Did Britain just decide to become England?

Britain just voted to leave the European Union – Brexit passed 52-48.  This is not an issue that I have studied so I don’t really have an informed opinion, but I do want to mark what I think is probably a pretty important event with at least some random thoughts and wonderings.

It appears that Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales now are all talking about breaking from Britain because they don’t want to leave the European Union.  Did Britain just vote to become England?

Leaving the European Union might also unravel the European Union.  It is fine to have a common market, but a common currency, and bureaucratic control from Brussels without a common, united government seems to have stopped working around September 15, 2008 when Lehman Brothers in the United States declared bankruptcy and the entire world economy nearly collapsed, hitting the European Union particularly hard.

This is a big step in the general unravelling of the world, or at least the unravelling of many of the existing structures of the world.  I never really understood the European Union – how did such completely different peoples decide that they had a common identity?  After centuries of disastrous wars?  In order to prevent future disastrous wars, of course, was the objective, but the old WWII folks are mostly dead now, and newer generations might have to learn those old terrible lessons all over again?  I certainly hope not.

On the surface it looks like the biggest cause of the Brexit is saying NO to forced immigration policies onto England by Brussels.  I think there are a number of right wing movements in the rest of Europe pushing back very hard on the acceptance of immigrants from the exploding Middle East.  (thank you Osama bin Laden for leading these attacks, and thank you George W Bush for taking bin Laden’s bait and invading Iraq (that’s a bit of sarcasm just in case I was confusing)).

It’s all reactionary.  I think it starts with WWI, goes to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, goes to Colonialism and Imperialism of the Middle East, goes to supporting despotic Middle Eastern regimes by the West (just send us the oil and stop Communism), goes to terrorism to drive out the “infidels”, goes to chaotic realignments in the Middle East, goes to massive immigration into the West out of the Middle Eastern slaughters, goes to xenophobic and nationalistic reaction against the immigrants out of fear of terrorism and out of fear of dilution of existing nationalistic boundaries and identities, goes to Brexit…

Where to next? Britain First!  America First? (Trump?  dear Lord please no ) France first? Sweden first? etc etc etc?

I think it is a natural response for people to pull into themselves when things are in chaos and they feel threatened.  But I don’t think it is necessarily wise.  

ISIS claims responsibility for the Orlando slaugher

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the slaughter of innocents in Orlando last night where 50 were killed and another 52 were injured in a gay night club.  This is an unthinkable level of depravity and carnage.  

How is it possible for anybody to buy a weapon that can mow down over 100 people?  As far as I'm concerned it needs to be illegal to sell any weapon capable of firing more than 10 shots.  

Beyond that, how is it possible that someone who is on an FBI terrorist watch list to buy an assault weapon?  Must the weapons lobby, the NRA, insist on selling anything to anyone just as long as it gets its money?

My heart goes out to the killed and wounded and all those who love them or loved them.  This is just too much pain to have to live with.

Apparently, the fascist wing of Islam, the Islamofascists, think that they are justified by their holy texts to kill gay people.  What a stupid idea.  It's just bigotry and fear of homosexuality dressed up in religious robes.  I am convinced that those who are violently against gays are afraid that they actually have gay tendencies and are violently opposed to gay urges in themselves.  They manifest that fear by acting out dogmatically and violently against gays.  They are manifesting their own fears, and quite frankly revealing their own attractions to same sex people which is something they cannot come to terms with in themselves.

I believe that ISIS wants to have a say in this year's presidential election. They have been trying to bait the U.S. into a massive ground war in the Middle East because they believe it is written in their holy scripts that the Armageddon is coming and is necessary for the establishment of their caliphate where strict Islamic rule is the rule of the land.  They see this as required by their God.  So far, Obama has done a good job of not taking the bait and keeping the U.S. out of the religious civil wars in the Middle East (at least as much as possible)

I have expected atrocious attacks during this election cycle because I believe they want our presidential candidates to take the bait and promise to send massive troops to the Middle East.  It's bait.  It's a trap.  

We should treat this as terrorism, not as an existential war.  So far, Obama is doing that.  Will Trump? How about Hillary?  I think Trump will see this as his ticket to the White House because the only people he pays any attention to are the Right Wing radicals on the radio and Fox News.  And I presume that there will not be any call for thoughtful response in those quarters. 

I would love to be wrong about this.

The problem with gerrymandering and with the primary elections process

Two of the biggest political problems, in my opinion, are gerrymandering and the current primary election system.

Gerrymandering is where the party in power in a state draws the lines of voting districts.  They do this in a way that will most benefit their own party for elections over the next ten years.  As has been said by others, it changes the whole idea of democracy.  Rather than having the voters choose their politicians, the politicians choose their voters.  And we end up with an unrepresentative democracy.  In 2014 Republican House members in total received 51.2% of all the votes cast nationwide, yet they got 56.8% of the House seats on D.C.  That is not what the Founders had in mind.

Solution? Eliminate gerrymandering by having independent, non-partisan committees draw voting lines in each state, legislated by Federal law.  Or better yet, have a mathematical formula based on geography and population applied to each state so there is no human bias possible in the drawing of the voting districts. Probably a complicated math problem but should be solvable.

The second big problem is what we are seeing in these 2016 elections – the primary voting system being used by both parties to choose a nominee for president. 

The biggest distortion is that the voters who turn out in primary elections are more politically committed, and more ideologically extreme than the general voting public.  So, we get extremists nominated who do better in primaries than they would in a nationwide general election. 

