Category Archives: The Nation

A few words regarding this Venezuela thing…

Hey! Whatever happened to U.S. determination to deal with THIS guy?

Last week, I referred to my recent lack of interest in the sort of news that used to fascinate me, and as an example mentioned my unsettling (to me) failure to keep up with what the U.S. was doing in and near Venezuela.

And then, BANG! My eldest granddaughter woke me on Saturday morning with a text that asked me to call her because “I don’t understand what happened in Venezuela.”

I took it something new had happened there overnight, and I was able to confirm that immediately. But if I was to explain it, I had to do a bit of scrambling. Knowing how good The New York Times is (or at least has been in the past) at providing overall perspective on events and the background behind them, I looked there. Unfortunately, I encountered one of those “live update” stories, which provide no easily accessible perspective at all.

So I turned to the editorial page, and found what I needed in this lengthy editorial the board had put together while I was sleeping. “Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise.”

It’s a pretty good piece, especially for something thrown together quickly. But it has its flaws. For instance, it asserts that “If there is an overriding lesson of American foreign affairs in the past century, however, it is that attempting to oust even the most deplorable regime can make matters worse.”

Well, yes, it can. But that doesn’t mean it must, as so many in our country — on the left and the right — now believe. Many of you believe it. So the NYT has used a convenient post-Vietnam lever here — We know intervention is always a bad idea! — as an easy device to persuade us that this foray into another country is a bad idea as well.

Which really doesn’t explain what’s wrong with this latest action. In making its easy point, the board of course mentions Afghanistan. As though it was a similar situation. It was not. As the Times and a huge proportion of America seem to have forgotten, we had an ironclad reason to go into Afghanistan — we needed to make sure it would never again be a haven for Al Qaeda. You know, that group that had just deliberately murdered almost three thousand Americans in their own country.

We’ll discuss later, if you wish, what happened later. The point here is that Venezuela does not in any way offer such a justification. Mumbling about “narcoterrorists” and the like does not constitute a viable explanation. Nor does mention of the Monroe Doctrine. I wonder who told him about the Monroe Doctrine? Well, no matter. The fact is, it doesn’t apply.

But on the whole, the NYT piece did a good job of explaining the situation, and condemning this unwarranted action by Mr. Look-at-me-now-I’m-suddenly-a-neocon.

To appreciate how good the piece was, you have only to look at the mad raving that was published in The Washington Post under the headline — and I’m not making this up — “Justice in Venezuela.”

The Post, which was once a great newspaper, seems unable to see past the happy fact that Nicolás Maduro is now out of power. And it is a happy fact, as the NYT acknowledges:

Few people will feel any sympathy for Mr. Maduro. He is undemocratic and repressive, and has destabilized the Western Hemisphere in recent years. The United Nations recently issued a report detailing more than a decade of killings, torture, sexual violence and arbitrary detention by henchmen against his political opponents. He stole Venezuela’s presidential election in 2024. He has fueled economic and political disruption throughout the region by instigating an exodus of nearly eight million migrants…

But that’s not the point. The thing is, if the man in the ruins of the White House is in a mood to pull on his big-boy pants and throw his nation’s weight around, there are more urgent needs in this world.

You want to take bold action? International priorities indicate the place to demonstrate your strength and determination would be Ukraine, or the Near East. But no, not the same kind of action. No, no, no, no, no.

Since the adversary in Ukraine possesses — you may have heard about this — nuclear weapons, a far more subtle approach is called for. Something like what we saw the Biden administration doing — exercising soft power where we could, and gradually beefing up Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. This was working,, before an off-and-on Putin admirer took over.

Or you could concentrate your efforts on trying to sort out the mess in the Mideast. Don’t expect overnight success, but we need to continue to try — as American leaders have tried since about 1967 — to keep the peace and realistically reassure our ally Israel of its survival. And if you’ve decided regime change is your new thing, try doing it the hard way — by convincing Israelis, via diplomatic means, that they can survive without Netanyahu.

But, you say, why can’t we get rid of Maduro and then do that more important, harder stuff?

Because… as I acknowledged in response to the NYT’s simplistic condemnation of interventionism, attempting to oust even the most deplorable regime can make matters worse. Every such venture is a risk, often in ways we’re unable to anticipate.

There can be far-reaching negative effects, even horrific effects, from this action in Venezuela. And I’m not just talking about the straightforward, housekeeping considerations such as answering the question, “So what happens now in Venezuela?”

Let me pull one such consequence out of left field: For more than thirty years, China has very effectively been buying friends all over the planet, particularly in the Third World. (I’ve occasionally written about this since my first week on the editorial board of The State in 1994. Here’s an update from the NYT.) Building airports and local economies, it has promoted an image of itself as poor countries’ kindly, helpful friend. This action in Venezuela can play right into China’s hands as it tries to become the next America (in hegemonic terms). We’re the Bully Boys; they’re the ones in the white hats. Maybe you don’t think that and I don’t think that, but we’re not the only people in this world.

For that reason (and many others), you don’t do things such as this unless you have an extremely good reason — as we did in Afghanistan, before we all forgot what it was.

Digression: Of course, we can’t do what China does because we are not run by leaders who spend money as they like in pursuit of their careful plans. Try spending a few extra bucks on a needy country, and the folks who currently run our democracy will holler, “America First!”

America First. Speaking of that… we could talk all day about Trump’s inconsistency in this instance, but what’s the point? What are we going to say — that he’s not following his own doctrine? The power he currently possesses is not the result of philosophy of any kind. How could it be? Philosophy means “love of wisdom.” It’s hard to imagine a word less at home in TrumpWorld.

Trump does what makes him, personally, feel good. And that may be the most dangerous thing about this venture in Venezuela — it has greatly expanded his own sense of what he can do, and get away with, and feel good about.

So going into Venezuela was a bad thing. But it wasn’t the worst thing Trump has ever done. It’s not even the worst thing he’s done this week.

I’ve written about 1,200 words so far on this, and I need to move on to some other things. So I’ll just mention in passing my nomination for worst thing of the week: Withdrawing the U.S. from 66 more international organizations, and making America more of a pariah in the world. That was not as noticed the way removing Maduro was, but it was way worse…

All that really needed to be said about Kirk’s foul murder

48 Replies

Screenshot

The evening of the day on which Charlie Kirk was murdered — a week ago today — I read an editorial about it in The New York Times that said everything that needed to be said about that appalling event.

Sorry to take so long posting it. The headline was “Charlie Kirk’s Horrific Killing and America’s Worsening Political Violence.” The link on that headline is one of those “gift” links the NYT offers, so you should be able to read it. Let me know if you can’t.

In the meantime, I’ll share some key paragraphs:

The assassination of Charlie Kirk — the founder of a youth political movement that helped revolutionize modern conservatism — at Utah Valley University on Wednesday is a tragedy. His killing is also part of a horrifying wave of political violence in America….

Such violence is antithetical to America. The First Amendment — the first for a reason — enshrines our rights to freedom of speech and expression. Our country is based on the principle that we must disagree peacefully. Our political disagreements may be intense and emotional, but they should never be violent. This balance requires restraint. Americans have to accept that their side will lose sometimes and that they may feel angry about their defeats. We cannot act on that anger with violence.

Too many Americans are abandoning this ideal. Thirty-four percent of college students recently said they supported using violence in some circumstances to stop a campus speech, according to a poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression published a day before the Kirk shooting. Since 2021, that share has risen from 24 percent, which was already unacceptably high. Surveys of older adults are similarly alarming….

The intensity of our political debates will not disappear. The stakes are too high, and the country disagrees on too many important questions. But we Americans have lost some of our grace and empathy in recent years. We too often wish ill on our political opponents. We act as if people’s worth is determined by whether they identify as a Republican or a Democrat. We dehumanize those with whom we differ….

That was the penultimate graf. Since I’ve quoted so much, I might as well give you the last one:

…This is a moment to turn down the volume and reflect on our political culture. It is a moment for restraint, rather than cycles of vengeance or the suspension of civil liberties, as some urged on Wednesday. It is also a moment to engage with people who have different views from our own. When societies lose the ability to argue peacefully and resort to violence to resolve their political debates, it usually ends very badly.

(When I read that editorial that night, I retweeted it with this comment: “NYT ably describes the violent tip of the iceberg of hostility that is sinking America. But we’re all too busy despising each other to bother trying to find a way to save our ship. “)

As for the excerpts above — if the NYT lawyers call, I’ll just have to ask them how much I have to cut to suit their definition of Fair Use. But I just thought it was too important not to share. It was a grown-up editorial. It seems to me to have been written by someone mature enough to remember when this country was healthy enough that we could disagree strongly and vehemently, and then shake hands and walk away as friends — or at least as people who recognized each other as fellow Americans, and not as “the enemy.”

Of course, maybe it was written by a younger member of the board. If so, we have someone to thank for providing that person with an excellent education, and a firm understanding of what made America great, before our country’s recent tragic decline.

Evidently the faculty members who were suspended from teaching at Clemson were not the kind who provide such intellectual enrichment. Their grotesque fulminations are an embarrassment to anyone with. conscience. Doubt me? Here are some quotes from their outbursts. If that link doesn’t work, I’ll be happy for you, because you’ll be happier for not having read them.

Should they have been fired for it? Let me pose a different question. Should people who would have deliberately published such remarks at such a time have been employed in the first place, in jobs that involve shaping young minds? Such irresponsibility is inexcusable. They weren’t courageously outspoken; they were stupid, cruel and hateful.

You would think that in an atmosphere in which more than a third of college students believe violence can be justified to stop speech they don’t like, anyone who teaches them would understand that their responsibility is to model productive speech and behavior. And the responsibility of college administrators is to make sure they hire people mature enough to understand that.

At this point in our increasingly ones-and-zeroes country, we will now start hearing the “what abouts.” What about those GOP politicians who have demanded their firings? Are you defending them?

Are you nuts? Those people are cheap opportunists, trying to make themselves heroes to an angry crowd. Or, worse, they’re trying to make a merely grieving crowd… angry. Stir things up. Because they seek higher office, and Donald Trump has taught them that the approach taken by every president before him — striving with all their mights to pull us together in troubled times by invoking the values we hold in common — is for chumps. You can win by feeding division, by pouring gasoline on the embers, he has taught them. And they’re acting upon those lessons.

Just as others have learned that if you post something stupidly inappropriate — the more hateful the better — on social media in response to any news event, there are thousands if not millions of people like them who will regard them as brave and witty, and clap them virtually upon their backs in congratulation. A certain needy type eats that sort of thing up.

Both categories are unacceptable in a rational society. But they are so richly rewarded — in the currencies that matter to them — that they just keep doing it.

One final word: If you actually believe that anything those disgraced faculty members said about Kirk was justified by his rhetoric, you are just as much a part of the problem as those hungry GOP pols.

Personally, I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before the news of his murder. But I went and looked at a couple of videos of him speaking. The entire thrust of what he said, even in the milder comments, was wrongheaded and objectionable to me. In others, he was utterly offensive. But all that was what I expected, since Trump is trying to canonize him. And all of it is beside my point.

Y’all know I don’t believe in capital punishment. But even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t support summarily executing a man for saying things that offended me. I could never support that. And I could never support or worse, applaud anyone who mocks a human being who has died that way.

The U.S. strikes upon Iran targets

5 Replies

I haven’t posted much lately, but of course I feel compelled to say something about this.

But what should I say? I don’t feel qualified to express an opinion about it — yet. I might have in the past, but I’m hobbled by two things:

Donald Trump is president of the United States. He and Pete Hegseth are the main sources available right now as to what just happened, and I can’t trust a word either one says about it. When I say “can’t trust,” I’m not so much talking about lying — although we all know Trump does that almost each time he takes a breath. The thing is, he and Hegseth could be tellling the absolute and complete truth. And from everything I’ve seen, neither one of them understands what’s going on — especially not Trump (I don’t know Hegseth nearly as well).
Second, the way news is reported these days, it’s difficult to get a coherent picture of what has happened from major newspapers. A few years ago, those papers spent the hours before their daily deadline distilling all that was known into a single, coherent story arranged with all the key information in the first paragraph (the lede). You read the first few grafs of a story back then, and you had a pretty decent idea of what had happened. Now, whenever something big happens, you get these moment-to-moment update strings, such as this one and this one. You have to read every update from the last to the first (sometimes stretching over 24 hours) to get anything like a handle on the story, and even then it’s difficult. When something of moderate importance happens, you still get the one, coherent story — with new ledes added as necessary. With the big stories, such as this, newspapers are little help, because you get the “updates” string instead. They no longer focus on helping readers understand; they’re too busy making sure they throw out the latest factoid.

So… that means I turn to the journalists who still write in the old style — and that means opinion writers. Of course, since I know who they are, I look for the ones I know are trustworthy — again, not so much in terms of not being liars (although, of course, that’s a prerequisite), but because they have consistently displayed deep understanding of such matters in the past.

Unfortunately, not many have weighed in yet. For the moment, I recommend checking out Nicholas Kristof (“The Three Unknowns After the U.S. Strike on Iran“) and Max Boot (“Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.“). And while he’s not one of my trustee regular voices, you might want to read this piece (“Why Israel Had to Act“) by Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence. It was written before the U.S. joined in, but I still learned some things from it that help me understand Max Boot’s points.

That’s of course assuming you can read them. If you can’t and you want to, I can try to give you “gift” links. (I’ve tried in the past to share those with you, but I haven’t gotten enough feedback on them to be sure whether they even work when sent to more than one person.)

So I’m waiting to read a lot more, from smart people who’ve been following all this far, far more closely than I have.

But I should say something, right? But all I have now is random, chaotic, piecemeal reactions — which is probably what you’ve seen elsewhere at this point, whether those offering such reactions tell you that or not (especially if you’re someone who forms your impressions of such events by watching television, God help us).

So here you go:

I’m very, very worried. Smart leaders (pretty much everyone who’s been in relevant office before Trump was elected) have avoided war with Iran for very good reasons. One of the biggest is something Kristof mentions: By and large, the Iranian public is quite pro-U.S. What they need is new leaders, if they can manage to get them. And the fastest way to turn them against us is military action. That change in Iran public opinion would be disastrous.
That said, it is indeed essential to make sure that Iran, whose current leaders hate the U.S. almost as much as they do Israel, does not obtain nuclear weapons. If you look at that and only that, these U.S. strikes are good news — if they were effective, by which I mean they set Iranian nuclear efforts back many years without killing civilians. That’s a big “if.”
The one thing that makes me tentatively optimistic (and only slightly) on that last point is that Iran can’t hide facilities essential to its own Manhattan Project in tunnels under civilian dwellings, hospitals and schools — they way we know its ally Hamas does. At least, I don’t think so. But I don’t know that.
As much as I may search for reasons not to be terrified at this point, I know that even if all the steps taken up to this point by Trump and Netanyahu (and there’s a fragile liferaft to cling to), have been wise and correct, I know that Trump, at least, is capable of turning in another direction in a split-second, prompted by something as idiotic as a social media post he doesn’t like.
That’s the situation that a majority of U.S. voters put us in on Nov. 5, 2024. And the only recommendation I have for dealing with that is to pray. If you don’t know how to do that, it’s past time to learn…

The mind of a soldier, and the soul of a country

7 Replies

What causes them to charge into enemy fire?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m cleaning up old emails that backed up way last summer when we were in Europe. Well, I’m still doing it, making my way through a few hundred each day. Which is progress, just not fast progress.

Anyway, today I ran across something I had set aside to consider writing about (which I may have done in passing; I don’t recall now). It was an Ezra Klein podcast (he’s always good) headlined, “What’s Wrong With Trump?”

I gave you a link to that if you want to go back and hear it, or read the transcript. But I’d rather you spend time reading what I’m thinking about today, which is on the much larger topic, which is Trumpism, and what is wrong with that. Which is, of course, an immense topic (since it’s about what is killing our country), but this is at least a digestible bite out of the subject.

It’s a David Brooks column from several days ago, and it’s headlined, “I’m Normally a Mild Guy. Here’s What’s Pushed Me Over the Edge.” (That, by the way, is one of those “share full article” links that the NYT offers, so please let me know whether it works for you).

It very much goes to the core of my own views, because it arises from Brooks’ marked tendencies toward communitarianism, which is one of the main reasons I enjoy reading him, and am often inspired by his words.

He starts this way:

Last Monday afternoon, I was communing with my phone when I came across a Memorial Day essay that the Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen wrote back in 2009. In that essay, Deneen argued that soldiers aren’t motivated to risk their lives in combat by their ideals. He wrote, “They die not for abstractions — ideas, ideals, natural right, the American way of life, rights, or even their fellow citizens — so much as they are willing to brave all for the men and women of their unit.”

This may seem like a strange thing to get angry about. After all, fighting for your buddies is a noble thing to do. But Deneen is the Lawrence Welk of postliberalism, the popularizer of the closest thing the Trump administration has to a guiding philosophy. He’s a central figure in the national conservatism movement, the place where a lot of Trump acolytes cut their teeth….

He then mentions that J.D. Vance made a similar point at his inauguration, and that “these little statements point to the moral rot at the core of Trumpism, which every day disgraces our country, which we are proud of and love. Trumpism can be seen as a giant attempt to amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies.”

Of course, Brooks isn’t saying soldiers don’t lay their lives on the line for their buddies. “Of course warriors fight for their comrades.” And they do. I’ve made that point many times on this blog. (Based of course upon study, not personal experience. But what I’m studying is the experiences and memories of combat veterans.) When battle is at its hairiest, that’s an essential factor that keeps soldiers from turning tail and running — the comrades beside them. To see what happens when that factor breaks down, read the first part of The Red Badge of Courage, when the protagonist flees the battlefield because others around him are doing the same.

But there are larger questions — the factors that cause a someone to become a soldier to begin with, and don the uniform and go through all that training, long before they’ve even met those comrades who will keep them from running.

That’s what Brooks is writing about. And it’s what Deneen and Vance are dumping on when they say soldiers are never motivated by “abstractions — ideas, ideals, natural right, the American way of life, rights, or even their fellow citizens.”

That is not only an insult of immense proportions to soldiers (and sailors and Marines and others who serve) but to all Americans, whether they’re capable of perceiving the insult or not. It’s an insult to the idea of America. It’s an insult to ideas, period — to democracy, to freedom, to humanity, to God. It reduces us to grunting animals who can’t see past their own feeding troughs, and don’t care.

