The Beer Hall Putsch

The following text appeared in the “AI Generated” response to the Google search of the so-called, “Beer Hall Putsch” that I conducted on the morning of January 6, 2025:

“The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d’état attempt by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party on November 8–9, 1923:

Goals

The Nazis planned to overthrow the Weimar Republic, seize control of the state government, and march on Berlin. They also wanted to establish a new government based on race and create a unified Greater German Reich. …

Aftermath

Hitler was charged with treason and sentenced to five years in prison, but was released after nine months.”

There is a link to Wikipedia description of the event below. The piece is fairly long, but those who haven’t studied the history of the Nazi rise to power may find it of interest. I do note three brief parts of the Wikipedia entry, as it existed on the morning of January 6, 2025:

“The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d’é·tat by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 15 Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander.”

Second, elsewhere in the entry, Hitler is quoted as declaring to rally his supporters on the night of the putsch, “One last thing I can tell you. Either the German revolution begins tonight or we will all be dead by dawn!”

Finally, the section entitled, “Legacy,” provides in part:

“The 15 fallen insurgents, as well as the bystander Karl Kuhn, were regarded as the first “blood martyrs” of the Nazi Party …”

“Shortly after [Hitler] came to power, a memorial was placed at the south side of the Feldherrnhalle crowned with a swastika. The back of the memorial read Und ihr habt doch gesiegt! (‘And you triumphed nevertheless!’).”

Beer Hall Putsch – Wikipedia

On the Passing of Bob Uecker

Perhaps our most beloved Wisconsinite, the same man on- and off-air. Although the Brewers retired Number 50 in 2005 in honor of his then-50 years in baseball, he went on to actually broadcast Brewer games for over 50 years, through this past season – reporting in all but the first year that the team has been in existence. One of the few primarily “local” broadcasters – the Dodgers’ Vin Scully is only other who comes immediately to mind – known and loved nationwide. He has arguably been more important to the soul of the franchise than any single player. If the Brewers had a Mount Rushmore, his would be one of the images. For years to come and for generations of Brewer fans, listening to a Brewer broadcast won’t seem quite “right.”

You were always front row. You yourself never missed a tag. Rest in Peace.

A Candy Land Certification

I wasn’t going to post on this, since the point to be made here has been made in a number of other quarters, and has undoubtedly already occurred to you; but a metaphor that seemed most apt struck me, and I can’t resist. This week, we had a Candy Land Certification of Donald Trump’s November electoral victory.

Virtually all are aware of the board game, Candy Land. We played Candy Land quite a bit with our grandchildren over the Holidays, as we had with our children at the same ages. A player’s victory or loss depends entirely upon what s/he draws from a shuffled deck of colored cards that coordinate with colored squares on the path to the Candy Castle. Wikipedia describes the game as “… suitable for young children. No strategy is involved … .”

That said, precisely what makes the game suitable for young children – its simplicity and random nature – makes it difficult for an oldster to “fix” the game so that a young player wins, even if the oldster is so inclined. (Some are, some aren’t; we’ll leave the benefit of each approach to parenting and grandparenting specialists 🙂 ). Over the Holidays, we found that our young family members would be happy when they won – peace would reign – or very upset when they lost – tantrums might erupt. They are all wonderful kids; we are inordinately proud of each of them; their behavior was the same as I remember our kids’ being 35 years ago, and I am confident that they will all learn to maturely deal with defeat as their parents have. (I recall that my own ability to handle defeat in my early grade school years left a lot to be desired; one might well infer from these notes that my demeanor hasn’t improved much 😉 ).

You know where I’m going with this. Despite all the bromides now being cast out about “the peaceful transfer of power,” peace is only prevailing in our land because Mr. Trump won. If the vote totals between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris had been exactly reversed in the key swing states – Ms. Harris lost the three “Blue Wall” states that would have been enough for her to claim an Electoral College majority by an average of slightly over 1% — our land would have been torn apart over the last two months by lies, threats, spurious lawsuits, violence, MAGA state legislators’ attempts to override their states’ vote tabulations, and Congressional MAGAs’ baseless procedural challenges to Ms. Harris’ certification.

But this week, we had no tantrums. The kids are happy because they’re getting to enter the Candy Castle.

Lessons from Mr. Carter

As all are aware, former President Jimmy Carter, 100, died this past weekend. I’m acutely aware that a number of those reading this note can’t remember when Mr. Carter was president. As is appropriate when marking the passing of such a fine man, commentators – I noted that for the brief time we tuned in, even on Fox News – have emphasized Mr. Carter’s fundamental decency. The grotesque dichotomy between Mr. Carter’s character and that of the next occupant of the Oval Office need not be remarked upon here; it speaks for itself. (I do admit that I relish the notion that older Evangelical leaders’ contemplations of Mr. Carter may be causing them to rue, however briefly, how far their movement has strayed over the last 50 years for what it considers expediency.)

