Posted on by rjonakait

Murder or War Crimes?

I was recently asked by a facilitator of a current events discussion group to talk about Venezuela. It reminded me of my only conversation with a Venezuelan, and it happened some years ago. He was sitting next to me at a jazz brunch, part of a Pennsylvania music festival. Surprisingly, he and his wife had a home in a nearby Poconos community. He explained how that came about, but I don’t remember the explanation. I knew very little about Venezuela, but I had wondered why baseball was so popular there when it was not in the rest of South America. My brunch partner did not have an answer, but he was a baseball fan and seemed to know of every Venezuelan who was in the major leagues. (Today there are more than a hundred.) I asked him about conditions in Venezuela. I was aware that the president, Hugo Chavez, was an authoritarian who styled himself a socialist and that economic conditions had been deteriorating in the country. My retired companion had been the head of the Venezuelan branch of an American insurance giant. He told me that one of his sons had already left the country for Panama, and he was about to buy a place in that country as well. He said that he and his wife worried that someday they might have to flee their country in a few hours’ notice, and they needed a place to go to. I tried to imagine how unsettling that must feel. Now my imagination can more easily encompass such thoughts, even though I have not investigated an escape route from the U.S. Got suggestions?

While many of the Venezuelan economic problems seem unchanged since my conversation with the jazz lover, I was asked to speak at the current events group about America’s recent actions around and possibly in the country. I started by saying that it was hard to talk about the legality of our sinking boats and blowing up humans because the administration has not made public justifications for our destruction. Slogans have been tossed around—self-defense, unlawful combatants, narcoterrorism, foreign terrorist organizations—but not any true legal rationales. We have not been given any facts. How did we know that the boats carried drugs? Even if they did, how did we know that the drugs were destined for the United States and not other Caribbean nations, Europe, or West Africa? These, too are destinations for drugs leaving Venezuela.

Without legal and the information, it seems that we are in an unauthorized war. If so, we may have already committed war crimes; if not, we may murdered people. Moreover, we don’t know how far Trump’s reasoning carries (if it’s reasoned at all). If we can blow up those who are supposed drug dealers, why should it only be in foreign or international waters? By Trump’s logic, drug dealers within the U.S. are aiding drug cartels that Trump labels foreign terrorist organizations. Drug distributors and perhaps drug users could be labeled unlawful combatants under his reasoning. Can Trump have them summarily killed in this country?

Trump has said that each of the ten bombed boats were carrying drugs that could kill 25,000 Americans. In his mind, he has saved 250,000 lives. The Centers for Disease Control collects information about drug overdose deaths. The latest reports are from 2023 when there were 105,007 overdose deaths from all drugs, which is a slight decline from the previous year. Synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) caused 72,776 of those deaths in 2023, also a slight decline. As tragic as drug deaths are, Trump’s figures are vastly exaggerated.

Of course, synthetic opioid deaths did not start with fentanyl and originally weren’t foreign. There were the prescription drugs oxycontin and oxycodone. In 2023, about 13,000 deaths came from these prescription opioids. Most meth, which has harmed many Americans, is not imported. Ask Walter White.

In Trump’s first term, which he does not mention, opioid deaths increased roughly 50%. One of his campaign pledges was to end the fentanyl crisis.

To put this in some perspective: There were 46,728 deaths by guns in 2023. About 18,000 of these were homicides. Another 27,000 were suicides. We don’t have a “war on guns.”

About 41,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents.

Is the drug problem in America an emergency? The War on Drugs was proclaimed by President Nixon in 1971. In 50-plus years we have not been able to quash the drug trade or drug use. One problem: Illegal drugs are a commercial product that Americans want and are willing to pay for. Trump says this is an emergency. Has he just learned about it?

Trump now hints at land actions in Venezuela. The National Security Act of 1947 authorizes the CIA to collect intelligence, conduct counterintelligence, and undertake covert action. The point to covert actions had been to be able to deny them if compromised. By publicly announcing “covert activities” in Venezuela, Trump is again a norm breaker. According to the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act, the CIA must act only on the basis of presidential findings for covert actions, and the findings must be monitored by House and Senate Committees. This is not happening.

There have probably been many more covert actions in our history than we are aware of, but until now there have been two major realms of activities. The first came out of the Cold War. We undertook many actions fueled by anticommunism. The second came after 9/11 and were part of the War on Terror.