So it’s worth getting “angry about,” as Brooks so mildly puts it:

Deneen’s and Vance’s comments about men in combat are part of a larger project at the core of Trumpism. It is to rebut the notion that America is not only a homeland, though it is that, but it is also an idea and a moral cause — that America stands for a set of universal principles: the principle that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with inalienable rights, that democracy is the form of government that best recognizes human dignity and best honors beings who are made in the image of God.

There are two forms of nationalism. There is the aspirational nationalism of people, ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, who emphasize that America is not only a land but was founded to embody and spread the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. Then there is the ancestors and homeland nationalism, traditionally more common in Europe, of Donald Trump and Vance, the belief that America is just another collection of people whose job is to take care of our own. In his Republican National Convention acceptance speech Vance did acknowledge that America is partly a set of ideas (though he talked about religious liberty and pointedly not the Declaration). But then when it came time to define America, he talked about a cemetery in Kentucky where his ancestors have been buried for generations. That invocation is the dictionary definition of ancestors and homeland nationalism.

Trump and Vance have to rebut the idea that America is the embodiment of universal ideals. If America is an idea, then Black and brown people from all over the world can become Americans by coming here and believing that idea. If America is an idea, then Americans have a responsibility to promote democracy. We can’t betray democratic Ukraine in order to kowtow to a dictator like Vladimir Putin. If America is an idea, we have to care about human dignity and human rights. You can’t have a president go to Saudi Arabia, as Trump did this month, and effectively tell them we don’t care how you treat your people. If you want to dismember journalists you don’t like, we’re not going to worry about it….

Well, I’ve probably gone what the lawyers at the NYT would consider “Fair Use,” so I won’t quote any more.

But I urge you to go read the piece, and reflect upon it. It’s worth your time…

DeMarco: Democrats and Independents: The Time to Stop Trump is Feb. 24

48 Replies

The Op-Ed Page

Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Wikipedia

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Rarely does a state have an opportunity to make history the way we do on Feb. 24 in the Republican presidential primary election.

South Carolina may be Nikki Haley’s last chance to derail Donald Trump’s path to the nomination. It will be hard for Haley to justify remaining in the race until Super Tuesday without a strong showing here.

I won’t rehearse all the reasons Trump is bad for America, just two quick points. First, Republicans could get all they say they want – conservative policies, family values, and respect for the Constitution – from Mike Pence and several other prominent Republicans. Yet they are drawn to Trump’s scorched-earth approach, despite the Sisyphean rock of baggage he bears.

Second, Trump has proven he is dangerously unpredictable. Almost no one on Jan. 5, 2021 would have predicted what happened the next day: a sitting president encouraged his VP to overturn the will of the people, exhorted the gathered crowd to march on the Capitol, and then watched passively for three hours as they ransacked it. When he finally sent out a Twitter video asking the crowd to disperse, his message to the rioters included “We love you; you’re very special.”

S.C. Democrats and Independents propelled Biden to the nomination in 2020. Our task in 2024 will be less comfortable and potentially riskier. Like me, you may prefer Biden over Haley and have deep policy disagreements with her. But this election is less about the candidates than about America herself. Both Biden and Haley will try to leave America better than they found her. Trump has no such desire.

If you are like many in this state and nation, you have had Trump’s number since he first announced for president in 2015. You recognized what a small, soulless human being he was. You understood his drive to be revered and his dearth of compassion and loyalty. Over the past eight years, you have endured his fountain of lies, from the claim that Obama was not a citizen to his claim that he won in 2020. You’ve asked yourself again and again, is this is the best the Republicans can do?

This is your moment. The turnout in South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Feb. 3 was predictably low, since Biden had only token opposition. Only about 131,000 voters participated (about 4 percent of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters). In 2020, when the outcome was not a foregone conclusion, about 540,000 voters participated in the Democratic primary. That means more than 400,000 voters who turned out in 2020 stayed home this year.

So if you’re a Democrat or Independent who voted in 2020 but didn’t vote on Feb. 3, you can make history. If we leave the election to usual Republican primary voters, the latest polls predict Trump will win by 65 percent to 35 percent. If there is healthy turnout, say 700,000 votes, then the final tally will be roughly Trump 455,000, Haley 245,000, a difference of 210,000 votes.

The 400,000 of you who voted in the 2020 Democratic primary but not in the 2024 primary can swing this election. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of others who didn’t vote in the 2020 primaries who could vote this time around. Everyone, yes everyone, except the 131,000 who voted on Feb. 3, is eligible to vote in the Republican primary (South Carolina has an open primary system, so you can vote in one primary or the other, but not both).

There are two ways to use this power. One is cynically, by trying to elect the weakest opponent for the other side so your candidate can beat them in the general. The better way is to help elect the strongest candidate for the other side, so that America will have the best choice possible. If Haley wins and then goes on to beat Biden in the general, I will disagree with some of her policies, but the country will be in sane, stable hands.

Imagine you have an infant child or grandchildren. How will you explain your vote for Trump to them in 15 years, when they are old enough to understand politics? I suspect many South Carolinians regret their vote for Strom Thurmond as candidate for the Dixiecrat Party in 1948 (more than 70% of SC voters chose him) or for George Wallace in 1968 (over 30% of SC voters). How an evangelical Christian will explain his or her vote for Trump in 15 years to intense questioning from a skeptical teenager, I have no idea (although I would pay to watch it).

I am hoping South Carolina plays the role Iowa did in January 2008 in its first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential caucus. In a state with challenging demographics, Barack Obama won and was propelled to a general election victory over John McCain. Whether or not you agree with Obama on policy, his respect for the office was clear. He adhered to essential presidential norms and left the fundamentals of American democracy as strong as he found them. Needless to say, if someone with McCain’s integrity was the Republican front-runner in 2024, this column would never have been written.

On Feb. 24, we can make a statement similar to the one our countrymen and -women in Iowa made 16 years ago. We can signal the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s political career by voting for Nikki Haley.

A version of this column appeared in the Feb. 14 edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

Tiny rays of hope, here and there…

8 Replies

I posted this this morning:

I’m learning to embrace small developments that offer glimpses of hope for our world. Yesterday, Jordan was finally rejected as speaker. Today, I welcome this… “Aid trucks cross Rafah border, providing first relief to besieged Gaza Strip” https://t.co/zLLMrY6CWq

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) October 21, 2023

No, it’s not much, is it?

The fact that the one of the worst representatives I can think of in the House — a guy whose name has long been one of the first mentioned in connection with the most insane, destructive developments in that dysfunctional body — will not be speaker is hardly an indication that things are going well in our country. We are left with the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of the party that controls the House was willing and even eager to elevate him to that post.

But it does mean the worst has not happened — yet. Even though we were careening in that direction this past week. And it offers a tiny gleam of hope that the GOP will get sufficiently fed up with doing things this way that it will turn to some approach that a reasonable human being might take. What would that be? Well, the most obvious thing that would happen in a sane world is that enough of the GOP would work with Democrats to choose a consensus speaker. That would be the best thing for America, and for the hope that our system used to give the world.

A somewhat more likely scenario would be to simply settle on the interim speaker, Patrick McHenry. I don’t know nearly enough about him to know whether he would be a good speaker, but at least we have few indications so far that he would be a horrible one.

Sadly, that’s where we’ve been in this country since 2016 — trying to avoid the horrible. Remember back in the 2008 presidential contest, when the country was offered a choice between “good” and “better.” And I don’t really care which of them you think was the good, and which the better. We’d have done well with either of them.

A great country should have choices all the time — for president, for speaker, for whatever. But it’s been a while for us.

As for Gaza… No, a truck crossing a border to provide humanitarian aid is not in any way an indication that this crisis is anywhere near over. Quite the contrary… Much blood, much horror, much suffering still seem inevitable. But if there is to be a path toward peace and justice, things like this have to happen. So it’s good to see, after all these days in which nothing good has happened on the ground there.

Yep, these are tiny things, but they need to be welcomed, if we want to move in the right direction on anything…

A Lyric Just in Time

1 Reply

I had a fun little exchange on Twitter with a friend a couple of weeks back, when he posted this quote:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege

— (@stevenpmillies) September 21, 2023

Hey, it’s always fun when people start quoting Elvis Costello. For me, anyway.

So I listened to the song several times, and got to thinking about how that one line is more than just fun:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege

You know how I frequently make the point that it’s harder and harder to get the kind of people who ought to run for elective office to run anymore? Reading those books from the late 19th century lately has driven home the point so much more painfully. Why do we almost never see the likes of Teddy Roosevelt or James Garfield — or, to reach higher, Abraham Lincoln — step forward any more? Or for that matter, the extraordinary men who served under them, in key positions — John Hay, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge?

Well, I know why — because of 24/7 TV “news,” and more recently and intensely, social media. Things that climb all over you and mobs that can’t wait to cancel you for the most trivial things. Consequently, instead of people who set brilliant careers aside to give back to the country by sitting down with other serious people and working out the country’s real problems, you get people who don’t give a damn about any of that. They don’t want to work out problems with anybody. They just want to posture for their respective bases.

And to gain the “privilege” of doing this, they spend every moment between elections raising the money to pay for it.

I even felt a moment of gratitude today when I heard the House GOP had gone behind closed doors to nominate a new speaker. No strutting or posturing for the mob. And they came out with Scalise, which I think is better, or at least not as horrible, as the alternative. Which isn’t much to celebrate, of course.

Anyway, Elvis said it better than I have:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege…

I’ll close with the video:

So, did I read this right? Should I have hung in there?

35 Replies

The only decent picture I could find illustrating the setting of the anecdote. No, I’m not in the picture.

It’s anecdote time. But first, a few words from Nicholas Kristof:

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Many Americans and Europeans flatter themselves by seeing the war in Ukraine through a false prism.

Too often, we think we have sacrificed for the Ukrainians. We pat ourselves on the back for providing expensive weapons and paying higher heating bills to help Ukrainians win their freedom — and we wish they’d get on with it.

In fact, what’s clear here in the Baltic countries is that it’s the other way around: The Ukrainians are sacrificing for us. They’re the ones doing us a favor, by degrading the Russian military and reducing the risk of a war in Europe that would cost the lives of our troops…

The whole piece is worth reading, but only those first three grafs are relevant to the memory that they stimulated…

It was a few months ago, maybe even in 2022. It’s hard to pin down, because it happened at Lowe’s, and I go there a lot.

This time, I wanted to copy some keys, and was using the self-serve machine devoted to that purpose. So for a minute or two, I was standing there, unable to easily evade folks who come up to strangers and initiate conversation.

There are a lot of people like that. And seriously, I try to go along and be nice to these folks. I get the impression sometimes that they are lonely. Maybe they live alone, and only get to speak to other people when they are out and about. And this is bad for everyone — but (or so I understand intellectually) especially painful for extraverts. (Although it would be great if some of them would stop whining about it! Oh, wait — I’d better add one of these… 🙂 )

This guy, whom I’ll describe as an older (as in, near my age) white guy, was at least topical. He comes up and without prelude (although maybe I’m just forgetting the prelude), he asks me who I thought would end up paying for all this aid we send Ukraine — us, or the Ukrainians.

I simply said, well, I assume we will, since we are the ones with the money as well as the goods. At that point, I could have gone on at length about how important it was for us to do so, and to keep doing so.

But I didn’t, because I sensed I was standing at the precipice, and one more step would take me into a spontaneous, fruitless argument with another isolationist. And I get into enough of those.

The conversation ended at that point. I don’t recall whether he just had no rejoinder — he may have been hoping to connect with someone who would say “It’ll be US, dammit! AGAIN! Those damn’ foreigners!” and didn’t know how to respond to my more neutral response — or I found some easy way of extricating myself.

Anyway, I now regret that I didn’t wait to see what was going on. It would only have taken a moment to find out whether I was in “America First” territory (in either the Trumpian or Lindbergh sense). I could have extricated myself at that point. Or perhaps I could have gotten him to see a broader picture (OK, everybody, stop laughing hysterically).

Or maybe he would have responded by saying “Hallelujah! Finally, somebody who’s not an isolationist!” And we could have had a high old time slapping each other on the back in mutual congratulation. That probably wasn’t where we were going, but let’s admit the possibility.

I think what chased me away was the thought that here’s a guy who comes up to busy strangers and starts conversations with something as likely to lead to acrimony as that. Made me wonder whether it was wise to stick around. Although I appreciated that he wanted to talk global affairs, rather than the weather or the Gamecocks.

But rather than keep kicking myself, I’ll close with Kristof’s words:

We’re right to celebrate a successful NATO summit. But especially if Ukraine struggles to recover large swaths of territory in this counteroffensive, there’ll be feckless grumbling in Western capitals about the price we’re paying and the favors we’re doing Ukraine. Anyone tempted to think that way should listen to the Baltic leaders, because they’ve learned the hard way how best to manage unruly bears.

Thrilled to meetcha…

2 Replies

I found the body language in the pool pics of Anthony Blinken meeting Xi this morning interesting.

Ol’ Xi seems to be going out of his way to make sure the world knows that he’s not thrilled to be finally meeting our secretary of state after the previous appointment was canceled over the spy balloon.

The one above is like, “OK, well, they told me I have to do this thing, so I’m doing it. Whatever…”

And I especially like the one below, evidently taken moments before by the pool photographer: Blinken eagerly striding over with his hand out, and Xi standing like his feet are nailed to the floor and he’s saying, “Yeah, OK, you can shake my hand if you must, but you’ve gotta come over to me, foreign devil…”

So, you know, no warmer relations yet, anyway…

Graham, Scott, also vote in favor of default

9 Replies

After I posted last night about the debt limit deal, the Senate did as I had hoped and passed it. So that’s done.

No thanks to Lindsey Graham or Tim Scott, who were among the 36 — all but five of them Republican — who voted instead for the United States to default on its debt, plunging the U.S. and world economies into turmoil.

Graham, for his part, offered an excuse that gave us a glimpse of his old self, the senator we knew before he lost his mind in 2016 — he said it was about national security. But that doesn’t wash. I’ve seen nothing on his vote since it happened, but hours before, he made a speech:

Graham made an impassioned speech Thursday on the Senate floor, saying small increases in fiscal year defense spending are not part of a “threat-based budget” but one that lacks safety and security for Americans. He later said that a supplemental defense budget for Ukraine and other spending must be agreed upon swiftly by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to make up for the House GOP’s below-inflation 3 percent military increase….

And as it happened, Schumer and Mitch McConnell joined together to offer as much assurance as anyone could reasonably expect under such rushed conditions, with default looming on Monday:

None of the amendments were adopted. But in an effort to alleviate concerns from defense hawks that the debt ceiling bill would restrict Pentagon spending too much, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a joint statement saying the “debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia, and our other adversaries.”…

As for Tim Scott — I’ve found nothing about why he voted the way he did. Maybe I’ve looked in the wrong places, but I found nothing on his website, on social media or in any news reports. Which reminds us of why it’s weird that he’s running for president. He’s not a guy who tends to be out front on anything, making his views known in developing situations. He’s not making an effort to tell us, and if he said something on the floor of the Senate, no one covered it.

He’s just this nice guy who’s happy to be a U.S. senator — his bio line on Twitter says “Just a South Carolinian living his mama’s American Dream” — and who doesn’t get swept up in what’s actually happening. Look at that Twitter feed, by the way. There’s nothing there — at least, anywhere near the top — posted in real time in response to anything that was happening, or anything he was doing. It’s just a bunch of prewritten campaign stuff, going on about how awful Joe Biden is.

You know, the Joe Biden who threw his all into working with McCarthy to keep the nation from defaulting for the first time in history.

And then, Graham and Scott basically said Nah, let’s go ahead and crash into the mountain…

Stop trying to oversimplify things, people! It doesn’t help.

3 Replies

Above, you see my results from an exercise offered today by The Washington Post that promised to show me “what kind of budgeter you are.” It was offered, of course, within the context of the debt ceiling “debate” going on in Washington.

It is laughable. Apparently, since I’m not, I don’t know, a member of AOC’s “squad” or something, I “believe that the national debt is the foremost crisis.”

It says that, even though I said a flat no to “Cut Defense Spending.” So go figure. I also, by the way, said no to “Enact House GOP debt ceiling bill.”

“Play our budget game,” the headline that led to the above brilliant conclusion. As though I were a child to be entertained. But at least they admitted that it was a game, and didn’t claim it bore any resemblance to real budgeting on the federal level — which, like everything else in government, is a tangled web of conflicting priorities.

Bottom line, as a more-or-less rational person, I believe we should reduce the debt. And I don’t see any way we get there without doing both of the following:

Cutting some spending.
Raising some taxes.

In fact, it will involve both cutting more spending, and raising more taxes, than most people even want to think about. Still, note the “some” in each case. Only a fool would cut all spending in sight or raise every tax suggested. The decisions to be made along the way are staggeringly complicated, and neither ideology nor simple rule of thumb will not guide you to anything that could remotely be recognized as wise governance. The process requires discernment and deliberation.

And putting silly labels on yourself or others — especially simplistic ones assigned by such a “game” as this — doesn’t help you acquire those qualities…

What do these ‘reluctant’ Democrats want?

3 Replies

Hey, y’all, I’m back — again. Remember how I told you I’d been on the island of Dominica, and that I would tell you all about it, but didn’t? That’s because I left town again for a few days, to accompany my wife to Memphis for her 50th high school reunion. I try to never miss a chance to go to Memphis. (And yeah, we made it to Pete & Sam’s.)

But before I start sharing travelogues, I thought I’d try to get some basic, everyday posts up. I’ve had several on my mind the last three days, but have been too busy trying to catch up with work (still not there) and emails (about 2,600 waiting, still unread).

So let’s start with this:

You know why they see no other choice? Because there IS no other choice. So whatever this supposed reluctance is about, it’s irrational and counterproductive…. https://t.co/cd8YGzJAvm

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) April 25, 2023

If you go to that on Twitter, you’ll see I got some likes, but also some new things to think about from our good friend Phillip Bush. He wrote:

‘Reluctance’ probably isn’t the right word. There’s no single word I can think of for this, but ‘being disheartened that we have no other choice’ probably covers it for many people.

I responded that “disheartened” is hard for me to understand as well. For my part, I’m deeply grateful that Joe is willing to do this. I think he sees, just as I do, that there’s no one else available right now.

But Phillip wasn’t done:

But Joe bears some responsibility for there being “no one else available” on the D side. And, will you still be grateful to Joe when he loses to DeSantis?

I’m not sure how Joe is responsible for the lack of other suitable candidates. That’s a problem that already existed, to which he responded by stepping up himself. (Maybe Phillip can elaborate on that point here.) And I’ll always be grateful to him for stepping forward when his country needed him — whether he succeeds or not.

This leads to my original concern about this “reluctance” I keep hearing about, which I continue to see as irrational and counterproductive.

Irrational because, what is it these people want? Who is it they see out there who could carry the banner better? Who do they think is MORE likely to beat DeSantis, or anyone else? I’m not seeing anybody. And Joe didn’t cause that problem. He stepped forward to offer himself to fill the void.

And it’s counterproductive because if Democrats don’t enthusiastically back Joe — their only option — this nation will plunge back into the steep decline we experienced starting in 2016. And it’s likely to be worse this time around.

So what’s your problem with Joe? His age? Hey, I’d love it if Joe was 20 years younger — he would, too, I’m sure. But that’s not being offered as an option. We’ve got the Joe we’ve got. And I like him…

Are we about to send ‘advisers’ to Ukraine? Seem familiar?

27 Replies

I guess we’ll have to repaint them first — some none-desert color.

The Ukrainians need heavy tanks to fend off the increasingly desperate efforts by Vladimir Putin to crush their country.

I’m glad they’re about to get them. And I hope and pray that a peaceful solution can soon be found — not the kind of “peaceful solution” Putin would like, in which Ukraine is under his thumb and the world trembles in fear of him, but one in which it is a safe, self-governed nation, living next to a Russia that will never do this again.

But right now, they need the tanks. So it is a good thing that the Germans are going to provide Leopard 2s, and allow other European nations to share theirs. But they refused to do it if we weren’t in it with them, so we have decided to hand over some Abrams main battle tanks.

The Pentagon had been unwilling to do this, “citing concerns about how Ukraine would maintain the advanced tanks, which require extensive training and servicing.” By contrast, the Leopards are relatively simple to maintain and operate, or so I read.

But since the Germans wouldn’t agree without our participation, we’ll be sending the M1s. They mostly likely won’t arrive until the fall, but that’s not the point. The Leopards are what is needed to help resist the expected spring onslaught. They’re a gesture of solidarity. To the Germans, this gives them the ability to say to Putin, “Hey, don’t just blame us…” That’s the point of all this.

Assuming, though, that we follow through, and assuming also that they are impossible to keep running without having a bunch of experienced people maintaining them, it seems highly likely that we’ll soon have “advisers” in Ukraine. They may just be maintenance crews for the most part, but it will be a presence we don’t have now.

(Mind you, I’m no expert on tank operations and maintenance. I couldn’t change the oil on an Abrams any more than I could repair a television. And maybe we can teach the Ukrainians everything they need to know before the tanks arrive there. But it doesn’t sound like the brass over here think that can be done. At least, they didn’t think so last week. It’s one thing to teach people to drive the tank and fight with it. It’s another to keep complex machinery going once it’s deployed, and that doesn’t sound to me like a long-distance procedure.)

There have been Americans in uniform there before now. But this will be different. It won’t be combat troops, but it will be people who are essential to the war effort, even if mainly in a political and diplomatic sense. Meanwhile, we have elements of the 101st Airborne Division right next door in Romania. And soon the 10th Mountain Division will also have a presence there.

Is this the moment that historians will look back on, 50 years from now, as the one that the “Ukraine Quagmire” began? Assuming historians still exist then. I mean, assuming this (or something else) doesn’t lead to the nuclear exchange that we worked so hard — and successfully — to avoid during the Cold War. Which is what enables us to sit around and argue now about how that was accomplished.

Will this be like when JFK sent the 500 advisers in 1961, to reinforce the 700 Ike had sent in 1955? (A sort of follow-up to the ones Truman sent in 1950 to help the French, but the French ignored the advice.) By the end of 1963, there would be 11,000 Americans in-country.

Today, the consensus is that boy, we really screwed that up. Correct me if this is not what you would say, but I can imagine most Americans saying, “We just kept sending more of our boys over there to a place where we had no business being.”

And Americans tsk-tsk about the foolishness, and worse, wickedness of it all. And they’re so sure they’re right, and that they are so much wiser then the Best and Brightest who got us into Vietnam, and couldn’t get us out. Or refused to get us out, until Nixon came along and saved the day by abandoning Saigon.

Myself, I can — with the benefit of hindsight — point to a truckload of mistakes and miscalculations made that got us deeper and deeper into a conflict that was simply not going to turn out our way. But I also look back and see how every mistake was made, and how it didn’t look like a mistake to those making it.

A lot of people around me think they know better. I guess I’m writing this to make sure they’re noting this as it happens — assuming I’m reading it right, and something similar, or at least analogous, is occurring. Yes, the situations are different in a thousand ways. But what I’m pondering here is the bits that seem familiar.

It would be great if we, as a country, could have foresight that is half as perfect and accurate as everyone’s hindsight is regarding Vietnam. That would lead inevitably to a happy ending in which Ukraine and the rest of Europe are safe, and Russia has learned the lesson we’d like it to learn.

But we don’t have that, and right now — in light of this and that and the other thing in the real world we’re looking at — it seems right to send the Abrams tanks. I hope and pray — yep, I’m repeating myself — that it is…

This is what a Leopard 2 looks like. This one was just a prototype, but it was the only image I could find in the public domain.

Experience the stories of South Carolinians who fought in Vietnam

3 Replies

Occasionally, I have given y’all a heads-up about programs happening at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum — an ADCO client.

Well, the museum has something very special coming up on Friday, Veterans Day. It’s been in the works for years, enduring many setbacks, from COVID to the flooding of the space where it is located.

My own father, like many South Carolina veterans, played a small role, being interviewed for hours back in 2017 by Fritz Hamer, then the curator of history at the museum. We lent a few of his artifacts and souvenirs from those days.

Fritz Hamer interviewing my Dad in 2017 about his Vietnam experiences.

It’s called “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina and the Vietnam War, 1965-1973.” The exhibit fills the 2,500-square-foot brick-lined, vaulted part of the museum that was once the water cistern for the Columbia Mills building when it opened in 1894 as the world’s first electric textile mill.

You can read more about it here, on the special website for this exhibit. Also, here’s a press release I wrote about the opening. On the “news” page of the site, you can read previous releases about recent events that have been building up to this opening, such as lectures by Vietnam veterans, and the huge, impressive diorama of Firebase Ripcord that’s stationed at the museum’s entrance. A lecture will be featured at noon Friday comparing the experiences of Vietnam veterans to those of servicemen who fought in previous wars.

And it’s all free on Friday and Saturday this week. It’s a good opportunity to check out the whole Relic Room, if you never have, but especially this new exhibit.

My father is gone now, but so many of these veterans are still with us, and it’s long past time for their service and sacrifices to be honored, and their stories told. I’m very glad the museum is doing this. It’s still coming together as I write this, but what I’ve seen looks good. I hope you check it out…

A tribute wall to South Carolinians killed in action.

Hey, 2nd District — give Judd Larkins a listen

13 Replies

Someone knocked urgently on the door that leads in from the garage while I was having a late lunch yesterday. It was my friend and neighbor John Culp, and he had brought me a Judd Larkins yard sign.

Well, it’s about time. I got James Smith and Jaime Harrison signs for him back in 2018, and he’s been owing me.

It also reminded me. A few months back, I had breakfast with John and Clark Surratt one morning at Compton’s, and John had brought along Judd Larkins and Marcurius Byrd for us to meet. Judd is running for office, and Marcurius is his campaign manager. Later, I got him together with James Smith over coffee, and they got along well.

Oh, you haven’t heard of Judd? Well, he’s the Democratic nominee for the 2nd Congressional District. But since everyone knows that district is drawn to provide Joe Wilson with a sinecure for life, that he inherited it from Floyd Spence, and that no one else will sit in that seat so long as Joe lives, folks don’t pay much attention to who runs against him. No matter what Joe does. Or, since this is Joe we’re talking about, no matter what he doesn’t do.

So Judd doesn’t get a lot of attention. But he should, because he is the kind of person who should get elected to public office, and Joe Wilson, by comparison, is not.

At the very least, watch the one and only debate in this “race.” It’s coming up Monday night, Oct. 24, and will be webcast from River Bluff High School at 7 p.m. If you’d like to attend in person, I’m pretty sure you can still get a ticket. If you want to see it on TV, I’m told you’re out of luck.

But if you miss that, don’t worry — you can go out and read some of the extensive news coverage of this election to decide who will go to Congress and run this country, such as… wait… how about… OK, I’m not finding any. No, wait, Marcurius has posted a story on Facebook from The Lexington Chronicle, and I’m sure y’all all subscribe to that, right? In case you don’t, here’s a link.

At some other point, I’ll put up a separate post asking why we even bother to pretend to have elections for Congress, since no one knows anything about these “races.”

But now, a few words about Judd, since you probably won’t see much anywhere else. First, I urge you to go check out his website. On the “About” page, you’ll learn such things as:

Judd was born and raised in a small town in Greenwood County called Ninety Six. Judd’s father is a high-school dropout turned success businessman while Judd’s mother was a schoolteacher before tragically passing away from breast cancer when Judd was just 14 years old. Judd attended Ninety Six High School where he was a two-sport star and Track and Field State Champion.

After Graduating High School, Judd attended Clemson University where he graduated Su(m)ma Cum Laude with a degree in Language (Chinese) and International Trade. While attending Clemson, Judd spent two summers in China becoming fluent in Mandarin Judd also holds a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge (UK). While attending Cambridge, Judd worked on crafting a business plan for new, innovative transplant technology and also conducted market research for a finance firm located in Dublin, Ireland. After Completing his MBA, Judd was based in Luxembourg while working for an Asian Financial Company…

Yeah, that needed some editing. And yeah, he holds a master’s degree from Cambridge. Personally, I went to Oxford — my wife and I spent six days there in 2011 and had a lovely time — but I guess a master’s from Cambridge is OK, if that’s all you’ve got.

In other words, he’s a smart kid. That he’s a kid is undeniable. If you meet him, you might think that self-proclaimed champion of the kindergarten set, Joe Cunningham, looks a bit like Methuselah by comparison. But again, Judd’s a smart kid.

More than that, he’s an idealistic, thoughtful, considerate, unblemished sort of young man who would do a lot to improve our ideology-poisoned Congress — if he could get elected.

Based on what I’ve seen, Judd’s campaign has little or no money. I don’t think he’ll do as well as Adair Ford Boroughs (who at least got to be U.S. attorney), because he’s simply a lot less visible.

Basically, his campaign seems to consist mainly of going door-to-door and introducing himself to people. Nothing wrong with canvassing, of course, but it’s kind of hard to do enough of it when the odds are stacked against you to this extent. In a congressional district, there are just too many doors you’ll never have time to knock on.

“There’s just so much ground to cover,” Judd told me when I checked in with him Wednesday. “We’re probably gonna run out of time.”

But Judd tries anyway. And generally, he’s pleased with the reception he gets. He hasn’t had anybody cuss him out, in spite of his being a Democrat and all. He doesn’t seem to do as well getting time with big shots in business and politics, but “Regular folks are generally nice.”

“Folks are like, oh, I saw you last week. Thanks for being here,” he said. “We need somebody new, somebody younger.”

I would add that they need somebody who’s all about telling you what he would do if he got the chance to serve (here’s his platform), and not about how bad that other guy is. Some of the folks out there tell him that, and Judd listens. “They all seem to be tired of the fighting. Just do something,” they tell him.

Of course, if he wanted to go negative, Joe gives him plenty to work with. Adair did a good job of pointing that out — the fact that the main thing about Joe is, he does nothing. (And don’t think it’s because he’s lazy. It’s a deliberate approach, which he inherited from his predecessor Floyd Spence, who I think got it from Strom Thurmond — do nothing as a legislator, and take care of constituent service. If you do anything, it might tick people off.)

But Judd’s not interested in that. Nor does he care to go on about what’s wrong with the Republican Party, or any of that stuff so many want to yammer about.

He wants to make life better for young and old, with a particular emphasis on the small towns all over his district, such as the one he grew up in — Ninety Six. (And by the way, when he speaks, you can tell he’s from someplace like that, Cambridge or no.) Again, here’s his platform. He can also speak intelligently about international affairs, but that’s not what he talks about.

Anyway, those are the kinds of things Judd wants to do. Y’all know I’m not big on platforms and promises. But I am a big fan of Judd’s approach. He wants to identify “universal issues” that people care about regardless of politics, and then “try to find allies on the issues,” and “find a solution.”

You know all those people on both ends of the spectrum who are all about putting a proposal out there that they know the competing party will oppose, and then running against the opponents on the basis of their opposition? It’s Plan A for so many in politics. And nothing ever gets done.

Well, Judd Larkins is sort of the opposite of that. Check him out.

Oh, and yeah, I put up that sign John gave me…

Graham’s questioning Jackson AGAIN? Why?

7 Replies

This may be a stupid question (actually, I know it’s a stupid question), but why is Lindsey Graham questioning the Supreme Court nominee AGAIN, just now? I just grabbed the less-than-ideal image above from the live feed on The Washington Post site.

I’ve done my best to ignore these hearings for quite a few years, because I find them to be such torture (I don’t think I’ve followed one closely since Clarence Thomas). That’s the only excuse I have for not understanding how they work.

But I’m aware that Lindsey had some time with her Monday. And again on Tuesday. I mean, near as I could tell from the info that slipped through as I was trying to ignore it. So… why is he on again?

These hearings do so little that is of any value, and do so much harm to our country — both in terms of fueling destructive partisanship and undermining confidence in our courts — that it really, truly seems they should be streamlined. Each member gets some time with the nominee (and they’ve each met with her privately before the hearings, right? what is this but a show for strutting before the base?), and we’re done. One day, tops.

You’ll say, that will never happen. But I know of one way to change that. Bar TV cameras from the hearing room. That would guarantee that the hearings would resume to simply conducting business, as required by the Constitution.

But of course, that will never happen either, will it?

Freedom as another word

6 Replies

It’s hugely important, but is freedom THE word that sums it all up?

Editor’s note: Y’all, this was supposed to post last night and somehow it did not. Don’t know what happened. So here it is. I’m not going to read through it yeah again to make sure there are no “today” that should be “the other day.” Just, you know, here it is…

Yeah, I know that headline is not the lyric. But while I wanted to suggest it, I didn’t want to say exactly what Kristofferson did. The thing is, it’s not “just another word.” It’s a pretty important word — one of the most important ones we have in our culture.

But in terms of the way we use it, I’m not sure it’s always the right word. And that’s what I want to talk about.

It’s something I think about a lot, mostly when I hear someone try to sum up what America’s all about — particularly when describing what our soldiers have fought for in this conflict or that one — and they just say that one word, and I wonder, “Is that really the right word in this instance?”

But I’m bringing it up today because of a podcast I listened to while walking a couple of days back. Actually, I read about it first, and it read like it would be a good examination of my point. I read:

Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic and cultural theorist whose work includes the award-winning 2016 book “The Argonauts.” Her newest work, “On Freedom,” pierces right into the heart of America’s founding idea: What if there’s no such thing as freedom, at least not freedom as a state of enduring liberation?

And more than that: What if we don’t want to be free? Perhaps that’s the great lie in the American dream: We’re taught to want freedom, but many of us recoil from its touch….

Nelson describes herself as a “disobedient thinker,” someone who enjoys looking at “the difficulty of difficult things,” and this conversation bears that out. We talk about when and whether freedom is hard to bear, the difference between a state of liberation and the daily practice of freedom, the hard conversations sexual liberation demands, what it means to live in koans, my problems with “The Giving Tree,” Nelson’s disagreements with the left, the difficulty of maintaining your own experience of art in an age when the entire internet wants to tell you how to feel about everything, and more.

OK, those are not exactly the things that I was thinking, but it sounded like a conversation that might go where I wanted it to.

It didn’t. In fact, some of it got pretty silly. Sometimes the conversation sounded sort of like possibly my favorite scene from “Love and Death”:

SONJA: Perception is irrational. It implies imminence. But judgment of any system of phenomena exists in any rational, metaphysical or epistemological contradiction to an abstracted empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself.

BORIS: Yeah, I’ve said that many times….

And now that I go back and read the description again after listening, I realize I should have seen that.

So let me start my own conversation about what American mean when they say “freedom,” and whether it’s the right word.

But first, three words from the French Revolution: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Of course, freedom comes first, but it is implied that at the very least, these are equally worthy goals for a civilization. But are they?

If you’re on the right in America — or at least the more libertarian neighborhoods of the right — you will insist vehemently that liberté is what it’s all about, and the one main thing we need. Freedom, baby.

If you’re on the more woke, Bernie and AOC portions of the left, then the main thing is égalité, and we need to spend all our political energies fighting to overcome the billionayuhs and make everybody equal in every way, whether they want to be or not.

But when I look around and think about what we most need in our society, that quality that’s most painfully absent from our country, I tend to focus on the third word. We need to get along, more than anything else. Brotherhood is what we should and must pursue, or this whole experiment is over. What sort of label should be slapped on that kind of thinking? Communitarian, I suppose. Or Catholic, maybe, taking it beyond the here and now. That’s what the pope would say, and in fact did say last year in Fratelli Tutti.

But that’s not to dismiss the importance of liberty in the sense of having a liberal form of government, or the critical principle of equality before the law. But here’s the thing: We have those things in generous plenty. Our nation’s history is basically a story of ensuring and broadening the guarantees of such things. What we’re hurting for is something our system doesn’t even legally mandate, fraternité.

But that’s not my point here today. That is in fact my second digression, counting the one about the podcast. My third, if you count “Me and Bobby McGee.” If I didn’t have all the room in the world — say, if this were print — I’d be showing more discipline. Eventually. My columns in the paper would initially be written more or less this way, but when I got serious about getting the paper out, I’d ditch everything above, and the published column would start right about here, after the warming-up exercises….

