Ben & Jerry’s introduced a new flavor of ice cream, “Pecan Resistance” and featured none other than Sharia-touting anti-Semite hate monger (and Farrakhan pal) Linda Sarsour.  The Ben & Jerry’s product announcement came just days after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that massacred 11 Jews.  Ben & Jerry’s then immediately chose to associate Linda Sarsour with its brand. 

Comments and acts like these would have been met with repercussions a decade ago, but apparently are fine now.  And that’s a very dangerous thing.  

The Meltdown- A Decade Later

9/11 exposed our defense vulnerability.  The housing crisis exposed the fragility of our financial system.  This week, the shooting in the Pittsburgh synagogue and the sending of bombs to Democratic leaders highlighted the frailty of our social fabric.  It’s hard to feel solid and secure at this particular moment in history.

Last week I attended a program put on by the Becker Friedman Institute at which former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and former Senator Chris Dodd spoke about the financial crisis as we are now a decade past the crash (although still feeling economic and political ripples from it).  Paulson and Dodd were two principal architects of the stabilization and recovery efforts undertaken by the government to pull us back from the edge of the abyss.   While there was a great deal of pain suffered in the U.S., and some may never fully recover, the efforts of people like Hank Paulson, Chris Dodd, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner undoubtedly rescued us from something much, much worse.  And both agree that the regulatory scheme put into place makes it less likely that we will have another fire like the one we had in ’08 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Paulson admitted he had a lot of sleepless nights with visions of breadlines throughout the crisis, with the worst moment coming when he knew that Lehman would fail.   He asserted that panics by definition are unpredictable and both he and Ben Bernanke underestimated how badly this one undermined the financial system.  Never before had the U.S. experienced a general decline in home mortgages.  Ben Bernanke missed the level of contagion that the crisis caused.

He bemoaned the lack of authority that he had to manage the crisis, but credits the fact that he had built relationships on both sides of the aisle before the crisis hit.  He also was able to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before Lehman failed as they were the only source of mortgage credit at the time. He said that they were able to use the authority they had imaginatively by guaranteeing funding for Fannie and Freddie rather than injecting capital directly.  In the U.S., putting public money in a private company is a “red line.”

The TARP program, while unpopular, was sophisticated and successful.  They were able to persuade 700 banks to take TARP money, thereby avoiding singling out the weaker banks which would have exacerbated the crisis.

Interestingly, both Paulson and Dodd defended their actions during the crisis.  Paulson said, “Even if I were omniscient, I don’t know what I would have done differently. I didn’t have all the authority I needed.”  Likewise, Chris Dodd asserted that, “I will go to my grave believing we did the right thing at that moment.”  Both are probably correct.

Paulson in particular made two comments that leave large unanswered questions.  First, Paulson said that he would rather have a lot of authority and a high bar for using it rather than have to go back to Congress.   Secondly, he regretted that they were not able to communicate to the public and create a better understanding of why it was critical to save the financial system.  Indeed, the presentation itself was interrupted by a single protester (that was escorted quickly out of the room) who screamed at Paulson for not doing enough for “the people” and that they had bailed out the banks.

As to the first issue, I understand that as in war, a financial national emergency requires the granting of authority to the government and flexibility to use that authority that it would not ordinarily possess in normal times.   Still, Paulson’s blanket statement leaves open many questions.  What type of authority?  To do what, exactly?  What would the triggers for granting such authority be?   How long would such authority last?   Paulson seems to argue for the ability under certain circumstances to at least dictate “curfews” if not financial “martial law.”  Exactly what would that authority look like.   As with the “red line” of putting public money into private enterprises, Americans are loath to grant blanket, unlimited, unaccountable authority to any one person or even a committee.

I am much more sympathetic to his second point concerning their failure to communicate adequately to the American public.  First, they did not want to spook the public and make a liquidity run worse.  But second, it may be that, like “Sully” landing his flight in the Potomac that same winter, we had just the right people in the right positions to deal with the emergency.  The skill set needed to fix the problem is not the same as communicating a complex idea to the public.  None of Paulson, Tim Geithner or Ben Bernanke will ever light up a room with their public speaking skills.   But all were calm, collected and focused at a time we most needed them.  In fact, Paulson commented that early in the crisis, Ben Bernanke in a meeting of treasury officials and congressmen calmly said, “If you do not act within days, the entire financial system of the United States, and much of the rest of the world will melt down.”  If I had to choose between great orators and adept problems solvers at that time, I would go with the latter.

Interestingly, having just seen Gordon Wood, Wood noted in his book, “Friends Divided” ’s recent book on Jefferson and Adams, Jefferson scorned paper money and banks.  Jefferson agreed with the French Philosopher, DeSutt de Tracy that “all paper money was a frenzy of despotism run mad.”   And Jefferson proclaimed that, “We are undone, my dear Sir, if this banking mania is not suppressed.”

How prophetic.

Back to Our Roots

At age 84, Gordon Wood is still doing book tours.  As the nation’s foremost living historian of the Revolutionary period, Mr. Wood is out lecturing on his new book, “Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.”  Wood is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Medal of Honor.   He is mentioned in the same breath as Page Smith and Samuel Eliot Morison.  His writing is clear, readable and accessible.

And in these tumultuous political times, he is just the sane voice the doctor ordered.  With a swath of the country convinced that America is a colonial, dominant power that is a source of evil and discord in the world, Wood reminded me of our glorious heritage through his latest book, contrasting two of our most important Founders.   Wood’s mind is still crisp.  Although academic looking, he moves with the body of a man thirty years younger.  His presentation was organized, methodical and he steered completely clear of our modern day politics, even in the question and answer.

Gordon would could have entitled his book “Frenemies.”  Jefferson and Adams represented two polar aspects of the young nation, and their views echo to this day.  Jefferson was optimistic about human nature and confident in the future.  Adams had a much more cynical nature about the human condition.  Jefferson thought people were blank slates and were created equal.  Adams was on the opposite pole of the nature/nurture continuum.  Jefferson was a Francophile.  Adams admired the English constitution.  Wood asserted that Adams was as important to the American Revolution as Jefferson, but their political struggle (and Jefferson’s eventual victory in it) shaped the nation forever.

People took it as providential that the two men died on the same day, July 4, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a document that Adams lamented that he had not written.

As many other historians have, Gordon Wood found it miraculous that these intellectuals came together in one place at one time.  But Wood has noted that “clusters” of genius tend to occur.  Scotland had Adam Smith and David Hume.  Ireland has a long history of great literary genius.  Wood might also have thrown in the economics department at the University of Chicago in that crowd with its 9 Nobel Prizes.

Two things struck me about Wood’s talk and book.  First, our seemingly rancorous time is not unprecedented.  As early as 1790, there were concerns that the South might secede.   Bitter partisanship is not new.  Name calling, the partisan press, the fight over the size and reach of the federal government have been with us since our inception.  In fact, Alexander Hamilton wrote a pamphlet decrying the “eccentric tendencies” of Adams and said he had an “ungovernable temper,” “vanity without bounds,” “extreme egoism” and was “unfit for office.”

Sound familiar?

It all helped give a little perspective.

In addition to their genius and devotion to the Republic, the Founders were also known for something else—they knew when it was time to quit.  Washington retired to Mount Vernon.  Jefferson also tried to retire from public service before being pressed into service again, “No state,” he said, “had a perpetual right to the services of its citizens.”   How refreshing an attitude.  Today, it’s almost impossible to get rid of the bastards.