The Melting Left

For over three decades, Garrison Keillor has opened his narrative of the fictitious town in Minnesota with, “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.”

Week one of the Trump Administration has been anything but.

Last week I wrote about the disconnect between women marching for freedom while at the same time donning hijabs.   I have come to conclude through the election and inauguration that the Left simply does not experience cognitive dissonance, and this deficiency runs  deep.  

Watching the Democrats react to Trump was like watching the scene from Star Wars when R2D2 was zapped, spinning it around with parts flying off of it and smoke coming out. 

It all looks bizarre and incongruous to the observer and makes you wonder what historians will be writing about 50 years hence.  This is a system that is convulsing and coughing up Bureaucratic Statism like a cat coughing up a hairball.

There was the dignified look of men running around in vagina costumes.   When that is your core constituency, you’ve got problems.

Then Keith Ellison tried to galvanize opposition to Trump by vowing to “take our country back.”  I’m old enough to remember being told that the phrase “take out country back” was deemed to be coded racism.

DNC chair candidate Sally Boynton Brown said that she wanted to “shut other white people down.”  I thought the Democratic Party was the party of inclusiveness.

Dan Rather, who lost his job at CBS over putting out a false story about George Bush was railing about “fake” news.

After a publicized dustup about transgendereds in latrines, transgendereds were complaining that they were excluded from the Women’s March.  Apparently, bathroom equality does not translate into protesting equality.

Chelsea Handler,  champion of immigrant rights, refused to interview Melania Trump because Melania “can barely speak English.”  Melania, it turns out, speaks 5 languages.

The limousine burned by the post-inaugural riots turned out to belong to a Muslim immigrant. Nice work, kids.

Barack Obama is reported to be on the cusp of a $20 million book advance.  Trivia question:  Which living president said, “After a certain point, you’ve made enough money?”

Trump appears to be following the Napoleonic dictum, “Never interfere with an enemy when he’s in the process of destroying himself.”  Trump is following a simple strategy:  Let the Left be eaten by its own internal contradictions like battery acid.

Nothing symbolizes the failure of Bureaucratic Statism like Michelle Obama’s school lunch program.  Like all liberal programs, it started with the best of intentions.  Who could be opposed to better nutrition for young people and less obesity?   In practice, Michelle’s program ended up like most government programs—coercive, uniform and wasteful.    The lunches were largely inedible and tasteless and were dumped by most of the kids.  Salad with kale paste dressing, anyone?  Yum.  They had a uniform prescribed number of calories, so student athletes received the same amount as the computer geek.  And as is the case when government gets too coercive, a black market erupts.  A nice little market for illicit cheetos, skittles and snickers developed.  The program will be dismantled by the new administration.

But the Left was not the only author of insanity this week.  The Trump Administration proved that it was also up to the task of illogic.  If the Cold War with Russia was re-kindled under Obama, Trump decided to start one with Mexico.  Yes, we have numerous issues with Mexico involving the flood of illegals and drugs over the border.  And, yes, it is probably time to re-visit and re-negotiate NAFTA, but the public display between Trump and Nieto was appalling and unnecessary. Nieto cancelled his planned visit to the U.S.  And the assertion of the Trump Administration that Mexico will pay for the wall via a 20% tax on imported Mexican goods is just plain false.  Anyone that stayed awake through Economics 101 knows that, depending on elasticity of demand for those goods, it will be American consumers that pay the tax, and will pay for the wall.  Trump knows this and knows better.  American companies have intricate supply chain relationships in Mexico.  While it is true that good fences make good neighbors, the rough treatment of Mexico is bad policy and bad relationship management. 

Finally, Charles Krauthammer (and others) have been critical of Trump’s “America First” posture.  America First is not altogether irrational, but Trump needs to soften it to let the world know that while his citizens are his first priority, it is not America Only.

Trump is the antidote to Obamunism.    While Obama reflexively ran around the globe expressing remorse and regret for America’s sins (most famously through his apology tour), Trump made it clear that he is reversing this view, “For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American Industry, subsidized the armies of other countries while depleting our own.  The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world.”

Trump is the anti-Obama.  While Obama viewed the developing world as victims that American imperialism exploited and bullied, Trump takes the view that Americans were the ones that were used and exploited.

But true adult relationships do not involve exploitation, but rather freely negotiated exchanges.

While it is tempting to be smug about the silly implosion of the Left, some of Trump’s world views are as simplistic and adolescent as Obama’s.  We need to grow up.... and fast.

Women on the March

As near as I can tell, the Women’s March was primarily organized and attended by women (and Pajama Boy inclined men) that favor Big Government.  And most astonishingly one of the organizers of the Washington D.C. event was a Muslim woman named  Linda Sarsour, who has ties to Hamas and is also bellyaching about the number of states that have passed or are in the process of passing laws forbidding Sharia law.  A fairly large number of women were wearing hijabs in “solidarity” with Muslim women. 

I’ve often commented that the Left preternaturally cannot experience cognitive dissonance.  To expect most leftists to do so is to expect a colorblind person to see red.  You can be angry and frustrated because they cannot, but it will do you no good, because they can’t.

But this weekend’s march really does top it all.  Yes, there were several instances of ridiculousness—Madonna, the original material girls railing against capitalism and with her trashy potty mouth railing on Trump, mostly because he has a potty mouth.  But we expect that from the Entertainment Elite, just as we  have come to accept Al Gore and Leonardo DeCaprio living in their giant mansions and  jetting around in their private jets complaining about everyone else’s carbon footprint, and the economic elite in Davos sipping fine wine and eating canapes and staying in the plushest hotels fretting about income inequality. 

But the incongruity of the weekend went beyond the pale.

As I have written before, I believe that words and symbols matter and matter greatly.  Last year, after the sick sociopath, Dylan Roof, killed those churchgoers in South Carolina, the country went into a veritable frenzy over the Confederate flag, demonizing it as a symbol of racial oppression. Nikki Haley made a big deal of taking it down from the state capital.  You couldn’t even buy a Civil War board game with a Confederate flag on the cover of the box.  I understand all that.  As someone of Lithuanian decent, I have the same visceral reaction to the hammer and sickle.

The hijab is in the same league.  It is a symbol of male oppression and subjugation of women.  France has banned it.  Ataturk banned it in Turkey.   It is dehumanizing, humiliating, confining and disempowering.

Yet it was prominent in many of the photos from the Women’s March.  In fact, Muslim women were teaching American women how to wear it.  And many proudly wore hijabs with stars and stripes.

How can this be?  How can an event devoted to the promotion of women’s rights and independence countenance and celebrate the hijab, the ultimate symbol of women’s oppression? I find this completely incongruous and demands an explanation.

The celebration of the hijab at this event takes on an even more bizarre twist when you consider the controversy surrounding U.S. Chess champion Nazi Paikidze.  Most of you have probably never heard of her.  Ms. Paikidze is a beautiful young chess prodigy and has been working with a professional coach since age 6.   To achieve her level of excellence, we know that she has not had a normal life.  She has undoubtedly sacrificed and worked tirelessly to be able to compete at this level.   

FIDE (the international chess association) in its infinite wisdom decided that the women’s world championships should be held in Tehran this year.  But Iran requires women to wear a hijab at all times.  Ms. Paikidze has taken a stand and has said that if she is forced to wear a hijab, she will boycott the tournament as she sees the hijab as a symbol of oppression.  Putting aside the boneheaded decision of FIDE to permit Tehran to host the tournament, we have heard almost nothing in the press about this.  None of the women at any of the women’s marches advocated for her or took her up as a representative of women’s oppression.  I doubt if any but a small fraction of the marchers has heard of this brave woman.  Consider for a moment the awesome personal sacrifice she is undertaking to make this statement.  She is an extremely talented and accomplished young woman.  She is giving up the fruits of years of exacting labor to fight oppression.  None, I repeat none, of the women this weekend can claim to sacrifice anything close to this to battle oppression.  Instead, the hijab pathologically became part of the women’s march this weekend.

It simply makes no sense for the hijab to be part of an event advocating women’s rights.  The hijab symbolizes just the opposite.  Ms. Paikidze understands that and is willing to make a huge personal sacrifice to drive that point home.  Donning the hijab at a women’s march  is precisely the opposite of what was symbolically done in the 60’s at these kinds of rallies--- bra burning.

So something else must be going on here.

Here is one counter-intuitive explanation.   A large number of the women that marched this weekend don’t want to advance women’s rights or freedoms at all.  Either consciously or subconsciously they want to put themselves in a position of being dependent.  

The other cause that they hew to consistently is Big Government.  Big Government doesn’t expand freedoms.  It takes them away.  It restricts them.  And it makes you dependent on it.  That the women at this march are simultaneously embracing Big Government and embracing the hijab says something about them.  These women would shriek at me and deny it, but I believe that a number of them, perhaps most that participated in the march, are not inclined to embrace their own empowerment at all but secretly have an affinity for dependence. 

It’s easier. You don’t have to make choices.  And making decisions is hard and uncertain.  

You see, the women that are achievers, the truly independent women, the women that value their freedom, abilities and self-respect reject dependence (including the dependence of Big Government) and symbols of oppression….like Ms. Paikidze.  They don’t embrace them.

Because independence and accountability ARE scary things.  You might not make it.  It’s hard.  You fail and fail often.  It’s exhausting.  Ayn Rand was always puzzled by her sister and held her in contempt because her sister liked Communism.  It turned out that her sister LIKED standing in line all day talking to her friends and waiting for her allotment of bread.  It was, to her, a fine way to spend one’s day. 

I called a woman last night that I admire greatly.  She is a business owner of a small business and has been through all the ups and downs of business ownership and has worked long and hard to make her business prosper and to provide a living for the families of her employees.  She has never married and has no man to fall back on—a quintessential independent woman.  I asked her if she had attended the women’s march.

Her flat answer, “NO!! I work.  I have a job.  I have no time for that.”

The achieving women are not out marching.  They are out doing.

When the women marchers and N.O.W. organize something to support Paikidze, I’ll be there.

Comings and Goings

Well, the torch has passed.  The Obama era has come to an end.  Obama closed out his tenure in Obama style,  taking inexplicably hard left ideological actions in the closing weeks of his presidency.  He refrained from using the U.S. veto at the anti-Israel  U.N. for the first time.  He ended the “wet foot, dry foot” preference for Cuban immigrants, thus ironically codifying  a type of Fugitive Slave Act toward freedom seeking Cubans.  Most egregiously, he commuted the prison sentences of FALN terrorist Oscar Lopez  Rivera and traitor Chelsea Manning.  The commutations were particularly galling because Manning and Rivera intended to inflict great harm to the United States and in another era would have seen a hangman’s noose or a firing squad.   I could have even understood the commutation of fellow Democrat Rod Blagojevich, as a favor for a fellow Democrat, but the commutations of Rivera and Manning were a finger in the eye of America, and their crimes were on the scale of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s.  Manning’s was an especially nasty affront.  I do not see what Obama gained from it, other than a simultaneous poke at the U.S. military and a genuflection to his LGBT supporters. 

Those actions were some goodbye kiss from Obama.

But Obama will quickly fade into history and yesterday Donald Trump was sworn in and delivered quite an inaugural address.  It is being amply covered by other pundits so I will briefly discuss what I liked and didn’t like about its message.