Also, there is a set order, established by tradition, that puts some states at the beginning of the cycle and others at the end.  So, Iowa farmers have an outsized influence on who survives the primary gauntlet.  And South Carolina too, with it’s strange effect of having lots of African Americans voting in the Dem primary, and white not so unbiased whites voting in the Rep primary.  And then California ends up at the tail end despite being the largest state by far.

Primary elections were not handed down from the Founders of America.  They have only been around for about fifty years, and the flaws are becoming more and more apparent.  What to replace them with?  There was something to be said about the old smoke filled room party leaders that chose who would represent their party.  They were a vetting system.  They were natural suppressors of extremist nut jobs.  They were a force for stability.  Turning the selection over to the voters opens up the parties to change, and that is good, but it also opens the doors to extremists and populists, and in this year of Trump it opens up the Republican Party to a populist demagogue who threatens to be an authoritarian despot.  Not good.

My suggestion would be to keep the primary system, but moderate its effect in two ways. 

First, have the order of primary states be on a rotation basis based upon random distribution – with a mix of large population states and small population states having their primaries every two or three weeks in groups of about five or ten until the cycle is complete.

Second, have the total number of delegates selected by the primary voters be only half of the delegates who go to the conventions, where the real election to nominate each party’s candidate happens.  The other half would be professional elected politicians, men and women who have already succeeded in winning their positions at the voting booth.  These folks would be the governors, attorney generals, the state legislators, the city mayors, etc.  The math would have to be worked out and guidelines set as to their qualifications to attend the conventions, but that should be doable.

That way, a populist or ideological extremist would have substantial mitigating forces of professional politicians that would either support or not support him or her.  And at the same time, corrupt or intemperate or unethical candidates would have those who knew them behind the scenes there to stop them as well.  Also, a traditional candidate would have these same elected politicians who might be part of a movement or populist sentiment there to push back against them. 

So I think we need some balance in our electoral system.  End the corrupt, undemocratic gerrymandering.  And balance the popular vote which is now overly influenced by extremist ideologically committed voters and those vulnerable to populist frenzies with professional already elected politicians in each state.  Checks and balances.  We need them, I believe.  A Trump nomination is wake up call for both parties and for the nation.

Where does Trump fit on the Republican continuum?

Now that Trump has locked up  the Republican nomination for president, who is he really?  Where does he fit on the Republican or conservative continuum?

Many Republicans and conservatives are starting to try to see Trump as a kind of normal Republican politician, one that competed in Republican primaries and beat out the competition, and thus one who is deserving of some kind of respect and support.  They are twisting themselves into pretzels to do this, but I wonder if it makes any sense

Where on the Republican continuum is Trump?  Evangelical social conservative? - well, no.  Libertarian minimal government intrusion conservative? - umh, no.  Shrink the government and starve it into non-existence? - I don't think so.  Lower taxes and deregulate industry guy? - not really.  Where does he land on a continuum from Reagan to Rockefeller, from Goldwater to Huckabee, from Gingrich to H W Bush?  I don't think he even shows up on the screen.

I think Trump isn't on a conservative or Republican continuum at all.  I think he is on an authoritarian continuum.  His signature popular attraction is his threatening nature.  His threats against Mexicans.  His threats against Muslims. His threats against immigrants.  His threats against journalists.  His threats against his political opponents.  His threats against those who sue him for business fraud and betrayal.  His threats against judges ruling on lawsuits against him.  His threats against... and .... and .... forever and ever and ever.

He is not on the continuum that includes Republican politicians like Reagan or the Bushes or the candidates he defeated in the Republican primaries.  

He is on the continuum of authoritarians, like Putin, Kim Jong-un, Chavez, Castro, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Assad, Peron, Pinochet, Franco, etc. etc. This is a man who thinks he has no choice but to attack when his manhood is questioned.  This is a man (overgrown child actually) who would threaten, attack, damage, and harm his political critics inside the country, and, worse yet, do the same in the world - and he would have nuclear weapons at his disposal.  This is a man about whom former CIA director Michael Hayden said military leaders would have to disobey orders that Trump has threatened.

The Republican primary voters have not voted for a Republican to lead their party, they have voted for an authoritarian to destroy those that they hate.  They are somehow mistakenly thinking that this dictator in waiting will only attack others.  But no one will be safe, and certainly not Trump supporters.  We all are at risk.

The U.S. has never had an authoritarian dictator.  We are naive.  We think we are immune to such things.  Republican primary voters have shown us that we are not immune, but rather we are in danger of being buried under a tyrant.  It can  happen here.

Unless we vote against it happening, which I firmly believe we will.

A sad day in America

By winning the primary election in Indiana, Donald Trump has locked up the Republican nomination.  Ted Cruz and John Kasich have both dropped out of the race.  The dream of a contested election with an ultimate defeat of Trump is gone.  This is a very sad day in America.

The Republican voters have chosen. They have chosen a childish, bullshitting ignoramus to be their nominee.  This is an astounding event.  

I can understand that there is a voice in the Republican Party that has needed to be heard, and they have been heard very loudly and very clearly.  That is the voice of those who have felt for a long time that nobody listened to them or cared about them - the ever more disempowered older white men.  They have seen their jobs disappear; they have seen their life styles mocked and ridiculed; they have been told that their attitudes about women, other races, and other sexual orientations are vile (softened in their minds to the phrase "politically incorrect").  They have said they are as mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore.  

So they nominated Trump, who will not be able to do anything about any of their grievances, but that is beside the point to them, I guess, because they think that at least they will have a president that understands them and will fight, fight, fight for them.

This is the formula for tyranny, dictatorship, oppression, chaos and violence in America and in the world.

