"Not With a Bang But a Whimper"

Poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), who was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature, was one of the twentieth century’s truly great literary downers. Among his best-known downers were The Waste Land (“April is the cruelest [sic]  month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land . . .), The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock (“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be . . .”), and above all, The Hollow Men with its soul-stirring last lines:

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

This is how the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

To be perfectly honest, I‘ve never been all that enamored with Eliot’s poetry; it is too dark, too disheartening and goyish for my tastes.  And yet, The Hollow Men has been crawling up my spine for the past several days . . . ever since former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani made a hair-dyed fool of himself at a nearly two-hour press conference, only to then be followed by Sidney Powell - another member of the Trump “illegal team” - who crazily insisted that her boss’s “overwhelming victory” was ruined by the worst, nastiest, most bestial political crime/conspiracy in all American history. Against all sanity and logic, Ms. Powell, while somehow maintaining a straight face, accused Republican officials of being involved in a payoff scheme to manipulate voting machines. Her ramblings also included a mishmash of lunacy involving Venezuelan Socialists, German Communists and, of course, financial bogeyman George Soros. And all the while, Rudy’s hair-dye continued its drip-drip-dripping from temple to zygomatic arch.  If this had been classic cinema, it no doubt would have starred Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester.

By day’s end, the Trump legal team (including Giuliani himself) issued a tweet stating “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own.  She is not part of the Trump Legal Team.  [sic] She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”  Talk about one’s world coming to an end “Not with a bang but a whimper.” Within 48 hours, things got even worse in Trumpland: Federal Judge Matthew Brann (a former conservative Republican and member in good standing of the Federalist Society who nonetheless was nominated by President Barack Obama to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2012) issued a scathing order dismissing the Trump campaign’s futile effort to block the certification of votes in Pennsylvania, shooting down claims of widespread irregularities with mail-in ballots. 

Brann wrote in his order that the Trump legal team had asked the court to disenfranchise almost 7 million voters. “One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption,” Brann wrote, so much that the court would have no option but to stop the certification even though it would impact so many people. “That has not happened,” he concluded. Having been legally mauled by Judge Brann in Pennsylvania, Trump decided to turn attention towards Michigan, and issued an invitation to Republican leaders of the Wolverine State legislature to come visit him at the White House, hoping against hope that he could convince them to “take one for the team” by invalidating hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes. Another foray into Never Never Land, another failure; the Michiganders refused to beckon to their leader’s call and announced that they would certify Biden’s victory.  The same thing happened with Georgia.

And that’s when the whimpering began in earnest . . . 

For the past 4+ years, a heck of a lot of political practitioners, writers and geeks have wondered aloud how and why the vast majority of Republican offer holders have stood mutely by while their beloved leader has trashed, humiliated and torn asunder the very fabric of American democracy.  How, we have queried, how is it possible for so many supposedly intelligent, patriotic people to let him get away with all the lies, the mindless dismantling of the America we know and love?  Isn’t there, we have cried out, even a single heroic voice on the other side of the aisle that is capable of shouting out “You have done enough! Have you left no sense of decency?” like Joseph Welch of old? Those who know their political history will remember that Welch’s words (which he delivered on June 9, 1954) were aimed at then-Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, who had turned the nation upside down and inside out with his paranoid conspiracy theories about the Communist takeover of America. Within 6 months of Welch’s rhetorical joust, the senate would censure McCarthy; within another 2 1/2 years, the disgraced “Tailgunner Joe,” long an alcoholic, died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 48.  (n.b. It should be noted that back in the 1950s, McCarthy’s chief political advisor/amanuensis was a young New York attorney named Roy Marcus Cohn; a generation later, this same Roy Cohn would become chief political advisor/groomer for one Donald John Trump.)

As the whimpering grows ever louder, we now learn from Watergate journalist and CNN analyst Carl Bernstein that there has long been a sizeable number of Republican officeholders who privately despise Trump, even as they have remained faithful to him in public.  Bernstein has now published a partial list of 21 Republican senators who have “privately expressed their disdain” for the president: the list includes Senators Rob Portman, Lamar Alexander, Ben Sasse, Roy Blunt, Lisa Murkowski, John Cornyn, Mitt Romney, Mike Braun, Todd Young, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley, Richard Burr, Pat Toomey, Martha McSally, Jerry Moran, Pat Roberts, and Richard Shelby. In an interview with Vanity Fair staff writer Eric Lutz, Bernstein said: “We are witnessing the mad king in the final days of his reign, willing to scorch the Earth of his country and bring down the whole system . . . They know what's going on.” '

Finally, yesterday the whimper became manifest; the world as Donald Trump and his legions have known it, began its final descent into oblivion. Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, announced that the transition from Trump to Biden could finally commence. In a memorandum sent to White House employees late last night, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, wrote that Ms. Murphy had made an “ascertainment” about the results of the 2020 election “to allow the start of a presidential transition.” (Interestingly, Trump tweeted that he - and he alone - was responsible for passing along the transitional key card to the Biden team.  This, of course, is yet another lie; federal law assigns this task to the GSA administrator alone . . . not the POTUS).

Almost immediately, the Biden transition team opened up their first “.gov” website: https://buildbackbetter.gov/ - and started announcing nominees for the new Cabinet. If you get a chance, follow this link and see who the President Elect has already nominated.  Unlike with the Trump administration, these nominees (Secretary of State [Anthony Blinken], Treasury [Janet Yellen], Homeland Security [Alejandro Mayorkas], Ambassador to the United Nations [Linda Thomas-Greenfield] (back to being a Cabinet-level appointment), National Security Advisor [Jake Sullivan] Director of National Intelligence [Avril Haines] and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate [Former Secretary of State John Kerry] as well as his first appointment, Chief of Staff Ron Klain, . . . these nominees are a highly impressive group. The caliber of these men and women, the diversity of their experience, and the fact that expertise - not loyalty - is the bedrock of their collective appeal is the bipolar opposite of what we’ve been experiencing since January 2017.

Indeed, the whimper with which the Trump years are ending, will no doubt continue to be heard for years and years to come.  The whimper of a loser who now, for perhaps the first time in his life, must face up the consequences of his actions. 

For as T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding, the fourth and final poem of his Four Quartets: 

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

42 days until the senate elections in Georgia;

57 days until the inauguration of the nation’s 46th President.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F Stone

There's Still a Lot of Work to Be Done

Last week’s theme song was “Dancing in the Streets” as immortalized by Martha and the Vandellas. And while people of a certain age undoubtedly remember Martha Reeves and her sisters (Lois and Delphine) for such classics as “Heatwave,” “Nowhere to Run,” “Jimmy Mack” (written by Phil Collins) and, “Quicksand,” very few are aware of the fact that Martha was also a “Motor City” political activist and an elected member of the Detroit City Council from 2005-2009.  Strong, proud and highly intelligent, Martha Reeves (who as of today is nearing 80 and still performing year round), always felt that there was more to life than simply entertaining . . . that “there’s still a lot of work to  be done.”

Yesterday’s “MAGA March” on D.C. didn’t come close to the million-man figure predicted by the White House or claimed by Presidential Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany.  While the gathering was taking place, their once-and-always POTUS was playing golf in Virginia.  He has yet to concede defeat, grant the incoming administration key cards so that they continue the serious work of transition, and no doubt hasn’t given thought to whether or not he will attend Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021.  Let us all presume that he will not . . . and for any number of reasons.  His absence from the inauguration will put him in a most select and historic crowd: In all American history, only 3 other presidents have absented themselves from their successor’s oath-taking: John Adams (1801) who left town for Massachusetts at 4:00 a.m. rather than smile upon Thomas Jefferson; his son John Quincy Adams (1829) who absolutely despised his successor, Andrew Jackson, and Andrew Johnson, the first “accidental president” (following the much beloved Abraham Lincoln’s assassination) and couldn’t even get his party’s nomination for a full term, and was thus succeeded by another much beloved figure: General U.S. Grant. (I for one find it fascinating that these three had the same initials: J.A., J.Q.A. and A.J.  Soon we will add another set of initials: D.J.T.)

(n.b. The fact that the incoming Biden administration is being denied access to the reins of government, while incredibly nasty and utterly amateurish, is not the end of the world.  Joe Biden is likely the best-prepared future President in American history.  His staff is equally ready and able to hit the ground running . . . and, he has every world leader’s home phone number . . .)

One has to believe that the main reason why DJT will never concede to President-elect Biden is that to do so would represent a double Trumpian first: the first time he has admitted defeat and the first time the spotlight will no longer be shining directly upon his pancaked punim . . . his face.  In a matter of weeks, he will have to face the daunting prospect of being without an income, a shield of legal invulnerability, and the very real prospect of being under multi indictments without a legal team to help protect him.  (Legal talent the likes of which he will no doubt require does not work pro bono, and the once-and-future ex POTUS has a long, long history of not paying his bills).

But just as President-elect Biden, Vice President-elect Harris and their blended staffs are already hard at work preparing to hit the ground running, so too must we - the nearly 79 million (as of this morning) people who voted for the Democratic ticket get back to work so as to insure that the United States Senate will be controlled by the party of Biden and Harris. If this does not occur - if Mitch McConnel continues on as Majority Leader, there is every reason to believe that he will spend at least the next 2 years making life miserable for the 46th POTUS. I can actually see him ordering his fellow Republicans to vote against virtually every Biden Cabinet nominee . . . perhaps not even calendaring them for committee hearings or visits (remember what he did to Federal Judge Merrick Garland during the last year of the Obama Administration?) What does McConnell care if he looks like a colossal horse’s rear end? It’s not as if he’s going to be running for reelection in 2026 when he’ll be 84 years old. He simply does not care what happens to the United States; he’s played his role to the hilt by paving the federal court system for the next 3-4 decades with judicial luddites . . .

No, we need to roll up our sleeves and get back to work; we need to fill the 2 remaining senate seats with Georgia Democrats Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff. Then the senate will be 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking 51st vote, and turning majority leadership over to New York Senator Chuck Schumer (or whomsoever the Democrats wish to elect).

Can Warnock defeat Kelly Loeffler and Ossoff defeat David Perdue?  Considering that the Biden/Harris ticket defeated Trump/Pence by slightly more than 14,000 votes (49.5%-49.2%) and that Trump/Pence will not be on the ballot January 5, 2021, there is a reasonable chance that  the Democrats can take back the Senate.  However, hoping is not nearly enough.  Contributions certainly help.  Both incumbents, Loeffler (likely the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate) and Perdue, can raise vast sums of money from their billionaire backers.  But so can Reverend Warnock and Mr. Ossoff . . . although their funding comes mostly from members of America’s middle class.  

Republican strategists have already attempted to block contributions from potential Jewish donors by claiming that the two Democratic candidates are both devout “tax and spend Marxists,” are anti-Israel (if not anti-Semitic) and will thus do everything in their power to destroy American Democracy. In other words, they are using the Trump playbook.  In one of her first ads, Senator Loeffler painted the Black pastor of the Atlanta church once led by Martin Luther King Jr, as a police-hating, Castro-loving Marxist. "This is America, her ad ran; “Will it still be if the radical left controls the Senate?" the narrator asks, while images show street riots.

Warnock has made climate change and environmental justice an important part of his campaign. Loeffler avoids talking about climate and boasts of being the senator most loyal to President Trump, who has led the nation out of the Paris climate accord and pursued energy policies that champion the fossil fuel industry. 

On Election day, Nov. 3, Warnock topped a field of 20 candidates running in a "jungle primary" special election that included Loeffler, who Gov. Brian Kemp appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Johnny Isakson in late 2019. Warnock received 32.9 percent of the vote, while Loeffler got 25.9 percent. Her main Republican challenger, Rep. Doug Collins, received 19.9 percent.

Warnock has already begun attempting to preemptively inoculate himself from Loeffler's attacks in ads of his own. In one, he says: "Get ready Georgia. The negative ads are coming. Kelly Loeffler doesn't want to talk about why she's for getting rid of healthcare in the middle of a pandemic. So she's going to try to scare you with lies about me." 

He also told voters on election night that he plans to "lean in" to his biography—that he is one of 12 children; the product of public housing and federal programs that helped him become the first member of his family to graduate from college.

"If you need somebody who will stand up for ordinary people, here I am. Send me," Warnock said.

Loeffler and her strategists have also done their utmost to paint Warnock as being an anti-Israel and anti-Semite. They did this by repeatedly bringing up a May 2018 sermon Warnock gave at the time Trump moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in which he flatly asserted that the move was meant mostly to please the president’s evangelical supporters. Additionally, Warnock has been accused of being in favor of the BDS (“Boycott, Divest, Sanction”) movement and supports a two-state solution (as do a majority of Jewish Americans). In recent polling, Warnock is a clear favorite of Jewish voters in Georgia.

Warnock has the endorsement of Georgia’s only Jewish state senator, Democrat Mike Wilensky, as well as several Jewish US senators and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a progressive pro-Israel group. This past Tuesday, he tweeted its support for Warnock.

Defenders of Warnock point to Loeffler’s affiliation with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the recently elected representative for Georgia’s 14th District who has advanced the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory. Loeffler campaigned with Greene just before Election Day.

“Reverend Warnock stands with the Jewish community, Jewish values, and stands with Israel; that’s why I support his candidacy to the United States Senate,” Biden organizer Ben Kanas tweeted on Tuesday. “His opponent stands against Jewish values and embraces those who favor the antisemitism of QAnon.”

During the other senate race - that between incumbent David Purdue and businessman/political activist/former/Congressional staffer Jon Ossoff, Perdue’s strategy centered around reminding George voters time and again that Ossoff is Jewish. During their one and only televised debate, Ossoff attacked his opponent, saying “First, you were lengthening my nose in attack ads to remind everybody that I’m Jewish; then when that didn’t work, you started calling me some kind of an Islamic terrorist And then, when then that didn’t work you started calling me a Chinese communist.”

“Instead of leading and inspiring, he stoops to mocking the heritage of his political opponents,” Ossoff, the Democratic nominee, said when sharing a clip from the debate on Twitter.

The video got a quarter of a million views within 48 hours. Another video grab from the debate, in which Ossoff accused Perdue of insider trading for buying stock in personal protective equipment after a private January briefing for senators on the potential for a coronavirus pandemic, has gotten more than 12 million views. Perdue denies insider trading accusations. That’s when he started referring to Ossoff as a “Chinese communist.”  He also announced that he  would no longer participate in any future debates.

In addition to contributing to Warnock’s and Ossoff’s campaign, we can assist by sending out postcards to potential Georgia voters. If you would like to take part in this simple yet highly effective campaign, please email Suzi Stoller (one of my ardent readers at suzi.stoller@gmail.com this is a postcard initiative. The postcards kits are supplied by Reclaim Our Vote (ROV). They are attention-getting fronts. ROV provides the words to be written. They ask that they be handwritten as sent. The scripts are put together by those familiar with what is comfortable and familiar to locals. If you choose to do this you will receive:

1. Postcards

2. The script-to be handwritten

3. A list of names and addresses-to be hand addressed

4. Last time (I assume this time, too) a sticker to be included which has specific information depending on the County it is going to.

You will be asked to put a postcard stamp on each and mail. I believe postcards should be mailed not later than Dec. 7. You will receive very specific information.

They ask that you also pay the postage for the packet that is mailed to you. If you do the work, just let me know, I will be happy to pick up the cost of the packets being mailed to you.

What follows is part of an email I received from Suzi Stoller.

