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Snippets

After the New Orleans New Year attack, Trump wrote that this confirmed that our country was unsafe because criminals were crossing the border. A Fox News host said that the country would soon be safer after Trump closed the border. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested the same. This was said even though the terrorist, an Army veteran, was an American citizen born and raised and living in Texas. Perhaps what Trump and the others were really suggesting is that we close the border between Texas and the rest of the country. This might not make the United States safer, but it would make me feel better.

I was surprised that the New Orleans terrorist was flying an ISIS flag. Trump destroyed that organization in 2019. Or at least that is what he said.

The Washington, D.C., homicide rate, which increased while Trump was president, has been decreasing.

His death brings to mind some Jimmy Carter trivia as well as a story about his mother. This is drawn from Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020). Because he was a veteran, Carter qualified for and lived in a new government housing complex shortly after leaving the Navy. He thus became the only president to have lived in public housing.

Carter is the last president not to have golfed while in office.

It was loudly proclaimed that the Carters did not lie. A reporter asked Jimmy’s mother about this, and Lillian Carter conceded that the family told white lies. When the reporter asked for an example, Miss Lillian replied, “Remember how when you walked in here, I told you how sweet and pretty you were?”

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” Walter Lippman.

I had a dream I was in hell; I was trapped in a corner at an endless cocktail party by a birder.

Given our divided country, I like to recall the words of some political and historical observers: “Conservatives are but people who learned to love the new order forced upon them by radicals.” And: “Radicals: Those who advance and consolidate a position for the conservatives to advance a little later.”

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Books 2024

Two years ago, I wrote about my reading habits, which include listing all the books I have read in a year. (See “My Book List” of January 2 and 4, 2023.) I continue to keep such a list; it’s a good thing I keep it because I remember few of the books I finish. What I wrote previously still applies: “I do wonder why I read. I read few books closely. I remember well only a few of the books I finish. I do get some fodder for this blog from my reading. It produces the ‘First Sentences’ I occasionally post. Sometimes the reading gives me an idea for a post or a quotation to use. But I don’t read as if I am researching for the blog or anything else. I read because I read.” Henry Grabar’s Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World typifies much about my reading. I remember that the book has a lot of fascinating information and insights, but I can’t now tell you what they are. As I read over this year’s list, however, I realize that a few still stick in my mind. These include:

Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song. Dylan’s musings about popular songs are often surprising and set me in search of many he wrote about. Thank you, YouTube.

Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. Bringley left his job with the New Yorker after the untimely death of his brother and became a guard for ten years at the Met. He writes movingly about grief and art.

Rupert Holmes’s Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide. A clever book. I would say it was Harry Potter-ish, but since I have not read any of the Harry Potter books, I’m guessing.

Vanessa Walters’s The Nigerwife, a striking mystery with a setting that opened a new world to me.

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. This is essential reading for making any sense out of the Mideast. It was the selection of two different book groups I attended.

Chris Van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food. This convinced me that I should not eat ultra-processed foods. And someday perhaps I won’t.

Abraham Riesman, RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. Is Trump’s best friend really Vince McMahon?

A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning. Amusing and insightful about our founding document and how we now often mistakenly regard it.

Walter R. Brooks, Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (illustrated by Kurt Wiese). I still enjoy the sly wit of Freddy the Pig books.

Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels. An old-fashioned delight from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message. Coates always makes me think and makes me check my assumptions.

Percival Everett’s James. At times this retelling of Huckleberry Finn took my breath away.

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Snippets

A student at the Abundant Life Christian School shot and killed another student and a teacher and wounded others. And I thought, If only we had prayer and Bible study in the classroom, this would not happen. Oh, wait a minute; this was a Christian school.

Where is Elon Musk? Trump suggests that the government will study any connection between vaccines and autism. Such research has been done many, many times with the same result (i.e., there is no connection). This is a clear waste of taxpayer money. However, I don’t expect Elon or Vivek to speak out against this reckless spending.

I used to play a lot of tennis, but those days are over.  Friends urge me to play pickleball, but I have not. The name pickleball is silly. The game is sillier. And you can tell the game was invented by some old-fashioned men. You can’t set foot in one part of the court. They named it the kitchen.

There are movements again to get rid of daylight savings time, although proposals differ. Some want to return to God’s time when at noon the sun is overhead. Others want to have permanent daylight savings time without the twice-yearly shift. (No more Spring forward, Fall back.)  But what we should really remember is what a wise person said: “The best way to save daylight is to use it.”

Especially during the holiday season, we should remember what Jerry Seinfeld has said: Nothing in life is “fun for the whole family.”

Over the last few decades Republicans have been responsible for most of the drama surrounding government shutdowns. I learned from C.W. Goodyear’s President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier (2023) that the first government shutdown was caused by Democrats. It was under President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879. The Congressional term expired without passing sufficient funding for the government. Democrats attached riders, that is, unrelated provisions, to appropriations legislation to curb federal poll watching in the South. Hayes vetoed these bills. Goodyear writes, “Never before had a House majority deprived the government of funding in an attempt to extort a policy change.” Eventually the Democrats backed down and the government resumed. There was no mention of a debt ceiling.

