RBG

 Social media lit up on Friday with the news of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, throwing gasoline on an already blazing fire.   Ginsburg, the second woman on the Supreme Court, was a trailblazing icon of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court.  The films RBG and On the Basis of Sex paid tribute to her, and she fought a courageous battle against cancer for years.

While her view of the Constitution did not align with mine (I am more in the Scalia camp), I admired her sharp mind, her tenacity and her devotion to her work.  Photographs can be very telling about a person and I found two of her that I liked a lot.  One of them shows her side by side in opera wigs with the late Antonin Scalia (taken from a social media post entitled “Together Again”).  Their friendship was legendary and I hope someone pens a book about it and them.  Intellectual adversaries that were great friends and enjoyed each other very much.  The other photograph was taken when she was a young woman.   This photo seemed to capture her best and it is posted here.  Her eyes reveal a deeply intelligent and soulful individual and there is an unmistakable softness in her look as if she were gazing upon a newborn child.  I would guess that the people that know her best would say that this photo captures her best.  Her achievements, the quality of the life she lived cannot be denied.   I find it incredibly sad and distressing that the celebration of the life and work of this singularly accomplished woman will quickly be consumed by the conflagration over her successor that will run smack into an election that is almost certain to be close and contested.

What brought us to this point?   In my view, it is mostly the unvarnished and raw lust for power on the Left that has attempted to crush all boundaries, all institutional brakes and willingness to accommodate to get what it wants.  The Kavanaugh hearing gave us a good look at what the Left is willing to do.  They dragged up an obviously troubled woman to make uncorroborated decades old allegations (and several others that were shown to make false allegations) to smear this otherwise exemplary individual.  It occurred to me during these hearings that none of the people screaming and howling in the streets and pounding on the Supreme Court doors actually read any of Kavanaugh’s opinions and could not make an informed statement of why they opposed him.

Unbounded by any limits, the radical Left will undoubtedly ratchet things up again, and this time they have shown no inhibitions about using political violence and threats of violence to achieve their aims. 

The family of RBG (and initially reported by NPR) claims that on her deathbed she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”  I have serious doubts about the veracity of this claim.  First, NPR now has been captured by the radical Left (they recently publicized the book justifying looting).  Second, RBG was smart and precise in her language.  It would be out of character for her to suggest that a new president is “installed.”  Finally, she knew that Supreme Court vacancies are not passed down like property under a will.  This is most likely a concocted and false statement.  We would do well to recall that Richard Cordray tried to bequeath the chairmanship of the CFPB to his successor before Trump was required to go to court and deny him.  Attempting to create  permanently occupied positions that can be passed down  is now a standard practice of the radical Left.

The lack of boundaries and understanding of consequences directly led to our present state.  Harry Reid killed the filibuster and it apparently never occurred to him that roles may be reversed someday. Whatever your views of the filibuster, it helped to ensure that you take the opposing party’s views into account.   But now things can be done with pure power, brushing the opposition aside.  RBG herself had a role in this mess.  She could have retired under Obama and let Obama pick her successor.  If her real fervent wish was to not have Donald Trump name the successor to the seat vacated by her, it was actually within her power to make sure that happened.

I am bracing myself for the circus that is likely to ensue and perhaps even the violence that may follow.  Although I am more in the Scalia camp of judicial leanings, it saddens me greatly to see that the media spent such a short period of time honoring this singularly accomplished woman and immediately pivoted to the blood sport politics over the appointment of her successor.

The Great Reset

One of my favorite anecdotes in Nassim Taleb’s fascinating book Antifragile is Taleb’s recounting of his bellyaching to his father about events in Beirut that led him to flee to the United States.  Taleb bemoaned the fact that they had a nice middle class life in Lebanon when war broke out in 1982 and they had to give all that up and they were forced to leave the country.  Taleb’s father said to Nassim, “You were on the road to becoming a beach bum in Beirut.  You have become a noted author and speaker in the United States.  Sometimes lives need to be shaken up.”

Now, it probably would have been better if our lives had not all been shaken up at the same time, but here we are.  All of us are in the midst of a seismic shift.  It is uncomfortable, but not all of it is bad.  It should be clear to most people by now that there we will not be going back to normal, and in certain respects, that is a good thing.

The Hard Stop.  

In mid-March, we were all told to “shelter in place,” to hunker down in our homes and work remotely to “flatten the curve.”   While we cannot dispute the disruption that this caused in our daily lives, there was a hidden benefit.   First of all, for those of us that live and work near urban environments, it was a gift of 8-10 hours of time a week that we didn’t have to spend commuting to our offices.  Most of us, especially families with two people working and children, live pretty frantic lives attempting to juggle all the demands modern life places on us.  The extra time gave us some time to read, to think, to reflect and think hard about priorities, time we are rarely permitted to have in our day to day lives. 

Professional Sports.   

Professional sports has been at the center of American culture for the last 50-60 years or so.  So much so, that we have afforded it generous tax subsidies and, in the case of the NFL and NBA, minor leagues that are free to the league and themselves tax subsidized (NCAA).  And by allowing the teams to bargain as one with an exemption from anti-trust laws, money poured into the leagues.  Most athletes that played in to 60’s and 70’s had to get real jobs when they retired.  They became ordinary working people when their playing days were done.   But over the past 35 years or so, things have gotten out of hand.  Their incomes and lifestyles bear no relation to the average working person’s.

