Mobocracy

I had an opportunity to witness a political event up close and personal last weekend.  Following a business meeting, I walked past the Palmer House in downtown Chicago, when I noticed a crowd gathered in front of the hotel.  I immediately suspected it was some union protesting the working conditions at the hotel but the crowd was bigger than I normally see.  As I drew closer, it became clear to me that it was part of the group gathered to protest Donald Trump’s rally at UIC. 

The crowd was approximately half African American with a substantial portion of Occupy Wall Street types thrown in.   There were several people on megaphones, and most of the signs were hand marked, with either messages damning Donald Trump, or Republican governor Bruce Rauner, or demanding free this or free that.  If anyone in the crowd actually worked in an office, I would be surprised.  It was quite discomfiting, a middle aged businessman in a dark suit and tie, walking past the menacing sneers and glares.  This was not just a group of peaceful protesters.  This was an angry mob, yelling, fists punched in the air, girding for battle, and, as I learned later, organized to disrupt Donald Trump’s planned rally.  It occurred to me that if I had donned on of Trump’s red “Make America Great Again,” caps, I clearly would have been confronted or at least verbally assaulted.

This gathering was classic Saul Alinsky—deliberately designed to disrupt the process and shut down free speech.  And it is going on all across the country on college campuses.  It is pure thuggery, organized to implicitly threaten, intimidate and stifle dissent.

I got my first taste of mob disruption late last spring.  The University of Chicago has its annual awards ceremony at graduation and a friend of mine was to receive the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for extraordinary contributions to teaching at the University.  Others were to receive other academic and service awards.  Parents and relatives from all over the country came to see their family members receive these honors.   A group demanding that the U of C house a trauma center at its hospital disrupted the program, shouted everyone down, as the protesters marched around with placards yelling and giving speeches.  They were not going to leave without a physical confrontation with the authorities (which   clearly wanted).   As a result, the families and recipients had their day ruined.  Some of the recipients (including my friend) had worked tirelessly for a lifetime only to have the only day when their sacrifices and achievements were to be publicly recognized by the institution and their families ruined. 

The problem is that the bullying worked.  This February, the University announced plans for its new Level 1 Trauma Center.

I have a lot of problems with Donald Trump as the nominee of the Republican Party.  I do not like his stance on trade.  His foreign policy positions do not sit well with me.   His assertion  that “Bush lied” to get us into the war with Iraq was outrageous.  I’m  not partial to his interrupting, bullying style.

Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters absolutely have the right to speak and to whip up more support in an unimpeded forum.  Surely, BLM and the Marxists Moveon.org folks also have the right to speak.  But they do not have a license to disrupt legitimate political discourse, even if the person they are opposing is appealing to emotion.  Like the bunch that disrupted things at U of C, the protesters were spoiling for a fight.  Thoughts of Russia in 1917 flashed through my mind.

The Left has elevated its bullying tactics---disrupt to get what it wants or to shut down speech with which it disagrees.    It is working marvelously on college campuses across the country.  The U of C caved into their demands and will commit to millions to sustain its trauma center.  Donald Trump cancelled his appearance in Chicago.  Condi Rice was shouted down in Vermont last year and canceled an appearance at Rutgers.  Worse, immediately following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino,   General Loretta Lynch vowed to aggressively prosecute anti-Muslim speech (we are attacked and our government acts to curtail 1^st Amendment rights).

This is a scary development. More and more, we are allowing thuggery to change policy and to curtail free speech.  This is not how we make decisions or engage in debate and discourse.  We have institutions and political systems with structures in place to manage decision making and dissent.  Our bicameral legislature, for instance, was deliberately designed to cool mob passions. 

The Left has figured out how to manipulate and intimidate and, as a result, if we do not check this, we are in danger of descending into mobocracy. Seeing the angry mob with my own eyes was a stark reminder of how close we are to descending into chaos and violence as interest groups simply bully institutions into complying with their wishes.  This will be a terrible direction for our republic, and it needs to be checked now.  We haven’t seen this sort of thing since 1968.  But the flames are burning hotter and it was an unsettling thing to witness it in person.

The mob had an opposite effect on me.  I left the scene wondering if I should vote for Trump out of sheer defiance.

Why Now?

I visited with an old friend of mine last week-- a rare individual, a skilled and knowledgeable economist that also has Democratic leanings.  We spent a great deal of time discussing the economy, America's place in the world and the absolute circus that are the primary races.  He asked the question, "Why now?"  We are facing trends that have been headed in the same direction for decades (slow or no income growth, contraction in manufacturing employment, income disparity).  Why is the political explosion happening at this particular time?  While the fissures are less pronounced on the Democratic side, the strong showing of Bernie Sanders and the anger expressed in Democratic exit poles show frustration and anger on both sides of the aisle.  With Republicans, it has caused a complete rupture of the existing order.