Perhaps showing my age, I had no idea who Andrew McCarthy was, but I plucked his book Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain off the Barrett Friendly Library shelves. The book about hiking the Camino de Santiago touched me. It is a reflection on love, a father and son, fame, faded fame, ham, eggs, lots of pizza, blisters, physical and other pains, and…well, love. It made me reflect on much in my life.

After the House ethics report on Matt Gaetz, I wonder if Woody Allen’s line is still true: “The most expensive sex is free sex.”

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Greenland Redux

The last time around, Trump showed a fascination with Greenland. He wanted to buy it. Well, not personally. Once again forgetting pledges on deficits, he wanted our tax dollars to pay for it. To me at least, it was never clear why. Now, as the countdown to his next term continues, he again indicates, without giving reasons, that we should own Greenland. Whether he is serious may depend on what Elon has to say, but Trump’s comments sent me back to a post of mine in 2019 about Greenland. I have reposted it below.

President Trump wants to buy Greenland. My first reaction: I was surprised that he would want to buy white people. But then I did some reading, and I learned that Greenland’s population is 88% Greenlandic Inuit, with 12% Danes and other Europeans. Maybe that eight-to-one ratio explains the acquisition mania.

On the other hand, I never thought that Trump would think desirable a place that does not have forests to decimate and is not dependent on coal or other fossil fuels. In what seems ironic, Greenland is one of the greenest places on the planet. According to one source, seventy percent of its power comes from renewable sources, mostly from hydropower. But perhaps this is an attraction for Trump. He can fulfill his promise to bring back jobs to the West Virginia coal fields by “ordering” the Greenlanders under some national security rationale to use coal. I can see the slogan as Trump supporters wear tee shirts proclaiming, “Make Greenland Sooty (Again).”

I wondered how Greenlanders have reacted to the proposed purchase by a world leader who does not believe in climate change. Greenland is ground zero for global warming. An ice sheet covers four-fifths of the island; it weighs so much that it has depressed the central part of the island making it almost a thousand feet below sea level. The glaciers have been experiencing increased run-offs contributing to the rise of sea levels. Does a lessened ice mass also mean that the land will rise?

Perhaps, however, the Greenlanders favor global warming. It would not be surprising. Greenland’s capital and largest city, with a population of more than 17,000 (Quick! What is it?), Nuuk, averages high temperatures below freezing for more than half the year. I assume, however, that the tourist agencies point out that the temperatures in July regularly reach a relatively balmy fifty degrees Fahrenheit. A few degrees warmer and perhaps the residents will be able to break out bikinis and speedos. During the summer, the sun rises at 3:00 A.M. and sets at midnight, so there is a lot of daylight for any unrestrained outdoor frivolity. Of course, during the winters, the sun is above the horizon for only four hours, but those long nights perhaps call out for other appropriate activities.  

If Trump does buy Greenland, you would think he ought to make at least one visit, even though that is unlikely since he does not own a hotel there and won’t be able to bill the American taxpayers for his stay. But perhaps those long nights appeal to him for all the dark hour tweets he can unleash. I may not have anticipated that Trump would float the purchase idea, but surely no one should have been startled that he showed the usual pique when those nasty Danish threw ice water on the idea. Canceling a scheduled trip to Denmark seems par for his course, but, of course, he does not own a golf course in Denmark and does not apparently have a way to bill us taxpayers and increase his revenues by a Copenhagen visit.

It was expected that conservative pundits would weigh in and maintain that Trump was again showing his genius. Too often the difference between these commentators and a rubber stamp is that the latter leaves an impression, but I was surprised that Trump-is-always-right sycophants have cited climate change—yes, climate change!–as a reason why the U.S. should purchase Greenland. An article on the Fox News website states, “But what makes Greenland particularly valuable to the United States is global warming. The unavoidable receding of Arctic sea ice will open a new sea route in the Arctic that can be used for both commercial and military vessels.” What especially struck me about this contention was the use of the term unavoidable. Global warming is happening, the writer to my surprise wrote, but his position is that it is inevitable. Increasing temperatures can’t be helped, apparently. I guess the writer believes that it is God’s will, so we should just go with it and seize opportunities. If we can keep the warming going and the ice diminishing and the seas rising, new sea routes will open allowing ships to go where they have not gone before. So, stop being so negative about climate change (which Trump says is not happening) and revel in new sea lanes.

What the writer did not make clear, however, is why the new ship routes, if they occur, mean that it is essential that we own Greenland. Aren’t there many sea lanes around the world important to us where we do not own the adjacent land? Why is this different?

This writer also said, as did others who find a way to support Trump after he makes a pronouncement no matter what it is, that Greenland has valuable minerals that should not fall into China’s hands. Why, then, don’t we try to buy the mineral rights? Indeed, those of us who believe in free enterprise and fair trade should expect American corporations to see the opportunity and seek to get all this valuable stuff. These Trump-is-amazing writers don’t explain this apparent failure of American capitalism. Where is their faith in free enterprise without government intervention? Isn’t that the point of cutting governmental regulations, which they support?

