February 27, 2017: Orange Julius, Caesar Disgustus, No Discernable Validation

"Donald tRUMP is much more than a national embarrassment; he is a national obscenity"
                            ----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

In what had to be one of the strangest spectacles to ever disgrace the republic, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held his first news conference and took to the podium not to announce new policy but to denounce press coverage of the inauguration, boldly and falsely claiming that the crowd attending tRUMP’s ascendancy was the largest in history, larger even than that attending Obama’s inauguration in 2009 or that of Lyndon Johnson in 1965.   Photos rapidly produced by the park service immediately demonstrated otherwise, including banks of empty seats lining the inaugural parade route right up to the presidential grandstand in front of the White House itself.   But tRUMP continues to contend otherwise, believing what he needs to believe, facts to the contrary notwithstanding.

Orange Julius is a serial prevaricator, which is to say, a pathological liar.  Everything coming from the mouth or computer (Twitter) of this man is either a diversion, exaggeration, hyperbole, or outright boldface lie; all designed to meet the deep emotional needs of a man with small hands and even smaller ego; a man ill at ease with himself; a man compelled to resort to petty, mean, small-minded acts of vengeance even at the cost of burying the larger Rescumlican agenda beneath false assertions and tweet storms. 

So the first press conference held by this administration was not an attempt to lay out an agenda, explain changes in policy, nor open the floor to questions and answers.  Instead Spicer simply took the floor, chastised the press for its reporting, and questioning the motives and by extension the legitimacy of the 4^th estate, and then called an abrupt end to the spectacle storming off the stage.  If the press had any intestinal fortitude it would simply refuse now to cover the White House, for whatever comes out of the White House is truth stood on its head.  We have now gone beyond spin into the nether regions and dark corridors of the deeply psychotic and paranoid alternate universe of Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and Breitbart “News”.   In the less than immortal words of former tRUMP spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway we are now presented with “alternate facts” which carry no discernable validation except in the minds of the tin hats now in the White House; “facts” which the White House now demands be taken more seriously than what the rest of humanity clearly sees as universally discernable and measurable empirical reality. 

Coming as it does on the heels of claims that 5 million illegals voted in the last election, thereby giving Hillary more popular votes despite virtually no evidence that any voter fraud, not to mention fraud at this level exist, tRUMP is emerging as a whining pre-adolescent, easily slighted, thin-skinned, and easily played.  The fact is that the ego of this little man simply cannot stand the fact that more people voted for someone else, especially when that someone else is a woman.  So, desperate to smudge the historical record he now calls for a presidential commission to investigate bogus claims of large scale voter fraud.

The White House has rapidly degenerated into a “Funhouse” house of mirrors, images of Orange Julius distorted to serve the purposes of the moment, images endlessly replicated into infinity giving the illusion of great depth when, in fact, there is no there, there. 

Welcome to the New Order, get in line, bow and genuflect before our very own Caesar Disgustus. 

February 26, 2017: Support and Rememberance, To the Ramparts, Seeking Ablution

On Saturday, January 21, I took part in a demonstration.  For weeks my daughter had been talking of taking part in the national 'women's' demonstration scheduled for the day after the inauguration in Washington D.C, and had gone online in search of a more local event which, she had hoped, I would be able to join.  The closest event being planned turned out to be in Grand Rapids and she decided that it might be too great a reach for the old man and dropped the subject.

Later, while perusing my email, I encountered a missive from one Caitlin Maloney from the "Courage Campaign" with the heading "Women's March on Washington: The pussy grabs back". How could one resist such an appeal?  Indeed.  I found myself irresistibly drawn to participate once again, to take to the ramparts and register my protest; to become part of the resistance. 

Accordingly, I looked up the information regarding the particulars of the event in Grand Rapids and decided that I, too, would join the march. 

The event was held on Saturday, January 21, at the Fountain Street Church.  For those not in the know, Grand Rapids'  Fountain Street Church is a venue which has hosted everyone from U2 to Winston Churchill and has long been a rallying point for those seeking expression.  Originally constructed as a Baptist Church it became, decades ago, nondenominational and has accordingly become an institution giving free expression to a range of religious and non-religious points of view. 
I made my arrangements and arrived at ten in the morning as the event was getting underway.

