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First Sentences

“Here’s a book very unlike the others I have written—very much shorter, for one thing, as some readers may notice—but its intention is to share some experiences I’ve had while doing the others, and thoughts I’ve had about what I’ve been trying to do with those books.” Robert A. Caro, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing.

“I like to think I know what death is.” Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.

“It was no place for a harbor.” James Tejani, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America.

“She never called her mother Mom or Mommy or even Mother.” Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel.

“On March 18, 1990, the city of Boston—and the world—suffered a profound loss when two men dressed as police officers commandeered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and pulled off the greatest art theft in world history.” Stephen Kurkjian, Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist.

“Day 1,299 of My Captivity: Darkness suits me.” Shelby van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures.

“As the judge banged the gavel, William Dampier hung his head in disgrace.” Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.

“The Old North bell tolls the hour, and I realize that I’ll be late.” Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian.

“My family’s story is a particular one, but it is also a story that millions of families tell about their past.” David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

“The rainy streets of Dublin on a cold winter’s day were no place for a young boy to dawdle, unless that very same boy had his nose pressed up against the window of the most fascinating bookshop.” Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop.

“The room felt like the bottom of a grave.” Mike Dash, The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia.

“Although I don’t consider myself particularly vain (except perhaps for considering myself more often than I should), I was pleased to have conceived such an expert murder, especially since I had never previously considered committing one.” Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide.

“We tend to think of measurement as something taken from the world: as knowledge extracted from nature by means of scales, gauges, and rulers.” James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

“When I was 12, I remember holding hands with this girl—I want to say ‘Patty,’ but I am guessing here—and something about the way she held hands was just . . . wrong.” Paul Reiser, Couplehood.

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First Sentences

“Here’s a book very unlike the others I have written—very much shorter, for one thing, as some readers may notice—but its intention is to share some experiences I’ve had while doing the others, and thoughts I’ve had about what I’ve been trying to do with those books.” Robert A. Caro, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing.

“I like to think I know what death is.” Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.

“It was no place for a harbor.” James Tejani, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America.

“She never called her mother Mom or Mommy or even Mother.” Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel.

“On March 18, 1990, the city of Boston—and the world—suffered a profound loss when two men dressed as police officers commandeered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and pulled off the greatest art theft in world history.” Stephen Kurkjian, Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist.

“Day 1,299 of My Captivity: Darkness suits me.” Shelby van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures.

“As the judge banged the gavel, William Dampier hung his head in disgrace.” Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.

“The Old North bell tolls the hour, and I realize that I’ll be late.” Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian.

“My family’s story is a particular one, but it is also a story that millions of families tell about their past.” David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

“The rainy streets of Dublin on a cold winter’s day were no place for a young boy to dawdle, unless that very same boy had his nose pressed up against the window of the most fascinating bookshop.” Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop.

“The room felt like the bottom of a grave.” Mike Dash, The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia.

“Although I don’t consider myself particularly vain (except perhaps for considering myself more often than I should), I was pleased to have conceived such an expert murder, especially since I had never previously considered committing one.” Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide.

“We tend to think of measurement as something taken from the world: as knowledge extracted from nature by means of scales, gauges, and rulers.” James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

“When I was 12, I remember holding hands with this girl—I want to say ‘Patty,’ but I am guessing here—and something about the way she held hands was just . . . wrong.” Paul Reiser, Couplehood.

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Snippets

How is “alack” different from “alas”?

The CVS anniversary card section had five “To My Wife” cards for every “To My Husband” ones. What does that signify?

Trump’s assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion seems to be based on the notion that whites have been discriminated against in hiring and that more whites should be hired in the future. To help accomplish this, grants and contracts have been suspended or canceled at universities and other institutions. In response, universities and other institutions have let people go or suspended hiring. In other words, the war on diversity, equity, and inclusion means that fewer people will have jobs, and therefore fewer whites will have jobs. Who thinks up these policies?

Is the arresting, non-human character in Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt right? He says, “Humans. For the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures.”

I picked up Trillin on Texas at a flea market. The book depressed me a little. Calvin Trillin is the writer I would like to be and never will be. The stories are dated, but I still loved them.

I gave up on another of my purchases from the flea market, Amish Front Porch Stories. I take a certain perverse pride in being the only person I know who has read several Amish romances. Who knew they even existed? Nevertheless, I learned something about the Amish from them, but perhaps most amazing to me is that there are many Amish romances, and they have sold millions. However, they are written at a sixth-grade level, and this time with Stories, I could not get past that and set the book aside. We have a weekly Amish greenmarket in the country. I was going to give the Amish cashier Annie some of the Amish romances, but I learned that the Amish don’t read them. But if you want to read Amish Front Porch Stories, it’s all yours.

I don’t think our current president ever sang along on the car radio with Buddy Holly, the Rascals, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, the Stones, or any other performers from his youth. If so, isn’t that sad?

“In that moment, silently, we agreed that we were indeed in the presence of an exceptionally delusional white man—which is, of course, one of the most dangerous things in the world.” Mat Jonson, Pym.

Nearly 90% of American students attend public secondary schools. Only three of the present nine Supreme Court justices did. None of the justices attended a public college, university, or law school.

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.” George Bernard Shaw.

I am not proud that in scanning the obituaries I feel some satisfaction when I find that a vegan has died of cancer.

In a pseudonymous essay written as the American colonies moved towards independence, John Adams wrote that a republic is a “government of laws, not of men.” He was contrasting a system with a despotic emperor who is “bound by no law or limitation but his own will.” In contrast, Adams wrote, a republic “is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making.”

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Eggs, Bonnets, and the Crucifixion

The resurrection of Jesus is at the core of Christianity. For most Christians their religion would not exist without the concept of life after death. It is important that this particular death, the death of Jesus, did not come from “natural” causes, from cancer or a heart attack or a liver disease or from what sometimes is labeled an Act of God–an earthquake or a flood or a tornado. It seems essential that the resurrection, the new life, came after a death caused by man. It was brought about not by an individual; it was not merely a murder or an accident. It was a death exacted by society. It was, in fact, an execution. If the resurrection is at the core of Christianity, at the core of the drama is also a state-enforced death penalty. Is there meaning in the fact that Christianity flows from capital punishment? As far as I am aware, the role of the death penalty in the Easter story is under-played. On the other hand, the method of carrying out the execution, the crucifixion, which by definition required a cross, has a central role in the symbols of the religion.

Although not all denominations fetishize the stations of the cross, nearly all Christians have an image of a beaten, yet still heroic Jesus struggling to carry the cross to Calvary. And every follower of Christ has looked in wonder at representations of Him on the cross, which, whoever the artist, are strikingly similar. He no longer can keep his head erect; it slumps to the side. He bears a crown of thrones and a wound in His rib cage. Stripped of all but a loin cloth (where did that come from?), He is dead or nearly so, but still powerful with a muscular torso and manly shoulders. Even in death, He is majestic.

Sermons and hymns almost rhapsodize over the agonies of the cross. Nails pounded through flesh, muscle, and bone into the wood. Hanging by the outstretched arms until death (mercifully) came. And this suffering, we are told, was for us, for our redemption, because of our sinfulness, so that we can have everlasting life.

As a boy, I felt that if this suffering were for me and my salvation, Jesus’ agonies had to be unique. How else could His crucifixion work this wondrous change in the future of mankind if that pain and torture were commonplace?  I knew, of course, that two others had been crucified with Him and must have suffered similarly, but these deaths were merely an accompaniment to Jesus’ crucifixion. It was confusing, then, when I learned that this mode of execution was not unusual and saw depictions of legions of men nailed to crosses. Many others, I realized, encountered a physical pain that had to be identical to that which Jesus endured. If the agony of Jesus was supposed to mean something to me, did the agony of these countless others have special meaning, too?

Although I do not (fully) understand the ecclesiastical reasons for it, Jesus had to be executed for His resurrection to lead to the belief in Jesus’ redemptive power. The crucifixion, however, was not unique to Jesus and many suffered it; therefore, His death did not have to occur on a cross. But would it matter to Christian belief if a different form of capital punishment had been used? Perhaps it is important that the form was slow and agonizing so that we can grasp His pain and sacrifice, but Jesus apparently died a relatively quick death for a crucifixion, as indicated by the centurions’ surprise that He was no longer still alive. But if prolonged agony was important, even a quick form of execution like beheading or a less gruesome form like poisoning could have been preceded by lengthy flagellation and mutilations. And, of course, other horrific execution methods were also used then, such as stoning, impalement, starving, crushing under rocks, burying alive. My question: What if crucifixion had not been used, but a different form of execution was? Certainly powerful symbols of Christianity would be different. Would that make any difference to Christianity itself? Is belief actually influenced by iconography, and if so, how?

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Bach, the Antisemite

I picked up a program on my way to find an empty seat. As usual for the “Bach at One” series at Trinity Church, the left side of the page contained the libretto in the original German and the right the English translation. However, this program for a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion also contained an Explanatory Note, which informed me that portions of the libretto “continually harp on the responsibility of ‘the Jews’ and Judaism for the crucifixion of Jesus.” It continued. “There is, unfortunately, no escaping Luther’s embrace of John’s view of Jewish culpability for Jesus’s death. . . . To avoid giving unnecessary offense . . . we have eliminated references to ‘the Jews’ even in passages where such wording could reasonably be taken to be neutral or positive, given the sensitivity of the topic today.” It noted that changes were indicated by underlining, but my program did not have this.

This Note later sent me scurrying to my favorite Bible, the one given to me on my tenth birthday when I attended Sunday School, to read again John’s version of the Easter story. And yes, it contains references to “the Jews,” but I had not thought that this meant that the Jews as an ethnic group or a religion were responsible for the death of Jesus. The Gospel also refers separately to “Caiaphas the high priest” and “the chief priests.” Thus, when John refers to the Jews, I believed he was referring to those chief priests who were advocating for Jesus’ death: “When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him.’ The Jews answered, ‘We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself Son of God.’” The Jews being referred to, I had thought, were the chief priests and officers, not all Jews everywhere.

This limitation made sense to me. The powerful and the rich did not condone Jesus’ preaching because His teachings often undercut the rich, the powerful, and the self-righteous. Thus, the whole eye-of-the-needle thing; the moneychangers-in-the-temple thing; the cast-the-first-stone thing. In short, the rich, the powerful, the chief priests and officers were threatened by Jesus. He upended the religious status quo. He also criticized Jewish dietary restrictions. As recorded in Mark 7, Jesus averred that food did not make a person unholy. (“Thus he declared all foods clean.”) Instead, people were defiled by their evil thoughts and actions. Jesus was undermining the religion espoused by religious leaders, and they did not like that. And, thus, when Pilate asked, “‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar.’” And Jesus’ fate was sealed not by Jews generally, but by those threatened chief priests.

The Gospel according to John says that Pilate placed a title on the cross that proclaimed Jesus as King of the Jews. According to John, “[M]any of the Jews read this title,” but then John becomes more specific and writes, “The chief priests of the Jews” asked Pilate to amend this to read, “’This man said, I am the King of the Jews.’ Pilate answered, ’What I have written I have written.’”

However, the libretto at the performance I attended had altered “King of the Jews” to “King of the nation” (des Landes König). This bothered me for it changed the theology of the gospel, or at least the theology I wanted from John. The title “King of the Jews” perhaps mocked Jesus, but it also mocked the chief priests and other high officials. In my mind, the Jewish elite did not want any suggestion that theirs was not the final word about God and religion. They could not admit that there might be a revelation that superseded their own teaching. Even the hint that Jesus was King of the Jews threatened their powerful positions, which they wanted to remain inviolate.

The libretto’s change also undercuts the meaning of an interchange between Pilate and Jesus. Pilate had asked him whether he was King of the Jews, and according to John, Jesus answered, “’My kingship is not of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.’” “King of the nation,” as the new libretto had it, would seem to indicate that Jesus was claiming dominion over land, which might have been threatening to the Romans, but not necessarily to the Jews. “King of the Jews,” however, is more ambiguous. It may indicate dominion over a people, but it can also indicate a leader of a religion that emphasizes how to worship and live. “King of the Jews” did not threaten the Romans, but it did threaten the high priests.

But there is still another reason not to sanitize John’s Gospel. We should remember that many have used the Easter story to justify antisemitism. Of course, others have read John differently from the way I have. I wanted Jesus and Christianity to stand for love, the Golden Rule, and the Beatitudes. Perhaps sometimes it is about those things, but others have fastened on John to justify discrimination and persecution of Jews. The sad truth is that religion, including Christianity, often has been as much about hate as love. To combat that hate we have to be aware of it and its supposed justifications. We may want religion to be about charity, goodwill, altruism, and benevolence, but if we ignore the prejudice religion has fostered, evil too often takes over.

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You Think I’d Crumble . . . That’s Me in the Corner

With Holy Week coming and nearly constant news about Gaza, I have been thinking about my one trip to Israel. It was a couple decades ago, and it was an an unusual junket—all expenses paid to study terrorism from an Israeli perspective. My reactions were all over the map.

As a kid, shekels was a slang term for money, but now I was buying chewing gum with that decidedly non-biblical currency. Back then I had often looked at the pictures and maps in my Thomas Nelson Revised Standard Version Bible during the boring parts of church, but only when I went to Israel, did I realize how small the country is.  (Bethlehem is six miles from Jerusalem.)  More than once on the trip, I was told that Israel is about the same size as New Jersey.  (Is there any other way that New Jersey is like the Holy Land?)

Of course, especially on this trip, there were constant reminders of terrorism—the disco across from our Tel Aviv hotel where partygoers were bombed waiting to enter; the Gaza checkpoint where soldiers had been killed; the meeting with the man disfigured by an incendiary device tossed into his car. These reminders of terrorism made it hard to remember that someone in Israel is more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a terrorist and that per capita more people are killed by guns in America than by terrorists in Israel even though guns are everywhere in Israel.  Soldiers carrying guns are a common sight.  (My favorite—a soldier in sandals carrying a gun slung over one shoulder and the biggest, reddest purse I’d ever seen balancing on her other side.)

One image of Israel: security, security, security.  Searches to get into the hotel; lengthy interrogations and more to get into the Knesset.  Sometimes I wondered about the efficacy of these measures.  The first time I went to a Czech restaurant the guard controlling admission did a cursory search. The second time, he simply said, “Have you got a gun?”  I said no and was nodded in.  Would a terrorist tell him he had a gun?  By the third day at the hotel, our group was generally waved around the security check point.  Does that mean a terrorist committed to staying at the hotel for at least three days could then avoid security?  Or is it that I and the rest of the group did not look Palestinian? 

My northern European looks did not stop El Al from subjecting me to rigorous scrutiny.  Going I was pulled aside from the other passengers, interrogated, and my suitcase thoroughly, I say thoroughly, inspected.  Returning it happened again, but then I had a touch of turista, and the experience seemed to take even longer.  I did get on the plane even though I had fudged the truth.  On the day of departure, it was market day near the hotel.  I went to poke around and ended up buying some gifts of Dead Sea mud and some bee products.  I did not give much thought about these casual purchases until I was asked at the airport whether my items came from the stall in the market, or whether the seller had gone into the back to get the facial mask and pollen rejuvenator.  Sick I may have been, but the mind quickly decided the right answer for getting on board—I picked them off the shelf, handed them to the proprietor, and then paid for them.  Everything was in my sight.  But as soon as I said that I was not absolutely sure that I really knew how the transaction went.  Wanting to get home, I did not voice this little doubt.  I was a bit nervous on most of the flight home.

We were exposed to many intriguing people—terrorism experts in academic institutions; drone pilots; agents who were incredible marksmen and, as indicated by a film of an actual incident, could snatch a suspected terrorist off the street, throw him in a van, and drive off in a matter of seconds.  Perhaps most striking was the professional interrogator for one of the intelligence agencies.  He entered the room, and his bearing, his aura, was such that I would have told him anything he asked me.  He maintained that a professional interrogator almost never needed to use physical force, implying that Americans did not have professional interrogators, but he also went on to discuss whether shaking a subject should be considered torture.

I also saw more usual tourist sights—the cars haphazardly parked; the Tel Aviv waterfront; Caesarea being set for a beautiful evening, seaside wedding reception; the I-would-not-believe-it-if-I-had-not-seen-it rest stop in homage to the King, not David or Solomon, but Elvis Presley.

We spent a few hours touring Jerusalem.  Our guide impressed me when, for reasons no longer remembered, he talked about the obverse of a coin.  Note, not the obverse side of a coin, which would have been incorrect. I was unsure if I had ever heard a native English speaker use obverse, and my admiration increased when I found out he was certified to give tours in many languages in addition to English.  He took us in and out of many religious places, and of course, it was important to remember whether the place was Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, or Muslim in order to put a hat on or take it off.   I think the Upper Room was pointed out, but then another place was said to be perhaps the site of the Last Supper.  Mary’s burial place was there, but, then again, a location in Turkey is venerated as the place where her Assumption took place, and of course, it is not clear to Assumption believers whether she actually died. (And I think that some believe she died in India.)

We passed stations of the cross and the crucifixion and burial places.  I wondered how people could be so sure that these were the right locations and why there was no marker for the doorway where the Wandering Jew refused aid.  Perhaps these doubts about authenticity led me to blasphemous thoughts.  I was told to plunge my arm through a hole so that I could feel the rock on which the True Cross stood.  As I did, my mind returned to the sixth grade Halloween parties where, blindfolded, we put our hands into bowls of grapes and spaghetti and told we were feeling eyeballs and guts.  Of course, many of these now revered sites were “authenticated” centuries after the events by, I believe, Constantine’s mother, who also collected many relics, perhaps the relics that Mark Twain later saw, and amusingly mocked, in his travels to the Continent and the Holy Land.  Even if they are in the places where the events happened, I wondered why they are regarded as holy sites.  If a religion is universal, then no place could be more sacred than another.

But the most striking part of the Jerusalem trip was its beginning and end. Before we entered, the obverse-coin guide brought us to a place that overlooked Jerusalem. He pointed out things in the old city; where Bethlehem was and is; the Palestinian-controlled territory; the wall marking the boundary (although Israelis called it a fence, not a wall); and the mural-painted wall (this was called a wall) behind us, which prevented Palestinians down below from shooting into Israeli apartments up above.

Our location was a parking lot, and a nearby food van was, like many other Israeli places, playing old American rock and roll.  The third song I noticed was Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.  I almost laughed at the remarkable fortuity.  I know that the song is about a woman’s strength in rejecting a lover who walked out, but what better chorus could there be as I looked out over Israel and Jerusalem than I WILL SURVIVE.

During this trip because of the sensitive places we visited—military and intelligence facilities—we were accompanied by heavily armed, young men, and in Jerusalem I fell into step with such an escort. A few moments later, some men rounded a corner shouting and elbowing others aside.  I asked the escort, born and raised in Israel, what that was about, and he replied, “Just some Arabs showing off.”  He and I exited the old city together, and I was visually assaulted by a row of tacky tourist shops.  American rock and roll came from them, too, and the first song I heard outside the old city was R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion.  I smiled and said to the escort, “That doesn’t seem right for Jerusalem.”  He stopped, paused a beat, and thoughtfully said, “I think that is the only way.”

Is that right?  Can there only be peace if we lose our religion?

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Snippets (Tariffs and Other Stuff)

Tariffs were controversial before the Civil War. Their benefits and detriments were not equal throughout the country. Brenda Wineapple reports in The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (2019) that in 1832 the South Carolina legislature said that, if not repealed, a federal tariff was null and void and a ground for secession.

Tariffs were also controversial after the Civil War. They were the chief source of federal revenues until the early twentieth century. The issue was not whether tariffs should be applied but at what rate. As Troy Senik wrote in A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (2023), tariffs had conflicting goals. Should they only be high enough to fund government or go further to protect American industry from ruinous foreign competition? Industry was best protected when tariffs were so high that almost no foreign goods were imported, but then little revenue was collected. On the other hand, tariffs set best for funding the government did not protect industry as much as higher taxes.

Troy Senik also says that Grover Cleveland correctly saw another conflict in tariffs: They helped to raise wages in protected industries, but this gain was offset by higher prices workers had to pay for goods

Friends talk about fleeing to Canada. But what is the point if Canada becomes the 51st state?

No friend talks about fleeing to Greenland. Perhaps that will be different when Trump builds Mar-a-Lago Northeast there.

Deputy Attorney Genereal Todd Blanche said recently that the Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into a leak of “inaccurate, but nevertheless classified” intelligence about the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. It comes as a shock that anyone in the Trump administration wants to keep false information secret.

Present policies show that the Republican party has abandoned much of what Ronald Reagan stood for. Nicole Hemmer in Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s states that Reagan, fueled by anticommunism, had “a preference for more open borders and higher immigration levels, for fewer tariffs[,] a stingier social net, [as well as] a more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union.”

Under Reagan, the federal workforce grew by 200,000.

Because of tariffs, the United States has intervened militarily and politically in foreign countries. Sean Mirski in We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and Rise of the American Colossus (2023) maintains that our interventions in Latin America at the turn of 20th century and beyond were not primarily to protect American business interests but rather to keep European governments outside the hemisphere. Some Latin American countries borrowed profligately from Europe and often could not pay the money back. Under international law, the lender countries were entitled to use force to service the debts. This was often a simple procedure: Seize the customhouse and collect the tariffs. The United States was concerned about this potential European presence in the Americas and feared further that the Latin American countries would grant the Europeans concessions that would disfavor the United States. Consequently, the United States thought it was better to intervene in the debtor nations and use the customs revenues to pay the Europeans. Frequently, this was good for the invaded country since the Americans did not skim from the tariffs, or at least not as much as before, and the Latin American country often saw its revenues increase. Moreover, Europe learned that interventions in the Western Hemisphere were expensive. The European powers then often blustered about intervening to get America to do the expensive work. America soon recognized that the problems would recur unless the debtor countries became stable and lived within their means. As a result, the United States became more and more involved in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.

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Another Third Term

Their glee was evident as they promoted a third term. The conservative panel on television was positively giddy as they speculated on a fourth term. But their gaiety, I thought, should be tempered. If there can be more than two terms for Donald Trump, then there can be a third term for Barack. And Obama would present a formidable opponent.

Trump will be 82 on the next inauguration day. That is Joe Biden’s present age. Trump is an amazing physical specimen, but 82 is 82, and of course, he would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a third term. Obama, on the other hand, will be 67 on January 20, 2029.

Also consider that Obama got a majority of the votes in 2008 and won by 52.9% to 45.7%. Four years later he won by 51.1% to 47.2%. Trump in his three elections, one of which he lost, has never gotten a majority of the votes. He lost the popular vote decisively twice and won only a narrow plurality in the recent election.

We, of course, don’t know what will happen during Trump’s present term, but in considering an Obama/Trump match, let’s compare Trump’s first term with what happened under Obama.

Inflation was low under Trump for most of his term, but it was even lower with Obama even though Obama inherited the Great Recession of 2007-2009 when the GDP dropped by 4.3% and unemployment peaked at 9.5%. That recession, which was the worst since the 1930s, started under George W. Bush. It ended under President Barack Obama. Of course, under Trump we had a recession in 2020 when the unemployment rate jumped in two months from 3.5% to 14.7%. This, of course, was largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the “misery index”—the sum of unemployment and inflation rates—soared under President Trump.

When Trump took office, the cost of gasoline (“Obama’s gas prices”) was lower than the averages during the next four years.

Trump seeks to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but under Obama a system was already in place to do that. Trump scuttled that in his first term.

Trump now touts “massive” deportations of undocumented aliens, but more people were deported under Obama than have been with Trump as president.

Homelessness, which jumped under President Trump, was lower under Obama.

Deaths per capita skyrocketed when Trump was in office and had increased even before Covid. The death rate was lower under Obama, and life expectancy, which fell in this country during the Trump presidency, was longer under Obama.

Obama has spoken eloquently in favor of combating global warming. Trump has labeled climate change “a Chinese hoax.”

Murder rates increased during Trump’s first term. They declined under Obama.  

Trump said that China posed a “tremendous economic and military threat” to the United States, but on his watch, China became the EU’s largest trading partner.

Trump has voiced much anguish over our trade deficits, but those deficits were larger at the end of his first term than when he took office. 

The national debt and deficits were lower under Obama than Trump.

Opioid deaths were higher under Trump than Obama.

We could go on, but the point is to be careful what you wish for. If the conservatives gushing for another run by Trump get their desire, I will join many others by chanting, Bring Back Barack.

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Hopes and Expectations—Judicial Edition

In my last post, I indicated that I had hopes for the courts to dampen the Trumpian madness, but my hopes are tempered by the understanding that the courts, including the Supreme Court, have only infrequently been a bulwark for freedom or civil liberties, especially in times of national crises.

Take the 1857 Dred Scott case.  In this critical period of American history, the Supreme Court held that Blacks could not become American citizens. It also held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it violated the Fifth Amendment property rights of slave owners. The author of the opinion, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and other justices hoped that the decision would put to rest the country’s slavery problem. Instead, Dred Scott, which has been denounced for its racism, judicial activism, bad history, and awful legal reasoning, helped precipitate the Civil War. Many rank this as the worst decision in Supreme Court history, although its competitors are legion.

Consider “You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater.” This is often seen as a forceful defense of the First Amendment holding that the government can prohibit speech only when the words present a “clear and present danger.” However, in the 1919 case in which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the memorable phrase (Schenck v. United States), the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the convictions and jail sentences of Schenck and others for distributing fliers advocating resistance to the World War I draft. In that case free speech took a back seat to wartime fears. Only fifty years later was Schenck overruled.

The Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) upheld the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, another decision that makes the list for most atrocious. Forty years later, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned because evidence had been suppressed. In fact, intelligence agencies had shown no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as Japanese spies. Reparations were granted internees under the 1988 Civil Liberties Act. However, it took until 2018 before the Supreme Court indicated that Korematsu was no longer good law (Trump v. Hawaii). In 2023, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard definitively stated that the wartime decision had been overruled. But that case had other ramifications (see below).

Today’s times bear resemblances to what is often now called the McCarthy era, which actually began before Senator Joe McCarthy came to national prominence. During the initial stages of the destructive anti-communism movement, the Supreme Court had encouraged it by upholding convictions for membership in disfavored groups. Only after McCarthyism had been discredited, did the Supreme Court hold that people could not be imprisoned for beliefs but only for actions.

In short, the Supreme Court has an imperfect record at best for protecting freedoms, especially in the midst of crises. Even when we may think that the Court has protected us — and it has on occasion — it often has done so only after a crisis is over, and the protection matters little.

There are reasons to hope that this time the courts will be protective of the constitution and civil liberties. The current legal cases mostly remain in the lowest federal courts, and those courts seem to be performing well, seemingly attempting to come to grips with the many issues presented by the administration and holding back administrative actions that bend towards authoritarianism. There is hope, too, as cases move up to the Supreme Court. In one case that has already come before the Court, the justices refused to set aside a restraining order as Trump wanted. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority. Moreover, Roberts spoke out against the cries from Trump and Trumpistas for the impeachment of judges who have dared to cross the president. (Perhaps in spite of life tenure, some judges are intimidated by impeachment threats, and Roberts reassured such nervous Nelsons. But, since a removal from office requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which ain’t gonna happen, Roberts’s words can be seen as grandstanding.)

Nevertheless, there are reasons for Trump to see the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice as supportive of his agenda. So, for example, the attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (DEI) together with the attempt to remove American racism from the national consciousness has its support in the case striking down affirmative action at Harvard. Notably, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the Court’s opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023). Without that Supreme Court decision, we would not have the obsessive anti-DEI movement

Moreover, Roberts wrote the presidential immunity decision, which surely emboldens Trump. The Court has suggested that the president can fire anyone in the executive branch, which surely emboldens Trump. The Court has also taken steps and is expected to take more towards gutting the powers of independent agencies, which surely has emboldened Trump. Roberts wrote a decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, which emboldened conservatives to suppress voting. Roberts wrote a disturbing decision about partisan gerrymandering which acknowledged that partisan gerrymandering is really, really bad and a threat to democracy but that we shouldn’t expect the Court to offer a remedy. Just as that gerrymandering is beyond the Court’s authority according Roberts’s opinion, Trump contends that his actions affecting foreign affairs are beyond the Justices’ bailiwick.

I do have hopes that the courts will be a bulwark against the move to authoritarianism. But my hopes are tempered.

Posted on by rjonakait

First, Let’s Kill Not Just the Lawyers

There are over 130 lawsuits against the administration’s activities, but I want to consider three instances where there could be, but aren’t, court cases. The first happened a few months ago. Trump sued the television network ABC for libel. ABC settled the suit for millions even though knowledgeable First Amendment and media experts said that the network would have won.

Second. The Trump administration said it was stripping Columbia University of $400 million in grants but would “negotiate” about them if Columbia made various changes, including prohibiting masks at protests, adopting a definition of antisemitism, employing security guards who are authorized to make arrests, and putting a department into “academic receivership.” Columbia seemingly capitulated and agreed to the extraordinary demands of the administration, probably insuring further attacks on other universities.

Third. Trump is now also targeting law firms that, in his opinion, “engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.” He has stripped firms of security clearances and forbade their lawyers from entering government buildings, which makes it impossible to represent sundry clients. Some firms have resisted Trump’s demands, but the large and powerful Paul Weiss firm gave into them. Paul Weiss will stop diversity activities, provide $40 million of free legal services to projects that have Trump’s approval, and take on clients with a “full spectrum of political viewpoints.”

There is a common thread here. ABC, Columbia, and Paul Weiss are all private institutions. The institutions have to be concerned that they will be effectively destroyed by Trump’s actions and by additional actions Trump might take if he were defied. ABC had to be concerned that the FCC and other government agencies would make life difficult for them and their affiliates or even strip them of their licenses. Columbia gets multiples of the $400 million in federal grants and contracts, and the university had to be concerned that Trump would extend his attack on the university. Paul Weiss felt that it would lose clients and lawyers to other firms because of what Trump had done.

Trump’s retribution is frighteningly broad, and while his memory for facts may be deficient, he remembers what he perceives as slights. Years ago, for example, Trump tried to sell Columbia some Manhattan property. Eventually the university declined, apparently angering the then real estate developer. Trump wanted $400 million for the property, the amount that the federal government is now withholding from the university. Coincidence? Another example: Trump has demanded an apology from the Maine governor for some comments by her that Trump did not like. His implication is that the state of Maine will be punished if “I’m abjectly sorry” is not forthcoming. Paul Weiss was targeted not for the work it had done, but for the work of a one-time partner, Mark Pomerantz, for the Manhattan DA. That the threatened actions against the firm are only a pretext is clear. If Paul Weiss were a threat to national security and security clearances needed to be stripped to ensure our safety, nothing the firm promised to do would change that. This is not about national security; this is about retribution.

The attack on law firms, however, is not just revenge. Apparently, prestigious firms have already decided not to take on cases that challenge Trump’s policies for fear that they or their clients will become future Trump targets. Trump is trying to win or avoid court cases not through our constitutional adversary system, but by eliminating legal opponents. We are in a new and dangerous territory when the government seeks to prevent lawyers from challenging it. Trump may not be trying to kill all the lawyers, but he is trying to kill those attorneys who oppose him as well as the institutions that do.

I, like others, hope that courts will step in to stop presidential abuses, but when institutions are rightfully concerned that they are facing an existential threat, it is understandable, and to me frightening, that they conclude that they must not fight to save their lives. When they don’t mount a defense, there aren’t cases for the courts to decide. For Trump, the path is clear: If I can show an institution that I can destroy it, they will probably capitulate, and I won’t have to worry about meddlesome courts. Most of the talk about a constitutional crisis has concerned Trump’s refusing to obey court orders, but these attacks on private institutions also constitute a constitutional crisis.

We will still get legal challenges. Individuals who have been arrested, or deported, or lost their jobs have challenged and will challenge what is happening. They feel that they will in effect lose their lives unless they challenge Trump. Private institutions may have pressures to capitulate; individuals have pressures to resist. However, individuals do not have the kinds of resources of an ABC, Columbia, or big law firms to take on the government. Individuals must depend on the volunteer activities of a few lawyers or on organizations like the ACLU or similar groups to stand up to Trump. If you can, this is the time to support those who are fighting against Trump. Only then will we find out what our country actually deems legal and constitutional.