One of those in the Trump-is-brilliant camp is Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. He recently published an op-ed piece in the New York Times. (Why is that when conservatives want to be taken as deep thinkers they so often publish in the “failing” Times? Mitch McConnell also placed an op-ed article with the “enemy of the people” the previous week. His piece was one about the importance of filibusters for our constitutional government glossing over that he had removed those all-important filibusters for Supreme Court nominees.) Cotton contended that the Greenlanders should welcome coming under American sovereignty. Denmark now subsidizes Greenland to the tune of at least $650 million dollars annually. America has more money than does the Danish government, so we can do even better for the Greenlanders, Cotton maintained. The Senator surprised me. He wants to commit to a new and expensive welfare program. He opposes entitlement programs for American citizens, but he wants to open the floodgates for those who are now foreigners. Is this the new conservatism? What do Cotton and the others feel about increased federal support for Puerto Rico? Or have I underestimated Trump? Were his remarks merely an opening salvo, and his real goal is to swap Puerto Rico for Greenland? The Art of the Deal may be more subtle than I ever thought.

I wonder, if in stating that America can increase governmental moneys in Greenland, whether Cotton has examined where the Danish subsidies go. Health care in Greenland is paid for by the government, and Danish subsidies support that. Cotton, who adamantly opposes the Affordable Care Act, expects America to expand single-payer medical services in the new possession. And here I thought that Trump supporters believed in America first!

Does Cotton realize that part of the healthcare in Greenland is for abortion on demand? Greenland now has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. In fact, abortions have exceeded live births in recent years. (Remember those long nights.) He supports the laws that prevent the federal government from paying anything for abortions in the United States no matter how poor the woman or how the pregnancy—think rape and incest–occurred, but Cotton wants to increase funding for this medical procedure in Greenland. (I am told that when residents of Greenland’s capital Nuuk do want a baby, they say, “Let’s have a little Nuukie.”) And perhaps Cotton should also examine how education is funded in Greenland.

Cotton is a hardliner about our immigration system, concerned that Mexicans and Central Americans are lured here by all the goodies they can get out of our government. Shouldn’t he and other conservatives then be concerned that when we increase the freebies to Greenlanders, illegal immigration will uncontrollably increase there as refugees see Greenland as a new land of welfare opportunity? Perhaps Cotton, who supports Trump’s border wall, is already planning to build a wall around Greenland to stop illegal immigration that he must think will inevitably occur. Perhaps Cotton ought to give at least an estimate as to how much federal money he thinks we will spend over there.

I also wonder if Cotton and the other Trump-is-marvelous crowd have thought about the status of those who would fall under American sovereignty. If we own Greenland, will we provide a path to American citizenship for those who live there, or will they automatically be citizens? Will they have an unfettered right to permanent residence in the United States? If so, how long does one have to be a Greenlander for that right? Puerto Ricans are American citizens and can come and go to the United States whenever they wish. Guam, which we own, is similar. Those born on Guam are American citizens who can move to the rest of America. (For reasons I don’t understand while Guamanians have birthright citizenship, those born in American Samoa do not.) If Greenland is to be treated like Guam, aren’t conservatives concerned that refugees will flock to Greenland and have ice-floe babies who will be American citizens who can freely emigrate to America? I am guessing that before conservatives grapple with such questions, they will have to ascertain whether Greenlanders lean Democratic or Republican. And perhaps even more important: Will there be a path to statehood for Greenland? Just because they have fewer than 60,000 people doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have two Senators and three electoral votes, just as long as they vote Republican.

We have acquired much territory through purchase in our history. As far as I know, we never sought to find out whether the people who already lived on those lands desired a new sovereign. In essence, they were treated like Russian serfs. You buy the land, you buy the people on the land. Should we who proclaim democracy and government of “we the people” continue such a feudal practice? Will there be some sort of plebiscite; will the leaders of Greenland be consulted? (I have no idea who the chief griot of Greenland is, but I am confident neither does our president.)

The Fox News writer points out, however, that we have bought lands before—including the Louisiana purchase, the Gadsden Purchase, Florida, and Alaska, and he concludes that Trump could simply buy Greenland. Hold on–it has never been that simple. We do have a Constitution, and the consent of Congress or the Senate has been necessary for those purchases. We may say that President Jefferson and Secretary of State Monroe made the Louisiana Purchase, but in fact Congress ratified and authorized the funds for it. The Gadsden Purchase and the acquisitions of Florida, Alaska, and other lands came via treaties together with the authorization of the funds from Congress. A treaty, of course, requires not just the consent of the Senate, but consent by a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Do you really think that is going to happen? Or does Trump have another trick up his sleeve that he will maintain justifies him in his mind to take unilateral action and do another end run around our Constitution—that document that conservatives proclaim to love so dearly?

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Panama Redux

The Republicans almost produced a government shutdown again and may have merely postponed it for a few months. As a result, the Speaker of the House may be out in the cold in several weeks and the GOP may then show its fractures even more clearly. While this brouhaha was going on, Trump was talking about seizing the Panama Canal. This all brings to mind my previous post about the Panama Canal treaties, which I have reproduced below.