A couple of interesting and positive notes, however.  The Republican base seems to have spoken out that they don't passively accept a couple of Conservative Holy Creeds - first that tax breaks for the wealthy will create jobs for the middle class, and second that the invasion of Iraq and endless war in the Middle East is a good way to spend the lives of American men and women.  Trump has exploded some of the conservative ideology by showing that the actual conservative voters could care less about those sacred conservative ideological cows.  

But, but, but... a Trump presidency is terrifying to me, to many Americans, and certainly to the world.  The rest of the world has seen this play before.  They know what an out of control, childish, authoritarian ruler means - it means oppression, it means crushing of the press, it means crushing of political opposition, it means political imprisonment, it means torture, it means the complete annihilation of human freedoms and human dignity.  

Do I exaggerate the authoritarian nature of Trump?  I hope so, but I don't think so.  

My biggest fear is that there is another voice that will speak in this election - the voice of radical Islam - ISIS, al Qaeda.  They want a massive war in the Middle East.  They will continue to bait America into that massive war.  They have a deep religious belief in the end times, and the trigger to the end times is apocalyptic confrontation between their radical version of Islam and the infidels.  They think Allah wills it, they think they will win with Divine assistance.

I expect at least one terrifying attack by the radical jihadists shortly before the election.  Their purpose will be to manipulate the voters into voting for the "strong man" Donald Trump who will promise to wage all out war in retaliation for the atrocity of their barbarisms.

And then we would have a president who would feel he would have no choice but to crush them, just like he felt he had no choice when Marco Rubio intemperately implied that Trump's genitals didn't "measure up."  Trump feels he "has no choice" but to attack when attacked.  

He attacks.  We die.  Lots of people die.  If he is president.  He is a child.  He has no impulse control.  He would have nukes at his disposal.  I do not exaggerate the threat he presents to the country and to the world.

Yesterday was a sad day. 

Trump whines that the nominating process is rigged

Donald Trump has whined that the nomination process is "rigged."  Poor baby. Trump doesn't bother with details about ... anything. His preposterous claims about what he will do as president are never backed up with any real substance. He is good at one thing only: promoting himself, getting "ratings" for himself. 

Details? Campaign rules in different states? How delegates are actually selected?  How someone wins the actual election to represent the Republican Party at the convention? What does he care? He thinks that all he has to do is show up, make simple and outrageous statements, bluster, prance about, intimidate and move on to the next photo op.

Isn't negotiating about knowing the issues? knowing the rules? knowing the people? Isn't deal making about dealing with ... people?  knowing the people? knowing what makes them tick? knowing who stands for what? taking time, doing research, having an advantage over your competition by knowing more about the people and what is important to them than the competition?

Donald Trump is proving that he is a terrible negotiator, is a terrible deal maker in this most important issue in his campaign so far - how to win delegates to win the nomination of the Republican Party.  He literally had no idea, or at least thought there was no need to bother to inform himself about how the convention itself works. 

So, he blows it off, and is caught by surprise by others who actually dig into things and figure things out and operate on actual knowledge and deal with actual people to negotiate, make deals, to work the rules and ... win?

Donald Trump is proving that one thing he doesn't know much about is negotiating - how to make deals.  He is just a braggart, with no real substance.  All hat and no cattle.

Maybe it's time people started to re-evaluate what he claims is his biggest strength - does he actually know anything about deal making, about negotiating?

The Problem with Authoritarianism

There are many problems with the terrible idea of Donald Trump as president.  At the heart of his candidacy is the promise of authoritarian rule.  So, what's wrong with authoritarian rule?  (Except, of course the history of the last 100 years with authoritarian examples from Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin and Castro).  The fatal flaw of authoritarianism is that there is no room for love in its world view.  David Brooks, New York Times conservative editorialist, summarized it concisely on his appearance with Mark Shields on the PBS Newshour last Friday:

"The thing about his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who has received no love, so his relationship with women has no love in it - it's trophy.  His relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating - as if he's going to win by competition what other people get by love. So you are really seeing someone with an odd psychology, unleavened by kindness or charity, but where it is all winners and losers, beating and being beaten - and that's part of the authoritarian personality, and it comes out in his attitudes towards women."

I think authoritarianism is at the heart of the Trump appeal.  He is seen as strong by voters who are either authoritarian themselves, or frightened people who want an authoritarian to protect them.

But I don't see Trump as strong. I see him as a pathetic child who is obsessed with promoting himself as strong, successful, as a...Man.  But he's not a man, he's a child. And he knows almost nothing about the country, the government, the law, the world, and especially he knows nothing about dignity or honor or ... love.  

Nixon's War on Drugs was actually a war on his political opponents - blacks and hippies

John Erlichman, President Richard Nixon's aid who went to prison in the Watetgate scandal, revealed the crass, heartless political motivation for Nixon's War on Drugs.  It was a way to attack his political opponents, hippies and blacks. Here is the stunning quote:

"You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”"

So there you have it - destroy lives to attack your political enemies, to win votes. Nixon's War on Drugs and his Southern Strategy (courting the South by welcoming racists who wanted to abandon LBJ's Democratic Party) has attacked  American blacks. Inner city black and brown neighborhoods are literally war zones where the police are often seen as an occupying military and huge numbers of young blacks are imprisoned. 

The anti-back tactics continue in the Republican South as they continuously find ever more creative and crude ways to restrict black and brown voting.

I know that my black and brown friends will find nothing surprising about this revealing quotation, but I find it deeply shocking and dismaying. 