If you would like to participate, please send me your name, addresses and the number of cards you would like. Packets are in sets of 30, so you request, 30, 60, 90, 120 or more, just always in packets of 30.

Let's all work together and turn the US Senate Blue.

Once I hear from you that you will participate I will order your packet. You should receive it in less than a week.

Last time my letter generated about 3500 postcards. Hoping to reach that goal again. If you know anyone who is interested, I'll order for them and send to them or you can order for you and your group.

Good Luck to ALL of US. Suzi Stoller suzi.stoller@gmail.com

Together, we can help change the world.

Remember, there’s still a lot of work to be done!

66 days until the inauguration.

51 days until the Georgia election!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Biden and Harris: They Know Our Names

For the past 24 hours I’ve had an endless loop of the late Marvin Gaye’s Dancing in the Streets (as sung, of course, by the legendary “Martha and the Vandellas”) pounding out a beat in my head.  And to make matters even better, most cable and network stations are showing people doing precisely that: “Dancing in the Streets.”  The lyrics and televised actualities are in perfect sync:

They're dancing in Chicago (dancing in the street)
Down in New Orleans (dancing in the street)
In New York City (dancing in the street)

All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swinging, swaying, and records playing
Dancing in the street . . .

It's an invitation across the nation
A chance for folks to meet
There'll be laughing, singing, and music swinging
Dancing in the street

Philadelphia, PA (dancing in the street)
Baltimore and D.C. now (dancing in the street)
Can't forget the Motor City (dancing in the street)

All we need is music, sweet music (sweet music)
There'll be music everywhere (everywhere)
There'll be swinging, swaying, and records playing
Dancing in the street

And of course, all the ‘dancing and singing’ is because of Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ victory in the presidential race.  As I write this, Biden and Harris have 279 electoral votes to Trump and Pence’s 214.  It seems likely that the Democratic ticket will wind up with 306 votes in the Electoral College; precisely the same number that Trump/Pence scored in 2016.  Of course, 4 years ago, Donald Trump declared that those 306 votes represented “a landslide victory of historic proportions.”  One wonders if the soon to become former POTUS will ever accord the Biden/Harris ticket the same accolade?  Will it be of any consolation that he did wind up receiving the 2nd largest number of votes in American history?  Probably not; coming in second is simply not part of his psychological make-up.

Whether or not the GOP ran the nastiest, least truthful campaign in American history should best be left to the historians.  Ever since Joe Biden became the official Democratic Party nominee, the opposition has accused him of being the “most corrupt, least successful of all presidential candidates.”  They have accused both him and Senator Harris of being “Socialists” and “Communists” who have made vast fortunes for themselves and their families.  I even read a piece which flatly stated that  the former Vice President and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, have squirreled away so  much money that today, they own “the biggest mansion in Delaware.”  This is of course so much twaddle.  Upon reading this scurrilous bit of bilge, I wrote the author a brief reply: “Are you aware that Delaware has long been home to the du Pont family, and that among their many, many mansions within that state one finds Nemours Mansions and Gardens?  It is a 47,000 sq. ft., 110 room estate sitting on more than 300 acres with a jardin à la française formal garden? By comparison, Joe and Dr. Jill’s main residence is a 6,850-square-foot home in an upscale suburb of Wilmington, the land for which they purchased in 1996.  Whatever wealth he possesses (c. $9 million as of this year) has been earned since he left public office in 2017 - mostly from lectures and a book contract . . . 

So far as I recall, at no  time during the brutal 2020 election, did the former Vice President attack the  President or his children for making vast sums by trading in on his name and connections.  It is interesting to note that  the total amount of money Hunter Biden has been accused  of making during his several years with Burisma (for which he was slammed for not knowing anything about the oil industry) equals approximately 1 month’s earnings for Ivanka and Jared Kushner.  And at no time, so far as I recall, did the former V.P. attack them for the absolute lack of knowledge or experience they brought to their many advisory positions in the Trump administration.

So what is it that not only caused more than 75,000,000 people to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but largely reject every charge laid against him/them by Trump and Pence?

First, there were the obvious differences in personal presentations: Trump is an angry man who only uses that one one-letter pronoun: “I.” By comparison, Joe Biden fully understands that our nation’s most important, most compelling document begins in the plural . . . “WE the people.” Joe Biden, although certainly no shrinking violet, is, by and large, a gentleman who embodies civility, empathy and a commoner’s sense of what is right and what is wrong . . . unlike Donald Trump, who comes off as some sort of multi-generational aristocrat. Remember all those times Trump claimed that Biden had “abandoned” Scranton, Pennsylvania and likely didn’t remember thing one about it?

In one campaign speech in Scranton, Trump, speaking before a largely unmasked crowd said “"And don't forget Biden deserted you. He's not from Pennsylvania. I guess he was born here, but he left you, folks. He left you for another state. Remember that, please. I meant to say that. This guy talks about oh, I know Scranton . . . . Well, I know the places better. He left you for another state and he didn't take care of you because he didn't take care of your jobs." Do remember: Joe Biden is the fellow who took the train every morning and night from Wilmington to Washington, D.C., so that he could tuck his children in every night and make their breakfast every morning. He was, like all the other commuters . . . just a guy with a job. By comparison, Donald Trump never mentioned his family roots in Jamaica Estates Queens . . . he would have us believe that he was always a man from 5th Avenue.

Much has been made about all the toil, trouble and tragedy Joe Biden has  gone  through in his life:

• The death his first wife and daughter as well as the serious injuring of his two sons in a car crash on the very day he was originally scheduled to take the oath of office as a newly-elected United States Senator (he had to wait because at the  time of his election he was only 29 years old, and the Constitution requires a senator to be a minimum of  30  years old); 

• In 1988 he suffered two life-threatening brain aneurisms, barely escaping death;

• The death of his beloved son Beau (who served 2 terms as Delaware Attorney General), from brain cancer (Glioblastoma) at age 46.  (n.b. With the assistance of then-President Obama, Joe Biden turned the ashes of this tragedy into a blaze of hopefulness: the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative, “An Act to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st century cures.” I am honored to be a part of the board which reviews the ethical standards by which the various clinical trials are undertaken.  We are making progress!). 

From all these tragedies - which would lead most people down into the pit of destruction and despair - Joe Biden has learned and grown.  Mostly, he claims by relying on his faith (he is only the 2nd Catholic to be elected {POTUS) and an indomitable spirit which makes him board that train every morning and every evening  in order to continue doing the work of the people.

But most importantly of all, I think the main reason why more than 75,000,000 people voted for him is that they see themselves in this kid from Scranton.

At the passing of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in April 1945, tens of millions of Americans gathered along the railroad tracks which took his body from Warm Springs, Georgia back to Washington, D.C. FDR, easily the most aristocratic, “blue blooded,” of all American presidents was first and foremost, a man of the people.  The story is told by political historian Judah Ginsberg about that final trek:

In Washington’s Union Station, a reporter asked a mourner, “Why are you here? Did you know Franklin Roosevelt?” The mourner replied: “No, I did not know President Roosevelt, but he knew me.”

“He knew me.” The squire of Hudson Valley, the closet thing this nation has had to an aristocracy, knew the mourner at Union Station and the thousands who stood for hours in the rain, watching for the train to go by.

This was the secret of FDR’s political success. He knew, he understood, the hopes and fears, the aspirations, worries, and concerns of the common man. More than any particular policies of the New Deal, most of which did not work anyhow, Roosevelt eased the trauma of the Great Depression by conveying that he cared, that he understood the suffering of Americans in those dark days.

In so many ways, the same can be said of both President Elect Joe Biden and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris: they know our names just as we know theirs.

May G-d bless them and keep them . . .

It's an invitation across the nation
A chance for folks to meet
There'll be laughing, singing, and music swinging
Dancing in the street…

And I am now honored to finally, finally be able to end a weekly essay with these words: 73 days until the Inauguration of the next POTUS.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

O Mio Babbino Caro

Last week’s essay strongly suggested that Maalox and expensive single-malt scotch were essential to keeping one from going stark raving nuts during the final 168 hours of the presidential race. Today, with just 48 or so hours remaining, might I suggest an elixir of a different sort: opera. Few, except family and my closest friends, know of the great love I harbor for this most delightful artform. And when it comes to the Hall of Fame of operatic composers, none, in my humble estimation, ranks higher than Giacomo Puccini (that’s him on the left.) Puccini (1858-1924), like his countryman, Giuseppe Verdi, had the G-d-given ability to tap into human emotion far better than just about any artist who ever lived.  Even if one doesn’t know più di poche parole basilari di italiano (“more than a few basic words in Italian), the loves, torments and emotions of his characters are still readily understandable . . . not so much because of the words themselves, but because of the heaven-sent scores he created. 

Of all his operas, my favorite - bar none - is one of his trio of one-act operas (il tritico - “The tryptych’’): Gianni Schicchi debuted at the Metropolitan Opera on December 14, 1918, along with the other two one-act operas: Il tabarro (“The Cloak”) and Suor Angelica (“Sister Angelica”).  Gianni Schicchi (pronounced “Johnny SKI-kee.”is a comic opera derived from a passage in the 30th canto of Dante’s Inferno,. That canto mentions, in an unflattering fashion, one Gianni Schicchi—who was an actual Florentine—as having been consigned to the eighth circle of hell with other forgers and cheats for disguising himself as Buoso Donati, a recently deceased Florentine aristocrat, in order to obtain Donati’s wealth for himself.

The high-point of the opera is the aria O mio babbino caro (“O my dear father”), sung by Lauretta, Johnny’s young daughter.  In the aria, she pleads with her father that if he forbids her from marrying Rinuccio, her true love, she will drown herself in the Arno.  Perhaps the greatest aria in the soprano’s lexicon, it has, over the past century, been successfully conquered by the  likes of  Dame Joan Southerland,  Montserrat Caballé, Maria Callas, Victoria de Los Angeles and . . . a brilliant Dutch South African named Amira Willighagen.  Amira’s version came to international attention when she was but 9 years old (today she’s 16 and even better).  And for those who have seen and/or heard her O mil babbino caro, there are tears to be shed, emotions to be felt and possesses the miraculous ability banish ennui, dread and weltschmerz a German word meaning “world weariness.”

Please give this tour-de-force a watch and a listen.  If nothing else, it might convince you that  in a world filled with pain, uncertainty, and the lack of what might be called the “artistry of humanity,” Amira’s singing of O mio bammbino caro may just well renew our belief in the possibility of beauty and redemption.  

Here’s to Tuesday . . . 

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Pass the Maalox . . . and While You're At It, Get Me Three Fingers of Glenmorangie Spios

One week to go - 7 days, 168+ hours until the polls close everywhere from West Quoddy Head, Maine to Cape Wrangell, Alaska, and from Point Barrow (again, Alaska) to Pago Pago.  This is not to say that we will know the final results of the presidential race 168+ hours from now.  Only the good Lord knows when the contest will be called; when “30” will be affixed to the bottom of the story and most importantly who the POTUS will be beginning on January 20, 2021. Both sides have their hopes and dreams; both sides fear what the nation - let alone the  world - will be like should “the other guy” win.  Without question, none of us have ever lived through such a presidential race . . . one that seems to have been going on for at least half a century.  Oh, the sleepless nights; the nasty invective, outright lies, the anger and the utter churlishness of the incumbent.  I for one have a medicine cabinet filled with Maalox and a personal stash of Glenmorangie Spios on the barroom shelf.  It’s been that kind of a political dual.  

On the bright side, there is a fairly good possibility that things are going to change; that the asinine Tweetstorms will abate; the unabashed nastiness and playground catcalls will diminish; that we will stop being treated like a swarm of gullible morons.  I know that for me - should my prayers and hard work be answered - that which I will miss even more than the constant polling, the chance to once again hear the name “Hunter Biden” come from the lips of the worst president in American history or the vomitatious claim that he has “done more for Black Americans than than any other president, with the “possible exception” of Abraham Lincoln.

Many of us remember the election of 1980, when Ronald Reagan gave incumbent President Jimmy Carter a shellacking: The Gipper won 44 states to the peanut farmer’s 6 (including the District of Columbia) and a 489-49 pasting in the Electoral College.  Those with decent political memories will remember long gas lines, super-high inflation and a 444-day crisis where the entire American diplomatic corps was held hostage in the American Embassy in Teheran.  It seems to me that we moderns have been going through our own long “hostage crisis” since January 20, 2017; unlike 1980, all of America has been held in thrall to Donald Trump, his massive ego, his march-in-step loyalists and the billionaires who underwrite and make possible his every deranged whim.  Should Joe and Kamala win, I for one will be overjoyed to no longer have to see, hear or be concerned with the likes of D.J., Trump, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Rudy Guiliani, the Kushners and whoever is the latest Chief-of-Staff.  

Without question, former Vice President Biden has higher personal ratings than Clinton, which is good news, but Trump seems to be campaigning much harder than Biden in these last several days. And when I see a reputable poll that puts Biden neck and neck with Trump in Texas - where no Democrat has won, let alone campaigned since 1994 - , it can mean only two things: Either we are headed toward the biggest electoral landslide in a generation, or pollsters are once again clueless about who is really going to turn out to vote.

It’s at this point that I renew the request to pass the Maalox and get us those three fingers of Glenmorangie Spios. Once we’ve medicated, we would do well to keep our hopes and dreams in check, lest like in 2016, we put a jinx on Joe.  But even if our favorite uncle does win, can we count on a normal transfer of power?  In a recent op-ed by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat bluntly headlined “There Will Be No Trump Coup,” Mr. Douthout argued that, as aspiring autocrats go, Donald Trump is too incompetent to pull off anything so ambitious as stealing an election.  Oh how I pray that Ross knows of what he  writes!

Come to think of it, successful strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan spend years carefully laying the groundwork for autocracy by first gaining broad public support, then by getting their allies to control the mainstream media, then by appointing their toadies to key positions in the military, and so on. Trump, by contrast, is despised by more than half the country, most of the media and his own secretary of defense. If someone ever uncovers his college transcript, I’m guessing he got a C- in the class on dictatorship, which is better than the D’s and F’s that I’m guessing he got in his classes on business analytics, financial accounting and management essentials. 

Like you, I am lousy at predictions . . . despite all the polls, interviews, advertisements and news clips.  All I know is that I long for the day when I no longer have to fear turning on Morning Joe at 5:00 a.m.; fearful that ‘45 did, said or commanded something overnight which will make the day another bloated belly terrible case of dysgeusia (a bad taste in the mouth). 

And so while we’re waiting, please bring on some more Maalox and crack open a new bottle of Glenmorangie Spios.  Who knows? Perhaps it will be in celebration! 

c. 175 hours to go . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

The Inevitable Law of Political Gravity

Could it possibly be true? Are we actually beginning to see Republican rats abandoning an inevitably sinking ship? Just the other day, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse - B.A. Harvard, Oxford University, M.A. St. Johns College, M.A., PhD Yale - unload on Donald Trump in a constituent call  saying a number of unflattering things about the President, including that he's "flirted with White supremacists" and "kisses dictators' butts.” The Republican senator went on to say “The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticized President Obama for that kind of spending I've criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with White Supremacists.” (As a response, POTUS has begun referring to the Nebraska senator as “Little Ben Sasse,” and has informed the world that “Sasse doesn’t have what it takes to be great.”