I made the journey alone.  Upon arriving I found myself wondering about the narthex of the cathedral where the organizers had placed several tables upon which were items for sale.  I found myself spending ten dollars on a sign reading:

IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE:
BLACK LIVES MATTER
WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL
SCIENCE IS REAL
LOVE IS LOVE
KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING

I purchased the item as a means of making a contribution to the cause as well as to have a souvenir that I could then pass on to my daughter who was, at that very moment, in Washington D.C. taking part in the center-stage event around which several hundred local protests were organized. 

As I wondered about, a woman approached me from behind and, taking my arm, pulled me aside to inquire what I was doing there.  I was a bit taken aback by the approach thinking that perhaps she had mistaken me for an errant tRUMP voter who, now seeking ablution, was now about the business of assuaging his conscience if not, by making a rare appearance in church, appealing now to a higher authority lest the grim reaper arrive before forgiveness is bestowed upon this lost soul.  I gently explained that I was here in support of my daughter who was now taking to the ramparts in the nation's capitol.  She seemed satisfied with my explanation and I could discern in her countenance that forgiveness was not in order and that I was indeed welcome into the fold.  I then walked about a bit, took my sign to my van for safekeeping, and then returned in time to find a place in the pews as the event got underway.

There was a bit of poetry reading, including a choice by Langston Hughes' I, Too, Sing America" followed by someone about to set up and sing some protest songs when someone once again tapped me on the arm.  I turned to find that the same lady who had buttonholed me earlier inquiring if I would mind being interviewed on local television.  I followed her out of the church into the daylight and was introduced by a channel 8 reporter for WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids.  I was led to a nearby stairway where she set up the camera and, standing behind the camera she asked her first question:

"As a white man", she queried, "what brings you here today?"

I was a bit taken aback.  Has 'identity' politics come this far? Nonplused, I soldiered on. 

"As a white man for sure," I responded, "but also as a father and a great grandson..."   I then went on to explain that a century ago my grandmother and great grandmother who were area organizers for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and, along with my great uncle, demonstrated for women's suffrage; and that indeed the struggle, now well more than a century old,  continues today.  In their remembrance, and in support of my daughter who was at the ramparts in D.C., I am here today.  Indeed along with the more than 280 others who had left Fountain Street Church and traveled to D.C. by bus from Grand Rapids earlier in the week. 

I then joined the march from the Fountain Street Church to Rosa Parks Circle located at Campau Square.  As we approached our destination a certain de ja vu overwhelmed me.  It had been nearly half a century since I walked these streets and took part in a political event and as I looked about and registered what had and had not changed since that distant spring morning in April 1968, I could still hear that voice in my ears. (1)

"There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
some forever, not for better
Some are gone, and some remain.  --The Beatles "In My Life"

I had started out earlier in the day quite alone seeking only to add my support by my participation in an event that would involve, across the country, many millions of people.  I ended up, quite by chance, on the local news.  It is indeed strange how these things sometimes evolve; hard to know what life has, at any given time, in store.  I had set out in search of an event only to find myself confronting not only my turbulent age, but my own distant youth.  My daughter had been right.  It was indeed quite  a reach for the old man. 

---------

(1).  See previous post: April 11, 2008: A Sunny Afternoon at Campau Square, "There aren't any Republicans Here, Are There?", Great Leaders Don't Grow On Trees




 

January 31, 2017: Citizens in the Hands of an Angry GOP, Furnace of Wrath, Capricious and Arbitrary

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep…

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell.  You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment…”

    ----Jonathan Edwards “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God” 1741 (1)

This is the essay I have been fearing to write for the GOP, always confusing itself with GOD, has now complete control of every branch of government and is about to unleash its venomous anger and bottomless mendacity upon the unsuspecting republic; a republic the citizens of which the Banana Republicans hold in deep and utter contempt.