Obama's opening to Cuba

Obama is visiting Cuba.  Good for him.  The problem with Cuba was never Cuba itself.  The problem with Cuba had been the Soviet Union, which is dead.  When the Soviet Union was dedicated to the expansion of its communist empire across the globe, Cuba was a big problem for the United States.  It was a forward outpost of the USSR on America’s doorstep.  It’s not that Cuba was a threat, but rather that the USSR was a threat.

Now, Cuba is just an impoverished communist nation of no real import.  But it is filled with some wonderful baseball players.  Aging Cuban-Americans who have good reason to hate Castro, and good reason to hate Communism, notwithstanding, opening relations with Cuba  is just a fine thing to do, as far as I can tell.

Right wingers still think Cuba is a problem, I guess, but it makes no sense anymore.  Just old ideology that is blind to reality.

Trump calls for riots if the convention doesn’t nominate him

Authoritarian Donald Trump, in the lead for the Republican nomination for president, continues to show how dangerous he is, and how much more dangerous he would be if given governmental power.  He has just called for riots at the convention if he shows up with the most delegate votes but isn’t nominated. 

This shows his ignorance, of course.  The delegates are to vote for who won their allegiance during the primaries – on the first ballot and the first ballot only.  If there is no majority winner on the first ballot then the delegates are free to vote as they see fit.  There have been many conventions in U.S. history where it took many votes for the political party to choose a nominee.

Why?  Why is that the way American democracy is conducted?  I think it is important to remember that the United States is not a direct democracy – thank goodness.  The United States is an elected Republic.  The political parties nominate their candidates.  The use of primary elections to assist the parties in the nomination of their respective candidates is relatively new – JFK used a couple of primary victories to make his case – at the convention – and was nominated.  But the real election of the nominee is on the convention floor.  For about the last half century, the conventions have been just rubber stamps of the primaries - the winner of the majority of delegate votes during the primaries won on the first ballot at the convention. 

OK, so what?  If no one wins the majority of the delegates on the first ballot, they have to win the actual election – the election of the convention floor delegates. 

The parties have every right to do their best to nominate a candidate that they think can win the election, and an even greater duty to nominate a candidate that they think will not destroy their party, and a moral duty to nominate one  that they think will not destroy the country.  Donald Trump is not that candidate.  Donald Trump is rightly perceived by many as a candidate that will destroy the Republican Party if nominated, and God Forbid, would destroy the country and perhaps the world if elected president.

If Trump wins on the first ballot and gets the Republican nomination, we can only pray – and VOTE – that he does not become president. 

If Trump fails on the first ballot, we can only pray that he is defeated on the convention floor.

If he creates riots to force his nomination I would expect that would permanently dismember and destroy the Republican Party.

If he wins the nomination, especially if he does so by riotous force, I would expect a third party Conservative Candidate to run for president so as to give conservatives someone to vote for.  That may happen even if he wins on the first ballot.  He is rightly despised by conservatives (and liberals too, of course)

Donald Trump is on a mission of destruction in the service of his astonishingly grandiose ego. The question is - how far does his destruction reach?  The best answer is that he manages to destroy himself, with a humiliating loss of the nomination, or failing that with a humiliating loss of the election.  The next target of his bile is the Republican Party.  The next level out is the United States.  Then the world. 

He must be stopped.  The ugliness is only getting uglier, and will become ever more so the further he advances in his quest for fame and power.  He is a pathetic man, needing adoration of supporters and fear of all who oppose him.  He promises nothing except bullying violent despotism.  Why does anyone think that is going to benefit them?

Very ugly. 

If you make a deal with the devil, you don't get the deal, but you do get the devil

I was listening to the evangelical conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt talking with conservative editorialist George Will.  Hewitt said that he would support Trump if he was the Republican nominee because Hewitt so wants a Republican president to put Christian conservatives on the Supreme Court.  Will said he would not even consider supporting Trump.  

My message to Hewitt, and all the poor lost conservative souls who are watching the Trump tornado with hopeless despair, is that if you make a deal with the devil, you don't get the deal, you get the devil.  Hewitt himself had interviewed Trump some time back and got a pledge from Trump that he would release his tax returns.  Gee, what a surprise, but when Hewitt put that same question to Trump in the last debate, not only did Trump refuse to release his tax returns, but he insulted Hewitt for having a small audience that nobody pays any attention to - normal Trump method - if someone asks a tough question, or says something critical about him, he attacks and insults them, on the level of the third grade bully.

So, why on earth would Hewitt, or any conservative, believe that they can count on Trump delivering Supreme Court nominees that he has mentioned on the campaign trail once in office.  Do they think a president Trump is going to be more dignified, more dependable, operate with more integrity than campaigner Trump?  Are they crazy?

I think New Jersey governor Chris Christie has just learned that lesson in a very deep and humiliating way.  Trump had a bad debate, and Rubio had attacked and mocked him quite successfully.  Trump's rejoinders were pathetic.  The next day Rubio was doubling down and gaining ground, but Christie rode in to the rescue and stole the headlines with an endorsement of Trump. It was an astonishing act of ambition.  He had obviously decided that Trump would win if Christie helped him at that critical moment, and he may have been right.  Trump went on to dominate the Super Tuesday primaries.

But what did Christie get?  He was humiliated and diminished by Trump.  It was painful watching Christie try to sound enthusiastic as he introduced Trump for the victory speech after the Super Tuesday results had come in.  And it was even more painful to watch Christie's face and eyes as he was forced to stand behind Trump and listen to Trump's narcissistic ramblings.  "What on earth have I done?" was written all over him.