Ben Sasse isn’t the only Republican senator beginning to scurry down the gangplank. Just the other day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he hasn't visited the White House in two months because of how it has responded to the coronavirus. Among other things, he explained to a gathering in Kentucky, "[I] personally didn't feel that they were approaching the protection from this illness in the same way that I thought was appropriate for the Senate." Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been warning about a “Republican blood bath of Watergate proportions;” even South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham one of the president’s most vocal allies, predicted the president could very well lose the White House. It should be noted that Senators Sasse, McConnell and Graham, none of whom supported Trump during the 2016 primaries, have something else in common: they’re all up for reelection, don’t want to go down to defeat, and sure as hell are frightened to their very marrow about seeing both the House and Senate - not to mention the White House - under Democratic control.  As a result, many Republican office-holders are finally becoming aware that they are being dragged down by what one former COP member of Congress (Carlos Curbelo of Florida) insightfully  termed “the laws of political gravity.” They are finally beginning to speak up publicly against ‘45’s spending mania, his love affair with QAnon and white supremacist conspiracy theories, his dismantling of American influence in the  world and his classless disparagement of anyone and everyone who will not march in lock-step with him.  Why now?  Because they are terrified of losing their positions of power.  Why not sooner?  Because up until they recognized that the law of political gravity works, they were afraid of him - afraid of their leader taking reprisals against them.  But that no longer seems to be the case.  They simply cannot see themselves sinking into the hellish political abyss with him.

So what can we the people do?  First and foremost, I believe that with whatever time we have left before November 3, we must contact every Republican senator and let them know that if they are to redeem themselves in the eyes of their constituents, they must announce their change of mind and heart about the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  At the same time, we the people must make sure that video captures of these same senators firmly avowing that a presidential election year is the absolute worst  time to push through a Supreme Court appointment (as they did with Judge Merrick Garland back in 2016) - that these videos bloom like crocuses in the autumn.  Put their two-faced duplicity on public display and then let the voters decide.

It’s not just that Judge Barrett has refused to answer a single question posed by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee; we already know  where she stands on birth control, the repeal of Obamacare, same-sex marriage and a host of other significant issues.  It’s that she was nominated mostly to save POTUS’ political tuchas when political gravity drags him down to an inevitable defeat.  And she claims she has no knowledge about this! That’s about as believable as when POTUS claimed he really did not know Paul Manafort all that well or really didn’t know shinola about QAnon of the Proud Boys . . .

The public must be warned of precisely how much damage Judge Barrett will inflict on the people of this country.  Suddenly, millions of people with pre-existing conditions will be without access to health insurance - and in the middle of a pandemic which will be treated as a “pre-existing condition”; discrimination on the basis of religious scruple and who one loves will set us back at least a half century; ‘45’s filthy fingerprints will continue staining everything it touches for years and years to come through his hand-picked judiciary. . . even if  he is languishing in jail, living in exile or has shuffled off this mortal coil.

By now, after nearly 4 years in office, ‘45 has his base so well-trained that they seem totally ignorant of the fact that if he gets his way with Barrett and the American judiciary, that it will wreak havoc with real living, breathing human beings. Take, as but one example same-sex couples whose very status is likely to be endangered to the max. They are totally freaked out.

Mark Kallick and David Moore 2020

The other day, I received a brief email from Mark Kallick and David Moore, a loving couple I have known for more than 35 years.  Mark and David met on April 14, 1983 in Cincinnati, where David would spend 42 years (1972-2014) playing viola with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Mark teaching and selling real estate.  As happy and emotionally healthy a couple as anyone would choose to know or befriend, they have spent a lifetime working on behalf of progressive political causes; Mark especially, has never been one to merely sit back and permit discrimination, bigotry or outright stupidity to go unchallenged.  Even back in the early 1980s, we would hold “evening salons” in my rooms (we lived at the fabled “Rose Hill” in the North Avondale section of Cincinnati) and engage in heady political discussions with people of all stripes.  Some things never change: just this past February, Mark and David put together a panel discussion on the topic “Can Hate Ever Be Conquered?” up in Ormond Beach, Florida (where they winter) with the southern head of the ADL, former Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, leaders of the transgender and lesbian communities (among others) and yours truly.  By this time, Mark and David had finally become a legally married couple.

As Mark recounted in his recent email: “We had to wait for thirty years to become legally married on September 25, 2013. Additionally, we had to travel to the state of New York. The Federal Marriage Equality Act had still not been passed by the Supreme Court; there were still only a few states that had legalized same sex marriage . . . . During our first thirty years we celebrated many married couples anniversaries, went to countless weddings, sent endless cards and gifts...happily.”

“We were denied the opportunity to enjoy a marriage that was legally recognized by our fellow citizens.
We had to forego the family health insurance provided for us by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. I had to go out of my way to ingratiate myself to David’s doctors so that I could properly look after him during illness and surgeries; I could have been legally denied.”

I dedicated so many of my years working (even going door to door) for the betterment and furthering of the Nation’s LGBTQ community; being a founding board member of Equality Cincinnati, Fairness Kentucky, Carolcole House (an AIDS hospice) amongst many other endeavors; there were bitter setbacks and some hard fought victories.”

Mark concluded his missive with the following heartfelt thought: “On Tuesday I watched many hours of the senatorial hearings to replace the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Ginsburg. The proposed nominee will render monumental decisions effecting profound facets of our private lives; including the fate of the marriage that David and I have been enjoying since September 25, 2013. One proposal is to make same sex marriage have less recognition and legal rights. I pray that we’ll be able to enjoy our legal marriage, in good health for all the years we have left together. This nominee will be confirmed and we will have to endure the challenges that will inevitably come before the United States Supreme Court, seeking to void our marriage. Other married couples may be wishing us well... but only same sex families will actually sit with baited breath... waiting and praying to G-d. I would not wish this indignity on another family.” 

When one puts real faces living real lives and telling real stories, it becomes far more  difficult to turn one’s back on them.  I heartily urge everyone reading this essay communicate with their senator (or someone else’s if yours isn’t up for reelection), and tell them in the strongest possible terms that their reelection hinges on standing with people like Mark and David . . . and those who are about to lose their healthcare, and those who are about to have their votes invalidated just so a racist, bigoted xenophobic homophobe with a penchant for lies and lucre can continue being president of a country whose citizens he cares not a fig for.

And  may the inevitable law of political gravity drag him and his colleagues down to Doggerland, the land beneath the sea.    

16 days to go until we change the future . . .
Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Nescience

Let us suppose - at least for the duration of this essay - that when all the votes are counted, the Biden-Harris ticket hands an electoral ass-whooping to Trump-Pence; that the Democrats maintain - and even expand - their majority in the House, and capture the Senate . . . as well as several more governorships and state legislatures. Although by no means a lead-pipe cinch, this outcome is within the realm of possibility. At the moment, no one knows what reaction to expect from ‘45 and his team should he succumb to a political bloodletting; will he reject it, lock the front, back and side doors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and call out the American military to protect him? Will he, in his last days in office declare war on China, Iran and/or Russia? Or will the leaders (?) and office-holders of his own political party finally, finally locate their “big boy, big girl” pants and tell him to באַקומען די גענעם אויס פון דאָ (pronounced bakumen di genem fune dah: Yiddish for “Get the hell out of here!”)?

Yes I know, the very thought of dismantling the current administration - along with all its corruption, lack of direction and cult-like devotion to one man - gives much of the American public - and indeed our once and (hopefully) future allies cause for cheerful optimism . . . a kind of “Ding dong the witch is dead” moment. But truthfully, dear reader, replacing Trump with Biden and McConnell with Schumer (as well as showing Miller, Mnuchin, Pompeo and Barr the door) is a mere first step on the path to recovery. For the current gang that couldn’t shoot straight is going to be leaving most of us with tremendous fiscal, medical and civil deficits, as well as systemic weakness and and grave doubts about ever again trusting anyone in power. Then too, there will be those who continue clinging to the staunch belief that’45 is, was and will always be the greatest, smartest and most capable of all American Presidents. Oh, it’s easy to deride them as fools and poorly educated drones. But do remember, they are far better armed than we, and lug about portmanteaus stuffed with resentment, bigotry and the certain knowledge that anyone on the “other side” is assuredly a communist, socialist or globalist. Case in point: the day after the Harris/Pence debate, ‘45 repeatedly referred to the California senator as both “a monster” and “a Communist.” By evening, those two terms could be heard on virtually every conservative and ultra-right wing talk show in America.

Yes, Trump and his tribe are leaving America in the throes of a lethal pandemic that will not go away, a job picture uglier than anything we’ve experienced since the Great Depression and a hell of a lot of people who stand defiantly against the country and government they wish to engage in a new Civil War.

Which brings us to the one thing which holds so much of this dire diagnosis together: nescience . . . our title word. Although hardly known and rarely used, nescience is a most useful word, meaning “ignorant or unknowing.” In all my years of reading novels and essays, I’ve only found it 3 times: In James Joyce’s Ulysses (chapter 17, in which he writes of “the lethargy of nescient matter”); W. Somerset Maugham’s The Hero (wherein the novel’s protagonist, James, is described as having been “. . .thrown into a blind rage by the complacency with which from the depths of his nescience his father dogmatised). and G.K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown (“In such a naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own”).

According to the great lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson, “There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would no rather know it than not know it.” Dr. Johnson teaches us that nescience evolved from a combination of the Latin prefix ne-, meaning "not," and scire, a verb meaning "to know." Dr. Johnson likely knew that scire is an ancestor of science, a word whose original meaning in English was "knowledge."

What this word has to do with our current POTUS and many of his cronies and appointees should be clear: both he and they are nescient when it comes to science, economics, foreign policy, conservation and a host of other subjects which are critical for leaders to know something about. In my experience, the wisest, brightest and best educated people need never brag or boast about how smart they are. And while Jefferson, both Adams, Lincoln, both Roosevelts and Obama were quite likely “the smartest person in the room,” there is virtually no record of them ever proclaiming this fact in public. Their books, essays, speeches and actions proved their worth. And what is more, they not only appointed people who were experts in their various fields; they actually listened to their advice, frequently incorporating what they had learned into their final decisions.

Compare this to ‘45, who throughout his presidency appointed (and fired) people mostly on the basis of their personal loyalty, not their expertise or experience in a given field. It has never really mattered; their boss has had neither the patience nor need to listen to others. From all indications, he doesn’t read any material his assistants may provide, and frequently diverges into self-congratulatory asides. The nation has heard him proclaim that he knows more than anyone about nearly any or every subject on which he speaks. All this from a world-class nescient whose sciolism (superficial knowledge) is largely responsible for the deaths of 212,000 souls, the rise of China and Russia on the world stage and the fading away of American exceptionalism. Merely wearing a baseball cap with the letters MAGA emblazoned across its top, or calling leading Democrats by nasty nicknames given them by the president, or refusing to wear a mask or keep a proper social distance, does not make a nation or even a segment of its populace great. What it does do is to separate a nescient minority from the rest of the people; to begin thinking about rebellion, revolution - even resurrection.  That segment is, for the most part, politically naïve, profoundly gullible, possessing a striking desire for strong authoritarian leadership . . . and heavily armed.   

The changing of the political guard may occur sometime in November or early December. Should this happen it does not mean that all that which has pained and ailed us these past several years will suddenly fade from view, only to be replaced with a growing sense of civility, empathy and the desired return to seeing the good in one another.  Alas, that’s not the way things generally work. 

But it can’t hurt.

23 days until the election.

If you have yet to mail in your ballot . . . what’s your plan?

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

An October Surprise to End All October Surprises

Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, C. 1862

It’s gotten to the point where it’s all but impossible to believe anything anymore. I’ve already chatted up at least a couple of dozen people who have grave suspicions that the President and Mrs. Trump’s (not to mention a lot of high-ranking Republicans and members of his White House staff) having tested positive for COVID-19 is an “October Surprise” - some kind of a hoax; a way of managing the news by trading in last week’s headlines for a new “page one above-the-fold” story. Let’s face it, after last week’s debate debacle and the New York Times front-page headlines about 45’s having paid only $750.00 in federal taxes in both 2017 and ‘18, the Trump team needed to do something - anything - to turn the tide from what’s increasingly looking like a electoral rout.

Around the time U.S. deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic went beyond the 100,000 mark (and well before ‘45’s “Stand back and stand by” charge to the white supremacist “Proud Boys,” I began making notes for a possible satiric piece in which several weeks before the November 3rd election, a desperate White House would announce that POTUS had contracted COVID-19, and the Cabinet, under terms of the 25th Amendment, would then turn the reins of authority over to VP Pence. Then, during the period that Pence would be acting POTUS, he would announce that he was granting transactional immunity - an across-the-board pardon - for Trump, regardless of whatever future federal charges might be waged against him. For reasons which no long matter, those notes never became manifest; the satire yet remains in a computer file. The title was to have been The October Surprise That Changed History.

In the meantime, I have done quite a bit of research on various “October Surprises” in American political history.  The earliest I could find went back to the presidential election of 1864, pitting incumbent Abraham Lincoln and former Union general George B. McClellan (1826-85).  In the spring of 1864 Lincoln was worried that he would go down to defeat.  This was grounded in Lincoln’s concern over Northern anger over the Emancipation Proclamation and the length of the war. Then, two “October Surprises” coalesced, handing Lincoln an overwhelming 55.03%-44.95% victory in the popular vote and a 212-21 swamping of  McClellan in the Electoral College.  What were the 2 surprises?

First,  the Democratic Convention, held in Chicago, nominated McClellan and adopted a peace platform, which called for a negotiated end to the war, as well as a repeal of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Quite a gift for Lincoln’s “National Union” ticket. Then, following quickly on the heels of McClellan’s nomination, was the increase in decisive Union victories: Admiral David. Farragut’s  capture of Mobile; two days after the Democratic convention General Sherman took Atlanta and began marching through Georgia, Ulysses S. Grant made progress at Petersburg, and General Philip Sheridan began his devastation of Virginia.  Goodbye to McClellan, the “Young Napoleon” (who would eventually be elected the 24th Governor of New Jersey in 1878) and welcome back Honest Abe.  This, of course, was not an “October Surprise” planned or prepared by Lincoln; that’s just the way things turned out.

Then there was the “October Surprise” of 1960 near the end of the Kennedy/Nixon joust. Two days before the final debate between Senator Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon, civil-rights leader Martin Luther King was arrested. King was jailed along with 52 other blacks who were trying to desegregate a Georgia restaurant. He was sentenced to four months of hard labor based on breaking probation (King had previously been charged with driving without a license, when he actually had been driving with an Alabama license in Georgia). King's wife, Coretta, was frantic and called Harris Wofford, a Kennedy campaign aide (and future one-term Pennsylvania senator), claiming that "they are going to kill him [King]." Wofford contacted Sargent Shriver, who was married to Kennedy's sister Eunice. Shriver convinced Kennedy that he should telephone King's wife, which he did, expressing his concern. Meanwhile, Kennedy's brother Robert (his future Attorney General) negotiated with the judge and secured a promise that King would be released on bail.

In contrast, Nixon consulted with Eisenhower's attorney general (William P. Rogers), who advised him not to intervene in the matter. The Kennedys' intervention gained JFK support from blacks, including King's father, an influential minister who had previously supported Nixon. The senior King told the press, "I've got a suitcase of votes, and I'm going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap." As Evan Thomas writes in Robert Kennedy: His Life, "Just two phone calls -- one by JFK, one by RFK -- decided the outcome of the election, and determined the course of racial politics for decades to come." Kennedy won the close election, 49.7 percent to Nixon's 49.5 percent.