It isn’t that I hadn’t seen it coming.  I remember a conversation with Jason Rhodes, then a graduate student at the University of Georgia, in the spring of 2009 as Obama had just assumed office and was grappling with the looming economic catastrophe left him by the previous incarnation of Rescumlican leadership.  Celebrating Obama’s victory and the majorities in both houses of Congress it was easy to get caught up in the euphoria.  “Jason”, I cautioned, “ let us not forget that the Democrats won’t be in power forever, rarely does a party hold the White House for more than eight years, and when they re-emerge from under the rocks that constitute their natural habitat, the next Rescumlican manifestation will represent a much more acute and lethal form of the cancer that is the American Conservative movement upon the body politic of the republic.”  Indeed meetings had already been held among Rescumlican leadership to block and obstruct virtually everything they could to prevent the success of this president even if it harmed the country by so doing. (2)

Later, much later, as I surveyed the landscape in the waning days of Obama’s tenure in office I noted the loss of nearly a thousand state legislative seats, most of the governorships in the country, two thirds of the state legislatures, both houses of congress and a record of gridlock and stagnation that had once again swept Washington in the last six years of his presidency as Rescumlicans put into practice their tactics of delay, obstruction, and obfuscation in an unparalleled display of political mendacity, it was not hard to imagine the return of the Scums to power only this time they would likely control every branch of government.  Now, despite the assurances of their candidate—a man whose veracity is totally unreliable—that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would be held harmless I feared that given the chance the wet dream of the idiot wrong was about to become a long national nightmare.  In this context, sitting in a restaurant chatting with my late wife and daughter, it stuck me. “Sinners In The Hands of An Angry GOP”,  I said, pointing out an appropriate title for an essay when the Scum returns to power.  Katie, a student of such things immediately grasped the concept. 

What has provoked our GOP is, perhaps, anyone’s guess.  It certainly predates abortion, for indeed much of the conservative movement has never accepted the New Deal or much of the twentieth century.  It all began to unravel with the candidacy of Barry Goldwater for his nomination—despite his crushing defeat in the general election—legitimized the unravelling of the New Deal.  In any case, not happy with the growing health and prosperity of those that create, through work, the wealth of this country; recoiling from the horror of the growth of the middle class; outraged at the emergence of a ‘social contract’ between business and labor that gave workers a voice and hope for an ever better tomorrow, these malcontents labored mightily to seize the public square, occupy the forum, and change the terms of the debate.  Now, after a half century, they emerge triumphant about to complete the vandalism begun so long ago.

 

 What form this takes is anyone’s guess, for at the head of this malignancy is a man incapable of understanding with a marked propensity for prevarication, obfuscation, and deceit.  He knows nothing of public policy and cares less.  A perfect figurehead for a movement hell-bent on vandalizing and destroying every bond that holds us together except greed.  tRUMP always capricious and arbitrary, now holds the body politic suspended by a thread over a newly constituted Rescumlican Hell.

And now we have nothing to lay hold of to save ourselves, nothing to keep the flames of wrath, nothing of our own, nothing that we have ever done, nothing that we can do, to induce the GOP to spare us one moment…nothing can save us except, perhaps, the breathtaking incompetence that is this man, this administration, this political party, this movement.  For it knows not how to govern and experience is powerless to instruct.

 -----------

(1)   Edwards, Jonathan.  “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God” 1741.  Baritz, Loren

“Sources Of The American Mind”   Copywright 1966 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, London, Sydney  pp 85-86.

    (2).  In a statement to the press after leaving office, former Ohio Republican Senator  Rudy

                        Voinavich told the press that meetings were held Inauguration night in which

                        Everyone present pledged to vote as a block to oppose the new president no

                        Matter what he tried to accomplish, even if he adopted their agenda.

           

December 31, 2016: Life is Made of Patterns, A National Obscenity, No Worse than the Rest

“And the pattern still remains
On the wall where darkness fell,
And it's fitting that it should,
For in darkness I must dwell.
Like the color of my skin,
Or the day that I grow old,
My life is made of patterns
That can scarcely be controlled. “   --Paul Simon

As the election approached, the nation was presented with two grotesque spectacles: the first being the Chicago Cubs in the World Series; the second another, and hopefully the last, presidential contest featuring two bona fide “Boomers” in what became a national embarrassment, a national obscenity, a borderline pornographic contest for the presidency of the United States. 

Much has been written in these columns about the Chicago Cubs (2), a franchise that has, over the decades, made a complete mockery of excellence, indeed an ethic of mediocrity.  That baseball should affront us with the spectacle of the Cubs in the World Series was bad enough, but coinciding as it did with the national obscenity that was, hopefully, the last such contest featuring two legendary members of the “Generation of Swine”, one could clearly sense that the universe had come unhinged; that the natural order has been stood upon it’s head; that, indeed, the last had finished first. 

I began to suspect that something was amiss when the Cubs got off to a great start and held their position atop the National League Central Division.  This anomaly coinciding with the rise of a common carnival barker to the Republican nomination for president of the United States had, by midsummer, cast an ominous pall over the cultural and political landscape.  One began to fear for the worst.  One found oneself beating back the demons by reasoning that the Cubs had, after all, made it as far as the division playoffs, indeed the National League Championship Series, and the Republic survived; and, of course, the nation survived Nixon.  Still fear and loathing swept across the land as we went to the polls in trepidation.

After a series of bruising “debates” during which issues were substituted with what became a series of mud-slinging contests and in which the Republican nominee serially stalked the Democrat on stage, and paraded out a line of women her husband had allegedly abused in effect telling the nation “look, they're no better than I am”.  In the hands of the “Boomers”, the election had degenerated to the point that “Why Not the Best”(3) became replaced with “I am no worse than the rest”.  Both candidates, appealing to identity politics and serial accusations, had lowered the bar to such a level that, in the end, nearly half the voters stayed home.

Not all was quite lost, however.  Trump was demonstrating himself much more adept at alienating voters, doing his level best to lose this election.  As the election approached the polling numbers began to narrow but it was thought that Hillary would, in the end, tough it out.

So as Major League Baseball presented us with the obscenity of the Chicago Cubs in the World Series for the first time since the entire world waged war (and the best players were in the service), and the poll numbers began to narrow, the nation went to the polls and held its collective breath.  As Cleveland took a commanding 3 to 1 lead in the series it had seemed that the country was going to narrowly miss a national catastrophe.

Indeed Nate Silver, the legendary political prognosticator, declared in a headline a week before the election  with Cleveland leading three games to one that Trump had as great a chance of winning the presidency as the Cubs had of winning the world series, roughly one in four.  We all took a deep breath and then exhaled. It was a short-lived relief.

The Cubs then went on a winning streak.  I told my family that this was a serious omen, and that coming with the observable shifts in the planetary magnetic poles and the fact that this economic recovery has reached its historic limits, a Cubs’ victory would certainly mean Donald J. Trump would enter the White House.  I was, of course, dismissed as an alarmist; my audiences failing to see the connections, although historiographer Ken Burns would, I believe, immediately see the obvious.  And, indeed just as the Cubs ‘ran the table’ and won the series, Trump on election night took that very narrow path still afforded him, after he had twitted his way into near oblivion, and ‘ran the table’ by taking enough states to win the election, while decisively losing the popular vote. 

I had seen it coming.  The broader outlines were certainly there for anyone to see.  All Trump had to do, I would, on Facebook, incessantly remind my Democratic friends, was go to the old ‘rustbelt’, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and promise to tear up those trade agreements.  Actually following through is another matter, but by simply promising to do so any candidate could communicate to the afflicted at least a recognition of their plight. This area of the country had been longing for someone in the political elite to at least see and recognize what is before their very eyes. Whatever the ‘solution’, both Bernie Sanders and Trump in separate ways addressed the savaging of the Middle West by this headlong ideological neoliberal movement to globalize the economy.  The Democrats, in acts of inspired stupidity, worked to defeat Sanders and in so doing closed off any viable Democratic alternative by nominating a candidate who, being ‘present at creation’ so to speak, and, in effect, promising more of the same. 

So, as we gathered before our televisions on election night the commentators, fully convinced of the inevitability of the Clinton Restoration, began the night by demonstrating what a long shot this was for Trump and prognosticating how or even if the Republican Party would survive in the aftermath.  Then, one by one, in a near repeat of 2000, the nation watched as Trump and his Republicans ran the table. 

And so with the Cubs now champions of the world, the magnetic polls in uneasy flux, the economy slowing, the global agreements on climate change now in limbo, and Trump and his crypto-fascist, knuckle-dragging minions about to enter the White House, the foundations of the republic can be heard to crack. I suspected as much when the Cubs rose above their natural station.  I could see the reaction in those about me, as if it was some kind of tin-hat conspiracy theory.  However, I earnestly retorted, “go ask Ken Burns what is the relationship between baseball and America, he did a series on it”.  In any case it isn’t any crazier than most of the ‘documentaries’ one encounters these days on Hulu or Netflix.

Some things are bigger than any of us; some things are bigger than all of us.  There are patterns we must follow. 

_________

(1). http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/paulsimon/patterns.html

(2) See

http://wandererandshadow.blogspot.com/2008/10/october-5-2008-question-of-will-exile.html,  As well as

http://wandererandshadow.blogspot.com/2008/05/may-4-2008-celebrating-century-lessons.html  for discussions on the influence of baseball, and the Cubs.

(3). “Why Not the Best” was the title of the campaign biography of Jimmy Carter published in 1976.  

November 29, 2016: Failed our Institutions, Circling the Bowl, Trumped the American Dream

 

Many people are now saying that our institutions, our political system, our media, our schools, have failed us.  I disagree.  I think that we have failed our institutions.  It was the “Boomers” who have made a pig’s breakfast of governance, who have set the tone.  It is we the people, led the “Generation of Swine”, that has opened the nominating process and then failed to show up to vote leaving the field to the knuckle-dragging ideologues be they Neo-Cons, Neo-Liberals, or the unwashed Teabaggers to seize control.  It was we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine”, who have stopped READING—newspapers, books, magazines—in favor of catching the latest meme now swirling through the “Internets” like so many turds circling the bowl.  It was we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine”, who have failed our educational institutions first by defunding them in favor of vouchers in order to finance the equivalent of the “American Madrasa” in the form of parochial and “on-line” education and thereby electing ourselves out of a well-rounded education.  It was we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine” who have been about the business of transforming our universities into glorified voc-ed centers thereby sacrificing the well-rounded citizen in the singular pursuit of money.  It is we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine”, that have failed our political system by supporting candidates who universally denigrate the very institutions they seek to join.  It is we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine, who have compounded the error by imposing term limits on public service thereby sacrificing experience to the lobbyists and the special interests they represent, and by imposing limits on the ability government to tax.  It is we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine” that having made an ethic of the individual we now compound the error by genuflecting before the altar of ignorant innocence. 

Our institutions are what we make of them and our ancestors bequeathed to us solid institutions that by and large performed the task of providing the greatest good for the greatest number.  Yes, there always has been and continues to be need for improvement, and the history of this country has been a history of struggle to achieve the ideal enshrined in our constitution to “create a more perfect union” in part by “providing for the general welfare”. 

But this generation, the “Generation of Swine”, have gone about the business of vandalizing our institutions by making continual war upon governance.  The mendacity of the swine has now Trumped the American Dream.  We are about to pay a heavy price and we have no one to blame but ourselves. 

 

 

October 8, 2016: Time It Was, Preserve Your Memory, All That’s Left Me

Katherine Camfield  b. December 11, 1959  d. October 8, 2015

“Time it was

And what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence

A time of confidences

Long ago it must be

I have a photograph

Preserve your memories

They’re all that’s left you.”

                        “Bookends” –Paul Simon

October 2, 2016: Chasing Rabbits, Logic and Proportion, Fallen Sloppy Dead

“One lie makes you larger

And one lie makes you small.

And the ones that mother tells you

Don’t do anything at all.

Go ask ‘The Donald’

When he’s ten feet tall

“And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you’re going to fall

Tell ‘em a hookah-smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call

Call ‘The Donald’

When he was just as small

“When the men on the chessboard

Get up and tell you where to go

And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom

And your mind is moving low

Go ask ‘The Donald’

I think he’ll know

“When logic and proportion

Have fallen sloppy dead

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen’s off with her head

Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head

Feed your head” (1)  

Clearly, we are now staring into the “Looking Glass” where logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead. It is not enough that “The Donald” stands four square against the scientific community on the issue of climate change, or that he has held—until recently—to various conspiracy theories, or that he is in deep denial concerning the condition of the economy.  It is not enough that his campaign has consisted of offering the country nothing but a series of insults directed at women and just about every group in America save for white men while advocating nothing of substance by way of policy proposals or strategies for effective governance.  It is not enough that he has undermined confidence among our allies by questioning the efficacy and need for our alliances, or for the nuclear umbrella.  It is not enough that this is not only the most vacuous candidacy for the presidency in memory but has in the bargain coarsened political discourse to levels not seen in well over a century.   Now instead of debating the woman who is the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, “The Donald”, like offal circling the soil pipe, could not control himself and went down the proverbial “Rabbit Hole”.  At three in the morning, always insisting on the last word, he is found twitting insults at the former Miss Universe.  As he should have learned from Sarah Palin, only an idiot twits and only a birdbrain tweets.

       

------

(1). A parody of the song “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane.

September 30, 2016: ‘The Donald’ at the Bat, The ‘Babe Ruth’ Of Debating, Madame Secretary I Presume.

“But McCain preceded the Donald, as did also our man Mitt,

And the former was a hoodoo, while the later was a twit;

So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,

For there seemed but little chance of ‘The Donald’ getting to the bat.

But McCain let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,

And Mitt, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;

And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,

There was Romney safe at second and Johnny a-hugging third.

From five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
it pounded on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
for 'The Donald', 'The Mighty Donald', was advancing to the bat"

On Sunday, 25 September, the outlook was beginning to look very grim indeed for the Democratic nine.  According to Nate Silver, the most trusted name in polling and electoral predictions, the Donald had narrowed Clinton’s lead to the point that he now had a 45.2% chance of winning the election, the best numbers his campaign had been able to post since just before the party conventions.  Moreover, he was closing fast.  Emails were being sent out by various progressive and Democratic (not the same thing) organizations in full panic mode.  Florida was going Rescumlican, Ohio is lost, what’s next: Pennsylvania? Michigan?

Word came from the Trump campaign that the Donald, being the ‘Babe Ruth of debating’, would summarily dispatch the woman, citing how he had easily dominated the primary debates.  Accordingly, it was thought, Clinton having to walk the high wire between being forceful and being a scold, would be hamstrung, defensive, seen as aloof, condescending, judgmental, a nerd and a bore cast in the lot with Mike Dukkakis and Al Gore.  Indeed one wag postulated that the challenge for Hillary was to square quantum physics with the theory of relativity while the Donald simply had to show up and not vomit all over the stage.  Apparently, the Donald believed it as well, swallowing whole his own press releases as he pranced about the country telling adoring audiences that Clinton didn’t have a chance. 

“There was ease in ’The Donald’s’ manner as he stepped into his place;

There was pride in ‘The Donald’s’ bearing and a smile lit the ‘The Donald’s’ face.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt ‘The Babe Ruth of Debating’ ‘twas at the bat.

Two hundred million eyes were upon him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;

Ten million tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt;

Then while the smiling Hillary ground the ball into her hip,

Defiance flashed in the ‘The Donald’s’ eye, a sneer curled the ’The Donald’s’ lip.”

Smiling, she led off by questioning his business acumen given his half dozen or more bankruptcies, chided him for stiffing contractors and employees that worked for him, suggested that the reason he isn’t releasing his tax returns is that perhaps he isn’t as wealthy or charitable as he claims, and that perhaps he owes money to foreign banks and governments creating huge conflicts of interest. 

“And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,

And ‘The Donald’ stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.

Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-

“That ain’t my style,” said ‘The Donald’, “Strike One!” the moderator said.

“From back-benches, filled with teabags, came up a muffled roar,

Like the beating of the storm-waves upon a stern and distant shore;

“Kill him, Kill the umpire!” shouted someone in the stands;

And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not ‘The Donald’ raised his hand.”

“Madame Secretary, May I call you Secretary?” he then asked condescendingly, at which time he pivoted to a rambling critique of her performance as Secretary of State.  Clinton, composed as an old schoolmarm dealing with a recalcitrant delinquent, simply rattled off her experience questioning in the end ‘The Donald’s” knowledge of the world about us, and his fitness for command.

“With a sneer of heathen charity the great “Donald’s” visage shone;

He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;

He signaled to the lady, and once more the dun sphere flew;

But ‘The Donald’ still ignored it and the moderator called “strike two”.

“Fraud!” cried the maddened teabaggers, and echo answered “Fraud!”

But one scornful look from ‘The Donald” and the great unwashed were awed.

They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,

And they knew that ‘The Donald’ wouldn’t let that ball go by again.”

And then, turning and facing him, Hillary reminded ‘The Donald’ of his treatment and remarks to a former Miss Universe when he owned and ran the pageant widening the criticism by reminding the audience of his disparaging remarks about women and, in particular, his treatment of comedian Rosie O’Donnell. 