As someone who does remember Mr. Carter’s presidency, a number of lessons have occurred to me:

First, he ran a revolutionary campaign in 1976. As hard as it might be for younger Americans to now appreciate, the Deep South was nowhere, politically, in 1976. To be successful, any presidential candidate’s timing has to be right, and has been repeatedly remarked, Mr. Carter’s sincere morality provided the perfect contrast to the sordid revelations of then-former President Richard Nixon’s Watergate; but it was more than that. Mr. Carter and his advisors [Chief Campaign Strategist (and later White House Chief of Staff) Hamilton Jordan and his closest confidante (aside from Mrs. Carter) (and later White House Press Secretary) Jody Powell (both of whom were about 20 years younger than Mr. Carter, and both of whom passed away in the 2000s)] devised a strategy in which he would make an early first impression – and hopefully win – the Iowa Caucuses and then contrast himself from his multiple liberal adversaries for the Democratic nomination by taking positions that were more conservative (except on civil rights, where Mr. Carter’s record was impeccable; African American support was his base) than those held by the rest of the field. Nobody outside of Iowa had ever heard of the Iowa Caucuses before 1976. The Carter Campaign realized that Mr. Carter’s background – an Evangelical, a farmer, a military background – was perfectly tailored for Iowa, and that the national media loved the new, the different. They made Iowa matter, he won, and rode the momentum to a victory in the New Hampshire primary. He was on his way – and won a bunch of subsequent primaries by taking about 30% of the vote while the liberal field split the remaining 70%. (President-Elect Donald Trump employed a version of the strategy — undoubtedly without recognizing the parallel to Mr. Carter’s – to win the 2016 Republican presidential nomination).

Mr. Carter’s narrow victory over then-President Gerald Ford is further evidence of a point I have made here several times in connection with my father, a rock-ribbed Republican who nonetheless passionately supported John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, in 1960: Mr. Carter needed and swept the Electoral College votes of the Deep South, although I would venture that the majority of those states’ voters were closer to Mr. Ford on substantive issues than they were to Mr. Carter. It didn’t matter; Mr. Carter’s election psychologically empowered them in the same manner that Mr. Kennedy’s did for Catholics and former President Barack Obama’s did for African Americans a generation later. (When campaigning in the South, Mr. Carter would grin, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a president who doesn’t speak with an accent?” The South, which had been trending Republican before Mr. Carter’s 1976 run, returned resoundingly to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.) (The one group that has not been decisively motivated by common identity is women, demonstrating both why we should have a woman president, and why we don’t.)

I will venture that as president, Mr. Carter knew how to manage but didn’t know how to lead. (A criticism he himself acknowledged but didn’t agree with.) Legendary Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives “Tip” O’Neill once remarked – my words, but his meaning – that Mr. Carter knew more about policy and less about Congressional dynamics than any president he ever worked with. Last fall, we took a trip to the United Kingdom, and while there I was particularly struck by the simultaneous lunacy and brilliance of the British system. The vast majority of the UK citizens we talked to had respect for and loyalty to King Charles (although clearly not the reverence they held for his late Mum 😉 ) while mostly disparaging their elected representatives (the current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, had just assumed his post; I couldn’t remember his name, and most of them couldn’t, either). The allegiance the Brits have for Charles — whose crown in the official photo seems (aptly, to me) slightly askew – who sits in opulence, separated only by an accident of birth from the guy on a pub stool down the street from the Palace — seemed absurd to my American eyes; at the same time, no matter how contentiously Brits may disagree on the policies of the ruling government, they all have the King to rally around. Although Prime Ministers have rallied the UK – Winston Churchill being the most renowned example – for the most part, it is the Monarch who is the communal foundation. I envy the touchstone of unity that the monarchy provides UK citizens. We Americans expect our Presidents to be both King – to lead majestically – and Prime Minister – to get the minutia right. Very, very few men (not only have all of our presidents been men; I fear that all will be men for the remainder of my lifetime) are good at both. Required to choose, we Americans seem to prefer presidents who lead with broad flourishes: in the last century, Messrs. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, Obama, Trump. We seemingly have less patience for presidents, no matter how arguably successful on paper, who govern in a more ministerial fashion: Messrs. Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Biden. Mr. Carter made a fine Prime Minister but a poor King. He checked a number of substantive boxes, but failed to hold the American imagination. His challenge as president was perhaps best captured in the Iranian hostage crisis: he did, in the end, through patience and persistence, bring the hostages home – an achievement for which their families and all rejoiced on a human level – but at a cost of leaving Americans feeling impotent, humiliated by Iran, then a third-rate nation with nothing but oil going for it. What Mr. Carter achieved – saving the hostages while avoiding a Mideast war – was commendable. It is not nearly so clear that his approach was the wisest strategically.