Lastly, there was the election of incumbent President Bill Clinton and Republican Senator Robert Dole. Clinton planned his own “October Surprise” in his re-election bid. In June, 1996, Clinton met with top FBI and CIA aides in hopes of organizing a successful sting against the Russian Mafia, which had been rumored to be interested in selling a nuclear missile. The operation failed to become a real October Surprise, however. Clinton also hoped he might be able to broker a last-minute deal between the Palestinians and Israelis. The two sides however only agreed to more talks. Clinton nonetheless won reelection, the first Democrat to do so since Franklin Roosevelt.

These are by no means the only “October Surprises” within American presidential history.  This current surprise - Trump’s sudden whisking away to Walter Reed Army Hospital due to a positive rendering on his most recent COVID-19 test, is unlike any other.  Coming on the heels of a failed impeachment, a disastrous debate and the discovery that he had basically skated on his federal taxes for more than a decade (among a plethora of other episodes and events) have put the future of his presidential reelection  campaign - let alone his very future as a supposedly wealthy free citizen -  in dire jeopardy.  Throughout his nearly 4 years in office, he and his staff/enablers have shown an almost genius-level ability to transform today’s nasty, negative headlines into the opposite side of the story. 

Even if it is true that ’45 is sick – as opposed to having made the entire scenario up – it is hard to see how it’s going to help him get reelected.  Then too, there is his moral/legal/ethical culpability - by his  very silence and mismanagement of the pandemic - of nearly 210,000 deaths and the recent spate of positive tests for his closest followers and family members. For months on end, he and his people have downplayed the seriousness of the COVID pandemic, making it abundantly clear that anyone who wears a mask or sticks to social distancing is a wuss . . . a weak-kneed, dastardly milquetoast who is likely a Socialist to boot. The fact that ’45 has continually derided both science and the very statistics involved in this pandemic isn’t going to do him a bit of good.  He has yet to utter a syllable of solace to any of the souls who have died from this disease (despite claiming during an ABC World News Tonight snippet that “To all the people who have lost someone, there’s nobody - I don’t sleep at night thinking about it - there’s nobody who’s taken it harder than me”) he’s spent the lion’s share of his time ignoring and deriding the very scientists charged with creating a cure and convincing the public that vaccines don’t work unless they are used to vaccinate the ailing.

And, to make matters even worse, it now seems clear that ‘45 has kept up a schedule of campaigning, speaking and fund-raising amongst hyper-wealthy, maskless donors inside stadiums, airplane hangars and the gardens  of the nation’s  home: the White House.  Will his having contracted COVID-19 change his outlook or force him to communicate in a more compassionate, understanding way?  As much as I wish it would, I fear the answer is “No, no, a thousand times no!”  He has created - either with full knowledge  or against his will - an  “October Surprise” to beat the band.  While his political opponents (Obama, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff et al) have ceased their negative political ads and publicly urged prayers and best wishes, Trump and his coterie have continued blasting the Democrats, still labeling them “far left ultra Socialists whose only wish is to destroy American society.” 

This is more than sad; it is an utter travesty. 

I for one hope and pray that he finds  his way back to health - diminished though it may be. (BTW: as a medical ethicist, I have been privy to many of the compassionate-use drugs he has been given and have a sense of what they can/may/cannot do.) I wish him all the best and also pray that wherever he winds up, they have world-class medical care like at Walter Reed. He will need it.

30 days until the election . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F.  Stone

"A Hot Mess Inside a Dumpster Fire Inside a Train Wreck"

For the past 36 hours or so  just about every pundit, columnist, newscaster and political creatures both insightful and ignominious have offered up their thoughts and opinions on the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden. Predictably, the Fox/Breitbart/National Review crowd found the president’s performance to be on a par with anything they’d ever heard or witnessed, and firmly believed that he had wiped up the debate floor with the former Vice President’s entrails. Likewise, much of the CNN/MSNBC/Daily Kos assembly awarded high marks for Biden’s clarity, and strength of character in standing up to - and making short shrift of - the Bully of Mar-a-Lago. Depending on which political bunker you were hunkered down in, moderator Chris Wallace was either found to be a traitor to the conservative right, a hero, or a fellow doing the best he could under the most trying of circumstances.  Few if any Republican office-holders or seekers had any comments to make about the manner in which their leader disported himself.  That few - if any - found anything objectionable in his unsportsmanlike, serial abuse of his opponent,  speaks volumes.  And while the former veep’s overall game plan won’t cause anyone to confuse him with the likes of FDR or Barack Obama, he did manage to stand his ground and maintain a strong-willed, if gentlemanly civility.

I came away from the 90 minute debacle with two immediate thoughts: 

1. There was but one person possessing presidential mien on the dais, and

2. Einstein was absolutely correct when he wrote that “politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.” (Then too, in a time when some rely on science and others scoff and mistrust it, one remembers another of his tongue-in-cheek bon mots: “Politics is more difficult than physics.”

Asked what he thought about the first debate, CNN’s Jake Tapper replied “It was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck.” His colleague, Dana Bash had even sharper words: ““I’m just going to say it like it is. That was a s--- show.” Finally, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, a previous primary debate moderator, said “As one who has watched presidential debates for more than 40 years, that was the worst presidential debate I have ever seen.”

Regardless of whom one thinks won the debate, two things are crystal clear:

1. The biggest losers of the night were the American people. I cannot imagine what it must have seemed like to people watching the debate in Europe, South America, Asia and other former allies of the United States.

2. While the pundits zeroed in on Trump’s constant interrupting and talking over Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace’s inability to gain control over the night, one moment in particular caused extreme distress for several commentators: Trump telling the far-right Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” when asked by Wallace whether he would denounce white supremacists.

Over the past 20 or so hours, there have been responses to this debacle ranging from rewriting debate rules to include the use of a “kill switch,” by which the monitor can cut off the mic of a participant if he keeps interrupting his opponent, and up-to-the-minute notifications of lies being told.  In the first-night debate, both sides uttered untruths or mendacious exaggerations.  The president, of course has, by far, the worst track record when it comes to straying from the truth.

As we get closer and closer to November 3, there’s only a tiny percentage of the American voting public who have yet to make up their mind as to whom they’re voting for.  This 4-5% of the voting public is the group that Republicans and Democrats are most interested in impressing and winning over.  Otherwise, all the speeches, commercials, placards, bumper stickers and interviews are directed towards the so-called “base” — those who will, without question, vote for the Democrat or the Republican.  With the way polling has been going for the past several months, it is Donald Trump who is most in need of expanding his base to include suburban women, African Americans and white college graduates.  Last night’s performance would lead one to believe that he simply does not care about adding new voters to his base.  He is so afraid of losing even a single vote from his base, that he cannot bring himself to put a “STOP!” sign in front of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, members of Q-anon and Proud Boys. Indeed, this is frightening stuff.

Then too, during the last moments of the debate, a question was posed as to whether the candidates would accept the election’s outcome regardless of whether they won or not.  Joe Biden quickly and unequivocally announced that indeed, he would.  By comparison, POTUS refused; in his world, the only licit election is one he wins.  Should he lose, he will declare that it was either rigged or stolen.   

As of this morning, it would appear that regardless of what Trump’s marching and chowder society says, he was the clear loser.  Overnight polls show that he has dropped more than 5% among all voters.  At the moment, he is down by more than 9 points; not a particularly comfortable place to be. I’ve been thinking over whether or not Joe Biden and his Democratic advisors and campaign staff should drop out of the debate schedule due to the president’s utterly atrocious behavior. I have concluded that the debates should continue.  Uncle Joe has shown himself a capable man who does not let his opponent turn him into a hypertensive idiot.  He is well controlled, possesses a guilt-edged smile and knows how to speak directly to the camera . . . to where American voters live, work and struggle.

Is Joe Biden the second coming of FDR, JFK or Barack Obama? No, he is not. What he is is a gentleman with a phenomenal track record, a thorough knowledge of the issues and governance, and a genuine love of people.  

After nearly 4 years of bombast, lies and near lethal egotism, who  could ask for anything more?

There are 33 days until November 3. Mail in you ballot today!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Like an Exclamation Point in the Heavens

According to an age-old Jewish belief, when a person passes away on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) or a Yom Tov (a major Jewish holiday), it is as if the ribono shel olam (the Master of the Universe) has placed a shimmering exclamation point in the highest heavens for the one who has departed this world. Now, when that major Jewish holiday coincides with the Sabbath itself, that exclamation point - so we are told -not merely shimmers; it is radiates with a light that seems to last an eternity. I have to believe that is why Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg departed this mortal coil on what we call Shabbat Rosh Hashana - “The Sabbath which falls on the Jewish New Year.”  It permits G-d to express in the most obvious of ways, just how truly exceptional the good justice was, is, and always shall be.  

Without question, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the most stellar and consequential Justices in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States.  A thoroughgoing judicial progressive, she was also a great friend of the court’s most intellectually stolid conservative, the late Antonin Scalia.  What in the world could the two have in common? Opera.  That’s the way things used to be in politics and the judiciary; human beings getting along with one another because they discovered the humanity in one another . . . regardless of their disagreements.  Justices Ginsburg and Scalia also shared a love of the law despite viewing it from bipolar angles. 

(BTW: for those who might want to learn a  lot more about Ruth Bader Ginsburg the woman, I highly recommend the best book I have ever read about the Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: my good friend, constant lunch companion and fellow Californian David Dalin’s magnificent work, Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court From Brandeis to Kagan.  It’s a great read!).

Yesterday (September 21) it was announced that Justice Ginsburg will lie in state in the United States Capitol. It is an unusual honor for a Supreme Court Justice and one that has never before been granted to a woman. Had the decision been in the hands of ‘45, there is every reason to assume that this honor would never have been afforded America’s more revered and beloved legal lioness. But precisely who receives the honor of lying in state in the Capitol is a decision that rests squarely with the Speaker - in this case, Nancy Pelosi who was a longtime friend and admirer of Justice Ginsburg. In describing RBG’s death, Madam Speaker called it “an incalculable loss for our democracy and for all who sacrifice and strive to build a better future for our children.” Also out of the ordinary, Justice Ginsburg will lie in repose at the Supreme Court for two days - tomorrow and Thursday, and her coffin will be placed under the portico at the top of the building’s front steps. Her coffin will be placed on the Lincoln catafalque, which was used for President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin when his body lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda in 1865.

Such respect has rarely been shown for a Supreme Court justice. But then again, we’ve rarely been in the historic presence of such a diminutive giant . . .

Then too, RBG’s death - like just about everything these days - has already become the focus of a nasty political war of words and deeds. No sooner had justice Ginsburg’s passing been announced then partisan politics reared its terribly ugly head.  Within 2 hours, Georgia Republican Representative Doug Collins tweeted “RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended pro-abortion laws. With @realDonaldTrump nominating a replacement that values human life, generations of unborn children have a chance to live,” Collins wrote.  (It should be noted that Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t take her seat on the nation’s highest court until Roe v Wade had been the law for nearly a generation and that for nearly more than 25 years, Donald Trump was one of NYC’s larger donors to Planned Parenthood.) Getting back to Rep. Collins, even Fox News nailed him for his extra nasty tweet.  Many conservative Republicans were terribly concerned lest the next Justice not be 100% in favor of overturning Rose V. Wade, putting the 2nd Amendment in jeopardy, or permitting the President of the United States from using his office to do whatsoever he sought fit to do.  And mind you, all this was made public hours and hours before Justice Ginsburg was laid to rest. 

Those who have long followed politics closely will well recall all the sturm und drang (turmoil) that arose in Mitch McConnell’s senate when then-POTUS Obama nominated Federal Judge Merrick Garland to the High Court more than 8 months before the 2016 presidential election. (Garland, then - and now - was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. whom Obama had nominated to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Back in 2016, you will recall, McConnell and virtually all his Republican colleagues refused to even consider the nomination of the progressive Judge Garland claimed that “voters should be given a say by way of choosing the next president. A sprinkling of quotes from 2016 will reveal how Leader McConnell and his Republican colleagues responded to the question “Should the Senate vote hold hearings or a vote on Judge Garland?

• Marco Rubio (FL): “I don’t think we should be moving forward on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term. I would say that if this was a Republican president.” (3/17/16)

• Chuck Grassley ( IA): “A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics. The American people should not be denied a voice. Do we want a court that interprets the law, or do we want a court that acts as an unelected super-legislature . . .?” (3/16/16)

• Mitch McConnell (KY) “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president..” (2/13/16)

• John Hoeven (ND): ““There is 80 years of precedent for not nominating and confirming a new justice of the Supreme Court in the final year of a president’s term so that people can have a say in this  very important decision.” (4/21/16)

• Lindsay Graham (SC): “I strongly support giving the American people a voice in choosing the next Supreme Court nominee by electing a new president.  I hope all Americans understand how important their vote is when itcomes  to picking a new Supreme Court justice. (3/16/16)  

• John Cornyn (TX): “At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, Texans and the American people deserve to have a say in the selection of the next lifetime appointment to the  Supreme Court. The only way  to empower the American people and ensure they have a voice is for the next president to make the nomination to fill this vacancy.” (3/16/16)

• Ted Cruz (TX) “This should be a decision for  the people.  Let the election decide.  If the Democrats want to replace this nominee, they need to win the election.” (2/14/16)

As of this morning, there are only 2 Republican members of the U.S. Senate - Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins - have announced that they urge waiting until after the 2020 election before taking up the matter of Justice Ginsburg’s replacement.  It seems clear that all those Republicans who kept Judge Garland from even getting a hearing because of some “Constitutional principle,” have now shown their true colors  . . . bright yellow.  And this, despite a report from NPR’s longtime legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg that Justice Ginsburg’s dying wish (made bedside surrounded by family members and her personal physician) was that  she wanted the winner of the November election to choose her replacement.  The POTUS and members of the Fox entertainment squad rushed to declare - without a scintilla of proof - that the dying Justice never made this final request.  Instead, ‘45 suggested (again, without evidence) that the dying wish was likely crafted by either Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer and/or Nancy Pelosi. Fox entertainer Tucker Carlson said flatly that he doesn’t believe Ginsburg actually dictated the message: “We don’t know actually what Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s final words were. Did she really leave this world fretting about a presidential election? We don’t believe it for a second.”  Rep. Schiff (whom ‘45 referred to as “Shifty” Schiff in his Tweet denying Ginsburg’s dying wish (which her granddaughter wrote down) issued his own tweet denying ‘45’s claim: “Mr. President, this is low.  Even for you.  No, I didn’t write Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish to a nation she served so well, and spent her  whole life making a more perfect union.  But I am going to fight like hell to make it come true.  No confirmation before inauguration.” 

Justice Ginsburg’s longtime friend, correspondent Totenberg said yesterday that she confirmed the dying wish with the Justice’s doctor.  Despite this, Trump and Carlson’s false claim spawned numerous conspiracy theories on social media, claiming that Ginsburg dictated the note to her “8-year old granddaughter.” (Far from being an 8 year old, Clara Spera  [who always called her grandmother bubbie attended Cambridge, graduated from Harvard Law in 2017, and is married to Shakespearean actor Rory Boyd.)  All this, and Justice Ginsburg has yet to be laid to rest. . .

It is highly likely that Trump and the Republicans will get  their way and make sure that SCOTUS finally becomes an impregnable bastion of Federalist Society judges; one easily capable of overturning Roe v Wade, of kicking the vast majority of people with preexisting medical conditions (which now includes COVID-19) off of Obamacare; of finding the constitutional “Emoluments Clause” unconstitutional; of outlawing the teaching of Darwinian theory in public schools and of giving the National Rifle Association whatever in the world it wants.