Our government now relies on another rationale, which we could call part of the War on Drugs, a war now longer than our war in Afghanistan and an even bigger failure. But the validity of the drug rationale is dubious, since Venezuela had not been a major supplier of drugs to the U.S. compared to other South American countries. Moreover, cocaine is primarily the drug that comes out of Venezuela, not fentanyl. (Cocaine overdose deaths were 29,449 in 2023.) Fentanyl most often comes from China through Mexico.

Perhaps there is a concern about Venezuelan drugs, but our actions really seem designed to convince Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro that he can’t remain in power. A recent Wall Street Journal article as well as other sources suggest that Marco Rubio has been the prime architect of our Venezuela policy. Rubio as Senator tried for a decade to oust Nicolas Maduro and now he is getting his chance as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. In Republican circles, Florida, particularly Cuban-Americans in Florida, have strong anti-Maduro sentiments, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Rubio are all from Florida. Bondi has placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro, accusing him of working with criminal organizations.

We have a heavy military presence in the region, which has been increased. Nuclear-capable B-52 bombers have been flying off Venezuela’s shores, and an aircraft carrier has been sent to the region. We have thousands of troops at our Caribbean military bases.

Venezuela has moved troops into position and mobilized its militia. This is scary stuff. What would be our reaction if Venezuela were sinking American boats? What if Venezuela shoots down the aircraft blowing up the boats and Venezuelans?

Why force Maduro out? One answer: Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Perhaps our foreign policy is truly always about oil.

But our policy may also be a throwback to the Cold War.  Maduro proclaims his socialism. Hugo Chavez, who was president of Venezuela from 1999 to his death in 2013, expropriated the assets of hundreds of companies. Nicolas Maduro was Chavez’s (last) vice-president and has continued many of these policies. General Motors and Kimberley-Clark are among the factories that have been seized.

But the situation is even more complicated. Venezuela has not expropriated the property of American oil giant Chevron, which has operated in Venezuela since 1923 and now accounts for about a quarter of the country’s oil production. Opposition leaders see Chevron as propping up the autocratic regime, but Chevron says it is a stabilizing force. Chevron’s role in Trump’s policies is not clear.

What is Trump trying to accomplish with all this saber-rattling? We are still guessing.

Posted on by rjonakait

Three Modern Free Speech Issues

I was asked by a leader of a current events discussion group to comment on some present free speech issues. I briefly commented on several.

1 . The first is the issue of self-censorship by media and other entities because of a concern about retributive governmental actions. Jimmy Kimmel is a prime example. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Kimmel made comments on his late-night show, which were not disrespectful of TurningPointUSA leader, but included some misinformation regarding the political affiliation of the killer. Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), responded by saying: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies [Kimmel’s employers] can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Kimmel was promptly suspended by ABC, a subsidiary of Disney. It was certainly reasonable for Disney to think it was being threatened by the Chair of the FCC. Over-the-air networks like ABC require licenses from the FCC. Moreover, two companies owning affiliates that air ABC programs were negotiating a merger that needed to be approved by the FCC. They could see the FCC Chair’s statement as a threat to that approval.

Though seemingly unrelated to free speech, these (not so) veiled threats have a direct impact on free speech. Sometimes even without a threat free speech is affected because of potential government action. We saw this dynamic in action with the $16 million settlement by Paramount Global (owner of CBS) of the Trump lawsuits against CBS. At the time of the settlement with Trump, Paramount had an $8 billion merger on the table that required government approval. What does this have to do with free speech, one might ask. Answer: Media companies (no company) should not be required to cave to the petulant posturing of a president in order to secure government approval for their business. And yet, Paramount Global felt, no doubt, that it had no choice but to cave to the political caprices of the president.

Perhaps there has always been a concern that free speech would result in government retribution. But it is more concerning now. First, the open vindictiveness of president Trump has changed things. In addition, the playing field has changed dramatically because the Supreme Court is consciously allowing the president more power that increases the possibility and feasibility of presidential retribution. Here’s how: Agencies like the FCC or the Federal Trade Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission were meant to be independent of the president. Ninety years ago, the Supreme Court held that commissioners on such agencies could not be removed at the whim of the president, but only “for cause.” The Supreme Court has not officially overruled that precedent, but it effectively has done so. The Supreme Court has now allowed Trump to “temporarily” remove commissioners while litigation goes on about whether the removals have been lawful. It is expected that the 1930s precedent will be formally overruled this year. In other words, the previously independent agencies will no longer be independent but must answer directly to the president. Thus, companies who need agency approval for something will naturally be concerned that they will be punished for actions that displease Trump. This is affecting free speech in ways it was not before.

