TALKIN' 'BOUT MY G-G-GENERATION

George Washington was born nearly 300 years ago, in 1732.  He’s the one who said, “I cannot tell a lie.”  The current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the one who cannot tell the truth, and was born in 1946 (as were George W. Bush and Bill Clinton).  From Washington and Trump, we’ve had 45 presidents.  They were all men (of course), and they were all born between 1732 (the Father of Our Country) and 1961 (Barack Obama). 

And so what?

But the distribution of presidents by birth year/decade is fascinating.  Or it is to me, anyway; your mileage may vary.  But consider this.  We’ve had at least one president born in every decade from the 1730s through the 1960s.  Except for three lonely decades:  the 1810s, the 1930s, and the 1950s. 

If you were born in the 1810s, you’re dead.  If you were born in the 1930s, you’re not technically eliminated from seeking the presidency (five sitting Senators – four Republicans and one Democrat – were born in the 30s), but you’re probably not buying any green bananas either.  If you were born in the Fabulous 50s, you’re getting long in the tooth, but you’ve still got at least a theoretical shot at the White House. 

Still, none of 2020’s serious Democratic contenders were born in the 50s, and on the Republican side, the GOP is doing its best to immunize Donald Trump against primary challenges.  It appears that the last great hope of the middle of the OK Boomer cohort is Mike Pence, who was born in 1959.  If Trump is impeached or otherwise fails to complete his first term, Pence is the only ray of hope for the Eisenhower era Boomers.

I’m a Boomer (born in 1947), but I was meant to be a member of the Silent Generation.  My parents got married in 1940, and tried to start a family immediately.  But after one miscarriage, it was Pearl Harbor time.  My father was drafted in 1942, and sent to the South Pacific.  My mother, who was a nurse, enlisted, and was sent to the European Theater.  My mom and dad didn’t see each other again for nearly four years.  Thanks to Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, I became a Boomer.

And as a Boomer, I say OK.  It’s time, and past time, for geezers like me to step aside.  But I’m going to slow-walk my exit long enough for an apologia pro vita sua. 

My g-g-generation began with babies born in 1946.  In case the significance of that date eludes some younger readers, it marks the period nine months or so after the end of World War II.  American GIs came home and started families.  Lots of them, all around the same time.  And they kept it up for a decade and a half.  If you have a problem with that, please take it up with the so-called Greatest Generation.  My fellow Boomers and I were merely passive participants in the post-war baby boom.  But the baby boom was real, and there’s a legitimate rationale for at least starting a new generation in 1946.

My g-g-generation ends with the babies born in 1964.  I’m not sure how the folks with the authority to name generations calculated the end of the post-war baby boom – maybe it was when the World War II generation (as they were known until Tom Brokaw came up with “Greatest Generation” in his 1998 book) stopped having babies.  If it were up to me, I’d have placed the end of the post-war baby boom at November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. 

Since all subsequent generations seem to hate Boomers, why not end the Boomer years with a disaster?  Let’s give the next generation the auspicious year of 1964, with the arrival of the Beatles in January, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in July, and the Democratic beatdown of Barry Goldwater in November.

Right now, the immediate post-Boomer generation seems to be known as Generation X, and for some reason, it was given the shortest span of any named generation (1965-1979).  The name Generation X is problematic, not only because it’s unimaginative, but because it also led inexorably to naming the next two cohorts Generation Y and Generation Z. 

Then what, guys?  Are you going to call the cohort born between 2021 and 2040 Generation A?  Or will you boldly follow Dr. Seuss, and go ON BEYOND ZEBRA.  Generation Yuzz!  Generation Wum!  Generation Quam!  Let’s do it. 

Or we could just remind ourselves that the whole generation thing is bullshit.  No defensiveness necessary, whatever your cohort.  Just live your lives and do the right thing, whenever you were born. 

TALKIN' LOUD AND SAYIN' NOTHING

It didn’t take long for the gaslighting to start.  Republicans are lying their asses off, secure in the knowledge that their talking points will be faithfully regurgitated by their propaganda outlets and absorbed uncritically by their credulous base.

They know that the facts about Ukraine are devastating for Trump.  They know that their only chance is to blow massive amounts of smoke, producing enough confusion to create a stalemate.  So they’ll wave their arms, bluster, and lie.  Sadly, at least 30% of the population will probably believe them.

In the normal course of events, I don’t interact with Trump fans.  Oh, I check some right wing websites to see what they’re saying, but I don’t engage with them.  But it’s that time of year when old friends and family get together for the holidays, and I know that I’ll be mingling with some Republicans at Thanksgiving time.

Personally, I’m conflict averse.  I do my best to avoid contentious situations.  I never bring up politics, and if someone else does, my instinctive response is to bite my tongue, drift to the perimeter, and look for a more congenial conversation in another room.

But in case that doesn’t work, I’m developing a few talking points to use – strictly in self-defense, of course. Who knows what revelations the next two weeks will bring, but as of now,  this is what I’ve come up with. 

Impeachment is unconstitutional:  This is an incredibly stupid argument.  Impeachment is in the Constitution.  It was put there – Article I, Section 2 – by our Founding Fathers as a safeguard against people exactly like Donald Trump.  Arguing that impeachment is unconstitutional amounts to saying that the Constitution is unconstitutional.  (On the other hand, if parts of the Constitution are unconstitutional, I nominate the 2nd Amendment.)

This is an attempted coup, with the goal of overturning the results of the 2016 presidential election:  False, unless the outcome of this impeachment effort somehow makes Hillary Clinton president.  But if Trump is impeached, convicted, and removed from office, his successor would be Mike Pence.  As Jim “Stonekettle” Wright put it: “When Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, we got President Ford, not President McGovern. If Trump is removed from office, we get President Pence, not Hillary Clinton. Democrats don't get the Oval Office. So, how is this a coup exactly?  I mean, if it IS a coup, well, then the primary suspect behind it wouldn't be Nancy Pelosi or Adam Schiff. It would the guy who ends up in power. That's how coups work. You want to call it a coup? Maybe wonder where the fuck Mike Pence has gotten to lately.”

Donald Trump is being denied his Sixth Amendment right to confront and cross-examine his accusers:  Another incredibly stupid argument.  The Sixth Amendment applies to criminal proceedings.  Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding.  It’s the responsibility of the House of Representatives to investigate, and to bring charges if they’re warranted.  The trial phase takes place in the Senate, where Trump (or more likely, his representatives) will have plenty of opportunities to lay out his side of the case.

Impeachment is a witch hunt because there was no quid pro quo:  We don’t have a full answer to who knew what, when, about the attempt to extort Ukraine’s President Zelensky.  But the more we learn, the worse it looks for Trump and his inner circle.  Republicans who argue that because Ukraine eventually got its money, Trump deserves a mulligan.  Bullshit.  Trump released the money because his scheme came unraveled, not because he thought better of committing an impeachable offense. 

Beyond that, attempting to commit a crime is a crime.  If you try to kill someone and fail, it’s still attempted murder.  Failed criminals are still criminals.

The Whistleblower complaint was merely hearsay:  If your kid told you he’d overheard some classmates plotting to shoot up their high school, you’d report it to the police, right?  And you’d expect them to stop the attack before it happened.  You’d be outraged if the cops said, “hey, that’s only hearsay, nothing we can do unless we hear it from an eyewitness.” 

But in this particular case, eyewitnesses stepped up.  Lots of them.  And they’ve corroborated the Ukraine Whistleblower’s story.   No credible evidence contradicting the report has surfaced.  Republicans want to out the Whistleblower as punishment for telling the truth, and to discourage potential future truth-tellers from calling out criminal behavior by one of their own.

Read the transcript:  First of all, it’s not a transcript.  It’s a summary, with some key parts missing.  The phone call lasted at least a half an hour.  You can read the summary aloud in 10 minutes.  OK, translation accounts for some of the missing time, but not all of it.  We know this because eyewitnesses have testified under oath about the missing elements.  Nevertheless, by all means, read the damn summary.  Even in sanitized form, it demonstrates that Trump intended to withhold military aid until Zelensky promised to investigate Hunter Biden.  That’s extortion.

The President has a right to insist that foreign governments root out corruption in return for our support:  It is to laugh.  In his beautiful, perfect conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky, Trump never used the word “corruption.” He made it clear that the “favor” he wanted was an investigation of the Bidens.  The notion that Donald Trump hates corruption is risible.  His favorite foreign leaders are corrupt dictators.  Donald Trump loves corruption. 

Why impeach in the House when we know the Senate won’t vote to convict?  In the first place, we don’t know that the Senate won’t vote to impeach.  Whatever their public protestations on his behalf, most Republican senators just want Trump to go away.  Not that they object to the substance of his policies, or even to his graft.  But they’re embarrassed by his oafish behavior, and because he doesn’t have the sense to be discreet about his crimes.  Right now, Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2020 are afraid of being primaried.  Some of them say privately that they’ll pivot once the filing deadline for a primary challenge has passed.  We’ll see.

But there are two more important reasons for proceeding with the impeachment hearings.  First, public testimony – under oath – makes things transparent.  Getting the facts on the record is a good thing.  And so is forcing every senator to take a stand, one way or the other.  If Republicans want to stand before history and say, “nah, we’re OK with extortion and bribery and all the other stuff, as long as it’s our guy who’s doing it,” then make them do that. 

Why not wait until the election next year and let voters decide?  This is a bad faith argument.  The logical implication is that we should suspend all political activity in the year before a presidential election.  Why not tell ICE to stand down until election day and see what voters think about immigration policy?  Why not let ISIS have their caliphate back until the election?  (Oh, wait, Trump already did that.)  Hold off on appointing more judges, etc.