Over this period, we have become conditioned to become spectators, rather than doers.  School systems have become structured not around the mental and physical health of all students but around the elite athlete.  As more of us turn away from viewing pro sports (opening night NFL viewership was down 16%), we will hopefully be substituting activities that require us to DO physical things—golf, tennis, hiking, gardening, hunting and such, rather than watch someone else DO things  It was one thing when pro sports involved manufactured rivalries- Yankees vs. Red Sox or Bears vs. Packers.  But it is trying to drag in real ones now.  When the underlying message is cops versus criminals, blacks versus whites, or worse, them versus the United States, it’s time to close the door, put down the remote and go outside into the great outdoors. 

Reshuffled relationships.

Friends have also been reshuffled.  It began with the 2016 campaign and election.  I belonged to a regular golf foursome of never-Trumpers, Trump haters that would spend the entire round carping about Trump, calling him a fascist, a Nazi, a racist and otherwise maligning him.  I respectfully asked them to divert the conversation to other topics, “I play to get away from work and other stresses and to enjoy your company.  We can talk about anything you want--- film, sports, books, even boobs- men always like to talk about boobs.  Just not Trump.”   They couldn’t do it and I eventually left the group.  Others have had similar experiences.  Long term friendships have ruptured.  Parents have disowned children.  Potential marriages have been scuttled.

But other friendships have formed or reformed, both in real life and on line.   While some relationships have been shattered, pandemic and the social discord has caused people have reconnected with old friends, classmates and relatives.  Several people have told me about this phenomena and it has happened to me.  I came to the conclusion that people that would criticize or label me or turn their backs on me because of politics were probably not worth having around anyway.  And the new and renewed relationships have proven to be very worthwhile. 

The people with whom I have spoken about the reshuffling of relationships have told me that this has taken them by surprise.  But we need to keep in mind that we have largely been insulated from this for a couple of generations.  Many of our grandparents and great grand parents left Europe, severed relationships to start a new life here.  Some had a difficult time adjusting (as the character Mr. Shimerda in Willa Cather’s My Antonia, who commits suicide because he cannot adjust to life away from his home in Czechoslovakia), but others embraced forming new friendships and relationships. 

If there is one nonfiction book I urge you to read in this disruptive time, it’s Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile.  While it will not relieve the discomfort and disorientation we are all feeling right now, it will help you think about how to regain some equilibrium and indeed find some positive aspects of The Great Reset, and turn them to your advantage.  If you look closely, you will find that some of the changes that you are being forced to make were changes that needed to be made.

A Tale of Two Visits

 

In the famous words of Woody Allen, 80% of success is showing up.

And both of the presidential candidates showed up to Kenosha this week, and the contrast couldn’t be more clear.

President Trump showed up to survey the damage done by the rioters and to pledge aid for police protection for this middle American community.  Of course, he was excoriated by the press for political opportunism, and asked by Governor Evers not to come, which made Trump even more determined to pay an in person visit.   The images were surreal and frightening.  Trump strolled around streets that looked more like 1945 Berlin than 2020 Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Trump did exactly as he should have done-met with the citizens to provide support and pledge financial assistance.   Former governor Scott Walker attributes the calming of Kenosha after three days of rampaging to Trump’s pledge of support for the city (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/3/donald-trump-saved-kenosha-period/).

Now, after criticizing Trump for his visit to Kenosha, Democrat Joe Biden immediately seized on the opportunity and followed Trump into Wisconsin, a state which Democrats have apparently developed an inexplicable allergy to.   In contrast to Trump, who focused on the devastation to the community, Biden’s focus was on the Blake family.  He met with members of Blake’s family, spoke with Blake’s father and instead of making comments against the background of the rubble, he chose the incongruous backdrop of a church.

In the interim, we learned that Blake, Sr. had previously posted hateful and anti-semitic messages on social media, and that Blake, Jr. has a long and sordid history of crime and abuse of his girlfriend.  Indeed the warrant that was issued for his arrest was for sexual assault and he had committed despicable acts with this woman.  His girlfriend also claimed that Jacob would get drunk, show up and beat her a couple of times a year. 

Let’s be clear.  There were multiple victims in Kenosha.  There were the innocent business owners whose businesses were ravaged by the mayhem.   These are the people that Trump pledged to support, and, Trump was entirely justified in visiting Kenosha for that purpose; it is a primary function of government to support and protect these people from people that would destroy their property and livelihoods.

But lost in this entire twisted episode is the first victim--- the woman Blake accosted and assaulted.  Democrats routinely stake themselves out as the party of women, but when it came right down to it, when a vulnerable woman was brutally assaulted by a savage and inhuman punk, the leading Democratic candidate for president sided with the punk.  He spoke with both the perpetrator and his father, who reared this little beast.   He had no time for the woman Blake victimized.  So much for women’s empowerment.   Blake has a GoFundMe account set up for him and last I saw, it amounted to a couple million bucks.  The funds for Blake’s victim and the business owners? Hmmm. 

The only legitimate reason for a government official to speak to Blake Sr. would have been to ask him how he feels about raising such a sociopathic feral creature.  Perhaps Biden felt a special bond with Blake, Sr., having raised a no-account, misogynist, scofflaw himself.

But this is not today’s Democratic party.  Today’s Democrats  now unashamedly embrace Louis Farrakhan and people of his ilk—hateful, resentful, anti-semitic, anti-white, black separatist.  It could care less about victimized women (except, of course, if they make up stories to attempt to derail a Supreme Court justice).   It was shocking to see Bill Clinton appear on the same stage with Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin’s funeral two years ago.  But now we know that the fringe elements like Farrakhan  and Linda Sarsour have moved solidly to the base of the Democratic party.

In a few days, the two presidential candidates defined their constituents.  Trump stood with the citizens and Biden with the perpetrators.