An aside: Might conservatives have a point in the Jimmy Kimmel affair? Four over-the-air late- night hosts use the public airwaves: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers, and Jimmy Kimmel. All can be characterized as anti-Trump. What if all were the comedy equivalent of Fox News? How would liberals react?

2. The second is another, non-Kimmel free-speech issue occurring in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

A recent newspaper article states that over 145 people have been fired or disciplined by their employers for comments about Charlie Kirk. These data are from public records, but there may be many more that haven’t been reported. Often the comments have been innocuous. For example, an employee of a public university commented on her private Facebook page, “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” She also said that she believed in the Resurrection and was praying for his soul. She was fired for these comments.

All the firings of employees for their comments while not on the job raise free speech issues, but not all raise First Amendment issues.  The First Amendment applies only when the government does something that limits speech. Thus, it comes into play when a public employer disciplines public employees for their speech. However, there are few legal restraints on private employers who often can fire for any reason.

But something new is also operating in this arena. Online armies are scanning for social media comments to get people fired. Those who have made comments critical of Kirk are often doxed and flooded with ugly and threatening messages scaring them and others into silence. The online scrollers want to punish and prevent speech they don’t like.

While the private firings and the doxxing may not raise First Amendment concerns, they do raise important free speech concerns. We need more discussion of how free workers should be to express their views while not on the job, and, further, how to prevent some of the terrible excesses of social media and the internet.

3. The new Pentagon leadership says it will require credentialed journalists at the military headquarters to sign a pledge to refrain from reporting information that has not been authorized for release — including unclassified information. Reporters, in effect, can publish only press releases. Journalists who don’t abide by the policy risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon.

I asked a friend who had been a media attorney whether he knew of similar past directives. He says this appears to be unprecedented.

He did point out that this administration (and others) have cut off reporters who published stuff the president didn’t like. (Witness the AP and the “Gulf of America” controversy). But these restrictions on free speech were relatively mild. They only limited the access of individual reporters. They were not a blanket restriction on what can be reported.

The Hegseth directive for the first time tries to make those covering the Pentagon into something like state media. You may publish only what the government authorizes. We have not had this Pravda-like restriction before. If it stands up in court, it would be a titanic and dangerous change in how the government, the press, and the people interact with each other.

Posted on by rjonakait

Trump versus Madoff

Near the end of his book Madoff: The Final Word, written shortly before our president won his second term, Richard Behar asks comparative questions about the con man Bernard Madoff and Donald Trump:

“Should there be an attempt at an analysis and comparison of Madoff and Trump—arguably the greatest fabulists of (for Madoff) the contemporary business world and (for Trump) the political world? Do they know when they lie? Do the 2020 presidential election deniers have anything in common with investors who blindly followed Madoff? And can denial be contagious and transmissible across huge segments of society?”

There may be intriguing comparisons between the two, but the fabulists were of different sorts. To effectuate his Ponzi scheme, Madoff faked stock trades. Of course, Madoff knew that he was not making the trades. He lied about them. Lies require an understanding and concern for the truth. Lying calls for a degree of craftsmanship that weaves in the truth in order to get the lie accepted. Harry G. Frankfort in his marvelous little book, On Bullshit, says: “In order to invent a lie at all, [the liar] must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.” Thus, Madoff made up the trades, but not the prices for the supposed transactions. He backdated the “trades” and then could pluck out real stock prices to make it seem that his funds had made profits. If someone had checked his trading ledgers, they would see entries that Madoff bought a security for x dollars on a certain date, and indeed the stock did sell for that amount then. The business record would also show that on another date, Madoff sold the shares for more than x dollars, once again a valid price for that date. The prices were real; the trades were a lie, but in hopes of being believed, he lied under the guidance of truth.

Frankfort makes a distinction between the liar, who has a concern for the truth, and the bullshitter who does not. A bullshitter’s “statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.” And since our president does not seem to craft lies as much as utter falsehoods with an indifference to the truth, he is, by this definition, not a liar.

The bullshitter has more freedom than the liar. The bullshit artist “does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a certain point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, as far as required, to fake the context as well.” Frankfort continues, “He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” The bullshitter is not rejecting the authority of truth, as the liar does. Instead, “he pays no attention to it at all.”

Many wonder how Trump can tell so many falsehoods, or how he can repeat falsehoods that have been repeatedly debunked, or how he can assert things that on their face are blatantly false. They haven’t recognized that while a liar and truth-teller are on opposite sides of the same contest, the bullshitter is not even in this game. Trump does not grapple with the authority of truth, as the liar does. Instead, as with any bullshitter, “he pays no attention to it at all.”

If Trump lied, he would not be as dangerous. Frankfort writes, “By virtue of [not paying attention to the truth], bullshit is the greater enemy of the truth than lies are. . . . Through excessive indulgence in [bullshit], which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost.”

There may be many causes for Trump’s bullshit—his narcissistic ego is a prime reason, but there is at least another one. “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” Those of us concerned with the truth should give up the notion that Trump will learn what is true and what is not and that the falsehoods will decrease over time. As long as Trump continues to talk about things he knows little to nothing about, the bullshit will continue.

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In Spite of the People

Texas is seeking to further gerrymander its congressional districts in favor of Republicans. Two-thirds of Texas House seats are currently held by the GOP even though the statewide vote for Trump in 2024 was only fifty-six percent. The Texans are now seeking to ensure that eighty percent of the seats are filled by Republicans. Texas Republican votes will in essence be weighted more heavily than Democratic ones. Slightly more than half the voters will pick four out of five Representatives while slightly less than half will pick twenty percent of the seats.

The United States Supreme Court faced a similar situation in the second half of the twentieth century. At that time some states did not require periodic redistricting of their state legislatures. With population growth and shifts, legislative districts that once may have held equal populations became unequal, but each was still entitled to the same representation in the state capital. For example, in Tennessee, two-thirds of the state representatives were elected by one-third of the state’s voters. One Alabama district had a population of 634,864 and another had 15,000, and each had one state senator. Within each district, votes were equal, but when the state was looked at as a whole, votes were unequal.

This only changed because the United States Supreme Court adopted what now is called the one-person, one-vote doctrine. The constitutional guarantee of equal protection, the Court recognized, requires that each vote within a state be equal to all the other votes in the state, and therefore legislative districts must have comparable populations.

The Court actions comported with a constitutional theory about the Court’s role in our government. In 1938, the Supreme Court said that courts must have a strong presumption that our laws are constitutional. Under our system, the elected legislatures and executives (the political branches) adopt our laws. If a law is perceived as bad or unreasonable or unwise, it is up to those elected branches to change it. It is not for the federal courts to determine the wisdom of a law. However, the Supreme Court also outlined three exceptions to that strong presumption of constitutionality. First, constitutionality cannot be assumed for a law or action that appears on its face to violate a provision of the US Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. The Court also said that it would scrutinize closely laws that discriminate against “discrete and insular” minorities, especially racial, religious, and national minorities, particularly those who lack sufficient numbers or power to seek redress through the political process. Finally, the Court should not grant a presumption of constitutionality to laws and practices that restrict the political process. The Court, in other words, should have a more active role when laws and practices prevent the political process from mirroring the will of the people.The political process in Tennessee and Alabama was not likely to change the inequality of voting districts. Representatives from small districts were not willingly going to give up their disproportionate power. The system that gave some voters more power than others stayed in place until the Supreme Court acted. The Court furthered political democracy by doing so.

Partisan gerrymandering is akin to those unequal districts the Supreme Court confronted in the twentieth century. The political process will not remove anti-democratic congressional boundaries when the line-drawing party perennially controls the state legislature. Although the minority party is not what the Supreme Court meant by a “discrete and insular minority,” it is very much like one since the political process cannot prevent discrimination against it. And if a party has gerrymandered congressional districts, it almost always also has gerrymandered state legislative districts. When that is the case, and it is true throughout this country, a mere majority in the state does not change the control of the legislature. Thus, a controlling party can distort the political process to continue its control. Gerrymandered state legislatures have drawn lines so that one party will have more state representatives than is warranted by the statewide popular vote. To change the legislature, the out-of-power party must not only retain its majority in the districts where it now wins but must also get majorities in the districts that are stacked against them. In reality, one party will need a supermajority of votes to get the governmental reins while the party that gerrymandered can retrain control with a minority of the vote.

The Supreme Court has recognized that “partisan gerrymandering” may be “incompatible with democratic principles.” Even so, the 5-4 2019 decision Rucho v. Common Cause, written by Chief Justice Roberts, said that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts [Emphasis added].” If gerrymandering is a “political question” as the Court stated, you might think that there would be a political process to address its abuses, but the Court, for the good reason that there is none, did not suggest any. It is as if the umpires turned their backs and walked off the field saying that while it does not seem right, the home team can call balls and strikes. And, thus, due to the Court’s inaction, the constitutional rights to equal protection and due process do not govern partisan gerrymandering.

With the abdication of the United States Supreme Court, some who seek better, more democratic government have gone to state courts contending that partisan gerrymandering violates state constitutions. The results have been mixed. Some state supreme courts have adopted the U.S. Supreme Court reasoning and will not consider partisan gerrymandering cases, while a minority of state courts have held that partisan gerrymandering does violate their state constitutions.*

In some ways, however, this just compounds the problem. Many states can freely gerrymander while a few states cannot. As a result, the political parties of the gerrymandering states have even more power than if all states gerrymander. They get the unwarranted number of representatives from their states and still get the deserved number from the other states.

Gerrymandering not only makes votes unequal. It also increases uncompromising partisanship. In a “safe” district, a candidate does not have to appeal to the other side — or even to the center — to get elected. The candidate merely must win the party’s primary. The candidate does not ever have to appeal to the majority of the electorate, but only to the partisans voting in the primary. And when elected, members from a gerrymandered district can indulge their partisan ideology without political retribution. We become a more polarized country as a result.

It also affects the mindset of elected officials. In the early days of the country, the electoral franchise was limited. Property requirements prevented some people from voting, and, of course, women could not vote. They, however, were not unrepresented. The elected official represented everyone in the district because everyone in the district was counted whether they could vote or not.** We see that today in a modified form. Children cannot vote, but the elected official represents them. The representative theoretically represents everyone in the district. But with gerrymandering that is not how many elected officials operate.

Recent raucous town halls should remind us of that. Conservative commentators point out that calls went out for Democrats to attend the town halls, and therefore the town halls should be discounted. In essence, the commentators are saying that critics should be disregarded. After all, those critics do not vote in the only election that matters in a gerrymandered district—the primary. When elected officials feel that they do not have to listen to people in their districts, they no longer feel that they have to represent them. But gerrymandering encourages our elected officials to act as if they represent only those who will vote in a primary.

The next midterms will raise important issues. The Republicans worked hard to pass that Big, Beautiful Bill. They claim it is good for the country. The tax cuts will increase prosperity. The changes to Medicaid will improve the program. Those who voted for or support the law should be willing to explain and defend the BBB. Those who voted against or oppose it should also be willing to tell their constituents why. And, of course, there are other important issues. Increasingly, however, the next and future elections will not be decided by the issues but will be decided instead by which side can gerrymander more and better.

It was funny, and ludicrous, when Pat Paulsen, the comedian a generation or so ago, who “ran” for President, said, “I want to be elected by the people, for the people, and in spite of the people.” We now live in a world where “in spite of the people” is, alas, a dominant political strategy.

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*Civics courses have taught that the lower houses of the national and state legislatures are the most democratic and representative of our governmental institutions because the fewest number of voters select these representatives in frequent elections. With gerrymandering, however, these bodies have become increasingly unrepresentative of the people. However, officials elected in statewide elections are not gerrymandered into office.

Civics courses have often concluded that the courts are the least democratic of our institutions since they are the most removed from the electorate. But when state supreme court judges are elected in statewide elections, not in gerrymandered districts, the state supreme courts are more democratically selected than gerrymandered legislatures.

** Trump has now suggested that not everyone within a district should be counted for the census. Undocumented people, e.g., have heretofore been included in the census count, and hence should have been represented by the elected representatives of their district. Trump wants to exclude those people from the census. Will he exclude children next?

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Presidential Rock

No president has performed heavy metal or even any good rock. Or rap. We have had some insipid piano playing, some mediocre saxophone, and a good version of Amazing Grace. But no real rock ‘n’ roll. Or rap. And I believe the country would be better if the president rocked. Or rapped. However, after extensive, made-up research, I have found that many presidents did make music. Some examples:

Of course, the hits began with George Washington and his surprising novelty, Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor in the Dentures Overnight?

This was followed by Thomas Jefferson’s unclassifiable, but revealing, song that was huge in the South, Love in Chains. The third president had a follow-up success in the North, Set My Love Free?  

It was Dolley Madison who had a hit that referred to her husband’s constitutional amendment career with a refrain still resonating today: “Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy Mad, Are those rights just a fad?”

Andrew Jackson sang now forgotten plaintive Appalachian songs accompanying himself on the acoustic dulcimer.

Then there was Millard Fillmore.  No one knew who he was, so no one knew if he sang anything.

Abraham Lincoln accompanied Mary Todd Lincoln on the concertina as she sang, Re-United. Lincoln himself on the late-night tavern circuit tried to set With Malice Toward None to music, but, of course, he never finished it.

Rutherford B. Hayes performed with disastrous consequences still felt today, Reconstruction is for Suckas.

The insomniac William McKinley sang with some success his Mr. Tariffing Man. It was only after the full effects of Smoot-Hawley were seen in the Depression that the lyrics were expanded to include: “that evenings empire has returned into sand/Vanished from my hand/Left me blindly here to stand. . . .”

William Taft, who could not lie, was too obvious when he sang,”I like big butts.” The country back then, however, apparently did not.

Woodrow Wilson seemed convincing when in 1916 he sang “War! What is it good for?” And then he led us into war.

Warren Harding sang old family “darky” songs that would be considered offensive by many today but would be banned by others as DEI.

Calvin Coolidge did not sing but he was a trained mime. He did not get enough recognition for his Man Walking Backwards Against Heavy Wind although he was overpraised for miming handcuffing the Boston Police strikers.

Not surprisingly, FDR could not rock. His only memorable song was The Wheels on the Chair Go ‘Round and ‘Round.

Eisenhower avoided music. He thought that the public would demand from him martial tunes, which he hated.

Kennedy largely spared us those Irish jigs where four or eight bars are endlessly repeated until the fiddler gets tired and stops.

Not many people know that W wrote many lyrics, but they were so filled with malapropisms that no one could understand them.

And now under Trump we have endlessly repeated I Am Just a Fool (in Love) ((with Myself.))

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A Day for Presidents

Ulysses S. Grant liked to say that he knew two songs. One was “Yankee Doodle” and the other was not.

John Ganz in When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024) says that George H.W. “Bush was the representative of a class bred to govern, not to lead.”

Grover Cleveland vetoed more bills in his first term than all previous presidents combined. (Many, however, were private pension bills.)Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

Lincoln said about General Phil Sheridan, who had a distinctive body, that he was a “chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch, he can scratch them without stooping.”Scott W. Berg, The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul (2023).

Warren Harding, when President, privately said that his vote for World War I was a mistake. Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022).

Nicole Hemmer in Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s summarizes President Ronald Reagan as being fueled by anticommunism, which gave him “a preference for more-open borders and higher immigration levels, for fewer tariffs and a stingier social net. Anticommunism mattered more to him than democracy or small government. He wanted a sharp increase in military spending, a more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union, and more extensive aid to right-wing illiberal regimes in place in South and Central America and Southern Africa.”

Hemmer also reports that Reagan’s 1980 presidential race was the first with a partisan gender gap.

Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) reminded me that Reagan, in response to Black Panthers, said there is no reason why anyone should carry a loaded gun on the streets.

Joshua L. Powell writes in Inside the NRA: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia within the Most Powerful Political Group in America (2020) that gun owners voted for George W. Bush by 25 points over Al Gore.

Al Gore is younger than Donald Trump.

Ted Widmer in Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington (2020) refers to a historian who said that to discuss Millard Fillmore was to overrate him.

One modern president who was religious believed strongly in the separation of church and state. Jonathan Alter writes in His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020) that when he was the Georgia governor, Carter canceled a weekly worship service for government employees because it violated separation of church and state. President Carter did not allow religious sermons in the White House because of separation of church and state.

