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.