Mr. Carter taught me a lesson about myself – one that I suspect he would not appreciate — that indeed was part of the genesis of the title of this site. Never over the last 50 years have I been as passionately for a candidate as I was for Mr. Carter in 1976. (I have since been at least as passionately against a candidate, but you know that 😉 .) In 1976, I had nothing against Mr. Ford; I had simply become a true believer in Mr. Carter. I was absolutely confident that Mr. Carter would really make a difference, truly lead us in a new direction. For me, his presidency was a terrible disappointment. [I guess that at bottom, I am among those Americans that prefer majesty (while hoping the president has an able staff in the background 🙂 ) to ministry.] In 1980, my vote for Ronald Reagan was not a vote for Mr. Reagan but a vote against Mr. Carter. If you now dismiss my initial expectations as youthful exuberance, I will not disagree; but the fact remains that between 1977 and 1981 I realized, and have always thereafter recognized, that if I could be that wrong about a candidate, any notion I had about any candidate or issue, no matter how firmly held, could simply be … only so much noise.

That said, I leave the most important lesson for last: Mr. Carter’s example after leaving the White House. I would venture that there can hardly be a more bitter blow to one’s psyche than to win the U.S. presidency – to ascend to the highest secular height that the modern world offers – to work as hard at the job as Mr. Carter did, and then … to be so humiliatingly cast aside (Mr. Reagan won 44 states). In Mr. Carter’s post presidency – I think that even the notion of a “post presidency,” and the term, “Post-President” were generated because of Mr. Carter – he taught us that even following the most emotionally devastating defeat, there is much good one can do if one has the gumption to get up and do it. So even at this time when some of us are terribly disillusioned, his example provides encouragement that there is much good to be done – not only in the realm of policy and politics, but also to better the everyday situations of those less fortunate around us.

We just need to see what can be done, and get up and do it.

Gratias tibi, Mr. President. Requiescat in pace.

Back At Ya

President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden (“hereafter, “Hunter”), yesterday seemed to me worthy of a short note. At some point in January before Inauguration Day, I’ll do a post on Mr. Biden’s conduct of the presidency, but the pardon will only be addressed here.

While the media is harrumphing that the President “lied” when he indicated while running for a second term that he would not pardon Hunter, and I would have considered the action dishonorable a month ago, I now consider it to be irrelevant whether Mr. Biden was lying or simply had a change of heart since the election. I also consider it irrelevant that President-Elect Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and the alt-right media propagandists will constantly cite Hunter’s pardon as rationalization for every disreputable action they hereafter take; masters of “whataboutism” that they are, if they didn’t have the pardon to yell about, they’d find something else. (If they even care to justify their actions; I suspect that soon if not immediately, they won’t even bother to try.)

It was the American people who pardoned Hunter. The vast majority of American eligible voters – not only those who affirmatively voted for Mr. Trump, but perhaps as many more who didn’t care enough about our democracy and way of life to go to the polls to vote against him – blatantly demonstrated that they don’t give a damn about self-dealing, lying, or respecting the rule of law. Why should Mr. Biden be expected to act in disregard of their evident sentiments?

I had already determined since the election that when referring to the actions of Mr. Trump and his acolytes in future posts, I wouldn’t allude much to the Constitution, federal law, or authorities such as The Federalist for what the Founding Fathers might have intended; Mr. Trump, MAGAs, Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court and a majority of the American people have already made a mockery of those standards. So, reflecting purely by what seems right to me, since hearing of the pardon I have considered the mood of an 82-year-old man, whose heart has been broken by the majority of Americans’ willingness to turn their backs on the American principles he has spent his life defending, faced with the prospect that he would probably die with his son in a prison system controlled by the unscrupulous who hate him. Of course, he would pardon his son. I would. Any parent reading this who wouldn’t should immediately place his/her children up for adoption.

I would submit that the pardon also represents a “Back at Ya” from Mr. Biden to the American people for their disregard of his half-century of service. It would be from me, were I in his place. (I know; “Back at Ya” is merely a euphemism; but someday my grandchildren may read these notes 😉 .)

May the Biden Clan have a Very Merry Christmas.

A Little Bit of Heaven

At Mass a couple of weeks ago, I heard the best sermon I have ever heard in my life – and that’s covering a lot of sermons – offered by Fr. Thomas Hagan, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, founder of Hands Together, the nonprofit he started in 1986 after leaving the Princeton University Chaplaincy. Hands Together provides educational, pastoral and humanitarian development to Haiti’s largest and poorest slum, Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil. Before he recounted the horrendous conditions which residents of Cité Soleil endure – they not only suffer extreme destitution, but are now subject to the terror of the gang anarchy dominating Haiti — Fr. Hagen, approximately 80, of Irish ancestry, began by describing his childhood with his siblings in a working class area of Philadelphia, and indicated that as he grew up, his father often repeated that his family provided him “a little bit of heaven” on earth.

A Little Bit of Heaven. I suspect that in many instances, Thanksgiving will mark the first occasion since the presidential election that family members holding fiercely contrasting political perspectives will be together. No matter whether one eagerly awaits or fearfully dreads what will follow Inauguration Day, during this Holiday let all of us who are blessed with family embrace that Little Bit of Heaven that our loved ones provide, and take a minute to say a prayer for or otherwise remember those who are not as fortunate. Also, consider whether you experienced a particular blessing during the past year for which you are truly, truly thankful. We did.