Knowledgeable people find the roots of the Republican Party’s current dysfunction in the hyperpartisanship practiced by Newt Gingrich when he became Speaker of the House in 1995. Others find tentacles spreading from the Tea Party movement, which emerged in 2009 and brought conspiracy theories into mainstream politics. But seeds were planted twenty years earlier with the now largely forgotten battle over the Panama Canal treaties. In his book, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right (2008), Adam Clymer explains how the fight over the Panama Canal Treaties helped fuel the rise of the modern Right.

Both treaties were signed in 1977. One treaty gave the United States the right to use force to assure that the canal would remain open to ships of all nations. The second treaty gave Panama control over the canal starting in 2000.

In order to take effect, the treaties not only had to be signed by the leaders of Panama and the United States. They also had to be ratified by appropriate bodies within those countries. After Panama did so in a plebiscite, a political battle ensued in the United States Senate over their ratifications. According to Clymer, this led to the emergence of Richard Viguerie, a founder of modern conservatism, the use of direct-mail marketing, and the rise of single-issue PACs designed to raise money and defeat moderate Republicans.

Although it was President Jimmy Carter who signed the pacts, the negotiations had started under President Nixon. The treaties were thought desirable because they gave America the right to assure the canal’s neutrality, and they removed a flashpoint for much of Latin America, and Panama in particular, by giving Panama control over the canal. Those supporting the treaties maintained that they would increase the security of the canal by helping to remove the threats of guerrilla attacks, which were almost impossible for America and Panama to prevent. 

The treaties were backed by prominent conservatives, including Henry Kissinger and William Buckley, but they were also attacked by other conservatives in near-hysterical terms. Opponents maintained that this was a surrender of American sovereignty, and furthermore, the military leader of Panama was pro-Communist. Marxists would control the canal and Panama, and the harm to the U.S. as a result would be disastrous.

What is surprising to a modern surveyor of the political scene is that some Senators supported the treaty simply because they thought it was the right thing to do even though they knew that their ratification votes would harm them politically. The single-issue PACs targeted some of these Senators, and, through direct-mail marketing (enter Richard Viguerie), inflamed a cadre of voters. Republicans who supported the treaties were defeated in primaries when they stood for reelection. Their overall record did not matter. Their vote on this one issue doomed their political careers. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan opposed the Treaty, and some, including Bill Buckley, maintained that the treaty controversy helped elect Reagan president.

This issue is now largely forgotten even though its aftermath continues to affect the United States. A lesson from the controversy has been absorbed, even if that lesson’s source is not remembered. Republican politicians now fear that if they don’t toe some single-issue lines, a portion of conservatives will target them and defeat them in the primaries. The result is that the politicians cannot develop nuanced positions; compromises are verboten. Instead, the “wrong” stance on individual issues can result in a primary defeat even if the politician accepts the conservative line on other matters. If I don’t completely accept the NRA’s positions, I may be defeated in the primary. If I adopt a moderate stance on abortion, I may be defeated in the primaries. If I have concerns about tax cuts, I may be, in today’s terms, “primaried.” And so on. The result is a lockstep, hard-right conservatism. Back in 1978, some conservative Senators studied a complex situation and decided that a ratification vote for the Panama Canal treaties was in the best interests of the country. What is remembered is not that their position was right, but that some lost their political careers as a result.

History, of course, has shown the proponents to be correct. The Canal functions just fine. Panama is not a hotbed of anti-American Communism. Those who were wrong, however, did not pay a price for their belief; they continued in office. And most of us have forgotten the debate.

In what now seems impossible, Democrats and Republicans joined together to ratify the treaties. Fifty-two Democrats and sixteen Republicans voted for ratification, while ten Democrats and twenty-two Republicans voted against. We have seen little of such bipartisanship since the Panama Canal treaties. On the other hand, since that 1977 controversy we have seen many conservatives benefit even when proved wrong.

The Republican party has been on a forty-year path to its present dysfunction.

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I Am my Own Ancestor

The Jonakait family has not been particularly interested in family history. When I reported that a grade school classmate bragged that Abe Lincoln was somewhere in his background, my father responded, “And if he looked hard enough, he would also find a horse thief in the family tree.” My mother told me that when she was asked to fill out a form as a schoolgirl about her ethnicity, her father replied, “It’s none of their damn business. Just tell them your family is New England Yankee.”

Although none of my immediate family has studied our ancestry, one of my mother’s seven (or eight?) sisters produced an extensive family tree. My mother’s maiden name was Dewey and the tree placed its roots back to 1600 England. My maternal grandmother, who died long before I was born, was a Clement, whose roots went back to ancient England and Holland. The chart claimed that the progenitor Deweys came to America on the third or fourth boat after the Mayflower. That amused me. The passengers on the Mayflower are well documented as they might be for the next boat. I am not sure, however, that passenger manifests exist for later vessels. Who can prove you wrong if you claim the family came over in the late 1600s?

It is clear, however, that this side of my family is WASP. The tree-forming aunt did not appreciate it when I said, “You mean we are white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and came to America before 1700. And yet we are all poor. Is this something to be proud of? What does that say about our stock? Certainly we have no excuses for our lack of wealth.”