“The sneer is gone from ‘The Donald’s” lip, his teeth are clenched in hate,

He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate;

An now the lady holds the ball, and now she lets it go,

And now the air is shattered by the force of ‘The Donald’s’ blow”

“Well, she deserved it” replied “The Donald” in a tone of righteous indignation. 

Strike three.

“Oh, somewhere in this promised land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,

But there is no joy in Mudville—‘The Donald’ has struck out.” (1)

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(1). My thanks to Ernest Lawrence Thayer for one of the favorite poems of my youth and the inspiration it has given me here.  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/casey-bat

August 9, 2016: That Little Girl, Dreams are Torn, Youth and Innocence.

“I met her on the strip three years ago

In a Camaro with this dude from L.A.

I blew that Camero off my back

And drove that little girl away.

But now there’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes

And she cries herself to sleep at night

When I come home the house is dark

She  sighs, ‘baby did you make it all right’

She sits on the porch of her daddy’s house

But all her pretty dreams are torn

She stares off alone into the night

With the eyes of one who hates for just being born.

For all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels

Rumbling through this promised land

Tonight my baby and me, we’re gonna ride to the sea

And wash these sins off our hands.

Tonight, tonight, the highway’s bright

Out of our way mister you best keep

‘cause summer’s here and the time is right

For racing in the street.”  

                                     ---“Racing in the Street” Bruce Springsteen.

Today is an anniversary of sorts.  Today is my grandson’s birthday.  Happy birthday son. Today also marks the 17^th anniversary of my first meeting Katie in Indianapolis, Indiana..It seems like so long ago, and yet like almost yesterday.  Today, for what it is worth, also marks the 42^nd anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon. 

While here I pine for love’s labor lost, the nation pines for Nixon.  Only my grandson, insulated by youth and innocence, remains unscathed.  

-------

Springsteen, Bruce.  "Racing in the Street" from the album "Darkness at the Edge of Town"

1978 Columbia Records. 

July 1, 2016: The Flower of England, Military Mind, Veritable Monument.

“Young men, soldiers, Nineteen Fourteen

Marching through countries, they’d never seen

Virgins with rifles, a game of charades

All for a Children’s Crusade” (1)

On this date, at the break of dawn precisely one hundred years ago, they went over the top in what became known as the Battle of the Somme. (2)  It was the bloodiest day in the history of the British army.  As the sun rose, the whistles blew and the men went, in the parlance of the time, “Over the Top”.  By sundown, the British had lost 57,470 men, an estimated 20,000 dead, mostly by noon that day.  It was a killing field.  The army advanced at a cost of 3 men for every foot of ground gained. 

  

It is remembered today largely as the leitmotif of a struggle characterized by what historian Max Hastings has termed the “Blackadder” interpretation of the First World War, after the British Sitcom of that name, which pilloried the struggle, especially the military leadership that led it.  Hastings takes umbrage with the critics, among them Siegfried Sassoon, claiming that they didn’t understand either its necessity nor its tactics. I must take issue with Hastings on both counts.

I don’t think that either Atkinson (“Blackadder”) or Sassoon the poet were critics of the struggle.  I don’t think either one of them, or many of the host of other critics of General Haig and the military chiefs, hold the view that the battle was unnecessary.  Where they take issue is with the strategy and the tactics used, and the continued order of repeated attacks for the next 141 days until the battle subsided due to the onset of winter having achieved not even the first day’s military objectives.  When it ended both sides suffered casualties each estimated at over half million men.

“The Children of England would never be slaves

They’re trapped on the wire and dying in waves

The flower of England face down in the mud

And stained in the blood of a whole generation.” (3)

The battle occurred because the French were being decimated at Verdun and to alleviate the pressure and to save the French army, the British were called upon to begin a major offensive.  Its necessity is, therefore, not in dispute.  What is in dispute are the tactics.  

I’ve made the point in previous posts concerning this conflict that I hold the military brass responsible because they had learned nothing from studying war.  One questions the purpose of military academies where lessons from previous conflicts seemingly are at best forgotten and at worst ignored.  All the European powers had observers on both sides during the American Civil War, a war that introduced the devastation of the modern rifle as well as the stalemate of trench warfare.  Nothing had improved since then, the introduction of the Gatling gun, followed in turn by the machine gun, could not auger well for any military offensive.  Nevertheless the military mind, being what it is, refused to come to terms with the evolving technology.  Indeed the French military approached the conflict with a training manual that insisted that the army would do nothing but attack.  Such tactics, given the technology at the time, were breathtakingly uninspired.

“Corpulent generals safe behind lines

History’s lesson drowned in red wine

Poppies for young men, death’s bitter trade

All for a Children’s Crusade” (4)

The bombardment started a week or so before they went over the top.  The British fired an estimated 3 million shells at the German lines but, due to lack of quality control, a third of them were duds.  The purpose was, of course to destroy the enemy’s earthworks; but also to cut the barbed wire to ease the advance.  Ignoring front-line reconnaissance reports back to headquarters that the barbed wire was still in tact; and arming the men with wire cutters that couldn’t cut the much thicker German barbed wire, the men were led ‘over the top’.

The artillery were largely anti-personnel shells (similar to Civil War era grape shot) and, therefore, useless at destroying either trenches or wire, and the enemy was dug in with bunkers 30 to 40 feet underground. The British Infantry, loaded with up to 60 pounds of kit and told to walk across ‘no man’s land’ because the enemy will have been destroyed, went up—‘over the top’ into a perfect killing field.   

Like Viet Nam decades later, a conflict in which American forces would be brought to the battlefield by helicopter and the enemy simply counting the rotors and quickly determining if he would stand and fight or blend back into the jungle, so the Allies would announce the advance by the cessation of the artillery barrage.  A quick silence followed by the blowing of whistles signaling the men to climb out of their trenches and advance on no-man’s land—but also signaling to the enemy to come out of his bunkers and take up position, a strategy that effectively eliminated any purpose or advantage the bombardment was supposed to produce.  With the element of surprise gone, with the relative strength of each army generally understood, it was left to the infantry to slog it out in what quickly became a hell on earth. 

All of this was foreseeable.  As in the American Civil War, one had only to look to Fredericksburg or Antietam for lessons on what not to do at Gettysburg or Kennesaw Mountain; one had look no further than what was going on at Verdun to draw similar simple conclusions.  However, no, the military mind has trouble with universally observable empiricism.

The historian struggles to justify.  Many point to the Battle of the Somme as the first use of tanks and the use of aircraft as offensive weapons in an effort to demonstrate the military’s willingness to embrace new technologies and strategies but, unfortunately, these apologies are not supported by the historical record.  The fact is that tanks, here introduced to warfare, were not the brainchild of the Army’s brass.  Instead, the modern tank is the brainchild of one Winston Churchill who, in a rare moment of prescience and wisdom, insisted as Lord of the Admiralty, to build the tank.  It was the British Navy not the army that developed the modern tank; the army having been presented with the idea quickly dismissed tanks, deriding them as ‘land yachts”.  While taking part in the battle, tanks were, nevertheless ineffective both because they were not present in large enough numbers and because the Army hadn’t developed the tactics for their use.    Indeed the same criticism has been leveled at Haig and the brass concerning the use of flamethrowers, mortars, and other weapons that civilian authorities were to impose upon the military command in an effort to break the stalemate.   Indeed, it was the Canadians, later in the war that introduced the ‘rolling’ artillery”, a strategy of using it during the assault and calibrating their fire to lay down a barrage just ahead of the advancing troops. This to prevent the enemy from taking position—a strategy that more than any other would finally break the stalemate near the end of the war. 

Hastings, unlike Sassoon, did not fight this battle, nor any other in this war.  He is the grandson of one who did, but he wasn’t there.  Sassoon was and, on balance, I’ll take his version of it.

Let us take a moment and pay our respects to the ones who fought and died there, to the ones who fought and were wounded and dismembered in body and soul, to the ones who carried the memories well into my lifetime for while it surely wasn’t in vain it was, however, altogether too great a sacrifice.  The battle remains, however, a veritable monument to the stupidity of leadership and the madness of man.

“Pawns in the game are not victims of chance

Strewn on the fields of Belgium and France

Poppies for young men, death’s bitter trade

All of those young lives betrayed” (5)

____

(1)   http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sting/childrenscrusade.html

(2)   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme

(3)   Op. cit.

(4)   Ibid.

(5)   Ibid.