So what can be done?  To my way of thinking it is imperative that  Democrats recapture both the White House and United States Senate, expand Democratic victories to state legislatures and governors’ mansions, and give serious, serious consideration to instituting their own version of FDR’s “court packing plan.” There is nothing in the Constitution which states that SCOTUS must have precisely 9 members.  

And above all, let’s keep the spirit and strength of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg alive.  Just look up to the heavens, look for that celestial exclamation point and let her fortitude be our fuel.

42 days until the election . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"If I Am Not For Myself . . ."

Hillel the Elder

(As has been my habit for more than 15 years, I post my High Holiday sermons in place of my normal weekly political fare at this time of the year.  Otherwise, I would run out of time!  And so, what follows is my sermon for the first day of Rosh Hashana.  5781 . . . KFS)

Welcome to the Jewish year 5781, which of course corresponds partly to the Gregorian year 2020, but mostly 2021. I don’t know about you, but I rather looked forward to 2020 . . . mainly because in terms of vision it signified seeing the world with utter clarity . . . with visual perfection. To have 20/20 vision is really the ideal . . . unless you’re someone like baseball great Ted Williams who, according to his medical records from the military, came in at an unbelievable 20/15. No wonder he was such a fantastic hitter and even better fighter pilot in 2 wars. Whatever the case, the Gregorian year 2020 will long be remembered not for its clarity, but rather for its utter murkiness. It has been, to say the least, one of the most difficult, dangerous and distasteful years in a long, long time. Hebraically, today is the first day of the seventh month (Tishrei) in the new year 5781. Rosh Hashana, by the way, is the only Jewish holiday which begins on the first day of the month. Just thought I’d slip that in; don’t worry, it won’t be on the final exam. In Hebrew, the number 5781 is spelled out ת-שַ-פַ-א . . . with the numerical value, going from right to left, 400, 300, 80 and 1. All this adds up to 781 . . . the 5,000 being understood. In rabbinic scholarship, there is a field known as gematria, which consists of an alphanumeric code of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase based on its letters. Say what? Actually most of us who have had the benefit of a bit of Jewish learning are well aware of gematria -- at least on a subconscious level. If I ask what the numerical value of chai, the Hebrew word for “life,” is, most can easily answer “18.” That is why a typical donation in the Jewish world is generally based on a multiple of 18 . . . “Death” by the way, מוות in Hebrew, adds up to 452, which no one but a scholar with too much time on his/her hands knows.

Fascinatingly, the first set of words one can make of the four letters ת-שַ-פַ-א spell out “You will be amazed.” Fabulous! Could this be an omen for a new year in which we eradicate a pandemic, set aright an economy which has gone topsy-turvey and begin restoring honesty, civility, humility, humanity and equanimity? And how about a major lessening of anger, bigotry, racism and conspiratorial claptrap? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Indeed: ת-שַ-פַ-א: You will be amazed! As well-armed as modern-day Jewish warriors are - most notably, of course, in the State of Israel, historically, our weapons have far more often come from our minds, hearts and souls than from foundries. Our armaments are our ethics, the “אֱמוֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה "הַרְבֵּה (“say little but do much”) of Shammai; or the moral lesson of Rabbi Tarfon, which states לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה” ("It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either").

In comparison to most of the major religions we encounter in our corner of the world, Judaism is far more a religion, a people, a culture whose marching orders are based more on what one does than what one believes. “It’s the deed, not the creed,” is the philosophy that has always made us so terribly unique and successful . . . and frequently so terribly hated and mistreated. Some of the most important lessons for living a moral and ethically victorious life come from that section of Mishnah (the earliest code of Jewish law) called Pirke Avot, generally translated as “Ethics of the Sages.” It is the only part of the six volumes of Mishnah which did not find its way into the Talmud, for being largely about ethics and civility, it really did not require voluminous commentary. Every year as we prepare to turn the page on our ancient calendar, I review its many pages, retranslate its wisdom based upon what I’ve learned in the preceding 12 months, and feeling better armed for the coming battle, go out to face the new year. Permit me to share some of the most important of these verses - those which, to use the ancient expression, “gird my loins” for whatever may come my way. For years without end, my favorite lesson from Pirke Avot comes in the form of two tidbits from Hillel, the 2nd century sage, which, in my estimation, are more modern and needful than anything else in the Mishnah. The first, states simply, על תפרוש מן הציבור (namely, “Do not separate yourself from the community), and the second, .בה מקום שאין אנשים השתדל לוות איש. Namely: if you happen to be in a place where no one is acting like a mentsch (a moral human being), you strive to be a mentsch. These are both terribly important. We often find ourselves in situations where people - especially people in positions of leadership, acting like fools, ignoring the immoral acts and hateful, mendacious words of those supposedly above them. Frequently, instead of putting in their two cents and shouting out “But you are telling an outright lie!” or “The facts are obviously and completely against what you do or say!” they sit on their hands, and keep their collective mouths shut . . . thereby lending tacit agreement to the obscene, immoral deeds of others. In short, they are the exact opposite of what a mentsch should be and thus, separating themselves from the community. Although the ideal may well be, if at all possible, to stick to the status quo in communal events and activities, if the people supposedly in charge are a corrupting force, it is our obligation to raise our voices and strenuously object . . . in other words, to strive to act like a mentsch when others are acting just the opposite.

Last on my list of wise words to incorporate into our lives in this new year come from a sage named Ben Zoma: Who is wise? The one who learns from every person, as it is said: "From all those who taught me I gained understanding" (Psalms 119:99). Who is mighty? The one who subdues his impulses, as it is said: "Better is one slow to anger than a strong man, and one who rules over his passions than the conqueror of a city" (Proverbs 16:32). Who is wealthy? The one who is happy with his portion, as it is said: "When you eat the toil of your hands you are fortunate and it is good for you" (Psalms 128:2). Who is honored? The one who honors others, as it is said: "For those who honor Me will I honor, and those who scorn Me will be degraded" (I Samuel 2:30). Ethics of Fathers 4:1

Ben Zoma speaks first of wisdom, rather than knowledge or logic or intelligence. Wisdom is the application of the other four, the faculty of directing the power of the intellect and interpreting information to recognize its deeper significance, its meaning, and its relevance to daily life. One may possess encyclopedic knowledge or be able to perform lightning-fast computations, yet remain an utter fool. The qualities of wisdom are patience, judgment, and perspective. Many geniuses lack these, and many of average intelligence posses them to a high degree. The lessons of life are both great and small, and it is a fool who believes that wisdom trumpets itself from the rooftops. Many of life's most important lessons are broad, sweeping concepts of morality and self-discipline, but the subtleties and nuances that instruct us in applying these general principles to the mundane tasks of living are themselves found in life's subtleties and nuances. While it is true that we cannot easily control the actions or beliefs of others, we can - and must - set our sights on living up to what might be called “The mentsch’s creed”: אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי “If I am not for myself, who am I? And if I am only for myself what am I? And if not now, when?” What a brilliant series of questions to ask oneself at the New Year! To me, the first two parts are both powerful and obvious: If I cannot find the inner strength to make of myself a better, more moral and community-clinging individual, I leave much to be desired. But if I do not extend that lesson to others and help them to learn from the errors of their ways, what kind of a person am I? The hardest, least facile and most obscure question is the last one. When do I begin if not now? That’s much of what new beginnings are for . . . repairing, improving and healing both ourselves and the world we inhabit. And if we take these bits of wisdom to heart, who knows? Maybe 5781 (תשפא) will truly spell out

“You will be amazed!”

Copyright©2020, Kurt F. Stone

From "I Cannot Tell a Lie" to "I Shall Never Tell the Truth" is a Long, Long Journey

For the past several years, Madame (Mom), my slightly-older-sister Erica (Riki). nephew Adam, Madame’s special gentleman Fred, and the Pentagon have been conspiring to create a special birthday gift for yours truly. The only thing I knew about it was that Fred - a longtime Navy veteran and highly-skilled framer - and the rest of the clan had been working on some sort of “art project.” Having no idea of what they were doing, I decided to stop asking questions. Well, I celebrated my 71st (gasp!) birthday a couple of weeks ago, only to discover that over the past dozen years, they have been retrieving my late father’s war ribbons from WWII in order to put them into a marvelous shadow box, which now adorns the wall in my home.

Dad, who at the time he entered the Army Air Corps shortly before Pearl Harbor,  was known as “Henry E. Schimberg”; he  had yet to legally adopt his “Hollywood name.”  He remained in the service until 1946, serving mostly as a weather forecaster in the CBI (China-India-Burma Theatre), where his main task was keeping planes  from flying “over the hump, the name given by Allied pilots in WWII to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based in China.  Although largely unsung, their role was crucial.  Without their highly developed technical skills - matched by good old-fashioned intuition - dozens, if not hundreds, of planes would have gone down in the Himalayans.

Dad’s medals and battle ribbons were next to impossible to retrieve, due to the fact that he served under his birth name; he wouldn’t legally change the family name to “Stone” for more than a decade. But for those who know Madame and Erica, you can understand: nothing is impossible; when they get their claws into a project, watch out!  

Dad rarely, if ever, spoke of his military service; he was both humble and an extraordinary gentleman.  And yet, he was  proud of serving his country.  He was definitely neither a loser nor a sucker.  Far, far from it. He served 6 of his first 31 years in the military, leaving behind his dream of becoming  a movie star, and emerging as as a newly-wed who eventually became a highly successful stock broker in Southern California.  Were he alive today Dad (1915-2002), would have been 65 kinds of P-O’d at the current POTUS: “How dare you call us “losers” and “suckers  . . . we’re the men and women who saved the world from fascism!” Dad wasn’t an overly political sort, spending his life as a moderate FDR-Democrat.  The one time he even suggested the possibility of voting for a Republican (Nixon in ‘68) Madame read him the riot act and urged him to recall Lysistrata - Aristophanes’ comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnese War between Greek city states by denying all the men of the land any sex.  Thank G-d Henry was literate enough to understand the illusion . . . he wound up voting for Hubert Humphrey.

Fast forward to a September 3, 2020 article in which the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported that ‘45, “the president who cannot tell the truth,” canceled a presidential visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 - the centennial of the battles of Belleau Wood and Chateau Thierry. (This cemetery, which sits at the foot of Belleau Wood, contains the graves of 2,289 American war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the summer of 1918.) According to the Atlantic’s Goldberg, Trump blamed rain for the last-minute cancellation, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

In  his astounding article - backed up by incontrovertible facts - Goldberg writes: Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed. 

Sir Nicholas Soames, a Conservative member of the British parliament and Winston Churchill’s grandson, tweeted his utter disapproval of Trump’s snub and lame excuse:

“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen.”

True to form, the White House and Trump’s Twitter account found in Goldberg’s meticulously reported, well-crafted story,  a gigantic hoax perpetrated by the “left-liberal-socialist media.”  Even Fox News went back-and-forth on whether or not to find any truth in Goldberg’s article. When ‘45 learned that Fox New’s political reporter Jennifer Griffin supported Goldberg’s piece, ‘45 demanded that her employers immediately fire her.  For Trump, all this is, of course, “fake news.”  But then again, throughout his public career, Boss Tweet has been a volcano of untruths, misstatements and outright prevarications . . . many of which have actual video and/or audio backup . . . such as the number of times he said of the late Senator John McCain “he’s no hero,” due to his having been captured, tortured and imprisoned at the “Hanoi Hilton” by the North Vietnamese.  

I don’t like losers,” he repeatedly stated even before announcing his candidacy back as far as 2015. Trump went on to dismiss McCain’s war service: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”  45’s “McCain’s a loser” meme began when the Arizona Senator lost the 2008 presidential election to Barack Obama . . . again, “I don’t like losers.”  In her new book “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” (which sold more copies on the day it was released than her uncle’s The Art of the Deal has in nearly 30 years) presidential niece, Dr. Mary Trump (she earned a PhD in  Clinical Psychology from Adelphi University) clearly stated that what DJT fears and loathes the most is being called a “loser” or "a sucker.” She has also “revealed” what oh so many of us without doctorates in psychology have long suspected . . . if not fully known: that he is a psychopathic liar who is incapable of feeling empathy or compassion, and is imbued with an inferiority complex the size of the Grand Canyon.  

Listening to Donald Trump endlessly praise himself is a form of self-torture;  hearing him disavow any knowledge let alone familiarity of any indicted person who has ever worked for or served him (until the time comes for a pardon); or endlessly bragging about how much more he knows about medicine, history, economics, diplomacy or the philosophy of Edmund Husserl (the school of “Phenomenology,” which is generally defined as “the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view”) for all I know. To listen to ‘45, as POTUS he has accomplished more for blacks than Lincoln or Dr. Martin Luther King; more for women than Susan B. Anthony or Eleanor Roosevelt; more for Hispanics than Caesar Chavez'; more for the modern State of Israel than Theodor Herzl or David Ben-Gurion; and that “Veterans have no better friend than President Trump.”

To a majority of those with eyes with which to see, ears with which to hear or minds with which to think and remember, all these are demonstrable lies; the product of a man who is taking both our nation and our planet down into the swamp of delusion.

It wasn’t always this way. Indeed, our very first - and likely greatest - POTUS, George Washington. was once known by every school child in this land as a person who could “never tell a lie.” What could be more honorable, admirable and moral? Then there was Lincoln, our 16th president, whom every school child knew was nicknamed “honest Abe.” Today, our 45th POTUS has been saddled with an overabundance of monikers - none of which, so far as I know, is even slightly endearing.

It grieves me deeply that so many people in this land are willing to give ‘45 a pass and ignore his gaffs, his lies, his immoral nature . . . his very presence. What we need is not a self-proclaimed genius-about-everything but a person who seeks wisdom and guidance from those who truly know what they’re talking about. Not a blatherskite who blows his own horn, or a braggart whose only script is the one he provides himself. And certainly not a man who may one day be convicted, but rather a man of convictions.

Indeed, from “I cannot tell a lie” to “I shall never tell the truth” is one hell of a long, long journey . . . a journey into fear and damnation.

There are 56 days to go until November 3, 2020.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F.  Stone

Living the Dystopian Life

In the world of medicine, a substance or drug used to induce vomiting is called an emetic. Historically, the go-to emetic was an agent called syrup of ipecac; it is no longer the standard of care in either human or veterinary medicine, due to its cardiotoxic (having an adverse effect on the heart) potential. Today, the safest over-the-counter emetic is likely activated charcoal. Then too, there are so-called “cathartics” like Sorbitol, an artificial sweetener which is frequently used to speed up the emptying of the gastrointestinal tract [GIT].

These and other emetics are generally used to rid the GIT of poisons - caused by ingesting rancid foodstuffs, imbibing too much alcohol or a sequela (a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease or injury).  Regardless of the cause or emetic used, emesis (the medical term for barfing or upchucking) can indeed provide much-needed relief.  But what about the kind of extreme nausea which has nothing to do with ingesting or imbibing, but rather with overindulgence in the kind of dystopian politics many of us witnessed during last week’s Republican National Convention . . . aka publice coronum regalem Donald Trump (Latin for The coronation of Donald Trump)?  