Another part of the family tree did interest me. A nineteenth century branch noted that a female ancestor lived in upstate New York and was named Freelove Dewey. I wonder how that played out for her.

I know little about my father’s parents, even though they lived in the flat above us on Tenth Street. I never discussed anything with my grandparents about their lives. I am confident, however, that my grandmother was born in what was then Germany but is now Poland. She came to this country when she was 16-18, I think. I never heard mention of any siblings or of her parents. I assume the teenager came alone, a trip in my youth I did not think much about. I know that she strongly disliked Germany, and although my father went to a Lutheran school, she also had disdain for the church.

My paternal grandfather was born in Pennsylvania to what I was told was a German immigrant family, but perhaps it was a Lithuanian family since the part of Pennsylvania where he was born had many Lithuanian immigrants. My grandfather’s family, legend has it, moved back to Germany, but my grandfather stayed in America. I have no idea how he ended up in Wisconsin or how he met my grandmother. I don’t know what he might have done before, but he I know that he worked in the Kohler Company factory for 35 years.

I have often been asked the derivation of the Jonakait name. Most times I answer that it is a corrupted Lithuanian name. Those who know better than I say that it has Lithuanian roots but is no longer Lithuanian. Those names almost invariably end in “as” or “us.” It is clear, however, that the name was changed before anyone came to the U.S. My theory: At one time Lithuania bordered what was then East Prussia in Germany. I think a Lithuanian family moved to East Prussia and the name became modified to become less Lithuanian and more German. I think of my father’s roots as German, not only because of the altered name. Lithuania is a Catholic country that had a significant Jewish population. East Prussia was Lutheran, and my grandfather identified as Lutheran. I believe he spoke Lithuanian, although I never heard it, but I know he spoke German with his friends and his wife. My father spoke some German, but no Lithuanian. I also think of Jonakait as German because when I have googled the name, I have found a few with the name or close to the name in Germany, almost always in eastern Germany, and none in Lithuania.

One thing is clear: there are few of us Jonakaits. Some are sprinkled around the country with slightly altered spellings—Jonakeit, Jonekait, etc.—but not many. Outside of my immediate family, I never met another Jonakait.

This lack of ancestral knowledge does not bother me. Even though I know that it can’t be entirely true, I want to think that I am my own creation. However, part of who I am surely came from my parents, and then part of who my parents were, surely came from their parents. So ancestry must make some difference. There is some truth in the Chinese proverb, “To forget one’s ancestors is to be a book without a source, a tree without a root.” It must be, however, the further you go back in the ancestral tree, the less influence today and the more irrelevance. I want to be judged on what I think and do, not on who my great grandparents were or weren’t. As Russian General Mikhail Skobeleff supposedly said, “I make little account of genealogical trees. Mere family never made a man great. Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring fate.” (He clearly didn’t live in 19th century England.) Andoche Junot, another general, this time Napoleonic French, when asked about his ancestry, put it more succinctly, “I know nothing about it. I am my own ancestor.”

But perhaps my true driving force on this topic was stated by a modern sage in a tweet: “I will never understand people’s fascination with their ancestry; isn’t knowing your current family bad enough?”

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First Sentences

“Three Lives & Company is a 650-square-foot bookshop on a corner in New York City’s West Village.” Evan Friss, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore.

“I wonder if there isn’t a lot of bunkum in higher education?” Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels.

“On the outskirts of Nashville, tucked between open pastures and suburban cul-de-sacs, stands a museum dedicated to the memory of Andrew Jackson.” Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land.

“So you have decided to commit a murder.” Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide.

“Benjamin Franklin, forty-six years old in June 1752, strode into a field just north of the burgeoning village of Philadelphia.” Richard Munson, Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist.

“Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said.” Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake.

“When I was a very young man and became very successful in the movies very quickly, I harbored a notion that I had not earned my accomplishments, that I hadn’t done the requisite work, that it was all merely a fluke, that I didn’t deserve it.” Andrew McCarthy, Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.

“As requested, they had all assembled in the Library before dinner.” Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book.

“It is predawn in Macon, Georgia, and at four o’clock, the city does not move.” Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife.

“Alice and Emma, the two ducks, sat on the bank and watched the breeze crinkle the surface of the duck pond into a sort of blue and silver carpet.” Walter R. Brooks, Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (illustrated by Kurt Wiese).

“Florie’s Papa had sent a letter.” Jon Grinspan, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy.

“No. Nup. That wouldn’t do. It reeked of PhD. This was meant to be read by normal people.” Geraldine Brooks, Horse.

“It is worse, much worse, than you think.” David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. (Thanks to Steve Newman)

“I learned of Samuel’s death two days before Christmas while standing in the doorway of my mother’s new home.” Dinaw Mengestu, Someone Like Us.

“The House of the Vampire arrived in 1907, with a pinch of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a dash of Swinburne, and a major crush on Oscar Wilde.” Rachel Maddow, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.