Jill Lepore states in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) that Lyndon Johnson had broad support among evangelicals in 1964.

Something that would not happen today: Doris Kearns Goodwin reports in An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s that she thought that she would lose her position as a White House Fellow in 1967 because she had co-authored a piece in The New Republic titled “How to Remove LBJ in 1968.”

Jonathan Alter maintains that Jimmy Carter had a photographic memory for names, which reminded me of a story a former colleague told me. Ed grew up in a small Arkansas town where his parents had a modest, but successful, business. When Bill Clinton ran for state attorney general, Ed’s parents attended a fundraiser in their hometown for the candidate. Eight years later, when Clinton was out of office between his non-consecutive gubernatorial terms, Ed’s parents were in Washington, D.C. They spotted Clinton on the opposite sidewalk. They debated whether they should go up to him because of their one meeting. Before they had made a decision, Clinton strode across the Georgetown street, stuck out his hand, and greeted Ed’s parents by their first and last names.

This is not the first time we have had an administration with strange opinions about vaccinations. Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) states that Dwight Eisenhower and his Health Secretary said that the free distribution of the polio vaccine was socialized medicine.

According to Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018), Trump in 2016 did best in counties with a public health crisis, especially where the suicide rate and opioid use was high.

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Snippets–Inaugural Edition

The inauguration was moved indoors because of extremely cold weather. What is your joke on hell freezing over?

Does this have any relevance today? “One left an encounter with Winston certain that Winston was the most interesting person alive; when one left a meeting with [Lloyd George] one convinced oneself of being the most interesting person alive.”David Reynolds, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him.

I wonder if RFK, Jr., has been like me and thought that bacteria is the rear entrance to a cafeteria.

At least as defined by Mark Twain, the new president does not have good breeding, which Twain said “consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

I am frequently struck by Trump railing about a problem that he considers caused by Biden when the problem also existed during Trump’s first term. But as a wise man said, “Among the things that enable a person to be self-satisfied is a poor memory.”

Now that Elon is on the scene, I wonder if what Abraham Riesman wrote in RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America continues to be true. Reisman said that Vince McMahon may be Trump’s closest friend. McMahon “is said to be one of the only people whose call Trump takes in private, forcing his retinue to leave the room so the two old chums can chat in confidence.” Trump is a member of McMahon’s wrestling Hall of Fame. Will Elon enjoy the same access?

This is not just inauguration day; it is also the day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. There must be a site somewhere where I can bet how many times, if any, Trump mentions MLK today. We tend to think that King gave his great “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, but the complete name of the rally was the March on Washinton for Jobs and Freedom. Six decades later, the demands of that day are still incompletely met. For example, the March was asking that the Fair Labor Standards Act cover agricultural workers. That act still only partly encompasses those who till and pick our food. The rally also sought to increase the minimum wage to $2 an hour. We fall woefully short of that today. Two dollars in 1963 is the equivalent of about $20 today, and the federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage was $1.25 in 1963, which would be about $13 today. We would honor King if we at least thought about how we treat the working poor. (And we should remember that when King was murdered, he was in Memphis to lend support to a sanitation workers’ strike that aimed to change some of their horrendous working conditions.)

I am anything but a Trump supporter. I think many of his policies will do harm to this country, but I hope that I am wrong. Although not expecting it, I wish him success. There is much in this country that could use improvement. I could make my list. You, no doubt, could make yours. But instead, I give you what David Leonhardt said in Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream (2023):

“We live in the only high-income country that does not provide parents with paid leave. We live in one of the stingiest countries for daycare, preschool, and the resources devoted to children. A typical thirty-year-old man is not much more educated than his parents were. The United States remains the only rich country without universal health care insurance. American women are more likely to die in childbirth than women in many other countries. American babies are more likely to die, too. Income inequality is higher than in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Kores, or Australia. Almost two million Americans wake up each day in a prison or jail. Our children consider it normal to spend time at school preparing for a mass shooting. Our opioid death rate leads the world. Our roads are more dangerous than in other affluent countries, which was not true only a few decades ago. In 1980, life expectancy in the United States was similar to that in other high-income countries. We have become a grim outlier.”

Posted on by rjonakait

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.”

Posted on by rjonakait

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.

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.