What I liked.

• ·         America First.  While it was somewhat extreme in its nationalism, he clearly contrasted himself with Obama, who fancied himself as a “citizen of the world.”  We are, and always have been, existing in a world of competing systems.   We hire a president to represent OUR interests and to show the world that American values—individualism, democracy, liberty, human rights, entrepreneurial, can-do spirit are a better way, not the Obamunism message of “whatever works.”    A CEO of an organization must promote the interests and values of that organization, whether it is a corporation, a university or a polity.  Trump understands that.  He was so nationalistic, that I commented, “Liberals wanted to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill, so we put him in the White House instead.   

• ·         Excoriating Washington.  His best line, “What truly matters is not which party controls the government, but whether our government is controlled by the people,”   He bashed Washington tor enriching itself while the rest of America suffered.  Indeed, following the mortgage crisis, the only districts to see gains in housing prices for a long time were in the D.C. area.  And the hottest job in America remains Chief Compliance Officer.  He made both Democrats and establishment Republican squirm throughout his remarks.  Although Trump nominally ran as a Republican, it is unclear which party will be the opposition party.

What I didn’t like.

• Liberty?    Absent from his speech were the words “liberty” or “Constitution.”  Obama rarely invoked the term “individual liberty” and repeatedly stretched the edges of our Constitutional form of government by governing with his pen and phone.  It astounded me that he somehow was able to get deals done with Castro and the mullahs in Iran but not his own countrymen in the opposition party.   I wanted to hear from Trump how he will return the nation to one that values individual liberty above all.  I wanted to hear how the Constitution is a sacred document.  I did not hear that.
  
•  Extreme protectionism.  Trump raises some valid points on trade, especially with China.  China has abused us for years.  The Chinese hacked OPM.  They have begun to militarize the South China Sea.  They have enabled North Korea.  They have manipulated their currency.  They routinely steal our intellectual property.  They cheat on trading deals by shipping through other nations.  And yet they want to keep selling us stuff and have access to our markets while denying us the same.  Trump is entirely correct that our entire relationship with China needs to be re-evaluated.   Yet I was supportive of TPP (even Hillary walked from it).   Automation represents a greater threat to manufacturing jobs than foreign competition.  More jobs are being created “behind the glass” that require computer and other technical skills.  The reality is that China has “stolen” a lot of bad jobs.  Both Trump and Obama (and Bush) fail to address the harder issue—our  K-12 public education system that has failed to educate and provide skills for a 21^st century workforce.  Our community college system also needs to be strengthened and supported.   This means confronting unions, providing choices, and thinking innovatively and longer term.  Browbeating, trade wars, and punitive tariffs are not the path to wealth creation any more than excessive taxes and regulation have been.

 So my assessment of Trump is (and has been) mixed.  Some things I cheer.  Some make me swell with pride.  Some make me cringe.  But it’s clear that a large portion of the American electorate believe we need a break with the status quo.  Trump is that.

                                                        

Meet the New Boss

As inauguration day approaches, much is being said and written about our divided country, and the fissures have qualitatively and quantitatively widened over the past decade.   The vitriol seems to be getting worse over time and this is the first time in my memory that people protested after the election results were in.  Generally, the American way of protesting is THROUGH the ballot box.   There are lots of explanations for our political divide—gerrymandered “safe” districts, social media that excludes conversations with people that have opposing views, the news media transformation into advocacy rather than reporting.  Finally, there is an economic explanation.  People of radically different classes, cultures, races and religion get along better when everyone is relatively prosperous and our economy has not delivered.

What can we do about this?  I have a one proposed partial answer.  Stop bullying—of all kinds.  The trouble with bullying is that bullying begets bullying.

In America, the political Left has become very adept at bullying in all its forms.  Bullying takes on various forms, through words and actions.   Sometimes bullying is explicit.  Sometimes it’s explicit.  It is coercive, and not borne out of a voluntary exchange.  It is most often accompanied by a threat and is marked by mocking, disparagement and name calling.  Social media has made it much worse---it’s an easy way to publicly bully someone and show public scorn without much repercussion. 

• ·     Barack Obama.   Barack Obama is a bully par excellence.   He has successfully employed bullying tactics throughout his eight years as president.   Because he rarely raises his voice or displays emotion, on the surface it doesn’t look like bullying, but it is bullying nonetheless.  How do we know?  He employs the language of bullying often.  “I have a pen and a phone,” is perhaps his most infamous quote.  Quotes like “If they bring a knife, we bring a gun,”and “I want you to get in their face,” is not the language of negotiation, middle ground and consensus, but of bullying. Much of his administration has involved bullying—imposing his will through executive orders and regulatory agencies rather than through negotiation and agreement.  His most egregious acts of bullying have come through the regulatory agencies.  Using operation Choke Point, he directed the bank leaned on bank regulators to come down hard on banks that loaned money to industries that were out of favor with him.  Rather than let the market decide what it wanted, the Obama administration targeted certain industries for harassment or extermination—coal, Payday lenders, electronic cigarettes to name a few.  Without legislating, without consensus, without even a hearing, he was able to punish certain industries and they have little recourse but to knuckle under.  That’s bullying. Barack Obama may be one of the most skilled bullies in our time.  He does it with panache and flair, but he doesn’t intend for this to be an exchange.  Obama has used the language and tactics of bullying often, and like an expert bully, mostly through surrogates.
  
•  Academia.   Academia has become a fertile ground for bullying.  Rather than an environment that fosters the free exchange of ideas that are respectfully heard, American universities have been transformed into factories of indoctrination of ideas of the Left.   Opposing thought or contrary ideas are routinely shouted down or otherwise ridiculed or marginalized.  The poster child for this was Asra Nomani, a Muslim and a former Georgetown (a Catholic institution) professor that supported Trump.  She was savaged in social media by C. Christine Fair who compared Trump to Adolph Hitler, called Nomani various names, including a “slut,” and so far there have been no consequences.   Various conservative speakers such as Condi Rice, Milo Yiannopolis, Ben Shapiro and David Horowitz have been shouted down and heckled.  Even at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, Sean Spicer was heckled by students.   Not allowing another voice to be heard by an implicit threat of violence or shouting down is bullying, pure and simple.
  
•  Disrupters— Bullies of the disruptive type are straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.  Their goal is to disrupt day to day activities or to attempt to provoke a confrontation.  Black Lives Matter is very adept at this.   They don’t simply protest.  They distrupt and stand nose to nose with law enforcement officers to try to get them to throw the first punch.   An activist group at the University of Chicago employed this very successfully.  They disrupted numerous events—graduations, lectures, conferences, and reunions to attempt to persuade the university to build, underwrite and support a trauma center at the hospital.  This activist group did not turn to wealthy donors or otherwise turn to political representatives or otherwise show any initiative in that regard.  Instead they continued to bully, terrorize and disrupt day to day university activities tirelessly until they got their way.  It worked.  The university buckled.  They got their trauma center through gangster tactics worthy of the mob in NY in the 1960’s.
  
•  Entertainment--Entertainment is yet another, more subtle vehicle for bullies.  Although not as effective or threatening as the other forms, entertainers have begun to use this method with some regularity.  Mike Pence was subject to this form when he attended Hamilton.  He was subjected to derision by the crowd and an unwelcome lecture by one of the cast members. Colin Kaepernick has done the same by drawing attention to himself and making a public spectacle of kneeling during the national anthem.  Meryl Streep politically vomited at the Golden Globe Awards.  I had my own experience at a Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert in which I was subjected to left wing political rants disguised as song.   These events are all a form of bullying.  If you have attended an event in person, you have paid for a ticket.  You are in your chair.  You are captive.  You are powerless to mount a counterargument.   You have signed up for entertainment and instead you get a commercial and lectured.  Your only choices are to sit and listen to the rant or leave.  Of course those inflicting this form of bullying on you wrap themselves in a free speech argument. But the show, lecture or concert is neither the time nor the place for a lecture.  They are stealing time from you and forcing you to listen to their preaching, frequently when you have paid for something else.  It is bullying and abusive. 

The Left has gotten so very expert and proficient at this, that you don’t even know you’re being bullied much of the time.   So now along comes Donald Trump.  Middle America grew so tired of being bullied and coerced that it went out and hired its own counter-bully.  Trump is a reputed counterpuncher that has the ability to bully right back and in a very blunt and coarse way.  Jim Acosta recently felt the sting as he attempted to bully Donald Trump at Trump’s press conference this week and Trump showed that he is not going to genuflect to the MSM in the way that other Republicans have in the past.

But we are a democratic republic.   If we are to come together as a people, the bullying must stop. 

Sadly, Trump so far looks like someone that may not improve this state of affairs.  Even before coming into office, his attempt to secure greater manufacturing employment in the U.S., laudable as it is, has relied primarily on threats and coercion.   He has threatened companies with a punitive tariff if they move operations abroad.  He made implicit threats to Boeing over Air Force One and Lockheed over the F-35 to get price reductions.  The correct position is to create a favorable tax and regulatory environment and a skilled and educated workforce that makes these companies WANT to stay. But if Trump engages in bullying (rather than counterpunching), he will be no better than Obama, and his thin mandate (to the extent he has one) will flame out quickly.  It’s one thing to hit back--as he did with Jim Acosta and Meryl Streep. It’s yet another to issue threats to people and companies.

For companies and individuals who run them, threatening them with a regulator or with taxes or by publicly shaming them into submission are just different tactics used to bully them into certain behaviors.  If Trump continues to do this, corporate America will be humming Won’t Get Fooled Again, “Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.”

First lady elect Melania Trump has picked cyberbullying as her cause.  Perhaps she should broaden her push and lobby against bullying generally.  If we want to unify as a nation, bullying of all types needs to be tamped down.  She will be doing this country a great service if she whispers that into her husband’s ear each night.

Predictions

I received a number of text, email and messages through social media on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.   I noticed a decidedly upbeat tone in most of them this year.   Despite a bruising election that left an electorate bitterly divided, sometimes within families, I noted an enthusiasm and spirit that had been absent for a long time.  Most said, “2017 is gonna be great!” or something similar.

I usually shun making predictions.  And when I do make them, I usually hedge or couch them in terms of probabilities.  I made one prediction last year.  Back in January, I set out all the reasons I thought Trump COULD win it all, but I had great doubts over whether he would prevail over the Clinton machine, allied with academia, the mainstream media and Hollywood.  Paul Krugman has no such reservations, and declared the market would “never recover” from a Trump presidency (up 10% so far).  I, on the other hand, subscribe to the Yogi Berra view of forecasting, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Nonetheless, I will make two and only two for 2017.

First, the day to day lives of most Americans will improve on most dimensions and African Americans will experience the largest gains.  Second,  a serious international crisis will flare early in the year. 

Despite the low unemployment rate and the nominally expanding GDP, there has been a pall hanging over the country during the Obama administration.  What is that pall?  Why aren’t we feeling better?  It is the pall of big government and the inability of liberals to experience cognitive dissonance.  None other than Barack Obama personifies this lack of ability to experience or feel cognitive than Barack Obama, who famously chirped, “ISIS is contained,” the day before the attacks on Paris.  Fittingly, he has chosen Chicago, and the South Side locale of McCormick Place to deliver his farewell address, presumably to puff his chest and sing about all of his policy accomplishments, a 3 minute Uber ride from the most dangerous territory outside Mosul. 

Heather MacDonald has written and spoken extensively  on the Obama administration’s War on Police, and his campaign to restrain law enforcement has borne fruit in Chicago.  762 murders—up 56% over last year’s total of 480.  Just as telling, arrests are down 28%.  4,331 people were shot, including a young athlete from C.V.S. shot several times on his front porch, who, miraculously lived and is returning to play basketball.  

Obama has avoided the South Side and has been completely silent about the bloodbath in the city that gave him his political birth.   Yet, the nation’s first African American president returns triumphantly to Chicago—the bluest city in the bluest county in a deep blue state, where African Americans are being slaughtered by the dozens every week—11 on Christmas alone. You would have thought the shooting deaths of young blacks like beautiful aspiring young model Kaylyn Pryor (killed in a drive by and pictured above) or the grandson of longtime Congressman Danny Davis would have spurred Obama to action---some bold, innovative proposal.    But Obama rarely visited the South Side, hardly mentioned it throughout his two terms, and responded only by embracing Black Lives Matter and proposing gun control measures that would have done nothing to stanch the bleeding.  Obama took to the podium for street thug Michael Brown but not for Kaylyn Pryor.

Besides the violence, Chicago has a failed school system and the state of Illinois is bleeding both cash and people.  Democrats, led by Mike Madigan, have fought tooth and nail against any sensible fiscal reforms proposed by Republican Governer Rauner.  As 2017 dawns, Illinois has $11 billion in unpaid bills. High earners—including professional and working class blacks—are fleeing the state.

Obama couldn’t have chosen a more inappropriate place to talk about his policy achievements.  Illinois and Chicago are about as close to failed states as you can get in the U.S.   I guarantee that President Obama’s address will not answer the question that Reagan famously asked in 1980, and should be asked, especially by African Americans in Chicago, “Are you better off now than you were eight years ago?”

Second, there will be a serious international crisis in 2017.   There are just too many potential hotspots for it not to happen.  After eight years of the inmates running the asylum, pushing the U.S. around at every turn with no reaction from the Obama administration, at least bad actors across the globe will test Trump’s meddle to see what he is made of. Over the past few years we had China hack the OPM and build a military base in the South China Sea.  Russia invaded Crimea, established itself as the predominate power in the Middle East, buzzed our planes, and possibly tried to influence our election (Obama initial response, “Cut it out!”).   Iran seized our sailors, held them at gunpoint and squeezed $400 million in cash from the U.S., and provoked our warships with speedboats.  North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb and appears to be on the brink of testing an ICBM.  ISIS has shown an ability to project or inspire violence into Europe with some regularity and it is not beyond the boundaries of imagination that they can inflict casualties here too.

The Obama administration inflicted an enormous amount of damage to U.S. global leadership and stability.

1

• The unenforced “red line” in Syria was the most detrimental and grievous mistake.   Every grade school teacher knows the consequences of empty threats.  Every rival and bad actor across the globe saw this and took note.
•  Eliminating two theater war capacity.  Until 2012, the Pentagon had a two-war strategy, meaning we retained the capability to fight in two different major theaters simultaneously.  Obama called a halt to this doctrine.  Now, if we are required to repel a Russian incursion into the Baltics, we are exposed if North Korea invades the South or if China attacks Taiwan.
•  Leading from behind.   This is the most nonsensical concept since Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.
  
•  Unilateral concessions.  Obama made a series of unilateral concessions tied to receiving nothing in return.  He gave up installing missile defense in the Czech Republic and Poland simply because Russia squawked.  He gave Cuba diplomatic recognition and received nothing for it.  And he chased Iran around like a love struck schoolgirl, gave them cash, and their behavior hasn’t changed even a smidgen.
•  Abandoning friends – Obama snubbed the solidarity walk after the terror attacks in Europe,  abruptly told the Poles and Czechs that we were abandoning missile defense on their soil and as Obama was exiting, kicked the Israelis in the shins by withholding our veto at the U.N. after making the statement that “we have your backs.”

There will be a huge price to pay for these egregious errors.  Taken together,  these positions have signaled to the world that the U.S. does not wish to defend its interests or the interests of its allies with much vigor.  These totalitarian states and nonstate actors have not paid a price for aggression and defiance of international norms of behavior.  There is no shortage of bad actors that will be willing to test the boundaries of President Trump, to learn if he is just a bag of wind or whether he has the stomach to back up what he says.  I predict that that test will come soon and will most likely come from North Korea or possibly an incursion into the Baltics by Russia.

2017 arrives with a great deal of uncertainty and only the brave will make many predictions, but on balance, I think 2017 will be a good year.   And if the only progress we make is to have fewer senseless deaths of young people like Kaylyn, I'm ok with that.

2016-- A Year of Discontinuity

If there is one word that summarizes 2016, it’s discontinuity and rejection of political correctness.  It was a year in which the most improbable became reality.  Great Britain voted itself out of the EU Club, a nonpolitician won the U.S. presidency, and the Cubs won the World Series.   The odds against all three occurring were long indeed.

Politics

The world order and, indeed, traditional political alignments in the entire Western world are being reordered in the most significant way since the end of WWII.  In both Great Britain and the United States, the political system voiced dissatisfaction and voted with their feet.    Great Britain voted to affirm its sovereignty and exit the EU.  In America, voters rejected both the Democratic Party and the Republican Establishment and elected a populist that defied both.   As the sun sets on the Obama administration, it is unclear exactly where all this will end, but it’s clear that voters were willing to gamble on a change.   Who would have thought that a Republican that asserted that Bush lied, was protectionist and advocated a $1 trillion infrastructure spending package could not only get the nomination but defeat an incumbent party in the midst of an economic recovery with unemployment below 5% and who was solidly backed by the MSM?  For the second time, Hillary Clinton failed to defeat an opponent with NO executive experience.   This time, she failed to defeat an opponent that didn’t even have the solid backing of his party.   I assert that Trump and Brexit are two sides of the same coin.  Both represent a desire to push back against a faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy and a desire to reassert nationhood.  Both Great Britain and the United States have a great national identity and culture and a belief that they hold special place in the world.   A nation is composed  of three basic pillars:  language, culture and borders.   The Brits saw the EU attempting to erode those pillars and Barack Obama and the liberals tried the same here in various ways.    An aspect of this reassertion is the Muslim refugee problem.  As Americans and Brits saw Muslim refugees overwhelm Europe and the ever present threat of Islamic terrorism (which both Angela Merkel and Barack Obama downplayed), voters called a time out.  Trump and Brexit were also reactions to an increasingly undemocratic political process where decisions were being imposed more and more without the consent of the governed (Obama with his pen and phone and regulatory agencies; the EU Commission).  Voters decided that they had had enough.  The consequences of both are hard to ascertain, but they mean change.

Economy

While the economy continued to grow and finally kicked up past 3% for the first time in Obama’s tenure as a result of revised figures.  This recovery is seven years old and one of the longest on record, yet it’s hard to find many people that think of this period as salad days.  Most Americans have lost ground during this expansion.  Increased taxes and health insurance costs suffocated many families financially.  Many industries are drowning in regulations.  Many businesspeople I talk to liken this era as “like trying to swim in peanut butter,” and conversely, one businessperson said of Trump’s election, “I feel like somebody took a plastic bag off my head—for the first time I feel like I can breathe.”  Hillary Clinton promised more of the same—more regulations, higher taxes, and much bigger estate tax, and because of the pressure put on by Bernie Sanders, gave up on free trade.   And despite Paul Krugman’s dire warnings that the stock market “may never recover,” the market has boomed since the election, despite an increase in interest rates.   

Trump is considering appointing Larry Kudlow, an old Reaganite to the post of Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.  That would be a real plus.  Kudlow understands the incentives created and distorted by excessive taxation and regulation and could be a real force in getting Trump to moderate his protectionist inclinations.  Despite the accelerating growth, our economy has some real headwinds—the damage done by the ACA and other regulations as under Dodd Frank, rising interest rates, a strong dollar, low productivity, an aging workforce, student debt,  $10 trillion in debt and low household formation and labor participation rates.  Layered on top is a dysfunctional, bloated government that needs to go on a diet.   So far, Trump’s appointees have been solid, but Trump’s protectionism and his bullying tactics (as with Carrier) remain wild cards.

Foreign Affairs

Nowhere has the toxic blend of Obama’s narcissism and naivete become more dangerous and dreadful than on the foreign stage.  Just a few days before Christmas, Obama was still complaining about slavery and colonialism as if remedying those ills should be a priority guidepost for today’s foreign policy.  His worldview of Western Civilization as an evil to be contained has turned the world completely upside down and we now have a foreign policy that embraces and does deals with sworn enemies like Cuba and Iran and kicks longtime allies like Israel.  Instead of being the lantern of liberty in the world, the Obama foreign policy apparatus has cozied up to antidemocratic regimes that have been hostile to “Western Imperialism.”   Obama has been silent on the world’s great humanitarian crisis—the collapse of Venezuela---largely, I believe, because Venezuela represents the logical endpoint of socialism. Perhaps my greatest contempt is reserved for U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power.  I read her entire treatise:  A Problem from Hell- America in the Age of Genocide in which she took the U.S. to task for not acting sooner as the genocides in places like Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina unfolded.  Yet she has been nearly silent as ISIS perpetrated its genocide against Christians in the Middle East and Putin and Assad teamed up to wreak havoc in Syria, causing a humanitarian crisis not only in the Middle East but Europe which directly led to Brexit.   Power’s shameful tenure at the U.N. was capped off by the abstention of the U.S. vote that censured Israel.   With any luck, Samantha Power will soon be teaching political science at some inconsequential liberal arts college where the harm she inflicts on humanity will be minimized.   It will take the rest of my lifetime to reverse out some of the damage done to Western Civilization by the Obama administration.

Film.

There have been some interesting films this year and I admit there are some that I have yet to see.  But my favorite film is Manchester by the Sea.  Its authenticity is gripping.  Its drama, vivid but not overdone.   A close runner up was Moonlight—raw and intense, a film that tracks a boy growing up in the Miami ghetto, coming to terms with his identity.  Moonlight was an emotionally tough film, but one of the best of the year.   After dining on the Downton Abbey series for awhile, it was quite a change of pace to see films centered on working class whites and urban blacks---people with REAL problems to deal with.

Music

2016 was marked by losses rather than gains in 2016.  We lost some big names in 2016—Leonard Cohen, Prince and David Bowie and just a few days ago, George Michael.   My favorite live concert of the year was the performance done by the tribute band that does the season ending concert at Ravinia in Highland Park. In past years they have done the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.  This year was a tribute to David Bowie, which was wonderful on a warm September night.  They did all of his best songs—Space Oddity, Suffragette City,  Let’s Dance,  Young Americans, and Heroes.  It was a great event to recognize the talents of one of rock’s greatest innovators.   Another giant in music was recognized in 2016.  Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.   While the award stirred up some controversy, I was supportive of it.   Dylan stood as a giant in the music world for decades and his was delighted to see him get the award even if the Nobel Committee had to stretch to get it to him.

Sports

In sports, obviously, the big story was the Cubs.  They broke their 108 year drought in Cubs style by scaring the hell out of us as they gave up a 6-3 lead, only to win it in 10 innings.  Although nominally a Sox fan, I was pleased as punch to see the lovable losers finally do it.  Now, I have lived to see all the major sports teams in Chicago win a championship in my lifetime—Bulls, White Sox, Bears, Blackhawks and the Cubs.  The most fun championship was the ’85 Bears—lots of personality and swagger-- and from the looks of things, Chicago may not see another Super Bowl champion in my lifetime.

Still, the Cubs victory was sweet and they should be competitive for years to come.

Books

There have been so many good books out this year…and so many that I haven’t yet gotten a chance to read.   But the two that I thought were can’t miss were Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance and The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver.

In the nonfiction category, I thought Hillbilly Elegy was masterful.  Sincere, honest and without pretense, J.D. Vance turns the concept of “white privilege” on its head with his memoir of growing up working class white of Appalachian heritage.   I reviewed the book in my September 19 post, so I refer the reader to that post for more commentary, but I loved this book.

In the fiction category, I liked the The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver a great deal.  The book chronicles a family of at least some means that is trying to cope with a Venezuela-type collapse of the United States.  It is laced with humor, but its dystopian future has become all too realistic as U.S. debt rises, our economy seems to be stuck in neutral and spending seems out of control.   Shriver is a talented writer whose prior work, We Need to Talk About Kevin also received accolades.  Interestingly, Shriver found herself in the midst of a controversy as there appears to be a movement among writers of minority status to assert that nonminorities cannot and should not write their point of view in a novel with authenticity.  Shriver pushed back hard and responded, “Otherwise, all I could write about would be smart-alecky 59 year old, 5 foot- 2 inch white women from North Carolina.”

Good for you, Lionel.

Words and Phrases

It’s official.  Despite riots, threats, and recounts, the Electoral College cast its vote and Donald Trump will be our next president.  And he will have a Republican House and Senate.  How did this happen?

We know how powerful images can be and that they can shape public opinion and foreign policy decisions.  For instance, nothing captures the Vietnam War more than the iconic image of the naked girl running down the road fleeing as her village was being napalmed or the image of police chief general Nguyen Ngoc Loan just as he pulls the trigger and executes a Viet Cong prisoner at point blank range. But words and phrases can carry just as much power and be just as lasting as visual imagery.  They can  be just as determinative of political outcomes and how policies and results are perceived. 

Democrats are still in various stages of grief.   If you follow the 5 stages of grief set out by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross several decades ago, their reactions will be familiar to you.  It started out with anger as evidenced by the rioting in places like Portland and it has moved on to denial and sometimes bargaining.  They are blaming the Electoral College, Richard Comey,  the Russians, and as of late last week, Obama was blaming unfair media coverage of Hillary (cough, cough).   The Democrats had deep advantages.  The economy was putatively in recovery.  Nominal unemployment was below 5%.  Barack Obama’s approval rating was still above 50%.  Clinton had raised a lot of money and had 104 electoral votes in the bag (NY, CA and IL).  She was running against a candidate with very high negatives.  The MSM was in her corner, and Wikileaks demonstrated that the media actually collaborated with the Democrats on several occasions.  Much of the conservative base was at least wary of Trump, and most real conservatives eschewed him.  Yet, Democrats managed to squander all those advantages.

I believe it is the power of words and phrases that were used by the Obama administration that had a tremendous impact on the electorate.  I have faith that the American people are able to connect up the words and phrases with reality as they perceive it, and reconcile them with reality. 

Rather than do a traditional summary and evaluation of the Obama years, I thought it would be more appropriate to pick out the words and phrases that Obama (or his underlings) used that I believe were deadly to the Democrats.  Some of these may be more memorable than others, but they hold important clues as to why the Democrats lost the White House, failed to take the Senate, the House, and have control of only 15 state legislatures.

Here are the top 6 that I thought ultimately cost the Democrats control of the government.

11.      “…they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”  This Obama quote early in his administration had a lot packed in one phrase and was a most concise attack on small town, traditional middle America.  Obama in a single phrase was able to level an attack on the 2^nd Amendment, the 1^st Amendment (freedom of religion), and categorized middle America as embittered and bigoted.  It was the precursor to the “Basket of Deplorables” and reinforced by  Hillary Clinton during the campaign.   Its message is that if you disagree with us, and have different values than we are espousing, you are a backwards throwback.   It reflected a sneering contemptuous attitude toward people that adhered to some basic tenets of life:  marrying someone of the opposite sex, staying married, going to church every Sunday raising your kids and wanting a job that pays a fair wage.  There doesn’t seem to be anything controversial about those things.  Worse, Obama jumps to the conclusion that these people are bigoted and intolerant.  No surprise then when middle America  decided that the Democratic party—traditionally the workingman’s party—had no room for them.

22.       “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”
This catchphrase was used time and time again to peddle the Affordable Care Act.   It turned out to be horrendously false as the ACA unraveled, with insurance companies pulling out of exchanges, signups of young people way below projection and premiums soaring and deductibles skyrocketing.   Millions were forced to give up the networks they liked and the doctors they were comfortable with.  They phrase became a national joke.  It turned less than funny for Democrats on election day as premium notices went out just before the election.   The sticker shock for working people undoubtedly was a major factor in the election results.