I am sorry to report that I have been engaging in quite a bit of self-inflicted stupidity these past several weeks: reading - and in some cases rereading some of the most ghastly, hit-the-nail-on-the-head dystopian novels of all time.  For those who can define “utopian,” but become tongue-tied when it comes to “dystopian,” the former (“utopia”) was coined by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book Utopia, which was about an ideal society on a fictional island. The latter, when applied to literature (as in “Dystopian literature”), refers to essays and novels which explore the dangerous effects of political and social structures on humanity’s future.  Generally speaking, dystopian novels break down into various types:

• Nuclear disaster

• Government control

• Religious control

• Technical control

• Survival

• Loss of individualism.

Included on my “Best Dystopian Novels of All Time” list are:

• The Trial (Franz Kafka, 1925)

• Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932)

• The Iron Heel (Jack London, 1907)

• It Can’t Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis, 1935)

• The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)\

• Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, 1953)

• The Time Machine (H.G. Wells, 1895)

• Do Androids Dream of  Electric Sheep? (Phillip K. Dick, 1968)

• The Wall (John Lanchester, 2019)

• Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)

• 1984 (George Orwell, 1948)

Without question, my three favorite novels culled from the above list are Jack London’s largely unknown The Iron Heel, Sinclair Lewis’ chilling It Can’t Happen Here, and my all-time favorite, George Orwell’s 1984, which was without a doubt the worst thing anyone could have been reading during last week’s RNC.  I know, because I was engaged in rereading that novel in the hours leading up to ‘45’s seemingly endless speech on the grounds immediately outside White House.

The number of mask-less mega-donors crowded together like sardines in a well-oiled tin approximated the number of people who expired due to COVID19 on the very day of  Trump’s coronum regalem.  And what got their digestive juices flowing in ever greater volume was the portrait of an America Trump warned against should the Biden/Harris ticket manage to win the election.  Fascinatingly - and may we say, ridiculously - the very apocalypse POTUS was sternly warning against should Democrats take back the White House (not to mention the U.S. Senate), is the very America that ‘45 and his cronies are currently overseeing during their time in office; in other words, they are essentially warning against themselves.   If this carries so much as a scintilla of logic or reality about it, then those of us who tend to support Biden/Harris and the Democrats are likely long in the throes of bilious political nausea, searching for a potent emetic.  Like Winston Smith and the proles of Oceania in Orwell’s 1984, Trump’s “maskless marvels”
live under the thumb of “Big Brother” and his henchmen who have proclaimed that in “Newspeak” “War is Peace,” Freedom is Slavery,“ and “Ignorance is strength.”  In Trump’s America,  though the slogans may be different, the message is largely the same: “Media is made up of liars,” “Autocrats are small-D democrats,” and “Scholars and intellectuals are ultra-liberal enemies of the state.”

During his acceptance speech, POTUS made a series of promises defying what he and his party have engaged in during the past 3 1/2 years:

• “We will ensure equal justice for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.”

• “We will uphold your religious liberty” (as if it is in danger).

• “We will protect Medicare and Social Security.”

• “We will always, and very strongly, protect patients with pre-existing conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party.”

Then too, in that same speech, Trump engaged in a liefest to beat the band, loudly proclaiming that:

• “The Democrat [sic] Party supports the extreme late-term abortion of defenseless babies right up to the moment of BIRTH.”

• “If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other Constitutional freedoms.”

• “Biden will defund police and bring violence to America’s cities . . .No one will be safe in Biden’s America.”

• If  the Democrat [sic] Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them.” 

The difference between the Republican and Democratic Partys’ political strategy for the 2020 election is as dissimilar as negative is from positive or zebras are from Croatian Coldbloods.  The Republicans (who did not see fit to publish a party platform) have largely based their electoral strategy on fear; the fear of left-wing Socialism, anarchy, Fascism (they can’t all go together!), endless taxes, governmental corruption, and the outlawing of “That Old Time Religion.”  Democrats, on the other hand, are pushing hope; the hope of better days if only we work together; the hope that grows when ceaseless lies are replaced with the telling of truth and taking responsibility for the mistakes we make.  Republicans, like Big Brother in 1984, communicate via Newspeak, which turns lies into truth, vigilantism into heroism and loyalty to the Supreme Leader into presidential pardons.  It is enough to make many a former Republican grab for an over-the-counter emetic. 

In Donald Trump’s dystopian world the POTUS has consolidated a circle of extremist advisers; hardline restrictions on immigration which include separating and caging children away from their parents; eliminating many Wall Street and environmental restrictions enacted by the previous administration and made it next to impossible for ordinary Americans to agree on simple truths, let alone politics. He has actually convinced a sizable minority of the American public that despite suffering more than 180,000 deaths from COVID19, he is absolutely correct in ignoring the advice of galaxy-class physicians and scientists and that despite more than 1 million people applying for unemployment insurance every weak for the past 3 months, the economy is booming. And perhaps the worst, he has sold his minions on the fact that voting by mail is the biggest con since Charles Ponzi. If all this isn’t dystopian, I don’t know what is.

(BTW: Since beginning this essay, POTUS has retweeted a conspiracy theory falsely claiming that only about 9,000 people had “actually” died from corona virus, instead of more than 180,000.  Twitter later removed the tweet, written by a user named “Mel Q,” who is also a believer of the QAnon conspiracy theory, saying it violated its rules.  In yet another series of tweets early this morning, Trump also embraced a call to imprison New York  Governor Andrew Cuomo; threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House; attacked CNN and NPR; embraced a supporter charged with  murder; and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation.  Vice President Biden put on his “big boy pants” and responded in kind: “What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters?  He  is recklessly  encouraging violence. He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong - but his failure  to call on his  supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he  is.”)

So what is the sole emetic to be taken for extreme political nausea? 

Simple:

Voting+campaigning+making financial contributions

It may not bring Sir Thomas More’s Utopia back to life . . . but what have we to lose?

There are 63 days until November 3, 2020

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

If You Ain't Indicted, You Ain't Invited

“Kiddo” Davis

Unless you are a really serious baseball fan you have no idea who George Wallace “Kiddo” Davis was. Who? Kiddo Davis (1902-1983), was the only man who replaced Babe Ruth in a baseball game.  It happend in the ninth inning of a losing game against the Cleveland Indians. Although Kiddo’s name made its way into the official box score for that game, which took place on June 5, 1926 Davis didn’t get up to bat, and wouldn’t play in another major league game until April 12, 1932 by which time he was a member of the Philadelphia Phillies. And although he did eventually play in parts of seven more seasons and went 7-18 in the 1932 World Series (won by the N.Y, Giants), replacing Babe Ruth was his single claim to baseball immortality.

Orson Welles

Then there was Orson Welles who, at age 24, wrote, directed, edited, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, considered by many (myself included) to be the greatest motion picture of all time. And to make matters even better, he brought the film in on time and under budget! What in the world would the young Welles’ next film be? How in the world could he compete with cinematic perfection? Well, his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons (adapted from a Booth Tarkington novel) was nearly as good — mainly before his bosses at RKO butchered it after Welles had been sent to South America on a ruse. Nonetheless, it is still considered to be in the top 50 of greatest motion pictures of all time.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his last,  unfinished novel (The Last Tycoon), “There are no second acts in American lives,” by which he likely meant “there are no second chances.”  We begin this piece with Kiddo and Orson, using the pair as a dual prelude to this week’s topic: the upcoming Republican National Convention, which begins tomorrow night. (BTW: It has just been announced that ‘45 will speak all 4 nights . . . something absolutely sui generis in the world of political conventions.)

Many of us watched virtually every minute of last week’s Democratic National Convention.  If you’re like me, you were no doubt transfixed by the words we heard, the images we saw and the messages those on screen delivered. Considering that up until quite recently, all systems were go for a typical flag-waving, balloon-dropping political coronation in a vast barn of a hall in Milwaukee, what the Democrats were able to create in such a short period of time was both technically brilliant and emotionally memorable.  I for one watched the convention with both the eye of a veteran political operative and the critical sensibilities of a Hollywood Brat.  One of the things which most impressed me was the manner in which those behind the camera were able to spot their shortcomings, understand what changes had to be made and then put them into effect within but a few hours. 

Case in point: Michele Obama’s first-night speech.  While it was absolutely stellar from a rhetorical point of view, it left quite a bit to be desired when it came to smoothly editing a three-camera shoot.  Going from camera one (front-on) to camera two (right profile) to camera three (left profile) was both clunky and amateurish.  But by the second night, those in charge had gotten the kinks out and produced smoothly flowing set pieces.  Pure Hollywood!

From the incredible presentation of the state-by-state, territory-by-territory vote – which reminded us of just how photographically beautiful and geographically diverse we are as a country – to the once gravely injured Gabby Giffords playing French Horn and speaking with great clarity, to Brayden Harrington, the teenage boy afflicted with stuttering talking about how much Joe Biden has done to instill hope, and the first-rate speeches of the Clintons, Mayor Bloomberg, Senators Sanders, Booker and Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, to former Mayors Pete and Bloomberg and oh so many others, this convention was worthy of both an Emmy, an Oscar and an overwhelming victory come November. (The difference between how V.P. Biden responded to Brayden Harrington to how ‘45 mocked a Washington Post reporter who has a disability says it all.)

To return to a baseball idiom for just a second, this virtual convention showed one and all that the Democrats are capable of fielding an extraordinary, multi-cultural team, and, at the same time, stocking a “bench” deep with talent which is second-to-none.

For as long as I can remember, whenever one of my students asks me to predict the future, I respond somewhat whimsically, explaining that “my crystal ball has yet to get back from the dry cleaner.” I answer in the same vein when asked about how I believe the Republicans are going to respond during next week’s national convention. Simply stated, I have no idea. HOWEVER, I do feel that they are in danger of getting themselves dangerously mired in both political and videographic quicksand. Simply stated, they have neither the team nor the bench to compete against the Democrats. Where the Democrats spent last week preaching love, unity and the ability to get things done if only we can do them together, the Republicans are stuck with negativity and the fear of both “left-wing socialism” (whatever in the hell that is) and minorities who they will no doubt depict as being the opposite of what they would have their base believe is “the real America.”  

So far as I can tell, next week’s convention is going to be angry, negative and filled with attacks against all those who do not represent 1950’s America. Their message will likely be aimed directly at those who are white, Christian, and mostly non-college educated. The number of front-line Republican pols who will not be speaking (nor likely be “attending”) will likely be obvious.  As of today, the “announced” speakers are Vice President Pence, First Lady Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Senators Tim Scott (SC), Joni Ernst (IA), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) as well as former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and likely Patricia and Mark McClosky, the  St. Louis homeowners who pointed guns at protesters earlier this summer.

The president is no doubt going to have a lot on his mind.  As much as he revels in giving political speeches, there won’t be any mass crowd giving him energy; due to the constraints of network television, he would be wise to what’s on his teleprompter.  The faces that may well be  flashing before his mind’s eye are those of the  recently indicted  Steve Bannon, the recently pardoned (commuted, actually) Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, his former “Mr. Fixit (and soon-to-be-author) Michael Cohen, his niece, best-selling author Dr. Mary Trump, and his eldest sister, former federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry. As he preaches about the evils of “left-wing socialism,” the duplicity of Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton, the various conspiracies (minus QAnon) created to bring him down, he is likely to come off far more like the Emperor in Hans Christian Anderson’s  Kejserens nye klæder (“The Emperor’s New Clothes) who got  exposed before his subjects, than the second coming of Theodore Roosevelt.  I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes . . .  

I for one feel truly sorry for those Republican functionaries who have been assigned the awesome task of putting their convention together at the last minute. They are facing a tremendous challenge; mostly from the leaders and campaign experts on the Democratic side of the aisle who put kindness, compassion, empathy and civility center stage.  By now, the Republican leaders and campaign experts know full well that they are incapable of putting any of the aforementioned traits on their campaign slate; their incumbent simply not made out of the same stuff as his opponent.  Simply stated, he neither knows nor can identify the soul of America. 

Democrats also understand that a preponderance of the Trump team is currently under indictment. And they will likely make it clear that those who ain’t indicted, ain’t invited.

Next week’s virtual convention  should  be a real lulu. 

72 days until Nov. 3, 2020

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Donald Trump

To say the least, my last couple of conversations with Madam (Mom) has been both depressing and oddly energizing. The issue at hand? The United States Postal Service and how the POTUS is doing everything in his power to dismantle it in order to win reelection. Now nearing 97, Alice finds herself with far more time on her hands than she would like or has long been accustomed to. And so, she reads newspapers from cover-to-cover, and watches MSNBC from dusk to dawn. She has long been a political animal (why do you think my middle name is “Franklin?”), has voted in every election since 1945, volunteered in her share of campaigns, and from time-to-time has actually received engraved invitations to presidential inaugurals. She also continues to harbor a profound hatred of Senator Joe McCarthy and the House un-American Activities Committee. And while it comes as no surprise to those who know her that this wise and totally “with it” woman should still be following politics, it is saddening to note that for perhaps the first time in her life, she is beginning to feel helpless. “Kurt, what can we do to keep this ‘j*rk’ from stealing the election and utterly destroying America?” she asked me yesterday. “Who can I call? Give me some addresses and phone numbers. I can’t just sit back and do nothing!” And so, I gave her the telephone number of her local member of Congress (Brad Sherman), Adam Schiff (whose district is next door) and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

Before ringing off, I reminded her to wait until Monday morning before making her calls.  “Any idea of what you’re going to say?” I asked.  “Hell yes!” she barked.  “I’m going to tell them that they’ve got to stop this mad man from taking America away from a 97-year old woman! And I’ll remind them who my son is . . .”

The Post Office Department is even older than the United States.  Indeed, Benjamin Franklin, America’s first Postmaster General, was appointed to his position in 1775; a full year before the Declaration of Independence.  Throughout America’s earliest decades, one’s postal delivery person was the average their closest - if not only - connection to the Federal Government.  The first stamps were issued in 1847; the Pony Express began 13 years later, and most soldiers fighting in the Civil War voted by mail.  For years and years, it was commonplace for the Postmaster General to be a close political ally of the President.  Two of the most famous were Warren G. Harding’s political henchman, Will (“The Deacon”) Hays (who would become the Hollywood film industry’s “morals czar” in 1922, and James A. Farley, FDR’s campaign manager.  Today, the Postmaster General appointed by President Donald Trump is currently residing in the eye of a political hurricane; Louis DeJoy (who was appointed just 2 months ago) is a major financial backer of ‘45 and, along with his wife, Dr. Aldona Wos (a former U.S. Ambassador to Estonia) have purchased significant stock options in Amazon (which the POTUS has falsely claimed is largely responsible for the U.S. Postal Service losing money) as well as a minimum   $30 million in stock in XPO Logistics, a contractor company that processes mail for USPS - a clear conflict of interest.

(n.b. The major reason why USPS has been running up a lot of red ink over the past 12-15 years is not because of Amazon and other mass package-mailing concerns.  Truth to tell, In 2019, the Postal Service reported a net loss of $8.8 billion, but the shipping and packages segment of its business increased revenue by $1.3 billion, or 6.1%, over 2018. No, the real culprit is a 2006 law passed by a lame-duck Republican Congress called “The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act” which law forced USPS to prepay its pensions for 75 years . . . something which no other corporation does. This was meant to bankrupt it so it’s business could be privatized for profit.) 

As most – including Madam – know by now, ’45 is doing everything in his power to defund USPS.  It is his contention that voting by mail will unquestionably benefit the Democrats whom he contends, are far, far more likely to engage in fraudulent practices.  Boss Tweet has warned of foreign governments mailing out tens of millions of counterfeit mail-in ballots (which are even more difficult to counterfeit than cash), of dead people and illegal immigrants voting tens of dozens of times apiece, and other fairy tales which have virtually no backing in truth.