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Snippets

The famous definition says insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I have been experiencing a variation of that:

I had hoped when Trump lost in 2020 that he would fade away. My hopes were not fulfilled. I had hoped that when he won in 2024, his increased experience would mean that he would show more knowledge and spew out less, how shall I put it, hooey. My hopes were not fulfilled. I had hoped that his supporters would now recognize the hooey and say something about it or, at least, not be taken in by it. But, of course, that didn’t happen.

I was reminded of this when a conservative website attacked the “Meet the Press” host for being deceptive in her interview with Trump. The president-elect told Kristen Welker that he planned to get rid of birthright citizenship. She responded that the 14th Amendment says, “All persons born in the United States are citizens.” The right-wingers rightfully called Welker out on this because she did not cite the 14th Amendment language that gives birthright citizenship to people born here only if they are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The conservative complaint about Welker, however, did not complain about Trump. For years he has said that he plans to eliminate birthright citizenship, but he still does not seem to know what the 14th Amendment says (or anything in the Constitution for that matter). He responded to Welker’s statement with a simple “Yeah.” You might have thought that he would immediately correct Welker, but he did not. Instead, he went on to say that we are the only country with birthright citizenship. That is hooey. He then went further and said that “if somebody sets a foot, just a foot, one foot, you don’t need two, on our land, ‘Congratulations you are now a citizen of the United States of the United States of America.’” That is so many plops of hooey that it is knee high. But while Welker was called out, the conservatives did not call out the person who will be president and has and will take an oath to the Constitution. I don’t think that I am insane, but I did foolishly hope for different results and more sanity.

When I watch “Antiques Roadshow,” I find out that I am much like many of the objects brought for appraisal—I have “condition issues.”

She was visibly upset when she came into his office. The teacher assumed that she was reacting to the election results from the day before, but he still asked. She said that she had helped her parents vote. She explained that they were born in China, and because they spoke little English, she was allowed to aid her mother and father in the voting booth. Each had voted for Trump. She started to cry in the teacher’s office, and between sobs said that after leaving the polls, she asked how they could do that. Did they not know what Trump would do to them if he could? Her mother responded, “At least he’s not Black.” The parents had been urging their daughter to go to a college near their Philadelphia home. The high school student said that she was now determined to go as far away as possible.

The spouse regularly seeks bargains for gasoline. She will wait a long time in line idling at Costco to save a few cents a gallon. When driving, it is amazing how many prices she spots, eagle-eying servicing stations. To the delight of all traveling in her vehicle, she comments, often with a surprised tone, on at least 90 percent of them. (I do confess that I might do something similar.)

The childhood death rate started to increase in 2019 before the Covid pandemic began and while Trump was president. It increased 18 percent between 2019 and 2021, which was fueled by more gun and drug deaths. Predictions about what happens in the next Trump presidency?

Posted on by rjonakait

(Not) The End of Democracy?

I owe him an apology. My nephew asked if I thought we had just had our last democratic election. I arrogantly, churlishly responded, “Why would you say that?” I acted as if the question was paranoid, misguided. It was not.

My initial response was driven by several factors. First, we have no indication in the recent election that the Trumpista crazies who became election officials did anything to throw the election in Trump’s favor such as skewing the vote counts. If this did not happen with Donald Trump running, it is unlikely to occur with another candidate. The loyalties of those who want to upset our democratic norms are not to the Republican Party specifically nor to conservatism in general, but rather to Trump, and Trump will not be the running next time. And, thus, I had reasoned that the threat to our democracy would be minimal.

The nephew countered: Did I really think that Trump would not be a candidate in 2028? I referenced Trump’s age. He will be 82 in  four years, if he survives that long. Even many Trumpistas will think he is too old to be president. In addition, many other Repubs want to be president and will work to prevent a fourth Trump run. And, then, of course, the Constitution forbids it. The opening clause of the Twenty-Second Amendment is as clear as anything in our national charter: “No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice. . . .” Period. The end. I don’t see how even the most partisan Supreme Court justice could find a way around this unequivocal pronouncement. Trump won’t be running. And because he cares only about himself, not the Republican party or conservatism, Trump won’t be campaigning to overturn an election in which he is not a candidate. Without his efforts, we are unlikely to have fake electors or requests for changes in vote counts. So, I reasoned, Trump won’t be a candidate, nor will he be tampering with the election in 2028.

But then I had a horrific thought: What if Donald Trump, Jr. were a candidate? (Or Ivanka or maybe even Jared? Even the father couldn’t support Eric, could he?) Then take everything I said above off the table.

However, as I thought more about my uncharitable response to my nephew, I realized that true democratic elections require more than just an accurate vote count. They also need an active opposition and the free-flow of information. Those are threatened by the calls from Trump and his cronies and his nominees for retribution. Such retaliation will not only be a punishment for the past, but a deterrent for the future spread of ideas and information necessary for democratic elections.

It is important to note that the promised retribution is not for criminal conduct, or for any kind of illegal conduct; it is for speech. Speech. Kash Patel makes this clear when he says that he will “come after” the media for what they have said. While media may be first on his list, retribution against others will soon follow. And, of course, with threatened punishment for information and ideas, fewer will be willing to speak out. And democracy will suffer.