Fr. Hagan was in Madison rather than in Haiti because he was evacuated from Haiti earlier this year due to death threats against him; other members of the Hands Together organization had previously been captured, tortured, and killed. His most recent attempt to return to his adopted land was abandoned literally in-flight due to reports that gangs were shooting at planes attempting to land at the Port-au-Prince airport. Recognizing that this is the time of year that all with an address are deluged with solicitations for charitable contributions, I am including a link at the bottom of this note for any with an interest in Fr. Hagan’s mission. I admit that I was very taken with the fact that almost thirty years ago he left what was clearly a pretty comfortable position at Princeton to undertake the work he has.

In a number of past Thanksgiving notes I have included a link to one of the West Wing vignettes relating to Thanksgiving. Aaron Sorkin’s Thanksgiving scenes ranged from the patriotic to the humorous. The one below was perhaps his best expression in the series of the love and tradition that is family.

Happy Holiday.

https://www.handstogether.org/

On the Power of Faith

[As always, please excuse my use of male pronouns when referring to a Supreme Being without gender.]

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln regularly pondered the irony that two sets of peoples were fervently praying to the same Deity for diametrically opposed ends. In September, 1862, he wrote:

“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for, and against, the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something quite different from the purpose of either party – yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose.” [Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s]

In a letter to a friend on September 4, 1864, Mr. Lincoln wrote:

“The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. … God knows best … We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains.”

Finally, in his March, 1865, Second Inaugural Address, delivered on the cusp of what had become an overwhelmingly-likely Union victory, Mr. Lincoln noted the aspect that faith was playing in the conflict:

“Both [Union and Confederate adherents] read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. … The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

For someone who has been so viscerally engaged in our current electoral struggle, I find myself, if not serene, with at least a level of equanimity as we contemplate today’s uncertain outcome. I have realized that it is because I believe – as Mr. Lincoln held – that God knows best. What follows is the passage we chose as our wedding Gospel so many decades ago and has since been included in each of our children’s wedding celebrations:

“Therefore, I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. … Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of much more value than they?

… Consider how the lilies of the field grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which flourishes today but tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, O you of little faith?

Therefore, do not be anxious … But seek first the kingdom of God and His justice ….”

Matthew, 6:25-26, 28-31, 33

As this Election Day unfolds, I know what I think is the best way forward for our country; but about half of my fellow citizens feel just as strongly to the contrary. I have frequently referred in these pages to what I consider to be our struggle to maintain democracy; yet it cannot be forgotten that the peaceful expressions of different views are the essence of a democracy. Given these circumstances, I feel fortunate – nae, blessed – to have the consolation of my faith. Today, I am confining my prayers to this: that the Almighty bring about the victory of the presidential candidate who will do the most good for our nation, our children, our grandchildren, and – given our geopolitical, financial, and military standing in the world – who will provide the most good for all of His people of the earth.

If you haven’t yet voted, quit reading this and go vote. If you have voted, it’s time to sit back and embrace what has been, for over two centuries, the most magnificent expression of public will in the history of the world.

September Notions

Our recent ramblings have provided little opportunity to post in these pages. A few notions over the last couple of months:

First, a mea culpa: I indicated in an August preview of the Democratic Convention, “I suspect that there will be no rising Democratic stars given prime time speaking slots … I doubt that delegates will be offered any opportunity for second guessing, … thinking … ‘“We nominated the wrong ‘guy’.”’ In fact, every rising star I listed by name in that post spoke, as well as everybody who wants to be a rising Democratic star, as well as your Uncle Fred. Democratic Presidential Nominee Vice President Kamala Harris obviously emerged from the convention stronger than before. Well, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once observed: “I have never developed indigestion from eating my own words.” 🙂 .

As of the time this is typed, Ms. Harris has run a truly effective campaign. Keeping in mind that I am frequently – and accurately — chided as Mr. Pessimism, I consider her performance thus far to continue to offer her a real chance for victory against the implacable support of MAGA Presidential Nominee former President Donald Trump. (I can’t be more bullish than that.) I thought her debate performance was masterful; she has clearly grown exponentially as a debater since her 2020 run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. She baited Mr. Trump while she ignored his barbs and kept repeating her own messages, demonstrating better control than I think I could have mustered. Yet more intriguing was her strategy to let Mr. Trump talk. Although Mr. Trump whined about the ABC moderators’ unfairness in the wake of his obvious debate debacle, I counted only three times when the moderators corrected his obvious lies, but many more than three times when the moderators turned his microphone back on, contrary to my understanding of the debate rules, to let him respond to a point she had made. At the time, I was irritated at the moderators; in retrospect, I realized that she hadn’t objected because she recognized that once she gotten him off-stride, his talking helped her. All that said, I found her 63%-37% victory in CNN’s snap poll of undecided watchers to be instructive. In a sane world, she should have won 100% – 0%. Even so, from the perspective of the real world to which we have become accustomed, I scored it closer — perhaps 55% – 45%. Hopefully, whomever she swayed in the debate will remain in her camp. To her credit, Ms. Harris is seeming to continue to run with an underdog mentality. She had better.