So, whatever deal Christie thought he was getting from the devil, it won't be happening, he won't get the deal but he will get the devil. And believe me, Trump is as close to the devil as I ever want to see running for president (Cruz might be worse, but let's slay one dragon at a time)

Is America in the Process of Losing its Innocence?

It looks like Trump has won enough in yesterday’s Super Tuesday primaries that he is the likely Republican candidate.  I think this is a sad day for the Republican Party, and an even sadder day for America and the world.  Trump’s rise is a sign that America is in danger of losing its status as an exceptional country, and is becoming just another country in a big world filled with problems.  It is in danger of electing an authoritarian despot, just like so many other countries have all too sadly done.

There are many reasons I am appalled by Trump.  He is remarkably wrong in many, many ways to be president of the United States.  But let me just write about one issue – authoritarianism.  Trump is, or is pretending to be, an authoritarian.  America has been very, very lucky so far.  We have not been guilty of electing monsters to be our leaders. There have been many presidents that have engendered a lot of opposition, but none have been actual monsters.

Other countries have to live with a past that includes monsters.  Italy had Mussolini (whom Trump consciously or unconsciously mimics in his face and body language); Italy also had Caesar; Russia had Stalin, (and Lenin, and Peter the Great, and now Putin), China has Mao Tse Tung (and a few thousand years of brutal rulers); Japan had crazed generals; and of course Germany had Hitler.  These countries all lost their innocence long ago.  They were seduced by authoritarian leaders who became monstrous despots and war mongers. 

I don’t know if Trump is capable of sinking to those depths, I certainly hope that he is all show and little reality, but this is a man who is overtly campaigning on the promise to be a war criminal, to end first amendment protection of a critical press, and who refuses to disavow the KKK with anything other than annoyance and impatience that he is being asked to do so.  If Donald Trump is real, he should be terrifying. 

Why?  Why are Republicans voting for Trump?  People say old white people are angry at government.  Sure, that’s true.  People say people who believe in conspiracy theories are drawn to Trump.  OK, that’s probably true.  But, is that what is happening?

I think that the explanation of Trump can be found in a brilliant book written after WWII by psychologist Erich Fromme “Escape from Freedom.”  Fromme’s thesis was that authoritarian people were drawn to Hitler and Stalin and empowered them.  They wanted an authoritarian personality like themselves to rule brutally, like they would if they had the power.  They got Hitler.  They got Stalin.  It was not good  - for anyone, not even for them.

I believe the one trait of Trump supporters is that they are authoritarian personalities, and have a will to dominate, and see brutal domination as what is needed in a dangerous world, and in a government that refuses to do exactly what they want.

Just a final thought – blacks and Native Americans are under no illusion about the brutal nature of America’s past, so maybe my analysis is flawed.  But America is perhaps best explained by English Historian Paul Johnson made the point in “A History of the American People” that the United States has always had two parallel energies in operation – idealism and greed.  The slaughter of the indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans should disabuse us all of the notion that brutality and domination are not part of the American character.  But, so far in our history our despotism has not gone beyond our own shores the way some of our older, sadder neighboring countries have done (early 20th century empire building as an exception).

I hope I paint too dark a picture of a reality show personality that has figured out how to get TV ratings and win votes.  I hope that when you scratch beneath the surface of Donald Trump all you find is a shallow, vain narcissist who only wants to be worshiped.  I just don’t know how far he will go to make people kiss his ring.  Looking at Chris Christie who was forced by Trump to stand behind him while he gave his acceptance speech, looking like he was a captured hostage with a knife to his throat, is not a good sign about what Trump will make people do to kiss his… ring.

Time for Americans to grow up

Dana Milbank makes a telling point about Donald Trump - he speaks at the level of a third grader.  And it works.  His sentences are simple, short, direct, emotional, uncomplicated.  He doesn't confuse anyone with policy or plans or details of any sort. He speaks in the broadest and simplest terms.  

And it is working for him.

But, my goodness, don't we need an adult with his finger on the nuclear button? Don't we need an adult to deal with what is really a very complicated world? Don't we need someone who actually is informed and knowledgeable?  

The problem, of course, is the Trump voters, who apparently are of the same level of maturity.  It's not that they, or he, are stupid, but just that they are childish.  This world is too dangerous for children to try to run this most powerful country.  

It is time for the adults in the electorate to assert themselves.  I have no liking far any of the Republican candidates, but it seems to me that Trump is the most immature of the lot.

When Trump promises to be a war criminal, or promises to end the first amendment protection of a critical press, he displays a strange kind of childishness.  He was, and still is, a spoiled trust fund brat. I believe that he has been so protected by his great wealth for all of his life that he has absolutely no sense of personal limits, and no sense of reality.  He has simply bullied and demanded and pouted and tantrumed his way through life without ever having to run into real consequences.  His money always allowed him to get away with it all.  

He reminds me of the Affluenza kid who got off with a light sentence after killing four people as a drunk driver.  His money protects him from consequences, he gets away with "murder" all the time.  He has no sense of limits on his behavior because he has gotten away with so much for all of his life.

OK, so Trump is a spoiled child.  And his supporters are angry children who don't want to be confused by things that make them think and understand complex things like policies or nuance of any sort.  But, goodness gracious, certainly the Republican Party has actual grown ups and adults who can assert themselves and stop this third grader with money and fame. 

Time is running out.  Time for the adults to take over.  Time for Americans to grow up.

Scalia's originalism vs the Constitution as a living document

Scalia's judicial philosophy was that cases brought before the Supreme Court were to be decided according to the original intent of the authors.  This sounded like a really good idea to me when I first heard it, but over time I have concluded that it is incomplete.  

It seems to me what needs to be preserved into perpetuity of the Constitution, Preamble, and Declaration of Independence are the broad principles of those founding texts, but not their literalness.  I believe that the principles are enduring, but the interpretation must be thought out for each generation.  

Simple example - the Declaration of Independence says "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal...".  This is a glorious statement about equality, not a statement about men.  

If you try to be stick to the original wording and decide that the Founding Fathers were referring only to men, not women, not black men or red men or yellow men or brown men, then you gut the most powerful statement of the purpose and meaning of America itself - equality.  But, if you realize that the Principle is Equality, then you must apply that principle to later understandings, which is that the real purpose of the statement is that "all humans are created equal..."  men is not the point, equality is the point.  

So, by deliberately ignoring the textualist/originalist narrow interpretation that only men are created equal, later generations applied the luminous imperative of equality to include women, blacks, reds, yellows, browns, and whites - as it should be, and as the deeper spirit and meaning of the Declaration of Independence demands.  

The Constitution IS a living document - the Principles of our sacred documents are enduring and are challenges for future generations to apply to future worlds. To limit interpretation to the circumstances of the 18th century could not have been the intent of the Founders. 

Scalia famously said:

"Would the American people have ratified the document if it said, the application of this document and what it means shall be whatever the Supreme Court says it means from age to age? Nobody — nobody would have ratified that document."

I would respond that on the contrary, would Americans have ratified the document if it said that the application of this document if it locked America into living the life, culture, technology, business practices, religious imperatives of the 18th century with no hope of change or progress?  I think nobody would have ratified that document.  The whole point of the founding of the United States was that it was to be, and is, a noble experiment in self government.  It was never conceived to be a trap to lock an expanding nation in a time warp.

At any rate, Scalia forced the Courts to pay attention to intent of the words, and his foes forced the courts to look at not only the words but the principles underneath the words.  The result are a couple of good guides to future courts.

Supreme Court Vacancy

With the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the political world has been thrown into a frenzy.  There is no doubt that Scalia’s influence on legal thinking has been profound – in two ways.  First, he was most famous for insisting on deciding cases before the Court based upon interpreting according to the original intent of the Constitution. Second, he was a leader in the charge by conservatives to rule conservatively on cases before him – from gun rights, to social issues, to business and labor issues. 

These two legacies are contradictory,of course, because you could easily conclude that by relying on original intent you would not end up with either conservative or liberal results on the whole.  But, Scalia and the other reliable conservative votes on the bench advertised themselves as jurists sworn not to legislate from the bench, but their actions have been pretty consistently politically predictable. Their claims of not legislating from the bench simply do not ring true.  

Should the Senate confirm a new Justice to replace Scalia?  Of course.  The voting public has voted already on who is supposed to nominate a Justice – Obama won two consecutive elections, fairly handily as a matter of fact.  So, there is no excuse for him to avoid his constitutional obligation to nominate a replacement.

Will the Senate confirm a new Justice to replace Scalia?  Of course not.  Republicans have been relying on Scalia, and his spot on the court, as a reliable judiciary arm of the conservative movement, and they clearly have no intention of letting that seat become liberal.

Will Republican obstructionism hurt the Republicans?  Yes, I believe it will hurt them in this election year, and hurt them pretty badly.  It will be easy for the President to nominate a center-left judge to replace Scalia who has already been easily approved of by the Senate in earlier confirmation hearings for a lower court.  For the Republicans to simply refuse to consider such a person, or to do their best to demonize that person for headline news stories all the way to the election will make them look really ridiculously partisan, obstructionist, petty, unwilling to play fair, and incapable of the trust of the American voters. 

The Republican Party could well go down on the sinking ship of Republican Senate ideological warfare.

It will certainly not be an uneventful political year.

The Loser loses

Yesterday I wrote that I thought that for people to tell a pollster that they wanted Trump is very different than actually voting for Trump, and Iowa showed that to be so. The Des Moines Register had Trump with a 5 point lead, and it looks like he lost by 4 points instead. That is wonderful news as far as I'm concerned. Of course the terrible news is that he lost to Cruz, who scares me even more than Trump does. 

There is a very long way to go, and I am never sure how important Iowa is because it is caucuses rather than elections, and it certainly is not a representative cross section of America. But I will take a sigh of relief that The Loser lost. Not sure how long his ego will allow him to run if he doesn't feel adored. 

Will the polls hold up?

It will be interesting to see if the actual votes reflect the polls. Caucuses aren't really voting in elections, but the result of an hours long process. So they probably only attract the passionately committed. That aside, it could well be that it is one thing for those enraged at Wall Street or those enraged at immigrants to tell a pollster that they support Sanders or Trump, but it may be quite different to actually cast a vote for them. 

Another brain damaged football player autopsied - only 25 years old

The terrible parade of brain autopsies of football players suffering from brain damage continues unabated.  Here is a 25 year old man, Michael Keck, who died of heart failure but wanted his brain autopsied upon his death because he was experiencing the terrible symptoms of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) The suspicions of his wife and him were correct.  This man hadn’t even played in the NFL but his football career from the time he was 6 through college was certainly enough to permanently damage his brain. 

This disease can only be diagnosed after death, and Michael Keck is the youngest victim discovered so far.  His early coronary death made the autopsy possible.  He quit the game in the midst of his college career because he could feel his mind going out on him.

Sorry to be a spoilsport, but personally I can no longer enjoy watching football, all I see is brain damage and the shortened and agonizing lives of very large percentages of the players.  Such a shame, a beautiful sport is too deadly to play.  Parents will start to keep their sons off the field, I believe. I hope.

We have always known that football players were walking wounded – joints, bones, muscles, organs all damaged – but now it appears that many are also the walking brain damaged.

Savage sport. Too savage to watch - or to play.

Are Saudi Arabia and Iran going to openly go to war with each other?

I have been writing for some time that the wars in the Middle East are fundamentally religious wars between the Sunni and the Shia. These wars have been going on for centuries and are exploding in today's world, maybe now most of all because America decided to invade Iraq after 9/11/2001 - a very poor decision that took out the Sunni leadership of Saddam Hussein which has been replaced by an Iranian proxy Shiite government.  This has given rise to the Sunni ISIS which is taking on both Iraq and Syria. All America did was dis-empower the Sunnis and empower the Shiites.  Why? The region has become unstable and the fighting just gets worse amongst them.

The wars raging since the American invasion of Iraq have been largely proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia.  The sponsor of the Shiite fighters is Iran, and the sponsor of the Sunni fighters is Saudi Arabia. Iran is supporting the Shiites, and the Saudis are supporting the Sunnis in the multiple wars going on in the tragedy of the Middle East.  ISIS is the rising of the Sunnis against the Shiite government brutalities in Syria and Iraq. But they are so vile even Saudi Arabia is afraid of them.

But, maybe now the proxy wars are going to morph into open warfare between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi Arabia just executed a Shia cleric named Nimr Baqr al-Nimr.  I don't know why they did it, but Iran did not react well to that religious attack on the Shia. I think that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, and United Arab Emerites have either cut off diplomatic relations or withdrawn their ambassadors.  Saudi Arabia cut off air-flights to Iran.  Things seem to be escalating.

I don't really know which Middle Eastern countries are Sunni and which are Shiite, and don't really care all that much, except that I guess we're going to be taught about this as the Middle Eastern nations take sides as Saudi Arabia and Iran more overtly go after each other. The Kurds are in there fighting for their own territories as well, of course.  Actually, I think that most of the Middle Eastern countries are a mix of Sunni and Shia, maybe they need this war to redraw the countries so that there are clear cut Sunni countries and clear cut Shiite countries.  But, everyone wants to live where they are born, and I guess they all want to kick out what they consider to be infidels from "their" country.  

This is going to take generations. It would be nice if America could be an honest broker to help sort out negotiated peace and re-balancing of forces.  But, of course, we are seen as infidels ourselves and rejected by the fundamentalist fanatics on both sides.  So, there is no one to step in the help that process proceed without these most barbaric middle ages style slaughters.

By the way, I don't see these horrible wars as having all that much to do with either Israel, America, or Europe.  We are targets of hatred, but the heart of the matter seems to me to be Shiites and Sunnis going after each other to take over the religion and the Islamic world.

Blood blood blood. We need some miracles here.

Concussion - the story of real courage standing up to the industry of the NFL

“Concussion” is a very good and disturbing movie about Dr. Bennett  Omalu, the pathologist who discovered the brain damage caused by playing football. His story of courage, honesty, and persistence is inspiring. This is a very human story about very human people caught in this difficult truth about football.  Oscar nominations for the movie and for Will Smith should be forthcoming.

Short version – football damages the brains of its players.  Not too complicated.  The human brain was never developed over millions of years of evolution to be jarred up against the inside of the skull over and over and over and over again in a game that football players practice and play for years and for decades. 

Is it just the big concussions where a player loses consciousness the problem? No. The bigger problem is the countless sub-concussions that come from every block, every tackle, every bounce of the head off the turf, pretty much every play that every player plays.  That’s the problem.  Blocking and tackling, or, the game itself.

The movie is about the scientist who discovered the brain damage to one of the game’s greatest players  - Mike Webster of the famous Pittsburgh Steelers multi-Super Bowl victory team.  Hall of Famer.  Center.  Block block block block block block …

  

How does it work?  Apparently what happens during sub-concussions is that a protein known as tau forms around blood vessels in the brain, tau is released into the brain after an event (each and every block or tackle during a game, or during practice, etc.), then more of that protein is released the next time, and more, and more.  The blood vessels become more and more impaired and constricted by the protein and eventually the brain becomes deformed, brittle, dramatically impaired.  The result is CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.  (See the symptoms and tragic human results later in this post)

So, as I have written often, I simply do not enjoy watching football anymore because all I see is brain damage.  I was a big fan back in the Mike Webster days.  Not anymore.

What to do?  I think football will just fade away.  As Will Smith, star of the movie, said in an interview on the Charlie Rose show, his son played football in high school, and Will Smith was completely unaware of this danger to his son.  I believe parents will refuse to allow their sons to play football as they come to understand the consequences.  I believe others will be like me (and Will Smith and the director, Peter Landsman, who played high school and college football) and we will simply stop watching simply because it is not fun to watch people inflict brain damage upon each other.

This is a strangely American problem because football is such a representation of the American notion of “Manhood” – being tough, strong, impervious to pain, courageous, playing hurt, hyper aggressive, punishing, bulling, pushing, conquering, dominating  - all tests of and proofs of “Manhood.”  In many ways football is a representation of the mind set of military warriors, and we all admire the military and their mindset.  They protect us and we are grateful.  But football actually is not war, and the brain injuries last a lifetime and progress to greater and greater damage as ex-players age.

Maybe it’s time to come up with some new ideas about what it is to be a man, what real courage is all about, valuing thought and feeling as well as action and will, valuing mastery but not domination.  Actually, basketball was invented as an alternative to the savagery of football by Dr. James Naismith over 100 years ago. We could watch that instead?

See the movie - if you dare. But you may start to wonder how you can enjoy watching men do so much harm to each other.  I know we have parts of ourselves who a enthralled by watching gladiators fighting to the death, or Christians being fed to the lions, in the Roman Coliseum, but is that who we want to be today?

The film dramatizes the tragic effects of CTE on players.  For your reference, the Mayo Clinic lists these symptoms of CTE:

"Symptoms of CTE are like those of other conditions that involve progressive loss of function or structure of nerve cells (neurodegenerative diseases…

Signs and symptoms of CTE usually begin eight to 10 years after repetitive mild traumatic brain injury. These include:

·         Difficulty thinking (cognitive impairment)

·         Impulsive behavior

·         Depression or apathy

·         Short-term memory loss

·         Difficulty planning and carrying out tasks (executive function)

·         Emotional instability

·         Substance abuse

·         Suicidal thoughts or behavior

Over time, memory and executive function may become worse, and other signs and symptoms may develop, including:

·         Irritability

·         Aggression

·         Speech and language difficulties

·         Motor impairment, such as difficulty walking, tremor, loss of muscle movement, weakness or rigidity

·         Trouble swallowing (dysphagia)

·         Vision and focusing problems

·         Trouble with sense of smell (olfactory abnormalities)

·         Dementia

Researchers use the following stages to describe the progression of CTE symptoms:

·         Stage I. Headache, loss of attention and concentration

·         Stage II. Depression, explosivity and short-term memory loss

·         Stage III. Decision-making (executive) dysfunction and cognitive impairment

·         Stage IV. Dementia, word-finding difficulty and aggression

They have also created four stages to describe the process of damage to brain tissue.

CTE causes ongoing pathological changes that once are started, continue to have an effect for years or decades after the original traumatic brain injury or after an individual retires from a sport. Symptoms progress throughout an individual's life.

CTE progresses in two patterns. In younger people, it may begin with behavior and mood changes, whereas in older people, it may begin with cognitive problems that progress and may lead to dementia. It's not known whether there are two different disease processes or if the process changes over time."

It makes me wonder about the endless stories of hyper-aggressive behavior of football players like Ray Rice and O.J. Simpson.  Not to excuse their behavior, but do they suffer from CTE?  I would like brain autopsies on them when they finally pass.  I wonder…

"The Big Short", or why Wall Street predators should be jailed

The movie, "The Big Short" is a great, entertaining, funny and fun movie about a very serious topic, the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008 resulting in the near total collapse of the world economy.  It is a nice two hour education of the essentials of our Great Recession. It shows the crisis in this country of greed and avarice, and their necessary corollaries - heartless indifference to the consequent suffering of the many millions of middle class and working poor.  

The short summary is that the financial industry made fortunes by selling bad mortages to unqualified people, passed those bad mortgages along into bond funds called Mortgage Backed Securities made up of mostly highly risky mortgages, had them rated as safe AAA bonds, which corrupt bond traders fraudulently sold high risk investments as low risk safe investments to fools.  Fraud.  Greed.  Fortunes.  Multi-generational fortunes for the predators on the top of the greed pyramid. And they thought it was all fair game, to exploit the ignorance and stupidity of unqualified home buyers, and exploit the ignorance and stupidity of bond buyers, and exploit the ignorance and stupidity of giant financial institutions like pension funds.

Wall Street sucked enormous amounts of money out of the middle classes and payed themselves fortunes.  

The movie is about a small handful of men who saw that the the entire housing industry was a bubble built on fraud, and those men made fortunes betting that the bubble would burst, and the values of the mortgage backed securities would collapse along with the values of all the extraordinarily complex and opaque derivatives of those bonds. They foresaw the inevitable catastrophe.

One of the problems with our financial industry is that there is so much money being made by playing zero-sum games that have nothing to do with financing businesses and funding the economy. When the bright minds in banking spend all of their time creating various derivatives of things like mortgages the fundamental reason for banks seems to have gotten lost.  Rather than funding our capitalist system, they became leaches designed to suck capital out of the economy rather than feed it to make it stronger.

Of course, one of the points of the movie is the obvious truth that Wall Street has not reformed, they have only become more consolidated and powerful.  They had done all they could to gut the Dodd-Frank banking reform bill, and continue to pay enormous sums to continue to weaken it whenever they can.  They are coming up with new versions of mortgage backed securities, gulp. They have created flash trading  with super computers that give them insider information that steals more and more money out of the stock market before market moves become public.  They continue to apply their high IQs to the task of transferring money from the middle classes and poor working classes to build their fraudulent fortunes.

But, of course, none of them ever go jail.  They just pay some fines which are no more than the cost of doing business to them.  The greatest crime of all of course is that none of what they do is illegal. Why would it be? they write the laws. They own the politicians.  Who obey them.

Some books that I have read that tell these stories of this predatory greed:

• "The Big Short" - Michael Lewis
• "Too Big to Fail - Andrew Sorkin
• "House of Cards" - William Cohen
• "All the Devils are Here" - Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
• "Liar's Poker" - Michael Lewis
• "Flash Boys" - Michael Lewis

They all tell the same story - smart guys figure out how to cheat the middle class and steal their savings in order to create their own massive fortunes.

The financial world has been out of balance for a long time.  I think putting some financial titans in jail would be a start to ending this fraudulent mind-set.  When did our brightest Ivy-Leaguers decide that the point of their educations was to become financial predators?

Time for a change.