In this country, in this culture, freedom is a very important concept, to be sure. It’s something our way of life can’t do without.

Unfortunately, the word is often used to excuse an abandonment of adult responsibility that might make a child in the Terrible Twos blush. It’s used to defend hating government — which means hating the system that enables us to live together as a civilization, to dwell together in the hundreds of millions without randomly killing each other. It means hating the thing that makes rights — freedoms — possible. (Here we could have a big philosophical argument — and we may — over whether the Bill of Rights were necessary. Some opposed them on the grounds that rights are natural, God-given, and that to spell them out would be to limit them. I don’t think so. And if you think such things exist in a state of nature, you need to study the record of our species more closely. In fact, have any of you read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari? I’m still reading it, but when I’m done I’m going to write a post or two about it. There’s some nonsense in it — some of it insulting, if you’re, you know, a Homo sapiens — but a lot of interesting stuff as well.)

Often, another word meant to appeal to our sense of the importance of freedom — choice — is used in our politics to defend ideas that would be a tough sell on their own. Hence abortion is sold as “choice.” So is the execrable practice of diverting public money away from public education. So yeah, go ahead and call me “anti-choice,” since you’re going to do that anyway. I certainly am against “choice” when you’re using it to mean, “I get to do any damned thing I choose to do, and I have no responsibility to anyone else concerned whatsoever.” But since I suspect relatively few of you would agree with me on both those points, I’ll just move on…

But not without saying that “freedom” gets used in exactly the same way — such as to defend otherwise indefensible things such as banning mandates on masks or vaccines. Yeah, it’s stupid and horrible, but it’s about freedom, so…

Beyond that, though, is freedom what we’re all about, in the sense of being a one-word answer that completely does the job? I don’t think it does. It expresses a lot of what we’re about, but it sort of cries out for elaboration, if you’re going to truly understand the country and what makes it what Madeleine Albright and I would call the indispensable nation, or — to use a term many of my friends hate — if you’re to explain what makes us exceptional. We can argue all day about that word, too. But my point is, when people pick a word to express that exceptionalism, they tend to fall back on “freedom.” Which I don’t think gets the job done. (And of course, a lot of you who are offended by “exceptionalism” think people who believe in it are idiots who want to oversimplify anyway, but that’s another side argument.)

Let’s look at our history, starting with the Revolution. Of course, as long as I’m being picky about words, in my mind, “revolution” has always been a bit of a misnomer. Compared to real revolutions like the French or the Russian, it’s pretty tame stuff. It wasn’t about the peasants rising up to overthrow the brutal overlords (or however those folks saw their elites). Basically, the guys who were already running these colonies wanted to be left alone to run them, and didn’t like the way London — the Crown or Parliament or whomever you want to blame the most — was interfering.

If you want to go by the best-known oversimplification of the time, it was more about representation than freedom. (And no, my libertarian friends, it wasn’t “no taxation.” It was “No taxation without representation.”) You can say they wanted to be free of the king. But if I recall correctly (and I confess that in college I studied the period right after the Revolution far more closely than that just before), they had very much liked being British subjects, but they felt like they were starting to lose some of the benefits of that status. Hence the fight for independence.

Let’s move to 1861. In the great scheme of things, that was certainly about freedom. (Note that I’m talking about the Union side, because this post is about this country, not factions trying to split off from it.) But interestingly, most of the soldiers were fighting not for freedom for themselves, but for the freedom of other people who weren’t even allowed to take up arms until late in the process. Also, I’m not sure how many of those fighting — or supporting the fighting on the homefront — would have said that’s what they were fighting for. But certainly “freedom” played a huge role in the memes of the day, and with more justice than during other periods of our history.

In later conflicts, we saw that pattern repeated. Often, Americans fought and bled and died for freedom — but as often as not (in fact, probably more often than not) it was for other people’s freedom. Which is one of the most exceptional things about us.

Take WWII. When the Japanese attacked, were they trying to take over the United States and repeal not only the Bill of Rights, but the Constitution? Or were they just trying to grab as much of the western Pacific Rim and its resources as they could, and correctly saw us as an obstacle to that? And the Germans were certainly taking the freedoms of Europeans, but at what point was there ever a real possibility of their marching into Washington or New York? Had Hitler won the war, I think the U.S. would have existed in a less free world, and that would have put huge strains on our own system. (Like the Cold War, only much worse.) But was it really about our freedom?

This brings us to Afghanistan. If you’re an Afghan woman, you bet it was about freedom, and you can rely on someone like me to use that reason a lot in explaining why we needed to be there. And I’m not trying to mislead you: I’m a big believer in using our strength to help oppressed people everywhere, when possible and practicable. You may have noticed that.

But is that why we were there? No. The Taliban had allowed their country to be used as a safe base for, well, the Base, and that presented a shockingly demonstrated physical threat to the United States — the kind of threat to which an oppressive country would likely have responded more or less as strongly as a “free” one.

Mind you, I’m not saying “freedom” is a bad word for what we’re about. I’m just saying we’re about so much more.

It’s kind of like “democracy.” People use that much the way they use “freedom.” But if I thought “democracy” summed up what our system is all about, I’d be slightly alarmed. I’m not a fan of direct democracy. I think having a system in which we all voted online on yes or no questions regarding major policy issues would be utterly insane. What we have is something more accurately described as “representative democracy” (to bring up, in a sideways fashion, that concept that seemed so important at the time of our revolution) or, in a Madisonian sense, a republic. And thank God for that.

This bothers those who smell “elitism” when they hear things like that. Well, their noses aren’t working right. I don’t believe for a moment that people who are elected to make decisions are by definition wiser, or in any other way better, than those who elect them (although I certainly respect them more than people who say they “hate politicians”). It’s about the process more than the people. If you just grab people at random off the street, and send them to Washington to study issues and engage in debate with people of various views, you will get better laws than if you simply ask those people on the street to state their uninformed, gut preference on a complex issue (which is why I’ve always hated “man-in-the-street” interviews — they make me embarrassed for the human race).

This is why I am so dismayed by Trumpism, and the extreme partisanship that was ruining our politics before Trumpism. When you go out of your way to elect people who are so aggressively idiotic that they will not engage in debate in good faith, the system cannot possibly work, no matter how “free” we say we are. (I’m stopping myself here from returning to another tangent, about the “freedom” to refuse vaccines and not wear masks, thereby killing thousands of your neighbors and destroying our economy. If you use “freedom” that way, you are definitely on the wrong track.)

Bottom line, I’m an American, and I cherish my freedom. It is worth fighting for and dying for, and I am profoundly grateful for everyone who has ever done that. Which anyone who has followed what I write knows. The least the rest of us can do is speak up in favor of it.

But does the word by itself sum up what I love about my country? No. You have to use other words as well, carefully and thoughtfully. And you have to insist that when people say “freedom,” they use it correctly and respectfully. Or else you’re missing what our country is about.

Speaking of words, I’m going to stop now…

What? You mean that guy’s still governor of New York?

29 Replies

About a week ago, I ran across the name of Andrew Cuomo in The New York Times, and saw that they still referred to him as “governor.” (Or maybe just “Gov.” before his name. I can’t find the piece right now.)

I hadn’t seen the name in awhile, and my first reaction was, Really? That guy is still governor of the state of New York?

And when I got this notification on my phone this morning, I had the same thought again: “New York Gov. Cuomo Sexually Harassed Multiple Women, Investigation Finds.”

Well, actually, I had two thoughts. The first one was to the statement in the headline itself: Yeah, we all knew that.

The second thought was Really? You mean that guy is still governor up there?

Perhaps you will have other thoughts. Personally, I dismissed this sleazeball quite a while back. I see that I last made a reference to him here, in an open thread on March 10:

What about that Cuomo guy? — I’ve never paid much attention to this guy, which was probably wise on my part. I’m not hearing anything good about him. And I don’t just mean the nursing-home deaths. I mean, who hires a 25-year-old “health adviser?” This guy does, if he likes her looks. Wow. Have you seen the picture included with this story about the gov making his unwelcome moves on a tiny, vulnerable, appalled young woman? He looks like Dracula with his latest victim. What a jerk. By the way, I have a problem with the hed to that Gail Collins column I linked to above: “Sex and the Single Governor.” He married Kerry Kennedy in 1990 and they have three kids. Yeah, they divorced in 2005. But he’s Catholic; she’s Catholic. He’s not “single.”

Yo, New York: Deal with your problem. We have enough headaches dealing with the various absurdities cranked out on a regular basis by our own governor. I don’t have time to waste worrying about yours…

DeMarco: Reconsidering Thomas Jefferson

17 Replies

The Op-Ed Page

A version of this column appeared in the July 21^st edition of the Florence Morning News.

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Reconsidering learned history is difficult. As we are educated, most of us create a world view that portrays the tribe with which we identify in a positive light. For most of America’s existence, schoolchildren have been taught a story favorable to whites. This narrative persists and tends to harden in adulthood.

As I wrote about in a previous post, I continue to learn that my formal and informal education about my country’s and world’s history has been skewed in my favor. This relearning has been particularly difficult with one of my heroes, Thomas Jefferson.

