Category Archives: Politics

Fear mongering

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Guns (1 of 1) More Americans had their backgrounds checked while buying guns on Black Friday than on any other day on record, according to F.B.I. statistics, New york Times.

A week or so ago, right after the San Bernardino shooting, I started to do a post on guns and fear mongering but I kept getting distracted by Trump’s rhetoric escalations. Guns are a big problem in the United States, but I don’t think that guns are our biggest problem, maybe they are a distant third. Not counting Global Climate Change, our biggest problem is the growing toxic environment of fear. Increasingly, we are unable to see reality because our fear induced anger in clouding our vision. While I think the biggest offenders are on the right, it is not just the right that seems to be blind with rage.

In what seems like months ago, I couldn’t imagine how ISIS could be an existential threat to the United States. Now I am starting to think that I was wrong. Roosevelt famously said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, I learned that in school, maybe in some Civics class, maybe in a High School History class, I don’t know, but I do know that I really didn’t understand the moral importance of that quote. I knew what the words meant intellectually, but not the emotional urgency. Now I am beginning to better understand the corrosiveness of fear as I am starting to see it play out in front of me.

For about six months, starting in late 1973, the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left wing terrorist organization, ran wild in California. They said the purpose of the mayhem was to get the police to over react turning the general population against what they saw as corrupt authority. The police did over react, in a way, with 400 police officers shooting about 9,000 bullets into a house where the SLA – as they were known, almost none of us knowing what symbionese meant – was holed up, but the populus never followed suit. To me at the time, getting the population to turn on the government, to, in effect, turn on itself seemed, fortunately, like an impossible goal. In the early seventies, the left was similar to the right of today except, of course, 180° out of sync. The SLA, however, was just too small a lever to move the country in any measurable way. I am worried that in our more polarized nation, a right wing terrorist organization, ISIS, may be a big enough lever.

When Trump says “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” it is not only an idiotic misstating of reality, it is bad for America because it excites fear. People are already afraid, for their jobs, for their kid’s job prospects, and I think, in the back of everybody’s mind is the spectre of Climate Change, so fanning that fear, finding and blaming scapegoats, as a way to get votes smacks of being ungentlemanly at the very least.

While it may seem unAmerican, in that way Trump is not any different than classic American fascists like the proNazi Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s. The problem is that hate mongering breeds conviction and self-righteousness, not only in the gullible listener but the cynical liars become believers, believing their own vile bullshit, stoking their own fire. When somebody of Trump’s stature and fame says bigotry is OK, that it moves the bar of acceptable behavior, Jeb! seems benign when he suggests almost the same thing in a more acceptable way.

But when Trump says he wants “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and when a governor, like Bobby Jindal or John Kasich issues an unenforceable executive order preventing Syrian refugees from coming to their state, it is worse than unAmerican, it is antiAmerican.  It is aiding and abetting the enemy and I don’t say that lightly. Trump et al are are smart enough to know that what they say they want, would create the same segregated and isolated  conditions that are causing Europe so much trouble. What we do better than anybody, is assimilate our immigrants – although it is a low bar – and it is in our best interest to keep doing so. What Trump et al say they want are more the conditions that make jihadis in the first place. That hurts more than our liberal sensibilities, it makes our world more dangerous.

A modest proposel

Americana, Politics, War

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If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna. Napoleon Bonaparte

First, a disclaimer. I only understand what is happening in Syria in the most fuzzy and incomplete way. That said, it very roughly seems to be a civil war against the Shiite minority government of Syria by that country’s Sunni majority, a war by the Sunni minority against the ruling Shiite majority in Iraq, a war by the Kurds for their own territory, a war by Turkey on the same Kurdish separatists, a war between the Kurds with both the Iraqi Army and Shiite militias against the Sunnis who have captured what they consider their land, and a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In addition, we are backing the Iraqi Shiite government, along with Iran, against the bad Sunni separatists but we are also backing the good Sunni separatists that – theoretically, at least – are against the Iranian supported Shiite government in Syria. In the middle of this is a group of Sunni fanatic thugs, ISIS, and disenfranchised Baathist military.

ISIS, it seems, wants to be fighting with everybody who is not their brand of Sunni extremist. They are killing Shiites, Christians, and random foreigners at home while blowing up Russian airplanes, killing Chinese workers in Africa, and killing people with guns and bombs in France, Mali, Yemen, Libya, and – it seems – any place else they can. Either they have no idea that their actions will result in retaliation and are killing people thinking they will not get hit back or their actions are in an effort to get us to strike out at them.

If ISIS is attacking and terrorising people all over the world for a reaction, it brings up the question, What do they want the reaction to be? When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the purpose was to shock us enough to keep us out of Southeastern Asia. In retrospect, that attack seems suicidal, all it did was enrage us. Seventy five years later, it is naive to think that ISIS  is making the same mistake. Much more likely is the scenario that they are trying to get us to strike back. Strike back at Syrian refugees so we make it harder for them to escape ISIS by leaving Syria, getting politicians to attack Muslims living in Europe and the United States so they will become alienated in their own country, and, of course, attack ISIS territory directly to help them solidify their rule. If we are really going to let ISIS suck us into this, how are we going to win? The scenarios range from doing nothing to nuking Mecca. The problem is that all the scenarios are bad and what we are doing now is one of the worst.

ISIS and alot of other people don’t like us because we invaded Iraq and terrorized a big portion of the population. We disenfranchised the Sunnis, especially alienating and pissing off the young Sunni men whose lives were trashed by the invasion. Now we are bombing them again, or, at least, some of them again, just like ISIS wants. This is the worst of all possible worlds, we are not doing enough to win but we are killing, mostly, innocent people and making more people hate us.

Bombing is not an effective way to win a war. During World War II, the Allies dropped more than a million and a half tons of bombs on Germany, killing between 400,000 to 600,000 civilians and we still had to move troops into Germany – or put boots on the ground if you prefer – to win the war. War can only be won, the enemy can only be conquered, by occupying the other’s territory and running the place. The ruler can rule directly or install a puppet regime but, either way, the ruler must be prepared to stay for a while.

The easy way to do this is to provide air support and let some local army put their boots on the ground. But which locals and how many boots on the ground? The Kurds are on our side and are pretty good fighters especially with our air support. However, the biggest reason the Kurds are good fighters is that they are defending their own ground and they are really only interested in regaining and protecting greater Kurdistan.

The Iraqi Army which is, primarily, a Shiite Army, along with Shiite militias and Iranian leadership and support, are pushing back at ISIS both to the north and east of Baghdad but they are not going to move into Syria and take over ISIS’s capital, Raqqa and we don’t want them to. They will have a hard enough time holding on to the Sunni parts of Iraq which, after all, is a major factor in Sunni deflections and ISIS’s ascendency. I doubt Saudi Arabia is going to put a million boots on the ground to kill Sunnis when all they want to do is defeat Iranian backed, Shiite ruler of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

If we are serious that ISIS is an existential threat to our way of life, if we really think they are out to destroy us and our way of life and the only way to stop them is to, in Hillary Clinton’s words, defeat and destroy ISIS, then we are going to have occupy their territory.   The French seem game to help but it is doubtful that most of Europe will be offering up troops. That means we will have to make this war the national priority like our war against Japan and Germany. We can’t diddle around like we did in Afghanistan where we spent thirteen years and changed nothing but the price of rental housing in Kabul. The boots on the ground has to be lots of boots on the ground.

It is hard to believe that even Marco Rubio or The Donald really want to do that. What everybody seems to want to do is just poke at the problem hoping – I guess – that ISIS will change their mind and go away. But that is not going to happen.

I think we ought to do the opposite, I think we should withdraw our troops and drones from the region and continue Obama’s approach of blockading ISIS territory, stopping  them from selling oil and buying weapons. I think we should contain them. I want to quickly say that I know ISIS is loathsome, closer to the 1930’s Nazis than anybody else that comes to mind. They are great at propaganda and even better at perverting their host civilization. The leaders are thugs. They are killers and rapists and their behavior is attracting other thugs. If we leave, we leave a terrified country to be plundered and brutalized. That is sickening. If we really ran the world, we could wave a wand and have ISIS disappear or order some client state to defeat and destroy them, or cajole some ally, if you prefer, or convince a neighbor that it is their best interest to take them out. The problem is that, while it is in most countries interest to have ISIS gone, it is not in anybody’s self-interest to move the million troops into Syria to make it happen.

We should just get out, the world will not end any more than it did when we pulled out of Vietnam (and, remember, the hawks said that, when we pulled out of Vietnam, the neighboring countries would fall like dominoes, including Thailand and Japan). Will they try to convince alienated Muslim children to attack us, of course, and some will be successful, and that will hurt. It will hurt our country and, especially, the Muslim community, but it will hurt less than putting two million boots on the ground. We should just get out.

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of thoughts while watching the Democratic Debate

Americana, Politics

Debate (1 of 1)I’ve been thinking about the Democratic Debate all week because one of these guys is who I will probably vote for for president, and my first impression is still how subdued it was. There just didn’t seem to be any crazies. Nobody touted a non-existent film and everybody believed in global climate change.

Starting stage right, I liked Lincoln Chafee and when he said  “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, it left me” – probably not quoted very accurately –  I thought, What a great guy for the Democrats to run for president, they can pick up the Reagan Democrats who are disillusioned with the Republican crazy. But Chafee completely blew the question of why he voted for the reduction of Glass Steagall – and that is a question he should have known was coming and be prepared for – and his “Solid as a block of granite” comment, at least twice, just seemed too contrived. But, when he pitched that his biggest plus was that he had no scandals, I knew he is not going to get this nomination – he couldn’t even get reelected as Senator from Rhode Island – and the fact that he seems clueless to that just reinforces how delusional it is to live in the political bubble.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jim Webb gave a great impression of what a sane Republican would look like. His credentials are solid working white blue-collar, if that makes sense, with a mother from Arkansas who worked in fields picking cotton. When he said he would have no problem with letting undocumented immigrants get on ObamaCare, I was a little surprised, but then he talked about his immigrant – from Vietnam – wife going from not speaking English to graduating from Princeton, I was completely convinced that he meant it. When Webb was asked about his position of being against Affirmative Action – he is against it because it has been expanded to almost everybody but poor white people – I thought This is too nuanced, but I almost completely agreed with his answer and when he talked about African Americans being special because of slavery and then, surprisingly, included Jim Crow, I thought This guy really does understand the problem. But when he was asked “What enemy defines him?” – or something like that – his answer of the Vietnamese soldier who tried to kill him was almost embarrassing. In the end, much of the time, Webb just seemed to come off as pissed.

After Bernie Sanders said something along the lines of being a Democratic Socialist, Anderson Cooper asked if anyone on stage besides Bernie Sanders wasn’t a Capitalist, nobody raised their hand but only Clinton spoke. The question was about Bernie, so he couldn’t speak but that nobody but Hillary seemed to want to speak, was telling. If nothing else, Hillary came across as really, really, wanting the Presidency and she is willing to bust her ass to get it. I thought her answers – like “I can find common ground and know when to stand my ground” or “I want to save Capitalism from itself” or “I’m a progressive who gets things done” (which is, technically not true) – were too canned but I think Clinton did a fine job in doing what she needs to do. Her main tasks were to keep her backers on board and to keep Joe Biden out and she probably did both (maybe, in the end, she won’t be able to keep Biden out, but she did make it harder).  I’m still not a Clinton convert, I’ll vote for her if she get’s the nomination, then I won’t have a choice, but there is something about both Clintons that is a little bit above the law and she is too much of a hawk for my taste.

Martin O’Malley was a complete unknown to me so the fact that he is much better known nationally is a big win. I keep thinking that he is running for Vice-president which may not be fair.

I turned on the debate wanting Bernie to win and, in the end, I still wanted him to win and I am still going to vote for him as long as I can. At one point he was asked – what could be called a gotcha question – on not voting for the Brady Bill and he started to explain a couple of details that he didn’t like but, unlike Chafee, his answer seemed to say Why are you asking me such a stupid question, ask me about the important stuff and I don’t think it hurt him. When Hillary was asked a gotcha question about her emails, Bernie had a similar reaction saying something like “Nobody cares about the stupid emails, let’s get to the important stuff like inequality.” His answer helped Hillary but I don’t think that he cared, I don’t think that was the purpose of his answer, I think that he just wanted to get back to his agenda.

At one point, everybody was asked “What is the biggest single threat to the United States?” and the various answers were interesting. Somebody, several, actually, said versions of Terrorism, Webb surprisingly enough said China, Hillary listed three or four things – that above the rule thing again – and Bernie, with a tone of voice that seemed to say duh!, said “Climate Change”.

Of course it’s Climate Change. The long drought in the middle east – is middle east still OK to say? or is it like Oriental? – has been a major fact in the violence, especially in Syria where farmers have been forced to give up their farms and have fled to the cities. In North Africa, the nomads are being driven south to what was traditionally farming country rapeing and killing as they go. The seas are rising which should make living in Seattle and New York interesting (not to mention our dear Bay Area). Bernie saying “Climate Change” and the way in which he said “Climate Change made me very happy.

But I don’t feel about Bernie the way I felt about Obama even though his positions and his priorities line up almost perfectly with my beliefs. I am for Bernie and I have sent him money – not much – but I am concerned that I’m only for him because I don’t think he will win. If he wins, I worry that he won’t be effective, he isn’t known for Playing well others after all. And I worry that I’m not the only one who feels that way. When I heard him on the Bill Mahre show, I started thinking that maybe Bernie feels that way too. I think he wants to energize the country, to push it in the direction it must go to survive, more than he want to be President.

 

A couple of thoughts after watching most of the world’s longest debate

Americana, Politics

Repub debate (1 of 1)My first impression of the Republican Debate last Wednesday is that the candidates live in a different world than I do. In their world, the economy was doing great until Obama became president, 9-11 apparently happened on Clinton’s watch after which Bush the Younger did keep us safe, and the possibility of making a deal with Iran will result in the end of the world as we know it. Trump even said that, if Israel goes to war against Iran, we will have to take Iran’s side.

Everybody expected the debate to revolve around Trump and he did get the more airtime than anybody else – to a great extent because the debate rules gave everybody the time to answer attacks and the other candidates were constantly attacking him – but I don’t think he was the center of the debate. Watching Trump, I was reminded of  the George Cohan quote, I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right. I went into the debate thinking that Trump is an egomaniac and I was not disappointed but I also kept thinking Trump has hit a nerve and the Democrats keep thinking that there is no nerve there, I think that is a mistake.

At one point, Trump and Carly Fiorina tussled and I was surprised at how much Trump knew about Fiorina’s Hewlett Packard career  disastrous experience (I was also surprised that he knew the word persona). We live less than ten driving miles away from HP and Fiorina’s mistakes were big news here and I think Trump was pretty much right. About the time the smart money was realizing that computers were becoming a commodity in a saturated market, Fiorina forced a $19 billion merger with computer manufacturer Compaq that is still haunting the company. If I were going to vote for a business person for President – and I won’t because government and business are very different, business is a dictatorship designed to operate in secret to make money and government should be open and transparent, helping people; it is a stupid idea, just look at Chaney – I would vote for Trump over Fiorina.

As an aside, that is not to say that either Trump or Fiorina are stupid. They both know how to take care of themselves: Trump bankrupted four companies while making money for himself and Fiorina was fired and given a Twenty Million Dollar severance package to get her out of the trashed HP. End aside.

The three people I liked the best were Rand Paul,  Ben Carson, and John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio. Maybe I should say The three people who I started out liking best because each of them would start out saying something that make sense and then they would wander off into fantasyland. Like Rand Paul saying For every Kentuckian that has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage, or, from Ben Carson, A lot of people who go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay, or my fave from Rand Paul, again, saying The president is advocating a drone strike program in America. 

The three people I liked worst were Jeb! Bush who wants to put Margaret Thatcher on the ten dollar bill – WTF? – Mike Huckabee who wants to make the USA a theocracy, and Ted Cruz who wants to shut the government down.

It is a sobering thought that one of these guys will end up actually running for President.

Lewis Hamilton, Barack Obama, and black role models

Cars, Politics

Lewis-Hamilton (1)I was watching the British Grand Prix a week or so ago and the camera panned to a small boy holding up a sign that said It’s hammertime Lewis. This was a home crowd for British driver Lewis Hamilton who is generally considered  the best race car driver in the world – as an aside, I say British but I am not sure of the British/English rules, so I only suppose he is British and not English. I once introduced Marion Kaplan, Michele’s cousin who was born in England, as English. Later she corrected me, saying It is not like America where you are American if you are born there, I am British, not English. She went on to explain that English means one’s heritage is English and her heritage is eastern European. End aside – but Hamilton is a crowd favorite almost everywhere.

When I was a boy/man getting interested in cars and racing, my hero was Stirling Moss who was pasty English white guy and my President was primarily Eisenhower, another pasty white guy. Today, my idol would probably be Lewis Hamilton – well, duh! even as an adult, he is – and my president would be Barack Obama, two black guys. I keep thinking how much different this would be growing up than when I was a kid.