33.       “ISIS is the J.V.,”   “ISIS is not Islamic,” “ISIS is contained.”
Every high school football and basketball coach in the country knows that it is folly to underestimate an adversary.  True, ISIS doesn’t represent an existential threat the way that the Soviet Union did (or Russia does now), but time and time again, ISIS proved to be resilient and capable of directly or indirectly committing heinous attacks and atrocities.  As Joshua Cooper  Ramo noted in his book  “The Seventh Sense,” ISIS was able to capitalize on the power of networks to wreak havoc.   Obama’s contention that ISIS is not Islamic has been countered by many commentators, most notably by Graeme Wood in his  March 2015 piece in the Atlantic, “What ISIS Really Wants.”  The failure of Obama’s ISIS strategy was irrefutably laid bare when he confidently announced that “ISIS is contained” the day before the Paris terrorist attack last fall.  Even an uneducated plebe from Wisconsin knew then and there that Obama had gotten the ISIS strategy terribly wrong.

44.       Leading from Behind.
      Leading from behind was the pithy little phrase probably designed to differentiate Democratic foreign policy from the Bush policy that led the invasion of Iraq.  I’m not sure they thought about it, but it sounded much like the counter to the pro-American swashbuckling George Patton quote, “Lead me, follow me, or get out of the way.”  This was defense by consensus but most people know that the wisdom of Yoda still prevails, “Either Do or Do Not.”   After carping at Bush for years over Iraq, Obama and Clinton did EXACTLY the same thing in Libya.  To be sure, they did it on the cheap, but they deposed a secular tyrant without a plan and created a culture dish for ISIS in Libya.  And the ultimate consequence was to lose 4 American lives including Ambassador Stevens at Benghazi.  America cannot lead from behind.  It need to lead.  Period.  There is no other nation willing or capable.  Aleppo is what happens when America hands that responsibility to another nation.

55.       Basket of Deplorables. 
This was the nail in the coffin of the Democrats.  Their contempt and misjudgment over the electorate was on full display with the use of this phrase by Hillary.  Many voters were uncomfortable with  Donald Trump, yet recoiled at being labeled “deplorable” because they dared to differ with Democrats on such issues as the size of government, America’s role in the world, or marriage equality.  Trump seized on the phrase immediately and had an image from Les Miserables as a backdrop for his campaign with the words “Les Deplorables” across it.  It was a fatal error for Clinton.

66.       I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.  This phrase belied Obama’s contempt for the legislative process and his desire to issue edicts like any Latin American  tin pot dictator.  Obama acted as if Congress had spontaneously sprouted up instead of being elected by the people.  However obstinate and obstructionist he may thought them to be, they were the duly elected representatives of the people and he had to deal with them.  But he chose not to and simply issued executive orders whenever and wherever he could, and courts rebuked him often and on important matters such as environmental laws, immigration enforcement and NLRB appointments.  Even more galling was the fact that he negotiated a deal with Iran (arguably a treaty subject to Senate approval, yet could not reach deals with his own countrymen.  Even the liberal leaning New York Times ran a front page article expressing discomfort with Obama’s growing comfort in circumventing Congress and ruling by decree. 

There were other runner ups: 

 “Christians shouldn’t get on their high horse over Islamic extremism” (Barack Obama) 
As if events a millennium ago have any bearing on the current problem of Islamic terrorism.

“We can’t kill our way out of this problem.  We need to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs..”  (Marie Harf)
The much derided sorority sister of foreign policy set forth her infamous ‘jobs for jihadis’ position.  She was ridiculed so heavily for this remark, she disappeared from public view within weeks and has not been heard from since.

 “The most effective way to combat terrorism is with love.” (Loretta Lynch)
ISIS leaders and Hezbollah are still giggling about this one.

“I do think, at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” (Barack Obama)
Another swipe at capitalism and free markets.  The alternative is to hand it over to government, right?

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.” (Barack Obama)
This was an echo of a comment by Elizabeth Warren.  Every entrepreneur in the country that worked 18 hour days turned purple with rage over this one. 

“I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” (Barack Obama)
Apparently, he believes this regardless of how hard you work or how much risk you are willing to take.

 “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”  And  “The Cambridge police acted stupidly.” (Barack Obama)
These were the lead-ins to the war on police that lead to the spike in deaths of police officers, including the assassination of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge.  Obama’s willingness to jump to conclusions about the nation’s law enforcement officers and subsequent “soft strike” has lead to the spike in officer deaths and violent crime in urban areas that has been trending down for decades.

“We’re going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.” (Hillary Clinton) 
Hillary’s willingness to sweep working people aside in her zeal to have a government directed economy proved costly to the Democrats.

“Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” (Hillary Clinton)
This is the corollary to the “you didn’t build that” comment.

“He [Bowie Bergdahl] served with honor and distinction.” (Susan Rice)
This was shown to be patently false as Obama sought to justify his trade of Gitmo prisoners for this deserter. Bergdahl will be court-martialed. This comment along with her assertion that the filmmaker was responsible for the attacks on Benghazi assures us that Rice will finish out her ignominious career as an obscure lecturer at some left leaning university. 

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” (Barack Obama)
This was asserted in his Cairo speech, the most important of Obama’s apology tour.  The problem with this statement is that it lays the foundation for making blasphemy and “hate speech” a crime.  The Netherlands just did exactly that by prosecuting Geert Wilders.  America holds nothing sacred.   We thought “The Life of Brian” was hilarious.  “The Book of Mormon” sold out.   We poke fun at televangelists.   “Old Jews Telling Jokes” is having a great run.  Islam doesn’t get a special exemption from the First Amendment.

More than the Electoral College, the FBI investigation into Hillary’s server, fake news, the leaked emails by Wikileaks, or any of the other assorted excuses for their losses at the ballot boxes, these words and phrases resonated with people as much as images and the electorate understood that they were either falsehoods or inconsistent with their values and beliefs.  If you read all of these statements, you can see why Democrats have a lot of work to do.