Will we have retribution for free speech, as Trump, Patel, and others desire? Certainly, harmful retaliation has become more likely because of the Supreme Court decisions giving once and future president Trump immunity forever — let me repeat, forever — from criminal and civil actions. While the Court-created exemption extends “only” to official actions, the Court’s vague definition of official action is incredibly broad and extends even to illegal conduct. The Court indicated that any presidential order to or conversation with anyone in the executive branch is an official act, and it garners immunity. This is so even if the command is to take an illegal action. In other words, Trump does not have to worry about criminal or civil liability for presidential orders to the Justice Department, the FBI, Homeland Security, and many other departments. (The Supreme Court immunity decisions do not address whether an executive branch official who performs an illegal act under a presidential order can be prosecuted. It would be a strange world, however, if the underling can be prosecuted but not the boss who issued the directive.)

Retribution does not have to be illegal to provide a powerful deterrent to a free society. Practically speaking, the executive branch can investigate whomever it wants for whatever reason it wants. If probable cause is found to believe that a person has committed a crime, that person can be prosecuted. Moreover, the federal criminal law is broad and often vague. Many, perhaps all, of us have committed crimes—ever take a pencil home from work?—and if enough resources are put into a retributive investigation, many people could be charged with a crime. Of course, such charges will deter others from criticizing or opposing Trump and his acolytes. And democracy will suffer.

Retributive investigations will deter freedoms even without prosecutions. Investigations by themselves can lead to onerous demands for documents and testimony. The target has to bear the costs in time and money, which can reach hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in fees and costs. Few organizations, much less individuals, can afford such harassment. Many of us will decide that it is better to remain silent rather than face the possibility of such retribution. And democracy will suffer.

It is not just investigations and prosecutions that can deter free speech and undermine democratic elections. Peter Hegseth promises to remove wokeness from the military services. From what I have seen from other conservatives, the goal would be to fire, or at least not promote, some officers, not for their actions or performances, but because they have spoken out in favor of diversity and inclusion. If this is what combating wokeness means, it seeks the suppression of ideas in the very same way as the promises of retribution from Trump and Patel do. When ideas are punished, democracy suffers.

The coming years can provide other dangers to our democracy. Trump has said that he will pardon the January 6 mayhem makers. This undermines our democracy by indicating that there might not be penalties for obstructing a fair election. Trump has been urged to invoke the Insurrection Act. Perhaps we will discuss that Act someday, but let’s just say now that the vagueness of that eighteenth-century legislation could lead to alarming results.

And it is not just the Trump administration that is concerning. There is the anti-democratic institution of the Supreme Court. It is frightening what it might do in the coming years.

I am not saying that we are about to lose our democratic elections and the rule of law, but my glib response to my nephew was injudicious. I am no longer quite so certain that our democracy is safe.

Posted on by rjonakait

Twelve Ways to Win

In the last post, “77 Million,” I wrote that the real story of the last presidential election was not the switch to Trump, which was not large, but the “lost votes,” the many who had voted for Biden but did not vote at all this year. A story in a Pennsylvania news source neatly illustrates the point. A Philadelphia district that is overwhelmingly Black had shifted to Trump, but in that district Trump had gotten only three more votes than he had in 2020. Harris, however, had received 81 fewer ballots than Biden had four years earlier.

After the previous post, a friend said that he agreed with my analysis but wondered what my explanation was for the lost votes. I thought more about that and realized that I did not have a single overarching explanation but only a collection of partial possibilities. Here are some of them.

One. Donald Trump is a remarkable politician. His dominant qualities—liar, ignoramus, bully, fearmonger, bad economist, embarrassing dancer—should make him a laughingstock, but despite these characteristics, or perhaps because of them, he connects deeply with a broad swath of Americans. They are devoted to him like teenage girls to a K-pop boy band. There’s a major difference, however: American devotion to him has not been a passing fancy; we don’t seem to grow out of it. Other presidents—Reagan, Clinton, Obama—had devoted admirers, but not like Trump. To me the attraction is inexplicable, but I recognize his draw.

Two. Americans have short memories, and Trump benefited. In 2020, almost all voters held strong and accurate images of the Trump presidency. Despite the pandemic, the economy was about the same as it was under Obama, with some indicators stronger and some weaker than in the previous four years. (E.g., inflation was low under Trump, but it was even lower under Obama.) However, all was not well in the country. Crime had started to increase under Trump which was disturbing. Life expectancy had started to fall even apart from the pandemic. The border was a problem, and Trump had failed to fix it. Even Obama had deported more people than Trump had. Trump’s wall seemed a joke. His attempts to erase the Affordable Care Act were disturbing. Deficits skyrocketed. He played footsy with dictators, which was disturbing. His many grift-like actions were disturbing. A lot of things were disturbing, but that was all forgotten four years later. Moreover, of all the bad things that were predicted to happen because of his four years did not happen. For example, Biden continued the China tariffs that liberals had decried ruinous. Biden continued Trump border policies that were labeled ineffectual and heartless. More and more politicians supported the border wall. Trump was still the same Trump, but to many he did not look as bad as he had in 2020.