Knowing little if anything about shame, just this past Thursday Trump frankly acknowledged that he’s starving the U.S. Postal Service of money in order to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could cost him the election.

In an interview on Fox Business Network, Trump explicitly noted two funding provisions that Democrats are seeking in a relief package that has stalled on Capitol Hill. Without the additional money, he said, the Postal Service won’t have the resources to handle an unprecedented flood of ballots from voters who are seeking to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.

“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”

The President’s statements, including the false claim that Democrats are seeking universal mail-in voting, come as he is searching for a strategy to gain an advantage in his November matchup against the Biden/Harris ticket. He’s pairing the tough Postal Service stance in congressional negotiations with an increasingly robust mail-in-voting legal fight in states that could decide the election.  There is already visual proof that he’s dismantling the postal system; after-dark removal of blue mail boxes across the country and dismantling of mail sorting machines. 

The attempt to dismantle and even privatize the USPS didn’t begin with Donald Trump. Conservative Republican mega-donors have long sought to privatize everything from the military to America’s space program to, of course, healthcare. Trump’s hyper-wealthy backers convinced him that the reason why he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton was because of the inefficiency of the United States Postal Service. They further convinced him that mail-in votes were rife with fraud - a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence. It worked: Trump began complaining to senior White House advisers that Jeff Bezos — a presidential foe in part because he owns The Washington Post, whose news coverage the president thought was unfair and too tough on him — was “getting rich” because Amazon had been “ripping off” the Postal Service with a “sweetheart deal” to ship millions of its packages, one of them recalled. They explained that this was not true and that the Postal Service actually benefited from Amazon’s business, the adviser added, but the president railed for months about what he described as a “scam.”

In truth, the intricacies of voting laws are a matter for the states - not the feds. As an example, some states permit mail-in votes to be counted so long as they are post marked prior to Election Day. Others mandate that they be received by that date, and still others require that each mail-in ballot be notarized. ‘45 has threatened at least 46 states that they will be fined if they don’t complete counting mail-in ballots on Election Day itself. Whether or not this is legal is yet to be determined. But the Trump Justice Department knows full well that any legal case could take months - if not years - to wind up appearing before the Supreme Court.

Is it any wonder that Madam is deeply concerned?

What can we do? Everyone must contact their Congressional Representative and Secretary of State (for each of the 50 states) and express as simply and as tersely as possible why mail-in voting is provably honest and that the administration’s grand plan is could spell the end of Democracy. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. And above all, vote as early as humanly possible. Do not let these besotted egomaniacs steal away the presidential election so that they may continue to enrich themselves and their backers.

Madam deserves a good, sound, unencumbered night’s sleep. She knows and understands far, far more about politics than the current occupant of the White House and wishes only to cast this, her 38th presidential vote for a candidate who has read, understands, and fully supports the Constitution of the United States.

78 days until November 3, 2020.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"If Biden Becomes President God Is in BIG Trouble". . . So Saith Donald J. Trump

After nearly 1,300 days in office, hardly anything DJT says is surprising. Or so I thought until this past Thursday, August 6, when Boss Tweet, speaking before a group in Ohio, accused former Vice President Joe Biden of “following the radical left agenda,” and claimed that were he to be elected in 2020, he - Biden that is -  would “hurt the Bible [and] hurt God.” Furthermore, ‘45  flatly accused the gentleman from Delaware of being “against God.” This from the man who, in 2015, could not name a single Biblical verse when asked which was his favorite, instead claiming it was “very personal.” Could this be the filthiest presidential election in all American history? Actually not . . . and by a long shot. In order to take first place, a presidential election would have to have perfidious untruths spewing forth from both sides . . . not just one. To the best of my recollection, Joe Biden has never been very been terribly skilled at “דוחף שטויות” (Hebrew for “the shoveling of b.s.”) No, if you’re looking for the nastiest, most underhanded of all presidential elections, you would likely have to go back 220 years . . . to the election of 1800, which pitted incumbent President John Adams versus incumbent Vice President Thomas Jefferson.

By 1798 - two years before the next presidential election, Adams and Jefferson - who at one point had been rather close and greatly admiring of one another - were the worst of enemies. Precisely why is a long story. If you are interested in knowing more, I heartily recommend reading Gordon Woods’ Friends Divided. As different in tone, appetite, and personality as any two highly literate gentlemen could be, Adams, Jefferson and their surrogates befouled the political air with the most lethally noxious fabrications and exaggerations in that long-ago presidential election.

At one point Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind.”

On July 4, 1798, a revered congregational minister who was also president of Yale, delivered a ringing condemnation of Jefferson's supposed atheism. In a widely-reprinted sermon, Yale President Timothy Dwight, whom critics sarcastically called "His Holiness Pope Timothy," prophesied the likely consequence of a Jefferson victory: "[T]he Bible would be cast into a bonfire, our holy worship changed in a dance of Jacobin phrensy [sic], our wives and daughters dishonored, and our sons converted into the disciples of Voltaire and the dragoons of Marat." According to Dwight, "Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, the nation black with crimes.".

The fact of the matter was that Jefferson, far from being an “atheist,” was a Deist who could easily read the Bible in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, and even wrote and published a work still in print in 2020 known as The Jefferson Bible. (Deism by the way, holds that God does not intervene with the functioning of the natural world in any way, allowing it to run according to the laws of nature that co* ([he/she] configured when co* created all things.)

Ironically, it was one of Jefferson’s closest friends - James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution - who, repulsed by the religious attack on the Sage of Monticello, created within Article VI which, after requiring all federal and state legislators and officers to swear or affirm to support the federal Constitution, specified that “no Religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” In a sense, it is this article - the “No religious test” text, that the current POTUS has so obviously, vulgarly and nastily ignored in attacking his political opponent. Unlike Adams, who was a self-confessed “church-going animal,” Mr. Trump is, without question, a religious illiterate. On the other hand, former Vice President Biden is a lifelong practicing Catholic who regularly attends Mass at St. Joseph’s on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware. He wears a rosary on his left wrist, a gift his younger son Hunter gave to his older son, the late Beau Biden, after a visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. ‘45, on the other hand, has rarely been known to enter a church of any denomination. That ‘45 should aver that Biden is anti-religious and a threat to both the Bible and God is a clear indication that once again, Trump and his advisors are blithely speaking about that which they know nothing. By definition, God, who is both omnipotent and omniscient to those who believe, cannot be susceptible to “BIG trouble.” To place a heavy religious yoke astride the shoulders of his political opponent, POTUS is attempting to keep his Evangelical base firmly in his corner. For reasons not easily understood, Trump has been able to maintain a goodly percentage of that holier-than-thou base despite being a serial liar, an immoralist and a potty-mouthed boor.  And although Article VI only bans religious tests for those holding - and not merely running for - high office, one gets the overarching sense that  politics must be confined to the temporal - not spiritual or sectarian - realm; otherwise it makes of faith, morality and godlike acts little more than a sordid chapter from Elmer Gantry. As POTUS, ‘45 has surrounded himself with a tight-knit group of pastors and evangelical leaders who heap praise upon him for his socially conservative stances, his judicial appointments and his support for Israel’s government. Trump often invites these pastors to pray and seems to enjoy hearing their protestations of faith. Many of the pastors insist that Trump is a Christian believer. But they - and a vast percentage of their flock - seem not to care a fig that this man they call “a Christian believer” has a track record which falls far, far short of what the Bible preaches and teaches.  It  has never troubled them that the president has flat out disparaged two of the most religious politicians of our time . . . neither of whom are Evangelical Protestants: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who is a fascinating admixture of ardent Catholic and yiddishe bubbe) and Utah  Senator Mitt Romney, who is a devote Mormon.  Neither has ever put their individual faith on public display.  Many recent presidents, once in office, put together an “ecumenical faith council.”  I have, over the years, known several rabbis who served on various presidential councils.  When it came Trump’s turn, his council was absolutely 100% devoid members from Catholic, mainline Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or other traditions. Although raised a mainline Presbyterian and married (the 3rd time around) in an Episcopalian Church to Melania, (who is a Catholic), Trump has no time for anyone who is not a born-again Evangelical.  Why?  Because Evangelicals are as good for his political campaigns as billionaires are for his political fundraising.  And by the way, once Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), Chair of the Powerful House Appropriations Committee retires from Congress in January 2021, guess who will once again presume the title of grandmother of the most Jewish grandchildren in the Congress of the United States?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi . . . the only Speaker who also has a soccer field named after her in the State of Israel. 

Dear God: may it be your will that all of  your children - whether Evangelical Christian, traditional Jew, Muslim, atheist, agnostic,  or Jeffersonian Deist, come to recognize that one’s religious faith has nothing to do with secular politics.  It is by real deeds - not our verbal creeds - that our real selves come to be known and trusted in the public square.  

84 days until November 3, 2020

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"No Longer Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breath Free"

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There once was a time when every school child could identify the term “Mayflower” - the name of the first ship to arrive in the New World. To be the descendant of a Mayflower family meant that one was a “blue-blood.” The roster of passengers on that famous 1620 voyage contained names like Alden, Allerton, Bradford, Carter, Mullins, and Priest; Standish, Story, Wilder, Williams and Winslow. Among their descendants across many generations we find such famous (and infamous) people as Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Poet Robert Frost, the late Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, Barbara Bush, Helen Keller, Humphrey Bogart and even the Wright Brothers, Sarah Palin, Jane Fonda and John Hinckley, Jr.  Without question, the original passenger list of the Mayflower consists of some of the most successful families in American  history.  And although, as legend would have it, most came here in search of religious freedom, the truth is that just as many arrived on these shores looking for lower taxes and greater wealth.  I well remember a cartoon which adorned a wall in my cubbyhole of an office when I worked as “environmental ethicist” for California Governor Jerry Brown back in the mid-1970’s: Two pilgrims were standing on the bowsprit of the Mayflower.  One said to the other: “Religious freedom is a great thing, but I came here to get into real estate!” Whatever the case, to be part of the “Mayflower generation” has long marked one as a member of America’s aristocracy.

Not so well known was a ship that arrived in  Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan on September 22, 1654.  It was called the “Ste Catherine,” which had embarked from Recife, Brazil months earlier and has ever since been known as “The Jewish Mayflower.” The vast majority of its passengers were Sephardi - Jews whose ancestry could be traced to Spain and Portugal.  Non speakers of Yiddish, their native tongue was mostly Ladino (a linguistic blend of Spanish and Hebrew) or Judismo (sometimes referred to as “Judaeo-Arabic”).  Among its passenger list were families named Gomez, Seixas, Nathan, Cardozo and Lazarus.  One of the Cardozos - Benjamin [1870-1938] would become the second Jew to serve on the United States Supreme Court; another, Haym Salomon (1740-1785) was one of the two greatest financial backers of the American revolution); a third, Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) became one of early America’s most respected poets, and the author of the sonnet which adorns the base of the Statue of Liberty: The New Colossus, which reads in part:

                                                                                    "Give me your tired, your poor,
                                                                          Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
                                                                             The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
                                                                            Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
                                                                                   I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

For generations, immigrants to these shores - including, I would imagine - the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of many readers of this blog, entered the United States through New York Harbor . . . and this poem, sitting at the base of the “Lady With the Lamp,” was the first thing they saw . . . a message of heartfelt welcome.  My wife Annie, although she and her parents arrived at Kennedy Airport rather than Ellis Island when they came here from Argentina a half-century ago, were well aware of the welcoming arms which awaited them. Both sides of my family - with a single exception (Grandpa Doc) came in through either Charleston or Baltimore harbor long before “Lady Liberty” had been created by the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, built by Gustav Eiffel, and given a permanent home on Liberty Island. Nonetheless, their arrivals - around the time of America’s Civil War - were met with overwhelming optimism and pride . . . and the certain knowledge that at last they had found a home where being Jewish was neither an obstacle nor an impediment.  And so it has been for countless generations.  America welcomed generations of Schimbergs, Greenbergs, Hymans, Kagans and Zamosces with open arms and the promise a peaceful, prideful and productive future.

And it’s largely because of that inviolate promise that both my mother and my wife have devoted their time and energy to introducing newcomers to the mysteries of the English language, Democracy and the American way of life.  My mother – a long-time Midwesterner from Chicago, Kansas  City and Hollywood -  tutored a new generation of Russian-Jewish refugees back in the 1960s; she recently told me that one of her best teaching tools was “the good old Yellow Pages” (remember them?) My wife, an immigrant from Argentina who earned both a B.A. and M.A. in English as a Second Language, has spent decades serving as teacher and mentor to refugees and asylees from all over the world, teaching them not only English but how to shop, read maps and menus, vote, create a proper resume, find a job, and generally participate in civil society.

That is until just the other day . . . 

This past Friday, the Trump administration announced an exorbitant increase in fees for some of the most common immigration procedures, including an 81% increase in the cost of U.S. citizenship for naturalization. It will also now charge asylum-seekers, which is an unprecedented move. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a final rule in the Federal Register that details the new cost for dozens of immigration and naturalization applications, a further change in immigration policy to curb legal immigration of low-income foreign nationals.  In an accompanying press release announcing the drastic and unparalleled changes, USCIS claimed they were enacted  to "ensure U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recovers its costs of services.”  While it is true that unlike many government agencies USCIS is largely fee funded, the timing is more than suspicious.  The last time the agency raised its fees (by a weighted 21%) was in late December, 2016 - the very last days of the Obama administration.  Changes like these don’t happen overnight; they are, generally speaking, the product of months - if not years - of investigation.  But to publish and make manifest such draconian raises (which will go into effect on October 2, 2020), seems suspiciously political. The Trump team based an entire presidential campaign on the issue of immigration, dumping refugees, potential asylees - the “huddled masses yearning to be free” - into a cauldron bearing the legend “Go back from where you came; you are nothing but job-stealing, drug-dealing murderers and rapists who are intent on nothing less than living off the federal government for the rest of your lives.”  And while a majority of the American public never really bought into this Kafkaesque nightmare, there were enough to form a strong political base and buy into the “MAGA” master plan.’  

For months now, immigrants, refugees “the wretched refuse of your teeming shores” have largely disappeared from  both presidential press conferences and the nightly news.  And for obvious reasons which can be summed up in just a couple of syllables: impeachment, pandemic, job-loss ‘law ‘n order’ and 'massive voter fraud.’  But now that the national election is a mere 3 months away, it’s a great time to rev back up the issue of immigration; to make sure the Trumpist base is back on board.

And, as mentioned above, the fee hikes are without question, punitive to the max.  Here are just a few:

• The fee to apply for U.S. citizenship through naturalization will increase from $640 to $1,160 if filed online, or $ 1,170 in paper filing.

• Form I-881, Application for Suspension of Deportation. Current fee: $285. Final Fee: $1,810. Percentage change: 535%.

• Form ▪ I-929, Petition for Qualifying Family Member of a U-1 Nonimmigrant (Victims of Criminal Activity). Current fee: $230. Final Fee: $1,485. Percentage change: 546%.

It should be noted in passing that one of the main reasons why USCIS is in such perilous budgetary straits is that the current administration has so clamped down on refugees and those seeking asylum that now there are far fewer people paying fees. Somewhat surprisingly, this issue has received little notice in the mainstream media. At the same time, Trump’s political base is well aware of the “final rule” and all it entails.