Why now?  I believe that the answer is almost entirely economic, with national pride mixed in.

Like an earthquake, the political melee, I believe, is the result of tectonic forces that have been gradually building over a long period of time.  Real wages have been stagnant for 35 years.  That is not a new development.  Wage stagnation was patched over with the dotcom bubble and the real estate bubble, but we now have been in a period of sub-3% growth for 10 years.   People don't feel that they are getting ahead.   Worse, their kids can't get ahead. Prior to the collapse of real estate, many parents financed their childrens' college education through home equity loans.  With that vehicle no longer available, we are seeing the explosion of student debt over the past eight years. Couple the student loan hangover with the worst post-WWII expansion ever, you can almost feel the frustration build.  With the worst labor participation rate in 35 years, the real unemployment rate is probably in the 10-12% range.  Many college graduates are still residing in their parents' basements, several years into the expansion.  The '81-'82 recession was nasty (I graduated into that), but it was over quickly and followed by rapid growth under Reagan.  It is one thing to see your own opportunity flatten-- it is another to see that happen to your children.  

The Democrats have a simple answer and that is to promise more free things to people.  Bernie Sanders was able to garner enthusiastic support from young people because they have been steeped in the progressive bubble of college, and the prospect of free things has an irresistible.  Argentinians fell for it and they are just now able to return to the capital markets after being banished for 15 years. Hillary is selling a more muted version of that, but it is basically the same elixir: higher taxes (we just have to hunt down more wealthy people) and more regulation (going after Wall Street--never mind that we already did that with Dodd-Frank) with special attention toward pandering to special interest groups (both Sanders and Clinton almost tripped over themselves chasing after Al Sharpton).

Republicans have a much different problem, and are a more fractious, unruly group.  Someone once joked that there were actually two Republican parties:  the Libertarians and the Nazis.  Actually, there are three broad segments-- Libertarians (me), Democrat lite (Boehner), and Evangelical.  All are suspicious of one another, and they don't get along very well.  The problem is that each time the party has run a Democrat lite (or some version of it), the Republicans have lost.  Dole, Bush '92, McCain, and Romney.  

The long grind of this virtually zero growth expansion has created enormous pressures that exposed the fissures in the Republican party.  But the real spark has been the Obama administration.  He articulated his disdain for working class middle America when he wrote them off as bitterly clinging to their guns and religion and then accused them of bigotry.  This is also a very patriotic segment of America.  And an Obama that began with an apology tour, forfeited hard earned victories in places like Fallujah, shows deference to CAIR, released terrorists from Gitmo only to return to battle and permitted our sailors to be held at gunpoint by the Iranians while thanking the mullahs angered this group.  It is mostly their sons and daughters that sacrificed in Iraq and would be sailing in those vessels.  They see economic stagnation and America in retreat or humiliated in every corner of the world.

Why now?  The wooden, patrician Democrat-lite Republican Establishment watered down message lost its force. Its demise was foreshadowed by Eric Cantor's loss and John Boehner's ouster.  It could only promise tax cuts (which Democrats disabled quickly as being for "the wealthy").  Jeb Bush and John Kasich never got very much traction at all.  Marco Rubio made too many tactical errors and, beginning with the Gang of 8, showed a penchant for walking into ambushes, as he did with Christie, then fell into a name calling contest with Trump (which he was sure to lose).  

Trump's message is simple, "Make America Great Again" and "I will bring back jobs."  For a lot of middle America, a lot of sins will be forgiven if you can deliver on those two things.  Trump is scary, ham fisted, and has said things that are reminiscent of strongmen of an earlier era ("I'll bring back waterboarding and worse," "Bush lied," "Mrs. Ricketts should be careful").   His stance on trade smacks of Smoot-Hawley (and we know how that ended).  His stated admiration of Putin is scary.  

The comparisons with 30's fascists will continue unless he is able to tone things down and present himself as more presidential.  We would do well to remember that Germany turned ultra nationalistic through a democratic process under economic stresses and international humiliations in an earlier era.