Three. Americans are not only forgetful; they are ignorant. Americans want simple answers, and Trump benefited. The border problem has many causes. We need a reform of our immigration laws. We need more border agents. We need more immigration judges. The problem is fueled by criminal gangs and political unrest in various countries. The problem is exacerbated by poor economies in various countries. It is intensified by the wider spread of media coverage that tells more and more people that they can find a better life if they can get to the U.S. And so on. Americans don’t want to confront such complexities. They don’t want to concede that the problem has been years in the making. They want a simple answer. And to many, the border problem is simply the fault of the Biden-Harris administration. (When conservatives refer to 2017 to 2021, they never say the Trump-Pence administration.)

More simplistic thinking follows: If the border were tightened, for example, we could tackle our fentanyl problem. (We have already forgotten that Trump promised to solve the fentanyl crisis when he ran in 2016.) Inflation. Well, inflation was the consequence of many complex events, but Americans didn’t want to understand that. Neither did we want to know that many developed countries had a worse inflation problem than we had, and that perhaps our inflation, bad as it was, was not so bad. Americans did not want to hear that gas and oil trade in an international market, that supply chains are international, and that the U.S. government does not control these markets. Instead, we want a simple answer, and that answer was that inflation was the fault of the Biden-Harris administration.

Four. Fear sells, and Trump benefited. Many campaigns have tried to make the electorate fearful about the consequences of the other side’s actions. In the first election I paid attention to, JFK stressed a “missile gap” at a time when nuclear concerns were high. (That gap seemed to disappear once he took office.) This year Trump and his acolytes did a much better job of spreading fear than the other side—fear of crime generally, fear of immigrant crime more specifically, fear of immigration, fear of fentanyl, fear of transgender people. That last fear should not be underestimated. For most of the election season, I was in Pennsylvania, a swing state for the presidential election with a closely contested Senate seat and several close House races. It seemed as if every third political ad — and the ads ran nonstop — by those on the right brought up Democratic support for trans people. They damned Harris for supporting government payment for gender-transforming operations. They hinted that Democratic candidates were going to allow trans people to play girls’ sports and use girls’ bathrooms. This country may have become more accepting of gays, but many, many Americans see trans people as unsettling and dangerous. Trump and his supporters benefited.

Five. The media has had a fixation on Trump, and Trump benefited. News sources, including, or perhaps especially, liberal ones reported at length whatever Trump was doing or saying. This was not totally surprising. In the run-up to the election, Trump was on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits including his conviction of 34 felony counts in New York. Nevertheless, this coverage overwhelmed coverage of Biden’s accomplishments (how many of us can summarize what is in the Inflation Reduction Act?) and explanations for problems like rising prices or the border. Since memory-impaired Americans seemed less concerned about the bizarre and dangerous behavior of Trump in 2024 than they were in 2020, the media did Trump a favor by focusing on him and not other things.

Six. We don’t know how to handle misinformation, and that benefited Trump, too. A higher percentage of misinformation came from the right than the left, and listeners ate it up.

Seven. Liberals and Democrats are poor at messaging. Who named it the Inflation Reduction Act? I know. I know. It was meant to reduce inflation, and it certainly did help. But it was hard not to hear it as a laugh line when the cost of milk and eggs and gas and mortgages was unusually high. Why didn’t they change the name and start focusing on all the good the Act accomplished?

Eight. But perhaps the chief cause of Trump’s (narrow) victory came throughout Biden’s term. While Americans were concerned about the border and inflation, Biden seemed indifferent to those problems. He might have been able to do little or nothing about them, but he should have appeared more concerned about them. He did not. And Trump won.

Similarly, every third ad against Harris I saw featured her being asked what she would have done differently from Biden. The response was the blank look of a doe in the headlights with the answer of “nothing.” It was powerful each time, and I saw it many, many times. Such a question had to be anticipated. How could she not have had a better immediate response? (Later on — too later on — she did.) There was also the never-ending clip of her crowing about the success of “Bidenomics.” Democrats should have been ready to explain what they were hoping to accomplish and what they had accomplished. They did not. And Trump won.

Nine. In the eyes of many Americans the Democratic Party does not stand for anything, and Trump benefited. Worse: Democrats were seen as the party that stood for trans rights, defunding the police, DEI, and critical race theory. But what else? For many, Democrats didn’t stand for anything that benefited “ordinary” people. Biden’s support for the United Auto Workers made no dint in this perception.

Ten. Covid hurt Trump in 2020. It helped him this year. His inconsistent and bizarre reactions to the pandemic were fresh four years ago. Now many have selective memories of that time. Unless personally affected, few seem to remember that one million American died. Instead, today Covid is remembered by many as a time of unnecessary school closings that harmed kids and strained parents; of unnecessary face masks; of governmental overreach on vaccines and social distancing. These are all reasons to distrust the government, and Trumps surrogates did a great job of reminding us of this distrust. At the same time, some see the Democrats as the ones who believe in big government of the sort that made Covid more hellish. Trump benefited.

Eleven. Many are not ready for a woman to be the Commander-in-Chief. We cannot discount that this country continues to have a strong strain of misogyny. Trump benefited big time from it.

Twelve. What do you think contributed? I’d love to hear them.