I am a proud class of 1985 graduate of the University of Virginia. More than most universities, UVa reflects the personality of its founder. As I walked the Lawn, I had a window into Jefferson’s expansive mind. I saw him at the drawing board at Monticello, poring over competing designs for his “academical village.” I was grateful to be one of thousands of students he had inspired. I spent four years at the university in awe of Jefferson’s creativity, intellect, and eloquence.

Although I knew he owned enslaved people, I never grappled with the awful reality of what that meant. Despite my four-year sojourn at UVa, I emerged with a child’s understanding of Jefferson. He was an icon, as near to a perfect American as there would ever be. This is partly my own fault; somehow I managed to graduate from UVa without taking any history courses.

One of the things I did learn about Jefferson while at his university was his epitaph. His gravestone is engraved with the following: “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” He was so accomplished that his two terms of president of the United States did not make the cut.

After I graduated, when rumors of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman whom he owned, gradually bubbled into the press, I was skeptical. This information did not fit with the nearly faultless image I had fashioned for him. I was of the same mind as Dumas Malone who wrote an exhaustive six-volume biography, Jefferson and His Time. Malone opined in the fourth volume that the accusations related to Hemings were “distinctly out of character, being virtually unthinkable in a man of Jefferson’s moral standards and habitual conduct,” and I agreed.

However, in 1998 DNA evidence revealed that Jefferson could have been the father of one or more of Hemings’ six children. To be clear, the evidence is not definitive and there remains a group of scholars who argue strongly that it was another Jefferson relative (his younger brother, Randolph, seems the most likely candidate).

What is known is that Sally Hemings (who was 30 years younger than Thomas Jefferson) was herself the child of Jefferson’s father-in-law and an enslaved woman, Elizabeth Hemings. This made Sally Hemings half-sister to Jefferson’s wife, Martha.

I struggled with the fact that the possibility Jefferson could have been like many of the slave masters of his era who fathered children by their enslaved workers had never occurred to me (or was communicated to me) during my years at UVA. Despite seeing statues of Jefferson on the grounds almost every day, multiple visits to Monticello, and hours of reading, I had not fully reckoned with who Jefferson was. I saw what I wanted to see.

Irrespective of whether Jefferson was the father of Hemings’ children, my subsequent reading forced a deeper examination of the sharp contrast between Jefferson’s exalted words and his actions. Although he did make strong statements condemning slavery throughout his life, he was closely involved in the management and disciplining of the enslaved workers at Monticello. He, like many planters, would have been destitute without them. A nailery at Monticello, which ran mainly on the labors of 10- to 16-year-old boys, was critical to the economic stability of the plantation. The overseers occasionally whipped the children to ensure a sufficient output of nails, a practice about which Jefferson was fully aware. He also recognized the investment potential of enslaved people and calculated that “he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children.”

It was unsettling to have my comfortable images of Jefferson transformed in such a disfiguring way. It highlighted for me the fact that when Jefferson wrote the words “All men are created equal,” he was writing about people like himself, white male landowners: not women, not people of color, nor even white men who did not own property. Certainly not Hemings.

I’ve been included in Jefferson’s vision since he penned it over two centuries ago. I have had to fight for none of my rights. My freedom, my ability to live where I wanted, to be educated where I chose, to compete for any job, to expect only respectful deference from the police or any other representatives of government has been guaranteed since the founding of the republic. Not so for so many others.

Seeing our nation for what it really is – both great and deeply flawed, like Jefferson himself – will allow us to better understand and support those for whom the American dream remains unrealized.

Dr. DeMarco is a physician who lives in Marion, and a long-time reader of this blog.

I see the GOP just did an amazingly shameful thing. Again.

12 Replies

This is a screenshot from video of Rep. Cheney speaking after the vote, which you can watch by clicking on the image.

That’s essentially what I said on Twitter this morning about the Liz Cheney thing, and started to move on to other topics.

But perhaps we should pause on that one for a moment, seeing how I may have been a trite too dismissive of the significance of this moment in American political history.

Perhaps we should contemplate what Tom Friedman had to say in his piece, “The Trump G.O.P.’s Plot Against Liz Cheney — and Our Democracy.” He wrote it before what happened this morning, but with full knowledge of what would happen. And as ominous as it sounds, he may have been on the money:

One of America’s two major parties is about to make embracing a huge lie about the integrity of our elections — the core engine of our democracy — a litmus test for leadership in that party, if not future candidacy at the local, state and national levels.

In effect, the Trump G.O.P. has declared that winning the next elections for the House, Senate and presidency is so crucial — and Trump’s ability to energize its base so irreplaceable — that it justifies both accepting his Big Lie about the 2020 election and leveraging that lie to impose new voter-suppression laws and changes in the rules of who can certify elections in order to lock in minority rule for Republicans if need be.

It is hard to accept that this is happening in today’s America, but it is.

If House Republicans follow through on their plan to replace Cheney, it will not constitute the end of American democracy as we’ve known it, but there is a real possibility we’ll look back on May 12, 2021, as the beginning of the end — unless enough principled Republicans can be persuaded to engineer an immediate, radical course correction in their party….

Indeed. Let’s focus on that bit about these twits saying that this action against the one prominent person among them willing to speak the obvious truth is crucial to “winning the next elections for the House, Senate and presidency.”

Not for long, though. I only have this to say about it: If that’s what they believe and assert — which they have done in the last few days, in a Orwellian effort to “justify” what they’re doing to Rep. Cheney — well then none of them should ever be elected to anything, ever again. As you know, I’m willing up to a point to accept certain behaviors by elected officials that are meant purely to get them elected or re-elected, if they are worthy people otherwise. Because if you don’t get elected, you can’t do any good for anyone.

But sometimes, the thing you’re willing to do proves that you are not a worthy candidate. For instance, Lindsey Graham struggled for years to keep the yahoos from tossing him out so that he could stay in office and push hard for sensible immigration policy, or for dialing back the partisan madness that was undermining our method of selecting federal judges. But when you just give up completely, and commit yourself with slavish devotion to the worst person ever to hold high office in the country, you completely abandon any argument that the nation is better off with you than without you. Obviously, you should no longer hold office.

And any Republicans who want Donald Trump to have anything to do with their party, and are willing to embrace his outrageously destructive Big Lie in order to achieve that, are people who should not only lose the next election, but the one after that, and every election to come.

Friedman’s column continues with the ways Republicans are, across the country, trying to undermine our electoral processes so that no one can ever trust them again. In our Identity Politics era, much of the attention has been on the GOP’s efforts to discourage voting by People of a Certain Color. As dastardly as that is, it’s hardly the whole story. Writes Friedman:

There are also the new laws to enable Republican legislatures to legally manipulate the administration and counting of the votes in their states….

We’re talking about new regulations like the Georgia law that removed the secretary of state from decision-making power on the State Election Board, clearly aimed to curb the powers of the current secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, after he rejected Trump’s request that he “find” 11,780 votes to undo Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia….

As Stanford University democracy expert Larry Diamond summed it all up to me, while we’re focusing on Liz Cheney and the 2020 elections, Trump’s minions at the state level “are focused on giving themselves the power to legally get away with in 2024 what the courts would not let them get away with in 2020.”…

I’m probably close to getting in trouble with the copyright attorneys at the NYT, but I assure you I’m not trying to steal anything; I’m trying to help Friedman spread the alarm. I strongly urge you to go read the whole thing (and everything else you can find from honest, knowledgeable sources), and if they want you to pay for it, by all means pay. As I do.

It’s important because Friedman predicts that once Republicans complete the task of rigging the electoral system in their lying, malodorous favor, “both Democrats and principled Republicans will take to the streets, and you can call it whatever you like, but it is going to feel like a new civil war.”

Because what else is there to do, when our civilization is no longer held together by the rule of law, reference for the truth and profound respect for, and confidence in, fair elections?

Friedman, who covered the collapse in Lebanon, doesn’t use the term “civil war” either “lightly or accidentally.” He saw a civilized country fall apart, which is “what happens when democratically elected politicians think that they can endlessly abuse their institutions, cross redlines, weaken their judiciary and buy reporters and television stations — so that there is no truth, only versions, of every story.”

Dismiss it as alarmism if you like. Bask in the warmth of having an honest, decent, qualified president who is doing his best to serve to the betterment of his country, and enjoys high approval ratings as a result.

But keep in mind that the people who ousted Liz Cheney today have something very different in mind. They are eager to pull us all into the darkness…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: The Nation

A few words regarding this Venezuela thing…

The U.S. strikes upon Iran targets

The mind of a soldier, and the soul of a country

DeMarco: Democrats and Independents: The Time to Stop Trump is Feb. 24

Tiny rays of hope, here and there…

So, did I read this right? Should I have hung in there?

Thrilled to meetcha…

Graham, Scott, also vote in favor of default

Stop trying to oversimplify things, people! It doesn’t help.

What do these ‘reluctant’ Democrats want?

Are we about to send ‘advisers’ to Ukraine? Seem familiar?

Experience the stories of South Carolinians who fought in Vietnam

Hey, 2nd District — give Judd Larkins a listen

Graham’s questioning Jackson AGAIN? Why?

Freedom as another word

What? You mean that guy’s still governor of New York?

DeMarco: Reconsidering Thomas Jefferson

I see the GOP just did an amazingly shameful thing. Again.