Why now?  Trump is a result of the perfect storm.  He is the stepchild of an Obama administration that has presided over economic stagnation, and that has turned its back on American exceptionalism and global leadership.  Rather than advance liberty, democracy and human rights, the administration has made large concessions to Communists, Islamists, and Oligarchs that are antithetical to American values.  But Trump is also consequence of an inept, overly patrician, stagnant Republican party that lost the ability to connect and message with working class middle America, and has completely ignored black America.  

Why now?  Bill Clinton had it right over 20 years ago--It's the economy, stupid.There is anger and frustration across the political spectrum and it is being personified in different ways.  Black Lives Matter expresses its frustration differently than the ardent Trump supporters, but in essence, they are both raging at a political system that has failed them.   Voters on the right believe that the 47% getting government benefits that we can no longer afford are weighing down the economy.  Voters on the left believe that the "system is rigged," and have valid gripes about a government that bailed out Wall Street.  With an economy that can't seem to get its legs, the anger is starting to manifest itself in unusual, ugly ways.   The stagnation has gone on too long.

Robert Kagan is correct to be concerned about the rise of Trumpism.   But the insidious authoritarianism of Big Government that Sanders and Clinton are peddling may be just as dangerous and damaging to the country.  

Goodbye Nino

There have been many wonderful tributes to Antonin Scalia and I would be hard pressed to best any of them here. Scalia was the most brilliant, incisive, and colorful American legal minds of my lifetime.

Passionately devoted to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Scalia endeavored to discover what the Founders intended those words to mean.  To Scalia, two things were true.  Words had meaning, and the Founders chose certain words carefully and deliberately.   The coming together of the Founders was a unique event in human history and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was a document like no other before or since—circumscribing the role of government in our lives and declaring certain parts of our lives off limits to government power.  He viewed the Constitution almost as a sacred text.  In addition to possessing a mind of enormous intellectual power, Antonin had wit, charm, color, and a basic humanity that is so rare in public life.  His deep friendship with his intellectual nemesis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was an example for all of us in these politically charged times.  He was consistently rated the funniest justice—objectively by someone who tracks those things—eliciting more laughter than any other justice by far (I do think Clarence Thomas is at or near the bottom of that category).

I was fortunate enough to hear Scalia speak in person at the Union League Club in Chicago a couple of years ago and meet him in person.   Meeting one of America’s great minds of  past 100 years was certainly an exciting moment for me.  He did not disappoint.  He was warm, engaging and funny as hell, poking fun at some of his fellow justices that “couldn’t apparently distinguish between a penalty and a “tax.”  Scalia was a great gift to America who steadfastly defended one of mankind’s most sacred documents.

It isn’t a surprise, then, that President Obama elected to skip Scalia’s funeral in a very public display of nonattendance.  His Press Secretary offered no excuse,  and declined to even say whether he was going to play golf instead.  Obama uses these events to make statements.  This was not simply a matter of overscheduling.  As head of state, Obama has an obligation to attend ceremonies of significance and gravitas.  He is our representative in these matters.  Missing the funeral is a statement to the American people and to the entire world.  His attendance matters.

Obama has used the stature of the presidency and his presence to make statements throughout his presidency—to declare which people are worthy of his time and which are not.  Thus, he dashed off to hold the cartoonish “beer summit” when he thought Henry Louis Gates was treated unfairly by the Cambridge.  He scrambled out of town to a fundraiser and to meet with Jay-Z and Beyonce after his ambassador and 3 others were murdered in Libya.  He made a showy public appearance at a mosque in Baltimore.  And as if to underscore his contempt for Scalia, in the days immediately preceding his funeral, he announced that he would be traveling to Cuba to meet with the Communist thug Raul Castro—the embodiment of regime that Scalia undoubtedly reviled.

He has done this before to evidence his contempt or indifference.  He snubbed other European heads of state in their march against terrorism in Paris following their terrorist attacks (refusing to stand in solidarity with other European allies against barbarism, and then followed with a meek statement calling it a “setback.”).  He blew off Margaret Thatcher’s funeral as well—a woman, who, along with Ronald Reagan, steadfastly stood against Communism and changed the course of history.

Other commentators have criticized him for being petty and petulant in skipping Scalia’s funeral.  I see it as part of a much larger pattern.  These incidents are statements of inner conviction and ideology.  He burns with disdain for leaders like Thatcher and Scalia and their ideals.  To Obama, they do not even deserve the respect of his presence in the final celebration of their lives. 

No, these events are not independent occurrences.  They are powerful statements about the inner Obama and his core belief system. 