We’ve heard a lot about Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, popularly known as, “Project 2025,” the Heritage Foundation 900+ page opus setting forth a policy framework for Mr. Trump or some other MAGA winning the White House. I try to avoid expounding on a subject without reading the primary source myself. Months ago, I started visiting the Heritage Foundation website to buy a copy (the Heritage Foundation has posted full test online, but these old eyes can’t withstand 900+ pages onscreen), but for all these months, the volume has remained sold out. Any political think tank normally looks to grab any dollar it can. I have read snippets of the work, and think it is fair to infer from the Heritage Foundation’s otherwise curious failure to reprint a sure income generator that the Foundation – as well as Mr. Trump, who has tried to distance himself from it in front of mainstream audiences while embracing it in MAGA conclaves – recognizes that most Americans would find its prescriptions as anathematic as liberals and progressives claim they are. For those with stronger eyes than mine, a link to the volume’s pdf is set forth immediately below.

2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf (project2025.org)

I hate it when I am scooped by national media on a Wisconsin-related point that I intended to enter here 😉 ; I will enter it here nonetheless. On September 20, the New York Times ran an article, “How the Fastest-Growing County in Wisconsin Is Scrambling the Presidential Race,” describing how technology and science workers are flooding into Dane County (where Madison is located) and how these voters may be shifting the statewide balance toward Ms. Harris and away from Mr. Trump. A link is provided below for those who can get behind the Times’ paywall. TLOML and I happen to live on Madison’s west side amid burgeoning technology and science concerns. We see it first-hand. At rush hour, it is now a struggle to even get on the entrance ramps to Madison’s primary expressway that are respectively east and west of our home. It has never been this way – not even four years ago, when President Joe Biden narrowly bested Mr. Trump in Wisconsin where the Dane County turnout – not the Milwaukee County turnout – was ultimately considered decisive. These new Dane County residents are young, highly educated, overwhelmingly progressive, motivated to vote, and present a decided advantage for Ms. Harris.

Feeling good about Wisconsin? And yet, a note of caution. Recall that in 2022, White WI Gov. Tony Evers beat his MAGA opponent by three points, while Black WI Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes lost by a point to White Trump Toady U.S. WI Sen. Ron Johnson, who ran a crime-focused, thinly-veiled race-baiting campaign. This state is a long way from former President Barack Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012. The Democrats’ last female presidential nominee, former U.S. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, lost to Mr. Trump although Mr. Trump had made clear his intent to appoint Supreme Court Justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade. In both 2016 and 2020, Mr. Trump ended up with a higher percentage of the Wisconsin vote than polls had suggested he would; it is accordingly not unreasonable to anticipate that such might occur again this year. We won’t know the Wisconsin outcome until late on election night or the next day, when the vote counts in the Republican-leaning counties around Milwaukee report; Mr. Biden won in 2020 – by a narrower margin than Mr. Trump had in 2016 – because these Republican strongholds didn’t give Mr. Trump enough boost to overcome Mr. Biden’s Milwaukee and Dane County totals.

I’ve been cleaning out my study, getting rid of documents that no longer matter (at least insofar as the their impact on the upcoming election is concerned). It is stunning to see how much water – or better said, bile – has flowed under the bridge since Mr. Trump came down his escalator to start his 2016 presidential campaign: the Mueller Report; former U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s written attempt to whitewash the Mueller Report; the U.S. Senate Report on Russian interference in 2016 Election on Mr. Trump’s behalf; the Memorandum of the Mr. Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment resolutions against Mr. Trump; the federal indictments handed down against Mr. Trump for defrauding the United States and mishandling of classified documents. There is so much filth connected to one man that you can’t really mentally grasp it all at once, although we have lived it. If I had been presented in 2014 with the hypothetical that a Trump-like demagogue could rise in this country – not only preaching populism and racism but carrying all the ancillary personal baggage that Mr. Trump carries, I would have dismissed it as pure fantasy.

I pitched it all. Old news. While one might argue that the sleaze is why so many Americans detest Mr. Trump, the fact remains that today he nonetheless remains an extremely viable, if not the leading, candidate for the presidency of the United States. It is a frightening example of the powers of propaganda and hate that Adolf Hitler elucidated in Mein Kampf over a century ago.

A related notion: an indication how Mr. Trump’s influence has finally completely contaminated the previously-conservative political ecosystem: the hullaballoo attending MAGA Vice Presidential Nominee U.S. OH Sen. J.D. Vance’s despicable trumpeting of entirely false claims that legal Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, OH. Let’s put aside the irony, noted by some commentators, that in Hillbilly Elegy (which I have read, published when Mr. Vance was a sane voice before morphing into Junior Demagogue), Mr. Vance describes Ohioans’ bias in the 1950s against Mr. Vance’s own Kentucky Hillbilly forebears for allegedly engaging in practices not dissimilar from those for which he now loudly condemns the Haitians. To me the crucial point is that Mr. Vance has admitted that what he is saying about the Springfield Haitians is a lie – that there is no evidence it is happening – and he keeps on with it anyway. I’m a political junkie. As certain as death and more certain than taxes is that all politicians fudge, exaggerate, distort. They always have; they always will. That said, before Mr. Trump, I think it was extremely rare to find a politician who would know something was a lie, get called on it, and just blatantly, nakedly, keep on lying. Mr. Trump has now spawned a whole generation of politicians in his image who have no regard for truth, Mr. Vance now being the scariest of his progeny, because we must now assume that he will keep up his assault on truth à la Mr. Trump if he becomes Vice President, or … President of the United States.

