Two Ships

The Kaepernick kerfuffle is a great example of the mistake people in the media and elsewhere make over and over again in talking about 1st Amendment freedom of speech rights: Conflating freedom of speech with freedom from criticism of one's speech. The first amendment right to free speech insulates us from government interference with our right to say what we want – government being the key word here. Government, under the constitution, cannot use its power to either prohibit or punish speech. In other words, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking or saying.

It absolutely does not insulate us from the consequences of what we say, or render us immune from criticism for it. It doesn’t insulate us from being told by our fellow citizens that we’re full of you-know-what when we flap our gums about this or that. If it did, then calling Donald Trump a jackass for the things he says (as just one example) would be a violation of his constitutional right to free speech. Freedom of speech says you can stand on a street corner and rail for the deportation of all left-handed people, but it does not protect you from being booed off your soapbox or pelted with rotten tomatoes for doing it. You can advocate for a whites-only policy at your workplace and not be put in jail for it. But you will be fired for it, and that’s not a violation of your free speech rights under the constitution.

Yet we see this scenario played out repeatedly in the Kaepernick Caper: One guy says he thinks Kaepernick is dead wrong; the other guy comes to his defense by citing his free speech rights. Two ships passing the night. No one -- except perhaps the wingnuts who see lack of sufficient devotion to mom and apple pie as treasonous -- questions Kaepernick’s right to do and say what he did. But that doesn’t mean he can’t or shouldn’t be criticized for it. It doesn’t mean that the content of his free speech can’t be disagreed with. And it certainly doesn't mean that criticizing him or disagreeing with his content or tactics equates to questioning or attempting to abrogate his rights.

As for the substance of his complaint: Although I assume his intent is to do his bit to keep the spotlight on the problems/conditions he is concerned about, I think his criticisms would be better directed at the individuals who perpetrate the conditions he deplores, as opposed to “the country” which, by way of its constitution and its ideals, is on his side in this issue. It’s not a country that does the things he rightly deplores. It’s people.  Kaepernick might avoid being accused of grandstanding and of calling attention to his moral superiority if his criticisms were more carefully targeted.  The notion that all of this is more about calling attention to himself than it is about expressing anguish over a serious social ill was reinforced when he showed up in public wearing clothing that seemed to pay homage to Fidel Castro, whose regime routinely murders political opponents and would not hesitate to throw Kaepernick in jail if it did not like the content of any public stance he might care to take.

Which brings us to the larger, and somewhat touchier, question of why it’s felt necessary to even have these displays of patriotism before sporting events – why sports at this level are so tied up with patriotic sentimentality. There’s nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but there’s nothing particularly right with it, either. There’s no natural connection between patriotic theater and large sporting events. We don’t do these things – wave the flag, play the national anthem, put color guards on parade – before movies or church or kids soccer games or algebra class. Why big-time sports? It’s a mystery. For more on this subject, here’s a link to an article by Sam Borden in the New York Times…

Senator McCain?

Donald Trump has now said he will not support Senator John McCain's re-election campaign in Arizona. And Senator McCain has not said, as of this writing, he does not support Trump's candidacy for president.

Wow.  What's it going to take?

By now, we are all drearily familiar with the spinelessness of figures like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, both of whom, in the service of their own political survival, have said in effect, “I consider Donald Trump an ignorant fool and I want him to be president of the United States.” One is tempted to again quote Joseph Welch who inquired of demagogue Joseph McCarthy back in the 50’s if, at long last, he had any sense of decency. But that would be of little use because they have clearly demonstrated -- by their continued support of a man they consider to be a danger to our democracy -- that they do not, and that their allegiance is to their political careers.

If this pair have set some kind of record for profiles in cowardice, what to make of John McCain, who has said essentially the same thing and more about Trump, and, in addition, has been personally insulted and mocked in the most egregiously cruel and supercilious manner by him and yet continues to lay supine before him and urge the voters to make him president.

McCain was an American flyer on a combat mission over North Vietnam in 1967 when his plane was brought down by enemy gunfire, a surface-to-air missile. He came down in a lake in the middle of Hanoi, breaking both arms and one leg. When he was pulled from the lake, his left shoulder was broken by a gun butt and he was bayoneted in the foot. Unspeakable horrors followed over the next five years in Hoa Lo prison including beatings, disease, and solitary confinement. He was repeatedly offered his freedom in exchange for saying positive things about his captors and their cause but refused unless the other American POWs were also freed.

Donald Trump, who dodged the draft during that era with student deferments and one medical deferment for bone spurs on his heel, who did not serve in the armed forces let alone in combat, and who claimed the expensive military-themed high school he attended gave him more training than many people who served in the actual armed services, called McCain a loser, and said, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

McCain’s response: Trump should retract statements about preferring military veterans who weren’t captured. “What he said about me, John McCain, that’s fine. I don’t require any repair of that.”

That’s fine?

More recently, of course came the Khizr Khan business in which McCain was again personally if indirectly insulted and belittled by Trump, by way of Trump’s dismissal of another casualty of war, Khan’s son Humayun

But instead of withdrawing his endorsement of Trump and/or demanding he withdraw from the race for this seeming last straw and for the vast and growing collection of other lies and stupidities of which he is guilty, including the recent suggestion that a foreign power spy on the U.S., McCain paid homage to Humayun Khan’s sacrifice, and said Trump ought to set a better example.

“It is time for Donald Trump to set the example for our country and the future of the Republican Party,” he said. “While our Party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.”

He should set a better example?

"I claim no moral superiority over Donald Trump,” McCain went on. “I have a long and well-known public and private record for which I will have to answer at the Final Judgment, and I repose my hope in the promise of mercy and the moderation of age.”

Well, if John McCain thinks the pearly gates are going to open wide for him because he supported for president a person whose ideas and policies he despises and who he knows would be bad if not disastrous for America, all in the service of his own re-election in Arizona…well, I can’t speak for St. Peter, but I don’t see it happening. Nor is this the first time McCain has put his own electoral interests ahead of those of the country. Remember, it was McCain who would have put the airhead Sarah Palin a heartbeat away -- not because he thought she would make a good vice-president or president, but because he thought her presence on the ticket would help him get elected.

The ultimate irony and insult: Trump's announcement that he will not back McCain in Arizona. So the question is: At long last, Senator McCain, what’s it going to take?

Who knows? Maybe the people of Arizona will show more courage in this election than their senior senator has, and do the right thing.

 

Trump Supporters: What's it Going to Take?

This is a good time to ask Trump supporters, who hold their hands over their ears and hum loudly when confronted with the litany of blockheaded ideas and outright lies their hero is guilty of, what their reaction would be if, say, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were found to be in business with Russia, had expressed admiration for former KGB operative Vladimir Putin, and encouraged Russia to spy on America.  Or if they had called the American military a disaster, mocked an American flyer who was a prisoner of war for five years, and belittled the parents of a dead soldier, as Trump has now done to Khizr and Ghazala Khan. Answer: Apoplexy. They would be shouting the T word – as in treason – from the rooftops.

And let’s be crystal clear with regard to whether he is lying about this Russia question. Donald Trump Jr. said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.“  Donald Trump Sr. said, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”

So, that’s a lie.

Here’s another one: On national television he said, speaking of Putin, “I got to know him very well.” A week or so ago, he said, “I never met Putin.”

So, that’s a lie.

Conservative columnist George Will said this: “Speculation about the nature and scale of Trump’s financial entanglements with Putin and his associates is justified by Trump’s refusal to release his personal and business tax information. Obviously he is hiding something.”

The list of Trump “ideas” that are foolish, uninformed, bigoted, dangerous, and just plain goofy is a long one and gets longer every day.  And now this: Trafficking with an adversary of the United States – an adversary that has nuclear weaponry trained on American cities and that for decades has repudiated America and our way of life -- in a way that would send Trump’s  acolytes into orbit if it were done by a Democrat; and, now disparaging the father and mother of an army officer who was killed in combat.

So the question at long last for Trump believers;  What’s it going to take?

Bernie or Bust

The speech given by Michelle Obama at the Democratic convention was much praised and rightly so.  But the three most on-point words spoken during the first day of the event were these:  “You’re being ridiculous.”  As is now well known, they were said by comedian/actor Sarah Silverman to Bernie Sanders obsessives who were being, in fact, ridiculous – and, as is their wont, childish, boorish, and self-indulgent.  Their threat – in keeping with their insufferable self-righteousness and moral superiority -- to hand over their vote to the ignoramus Donald Trump in order to indulge their irrational, over-the-top hatred of Hillary Clinton, is truly astonishing.  A few points for them to consider:

1.Hillary Clinton is the nominee, not Bernie Sanders. That’s over with, and no amount of acting out will change it.

2. The overwhelming majority of Democratic voters – and for that matter, the overwhelming majority of the American people – do not know what the Democratic National Committee is or what it does or why it exists or if it exists, and are not influenced in any way by its internal machinations, including snarky email traffic among its functionaries about Bernie Sanders.  Sanders lost by millions of votes and that had nothing to do with the DNC or any election shenanigans of any kind by anyone else.  It had to do with the will of the voters. Period.  The nomination was not stolen from Sanders.  It was lost by him.

3. The jeering and the booing and the weeping and the long-suffering eyes-to-the-sky gazes betray a remarkably juvenile understanding of how the electoral process is supposed to work in a democracy, and how the two-party system is supposed to work within that process. The idea here is to  select a person whose view of the world is most like ours to run for office against the person whose view of the world is least like ours.   It’s not a team sport where we root-root-root for our side in the service of an uncritical emotional attachment to it and fall desperately in love with its star player.

4. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are politically much more alike than they are different, and they are both vastly different from Trump.  That’s what this election is about.  What it’s not about: Your failure to get every single thing you want, exactly as you want it, or you will stomp out of the room in a fit of pique.  The big picture here is that the Sanders-Clinton side is about inclusiveness and a reverence for the democratic process, and the Trump side is about divisiveness and authoritarianism, even fascism.  Get over yourselves and your petty disappointments and your haughtily judgmental verdicts regarding the sins of Hillary Clinton and get some perspective about who and what she is and is not.

Here is what the history books will say about fascist America: It came about because a group of disgruntled Democrats swung the election to Donald Trump by voting for him to show their anger over the failure of their candidate, Bernie Sanders, to win their party’s nomination.

Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

In the aftermath of Donald Trump's odious remarks about a "Mexican" federal judge, House Speaker Paul Ryan can circumlocute until the cows come home but what he has said amounts to this: “Donald Trump is a racist ignoramus.  I think he should be president of the United States.”  How’s that for a profile in courage? If Trump were not the GOP nominee, Ryan and other prominent Republicans – John McCain, Marco Rubio, Bob Corker, et. al. -- would think of him, if they gave him any thought at all, as an aging crackpot, a sort of Scrooge McDuck, harmlessly tweeting racist rants and cuckoo ideas from his Trump Tower aerie. As it is, however, they see the enacting of the GOP agenda, not to mention the preservation of their own jobs, as important enough to back for president a person they would otherwise see as a card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe.  Particularly pathetic in all of this is McCain, who has declared his support for a man who mocked his 5 and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

Meanwhile, in the rich and varied menu of misstatements, lies, and delusional assertions that have come out of the mouth of Mr. Trump, it’s easy for any one of them to more or less disappear into the gloaming – to get lost in the crowd, as it were. But one of the assertions he has made -- one that his followers presumably accept and that generated some pushback but not the gasps of incredulity it should have – is surely among his most demented. That would be the one that claims unemployment in the U.S. is currently in the vicinity of 20-percent. In the great scheme of things, acceptance of this idea by Trump folks is in keeping with the overarching belief on their part that everyone but their man is lying and only he sees through the lies.  But good grief, Trumpalators, when it comes to unemployment in America, do you not believe your own eyes?  Where are the bread lines and soup kitchens?  Where are the Hoovervilles?  Why is no one selling apples on street corners?  Where are the caravans of Okies headed west in a desperate search for economic salvation?  Because I assume you’re aware (aren’t you?) that in the worst year of the Great Depression, 1933, unemployment was about 24-percent. Trump’s assessment (which, of course, is based on nothing whatsoever), puts us right there, right now.

Holy smokes! If we are to take your guy at his word – that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has been compiling data on employment and calculating the unemployment rate the same way for over 100 years and through twenty-plus Democratic and Republican administrations, is now lying – we have to conclude that unemployment is at Great-Depression levels.  This despite any tangible evidence in the world around us of mass unemployment; despite the fact that consumer spending recently hit a six-year high; despite more than 30 consecutive quarters of economic growth; despite the fact nobody you know is involuntarily unemployed; and despite the fact that the automotive industry is enjoying its best years ever – ever – in no small part because of robust sales of the vehicles of choice for many of those supposedly out-of-work Trumpistas: pick-up trucks.

And where the heck is the Wall Street Journal when you need it? I know, I know, WSJ is part of the mass media establishment; but it is no fan of the Obama administration or of Democrats in general or, especially, of the party’s economic agenda and overall philosophy.  One would think it would be indefatigable in its quest to dig out the truth if it suspected that unemployment was four times higher than that which is being reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  But no!  Not a peep out if it, or out of any of the other right-leaning media outlets.  Or for that matter, any other media outlets at all.  Not one of them is onto this. Not one of them has reported what would be the story of the century – that unemployment is at depression levels and nobody knows it.  Except, of course, his Donaldness.

No, wait. Actually, thousands of people know it.  They would be the green-eye-shade types who work at the BLS and assembled the employment numbers.  They know the facts, but were sworn to secrecy at a mass meeting in a cave somewhere.  “I know you all know the truth – that unemployment is at about 20-percent,” President Obama said to the assemblage, “but I’m asking you to tell everyone that it’s 5-percent.  Okay?  And don’t tell anyone I said this.  Mum’s the word.”

In Trump fantasyland, Fergusom is among the world’s most dangerous places; muslims  danced on TV to celebrate 9/11; a giant wall is going to be built; millions of people are going to be rounded up and deported, the Clintons killed Vince Foster and Ted  Cruz’s father killed JFK; the government is going to “negotiate” the redemption of U.S. Savings Bonds; and there will be a 45-percent tariff on Chinese goods. And unemployment is at 20-percent.  However, here on planet earth, the U.S. unemployment rate is at 4.7-percent.  Just like the labor department says.  You could look it up.

Clinton Haters

Leaving aside for the moment the relative merits of the candidates, I would submit that there’s a special place in hell reserved for Bernie Sanders obsessives who would switch their vote to Donald Trump rather than give it to Hillary Clinton, the candidate whose real and imagined shortcomings they are so fixated on (like most Republicans are) as to have elevated her to comic book arch-villain status. Voting for Trump instead of Clinton would be beyond irrational – an act of petulance that would betray a stunningly juvenile willingness to abdicate responsible citizenship in favor of self-indulgence. It is akin to a suicidal 14-year-old envisioning, with a delicious mixture of self-pity and glee, how sorry all of his tormentors are going to be when he’s gone.

For all I-didn’t-get-my-way stompers out of the room as Sanders withdraws, a few important points…

• Clinton didn’t win this thing because of voter suppression or voter manipulation or a rigged system, or other sorts of skullduggery, or because various media players conspired to help her. She won because more people voted for her than for her opponent, by multiple millions. 
• Like all candidates for public office – like all people -- Clinton has pluses and minuses. But she is not corrupt, at least no more so than politicians generally are, and she is not the horror show some people have convinced themselves she is. She is a middle-of-the-road politician who, yes, has some mistakes to answer for but who is more like Bernie Sanders than unlike him. It’s one thing to disagree with her policy ideas and to not vote for her on that basis. But this over-the-top anger and hatred is bizarre. And inexplicable, except on some dark and deep-seated psychological level that has nothing to do with her qualifications or her ability to operate effectively as head of the executive branch of our government. Turning this irrational anger into a vote for the buffoon Donald Trump is unpardonable. Elections are not about which candidates are more or less deserving, and only people with an over-inflated sense of moral superiority think otherwise.  Elections -- and this one more than most -- are about which candidate is right for the job.  Period. 
• Sanders himself has said this: “I will do everything in my power to make sure that no Republican gets into the White House in this election cycle.” In other words, the man for whom some would commit harikari is vowing not to abandon Clinton for Trump, or anybody else, and to support her in the general election, just as Clinton enthusiastically and very publicly supported Barack Obama after losing to him in a bitter primary fight. Sanders, an intelligent man and a serious public servant, would never, ever align himself with Donald Trump nor place Hillary Clinton in the same category as him
• Finally, and most importantly for the purposes of this discussion, Clinton has not said/done the following: Characterized Ferguson as one of the most dangerous places on earth; called for negotiating with mom and pop on the repayment of their U.S. savings bonds; said her tax returns are none of our business; imagined that she saw thousands people on TV celebrating 9/11; made weirdo phone calls bragging about herself while pretending to be someone else; married and discarded glamour models and made sexually suggestive remarks about her offspring; favored starting a trade war and a worldwide recession by slapping an astronomical tariff on Chinese goods; called for the creation of a Gestapo-like government force to undertake a massive, years-long round-up and deportation of undocumented families; believes members of one religion should be put under surveillance and possibly put in camps; thinks Mexican people are rapists and wants to build a staggeringly expensive 2,000-mile wall that would be the largest infrastructure project since the interstate highway system; believes American soldiers should kill the  innocent children of suspected terrorists; run a fake “university”; mocked a war hero who was shot down and imprisoned for five years; ridiculed the disability of a newspaper reporter; referred to disliked members of the opposite sex as fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animal and inferred that Megyn Kelley asked about those characterizations only because she was menstruating; threatened to crush anyone who criticizes her in print through libel lawsuits; questioned Barack Obama’s country of birth and lied about his birth certificate; acquired her foreign policy expertise by “watching the shows;” accused Ted Cruz’ father of complicity in the murder of JFK; mplied the Clintons murdered Vince Foster And on an on.

This is a person you would rather elect to office than Hillary Clinton?  Can you possibly be serious?The numbers are implacable: Trump cannot win this election without help from Democrats. That some Democrats would give him that help in a fit of pique over not getting their way is repugnant. Get over yourselves and lose your insufferable moral superiority.

True Believers

I read recently about a pro-Trump person who said this: “There is nothing you can say that will make me not vote for Trump.” That was her cheerful response when she was presented with a litany of the candidate’s misstatements, lies, and assorted idiocies She was doing what Trumpists do: Putting her hands over her ears and humming loudly when confronted with the facts. What these folks are hearing from Trump has nothing to do with facts and is coming to them over a different frequency, like a dog whistle. It has everything to do with the none-too-subtle permission he grants them to blame their problems and failures on others and to see themselves as victims. It also has to do with a you’re-not-the-boss-of-me streak of childish resentment and stubbornness which essentially says this: I’m doing what I’m doing not because I think it’s right but precisely because you don’t want me to. This is what we’re up against as we try to stop this man who would be king from smashing our democracy.

And then we have the Bernie Sanders true-believers, with their loose talk about “revolution” and their adolescent demonization of Hillary Clinton. It is not unreasonable to support the political candidacy of Sanders, an intelligent and experienced politician with a good heart, while still having reservations about the wisdom and/or viability of some of the things he advocates. It’s another thing entirely to obsess over him – to worship at his altar to the point of believing that his candidacy will save the country and another’s destroy it. Some Sanders supporters who express rabid antagonism for Clinton – a middle of the road, not-insane politician who comes from pretty much the same place on the political spectrum as Sanders – are now making noises about voting for Donald Trump if they don’t get their way. Down this path lies a what-was-I-thinking moment, as President Trump attempts to make good on his bizarre promises and nonsensical ideas 

For now, though, we have the empty-headed musings of the actress Susan Sarandon, in which she suggested that a lot of Sanders people would be unable to bring themselves to vote for Clinton and would vote for Trump instead, because Trump “will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know, explode.” Here is New York Times columnist Charles Blow:

“What was Sarandon talking about with her coy language? ‘Bring the revolution’? Exactly what kind of revolution? ‘Explode’? Was the purpose to present this as a difficult but ultimately positive development? The comments smacked of petulance and privilege. No member of an American minority group — whether ethnic, racial, queer-identified, immigrant, refugee or poor — would (or should) assume the luxury of uttering such a imbecilic phrase, filled with lust for doom. Be absolutely clear: While there are meaningful differences between Clinton and Sanders, either would be a far better choice for president than any of the remaining Republican contenders, especially the demagogic real estate developer. Assisting or allowing his ascendance by electoral abstinence in order to force a ‘revolution’ is heretical. This position is dangerous, shortsighted and self-immolating. This is not a game. The presidency, particularly the next one, matters, and elections can be decided by relatively small margins. No president has won the popular vote by more than 10 percentage points since Ronald Reagan in 1984. There is no true equivalency between either of the Democratic candidates and this man, and anyone who make such a claim is engaging in a repugnant, dishonorable scare tactic not worth our respect.”

Note to Sanders fanatics/Clinton demonizers: You are way too far down in the weeds here. Take a breath and see the bigger picture.  You know the idea that Donald Trump would be better for the country than Hillary Clinton -- something a good many Republicans inexplicably continue to believe, or at least say they believe -- is ludicrous.  Shake it off.

At Long Last

It was during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, rebuked unrepentant demagogue and relentless smear artist Joe McCarthy with these words: “Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” There has been no shortage of information on the foolishness and demagoguery of Donald Trump. He has been fully exposed, and we know that he has no sense of decency. But what about his followers? What do they see in him? Who are these people who have so much admiration for this uninformed egotistical blowhard who trades in hatred, resentment, and fear. We’re a ways into this political season and the Trumpists have been steadfast and growing in number. At long last, have they no sense of decency?

An important clue is in the free-floating hostility they proudly harbor (and angrily express) toward everything and everybody they perceive as being aligned against them; which, apparently, is everything and everybody. It is to Mr. Trump they look to vanquish these ghostly tormentors, and their faith in his ability to do it appears to be based entirely on his swaggering, kick-ass attitude and carriage. It certainly can’t be based on anything he actually says because every word that has come out of his mouth so far has been either impenetrably vague, completely incomprehensible, or simply wrong. They live in a fantasyland of imagined enemies and armchair pugnacity.

A characteristic that true believers of every political persuasion have in common is the tendency (need?) to sanctify their candidate and demonize their candidate’s opponents. Their guy, they believe, will make everything all right. The other guy will make everything all wrong. They are, they seem to think, electing a king or a dictator, and not merely the head of the executive branch within a representative democracy in which making good on the wild promises one makes in a campaign setting is extremely (and deliberately) difficult. In fact, it is now clear that Trump and his people are quite impatient with democracy and its processes, and would prefer an office-holder who can make everything right for them by executive decree. Government by and for the people? Nah. We just want our daddy to tell us what to do, and make it all better.

Whatever “it all” is. In some quarters, followers of Trump are characterized as being perhaps wrong-headed in their embrace of Trump but having grievances that are legitimate, involving the changing economic and employment landscape of recent years. If that’s the case, there is an exquisite irony here, as these folks – staunch advocates of small government, free markets, individual responsibility, and rugged independence – whine about everything government hasn’t done for them lately.

You would think that they’re an army of the unemployed. In fact, these people are not, for the most part, unemployed. As for the economy in general, it has created 14-million private-sector jobs since 2010, dropping unemployment to under 5 percent. Housing and construction are strong, the auto industry is thriving, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled in the last eight or so years. So things are actually pretty good and the problems and conditions that have steam coming out of these folks’ ears are largely illusory.

No, chalking up their anger and frustration to economic dislocation gives them far too much credit. Because what they’re really about is bigotry, The message they get from Trump comes in the form of permission to hate – to believe in the existence of, and to blame their problems on, the hated “other.” Trump legitimizes the antipathy, the latent distrust, that this largely white, male, blue-collar constituency has for various groups – blacks, religious minorities, women, etc. They pine for the good old days when you could put these groups down without fear of violating “political correctness.” And, like the acolytes of demagogues everywhere, they are certain that whatever is missing from their lives is somebody else’s fault.

Whiner Leader

The people who revere Donald Trump are routinely characterized as “angry,”and their anger is often characterized  -- even by those who think Trump a buffoon – as justifiable or at least understandable.  An editorial in the Washington Post put it this way: “The grievances they speak to are real: a sense that the economy has left too many people behind, that globalization and technological change are helping the few while stranding the many.”

Please.  Or to put it another way, globalization-schmobilazation.

These people are not angry.  What they are is whiny. If there is a whinier, more put-upon group of people than Donald Trump’s followers I don’t know who it would be.  They hold these two ideas to be sacred and self-evident: (1) They are unhappy; (2) It’s somebody else’s fault that they are unhappy.  They love their victimhood, and they relish the prospect of Trump vanquishing their tormentors.  They do this even as unemployment is at historical lows, interest rates are miniscule, inflation is non-existent, and more of the vehicles of choice for these folks, pickup trucks, are being sold than have ever been sold in the history of the world.

And yet, they say they are angry. Foot-stompingly, sneeringly, smoke-coming-out-of-their-ears angry. What is their problem?

In a previous post, I wrote: “Normal people are mystified by the way Donald Trump can repeatedly say bizarre, even irrational things – he witnessed something that didn’t happen, he thinks members of one religion should be kept out of the country -- and his poll numbers go up. It’s as if a light bulb goes on over the heads of these newest Trump converts: ‘Wow. I knew he was a blowhard and a bigot, but now I see he’s also delusional. I’m voting for him!’ Unexplainable, seemingly. But, of course, what his people see in him isn’t about any of that. It’s about his promise to ‘make America great again.’ And by ‘great’ what his mostly white male followers understand him to mean is a time when people who looked like them had all the good jobs; when there weren’t all these weird non-Christian religions around; when blacks, Hispanics, and women knew their place; when political correctness didn’t prohibit decent white folks from putting down racial and ethnic minorities.“

Meanwhile, if you needed further proof of how utterly clueless the Donald Trump true believers are – proof that includes all of the above plus his belief in a mythical giant wall, his affinity for throwing tens of thousands of people out of the country, his call for the murder of women and children in the Middle East, his calling an opponent a pussy for not embracing water boarding, and on and on -- his remark about shooting people provided it. This is a perfect double whammy: (1) When he said “I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” he was absolutely right. His followers wouldn’t care if he committed such an act because they are oblivious to everything he says and everything he does, and respond only to the persona he projects, the one that does such a good job of playing to and nurturing their many resentments and imagined grievances; (2) They don’t get that when he said that, he was making fun of them. He was telling the world that his posse is so dense, so zombie-like in their adoration of him that he could do anything and they wouldn’t care. To be a blind follower of an intellectual and moral lightweight, and to not understand that you are being told by that person how blind you are and being ridiculed for it – that’s clueless.

Dear Trump peeps: If you are unhappy with the circumstances of your life you are absolutely free to improve on them. Nothing the government is doing or not doing is stopping you. Same with Wall Street big shots, the mainstream media, Muslims, immigrants, the Chinese, minorities, and so on. Your problems are of your own making, and so are the solutions. Electing your man to the presidency (or congress or the governorship or the school board) won’t make it all better. You won’t all of a sudden get the job of your dreams or get along better with your spouse. Your guy keeps telling you you’re being “ripped off,” something you clearly love to hear because you’re so fond of seeing yourselves as victims. Perhaps you can explain how you’re being ripped off. He can’t. Please be specific. Otherwise, you’ll just have to accept the New York Daily News’ characterization of Trump’s win in New Hampshire: “Dawn of the Brain Dead”.

The Villain Stan Kroenke

I was a follower and fan of the St. Louis Rams and I enjoyed their company while they were here.  I rooted for them to win, and, like everyone else, was exasperated when they played poorly which was, as we all know, most of the time. I will miss them. Having thus established my bona fides in this regard, I will say this: The demonization of Stan Kroenke and the outpouring of vitriol against him – the foot stomping, the insult hurling, a lawsuit for cripes sake, and an undoubtedly very expensive Super Bowl ad by a local personal injury lawyer -- is misplaced and comes across as childish and provincial. I don’t know Kroenke and have no interest in defending him, but the crimes with which he has been popularly charged, singly and in combination, seem to have been borne of anger and disappointment but not rationality. To wit:

Kroenke callously blew off St. Louis and should be ashamed.  Kroenke is in the entertainment business.  He owns a show.  And when you own a show, whether it’s a football team, a tent revival, or the ice capades, you’re going to locate it where you think it will attract the most customers and generate the most revenue.  That’s your job and it’s certainly your prerogative.  Where you grew up has nothing to do with it.

Kroenke betrayed the people who “supported” the Rams all these years.  People
who say that make it sound like folks donated their money to the enterprise – that they didn’t want to buy tickets to and attend Rams’ games but did so out of a spirit of generosity or civic duty. They were doing Kroenke a favor. In fact what they did was hand over money in return for which they were granted admission to and given a seat at a football game.  Quid pro quo.  They did what they wanted to do and they got what they paid for.  As for so-called emotional support, I’m not entirely sure what that means but it doesn’t sound like something grown-ups ought to bestow on a sports team.  Enjoy your team’s victories, mourn (for an hour or so) its losses, and understand that emotional entanglements are not adult-appropriate

Kroenke put an inferior product on the field.  It was an inferior product for the most part but I don’t see how you can make the case that it was because of anything Kroenke did or didn’t do.

Kroenke lied. Well he did say at one point he’d try to keep the team in St. Louis.  Maybe he didn’t really mean it.  Or maybe he changed his mind.  Or maybe he lied.  So what? People lie, and they certainly don’t always tell the whole truth.

Kroenke has enough money and shouldn’t be trying to get more by moving the team. Not your call.  How much money someone has and wants, whether it’s Stan Kroenke, your next door neighbor or your co-worker one desk over, is none of your business.

Kroenke took cynical advantage of a dumb stadium lease clause. He did, indeed; “dumb” being the key word here. The stadium’s proprietors signed on to the ridiculous idea that the team could get out of the lease if the stadium failed to reach a certain level in stadium tier-dom, and Kroenke used it to get what he wanted.  You would, too.

Kroenke’s move is a blow to the region’s economy. In reality, it will have almost no effect on the region’s economy.  What football fans, in their anger and disappointment, have a hard time getting their heads around is that they are in the minority. The majority is in one of these categories: (1) Might check the Rams’ score Monday morning but never attend or watch games; (2) Are only dimly aware of the existence of the Rams; (3) Are only dimly aware of the existence of football.  Only hard-core fans see this development as a tragedy.  Nobody else does and the regional economy will shrug it off.

Watching and rooting for the home NFL team is fun.  Many, many other things are also fun.  We should quit worrying about Stan Kroenke, a guy we never even heard of until about five years ago.

Is It Good For You?

Release recently of the federal government’s latest diet guidelines reinforces, once again, what an exercise in futility it all is, as foods continue to get kicked off the list and then reinstated. . If we’ve learned anything from the relentless discussion and study of food over the decades, it’s that what we know for certain about the relationship of diet to health and longevity is next to nothing. The expertise various people claim is a stew of superstition, old wives’ tales, conventional wisdom, pseudo-science, and charlatanism. Study after study refutes the findings of the one that came before and is refuted by the one that comes after, even as the media, which never met a study it didn’t like, reports breathlessly on the latest “findings,” caring not in the least if the study has any scientific validity or if the numbers it reports have any actual meaning. Is there a subject that has more junk-science jabberwocky associated with it than that of diet?

My theory is that since everyone wants to postpone for as long as possible (or maybe even eliminate) the inevitable catastrophe of death, they’re eager to embrace the notion that something as relatively simple and controllable as what they put in their bodies in the form of food is a major player in that process. Eat this, live long and prosper. Don’t eat that, live long and prosper. If only. There doesn’t seem to be any real science behind any of it, but that doesn’t stop people from asserting unequivocally that food A is “good for you” and food B is not. What science there is – the interminable revolving door of “studies” – routinely reverses conclusions about the healthfulness of individual food items, food categories, food chemistry, and food properties, and then reverses them again.

Eggs could be exhibit A in this phenomenon. Leaving aside the whole business of the relationship of blood cholesterol to heart disease – a relationship that is now being characterized as not very well understood – there has been a 180-degree reversal of the thinking on how dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol. It doesn’t, the experts now tell us. So go ahead and eat eggs, the yolks of which contain a lot of cholesterol. You’ll recall that not so long ago, it was understood that egg-eating should be limited because of the cholesterol they contain; and not so long before that, they were to be strictly limited if not eliminated from the diet altogether; and not so long before that, they were nature’s most nearly perfect food. Which they are again. Oh, no, wait. That was milk, the full fat version of which, thought to be something akin to poison for decades, has now been rehabilitated, even as the entire business of fat in the diet has been completely rethought. (Fat, the substance, was equated with fat, the condition, and Big Food made billions, and still does, by peddling stuff as low-fat or fat-free.)

The list goes on and on. Various vitamins had certain effects and then they didn’t. And then they did again. Food fiber prevented bowel cancer, until it didn’t. Fish oil was a major player in good health and then, not so much. Red meat was good, then bad, then good, then bad. (I think it’s good now. Or at least pretty good.) Protein, carbohydrates – good, bad, good, bad. Dark chocolate, red wine are good for the heart because of the resveratrol they contain, say various studies. Then various other studies say we’d have to ingest 73.5 lbs. of resveratrol a day (or some such thing) for it to have any effect. Coffee. Beer. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. A study shows something-something reduces the risk of heart disease by 17-percent. But what does that mean? That I will have a heart attack at age 81 and 15 days instead of age 81 and 14 days?

An interesting sidebar topic to all of this is “fast” food, a category that is generally ranked somewhere between unwholesome and poisonous in the popular culture The problem: No one really knows what the term means. Is it that the food is cooked fast? Eaten fast? Both? Or that it’s produced and sold by large chain restaurants that have drive-through windows. What difference does it make? Answer: None. It’s just food. The typical fare – beef, cheese, and bread – is served up in diners, fancy restaurants, and homes around the world, daily. There is zero true scientific evidence that people who refrain from eating these things are any healthier or live any longer than anybody else. The demonization of “fast food” is completely irrational.

Bottom line: There is a good deal of knowledge – science – out there about the properties of the food we eat, but not much about how those properties, individually and in combination, relate to health and longevity. “Good for you” and “not good for you” are not science or knowledge-based concepts and are therefore essentially meaningless. Same with the term “healthy diet.” It appears the only thing we know with any degree of certainty about eating’s relationship to good health is this: Don’t do very much of it.

Black Lives Matter

Recently, a young black woman who worked at a food concession in a Chicago zoo lost her job after grousing on Facebook about “rude-ass white people.” What the woman doesn’t fully grasp is that rude is rude, and there’s no reason to specify the race of the offenders. It’s true that most of her customers were white, but it’s also true that if most of them had been black, she would experience rude behavior from about the same percentage of them. In short, mentioning race here added nothing to the validity of her complaint. Saying “rude people” as opposed to “rude white people” would have served her purpose just as well.

To which black folks across America would be fully justified in responding: “Welcome to my world.” In that world, race is always mentioned by white people, whether or not it has anything to with anything, even in the most benign of contexts:

“I ran out of gas and this black guy stopped and gave me a lift.”

“There was a huge black woman in front of me in line.”

“A bunch of black teenagers came into the grocery store.”

“An old black gentleman was having trouble getting out of his car.”

In none of these statements does specifying the race of the actor affect what is being communicated. And, importantly, in none of them would race be specified if the actors were white. No white person would say “a white guy stopped and gave me a lift,” or “a huge white woman in front of me...” And so on.

The days of the most egregious and obvious race-based affronts to justice and morality, as typified by Jim Crow laws and customs, are long gone -- laws and customs that openly segregated public facilities of every kind, right down to the minutiae of drinking fountains; customs that, for example, forbade professional black athletes from eating in the same restaurants and sleeping in the same hotels as their white teammates; laws/customs that kept white and black kids from going to school together, or that systematically kept blacks out of most colleges and all the professions. We’re past all that, and many young people are aghast when they learn that such an era ever existed. As condescending as it may sound, it is fair to say that many young black people – with that era as a backdrop – don’t realize how good they have it.

That is not to say they have it good. The residue of Jim Crow that they’re left with is a more pernicious and subtle form of racism that is all the more infuriating to blacks because of white blindness to it. The consensus among most white people regarding the goings-on in Ferguson, for example, was that the protests were, at the very least, an over-reaction; that the sleights and injustices about which so much anger was expressed were overstated or even imaginary; that the protesters, while having some legitimate grievances, would be better off if they’d stop complaining and get on with their lives. In short, most of my white friends and acquaintances were unable to empathize. This, despite the virtual certainty, in my opinion, that these people, being intelligent folks with healthy egos, would be among the most virulently militant about the subtle and not-so-subtle indignities they would routinely experience if their faces were to turn black. My guess is they wouldn’t be so dismissive of the anger and frustration felt by a grown man or woman who gets pushed around -- figuratively and sometimes literally – and treated like a recalcitrant child, by a young white policeman.

Which brings us to “black lives matter,” a slogan and sentiment that many white reactionaries now characterize as an aggressively racist “movement” aimed at raising up blacks and putting down whites – a sort of latter-day Black Panthers thing. Their counter-slogan – which they believe to be a piquantly effective one – is “all lives matter.” The problem with that: the fact that all lives matter has never been in question. That black lives matter has been – in a thousand ways both subtle and overt – and is in need of re-affirmation in a way that the importance and value of lives in general is not. That all lives matter is a given. That black lives matter isn’t. People justifiably feel the need to re-affirm that blacks, just like whites, are individuals with strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, goals and aspirations. They are – like whites – short and tall, meek and bold, smart and dumb, athletic and ungainly, wise and foolish, industrious and lazy, pretty and ugly, strong and weak. They are not interchangeable. Racial stereotyping renders them interchangeable, and says, in effect, that their individual lives don’t matter. And that’s what the black lives matter idea is pushing back against.

Black Lives Matter should not be understood as a threat, although it will undoubtedly be employed in an aggressive way here and there, but as a plea for understanding and compassion and a reminder that even in this era of comparative racial enlightenment, a subset of the population struggles daily with indignities that range from subtle put-downs to flagrant injustices because of the color of their skin. Advice for white people: (1) Don’t indulge in racial stereotyping, even when it’s thought to be benign; (2) Have empathy for those who face it every day of their lives.