But of course, that’s not what Republicans want.  They want Democrats to suspend all political activity until after the election, so that they can go about their dirty business unimpeded. 

Why not give Donald Trump another twelve months of high crimes and misdemeanors?  Because justice delayed is justice denied.  The good guys have to at least try.

IF I HAD MONEY, TELL YOU WHAT I'D DO

Won’t someone think of the billionaires?  These are difficult days for the Billionairx community.  Most Democratic presidential candidates want to raise their taxes.  Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders scare the poop out of them.  Not since the Holocaust has there been persecution on this scale. 

In 1835, Honore de Balzac wrote, "The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed."   It’s usually bumper-stickered as “Behind every great fortune is a great crime.”

We know that’s true of Donald Trump.  His grandfather started the family fortune as a brothel keeper in Seattle and later in the Klondike.  His father was a racist slumlord in New York.  Trump himself blew threw a vast fortune, even losing money on casinos, of all things.  Then he decided that dishonesty was the best policy, and became a money launderer for Russian mobsters.   Of course, the fact that we know all that, and more, about Donald Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors, suggests that the execution has left something to be desired.

I don’t know enough about Tom Steyer or Michael Bloomberg to know whether there’s anything shady about how they made their money, but I have a theory, which I will share with you here.  No billionaire will win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. 

On the surface, Bloomberg’s credentials look impressive – three terms as Mayor of New York City, and a net worth of over $50 billion.  Of course, he ran as a Republican in his mayoral races.  Bloomberg seems to have commitment issues.  In the past 20 years, he’s shuttled back and forth between Democrat, Republican, Independent, and back to Democrat.

Purely in terms of his position on current issues, Bloomberg is better than Donald Trump, which is admittedly the lowest possible bar.  He’s had more experience than most Democratic presidential candidates in running an actual government.  New York City is a big stage, and while I don’t follow NYC politics, the fact that the residents of the five boroughs gave him three terms as mayor suggests that he did at least an adequate job.

At this point, I’ll repeat my customary pledge to vote for the Democratic nominee, whoever she or he may be.  But I’d rather not vote for Michael Bloomberg, even though he may be the least offensive of the candidates I don’t much like.  Here’s why.

First, I’m on record as wanting to vote for someone younger than I am.  Bloomberg was born in 1942.  He’s five months younger than Bernie (1941), and seven months older than Biden (1942).  Were he to become president, he’d turn 79 a few weeks after he took office. 

As a side note, I’ve seen people doing the “OK Boomer” thing with Bloomberg.  I’m on record as believing that the whole named generation thing is silly, but if you’re going to label people by their artificial birth cohort, at least get the terminology right.  Bloomberg – as well as Bernie and Biden – are not Boomers.  They’re members of the so-called “Silent Generation.”  “OK Silent” doesn’t have the same punch, though.  Maybe they’ll have to go to “Shut up, Silent.”

Being president isn’t easy.  Take a look at before and after pictures of Barack Obama (an actual Boomer, born in 1961, three years before the end of that particular granfalloon).  For that matter, take a look at before and after pictures of Donald Trump after three years in the White House. 

Being old isn’t easy, either.  I was born in 1947 (so it’s accurate to OK Boomer me – stupid, but accurate).  I haven’t had a heart attack like Bernie, and I’m not a walking gaffe machine like Biden.  But if I’m being honest, I have to acknowledge that I’m slowing down, both physically and mentally.  Bloomberg’s father died at 63, while his mother lived to be 102.  It’s hard to extrapolate Bloomberg’s life expectancy from those two data points.

But the important issue isn’t how long Bloomberg will live, but how he views the world.  Here’s a summary of his comments to a group of wealthy businessmen last year, as reported by Federica Pelzel on Twitter.  Bloomberg opposes legalizing marijuana because he buys into the gateway drug argument.  He’s suspicious of computers in schools, arguing that kids use them to look at porn and plagiarize homework assignments.  He doesn’t like the idea of early retirement.  He’s not entirely comfortable with women in the workplace.  He wants to return the presidency to the Bill Clinton era of powerful men (they’re all men) schmoozing, golfing, smoking cigars, and making deals behind closed doors.

In other words, when he’s speaking off the cuff to his peers, Mike Bloomberg is an old geezer.  He’s a better old geezer than Donald Trump, but – it says here – worse than either Bernie or Biden. 

I would prefer to vote for someone who could complete two terms as president and not have to move from the White House directly into an assisted living facility. 

Beyond the age issue, Democrats will need the enthusiastic support of African-Americans in 2020.  Bloomberg’s support among that demographic does not suggest enthusiasm.  One of his mayoral legacies is “stop and frisk” policing, which probably stopped some bad guys, but which also apparently gave NYPD license to harass people for the crime of Walking While Black. 

Maybe that’s why Bloomberg is contemplating entering the 2020 Alabama primary.  Either that, or Bloomberg’s polling discovered that Alabama voters are secretly sympathetic to Jewish billionaires from the Big Apple.

Here’s what I think.  Mike Bloomberg’s natural constituency consists mainly of pundits and TV talking heads in NYC and D.C.  They’re the ones who fantasize about a mythical consensus candidate who’ll ride in on a white horse and save them from the reality of politics c. 2020.  There are certainly hundreds of these folks – maybe even a thousand or two.  But not millions, which is what Bloomberg would need to win a national election.

People like MEET THE PRESS’s Chuck Todd fantasize about a unicorn candidate who is both fiscally conservative and socially liberal.  That sounds great, but it turns out that only about 4% of voters nationally fit that profile.  And most of them vote Republican. 

That pretty much sums up the Beltway pundit world view.  Not only do they want Democrats to be more like Republicans, but they want Democrats to be like a vanishingly small subset of the electorate. 

If Bloomberg wants to spend a few uncountabillion dollars on politics over the next twelve months, these kinds of projects make way more sense than trying to buy a presidential nomination.  Several people have suggested that Bloomberg (or Steyer) buy Fox News and either shut it down, or transform it into a real news organization.  Or round up a bunch of other obscenely rich plutocrats and talk them into pooling their fortunes to do something meaningful about climate change.  Or pay off all the outstanding college debt in one fell swoop.  Or subsidize free opioid rehab centers around the country.  Or help lower the abortion rate by making birth control freely available everywhere.  There are so many ways to make an impact with that much money. 

Running for president is the least useful thing a billionaire can do. 

Oh, and Bloomberg has terrible taste in golfing partners.

OH, THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT

Fun fact:  when Donald Trump took office on January 21, 2017, 36 out of the 50 governorships belonged to Republicans.  Today, the split is 26 Republicans and 24 Democrats.  Trump is helping to make America great again in spite of himself. 

Cast your memory back there, Lord, to the dark days of 2017.  The Deplorables were feeling their oats, and the Resistance was learning to fight back.  Women in pink pussy hats rallied in Washington on January 21, and drew a bigger crowd than Trump could muster for his inauguration the day before.   The November off-year elections brought some hopeful signs, but they were mostly in the form of closer than expected losses. 

A year later, though, the worm had turned.  In 2018, Democrats took back the House of Representatives in a wave election.    

In 2019, Republicans were taking no chances.  Donald Trump made last minute personal appeals on behalf of his beleaguered supporters.  He showed up in Lexington, KY, the evening before the election, begging voters to elect Republican Matt Bevin.  "If you lose, they are going to say Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world. You can't let that happen to me!" 

On Tuesday, Kentucky voters didn’t just let it happen – they made it happen.  Republican spinmeisters pointed to the down-ballot Republican sweep and said don’t blame Trump.  But Trump didn’t campaign for the down-ballot Republicans.  He campaigned for the one Republican who lost.  Now they’re claiming that they had secret polls that showed Bevin trailing by 15 points before Trump showed up.  No, it was 18 points.  Maybe even 20.  Trump worked his magic and elevated Bevin to within 5,000 votes of victory.  Don’t blame Trump, they argue, for the fact that Bevin was such a lousy candidate. 

So how about we blame Trump for putting his reputation on the line for such a lousy candidate?  Which he has a habit of doing, e.g. Alabama child molester Roy Moore in the 2017 Senate campaign. 

Maybe you can blame the Kentucky upset on Matt Bevin’s personal unpopularity, but there’s no similar excuse for that happened in Virginia.  It used to be reliably Republican.  On Tuesday, Virginia turned bright blue.  Similar Democratic upsets occurred in local elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana.  Hey, even my hometown of Wichita, Kansas, elected a Democratic mayor.

As goes Wichita, so goes the nation. Maybe. But miles to go before we sleep.

BUT THAT WAS YESTERDAY, AND YESTERDAY'S GONE

A distinguished conservative jurist lays out the case for impeachment.  Some excerpts.

"[The president’s] defenders describe the unthinkable disaster of impeachment. But it should not be unthinkable. The framers of the Constitution did not see impeachment as a doomsday scenario; they thought it necessary to remove bad men from the offices they were subverting.

“The president’s defenders, experts at changing the subject, prefer to debate whether [he] committed a felony …. [but] ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ are not limited to actions that are crimes under federal law."  “It becomes clear that the White House has never before been occupied by such a reckless and narcissistic adventurer. Sociopath is not too strong a word.”

“We are regularly lectured about a constitutional crisis if the House goes forward with hearings and ultimately votes a bill of impeachment for trial in the Senate. Consider the alternative. Perhaps American presidents, by and large, have not been a distinguished lot…  But if we ratify [his] behavior in office, we may expect not just lack of distinction in the future but aggressively dishonest, even criminal, conduct. The real calamity will not be that we removed a president from office but that we did not."

I heard John Nichols, who writes for The Nation and supports Bernie Sanders, say basically the same thing at the Tucson Festival of the Book last March.

But the passages above were written by one-time U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork, praising a book by Ann Coulter, back in 1998.  Of course, the president he wanted impeached was Bill Clinton.  Since Judge Bork passed away in 2012, we can’t expect him to weigh in on our current impeachment case.  If you assume that Republican jurists hold fast to their principles through thick and thin, though, you’d expect Bork to be all in for impeachment.  I do not make that assumption.  Republicans hold fast to their principles until there’s money to be made and power to be seized.  Then it’s “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”  (Ralph Waldo Emerson said that.  He wrote “a foolish consistency,” but never got around to explaining the difference between wise and foolish consistency, so many people drop his qualifier when they quote him.)

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has decided to pull up stakes in New York and move to Florida.  Perhaps he saw all those “Florida Man” stories and recognized kindred spirits.  Or maybe he had so much fun draining the swamp in Washington, D.C. that he decided that Florida should be his next big swamp draining challenge.  I don’t subscribe to those assumptions either. 

My guess is that the move is related to the difference in asset forfeiture laws between New York and Florida.  Florida protects one home per criminal from forfeiture, no matter how expensive the property might be.  New York doesn’t. 

This is pure speculation, but something tells me that Trump got word that the Southern District of New York is about to open a can of whoop ass in his general direction, and he wants to move as many assets out of that jurisdiction as possible.

Hat tip to Yoni Appelbaum of The Atlantic for finding and sharing (via Twitter) Bork’s Wall Street Journal book review. 

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME

Mickey Mantle was my first sports hero.  I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where the closest major league baseball park was in Kansas City, 200 miles northeast.  I only ever got to see one game in person as a kid, but it was a doozy.  I was 12, when – on June 22, 1959, my Aunt Cleo took me and my sister Mary to Kansas City to watch the Athletics (they played in KC before moving to Oakland) play the New York Yankees, with Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and other names to conjure with.  Mantle hit two home runs and a triple in that game.  It was one of the most gratifying spectator events of my life.

I wasn’t at game 5 of the World Series on Sunday, but I found it gratifying as well.  Not the game on the field, but the sight – and sound – of Donald Trump getting a rare comeuppance. 

Many of the usual Beltway stuffed shirts tut-tutted about civility and the need to respect the office of the president.  You know who is never civil and doesn’t respect the office of the presidency?  Donald Trump, that’s who. 

Trump loves to issue veiled threats.  In virtually every speech, he gets to a point where he starts using phrases like “everything is on the table,” “we’ll just have to see what happens,” and so on.  He thinks it makes him sound intimidating without committing himself to any particular outcome.

Strategic ambiguity can be an effective negotiating tactic if used judiciously, but Trump is incapable of being judicious. 

There are those who argue that Trump, if not exactly playing eight-dimensional chess, is making conscious choices to be outrageous in strategic ways.  I will concede that Trump is an experienced con man, and that he’s using tactics that have worked for him in the past.  The thing is, his past opponents were business rivals and various tradespeople he decided to screw over.  He’s playing in the major leagues now, with critics who won’t be intimidated or bought off. 

Trump rarely leaves his cocoon.  He surrounds himself with toadies, spends his time watching Fox News sycophants heaping praise on him, and rarely leaves the White House except to bask in the cheers of adoring Deplorables at yet another campaign rally.  He knows he has enemies, but he rarely encounters them in person. 

I regard it as salutary, then, that Trump learned that – even right after a rare success story – lots of regular people really don’t like him.  Not journalists, not deep state bureaucrats, but baseball fans.  Thousands of them.

Judging by his facial expressions at the game, the boos and chants of “lock him up” took him by surprise.  Good.  What goes around, comes around. 

THE GREEN GREEN GRASS OF HOME

On the occasion of Columbus Day 2019, I thought I’d offer an essay I wrote five years ago, and published on the website of my late, lamented friend Dan Wilson, who was kind enough to guest-author a few posts.  This one was called Ecological Imperialism:  Our Grass Can Beat Your Grass.

How humans came to populate the so-called “new world” – the North and South American continents – is still a mystery.  There are competing theories, resulting from ambiguous evidence and a few sites where evidence of human presence appears to be thousands of years older than conventional wisdom would allow. 

But when the first Europeans showed up 500 years ago, there were millions of “Indians” already distributed throughout the length and breadth of the two continents. Some were hunter-gatherers.  Others lived in great urban empires.  There may have been as many as 100 million of them.

The only thing we know for sure is that a century later, there were a lot fewer of them.  Like 90% fewer.  Some indigenous populations were wiped out completely, while others who survived have taken five hundred years to build their populations back up to 15th century levels.

When I was a kid in school in the mid-50s, the death toll was minimized and the conquest was ascribed to superior European technology.  Now it’s pretty generally acknowledged that the Conquistadors launched a holocaust, albeit not entirely on purpose.  As Randy Newman put it in “The Great Nations of Europe,”

The Grand Canary Islands
First land to which they came
They slaughtered all the canaries
Which gave the land its name
There were natives there called Guanches
Guanches by the score
Bullets, disease, the Portuguese, and they weren't there anymore

Here’s a YouTube link if you’d care to listen to Newman himself perform the song:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua0pR06pevU

Jared Diamond won a Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs, and Steel, published in 1997.  But eleven years earlier, Alfred W. Crosby had published Ecological Imperialism:  The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900.  Crosby anticipated some of Diamond’s conclusions, but his main interest lay elsewhere. 

OK, Crosby said, it’s not hard to understand why a handful of Spaniards were able to decimate the Inca and Aztec empires.  Turn smallpox, measles, and influenza loose on a population with no immunity whatsoever, and the survivors won’t be able to put up much of a fight.  Guns and steel came in handy for individual skirmishes, but germs really decided the outcome of the campaign.

If you’re like me, you might wonder why indigenous Americas hadn’t developed some nasty diseases of their own to plague Europeans.  In his 1972 book, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Crosby identified one or two of those. 

Syphilis was present in the Americas before Columbus, but unknown in the Old World until an outbreak in Naples in 1494.  That doesn’t prove that Columbus’ crew brought it back with them, but the Columbian hypothesis is more widely accepted than any other theory of the origin of syphilis.  And in a more indirect way, we might consider lung cancer, emphysema, and other tobacco-related maladies part of the karmic payback for the European decimation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.   

But Crosby poses a more interesting question.  Leave humans out of it.  Why did European grasses, introduced unintentionally through seeds embedded in the Conquistadors’ boots, spread throughout the two continents at the expense of native grasses?   

There were no horses in the Americas in 1491.  And yet somehow, a tiny initial population of Spanish horses – those that both survived the Atlantic crossing and then escaped their corrals and went feral – managed to multiply at such a rate that the Conquistadors encountered huge herds of wild horses as they moved north into Mexico and the rest of North America. 

European flora out-competed American flora occupying similar ecological niches.  European animals out-competed American fauna.  Guns, germs, and steel weren’t factors in those “conquests,” but the outcome was the same.

And not just in the Americas.  Similar scenarios were repeated wherever Europeans went during the Age of Discovery.  From the nearby Canary Islands to distant Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii, when Europeans arrived in places that had been isolated from the Old World for thousands of years, the native populations – human and otherwise – collapsed. 

Ecological Imperialism is a much richer book than I have space to describe.  Why did Native Americans domesticate so few animals compared to people in Europe and Asia?  Why was the wheel unknown in the Americas before Columbus, even in the great urban empires of the Aztecs and Incas?  Or more precisely, why were there pre-Columbian wheeled toys, but nothing like a cart or a wagon?  If these questions intrigue you, I urge you to read Crosby. 

I’ll plug a couple of Crosby’s other books while at it.  He wrote America’s Forgotten Pandemic about the Spanish Flu in 1918, which killed over 50 million people worldwide in two years, and has largely been forgotten today.  I’ve just started Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History, and it’s hooked me already. 

What is distinctive about our homo sapiens species?  Intelligence?  Nope.  Language?  Nope.  Laughter, grief, or shame?  Nope, nope, and nope.  Crosby says it’s a combination of three factors – bipedalism plus our ability to throw things (by hand or aided by technology) and our fascination with and ability to control fire.  Those factors, Crosby claims, have made us efficient explorers and efficient killers.  Ecological imperialists, you might say.   

IDIOT WIND

It is a commonplace that Donald Trump gets most of his talking points from Fox News, but I can’t help but wonder someone showed him “Animal House” recently.  His comment about the Kurds’ failure to help the Allies on D-Day resembles nothing so much as John Belushi’s “when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” soliloquy. 

Let the record show that the Kurds were equally useless at Bunker Hill, the Battle of New Orleans, and Gettysburg.  Did they help out at the Alamo or Little Bighorn?  Don’t make me laugh.  General Pershing could have used them in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and they were also AWOL in Iwo Jima and the Battle of the Bulge.  The Chosin Reservoir?  Khe Sanh?  No Kurds in sight.

Everything Trump touches, dies.  Now he’s touched the Kurds.  Recep Erdogan may think he’s won this round, but watch out, Turkey.  Trump has now touched you too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI

THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS ARE WRITTEN

After Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, took Jerusalem in 597 BC, he engaged in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign that became known as the Babylonian Captivity, forcing the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah to the east, into Babylon proper, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.  The author of Psalm 137 (possibly the prophet Jeremiah) wrote about it.  “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, also we wept at our remembrance of Zion.”

Their deliverance came 47 years later, at the hands of the Persian King, Cyrus the Great.  Cyrus conquered Babylon and allowed captives – from throughout the empire, not just Judeans – to return to their homelands.  He had a remarkably enlightened imperial philosophy, which was that he was willing to let the nations and tribes he conquered keep their local customs and religious beliefs.  As long as they kept the tribute flowing into Persepolis, they’d be left alone. 

That seemed like a pretty good deal to Judeans and Israelites, and their Old Testament prophets spoke highly of Cyrus the Great.

When pro-Trump evangelical Christians needed a way to rationalize their support for the profoundly unchristian Donald Trump in 2016, they seized upon the example of Cyrus the Great.  If God could use a Persian king to achieve his purposes, he could certainly use a reality show buffoon who never met a commandment he didn’t want to break.  But apparently Trump evangelicals worship a small-g god, powerful enough to use a heathen like Donald Trump, but not powerful enough to use Hillary Clinton.

Trump Evangelicals have created a self-fulfilling false prophecy.  Their modern-day Cyrus, Donald J. Trump, has begun to speak of himself in Biblical terms.  So far, in the year of our Lord 2019, he has referred to himself as “a very stable genius,” “the king of the Jews,” and “the chosen one.”  This weekend, he claimed to have “great and unmatched wisdom.”  Perfectly normal presidential behavior. 

But if we’re looking for comparisons to ancient middle eastern conquerors, Donald Trump reminds me less of Cyrus the Great than of Ozymandias, the subject of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem.  Here it is in its entirety: 

“I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.” 

Donald Trump has the sneer of cold command.  He desperately longs for obedience and praise.  He’d love to be able to say something like “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”  Sadly, Trump has yet to accomplish anything of note during his nearly three years as president. 

The only strategy he has left is to thrash around like a bull in a china shop, breaking things.  It took him less than three years to go from newly elected Leader of the Free World to “the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.”

But what if the best Biblical analogy for Donald Trump isn’t Cyrus, but instead a remarkable figure from the New Testament?  (Ever notice how Trump’s evangelical supporters look to the Old Testament, rather than the teachings of Jesus and his disciples, to support their arguments?) 

What if Donald Trump is the second of the Four Great Beasts of Revelation, known as The Beast From The Sea?  According to the Book of Revelation (13:5), “And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months.” 

Donald Trump has been in office just shy of 34 months. 

As the song goes, “You know I ain’t no prophet, and I ain’t no prophet’s son.”But Trump’s 42 months will be up next summer.If it happens, remember you read it first here.

GOING TO A GO-GO

The practice of attaching a “-gate” suffix to every new scandal after Watergate began as an attempt by a diehard Nixon speechwriter – William Safire – to trivialize the importance of the original Watergate scandal.  Safire was later employed by the New York Times (some things never change), so he had ample opportunity to stick the “gate” label on whatever took his fancy.  Typically, the chattering classes followed his lead, and so it has gone, for nearly five decades.

For most of the 45 years since Nixon resigned, he held the title of Worst President Ever.  He fended off challenges from Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, but Donald Trump is beating him like a drum.  Trump hasn’t (yet) begun to compete on the international scene with OG monsters like Nero and Caligula; medieval monsters like Vlad the Impaler and Torquemada; or the scurvy scum of the 20th century – the Hitlers, Stalins, and Pol Pots.  But he’s the worst this country has had since George Washington took his first oath of office in 1789.

Therefore, I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, declare that a leader as awful as Donald Trump deserves his own unique scandal suffix.  I wish I could claim I thought of switching out “gate” with “a-lago,” after Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, but the idea dates back at least to May, 2017, with several Twitter users apparently arriving at the term independently at about the same time.

“Ukrainegate” is broke.  “Ukraine-a-Lago” is woke. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0aFccufx-o&pbjreload=10

THE UKRAINE MUTINY

There are so many differences between the Watergate scandal and the ongoing existential crisis that is the Trump presidency.  But one difference is that Nixon knew right from wrong – or at least legal from illegal – and wanted to be seen as being right, or failing that, at least legal.  Spoiler alert:  history’s verdict is that he was neither right nor legal.   

But Donald Trump doesn’t even understand the distinction between true/false and legal/illegal.  For him, there’s only “good for me or bad for me.”  Today’s “transcript” release underlines that point.  He released an undoubtedly doctored version of his conversation with the Ukraine president-elect, which deletes portions of his own statements at three crucial junctures.  And he still manages to incriminate himself with an obvious quid pro quo request.  Maybe THE CAINE MUTINY trial is a better comparator than Watergate.

I took Latin in high school, so I know that “quid pro quo” means, essentially, “something for something.”  It’s a transaction.  I’ll give you X, if you give me Y.  Ukraine president-elect Zelensky said he’d like to buy some American anti-tank missiles, and Trump responds, “I would like you to do us a favor, though.”  Quid, meet quo.  Not that a quid pro quo is necessary to prove corruption.  Simply asking a foreign government to dig up dirt on a domestic political opponent is corrupt, high crimes and misdemeanor-wise.  But Trump’s request for a favor – investigate my political opponent – is the icing on the cake.

I’ve been frustrated with Nancy Pelosi, while at the same time straining to give her the benefit of the doubt, for the past several months.  As the Democratic Speaker of the House, she has to balance the interests of the moderate/cautious swing-district members of the caucus, with those of the firebrands in safe seats.  I’ve felt that she overdid the “impeachment is the furthest thing from our minds” position, but there’s an argument to be made that she played her cards just right, letting the pro-impeachment members build support for their position behind the scenes.  And when Trump overplayed his hand, she sprung the trap. 

Or maybe she was clueless and just got lucky.

Either way, I’ll take it.  She did the right thing this week.  She even backed down Mitch McConnell, who allowed a Senate vote on a resolution calling for the release of the whistleblower complaint, which passed 100-0.  Every single Senate Republican cast a vote against Donald Trump.  Who would have predicted that six months ago?  It ain’t impeachment, but it ain’t bad. 

Meanwhile, Trump and his risible co-conspirator, Rudy Giuliani, are melting down before our eyes.  Even on Fox News, the friendliest venue imaginable, Rudy babbles and contradicts himself, revealing secrets that undercut the current Republican narrative on a seemingly daily basis.  Trump sweats, slurs his words, shows up at the UN, reading from a teleprompter, a text he’s apparently never seen before, while sounding like he’s just been hit with a tranquilizer dart.  Even his own Secretary of Commerce dozed off, for crying out loud.

And now members of the House leadership have seen not only the doctored transcript of the call between Trump and Zelensky, but also the actual whistleblower complaint.  They say it’s explosive.  Even Republican members of Congress are worried (off the record, of course), as right-wing commentator Erick Erickson noted reluctantly today.  He wrote:  “Speaking on background to a Republican congressional source who has direct knowledge of the whistleblower report, he says it is really bad….  It ‘paints a clear path to impeachment’ with enough information that Democrats will be able to make appropriate document requests and subpoena witnesses for a focused effort.”

We will learn those details soon enough.  Trump may – may – have dodged a bullet with the Mueller investigation, thanks to his lying Attorney General’s misrepresentation of the facts.  But with regard to the Ukraine scandal, events seem to have overtaken him.

Everything that Trump touches, dies.  Rick Wilson, the man who coined that phrase, has a column in The Daily Beast (link below) with good advice for Democrats as they pursue the impeachment inquiry.  I pray they’re paying attention. 

Or, as another savvy political commentator (and the only man who’s won a Grammy, an Oscar, a Pulitzer Prize, a Golden Globe, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and also a Nobel Prize) once put it, “keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again.”  He also said, “Don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin,” which is worth remembering as well.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/five-simple-rules-for-impeaching-our-president-donald-j-trump

MY SON WAS LOST BUT NOW HE IS FOUND

When I was in elementary school, my family spent a year’s worth of evenings reading the Bible out loud – straight through, Genesis to Revelations.  My parents had found a study guide that divided the Bible up into 365 sections, and prescribed which verses to read on a given day.   At the time, I’d rather have been out playing, and no doubt I missed the point of most of what we read.  But it was a useful introduction to themes I’ve been revisiting ever since.  A few of the stories – the Book of Job, for instance – bothered me.  One of the others I found problematic was the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).

Basically, it’s the story of a ne’er do well younger son who persuades his father to give him his inheritance immediately.  He leaves home, he squanders his inheritance, and returns home to his family, begging for forgiveness.  His father is thrilled, and prepares a welcoming feast.  The other son – the good one, who stayed home and worked hard at the family business – said, basically, WTF?  You never did anything like that for me!  And the father said, “thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.”  That’s worth a celebration, so lighten up, dude.

For a long time, I identified with the older brother’s sense of grievance.  In my mind, if in no one else’s, I was the good kid in this scenario.  Why reward the bad kid instead of the good one?  It took me until adulthood to grasp the concept of forgiveness and the joy of a redemption story. 

And that brings me to a question my friend Jeff asked in the course of a comment on my most recent post about third party candidates – the one entitled WISHIN’ AND HOPIN’.  Jeff wrote: “So if third party candidates just hop into the Democratic Party like AOC, its all good? No one would ever CRUCIFY (figuratively) that candidate right? Or blame said candidate for the total incompetence and tone deafness of the eventual establishment candidate the Dems would push forward by hook or by crook? That person would be lauded by all? Or is it only winners we are celebrating? Asking for a friend who was called a "bro" who still voted dem in the general election.”

Fair questions.  Here’s my response. In 2019, Bernie Sanders finally joined the Democratic Party.  I wasn’t thinking of him when I wrote about third parties, but I suppose he qualifies as a third party convert since he was a member of something called the Liberty Union Party back in the 70s.  But for most of his career, he was an independent, rather than a member of a third party.  Same difference, I suppose.

In 2016, when Bernie ran against Hillary Clinton, he enjoyed the benefits (and had to deal with some of the drawbacks) of being an outsider candidate.  He won a lot of converts with his critique of the Democratic Party.  But that same critique also annoyed some longtime Democrats, including the members of the Democratic National Committee. 

Did the DNC praise him when he signed on as a member of the Democratic Party in 2019?  Not that I know of.  Was he lauded?  Not that I know of.  But that’s the DNC.  As professional Democrats, they saw Bernie as an interloper in 2016, and took it personally. 

There’s plenty to criticize about the DNC’s handling of the Clinton-Sanders competition in 2016.  They put their thumb on the scale in favor of Hillary Clinton whenever they could.  It was dumb, it was wrong, and it was also unnecessary.  I suppose the DNC thought they were helping a loyal member of their party beat an outsider who was trying to usurp the throne.  I’m not surprised that they wouldn’t be thrilled about Bernie’s candidacy, but their job was to be neutral.  I understand the bad taste that left in the mouths of Bernie supporters. 

Three years later, Bernie Sanders still harbors presidential ambitions, and it’s clear that he understands that his only realistic shot at becoming president is with the Democratic Party.  As summer 2019 winds down, Bernie remains strong in the polls.  He’s not every Democrat’s first choice, but no rank and file Democrat that I know of disputes his right to be in the race. 

I donated to Bernie in 2016, and voted for him in the Arizona primary, which he lost to Hillary, 56.5% to 41.1%.  He lost in a landslide, in other words.  It wasn’t close.  That result, and the results of other primaries, can’t be blamed on the DNC.  The plain fact is that the establishment candidate got more votes, won more primaries, and accumulated more delegates, than Bernie did.  It happens. 

It’s obvious in retrospect that the Clinton campaign made some crucial mistakes.  Maybe there are people who blame Bernie Sanders for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.  I’m not one of them.  Bernie endorsed Clinton, and campaigned for her.  Bernie Sanders wasn’t the reason Hillary Clinton lost.  And with that, I don’t see any point in continuing to litigate the 2016 Democratic nomination fight.  The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton won’t be on the ballot in the 2020 primaries, and Bernie will. 

So far, so good.  My discomfort with the Sanders candidacy is less about Bernie himself and more about a subset of his supporters – the ones who are basically “Bernie or Bust,” the ones who say or imply that Bernie is the only Democrat they’ll vote for.  I won’t criticize any 2016 Bernie supporter (or Green, or Libertarian) who, whatever their reservations, voted for Hillary Clinton.  That’s precisely the approach I’m advocating for the 2020 race. 

Here’s the Jeff Foxworthy-esq “you might be a Bernie Bro if” test I would apply to Sanders supporters.  You might be a Bernie Bro if you think that Elizabeth Warren is an establishment hack, and would rather vote Green or stay home if she’s the nominee.   I could add a couple of other candidates, but let’s stop there.  There are differences between Bernie’s policies and Warren’s, but they’re trivial compared to most other Democratic candidates, and microscopic when compared to Donald Trump and his Republican enablers.

If there’s no Democrat in the field besides Bernie who is an acceptable Plan B, I say you’re in a cult of personality rather than a political party. 

Why?  Because none of the other Democratic candidates have supporters like that. There are no Biden Bros, or Buttigieg Bros, or Beto Bros, or Warren’s Witches, or Harris’ Hexen.  No other major contender has a loud cadre of supporters who talk as though they’ll take their marbles and go home if their guy or gal isn’t the nominee. 

Should we blame Bernie for that?  Sure, why not?  He must know this is happening.  He could, if he chose, tell his supporters that he intends to support the eventual Democratic nominee, whoever it is, and that he hopes his supporters will too.  No denunciations, no purge, just a reminder that he’s a Democrat now, and that once the party’s nominee is chosen, whether it’s him or someone else, his supporters should make defeating Donald Trump their highest priority.

Is a statement like that urgent right now?  Probably not.  Does it need to happen sometime?  I say yes.  If it were up to me, all of the candidates would focus on “why I’m good,” rather than “why my opponents are bad.”  Wishful thinking, I know.  John McCain famously said that the only cure for presidential ambition is embalming fluid.  But most of the current crop of Democratic contenders are kidding themselves.  My hope is that, once the primaries and caucuses begin, the marginal candidates will have given up, allowing the serious candidates to get on with vote-seeking. 

When that winnowing happens, I expect Bernie Sanders to be among the survivors. Recent polling has been all over the place.  Warren is up.  No, Warren is down.  Biden is slipping.  No he’s not.  Beto is tanking.  No, wait, he’s trending up.  But Bernie Sanders has an ace in the hole.  While other Democrats are building name recognition and hoping for the best, Bernie has a substantial core of support that is NOT volatile.  He’s got a legitimate chance at winning the nomination.

And if Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee, I’ll support him.  I’ll give him money, advocate on his behalf, and vote for him.  But I will do the same for Joe Biden (although he’s now my least favorite among the major candidates in the race) and the rest of the major candidates.  Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, to world peace, and to the future of the planet.  On November 3, 2020, my vote will go to the person with the best chance of defeating that existential threat.  Which is to say that my vote will go to the Democratic nominee, whoever it is.

WISHIN' AND HOPIN'

My friend Michela voiced some concerns about my September 15 post entitled I DON’T REALLY CARE, DO YOU?  You can check that post for context and other comments, but my response is (typically) too long to be a simple reply to a comment, so I’ve created a new post for it.  One important note.  When I talk about third party progressives, I’m talking about the Green Party, even though Michela didn’t mention a specific third-party.  Apart from specific references to Green leadership, though, the points I’m trying to make would apply to any third-party.  Finally, to make it easy to tell where Michela’s comments end and mine begin, I’ve retyped hers in ALL CAPS.  If you read that as yelling, blame me, not her.

“I LOVE READING YOUR OPINIONS, WHICH ARE INFORMATIVE AND ENTERTAINING, AND OFTEN INSPIRE ME TO ARTICULATE MY OWN OPINIONS. I WANTED TO PUSH BACK A LITTLE AGAINST THE BLAME OF 3RD PARTY VOTERS, EVEN THOUGH, I DO IN FACT TEND TO AGREE WITH YOUR REASONING WHEN VOTING. THERE’S AN INCONSISTENCY IN YOUR ARGUMENT.  YOU SAY 3RD PARTY VOTERS AREN’T WILLING TO PUT IN THE WORK TO CREATE A LEGITIMATE PARTY. FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE “PUTTING IN THE WORK” IS VOICING THEIR OPINION WITH THEIR VOTE. NOT EVERYONE HAS TIME FOR MEETINGS AND RAISING MONEY AND RECRUITING MEMBERS, AND I DON’T THINK THEY ARE MORALLY REQUIRED TO DO THOSE THINGS IN ORDER TO SHOW UP TO THE POLLS AND VOTE FOR THEIR CANDIDATE/THEIR PARTY.”

Fair enough.  But there’s a difference between “not everyone has time” and no one has time. What have Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka been doing since Trump was inaugurated?  What about Ralph Nader?  (I checked his Wikipedia page.  He’s not even a Green anymore.)  Like it or not, building a political party with enough electoral clout to influence public policy requires a massive infrastructure investment.  Somebody is going to have to go to meetings, raise money, and recruit members.  Who’s going to do that for the Greens?  Rank and file Democrats and Republicans can just show up and vote every two or four years.  They’ve already got a major party.  Greens don’t have that luxury.

“BUT THEN YOU ALSO BLAME THEM IF THEY DO PUT IN THE WORK, WHICH UNDOUBTEDLY SOME OF THEM ARE.”  

I suppose it’s true that some Greens are putting in the work.  To the extent that’s true – and I’ll take your word for it – my next question would be whether they’re working effectively, or instead are devoting their time and effort to projects that will ultimately harm the causes they claim to support.  And I am absolutely convinced that helping to elect Republican presidents harms the causes Greens claim to support.  The Green Party has a strong environmental platform.  I’ve heard progressive voices say that we’re running out of time – that we’ve got maybe ten or twelve years to make a serious dent in global warming, or it will be too late.  But I get the impression that some progressives would rather give Donald Trump a second term than vote for Joe Biden.  I’m waiting for those folks to show me how they plan to save the planet by giving Republicans four more years to destroy it.

“AND YOU DON’T ACTUALLY WANT THEM CONVINCING ANYONE TO JOIN THEIR PARTY, AS YOU’VE MADE CLEAR.” 

Not exactly.  There’s a difference between joining the Green Party (fine with me), and voting for Ralph Nader or Jill Stein (not fine with me).  My main objection to the Greens (and Libertarians as well) is not that they recruit and advocate for their party’s positions, but that their primary focus always winds up being the presidency.  I say, vote for as many down-ballot Green candidates you want.  State and local elections are where Greens could make a difference, and also lay the foundation for success in national elections.  

Or build your party your way and show me that I’m wrong.  But if the path to building your party means helping to re-elect Donald Trump, I’ll take a hard pass.

“IT’S ALMOST AS IF YOU BELIEVE THEY SHOULD BE DOING THE WORK UNDERGROUND, AND THEN SOMEHOW SUDDENLY EMERGE ONCE THEY ARE A FULLY FORMED PARTY, READY TO TRULY COMPETE.  BUT OF COURSE THAT’S NOT REALISTIC. TO CREATE ANOTHER VIABLE OPTION, IT WILL HAVE TO BE IN BABY STEPS.”  That’s not what I meant, and I apologize for my lack of clarity.  People who believe in a progressive third party should be loud and proud.  Make your case, and try to win converts.  I like much of the Greens’ vision.  But if they want to be a political party, Greens need more than a vision.  A vision without a strategy is just a daydream.  If anyone wants to convert me, they’ll have to show me some evidence that they’ve figured out a realistic path to electoral success, even if it’s slow.  I don’t see that with Greens. 

“AND THAT WILL INCLUDE HAVING A CANDIDATE ON THE BALLOT, AND TRYING TO GET AS MANY PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR THEM AS POSSIBLE, EVEN IF THEY WON’T WIN—THIS TIME.” 

The Greens have fielded candidates in the last six presidential elections.  Their high-water mark was in 2000, when they pulled 2.7% of the vote (and helped elect George W. Bush).  In 2016, both major parties nominated candidates with considerable baggage.  The Greens weren’t going to win, but it should have been a golden opportunity to build party membership.  Instead, Jill Stein only managed to win 1.1% of the vote (which still helped elect Donald Trump).  How many election cycles will it take until they conclude that maybe what they’ve been doing isn’t working?  

No one asked me, but I’ll offer some free advice for progressives who don’t like what the Democratic Party is offering.  They could emulate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Join the Democratic Party and reform it.  Who has done more for progressive causes lately – AOC or Jill Stein? 

But emulating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would require a lot of time and effort.  If time and effort are in short supply, or if the thought of being a Democrat is too much to bear, then my alternate suggestion is to join the Green Party and reform it.  Anyone who had the Green Party’s best interests at heart would try to convince them to stop making unforced errors. 

First, they should drop silly talking points like there’s no meaningful difference between the two major parties.  That goes beyond permissible hyperbole.  It’s demonstrably false, and any rational voter knows it.  If Greens want to argue that they’re a better alternative to Trump than Democrats, fine.  Defend that proposition.  But don’t insult voters’ intelligence. 

Next, returning to an earlier theme, persuade the Greens to let go of their presidential ambitions for a couple of cycles and focus on electing candidates at the state and local levels.  There’s plenty of good work for progressives to do in such positions; those elections are often less heavily contested, not to mention much less expensive; and if Green county assessors, city council members, and dogcatchers do a good job, they’ll win converts.  And that’s consistent with the “start small and build incrementally” approach.

And finally, if and when they do get around to mounting their next presidential campaign, for crying out loud, insist that they recruit a credible candidate.  Nothing says “we’re not really serious” than nominating dilettantes like Ralph Nader and Jill Stein. 

I appreciate being pushed to clarify my thinking.  I’ll have more to say soon on the structural impediments to the rise of new American political parties.

I DON'T REALLY CARE, DO YOU?

The 1960 presidential campaign was the first one I paid any attention to.  I was 13 at the time, and was visiting relatives in Northern California during the Democratic convention. We watched on TV as John F. Kennedy won the nomination.  That fall, my social studies class held mock presidential debates.  My fellow 8th graders and I tried in vain to articulate the difference between the respective positions of Kennedy and Nixon on Quemoy and Matsu. 

What’s that, you say?  You don’t remember Quemoy and Matsu?  Well, they did an amazing job, and were being recognized more and more – until the election was over, and everyone forgot about them.

They were (and are) islands in the Taiwan Strait.  The People’s Republic of China (Red China, as everyone called it back then) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) both claimed ownership.  Kennedy and Nixon both supported Taiwan’s claims, of course.  The only question was which candidate hated Red China more. 

The Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 was the first presidential debate to be televised.  Afterwards, polling indicated that those who watched the debates on TV thought Kennedy won, while those who listened on the radio gave the nod to Nixon.  It’s now an article of faith among journalists that Kennedy “won” the debate because he was more telegenic.  I’ll post a link to the transcript of that 1960 debate below, but don’t read it unless you want to be depressed.  It will remind you that there was a time, in what seems like a mythical past, when even a Republican presidential candidate could articulate his views in complete sentences.  Without insulting his opponent. 

Ah well.  Forgive the ramblings of an old man. 

My point is that it’s useful to keep Quemoy and Matsu in mind as the 2020 presidential campaign hits its stride.  Democratic health care policy is a good example of a 21st century Quemoy/Matsu issue.  The press thrives on a narrative of conflict and controversy, but compared to Trump and the Republicans, the difference between the positions of the major Democratic candidates is minimal.  Ditto for proposals about climate change and gun control and whatever else. 

You can take this to the bank:  The worst Democratic proposal will be better than the best Republican proposal. 

But wait, you may be thinking.  I have other options.  What about the Greens and Libertarians?  Don’t they have some good ideas?  Why, yes.  Yes, they do.  But the only way any of their ideas will ever be implemented is if they’re adopted by the Democratic or Republican Party. 

Remember how, in 2016, Greens, Libertarians, and progressive non-voters who hated Hillary Clinton argued that there was no real difference between the two major parties, and that the best-case scenario would be to burn it all down and start over?  Well, they got what they wanted.  Donald Trump is burning it all down.  How’s the starting over going?

Building a credible political party requires sustained effort – going to meetings, circulating petitions, recruiting members, raising money, and running for office. How many of those disaffected progressives have done any of that since November 8, 2016?  My guess is, virtually none of them. 

Is that too harsh?  OK, tell me what those Greens, Libertarians, and progressive non-voters have accomplished since 2016.  Which policies have they implemented?  Which candidates have they elected? 

But wait, you may be thinking.  What about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, and Rashida Tlaib.  Well, what about them?  They’re serious politicians, ready and willing to work hard for the policies they support.  In other words, they’re Democrats – not Greens, Libertarians, or virtue-signaling dropouts.  They are, in other words, precisely the opposite of the hipster puritans who surface every four years to insist that no credible candidate is worthy of their vote. 

And what has all this purity accomplished?  They celebrated the beginning of the 21st century by effectively submarining the candidacy of Al Gore, helping to elect George W. Bush in 2000.  Voting for Ralph Nader got them an endless war in the Middle East, as well as a subprime mortgage crisis and a global recession. 

Did that prompt them to re-evaluate their strategy?  Of course not.  Being a hipster puritan means never having to say you’re sorry.  The next chance they got – in 2016 – they took a look at Donald Trump and opted to join the Russo-Republican attack on Hillary Clinton.

Is a puzzlement.  Luckily, we have tools to analyze the situation.  Cicero, the Roman statesman, asked, “cui bono?”  Who benefits?  Follow the money, or the power, to find your answer.  Centuries later, a Franciscan friar proposed a principle that came to be known as Occam’s Razor – given a choice between two or more plausible explanations, the simplest one is to be preferred. 

I can think of a few relatively simple explanations for the behavior of progressives whose election day behavior – voting third party or not voting at all – helps elect candidates whose views are antithetical to theirs. 

One possibility is that they’re just not very smart.  Their self-regard blinds them to the downside of their actions.  They live in a “2 + 2 = 5” world, and they’re stuck there.

A second possibility is that they’re just lazy.  Creating an effective political movement takes hard work.  It’s easier to announce proudly that none of the candidates with an actual chance to win is worthy of their vote.  Then they can spend the next four years blaming everyone except themselves for the consequences of their actions. 

Of course, it’s possible to be lazy and stupid at the same time. 

My third possibility is a bit of a stretch.  It’s cynical at best, and a conspiracy theory at worst.  But it’s not outside the realm of possibility that some Nader voters were actually sympathetic to Bush in 2000, or that some Stein/Johnson voters were secretly pulling for Trump in 2016. 

If that sounds far-fetched, try this thought experiment.  If Nader voters in 2000 wanted to help George W. Bush without actually appearing to support him, what would they have done differently?  In 2016, if Jill Stein and Gary Johnson voters wanted to help Donald Trump without actually appearing to support him, what would they have done differently? 

Cui bono?  Who benefited from Nader votes in 2000, or from Stein/Johnson votes in 2016?  Spoiler alert:  Republicans, both times.  The party of the rich, the party of white nationalism, the party of the patriarchy.  Way to go, progressives!

Fast forward to 2019.  We’re in the process of finding a Democrat to run against Donald Trump in 2020 (assuming, for the sake of the argument, that Trump lasts that long).  There are lots of candidates.  Probably you like some of them more than others.  Me too.

My prediction, though, is that the same people who gravitated to Nader in 2000 and to Stein or Johnson in 2016 will find a reason not to vote for the Democratic nominee in 2020.  And that will be true whether the Democratic nominee is Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren. 

If one of them tries to talk you into voting Green or Libertarian, remember Cicero’s question.  Cui bono?  Who would benefit if you voted for a third party, or didn’t vote at all?  Not the Greens or Libertarians, who aren’t serious about achieving national success.  Their strategy is to snooze for three years and poke their heads up every fourth year to recruit the next wave of hipster puritans. 

Nope.  Rationalize your vote how you will.  But our next president will be either the Democratic or Republican nominee.  If you vote for anyone besides the Democrat, you’re helping the Republican.

The Kennedy-Nixon TV debate transcript:  https://www.debates.org/voter-education/debate-transcripts/september-26-1960-debate-transcript/

BLAME IT ON CAIN, DON'T BLAME IT ON ME

When God, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt all agree on something, it’s probably a good idea to pay attention. 

Cain and Abel were the first children of Adam and Eve.  According to the account in Genesis, Cain was the first human to be born, and Abel was the first human to die, murdered by his older brother.  When God called him out (Genesis 4:9), Cain gave a good Republican answer: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Suffice to say the Good Lord was not amused.

Centuries later, in the New Testament, the Son of God (Jesus, not Donald Trump) preached “love thy neighbor as thyself.” One of the Pharisees in his audience tried to quibble.  That’s all very well, the Pharisee said, but “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which can be found in Luke 10:25-37.  

The parable of the Good Samaritan has lost a lot of its punch over the past two thousand years, because most of us don’t know what Jews in Jesus’ time thought about Samaritans.  Long story short, to Judeans, Samaritans were the equivalent of ISIS or MS-13 – the worst people in the world, unclean heretics.  And yet, Jesus insisted that these filthy heretics were your neighbors, and told his followers not only to love them, but to love them “as thyself.”

Jesus returned to that theme in various ways throughout his earthly ministry.  In Matthew 25:40, Jesus told his followers that: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”  Whether you opt to feed the hungry or to eliminate their food stamp allotment, you’re doing the same thing to Jesus himself.  Whether you opt to help strangers or to put their children in cages, you’re doing the same thing to Jesus himself. 

Needless to say, this is not a verse that is popular among Christian nationalists. 

But trying to be your brother’s keeper used to be part of the Republican tradition.  In fact, it was one of the earliest Republican traditions.  Three months after he won the presidency and three weeks before he was sworn in, our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, said this.  “I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.” 

Four score years later, Democrats finally got into the brother’s keeper business.  In his 1941 State of the Union speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt was even more specific than Lincoln.  Roosevelt spoke of Four Freedoms that everyone in the world deserves.  They were freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Lincoln’s comment referred to the duty of people, both individually and collectively.  Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, on the other hand, dealt specifically with the duty of government.  Broadly speaking, Roosevelt believed that government had a responsibility both to mind its own business (the first two freedoms having the effect of limiting the government’s ability to tell its citizens what they should believe or say), but also a corresponding responsibility to protect and nurture its citizens (doing whatever necessary to insure that everyone had enough to eat and a place to live, while protecting them from domestic and foreign threats). 

Nowadays, Republicans would insist that being forced to subsidize the 3rd & 4th Freedoms infringed on their rights under the first two Freedoms.  That attitude amounts to an explicit rejection of Abraham Lincoln’s assumptions about man’s moral duty.  The Party of Lincoln has given way to the Party of Trump.  What else is new?

I think it’s safe to generalize that people on the left side of the political spectrum tend to believe that they are, in fact, their brothers’ keepers.  Sometimes they overdo it, and we get silly nanny state regulations.  But for the most part, their hearts are in the right place – that is, they’re siding with God, Jesus, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, rather than with Cain, the Pharisees, the Confederacy, and the Trump-McConnell axis of evil.  I give them credit for that, even if their tactics are often less than skillful. 

But there are minor tactical mistakes, and then there are major strategic blunders.  I’m watching people who should know better let their legitimate frustration with the 21st century American political process become less interested in making converts than in punishing heretics. 

For the past several years, I’ve called myself progressive.  I like progress.  Progress is our most important product.  But now it has come to my attention that the heretic hunters have co-opted the name “progressive.” 

Sadly, the contemporary progressive movement doesn’t have much to do with making actual progress.  Instead, in some circles, “progressive” signifies theoretical posturing that ignores the practical realities of making actual progress. 

“Progressives” would no doubt disagree.  And maybe they’re right.

But as I was exploring the taxonomy of left-of-center beliefs, I came across a comment thread on the topic that reframed the entire question for me.  A commenter named Frank Wilhoit wrote, “There’s no such thing as liberalism - or progressivism, etc.” 

He went on to say that “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Wilhoit’s point was that the foundational political/social assumptions of recorded human history are conservative. They evolved to defend the status quo – to justify the right of princes and priests to tell peasants and proles what to think and do. 

That’s a remarkably clarifying insight.  At its core, conservatism has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility or family values.  What conservatives want to conserve is simply their own privilege – white privilege generally, male privilege specifically, and wealthy white male privilege in particular.   

The rich and famous know how to game the system.  The rest of us get gamed.  Donald Trump gets away with stiffing his creditors because he can afford to tie things up in court for decades, until it’s just easier for the creditor to settle for pennies on the dollar.  Jeffrey Epstein got away with raping children for decades because money trumps justice.

If conservatism’s fundamental assumption is that a country’s laws are, or should be, designed to reward people like them, and punish (or at a minimum, restrain) everyone else, then our job is to neutralize them by insisting, in Wilhoit’s words, that “The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.”

Whether it’s progressive, liberal, or “on the Left”, Wilhoit’s proposition strikes me as consistent with what God, Jesus, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were trying to tell us.  We are, in fact, our brother’s keeper.  And if loving our neighbors as ourselves seems impossible, we can opt for a reasonable Plan B, which is plain old tolerance.  Live and let live.  Tolerance isn’t a great end-state, but for folks (on both ends of the political spectrum) who are focused on excommunicating heretics, it’s a step in the right direction.

On election day in 2020, we’re going to need all the converts we can get.   

AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND DWELT AMONG US

White Trump Evangelicals used to claim that Donald Trump was the new Cyrus – the 6th century BCE Persian king described by the Prophet Isaiah as the non-believer whom God used to free Jews from captivity in Babylon.  But that’s no longer good enough for Trump.

Now he has proclaimed himself as “the chosen one.”  And in case you missed the point, he also described himself as “the second coming of god.”  Or rather, he argues that others see him as the second coming of god.  Since Trump rarely has original thoughts, he relies on flatterers for new ideas.  If they come up with something he likes, he’ll repeat it.  And he’ll keep repeating it until he convinces himself that it’s true. 

Will he be able to convince American Jews that he’s the messiah, and that disloyalty to him is the mark of a bad Jew?  Time will tell.  It’s hard to resist the blandishments of a very stable genius.  It’s all about making the gospel great again.

Meanwhile, Mr. Second Coming Of God has cancelled a visit to Denmark, because the prime minister refuses to sell him Greenland.One might think that the First Coming of God – a/k/a, God – would open up a can of whoopass on those Danes.Turn them into pillars of salt, or smite them in some other way.But the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

I JUST DROPPED IN TO SEE WHAT CONDITION MY CONDITION WAS IN

There are competing theories about Donald Trump’s health.  According to Trump himself, he’s in great shape, a fine figure of a man, straight out of central casting, healthiest president in history.  A good looking, very stable genius who will probably outlive Methuselah. 

That’s what you get when you let a narcissist summarize his own medical exam.  The other thing you get is a healthy dose of skepticism from everyone outside the White House inner circle.  Especially people who have watched and listened to him.

Donald Trump neither sounds nor looks like he’s in great shape.  In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if he’ll make it to election day 2020.  Not long ago, Trump was trying to sound presidential about the recent massacres in El Paso and Toledo.  Or maybe it was Dayton.  Who can tell those Ohio towns apart, right?  Thoughts and prayers to both places, just to make sure. 

But apart from garbling the location of the latest shooting, he was clearly having trouble forming words at all.  It was as though his tongue stopped cooperating.  It’s a symptom associated with some forms of dementia.  As I watch Trump’s ongoing cognitive decline, it’s getting harder and harder to imagine him going through the rigors of a typical presidential campaign next year. 

I’m obviously not the first person to notice this, and there’s been quite a bit of speculation about the cause of his decline.  The most persuasive analysis I’ve seen suggests Adderall abuse.  Adderall would account for some of his obvious symptoms, including dilated pupils and sniffing. 

But it’s worth remembering that Trump’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s towards the end of his life.  Maybe this is nothing more than heredity kicking in.

Whatever the reason, Trump’s verbal fluency is deteriorating perceptibly.  If you’ve tuned him out (not that I blame you), consider listening to recent clips again – not for content, but for his speech patterns. You will hear that he’s slurring his words more frequently.  His vocabulary is shrinking, and he compensates by repeating words and phrases. 

Trump is already struggling to answer questions coherently.  Based on his responses at recent press conferences, his strategy seems to be to wait until he hears a familiar word and then riffs on it.  Here are a couple of recent examples. 

When asked for a comment on the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, the only thing Trump could come up with was: "I have a lot of respect for Poland, and as you know the people of Poland like me. And I like them. And I'm going to be going to Poland fairly soon."  I’ll give him half a point for connecting Warsaw with Poland, but he obviously had no clue about the Warsaw Uprising, and used the question to praise himself. 

 At a press conference with the President of Mongolia, Trump latched onto a memory from his visit to a Japanese sumo arena back in May: “Mongolia -- they're great fighters. You know, they're great fighters, great wrestlers, great champions. Right? And we have the grand champion of sumo wrestling with us from a couple of years ago. And he's here from Mongolia. I was told that in Japan, actually, that they've had four grand champions from Mongolia. So they're great, great fighters. Your people are great fighters. Thank you very--we need great fighters too."

[Speaking of great Mongolian fighters, let us pause to consider the example of Genghis Khan, yet another guy who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.  Nevertheless, his career ought to be a cautionary tale for Trump and others obsessed with building a wall on our southern border.  When Genghis Khan decided it was time to take down the Jin Dynasty in the early 13th century, he breached the Great Wall of China multiple times in multiple places.  No wall Trump could imagine, much less build, would be more effective today than the Great Wall of China was then.  It’s a good thing for us that none of our real enemies are planning to launch an invasion from Mexico.  All they’d have to do is hire a platoon of Mongolian mercenaries, and the Great Wall of Trump would come tumbling down.] 

 But I digress.  My point is that, fifteen months before the presidential election, Trump is already spewing word salad.  Next year at this time, when the presidential debate season begins in earnest, he’s likely to be even less coherent. 

 I can’t imagine the Trump camp agreeing to debates next year.  It’s not simply that Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg (or whoever) would be better debaters.  After all, Hillary Clinton was a better debater than Trump in 2016.  Trump’s base could care less about vocabulary and logic.  The hardcore MAGA crowd will cheer if he recites Mary Had A Little Lamb, even if he gets the words wrong.  QAnon will explain that it’s some fiendishly clever code.  But I wonder how they’d react if he had a major meltdown in front of a national TV audience.

 Trump’s physical condition should also worry his followers.  He’s obviously gaining weight.  At times he’s exhibited an irregular gait, wobbling a bit when he walks, appearing to drag one leg, and relying heavily on his podium for support during his rallies.        

 These symptoms first surfaced early in his presidency, and at that point I assumed that Trump’s kids would intervene if things got too bad.  I was wrong.  As long as there’s money to be made, the Trump clan will prop up Dad’s gibbering carcass at Deplorable rallies, and hope that Putin can help them drag him across the finish line.

We’ll know for sure that something’s up if Team Trump announces preemptively that Trump won’t participate in any debates with Pocahontas, Sleepy Joe, or whoever the eventual Democratic nominee turns out to be, and will only sit for heavily edited interviews with Sean Hannity. 

Since it appears that at least a third of the electorate would cast a vote for Donald Trump even if he were in a persistent vegetative state, and maybe even if he were dead, we have our work cut out for us.

Democrats will fight among themselves, because that’s how primaries work, and also how Democrats work.  But for all their flaws, Pocahontas, Sleepy Joe, and the rest of them aren’t the bad guys. 

Eyes on the prize, people. 

IT'S GREEN GREEN, GREEN THEY SAY, ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE HILL

As we contemplate the possibility that Seward’s Folly will be joined by Pompeo’s Folly – that is to say, that Republicans are serious about acquiring Greenland and strip-mining its resources – let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears.

Donald Trump’s recent interest in Greenland is easy to mock, but it has a sinister foundation.  Trump himself wouldn’t know Greenland from Red Square, the Blue Ridge Mountains, or the Black Hills.  But this seemingly bizarre fantasy signals that some people in the Trump Administration understand that climate change is real.  And instead of trying to stop it, they’re trying to find ways to make money off it.  They’ve convinced Trump that there’s money to be made off of global warming.  They’re looking for short-term profits, and screw the future of the planet. 

Of course, Greenland isn’t for sale.  But if it were, we could indulge in some fantasy deal-making.  Republicans want Greenland?  OK, but make it a state.  And, in the spirit of the Missouri Compromise (conservatives revere the Missouri Compromise), we must insist on adding a southern state as well.  Puerto Rico, step right up. 

We’d get two new states with very different cultures (which would be a good thing), but which both have strong progressive traditions.  The citizens of Greenland are comfortable with Scandinavian-style socialism.  The citizens of Puerto Rico have seen first-hand the dangers of Republican misrule.  Two new states, four more progressive senators, six (assuming Puerto Rico gets five) more progressive members of the House.  What’s not to like? 

And once we have Greenland, we can set our sights on Vinland.  It’s only a matter of time until Newfoundland and Labrador are ours.  Then we turn west.  Manifest destiny rides again.  What could go wrong?

LATER ON WE'LL CONSPIRE, AS WE SIT BY THE FIRE

I came of age during the golden age of conspiracy theories.  I refer, of course, to the period between November 22, 1963, and August 9, 1974, which encompassed the assassinations of two Kennedys, of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the attempted assassination of George Wallace; the Pentagon Papers; and the Watergate scandal.   

Watergate wasn’t the last conspiracy, of course.  Ronald Reagan gave us the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton got a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky.  George W. Bush, who became president thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court decision, ignored warnings about the September 11 attacks, and then launched an unnecessary war based on Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. 

It is an article of faith among Republicans that the blowjob was the worst of these scandals. 

The Obama years were scandal free, if not mistake-free.  OMG, Benghazi, and Hillary’s email servers.  And then, Russia elected one of its puppets as our president. 

Although he’s trying to deny it now, the Russian puppet was pals with Jeffrey Epstein.  We know this because he said so.  And if that’s not enough, there’s also video evidence of Trump and Epstein partying with young women.  Once Epstein turned into box office poison, he became persona non grata in Trumplandia, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the two men were buddies for years.

There is also documentary evidence of Bill and Hillary Clinton associating with Epstein.  No one disputes that.  The difference between Epstein-Clinton and Epstein-Trump is that only the latter relationship was unambiguously based on a shared predilection for having sex with young girls.  And it was Donald Trump, not Bill Clinton, who rewarded Alexander Acosta, the author of the corrupt Epstein plea deal in Florida, with a Cabinet appointment. 

The Clintons were happy to take Epstein’s money, but I’ve seen no evidence – so far – that either Bill or Hillary were involved in Epstein’s pedophilia.  Of course, we don’t know all the evidence.  A few weeks ago, the FBI seized a cache of photographs and videos from Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.  Who knows what’s on them?  Presumably we’ll find out eventually.  I’ll wait for the evidence to come out, and I’m willing to let the chips fall where they may. 

But Clinton haters need to understand that when Jeffrey Epstein died, however he died, he was in the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice, led by Attorney General William Barr, who was appointed by Donald Trump.  If there was any foul play, it happened on the Trump Administration’s watch.   

And now, Epstein is dead, apparently by his own hand.  He claimed he was being extorted and harassed by his fellow inmates, which is believable.  Current reporting suggests that Epstein and his lawyers persuaded prison authorities to take him off suicide watch. 

It strikes me as entirely plausible that Epstein knew the jig was up, and talked his way out of intensive surveillance in order to kill himself without interference.

That’s not the only possibility, of course.  Why was America’s most notorious prisoner not under more intensive scrutiny?  Why was his cellmate transferred out?  Who signed off on those decisions, and why?  Who were the guards who failed to check in on Epstein as scheduled?  What’s their excuse?  Does video surveillance indicate any unusual activity in Epstein’s cell, or nearby? 

The conspiracy theory that currently makes the most sense to me is that prison authorities knew very well that Epstein was suicidal, and helped create conditions which would allow Epstein to kill himself.  But remember – those prison authorities were in Donald Trump’s chain of command.  If there was an official decision, either to murder Epstein or to allow him space to commit suicide, that decision was made by Trump or someone reporting to Trump.

Honestly, I’d love to believe that Epstein was murdered in his cell.  But I can’t construct a believable scenario for it.  Any number of powerful men must have wanted him dead.  I just can’t figure out how they might have done it. 

Trump and his enablers are trying to blame Hillary Clinton.  Right, the same Hillary Clinton who was too frail to be president in 2016?  But who in 2019 was somehow able to penetrate a maximum-security prison and kill the most notorious inmate in America, and then get away without leaving a trace?  Hillary the Ninja is going to be a tough sell – at least outside the fever swamps of MAGA-Land.

Or maybe someone bribed a guard?  Or bribed an inmate?  I guess.  Maybe.  Theoretically possible.  But plausible?  Likely?  I’m not there yet.

If we learn that multiple surveillance cameras malfunctioned, that would be kind of suspicious.  If evidence seized from Epstein’s Manhattan mansion mysteriously disappears, that would be kind of a red flag.  If William Barr says that everything was kosher, just move along, there’s nothing to see here?  Then we’d know that Epstein was murdered to protect wealthy pedophiles.  That’s the most likely outcome, in my view.  Welcome to 2019. 

As the saying goes, paranoia strikes deep.  But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. 

HE LIVED IN THE SEWER, AND IN THE SEWER HE DIED, AND WHEN THEY PULLED HIS BODY OUT

One of the worst human beings on earth is dead.  He took a lot of secrets with him to the grave.  I love a good conspiracy theory, but I’m going to wait and see where the evidence leads before I adopt a theory about the lonesome death of Jeffrey Epstein.

It is a matter of record that Jeffrey Epstein cultivated the rich and famous.  Some of them hung out with him because he gave them money – political donations, but also contributions to charities and scientific research.  Superficially, Epstein was just the sort of person that development officers dream about – a guy with deep pockets and a track record of generosity. 

I’m not going to name any names, but I’ve been involved, in a marginal way, in trying to raise funds for worthy causes.  As long as we’re not talking Al Capone levels of notoriety, you don’t worry too much about the probity of the donor.  Life is complicated, scruples are expensive, and, as Honore de Balzac said, behind every great fortune there is a crime.  If a rich guy writes you a check and it clears, you’re happy.  One of the donors I helped cultivate was an alcoholic racist.  Their posthumous donation is making life better for citizens of Arizona.  I can live with my contribution to that effort.

I don’t doubt that reporters will ferret out what the recipients of Epstein’s largesse did with the money he gave them, and that’s totally fair.  But unless the evidence shows that those donations were misused, I’m inclined to cut them some slack.  After all, if we begin to limit the revenue that comes from private enterprise, our only alternative will be socialism, right?

But there were others who hung out with Epstein because he gave them children to rape.  Those people need to be exposed, and to suffer the consequences for their crimes.   

That could still happen, as I understand it.  Epstein’s death means, at a minimum, that evidence seized in raids on his mansion is not subject to challenge by attorneys for other defendants.  There were unnamed co-conspirators in Epstein’s plea deal in Miami back at the turn of the century, as well as his current indictment.  Those people ought to be worried.

Will they ever be brought to justice?  Hey, not to worry.  Attorney General Bill Barr is on the case.  If he does for the Epstein case what he did for the Mueller investigation – well, I guess we’re screwed.  But burying the evidence a second time may be a bridge too far, even for Bill Barr. 

The Jeffrey Epstein saga is Watergate/Kennedy Assassination level stuff.  In 1963 and 1973, people were reluctant to believe in conspiracies.  Today, everyone’s a cynic, willing to believe the worst about everyone and everything.  The crooked deal that Epstein cut in Florida, his Lolita Express pals, and now his untimely death – everybody knows there’s more to those stories, and sooner or later the truth, or something close to it, will be revealed.

The big question is, when we know the truth, what will we do about it?