We had the opportunity to hear former U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney speak on September 20. Although my views vary from Ms. Cheney’s on domestic issues, my respect for her patriotism and, as a Republican, lonely stand against Mr. Trump has earned my unbounded respect. Although I consider the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, strongly supported if not spearheaded by her father, then-Vice President Richard Cheney, to be the most egregious foreign policy failure of the last 50 years, Mr. Cheney, like his daughter, has forthrightly endorsed Ms. Harris due to the threat to democracy they recognize in Mr. Trump. For the remainder of my days, no matter how I feel about the Iraq invasion, I will always have the mental qualifier about Mr. Cheney: on the most important issue of his conscious lifetime (he was, after all, born during World War II 🙂 ) … he got it right.

At the same time, my current disdain for the reticence of former President George W. Bush cannot be overstated. I agree with pundits who suggest that given the hundreds of prominent Republicans (including former Trump Administration officials) who have already spoken out against Mr. Trump, additional Republicans endorsing Ms. Harris won’t matter, with one exception: Mr. Bush. It is common knowledge that he despises Mr. Trump. To speak plainly: if he has any guts, he should issue a statement to this effect: “During my presidency, I asked our people to give their lives in our nation’s cause. The least I owe them is to tell them directly what I think is best for our nation. I consider Donald Trump to present a direct threat to American democracy. I have honest disagreements with Vice President Kamala Harris on many issues, but she is honorable and will safeguard our way of life. I encourage you to join me in voting for Ms. Harris in the upcoming election.” If Mr. Bush fails to issue such a statement within the next couple of weeks – before advance voting starts in earnest across the country — he will for all time confirm what many of us have long concluded: he was indeed the wanting son of truly remarkable parents.

Finally, something particularly struck me watching the Democratic convention: it was (to state the obvious) a celebration of the predominantly young, multi-colored, multi-ethnic, multi-gender, multi-faithed. It presented a gender, youth, and racial revolution away from our traditional male, white, straight, Christian mores which was markedly more pronounced to me this year than it was in earlier electoral cycles in this century when the Democrats nominated other objectively tradition-shattering candidates — more so than in 2008, with Mr. Obama (cerebral, reserved, witty, beautifully tailored, traditional husband and father, Christian, Ivy graduate, incredible orator, another John Kennedy in all ways but skin color, who went to great lengths to not look threatening), or in 2016 with Ms. Clinton (a traditional Democratic presidential candidate in all ways but gender who was burdened, by having been in the public eye for so long, with sufficient baggage that she somehow forfeited the “change agent” mantle to Mr. Trump). I would submit that the cultural evolution that we have been more or less considering in these last decades is now upon us. We are at the tipping point. Ms. Harris represents not a rejection of tradition but the notion that our nation can accommodate more than one cultural paradigm. Mr. Trump is the embodiment of the posture that there can be only one. I don’t know which way this struggle will go; but I do believe that whether our nation will flourish or wither over the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren depends upon the outcome.

This is what occurs when one ponders without the attendant opportunity to expound 😉 . We’ll see what happens.

Mr. Lincoln on Labor’s Importance … and Immigrants’ Contributions

President Abraham Lincoln was elected in November, 1860, but under the then-prevailing Constitutional provision, would not be inaugurated until March, 1861. Mr. Lincoln began his trip to Washington, D.C., in February, 1861, after indicating in a Farewell Address to his fellow Springfield residents, “I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.” Upon his railway trip east, he made a stop in Cincinnati on February 12, 1861 – his birthday – and addressed a group including German immigrant laborers. It seems fitting to note his remarks in these pages as we celebrate Labor Day:

“I agree … that the working men are the basis of all governments … I am happy to concur … in these sentiments, not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind. …

In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I esteem them no better than other people, nor any worse. It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke, than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Inasmuch as our country is extensive and new … if there are any abroad who desire to make this the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to throw aught in their way, to prevent them from coming to the United States.”

It only occurred to me as I was typing this note that my father-in-law, of German heritage, who I came to revere before he left us too soon, was born in Cincinnati in 1923, only a few generations after Mr. Lincoln made his stop in the Queen City. It is improbable but seemingly not impossible that he, and if so, TLOML, our children and grandchildren, are descendants of one of the men that sought assurance from Mr. Lincoln that day in 1861 that the nation he had been elected to lead would give them a fair opportunity for a better life. It is a certainty that our children and grandchildren are descendants of Irish immigrants who were derided when they landed here as limited, brawling Papists who could never be true Americans.

One might question whether our country is still as Mr. Lincoln described it over 150 years ago – i.e., whether it remains “extensive and new.” I believe that it is. The majority of Americans – ironically, certainly the vast majority of those who today seemingly most dread immigrant influences — need only drive short distances from their homes (if they need travel at all) to appreciate our vast expanses; those fearful should perhaps consider from whom they are descended. It is the courageous, entrepreneurial, industrious, open spirit of those who have entered our nation over these last centuries that has made America great. Our nation is and will remain forever “new” as long as we are willing to replenish our spirit and strength through the labor of both our native-born citizens and those who wish to join us to work to create a better life for themselves and their families.

Enjoy the Holiday.

What Makes America Beautiful?

[Marking a national holiday usually prompts me to enter an optimistic note born of the festive nature of the occasion. Given former President Donald Trump’s lead over President Joe Biden in most polls – despite Mr. Trump’s adjudicated criminality and abhorrent conduct of the presidency, which culminated in the storming of our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021 – this anniversary of the founding of our nation seems to me instead the right time for each of us to ponder what sort of America we want. A close friend of ours – an ardent Trump supporter, who vehemently maintains that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump — recently said to one of us, “Democrats are destroying this beautiful country of ours.” No matter what else I have ever said or will ever say about Mr. Trump in these pages, there is one area in which I have absolute faith in him: If he is elected in November, he will do what he says he will do. What follows is a post published on September 30, 2021; since it seems even more relevant today than it was then, I am taking the liberty of reentering it here.]

On the Quest for an American Apartheid

Earlier this week, I entered a link in these pages to Robert Kagan’s September 23, 2021, Washington Post essay, “Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here.” There, Mr. Kagan wrote in part:

“Trump is different, which is one reason the political system has struggled to understand, much less contain, him. The American liberal worldview tends to search for material and economic explanations for everything, and no doubt a good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in life. But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican Party establishment as corrupt and weak — ‘losers,’ to use Trump’s word, unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony. They view Trump as strong and defiant, willing to take on the establishment, Democrats, RINOs, liberal media, antifa, the Squad, Big Tech and the ‘Mitch McConnell Republicans.’ His charismatic leadership has given millions of Americans a feeling of purpose and empowerment, a new sense of identity.”

While Mr. Kagan spent much of his piece focusing on the dangers to our system of government presented by former President Donald Trump and his nationwide network of Republican acolytes, in the passage above he referenced what I consider to be the primary source of our danger: us. We are no longer, as we were taught in the Pledge of Allegiance, “One nation … indivisible.” United States citizens have two wildly divergent and deeply engrained inclinations as to what makes America. Speaking in generalizations, one segment — demographically older, white, professed Christian, sexually straight, English-speaking, and more rural in outlook — views America to be the product of traditional American ethnicities, customs, cultural experience, and memory; the other segment — younger, multi-complexioned, multi-theistic/atheistic, multi-lingual, multi-sexual and -gender, and more urban, with relatively lesser regard for traditional American experience and memory – views America as a system of government providing each individual the freedom, within the purview of the safety of the body politic, to not conform to traditional American customs and values.

What makes America … America?

If any reader of these pages is willing to review a volume s/he may well find abhorrent, I would recommend State of Emergency, written by former Republican Presidential Candidate Patrick Buchanan in 2006. Mr. Buchanan, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan White Houses, is – although reportedly called out for bigotry during his career by conservative commentators William F. Buckley, Jr. and Charles Krauthammer – both fluent and unquestionably knowledgeable about American history and policy. State of Emergency is primarily an assault on what Mr. Buchanan perceived as an unhealthy influx of Mexicans into American society. It is a book that Mr. Trump, if he knew history, would have conceived; if he could write, would have written. My familiarity with alt-right theorists isn’t that wide, but Mr. Buchanan’s candidacies were in retrospect clearly forerunners of Mr. Trump’s, and in State of Emergency he set forth what may be among the most articulate expression of the theories underlying what has become Trumpism:

“[Patriotism] is a passionate attachment to one’s own country – its land, its people, its past, its heroes, literature, language, traditions, culture, and customs. … There is a rival view … that America is a different kind of nation. Unlike Ireland, Italy, or Israel, the United States is not held together by the bonds of history and memory, tradition and custom, language and literature, birth and faith, blood and soil [Note: “Blood and Soil” was a Nazi slogan]. Rather, America is a creedal nation, united by a common commitment of all her citizens to a set of ideas and ideals. … Demonstrably, this is false. Human beings are not blank slates. Nor can they be easily separated from the abiding attachments of the tribe, race, nation, culture, community whence they came. Any man or any woman, of any color or creed, can be a good American. We know that from our history. But when it comes to the ability to assimilate into a nation like the United States, all nationalities, creeds, and cultures are not equal. To say that they are is ideology speaking, not judgment born of experience. … Should America lose her ethnic-cultural core and become a nation of nations, America will not survive.”

There are, ironically, corresponding echoes of Mr. Buchanan’s comments in Mr. Kagan’s essay:

“Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors and solid members of their communities. Their bigotry, for the most part, is typical white American bigotry, perhaps with an added measure of resentment and a less filtered mode of expression since Trump arrived on the scene. But these are normal people in the sense that they think and act as people have for centuries. They put their trust in family, tribe, religion and race. Although jealous in defense of their own rights and freedoms, they are less concerned about the rights and freedoms of those who are not like them. That, too, is not unusual. What is unnatural is to value the rights of others who are unlike you as much as you value your own.

…

The events of Jan. 6 … proved that Trump and his most die-hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms, just as revolutionary movements have in the past. While it might be shocking to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life [Emphasis Added].”

I infer from some passages in Mr. Kagan’s column that he considers regular Trump supporters — if not the arguably more sophisticated and partisan Republican Party officialdom — credulous, and to actually believe Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud; he left at least me with the impression that he thinks that if regular Trump supporters understood the truth, they’d begrudgingly accept the will of the majority even if they disagreed with it. If that is indeed his view, I am less sanguine. I would suggest that the majority of regular Trump supporters are simply choosing to indulge in the self-delusion of a fraudulent electoral process because it enables them to rationalize the anti-democratic steps they are either taking or condoning; that in their deepest recesses, the majority do know that Mr. Trump lost, and – much more importantly – have come to viscerally grasp that if our nation’s current demographic and political trends continue unchecked, what they consider America to be (in Mr. Buchanan’s phrase, “bonds of history and memory, tradition and custom, language and literature, birth and faith, blood and soil”) will fade away.

To Mr. Kagan, “… the American experiment in republican democracy requires … what the Framers meant by ‘republican virtue,’ a love of freedom not only for oneself but also as an abstract, universal good; a love of self-government as an ideal; a commitment to abide by the laws passed by legitimate democratic processes … ”

To Mr. Buchanan, America is as he quoted Framer John Jay from Federalist No. 2: “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people – a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs …”

I’ve previously noted in these pages that William Galston reported in Anti-Pluralism that Mr. Trump himself indicated in a speech in May, 2016, that “The only important thing is the unification of the people. [T]he other people don’t mean anything [Emphasis Added].”

It has become cliché that the voter suppression measures being enacted by cooperative Republican-controlled state legislatures and the current dust-ups in various states about alleged 2020 election fraud aren’t, despite Mr. Trump’s protestations, about the 2020 outcome, but rather to limit opposition voter turnout, lay a foundation of doubt about the veracity of our electoral processes, and have in place the mechanisms (state legislative overrides; friendly election officials; sympathetic judges) to avert any 2022 and 2024 electoral outcomes that Mr. Trump and his followers don’t like. (They must have realized the need for these latter official safeguards given the determinative number of Independents and traditional Republicans that voted against Mr. Trump in 2020.) Trumplicans have come to recognize that if all legally authorized voters cast ballots, they will lose significantly more than they win – either now, or in the foreseeable future. They don’t believe that “constitutional and democratic norms,” to use Mr. Kagan’s phrase, constitute America. Their measures are intended to save their America of (paraphrasing Mr. Jay) ancestry, language, religion, manner and custom.

Most of us have some background regarding South African Apartheid, which prevailed in some form from about 1910 until the early 1990s, most virulently starting in the late 1940s. My own information was limited to an understanding that it was legalized subjugation by a small white minority (about 15% of the population) over the significant black majority (85%). One of the theories for the institution of Apartheid, according to “The Origins of Apartheid” by the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, is that white Afrikaner Nationalists “feared that the Afrikaner’s very existence was threatened by the mass of Africans that confronted them in South Africa;” and that this fear resulted in “a range of laws that were passed … to preserve this ‘God-given Afrikaner identity [Emphasis Added].” In “The Evolution and Fall of the South African Apartheid State: A Political Economy Perspective,” John M. Luiz wrote, “[In 1948 the manifesto of the National Party (NP)] was that of apartheid and Afrikaner empowerment … [S]oon after coming into power, the government put into operation a three-pronged strategy designed to further the interests of Afrikaner nationalism. … The government set about Afrikanerising [sic] every state institution by appointing Afrikaners to every level of the civil service, state corporations, and security forces.”

No one that reads these pages will be a bit surprised that I am most comfortable with traditional norms. Although I’ve been told by someone very close to me that I am privileged, I feel no guilt about being who I am. In my estimation, the so-called “Woke” frequently overreact, sometimes grossly so. That said, I subscribe to the view that America is a creedal nation; that it should be governed through a system that pursues the will of a majority of its citizens who are all able to vote under an impartially-administered set of fair rules, while at the same time furnishing sufficient safeguards for the civic and human rights of the minority. I fear that those sympathetic to Mr. Trump and the actions of his acolytes think otherwise. While I concede that many Trump supporters are seeking to protect what they view as America, a significant number seem unfazed by the prospect that preserving their America may involve the suppression of the will of a peaceful, multi-complexioned and -faceted majority of U.S. citizens. Although I suspect that most would recoil if confronted with the notion, they are either actively or passively on a quest to establish an American Apartheid.

[Our friend’s vision of American beauty is clearly akin to that of Messrs. Buchanan and Trump. As we enjoy pleasant gatherings in the coming days, and inevitably hear the singing of “America the Beautiful,” it seems fitting to consider: What makes America beautiful to you?]