The Lady With the Lamp must be shedding tears at this turn of events. That which has long made the United States so successful and unique - its melange of newcomers from the four corners of the earth - has been unalterably changed. Oh sure, we’ve had bouts of anti-immigrant lunacy across the centuries; but now, it’s become both codified and made the central focus of an entire political movement. Shame on all those who have clothed themselves in the garments of cowardice and permitted it to happen.

In 1982, four years before the Statue' of Liberty’s centennial anniversary, President Ronald Reagan appointed Lee Iacocca, the Chairman of Chrysler Corporation, to head the Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation. The Foundation was created to lead the private sector effort and raise the funds for the renovation and preservation of the Statue for its centennial in 1986. The Foundation worked with the National Park Service to plan, oversee, and implement this restoration.  At the time, Lady Liberty was badly in need of repair; she was falling apart and begrimed with nearly a century’s worth of grime and slime.  And yet, by the time of her centennial, she was back to being a gleaming shrine; a vivid exemplar of what makes America unique among the nations.  At its unveiling in 1986, one of the things that people most remarked on was the pristine and hopeful idealism of the words at her base  . . . the words of Emma Lazarus, seen here in her own hand:

“The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Copyright©1883 Emma Lazarus

Meet Karen Bass

Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA)

There are now less than 100 days to go until the most crucial presidential election in American history. Many polls show that the Biden/? ticket will beat the poo out of Trump/Pence; a few speculate that Trump/Pence will squeak past Biden/? due to some kind of “November miracle.” Behind closed doors, the White House is straining to find a last-minute strategy which goes beyond what we’ve come to expect: name-calling, bluster, lies and the latest . . . “Law ‘n Order.” With less than 100 days to go, no one knows for sure how the Republican National Convention will work and precisely where ‘45 will give his acceptance speech to party loyalists. On the Democratic side of the aisle, the big question mark is who Joe Biden will select as his running mate. All we know for certain at this point is that his selection will be a woman. 

Back at the dawn of time, the person who came in second in the presidential election would automatically become V.P.  That is why Thomas Jefferson (the nation’s 1st Secretary of State) became our 2nd V.P under President John Adams) and then after 36 ballots by the House of Representatives, our 3rd POTUS (with the loser, former New York Senator Aaron Burr, becoming our 3rd V.P. Eventually, the choice of who would run on a party’s national ticket  for Vice President became the obligation of national delegates, party leaders or the candidate himself. Under these latter circumstances, the choice almost always was for political reasons - based either on a need to balance a ticket strategically or geographically.  In any event, part of the consideration would be that the Vice President be able to take over for the Chief Executive/Commander-in-Chief role should the need arise.  (Frequently it didn’t work out so well; Andrew Johnson had the grave misfortune of stepping into the shoes of the nation’s best - and tallest - president, Abraham Lincoln.  Ouch!)

Former Vice President Biden’s selection will no doubt be predominantly based on matters of  political strategy. Progressives have been pushing for Massachusetts ’Senator Elizabeth Warren; someone who can satisfy the party’s progressive wing and presumably keep them from sitting on their hands.  And, unquestionably, she is ready to step in on a moment’s notice.  However, it is by now obvious that she will not be Vice President Biden’s choice.  How so? Mostly, because he has adopted many of Senator Warren’s progressive policies.  Then too, a teaming of Biden and Warren brings neither racial nor generational diversity to the ticket, and would be a gift to  the Republicans who would continually remind their base of the perils of electing “Left-wing Socialists,” continually referring to the Vice Presidential candidate as “Pocahontas,” and not having to waste any time doing opposition research - they already know every “negative” there is know about her.  

Others being seriously considered 99 days out are Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Florida Representative Val Demmings, California Senator Kamala Harris, and former Obama National Security Adviser/UN Ambassador Susan Rice.  It should be noted that 4 are women of color.  Then too there are Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and helicopter pilot who lost both legs in combat while serving in Iraq, and California Representative Karen Bass, whom prior to her election to the House a decade ago, served as Speaker of the California Assembly . . . making her the second-most powerful politician in the world’s 7th largest economy.

Keep your eye on Representative Bass.  She brings so much to the national political table.  Besides being an African American woman with solid progressive credentials, she is a much respected member of both the House Judiciary Committee and Foreign Affairs, and chairs the House Black Caucus.  Karen Bass is a native Angelino, having been born nearly 67 years ago to a working-class family (her father was a postal worker; her mother a housewife). She was raised in the predominantly Jewish Fairfax area of L.A. and graduated from Hamilton High School (known to locals as “Hammy”), a majority Jewish public school.  Professionally, she is a physician’s assistant, and earned a Master’s Degree in social work from U.S.C.   

(BTW: many have not heard about her.  For my Jewish friends, it is likely that your first question will be about her bona fides vis-à-vis Israel.  It should be noted that she, along with 115 of her Congressional colleagues [all Democrats] signed a letter opposing unilateral annexation of the West Bank; otherwise, she has been a strong supporter of the Jewish State.

So what does Karen Bass bring to the table?  First and foremost, she is a leader who is both strong and highly knowledgeable about health issues, has a great deal of experience in international relations (both as Speaker of the California Assembly and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee), is passionate and . . . this might not at first blush sound like a positive . . . is not that well known to the opposition.  There is very little that can be said or done on the part of the Trump campaign to suddenly make her an “enemy of the  people.”  They are likely far behind in their opposition research on her, which means that they don’t have a vile nickname for her.  Let’s face it: while Vice President Biden is running away with the map, ‘45 is shooting himself in the foot (or mouth) 7 days a week.  

The best advice for the Biden team is to take comes either from Hippocrates (“First, do no harm”) or Napoleon Bonaparte (“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making mistake after mistake”).  With Karen Bass on the ticket, Uncle Joe can just be himself: experienced to the nth degree, decent, humane, compassionate and one of the people. 

And so, get ready to meet Karen Bass; a balanced ticket all unto herself.

99 days to go . . .  

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Good Trouble: Tearful Thoughts on the Passing of a Moral Giant

Most, if not all students of American political history know the eerie significance of the date July 4, 1826. For on that long ago Tuesday, which happened to be the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, two of its principle authors passed away within 5 hours of one another: Thomas Jefferson, America’s 3rd President, and his predecessor - and occasional political foe- John Adams. Ironically, the legend has it that the 90-year old Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” Adams, of course was wrong; he had no way of knowing that the 83-year old Virginian had succumbed five hours earlier.

Another eerie, though far far less well known coincidence occurred just yesterday, July 17. 2020: the deaths of 80-year old Georgia Representative John Robert Lewis and his 95-year old mentor, the Rev. C(ordell) T(yndell Vivian. With their dual passing - both of which occurred in Atlanta, Georgia - the last of the truly great giants of the American Civil Rights movement have gone to their respective rewards.

Lewis, the far better-known of the two, was, to say the least, a moral giant, and the last of the American Civil Rights Movement’s so-called “Big Six” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Whitney Young of the National Urban League; A. Phillip Randolph of the Negro American Labor Council; James L. Farmer Jr., of the Congress of Racial Equality; and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP. One of ten children of an impoverished sharecropper, John Lewis endured more than 6 decades of arrests and vicious beatings to become the longtime “moral conscience” of the United States Congress. Indeed, so well respected was this man that few - if any - members of Congress on either side of the aisle would ever say a word against him.

Already, as a 23-year old, John Lewis helped organize Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington (the enormous gathering at which Dr. King  delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech). Forgotten by many, Lewis himself actually spoke at the historic event: “In the Delta of Mississippi, in Southwest Georgia, in the Black Belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and all over this nation the Black masses are on a march for jobs and freedom.”  Turning away from the “black power” rhetoric of Trinidad-born Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998), Lewis remained steadfast to a Ghandi-esque philosophy of non-violence: "Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”

Lewis lost an election to Congress, won a seat on the Atlanta City Council, and eventually beat the vastly more urbane Julian Bond (1940-2015) for a seat in Congress in 1986. Lewis would serve in Congress until yesterday. Interestingly, Bond garnered far more votes from black voters in that ‘86 race than John Lewis. Although not known for being a legislative powerhouse, John Lewis quickly became known as both the conscience and moral center of the House. He was part prophet, part saint. About the only major American politician who would excoriate him was - not surprisingly - Donald Trump who, just days before his inauguration in 2017 disparaged the Georgia Representative as ““All talk, talk talk - no action or results” and further attacked him for representing a Georgia district Mr. Trump claimed was “crime infested” and “falling apart.” (In point of fact, John Lewis’ district was heavily Jewish and upper-middle class). John Lewis would go on to represent his district with distinction for more than 30 years; he declined to attend the inauguration of either Presidents George W. Bush or Donald Trump because, in his estimation, they had not won the office fairly.

The passing of John Lewis deprives the United States of its foremost warrior in a battle for racial justice that stretches back into the 19th century and the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Americans — and particularly his colleagues in Congress — can best honor his memory by picking up where he left off. In December of last year, John Lewis presided over the House when it voted to restore the Voting Rights Act. The Bill has now been sitting on Senator Mitch McConnell's desk for 225 days. One of the best ways to honor Lewis is for Congress to revive the law he devoted his life to & call it “The John Lewis Voting Rights Act.”

Then too, there is the matter of renaming an historic bridge.  In  March 1965, the then-25 year old John Lewis  (who at the time was chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee - SNCC) led a protest march along a 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. On March 7, as the group approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge (named after a former Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader), Alabama state troopers beat demonstrators who were marching for Black voting rights in what became known forever after as “Bloody Sunday." Among the most severely injured was John Lewis, who sustained a cracked skull after a state trooper beat him to the ground with a nightstick. That attack was captured on film by an enterprising television cameraman, and played on the nightly news. For the rest of his life, John Lewis would return to that bridge every March to commemorate the anniversary of the march, which ultimately led to the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act.

Change.org has started an online petition to change the name of that bridge to the “John Lewis Bridge.” It seems to me that it’s the least we can do to memorialize a man who continually challenged people of all races, colors and creeds (whom Lewis always referred to as “the beloved community”) to stand tall and engage in what he called “good trouble.”  (This comes from a 2018 Tweet in which he wrote: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair.  Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year.  It is the struggle of a lifetime.  Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. 

It seems to me that that the very best and most obvious - way to honor his memory is to get out and vote this coming November; whether via mail, absentee ballot or standing out in line until the deed is done. Keeping Donald Trump in office is the ultimate insult to a man who put his life and on the line every day for more than 6 decades.

To not vote deprives the United States of its foremost warrior in a battle for racial justice that stretches back into the 19th century and the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Americans — and particularly his colleagues in Congress — can best honor his memory by picking up where he left off.  King David wrote in Psalm 90 that The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years . . . John Lewis the man - the mentsch  - got his “fourscore years,” just as the most poetic of monarchs predicted.  But John Lewis the prophet, the non-violent warrior and dare I say, the saint, is eternal.  His passing reminds me of a comment made by none other than Bob Hope who, upon learning of the passing of Sir Charles Chaplin back in 1978  said in a tearful voice:

“We were fortunate to have lived in his time . . .”

106 days until November 3 . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"Vaccines Don't Save Lives"

I can just hear your initial comment: does the title of this essay really indicate the possibility that vaccines will not/cannot save us from COVID-19? Has Stone really moved over to the “dark side” and forsaken science like many of the Trumpeters?  Has he learned nothing from all the dozens upon dozens of clinical trials he has been privy to these past many months?  Before you devolve into a state of utter apoplexy, let me assure you that the answer is “No, no, a thousand times NO!  I do not for one second believe that vaccines do not/cannot save lives.” Rather, in the words of Walter Orenstein, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, Global Health, and Pediatrics at Emory University, (one of the nation’s truly supreme epidemiologists), “Vaccines don’t save lives. Vaccinations save lives.” In another essay, Dr. Orenstein wrote: “Vaccinations save lives. A vaccine dose that remains in a vial is zero-percent effective.” I can hear Homer Simpson sarcastically responding “DOH!”

It is (or at least should be) just that simple: vaccines are a matter of science; vaccinations, frequently (and most lamentably) a matter of partisan politics. Tragically, angrily, frighteningly, it is not that simple.  And it’s not just about a vaccine (or vaccines) still in the early stages of clinical trials.  For years, there have been people in various parts of the world who firmly believe that various vaccines are both a hoax and a danger.  As a result, diseases which, for the most part, have disappeared from the face of the earth have reappeared - with terrible consequences.  Every year, people - notably children - become horribly sick and ofttimes die from easily preventable diseases . . . like measles in Samoa, Fiji and Tonga, polio in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria and human papillomavirus infections in Japan. And here in the United States, there has been an ongoing debate as to whether or not a local communal authority like a city council, board of county supervisors or school board has the right to demand that children be given a MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination before being enrolled in public school.  

Why this debate, considering that MMR has been mostly eliminated as a result of children being vaccinated?  Two reasons: first, because in 1998, a major medical journal based in the UK, The Lancet, published a report headed by Andrew Wakefield, who was at that time a gastroenterological surgeon and medical researcher. The report implied a causal link between the above-mentioned measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the development of autism combined with IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) in children, which Wakefield described as a new syndrome he named “autistic entercolitis.” For more than a decade after its initial publication, the media widely reported on the study, leading tens of thousands of people to believe that the suggestion about the MMR vaccine must be true. As a result of this global vaccine scare, immunization rates dropped in the UK and North America. This of course has also lead to an increase in recent years of cases of measles, which the vaccine could have prevented. (Wakefield, it should be noted, had his medical license taken away and The Lancet retracted the original article.)  The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) published a very straightforward, exhaustively researched study entitled Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism.  Nevertheless, to this day, tens of thousands of parents refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated.  Even more telling, there are innumerable websites still warning against the dangers of the MMR vaccine.

The second reason?  Politics, plain and simple.  More specifically, because of political libertarianism which holds that whenever a governmental entity or body demands that a person receive a vaccination - or obtain health insurance, wear a mask, or observe social distancing - as but three examples - it is an infringement upon individual liberty and can thus be avoided or disobeyed.  

One thing I fear is that when (not if) the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approves the first of what promises to be several vaccines against COVID-19, there will be those who refuse to be vaccinated.  They will likely claim that the disease is a hoax, the vaccine(s) is/are going to sicken people further, and that the government does not possess the legal right to tell citizens what they must do.  (To be consistent, these libertarians should also demand the right to drive cars and motorcycles without being insured, belted or helmeted.  But remember Emerson’s dictum: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”  To be certain, in this instance, I quote Emerson with tongue-in-cheek.

It pains me every time I watch, read or listen to people who deride or denigrate the masters of medicine and science; who put their “right” to be free from any constraint mandated by government above my “right”to be healthy and from them infecting me or mine.  I want to shake them and make them listen while I explain the vast difference that exists between scientific research and abject alchemy.  COVID-19 is not a hoax perpetrated by liberals; it was not created in a Chinese lab under a grant from George Soros; it will simply not disappear just because a president who’s headed for the last political round-up says so. Bleach, Hydroxychloroquine, vitamin C and summertime cannot cure it.  Wearing masks, washing one’s hands many times a day, and social distancing can help keep its spread in check.  If you want to know how to lose weight, go to a coach or dietitian; don’t waste time drinking diet soda.  If you want to lessen your chances of testing positive for Corona Virus - or worse, infecting others - listen to and obey the wisdom of epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists; don’t take the words or suppositions of political “leaders” as gospel.

Just as vaccines cannot save lives if they merely remain in vials sitting on laboratory shelves, so too will “medical” advice fail if it comes largely from politicians and sellers of snake oil.

115 days until November 3, 2020. 

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone