#950: I Really Do Love Israel . . . However

There is an old tale (most likely originally told in Yiddish) about a Jewish man who got lost at sea and eventually made his way to an uncharted island in the middle of nowhere. After many decades, a passing ship noted smoke rising from the heretofore unknown piece of land, and thus sent a small launch in its direction to check it out and satisfy their curiosity. Tying up their launch, less than a half-mile from the island’s shore, they swam over and were amazed to be greeted by an elderly man with a long beard.

After exchanging pleasantries and learning how he had wound up being there - and that he really had no idea precisely how long ago that was - he asked if he could take them on a brief tour so that he could show them the beauty of his home. The visitors were amazed to discover that over the years the old man had created numerous vegetable gardens, a small patch of land devoted to growing wheat which provided him with flour, a lovely pasture with goats and sheep, and a hatchery for fish. He proudly showed them the grass hut he had built for his home, and then urged them to go with him to the other side of the island so that he could show them "the pièce de résistance.” Trekking to the other side of the island, they immediately spotted two beautiful huts standing proudly on their own mound of highly compacted sand.

“And what are these?” the launch leader asked, “and why are there two, considering that there are no other people living here?”

“Ah,” said the old man, “a good question indeed. Why two? You see, the elderly fellow told them, these are my two shuls.” Quickly seeing the lack of comprehension in their faces, he said : “My two synagogues . . . my places of Jewish worship.”

“But why two?” they asked once again. “Simple,” he told them.” Then pointing to the one on the right he proudly told them “This is the synagogue I go to religiously seven days a week, three times a day in order to pray.” "

“And the other one?” the leader asked.

“That’s the one I would never step foot in!” he said, spitting on the sandy ground . . .

“The Talmudic Argument” by Giuseppe Bonalini

This whimsical bit or irony is probably best understood by what we Jewish folk refer to as “M-O-T” - namely, “Members Of the Tribe.” You see, for as long as we’ve existed, despite being a single people (עם אחד - ahm echad - in Hebrew), we have had our arguments, disputes, and fallings-out with one another. Sometimes they have been vehement enough to cause one segment to walk away from another - e.g. building a shul to which no one goes, as in the story above. But in the long run, over many millennia, we have, more often than not, stood shoulder-to-shoulder when things got really dicey.

Another tale - this from the Talmud: Rabbi Eliezer was in an argument with five fellow rabbis over the proper way to perform a certain ritual. The other five Rabbis were all in agreement with each other, but Rabbi Eliezer vehemently disagreed. Finally, Rabbi Nathan pointed out "Eliezer, the vote is five to one! Give it up already!" Eliezer got fed up and said "If I am right, may God himself tell you so!" Thunder crashed, the heavens opened up, and the voice of God boomed down. "YES, RABBI ELIEZER IS RIGHT. RABBI ELIEZER IS PRETTY MUCH ALWAYS RIGHT." Rabbi Nathan turned and conferred with the other rabbis for a moment, then turned back to Rabbi Eliezer. "All right, Eliezer," he said, "the vote stands at five to TWO."

OK. I’ve - hopefully - gotten the point across that among Jews, arguing can sometimes be akin to sport, sometimes a matter of seriousness.  So let’s get serious . . .  

Over the past year or so, politics in מדינת ישראל (midinat Yisrael - the “State of Israel”) has become more than the subject of argumentation; they have become both unsettling and potentially earth-shattering.  In many ways, what’s been happening on the Israeli political scene is not all that much different from what’s going on in the United States: an increasingly right-wing, religion-driven minority enacting their other-worldly will over the will of the majority . . . as well as leaders whose greatest desire is to remain (or regain) their seat of power in order to stay out of prison.

        Israeli P.M. Bibi Netanyahu

Over the past two years, Israel has seen a number of governments collapse due to coalition partners being unable and unwilling to work with one another. Not even a so-called “Unity Government” could get along. To American observers of Israeli politics, their system is close to incomprehensible; it has aspects of British Parliamentarianism (from which the executive branch achieves its power) and the post-Ataturk Turkish Republic system of governance. Like the U,.K. (and New Zealand, Canada and Saudi Arabia), Israel has no constitution . . . which is part of their problem. Its heterodynamic (sometimes active, sometimes dormant) system makes political unity all but impossible. Case in point: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, the state’s longest-serving PM, in order to remain in that post, cobbled together a coalition which included two of the most ultra-orthodox parties in the business. In turn, these parties - which represent a small minority of the country’s voters and/or wishes, have the power to turn one of the world’s most modern, best-educated, and most technically advanced countries into a 8,560 square mile (approximately the size of New Jersey) shetl . . . the name for medieval Eastern European Jewish market town where rabbis ruled, women’s main tasks were to cook, clean and bear children, and there was no distinction between secular and religious.

This not having a constitution wasn’t the original plan. Israel’s Declaration of Independence explicitly called for a constitution, and the first Knesset (parliament), elected on January 25, 1949, was supposed to create one. They deliberated it for many months but the discussions reached a deadlock. It rapidly became clear that no constitution would be enacted; instead the Knesset would enact a series of Basic Laws that would in time be combined into a constitution. After nearly three-quarters-of-a-century, Israelis are still waiting.

Bibi Netanyahu’s current governing coalition is, as mentioned above, easily the most ultra-conservative and religious in Israel’s history. This is not to say that the various religious parties have remained on the political sidelines up until now. To the contrary: religious parties have always held seats within the 120 member Knesset and have been minor partners in various coalitions in exchange for which they fulfill their major goals. To wit, maintaining the Orthodox strangle-hold on marriages, divorces and conversions, receiving deferments for their young men from military service (so that they may spend their lives studying Talmud) and receiving monetary appropriations directed to the haredim (Hebrew for “those who tremble” - the most ultra-Orthodox) community. On May 23, 2023, Netanyahu’s Knesset approved a raise for Agudat Israel and Otzma Yehudit - the two most powerful religious parties - NIS 250 million raise, to be used for building additional settlements. Even this “chanukah present” came as the result of argumentation: the two party’s opening demand was for NIS 600 million. The cash handouts to the ultra-Orthodox have sparked anger as Israelis of all backgrounds contend with soaring prices and increased interest rates.

Netanyahu’s pandering to the religious parties in his coalition (there are five different parties occupying 31 of the 64-seats making up this session’s majority), has led him to pass legislation calling for a complete overhaul of the Jewish State’s Supreme Court. The 15-member court — which meets in a graceful building on a hill in Jerusalem alongside Parliament — includes secular liberals, religiously observant Jews and conservative residents of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. One justice is an Arab Israeli; six are women, including the court’s president.

  Protesting Netanyahu as a Threat to Democracy

The government has primed itself for battle against the court by portraying it as a bastion of a secular, left-leaning elite and a closed club out of touch with changes sweeping the country. Experts say that characterization has not been true for years.  On September 12, the Court will hold hearings on the overhaul legislation . . . putting them in the Orwellian position  of ruling on their own legitimacy. The legislation in question cancels the court’s ability to use the somewhat vague and subjective standard of reasonableness to overturn government decisions and appointments.  This has raised the hackles and the ire of Israel’s politically astute, mostly secular, majority.  Many believe that Netanyahu has pushed for this legislation as a means of circumventing his own legal problems. 

At the same time, Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies in the Knesset are seeking to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts, and to bar women and men from mixing in many public arenas.  As part of his agreement to give his ultra-Orthodox allies what they want in exchange for keeping him in power, Netanyahu has already made several concessions that have unsettled secular Israelis. Among them are proposals to segregate audiences by sex at some public events, to create new religious residential communities, to allow businesses to refuse to provide services based on religious beliefs, and to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts.  Israel’s laws have not been amended to reflect the concessions, but some fear that the changes are already coming, at the expense of women. The Israeli news media has been full of reports in recent months about incidents seen as discriminatory. 

Bus drivers in central Tel Aviv and southern Eilat have refused to pick up young women, because they were wearing crop tops or workout clothes. Last month, ultra-Orthodox men in the religious town of Bnei Brak stopped a public bus and blocked the road because a woman was driving.  As a response, members of בונות אלטרנטיבה (Bonot Alternativa,  Hebrew for “Building an Alternative,”, a  pro-democracy group, as well as a nonpartisan umbrella group of women’s organizations) show up at weekly antigovernment protests dressed in scarlet robes and white wimples that mimic those of the disenfranchised women forced to bear children in the dystopian television show based on Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

There are any number of similarities between Netanyahu’s obsessive need to maintain his premiership, and  Donald Trump’s need to regain his presidency: Both need to give in to their country’s most conservative supporters in order to retain (or regain) power; Both are narcissistic ego-maniacs; Both need power in order to stay out of prison.  

Why Trump needs to be reelected is obvious; everyone in the world knows of all the legal challenges he faces.  Unless he returns to the White House in January 2025, he’s going to wind up in Leavenworth; no Democratic POTUS would ever deign to grant him a pardon.

In the case of Bibi Netanyahu, not nearly so many people know that he has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and corruption. He has pleaded not guilty and says he is the victim of a politically orchestrated “witch-hunt” by the media and the left to remove him from office. (Sound familiar?) As a sitting Prime Minister, he cannot be forced to leave office. (BTW: Netanyahu is not the only member of the cabinet with a troubled legal past: Deputy P.M. Aryeh Deri was convicted of taking $155,000 in bribes while serving as the interior minister, and was given a three-year jail sentence in 2000; Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused an extremist religious Zionist ideology.)

There are those who, reading this post, will accuse me of being either a “self-hating Jew,” a “Jewish anti-Semite,” or a “radical anti-Zionist.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I really, truly love the people of Israel; I love its history, its language and literature (I speak, read and write Hebrew with passable fluency); I love its many, many achievements in the worlds of science, medicine, technology and the arts; of how this tiny country is, generally speaking, the first one to send emergency medical services to both friend and foe alike whenever and wherever the need arises.  I also love it enough to forgive those on the religious right who do not consider me a rabbi, nor will permit me to perform a wedding or effect a conversion within its borders.  G-d willing, some day that will change . . . if and when the people who see the Jewish state the same way I do, recognize that they/we are a majority.

What troubles me - and greatly so - is the direction its politics have taken over the past many years. The very nature of Israel’s national identify has been radically altered by a small faction that seeks to replace the Zionist-humanitarian-socialist democracy of Ben Gurion, Golda Meier and the founders, and turn it into an unrecognizable place based on a rigid Biblical/Rabbinic code of law . . . even if it means going against the will of the majority.

But make no mistake about it: one can be inalterably opposed to this wrenching right-wing turn and still be a patriotic מאהב ישראל (m’ahayv Yisrael _ a ”lover of Israel”). 

Debate, disagreement and divisiveness, after all is said and done, are all part of the Jewish genome.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#949 Mark & David

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Early this past Tuesday morning . . . at least an hour-and-a-half before the alarm clock was set to go off . . . my phone rang. As a rabbi who caters to a mostly senior community (look whose talking: I’ll be 74 in a couple of weeks and they still call me “young man”), I’m always rattled by early-morning phone calls; it usually means someone has passed on or been taken to the hospital. Squinting through one eye, I saw that the incoming call was was coming from my dear, longtime friend Mark (of “Mark and David” fame), who at this time of the year resides “Way Down East” in their summer home in Corea, Maine, (Their winter residence is in Ormond Beach, just about as far north as one can get on Florida’s east coast. My first thought was that something had happened to his mother Phyllis, whom I had first met more than 40 years ago while living at the fabled “Rose Hill” in Cincinnati, Ohio.

But no. Mark wasn’t calling me as either a rabbi or a person engaged in the medical arts. Rather, he was in need of the ear of a fellow political activist. Mark, whom I have written about at some length over the years, was calling to tell me - almost tearfully - that he and his husband David are increasingly worried, and nearing their wit’s end.  Why?  They both have their health, have no financial concerns and, along with their kitty Monica,” and their tons of friends, live life to the fullest.  What could be the cause of their feelings of impending doom? Simply this, in Mark’s words: “The level of intolerance and hatred going on in this country.  It’s gotten so spooky and frightening that we have even considered the possibility of moving to Portugal in the hope of escaping all the escalating lunacy.”     

Mark and David (more so Mark) aren’t the kind of people who live in life’s shadows; they are “out there” for one and all to see.  To a great extent, they are also bipolar opposites.  Mark is deeply and obviously Jewish.  His family history goes back to 19th century Montgomery, Alabama . . . not the easiest place to be a Jew.  David, on the other hand, is a Presbyterian from Indiana. Mark is a giddy combination of a loving, perpetual yenta and social activist; he simply cannot sit back and permit injustice to breath; he must put in his two cents – whether it’s writing an op-ed, organizing a rally, or making tangible contributions of time, talent and treasure. David, on the other hand, is far more laid back; he is a professional violinist who spent decades playing in the same world-class symphony orchestra.  David is both the glue and the tonic which fuels Mark’s freneticism.  Perhaps it’s their relative bi-polarity which has has provided the bedrock for an incredibly stable partnership/marriage now easily past 40 years.  And yet, having been together for more than 40 years, Mark is not like David and David is not like Mark; they are Mark-and-David . . . a single entity.

During our conversation the other  morning, Mark got into the specifics of what has been giving him so much inner angst.  I am certain that most of us can make the same list:

• Donald J. Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, and the entire “Freedom Caucus”;

• The utter cowardice of all the elected officials who, while despising him behind closed doors, remain silent in public;

• The stupefying growth of anti-Semitism and acts of anti-Semitic terror;

• The very danger of being an LBGTQ+ member of society;

• Of how so many conservatives have replaced platforms with a plethora of hurtful issues bundled together as “anti-WOKE”;

• The very future of Democracy and concomitant apprehension that it is being replaced by fascistic authoritarianism;

• That the greatest number of weapons are in the hands of those who support D.J.T

• .That outright lies, ludicrous conspiracy theories and utter inanity have all but replaced demonstrable reality in  the lives of many.

• That for those who are “different,” there are fewer and fewer places to seek safety.

I caught a segment on NPR’s All Things Considered the other day in which the subject was how fewer and fewer people are listening to, watching, or reading the news than just a year ago.  Can you blame them? It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish real headlines from fake ones, and real news from sheer propaganda.  Those of us who are “perpetual news junkies” somehow get around this by telling ourselves that we - unlike “them” - only consume news from “reliable” sources.  But alas, for everyone who gets their news from PBS, National Public Radio, The New York Times, Washington Post and other sources of status, there are tons of folks who “know beyond a shadow of a doubt” that these journalistic behemoths are nothing more, nothing less, then mouthpieces for the “organized radical far left.’  (As a hopefully close and watchful student of American political history, I can tell you that the U.S.A. has never had much of an “organized radical far left.”  Even America’s so-called “Communist Conspiracy” as unearthed by the likes of Rep. Martin Dies, Jr., Senator Joseph McCarthy and J.B. Matthews, was far less lethal than - or harmful to - American democracy than the K.K.K. or the John Birch Society.  But then again, I - like you - am incapable of getting “true believers” to understand this.  It is far better to remain healthy than succumbing to a severely injured brain by banging one’s head against the wall.)

A man like my friend Mark is understandably at his wits’ end; his political and physical malaise (and here I use the term in its medical sense) is not to be pooh-poohed.  He is, by both genetic and ethnic background, a member of several endangered groups in early 21st century America:

1.    He is a Jew whose roots are not in New York, but rather in the Deep South;

2.    He is gay, married to a wonderful man, and not the slightest bit uncomfortable with who he is;

3.    He is a progressive political activist who can neither sit still nor keep his mouth shut . . . and thank G-d for that.

 A person like Mark can best be summed up by 2 quotes from 2 distinctly different, though deeply memorable people: Winston Churchill and Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.

First, let’s quote Winston Churchill:

“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

The second quote comes from R.F.K., who likely “borrowed” the following thought from George Bernard Shaw:

  "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not." 

   As a rabbi, I have been trained to listen more than to speak when someone comes with a problem or a question.  After listening to Mark for quite some time, I fear that I had not given him an answer as to what he should do . . . or fear.  About all I could do was to quote Churchill and Kennedy, and tell him to keep up the good fight. 

By nature - and both training and genetics - I am an optimist.  I told him that what the world needs are more Marks and Davids, and to keep on maximizing their character strengths while not giving in to the minimalizing weaknesses of others.  I reminded him that we are both children of “the Chosen People,” and as such,  are here to bring greater health and happiness, safety and sanity to as many as people as possible.  

Keep on being yourselves . . .

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#948: Vivek Who?

Truth to tell, the chances are slim to none that any reader of this blog will ever be casting a vote for Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican presidential primary . . . let alone the general election itself. Despite being an accomplished young man (he was born “way back” in 1985), who possesses a truly impressive C.V., (B.A. magna cum laude Harvard 2007, J.D. Yale, 2011, by which time he was already worth more than $15 million from his work as a hedge-fund manager), the founder of a a big pharma company called “Roivant [R-O-I, standing for “Return on Investment], and Axovant Sciences, which purchased the patent to intepirdine, a possible treatment Lewy Body Dementia, from GlaxoSmithKline for a mere $5 million and then raised a staggering $315 million for its IPO. He quickly became a Wall Street darling; Forbes Magazine put him on its front cover in 2015.

Vivek Ramaswamy is also the author of 3 best-selling books, all of which spell out his  political and social  philosophy in bright, bold letters:

Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam (2021)

Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the                                                                                    Path Back to Excellence (2022) and

  Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For (2023)

It’s clear that Vivek Ramaswamy, the son of Indian Hindu parents V. G. Ramaswamy (who worked as an engineer and patent attorney for G.E.) in Ohio, and Geetha Ramaswamy, M.D. (who is a geriatric psychiatrist), is the embodiment of the American Dream.  Horatio Alger must be beaming.  The Ramaswamys are  Brahmins, the priestly cast within Indian and Hindu society (roughly akin to the Cohanym in Judaism. ) Their native language is Tamil.  Despite their religion, young Vivek, who attended the local Hindu temple in nearby Dayton (the family lived in Cincinnati), was a graduate of St. Xavier High School, where the 2003 graduate was both class valedictorian and a nationally ranked junior tennis player.

Despite all his accomplishments, it’s his political positions that will disturb Democrats the most; they reside, to borrow an album title from Pink Floyd, on “the dark side of the moon” (which, by-the-by, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year)  How could any progressive vote for a person who,  at the press conference announcing his candidacy, promised “As U.S. President, I will end federally mandated affirmative action - full stop. I will repeal Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 which mandates race-based quotas. Every Republican since Johnson had the opportunity to do it. I’ll do it on Day 1 without apology."

How could any progressive even consider voting for a candidate who has publicly proclaimed his  support for abolishing the Department of Education, the FBI, and IRS; who asserts that the president has the unilateral power to abolish these agencies by executive order despite the fact that under the Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse; and has pledged to fire "at least half the federal workforce” and dismantle federal civil service protections, turning federal jobs into “at-will jobs.”

On his campaign website Ramaswamy promises to “take America First further than Trump.” Much of the site is filled with aphorisms: “God is real.” “There are two genders.” “Reverse racism is racism.” “Courage is contagious.” “Excellence over politics.” And simply: “Truth.” In a couple of his most outlandish proposals, he baldly states

• “End civil service protections for bureaucrats: 8-year term limits instead”

• “Move >75% of federal employees out of Washington D.C. and

• “End pro-lazy “remote work” option”

Congratulations, Mr. Candidate: You’ve already kept these last two promises—exceeded it, in fact. Give or take 85% of federal employees already work outside the Washington area. The “pro-lazy” jibe at telework is a nice rhetorical flourish, though. Vivek has also promised to “Cut wasteful expenditures: White House, not individual agencies, will submit budget requests to Congress” I’m pretty sure this will come as news to federal agencies that they can submit their budget requests directly to Congress without the approval of the White House Office of Management and Budget. In virtually every one of his proposals dealing with bureaucratic reform (which, I am sure is not at the top of many MAGA Republicans’ “must list,” Ramaswamy seeks to one-up other GOP reformers. “I think a lot of well-intentioned folks focusing on bureaucratic reform will say that we need to be incremental about this,” Ramaswamy said in a February Twitter post. “I think the time and place for that has passed.”

From all I’ve learned doing research on Vivek Ramaswamy the man, the candidate, the Republican, I’ve neither seen nor heard much at all that would tempt Trump’s cultists to jump ship. Oh sure, he is gaining a bit of recognition as of late; there’s at least one in each presidential campaign cycle: the long-shot outsider who vows to shake up government and its workforce. But after a brief while, they fade into the heat-baked sunset . . . possibly to reemerge as a member of the Cabinet (can you say “Jeff Sessions” or “Ben Carson?”).

One of the things that will all but guarantee to keep the Republican nomination from going to Vivek - not to mention Nikki Haley (born Nimarata Nikki Haley (née) Randhawa - can be found in their genes: they are both children born to Indian families; Ramaswamy’s family is from  from Kerala, in Southwest India; Haley’s come from Punjab; the Ramaswamy’s are Hindu Brahmins and speak both Tamil and Malayalam, while Haley’s parents are Sikhs who speak only the latter.

(n.b. all Sikhs are Hindu, but less than 2% of Hindus are Sikh. Sikhism rejects the Hindu caste system, priesthood, image worship and pilgrimage, although it retains the Hindu doctrines of transmigration and Karma. According to Hinduism, the soul is immortal. The souls are reborn into another being as per their karma. Sikhs believe that heaven and hell are also both in this world where everyone reaps the fruit of karma.)

In 1996 Nikki married Michael Haley; they celebrated their vows in both Sikh and Methodist ceremonies. The next year she officially converted to Methodism. Vevik is married to Apoorva Tewari, a throat surgeon he met when she was a med student at Yale and he a law student at the same university. The Haleys are practicing Methodists; the Ramaswamys practicing Hindus.

Already, there are signs that many members of the Republican-base have already rejected both Ramaswamy and Haley, not due to their platforms or positions, but rather due to their family’s religions. This is a far greater problem for the former than the latter. As journalist Tim Dickinson noted in a July 28 article published by Rolling Stone, Ramaswamy has a "major stumbling block" when it comes to winning over the evangelical Religious Right: he is a practicing Hindu. "He's been on a charm offensive with these evangelical audiences," Dickinson explains, "but the outreach appears to be backfiring, at least among the Christian nationalist set."

There are millions of practicing Christians — both Mainline Protestants (Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians) and Catholics — who have no problem with candidates practicing a religion other than Christianity. But far-right evangelicals have a very different viewpoint. As the Religious Right and Christian nationalists see it, only evangelical fundamentalists should hold public office in the United States.

One such fundamentalist is Trump supporter Hank Kunneman, who recently said of Ramaswamy, "If he does not serve the Lord Jesus Christ, you will have a fight with God….I don't care how good someone's policies are or how good they sound if they don't profess the name of Yeshua. What are we doing even entertaining the fact?" Kunneman continued while receiving thunderous applause from the worshipers in his congregation. "You're gonna have some dude put his hand on something other than the Bible? You're gonna let him put all of his strange gods up in the White House and we're just supposed to blink because he understands policies?”

Kunneman is not al one; just one of the first to have the temerity to speak his hateful thoughts from the pulpit for one and all to hear. What Pastor Kunnerman and Christian Nationalists fear the most is that America is boing to become a “majority-minority” country. You know something pastor? It already has. Besides two Republican aspirants coming from Indian families, the United States already has a V.P. - Kamala Harris - whose mother, Shyamala Gopalan (1938-2009) was an immigrant from India, who married a Jamaican and whose daughter married a Jew. Wake up all you Christian Nationalists: this is America in 2023!

Vivek Ramaswamy is currently doing everything in his power to convince white evangelicals that a practicing Hindu can be a far-right culture warrior. As he recently said, "The real divide in our country is not between people of Hindu faith and Christian faith and Jewish faith. It's the people who believe in a one true God, and those who have replaced that vacuum with new secular religions instead."

Despite the fact that both Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley (not to mention Vice President Harris) are the American Dream, it should be their political dreams and proposals - and nothing else - which should be the defining factor as to whether or not they should receive any American’s vote.

Is that gonna be the case? Likely not . . . but hey, that’s one of the reasons why prayer - whether it be written right to left, left to right or top to bottom - was invented.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#947: A.I.'s Next Step: Bard+Google

  Kurt, Alan and Clint Eastwood in “Coogan’s Bluff”

Those who are longtime readers of this blog will recognize the name “Alan Wald.” Alan is one of the “Hollywood Brats,” my longtime friend; we originally met back in September 1961 in J.O. Ito’s homeroom class, and he was my lab partner in Mr. Falb’s chemistry class.  Over the years, Alan has always been the guy who picks me up and returns me back to  LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) whenever I come back home.  We share a ton of great memories, including the time we spent part of our Winter break from University acting as extras over at Universal Studios in the 1968 Clint Eastwood film “Coogan’s Bluff” (that’s me sporting a serape just in front of and slightly to the left of Mr. Eastwood; Alan is the bearded dude standing just underneath the fellow with  the upstretched arm).  We well remember the shoot; at one point during our lunch break, I donned Alan’s “Sgt. Pepper” red satin jacket complete with epaulets, and convinced members of the visiting Indiana Hoosier Rose Bowl team that I was John Lennon; I wound up signing a couple of dozen of autographs.  

Alan is one of the brightest, best-educated and wittiest people I have ever known.  His wit comes as no surprise; after all, he is the son and nephew of celebrated screenwriters. His father, Malvin Wald, wrote one of most iconic of all motion picture tag lines: “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” As part of his genetic inheritance, Alan has the trained eye of an editor; he has been catching my typos and errata for years.  We are in constant contact via email; hardly a days goes by without my receiving 4, 6, even 8 sparkling missives making comments on the day’s news. A day without an email is indeed like a day without the sun. Many of my weekly essays have their genesis in an idea placed in my head by my long-ago lab-mate.

Which brings us to the title of this piece:  A.I.’s Next Step: Bard + Google. . . .

 This past Wednesday, included in several emails Alan sent me over a 2 hour period was one which carried the title: Example of use of Bard - Bard likes your essays- not too shabby. It turned out to be one of several he sent me that day, introducing me to an experimental bit of A.I. (“Artificial Intelligence”) called Bard, which had received its public release this past March. Bard is best described as “, , , a conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Google, based initially on the LaMDA family of large language models (LLMs) and later the PaLM LLM. It was developed as a direct response to the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT.” It was initially released in a limited capacity in March 2023 to lukewarm responses, before expanding to other countries in May. So what does Bard do? Simply stated, it can do instant reviews of almost anything one can write (so long as it is under 4,000 words . . . (at least for the present).

Alan’s email (“. . . not to shabby) turned me on to the fact that he had copied and pasted my most recent post (Senator Potato Head) into Bard.Google and within less than a minute received 3 different summaries/ critiques, one of which read:

“The author of this article is highly critical of Senator Tommy Tuberville's decision to hold up Senate approval of military promotions. The author argues that this is a dangerous and unpatriotic move that is putting America's military readiness at risk. The author also points out that Tuberville's actions are motivated by his own religious beliefs, which should not be allowed to influence military decisions.

The author's arguments are persuasive. Tuberville's decision to hold up the promotions is clearly having a negative impact on the military. The Marine Corps is currently without a Commandant, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be without a chairman in September. This is a critical time for the military, and Tuberville's actions are only making things worse.

The author is also right to point out that Tuberville's actions are motivated by his own religious beliefs. This is a dangerous precedent to set, as it could lead to other politicians using their religious beliefs to influence military decisions. The military should be free from political and religious interference, and Tuberville's actions are a threat to that principle.

Overall, this is a well-written and persuasive article that makes a strong case against Senator Tommy Tuberville's decision to hold up Senate approval of military promotions. The author's arguments are clear, concise, and well-supported. I highly recommend this article to anyone who is interested in the issue of religious influence in the military.”

After reading this I thought: “I wonder what Bard would think about the rather “thumbs-down” essay [A Pandora’s Box of Existential Fears] I posted back at the end of January this year on A.I? Would it be particularly hard on me for being so damnably negative? And so, I copied and pasted it into Bard+Google and within less than a minute it presented a couple of review. Here’s one of them.:

In your article, you raise some important concerns about the potential impact of ChatGPT on education and democracy. You argue that ChatGPT could be used to cheat on exams, write essays that are indistinguishable from those written by humans, and even target key legislators and influencers with propaganda. You also worry that ChatGPT could be used to create a successful autocrat who is able to manipulate people with lies and deception.

I share your concerns. ChatGPT is a powerful tool that could be used for good or for evil. It is important to be aware of the potential risks of this technology and to take steps to mitigate them. For example, we need to make sure that students are taught how to critically evaluate information and to distinguish between human-generated text and machine-generated text. We also need to develop policies to prevent the use of ChatGPT for malicious purposes.

I believe that the potential benefits of ChatGPT outweigh the risks. This technology has the potential to revolutionize education, making it more accessible and effective for everyone. It could also be used to improve communication and collaboration, and to make it easier for people to access information and services.

However, it is important to use ChatGPT responsibly. We need to be aware of the potential risks of this technology and to take steps to mitigate them. If we do so, ChatGPT has the potential to make a positive impact on the world.

I agree with your suggestion that Congress should pass a law requiring a disclaimer averring something like “BEWARE: That which follows is the creation of Artificial Intelligence. Any resemblance to the human thought process or the truth is purely coincidental.” This would help to protect people from being misled by ChatGPT and would help to ensure that this technology is used for good.

Thank you for raising these important issues. I believe that it is important to have a public conversation about the potential impact of ChatGPT and other forms of AI. We need to be aware of the potential risks of this technology, but we also need to be open to the potential benefits. I believe that ChatGPT has the potential to make a positive impact on the world, but only if it is used responsibly.