Imagine, for a moment, if Obama had attended the funeral and had either delivered the eulogy himself or made a sincere, magnanimous public statements that displayed his respect for Scalia, the Court,  and the Constitution that began something like this, “I sometimes had views that diverged from Justice Scalia, but I respect and admired his intellect, his wit and humor, and his unwavering devotion to the Constitution and to America.”  Imagine what a PR bind he would put  Mitch McConnell in. 

But that's not the path he chose.  That's not who he is.

I Miss Barack Obama--Not Really

I Miss Barack Obama is the title of David Brooks's dripping ode to our nation's 44th but first African-American president which appeared in the Feb. 9, 2016 New York Times Opinion Pages.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/opinion/i-miss-barack-obama.html?_r=0)

While he attempts to establish credibility and fair mindedness by stating that he "disagrees with a lot of Obama's policy decisions," Brooks goes on to pen the kind of swooning love letter that you might hope your daughter would receive from a lovestruck beau.

Like Brooks, I will attempt to establish credibility by stating that my counterpoint is not personal.  In fact, Mr. Obama and I would likely get along swimmingly.  We have a great deal in common and would have a lot to talk about.  We both have South Side of Chicago and University of Chicago roots.  We were both reared largely by grandparents.  We both have an affinity for pickup basketball and golf.  At one time in life, I even shared the vice of being a closet cigarette smoker.  We would likely get on great on the golf course and for a few beers after.  As Chris Christie would say, "It's just business."

Brooks starts with the general decline in the behavioral standards in public life, and his assertion that Obama represents a departure from that trend.  True, Obama did not have a tryst with a young intern and lie about it like our 42nd president did, but his mendacity was of a decidedly more pernicious kind--- it was about policy.  The sales pitch used to peddle the ACA- his signature legislative accomplishment--was riddled with untruths, from "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan (which won the biggest Pinnochio in 2013," to "the average family will save $2,500 in premiums" (premiums have skyrocketed in most states), to "it won't add a single dime to the deficit" (it does-many dimes), to "illegal immigrants will not get subsidies," (they received $750 million worth).  More dangerously, Obama claimed that only a "handful" of Gitmo releasees returned to jihadism.   That is absolutely false.  The recidivism rate is about 30% and in his eagerness to clear the detention center (based on his wholly unsubstantiated claim that it aids the recruitment of jihadists), recently released an Al Qaeda bomb maker.  Add to these flat out deceptions, Fast and Furious, the IRS/Lois Lerner scandal, Benghazi, and Hillary Clinton's ongoing email investigation, we see that Brooks's assertion that "he and his staff have generally behaved with basic rectitude" looks pretty flimsy.  His rhetoric has been atrocious toward his own countrymen.  After calling for more "civility in discourse," he attacked Republicans as "crazies" and "extremists" and  regularly mocked political opponents ("the 80's are calling and want their foreign policy back," "Are they afraid of widows and orphans?") rather than engage in open debate on the facts.

His second assertion-- of Obama's basic humanity is also terribly flawed.  For that assertion he cites his visit to the mosque and that he would be great on a charity board.  The facts, though, show someone quite different.   After a journalist was beheaded, he dashed off to yuck it up with a round of golf.  After our ambassador and 3 others were murdered at Benghazi, he immediately zipped off to a fundraiser and to meet with Beyonce.  His actual responses in a number of instances belied a lack of empathy. We did not see real emotion from him until he issued executive orders on gun control.  But worse, his misguided policies caused or exacerbated real human suffering.  His incoherence and waffling in Syria and his abrupt exodus from Iraq facilitated the expansion of ISIS and the refugee crisis that is overwhelming Europe.  Worse, if you take the position that the Iraq War was a mistake, Obama doubled down by taking out another secular dictator and leaving a vaccuum.  Under the premise that he was preventing genocide, deposed Qaddafi in Libya, now an ISIS stronghold.   He didn't prevent genocide.  He enabled it.  Closer to home, he generalized the proposition that white cops were singling out black youths and shooting unarmed innocents from a couple of situations (one where the officer was exonerated).  The "Ferguson Effect"--police taking a much more passive approach-- has resulted in a spike in violent crime in U.S. cities. Both here and abroad, the "humanity" of Obama policies has been ultimately devastating to humanity.

Third, Brooks cites Obama's sound decision-making process.  You mean the decision-making process that led him to jump through hoops to do deals with mullahs, yet uses a pen and a phone to govern because he can't get deals done with members of the opposing party?  Or, the decision making process that has led the court system to stymie the Constitutional law professor's overreach on carbon fuels, immigration, and NLRB appointments?  Our Constitution is designed to force some sort of consensus around big policy matters.  Obama has done more end runs than the old Green Bay Packer offense.  His decision making on domestic matters often looks more like that of a Latin American dictator than that of an American president.   In military matters, he dithers and then withdraws.  He failed to leave behind sufficient troop strength to maintain a stable Iraq.  He telegraphed his timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. His generals and admirals had to hound him to assert navigation rights in the South China Sea vis-a-vis China.  And most egregiously, drew a red line with Assad, then did nothing.   He even managed to alienate the Canadians by his stalling  and ultimate rejection of the Keystone pipeline.  His decision making style seems to be "dictatorial at home, vacillating and accommodating abroad."

Brooks also cites Obama's "resilient sense of optimism" as a reason to miss him and accuses Republicans of "wallowing in the pornography of pessimism." Unfortunately, only 28% of the country currently believes that the country is on the right track.  Again, the facts on the ground say something very different.  We have had the worst postwar recovery on record, an abysmal labor participation rate, a middle class that is getting crushed, and no wage growth.  We may, in fact, be headed into another financial crisis and recession.  Businesses aren't investing and are being suffocated by the Obama flurry of regulations.  Obama has virtually killed the coal industry through unilateral regulatory directives.  Dodd Frank has buried community banks and completely halted new bank charters.  As one bank executive confided to me, "Everyone is just f--ng tired." Abroad, we have been pushed out of the Middle East by a resurgent Russia, and Iran has openly humiliated our navy.  North Korea and Iran fire missiles in blatant violation of UN resolutions and there is no real response.  Even Europe is endangered by the abrupt withdrawal of American moral and military leadership. "There's a shared assessment that the European security architecture is falling apart in many ways", observes Camille Grad, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.   Obama may have a resilient sense of optimism, but he is pretty much alone in that view.

Brooks gushed that "Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I am beginning to miss."  What Obama is likely to leave behind is an economy weighed by debt, taxes and a nightmarish thicket of labyrinthian regulatory schemes and super charged regulatory agencies.  It's an America in which the hottest job is now "compliance officer" not "inventor" or "entrepreneur."  

Most damning is Obama's blown opportunities.  The Obama appointed Simpson Bowles group did good work and showed promise of a truly bipartisan solution to our debt and deficit problem.  Obama failed to champion the proposal and budget negotiations deteriorated into bitterly partisan fights and the counterproductive sequestration (which Obama blamed on Republicans).  He came into office promising a "different kind of politics," and instead brought Chicago style political thuggery.

And most harmful was in the area of race relations.  Our country was big enough to overcome slavery, segregation, and a racist past to elect an African American president.  Although I did not support Obama, at the time of his election I thought, "Well, at least we will have completely exorcised that demon."  Instead of putting the demons to rest, he (and his appointees) resurrected them and brought them back to life.  Eric Holder bluntly asserted, "We are a nation of cowards," (no, thousands of men died for your freedom and people marched and we passed laws to rid ourselves of racism and segregation).  Obama himself declared, "Racism is in our D.N.A." (no, actually entrepreneurship, tolerance and a can-do attitude are in our D.N.A., Mr. President).  The false narratives of "Hands Up Don't Shoot" and giving "room to destroy" in Baltimore caused racial friction that we had not seen since the death of MLK.  Instead of advocating healing and togetherness, Obama picked at an old scab and promoted divisiveness and made assumptions about people as if they were stuck in amber in 1952.  

Finally, and most importantly, I will not miss Barack Obama because of his lack of appreciation for what America is all about.  And I believe a significant factor in Donald Trump's rise has been the need of Americans to feel that we are special---because we are.  Donald Trump talks about winning.  Great Americans from George Patton to Vince Lombardi talked about winning.  Ronald Reagan often referred to John Winthrop's "city upon a hill."  Abraham Lincoln referred to America as the "last best hope on earth."  Even rock star Bono said, "Ireland is a great country.  But it is a country.  America is an idea."  In contrast, beginning with his Cairo speech and throughout his presidency, Obama denigrated and apologized for the U.S.   "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," he proclaimed.  We're special.  Just like everyone else.  Talking about his Middle Eastern policy, he pondered, "This isn't about America winning."  He derisively referred to much of middle America--the backbone of the country--as people that "bitterly cling to their guns and religion," and went on to allude to their inherent racism.  An American president MUST be concerned first and foremost about America winning.  That's the job.   An American President MUST believe in this country's primacy as a force for good in the world, as a bastion of liberty, and an unwavering opponent of tyranny and guardian of human rights.   We are not perfect.  We are still the "American experiment"  and are still a work in progress, but Americans need to be told that they have a special place in the world and a special duty.  

Mr. Brooks and I attended the same undergraduate school at about the same time (although I do not remember him).   We have such starkly different views on President Obama, his integrity, his humanity, and his leadership that it's hard to believe that Brooks and I are assessing the same leader. I can only hope that history will view him as an aberration following the financial crisis and that our next commander in chief can restore the American spirit here and abroad. 

Son of Saul

Son of Saul was the most important film on the Holocaust since Schindler’s list, and provides a more intimate, personal perspective.   Written and directed by Hungarian director Laszlo Memes, Son of Saul centers around the ordeals of Saul, a Sonderkommando (Jew pressed into working at a Nazi death camp) at the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.   The film uses the similar technique of shaky, close up, hand held shots as Spielberg used in Saving Private Ryan to give the viewer the perspective of the prisoners.  You are taken inside the facility to see the mechanized industrialization of death that the Nazis imposed.  One is struck by how the Nazis treated the extermination of Jews  as if it were a mattress factory.  The Sonderkommandos helped herd men, women and children into the chambers, grimly stood outside the bolted doors and could hear the screams and pounding while deadly Xyclon B was suffused through the chamber.  The work crews were then charged with hauling the corpses (inhumanly referred to as “pieces” by the Germans) out of the chambers and scrubbing it down.  Memes mostly blurs out the piles of dead bodies so we are spared the worst of the horror, but the scenes  grip us—Meme forces us to see the dark reality of the Nazi death industry and its sick and twisted affront to humanity.

Saul Auslander grimly performs his duties but then he takes it upon himself to spare the corpse of a young boy, who he claims is his son, the indignity of the ovens, but rather makes it the focus of his existence to give the boy a proper Jewish burial.  While his fellow prisoners surreptitiously plot  an uprising, Saul surreptitiously tries to find a rabbi for a secret service.  Ironically, both activities carry the same risk--death at the hands of their captors.  On one level, Saul's quest seems irrational.  He should be putting his efforts toward helping his fellow prisoners plot an escape.  But viewed somewhat differently level, his focus is entirely understandable.  Part of our humanity is ritual around important life passages--birth, bar/bat mitzvah, first communion, marriage, anniversaries, and death. Saul has made it his purpose to bring humanity to one person in a world in which all humanity has been deliberately obliterated by the Nazis.  One is struck throughout the film by Saul's grit and grim steadfastness in the face of almost certain doom.

The release of this film last fall coincided with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. 70 years later, we are once again faced  a violent, malignant creed that is attacking the very things that make us human.  Pernicious branches of Islam in the form of ISIS and Boco Haram are menacing the globe threatening humanity just as the Nazis did 70 years ago.  Once again, the world has underestimated this movement just as it did the Third Reich.  Our president mocked them as merely the "J.V." and "guys in pickup trucks," as they took over huge territories in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, committing atrocities not seen since the Nazis-- beheadings, crucifixions, immolation, raping women, killing children... and perhaps the most abhorrent, declaring a fatwa against children afflicted Down's Syndrome.   In Paris and San Bernardino, they have shown an ability to take their murderous show on the road.  With their destruction of antiquities in Palmyra and their destruction of Iraq's oldest monastery, they are telling the world that all of the symbols of humanity are fair game for them.

The film Son of Saul is important because we can almost touch, smell, and hear the atrocities committed by an evil regime on an unimaginable scale.  Despite blurring some of the most ghastly parts, it is a film that will likely affect your emotional state for days.

But I can't help but wonder if was just the film that affected me, or the knowledge that it is happening again.   Not since the Nazis has humanity itself been assaulted in this way.  Once again, the civilized world reacts slowly and tepidly.

Truth

Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu pointing to the N.F.L. representative and through gritted teeth, imploring him to, "Tell the truth!" about CTE is one of the more powerful scenes from this year's films.  Will Smith didn't get nominated (that's a whole separate post), but his performance in Concussion was outstanding and it is one of three recent and important films that deal with the theme of finding and disclosing truth---truth that is being held back by powerful forces that have a self interest in telling a different narrative.  Concussion, Spotlight, and 13 Hours each evokes anger and dismay from the viewers by showing how vested bureaucracies will sometimes stop at nothing and will bury peoples' lives and careers to retain power.  Each demonstrates why investigative journalists and filmmakers have a vital role to play in an open society and why the current tide against "offensive" speech is so misguided.

We need to know the truth so we can deal with it.

The N.F.L. clearly has an interest in controlling the narrative around the long term effects of head trauma.  It has long been known that football players suffer debilitating injuries that leave them limping and sore for the rest of their lives.  Dick Butkus and Wilbur Marshall, for instance, had to sue to collect disability payments from their playing day injuries.  But it has been only recently that the Alzheimer's like symptoms of former players have become widely known.  Like tobacco use, it turns out that the effects of playing only show up years later.  The N.F.L. has downplayed CTE for years, and attempted to throw a blanket over Omalu's work.  It became harder to do so as more player suicides began to hit the headlines and more reports of symptoms of the effects of head trauma from ex-players like Jim McMahon and Antwan Randall El have made it difficult for the N.F.L. to sweep under the rug.  But they tried and went to great lengths to silence and discredit Omalu.   The reality is that only by dealing with the truth--understanding fully the evidence and the data--will the N.F.L. be able to save itself and the game of football.  We do not fully understand the extent of the risk (CTE currently can only be determined by examining the brain of someone deceased) but more research will help determine rule changes and technologies in equipment that may reduces the risk of  long term problems.

The film Spotlight centers around the Boston Globe investigative reporting team that did a spectacular job of uncovering the pathology of child sex abuse in the Boston Archdiocese.  The Catholic Church was a powerful institution in Irish Catholic Boston with adherents at the highest level of business, government, and courts.  Because these forces closed ranks, the Archdiocese was able to cover up the continued transferring of pedophile priests that ruined the lives of hundreds and hundreds of vulnerable children.  Because they preyed kids from lower economic classes with dysfunctional families, their actions were even more despicable.   The institution that is supposed to be an advocate for the disempowered instead victimized them.  That team at the Boston Globe courageously took on the Archdiocese and exposed the Church despite the implicit threats to their careers and helped put an end to outrageous practice of circulating offending priests from parish to parish.

In 13 Hours, the filmmaker largely left politics out of the film and let the facts speak for themselves. You will recall that Susan Rice went on the talk show circuit immediately after the Benghazi attack to propagate the fiction that the attack on our embassy was the result of a protest against an anti-Muslim video.  This film dispels that myth and shows that the State Department left that embassy woefully undefended and then did not respond to pleas for help when there were military assets available. Only the bravery and fighting ability of a handful of CIA contractors kept the death toll from being even worse.  The Clinton State Department spun a tale that was simply not true to protect Clinton and the re-election chances of her boss.   By sticking very close to the facts, Michael Bay fully discredits the fairy tale of Clinton and Rice without every mentioning them.

Film is a reflection of the times.  It is not fortuitous that these three films were released within months of one another.  We need to know the facts.  We need courageous journalists and filmmakers that are willing to risk their careers (and even their lives) to expose the truth. Louis Brandeis once famously said that "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."  We need to know the likelihood of head injuries in football so we have fewer good men like Junior Seaus, Dave Duersons and Mike Websters meet tragic endings.  We need to know how institutions like the Catholic Church screen and monitor priests so that we don't have systemic abuse of kids.  The country needs a full accounting of all of the facts leading up to the deaths in Benghazi to ensure that it doesn't happen again and because Mrs. Clinton is asking us to promote her to commander in chief.  In each of these cases, the existing power structure -- the N.F.L., the Catholic Church and the State Department attempted to whitewash the facts and tell a different tale.  Taken together, these films show that no institution is above challenge and we need always to view their narratives with an amount of skepticism.

Mrs. Clinton somewhat infamously proclaimed, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

When there is harm, it makes all the difference.

Why I Think Trump Can Win All the Marbles

Donald Trump has, I believe, moved from a curiosity piece-- viewed by many as a bombastic, unfiltered, blowhard-- to the front of the pack, and at the moment, has become the overall favorite to win the 2016 election.  Here's why:

• He puts America first.  After seven years of nonstop apologizing for America, from the Cairo speech to his denial of American exceptionalism, to his news conference in Malaysia where he said, "America has some work to do," Obama and his team have unloaded nonstop criticism at America.  "America is a nation of cowards," complained Eric Holder.  "Racism is in our DNA," proclaimed Obama.  Neither of those broadsides is true.  America is a nation of heroes, and entrepreneurship, independence and resourcefulness is in our DNA.  We need a leader that is willing to extol our virtues and be a cheerleader and advocate.  Our brand sells.  And sometimes we need our leaders to remind us about how good we have been and can be.  Trump starts with the slogan, "Make America Great Again as his starting point.   With the current officeholder, you sometimes wonder whose side he's on.  The image above is painful.  No American wants to see our sailors at gunpoint on their knees.  But John Kerry was not only ok with it, he thanked the mullahs for their prompt return of our sailors after parading them in this pose in their propaganda photos and videos.  Americans are tired of bowing.
• He bites back.  He is unafraid to take opponents head on.  When Hillary trotted Bill out to the campaign trail and simultaneously touted women's rights, he didn't hold back about Hillary's role in enabling Bill and destroying the women he preyed on.  When Cruz disparaged "New York values," he jumped on how New Yorkers responded to 9/11.  Trump is fearless when hitting back hard is necessary.  It's something Mitt Romney could never do.
• He is direct and truthful.  You might not like what he has to say, but he doesn't spend a lot of time clarifying his statements or walking them back.  People are tired of P.C., tiptoeing around issues, fear of offending this person or that.  In contrast, when asked about whether he would invade Iraq again (a question he had to know was coming), issued several clarifying statements after his initial answer.  I still don't know exactly what he said.  For better or worse, there is none of that with Trump.  When asked again about his proposal temporarily halt Muslim immigration to the U.S. after he was attacked by members of his own party, he simply refused.  He understands that we are tired of political correctness.  An anchor baby is an anchor baby.  Barring students from chanting "USA" (as Wisconsin sports authority just did) or barring professors from referring to America as "the land of opportunity" as the University of California did will not be well received in a Trump administration.
  
  
  But even worse has been the systematic peddling of untruths by the Obama administration.  From blaming Benghazi on a filmmaker, to claiming that ISIS is "contained," to asserting that "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor," to Obama's refusal to use the term "Radical Islam," Obama's crew has tried to sell obvious falsehoods.  And most voters are tired of it.  Trump at least appears to be able to give it to you straight up, and let it stand on its own merits.

• Islamic terror.  I'm not sure a complete bar to Muslim immigration, even temporarily, is the correct answer, but Trump is at least unafraid to confront the issue head on.  Obama has consistently downplayed the threat and made American security subordinate to political correctness.  His staff can't even use the term "radical Islam."  He labeled ISIS as the "J.V." and asserted that it was contained.  He told Christians to get off their "high horse" on religious violence.  He is bleeding out dangerous inmates from Gitmo.  He is willing to take on Syrian refugees even though our vetting process doesn't work and the assaults on women in Europe are rampant.  Women in Austria are being told not to go out at night.  Jews in France are being warned not to wear yamulkes. ISIS has told the world that they have infiltrated refugees.  Trump wants to at least press the "pause" button.  He will not be constrained by P.C. in dealing with this real and complex problem.
• He comes off as a little impulsive.  Our adversaries know that they can act with impunity with Obama.  Iran fires off missiles and there are no consequence.  Russia invades Crimea and tells us to butt out of Syria and there are no consequences.  China builds islands and there are no consequences.  North Korea tests...and nothing happens.  It is good to remember that Iran released our hostages as soon as Reagan took office.  North Vietnam invaded the South only after Nixon left office.  In both cases, they were a little afraid of what the consequences would be.  A little uncertainty in the minds of our enemies can be a good thing.
• He is an outsider.  The Republican Establishment is flummoxed by him.  Somehow, the losses of Eric Cantor and John Boehner and the poll numbers of Trump, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson haven't quite penetrated their minds.  The Republican Establishment is a losing horse.  Ronald Reagan proved that 35 years ago.  It is one of the reasons why Jeb Bush can't get any traction.  Hillary has more baggage than American Airlines and United Airlines combined could handle, but they only chance of beating her is outside the establishment.  That a missing persons report on Mitch McConnell appears to be ready to be filed should tell the RNC something.
• People are angry.  I like and respect Nikki Haley, but her gratuitous poke at Trump for being an "angry voice" evidences the tone deafness of the Republican party.  People are angry.  They are angry that their wages are shrinking.  They are angry about an overreaching, unaccountable government that encroaches in nearly every aspect of their lives.  They are angry over an America that is getting sand kicked in its face at every turn.  They are angry at being told they are bigots every time they express themselves.  They are angry  because they are struggling to feed their own families when we are letting other countries flood us with people that have to be supported with tax dollars.   Trump has figured out how to tap into that anger and frustration and responded to Nikki Haley in Trump style, "I accept the mantle of anger," he proclaimed.

This is not to say I am endorsing Trump.  I have lots of issues with him.  His animosity toward free trade is dangerous.  His bromance with Putin is misplaced.  His policies are devoid of details.  But I think I have to begin to come to terms with a possible Trump presidency.   

At least there will be no doubt as to whose side he's on.