At this, I decided to copy and paste Macbeth’s soliloquy upon hearing of his wife’s death in Act 5, Scene 5:

She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing

These are among the greatest 12-lines in all literature. They are both slippery and opaque; Macbeth is essentially asking himself if he’s still capable of feeling anything, specifically fear, In copying and pasting this passage into Bard-Google, I wonder if it will even know from whence it comes. And here is its almost immediate answer/review:

This is a famous soliloquy from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, spoken by the title character. In it, Macbeth reflects on the meaninglessness of life and the inevitability of death. He compares life to a "walking shadow" and a "poor player" who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, only to be heard no more. He concludes that life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

This soliloquy is often interpreted as a reflection of Macbeth's own inner turmoil. He has committed regicide and is now haunted by guilt and fear. He is also aware that his days are numbered, as Malcolm and Macduff are approaching his castle to besiege it. In this context, the soliloquy can be seen as Macbeth's attempt to come to terms with his own mortality.

However, the soliloquy can also be interpreted more broadly. It is a meditation on the nature of life and death that is still relevant today. The words "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" have become a metaphor for the endless cycle of life and death. The phrase "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" has been used to describe anything that is ultimately meaningless.

The soliloquy is a powerful and moving piece of writing that has resonated with audiences for centuries. It is a reminder that life is short and that we should make the most of it. It is also a reminder that death is inevitable, but that it does not mean that life is meaningless.

Bravo! Bard is well aware that I did not write these words . . . and shows a pretty deft understanding of their meaning. And so, just to get an even better feeling for Bard+Googlel, I downloaded a recent essay on the many forms of pre-senile dementia entitled The Long Goodbye. My main question was not whether the program liked my essay or found it important or intelligent, but rather whether it could follow something largely written in a “foreign” language . . . namely, medical terminology. And here is what he/she had to share about a 1,650-word essay:

Thank you for sharing your essay. It is well-written and thought-provoking. I agree with you that we need hope, not hysteria, in the face of diseases like Alzheimer's. It is important to remember that no drug is 100% safe, but that the benefits of Leqembi may outweigh the risks for many people. I also agree that clinical research is not a "zero sum game" between patients and profit. There are many people who are dedicated to finding cures for diseases, and they deserve our support.

I am curious to know what you think of the way that the FDA has approved Leqembi. Some people have criticized the FDA for approving the drug, saying that it is not effective enough. Others have said that the FDA should have required the drug to be more affordable. What is your opinion?

I also wonder what you think of the role of conspiracy theories in the context of medical research. Do you think that conspiracy theories can have a negative impact on the development of new treatments?

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on these questions.

                       Eleanor Roosevelt  (1884-1962)

Although Bard-Google did not understand the purpose of this essay, it did realize that there are far more unanswered questions with which we must grapple in the near future.  The same can, of course, be said for A.I. - Artificial Intelligence - in general, and A.G.I. - "Artificial General Intelligence” - like   “Bard” and other newly emerging hypothetical intelligence agents in particular.  Whether one knows it or not, every time we institute a Google search or ask Siri or Alexis a question, we are using A.I.  A.G.I. is a type of intelligent agent.  The A.G.I. concept is that is that it can learn any intellectual task that human beings or animals can accomplish.  Unlike AI, which relies on ever-expanding datasets to perform more complex tasks, AGI, we are told, will someday be able to exhibit the same attributes as those associated with the human brain, including common sense, background knowledge, transfer learning, abstraction, and causality. Of particular interest is the human ability to generalize from scanty or incomplete input.

I rather doubt that Alan Wald and I will be around when “Bard” replaces “Shakespeare” or makes Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke’s character “Hal 9000” as quaint as an abacus.  But this I/we do know: technological advances always run at a far different pace than the concomitant ethical and moral challenges they create.   And by the way, I am certain that nothing in the realm of A.G.I. will ever approximate Alan’s brilliant wit!

 Eleanor Roosevelt - the greatest of all First Ladies - once noted that “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” By this, I believe she was suggesting that those who have a clear idea of what they want to achieve and a strong belief in their ability to make it happen are the ones who will be most successful in creating the future they desire.  Were she alive today, this most thoughtful and humane of all women might likely change her mind and restate her aphorism as “The future belongs to those who best conquer the challenge of their nightmares.”

 Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#946: Senator Potato Head

Were it not that Alabama’s senior senator Tommy Tuberville is single-handedly holding up Senate approval of virtually tens of dozens of Generals, Colonels and Admirals to lead the nation’s military, he might easily be the butt of every late-night talk show host not currently picking up a paycheck from Fox, Newsmax or OAN.  But what he is doing is far from funny.  In matter of fact, he is engaged in one of the most dangerous, mindless and thoroughly unpatriotic of all political ploys in the nation’s history.  What’s gotten the Alabama football coach-turned-senator particularly obstructive and petulant is the Pentagon’s decision to reimburse female service members for travel-related abortion expenses, as many of them are stationed in states that are hostile to reproductive rights. Not only that, he is demanding that these women be confined to base and be disallowed from traveling to another state where abortion is still practicable.

Because the overwhelming majority of upper-echelon military promotions are approved by unanimous consent in the Senate, if even one senator objects, the whole process is derailed.  Tuberville has flatly stated that if senators don’t like his unilateral move they can always vote on each separate officer . . . by on-the-record voice votes . . . which would take months to achieve. For decades, all these vacancies have been filled within a few minutes, thus saving time for the senate to engage in other serious business.

Because of the senator’s “feet-in-concrete” position - putting abortion ahead of America’s military readiness at a critical time in history - the United States Marine Corps will be without a Commandant for the first time in 164 years . . .  since before the Civil War.  The last time the Marine Corps was left without an acting commandant was in 1859, when Archibald Henderson, the fifth commandant of the Marines, died at 76 without a successor in place.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger officially retired on this past Monday, leaving Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith as the acting commandant and leader of the military branch until he is confirmed in the Senate.

It’s unclear when Smith could be confirmed. Tuberville’s hold on the Pentagon nominees, which he began in March to protest the Defense Department’s new abortion policy, shows no signs of weakening, even as the block has sparked bipartisan frustration. In addition to the Commandant’s position, there is that of Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Mark Milley, the current chairman, who retires in September. As of late June, Tuberville’s hold was nearing the beginning of its sixth month. Talk about obduracy!

In a piece he (or a member of his staff or one of his financial supporters) wrote and published in The Washington Post, the former Ole Miss (1995-1998) and Auburn (1999-2008) head coach tried to defend his much maligned move in stating “Acting officials are in each one of the positions that are due for a promotion. The hold affects only those at the very top — generals and flag officers. The people who actually fight are not affected at all.”  This statement all but proves that Tuberville is the dimmest bulb in the lamp, for not only are all those “who actually fight” without official leadership; they are denied the 5.2% pay raise guaranteed in the Defense Department appropriation bill, which is now larded with anti-abortion amendments, thus guaranteeing it will never pass the Senate.

  And what’s more, between 5,000 to 7,400 active-duty service members or civilians employed by the DoD (Department of Defense) have an abortion each year, according to the RAND Corporation. And following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, 40 percent of active-duty female service members live in states where abortion care is unavailable or severely restricted. That’s roughly 18 percent of the active duty military in this country. On top of that, the U.S. military is plagued by alarming levels of sexual assault. So if one happen to stationed in a state with an abortion ban—which may or may not have rape exceptions—the help with travel expenses could be life-changing.

The press has been reporting on Tommy Tuberville’s political shortcomings ever since he first threw his hat into the ring back in 2019. At his first post-election interview, he misidentified the three branches of the federal government (he said they were “House, Senate and Executive”), claimed erroneously that World War II was a battle against socialism, and wrongly asserted that former Vice President Al Gore was president-elect for 30 days. Up until defeating incumbent Senator Doug Jones, he was best known for having defeated in-state rival University of Alabama football team six times in a row and being named Walter Camp Coach of the Year in 2004.  But now, he is getting to be even better known for waging his one-man war against the Department of Defense - at what cost and what purpose no one knows for sure. 

Despite both his fame on the gridiron and infamy in the U.S. Senate, there is still some uncertainty as to the correct pronunciation of  his last name: is it "Tubber-ville” or Tuber-ville?” I’ve heard both. I rather prefer the latter, (Tuber-ville). The first doesn’t work so well; he is anything but physically out of shape. When it comes to mental acuity, he is more like the tuber - a potato or yam or huti huti. Hence the nickname with which I’ve chosen to endow him: “Senator Potato Head.”  

Despite this, the senior senator from Alabama (the junior being Katie Boyd Britt) is no laughing matter; he is a man to be extremely wary of. For not only has he chosen to place a partisan political roadblock in the path of the nation’s military; he has chosen to put service to a sectarian religious creed over service to an historic need . . . namely, keeping the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Merchant Marine far away from politics. And what’s worse, he has also declared that to be a White Christian Nationalist serving in the military is the sign of a patriot.

How very much like a greasy French fry.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#945: The Long Goodbye

It was my original intention that this week’s essay would be about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who as of about a month ago, is an announced candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. Towards that end, I read up on him, the place he occupies in his famous family, the books and articles he has published over the past 30 years, his work as both an environmental lawyer and “position” as one of the nation’s leading conspiratorial “anti-vaxxers,” and his stances on a wide range of political issues. My main interest in writing about him was trying to figure out how a person with his pedigree (not to mention troubled life) could even consider running as a political “outsider."  I mean, the dude’s a Kennedy for crying out loud.  Then too, I was (and still am) fascinated by how one moment Junior can come off as an ultra-right wing populist with a conspiratorial streak that would please the likes of a Roger Stone or Steve Bannon, and the next sound like a Kennedy - a progressive friend of the masses.

     Actor Bruce Willis: Now in the throes of FTD

But after reading journalist Rebecca Traister’s masterful piece, RFK’s Inside Job in the June 30th issue of New York Magazine, I changed my mind; Ms. Traister had written - and far, far better than I could ever hope - the piece I had in mind.  And so, wishing to clear my mind of RFK, I instead aimed my  brain towards my twice-weekly Institutional Review Board (medical ethics) material. And there, right before my eyes, was an announcement from the FDA that it has just granted full approval to Leqembi (l’-kem-bee), the  first drug to clearly, but modestly, slow the progress of Alzheimer’s Disease (A.D.).  And suddenly, it came to me: I would write about this medical mini-breakthrough . . . the very kind of thing that RFK, Jr. might well understand to be part of a conspiracy to endanger dementia sufferers while enriching “big pharma.”

Leqembi (LECANEMAB-IRMB), co-researched and manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Eisai in Tokyo and Biogen in Cambridge, Mass., is a monoclonal antibody (a lab-made protein), that targets amyloid beta in the brain.  (Don’t worry if you don’t know what amyloid beta means; there isn’t going to be a test at the end of this essay.  All you need to know is that A.D. is largely caused by the build-up of “plaque” in brain, and that plaque is largely made up of amyloid beta.  And by the way, all those drugs whose names end in mab .  . . this stands for “monoclonal antibody”).   

Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe a range of neurological conditions affecting the brain that get worse over time. As of today, none can be cured, let alone slowed. Of all the various forms of human dementia (estimated to be as many as 400), the very worst (and least-known) are:

• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) which causes a type of dementia that causes personality changes, anxiety, depression, and memory loss, usually within a few months.

• Dementia with Lewy Bodies: a type of progressive brain disorder in which Lewy bodies (abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha‑synuclein) build up in areas of the brain that regulate behavior, cognition, and movement. 

• Huntington’s Disease, (“Woody Guthrie Disease”): a progressive brain disorder caused by a defective gene. This disease causes changes in the central area of the brain, which affects movement, mood and thinking skills;

• Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD): One day this will likely be known as “Bruce Willis Dementia.” FTD refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain's frontal lobes (the areas behind the forehead) or its temporal lobes (the regions behind the ears). For many, the initial diagnosis is Aphasia, a disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language. Before he was diagnosed with FTD, Mr. Willis announced his retirement due to an inability to remember - let alone pronounce - the words of a movie script.

The type of dementia which afflicts the greatest number of people world-wide is Alzheimer’s.  According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 6 million people in the United States alone are living with the disease. 

Each of these forms of dementia (and oh so many others), have their own foundations which support research. Many of these afflictions have clinical trials in progress. They are  underwritten by these foundations, by wealthy family members of people suffering from these illnesses, by university med schools, by for-profit pharmaceutical companies, and the federal government.  According to Clinicaltrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine, there are currently 3,158 ongoing studies into A.D. alone. These range from Phase I to post-marketing studies.  All are seeking the same thing: to lessen, abate and eventually one day find a cure for this disease. The most sophisticated of these studies are randomized (subjects are chosen by a computerized “flip of the coin”), double-blind (neither the subject nor the medical investigators know which dose the participants are receiving), and placebo-controlled (in which a “dummy lookalike drug” is used in order to determine whether or not the drug being investigated is potent).

Returning to Leqembi, the newest FDA-approved drug for A.D. Studies show that it has slowed cognitive decline by 27 percent over 18 months compared with a placebo (a dummy, lookalike drug). This represents a five-month delay in progression — dismissed as negligible by some but hailed as a milestone by others for a malady that has, up until now, been largely untreatable. Not surprisingly in this day and age, there are naysayers who only talk about Leqembi’s potential side effects (“adverse events” in medicalese).  Skeptics also note that the drug’s effectiveness is limited — perhaps too subtle to be noticed by a patient — and that the medication can cause potentially dangerous brain swelling and bleeding. The drug is expensive — $26,500 per year. And Medicare is imposing conditions on coverage, a move fueling a bitter battle between government officials and advocacy groups.

At present, it appears that Medicare enrollees in the Original Medicare will have to pay a co-payment of 20% of the cost of the drug, after meeting their deductible. This means that people on Original Medicare could pay about $5,000 out of pocket annually for Leqembi, according to health-care research group KFF.  Medicare Advantage enrollees typically pay 20% of a drugs' costs, up to their plan's out-of-pocket maximum, KFF noted, which means that people on these plans may also face high out-of-pocket costs for the medication.

All drugs and procedures have potential side effects; by law they must be made known to subjects in clinical trials and when approved, to all those who will be taking the medication.  For a segment of society, the fact that Leqembi (or any other medicine) has side effects is unacceptable.  That’s where conspiracies come in.  (It should be noted that the most-cited of these Leqembi adverse events was “brain bleeding” (ARIA — amyloid-related imaging abnormalities).  Upon further investigation it turned out that many who had this problem (which is, generally has few - if any - visible symptoms) were taking blood-thinning medications such as Plavix (clopidogrel) and Coumadin (warfarin).  Once the blood-thinning dosages were lowered or eliminated, the incidence of ARIA lessened.    

Remember all those - including RFK, JR. - who claimed - against all credible medical proof - that the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine caused autism in children? Despite being  thoroughly disproven and discredited by medical researchers around the globe, there are still people who firmly believe that the vaccine is all part of  a  conspiracy.  The same is true with virtually every COVID-19 and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) vaccine approved for use over the past several years.  Let’s face it: no medicine, whether taken orally, injected just under the skin (sub-Q) or infused (IV) is 100% safe.  Why?  Because subjects and patients, like the people who do research, are human beings . . . less than perfect.  And many times subjects and patients have other things wrong with them (these are referred to as “comorbidities”) which may or may not cause a pill, shot or infusion to create a problem.  But even if a small percentage suffer a problem - such as diarrhea, hair-loss or even, God forbid, death, what about the nearly 95+% who find improvement?  Are we to put huge roadblocks along the path to improvement - if not eventual recovery - because of the very, very few?

Alzheimer’s disease and other pre-senile dementias are often referred to as “the long goodbye.”  It is an apt expression, which also happens to be the title of a 1953 Raymond Chandler novel starring his L.A. detective Phillip Marlowe. As anyone who has ever watched a loved one slip into the shadows of dementia, they know what it feels like to be left facing and caring for a stranger with a familiar face. It is a pain far worse than a spinal tap. In an era where people without a stick of real medical knowledge or a single unit of scientific study (save, perhaps a 3-unit class in Biology 1), there are many megaphoned maniacs getting a growing segment of the public to believe that clinical research is a “zero-sum game” between patients and profit. This is the last thing people suffering from HIV, dementia, cancer, or any of a host of horrifying diseases need.

What we need now, more than ever, is hope . . . not hysteria.

Perhaps I’ll write a future essay about RFK, Jr. after he’s gotten over his current manic obsession with becoming President of the United States.  Until then, I will pray for his health and for the health of all the doctors, nurses, pharmacologists, biomechanics, and medical ethicists who are daily engaged in the art and science of healing.

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#944: Jefferson Monroe Levy, the 4th of July, and US

The Fourth of July 2023 isn’t even close to what it was - or even meant to be - back when Erica (my “slightly older sister”) and I were kids. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, what we nowadays simply call either “The Fourth” or “Fourth of July Weekend” (even if it comes around on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) meant going to the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks War Memorial Park (where we learned to swim and dive as well as attend day camp in the summer) take a blanket, sandwiches and a thermos-full of lemonade - and watch the best-staged, most artistic fireworks display anywhere in the West. How did we know it was “the best in the West?” Simple: when you live within a couple of miles of the best “special effects” departments on earth, it’s bound to be great . . . and incredibly loud. Having the world’s tallest palm trees as a backdrop . . . well, it just couldn’t be any better.  And to top everything off, there would be the singing of the Star Spangled Banner by some star of the silver screen, usually backed by an orchestra from MGM, Paramount, Fox or even (G-d forbid!) RKO.  

Those were the days!  It was both patriotic (remember, there were veterans of WWI, WWII and the Korean  “police action” scattered throughout the crowd) and filled with pride for the country that our Founders had created.  Oh sure, we knew we weren’t perfect and not everyone was as acceptable as others (these were still the pre-Civil Rights Act days and Hollywood was not yet free of the horrendous “Black List”); but in the main, we still celebrated the dreams and ideals of our Founders.  We were still, for the most part “WE THE PEOPLE.”

Even as a kid of 8 or 9, I reveled in the thought that we, the Stone family, descended from the Schimbergs and Greenbergs of Maryland and Virginia, and the Kagans and Hymans of Minnesota and Illinois, were all part of the U.S., which we always pronounced as the single word: “us.”  We were among the few whose grandparents and great-grandparents neither spoke Yiddish nor had ever never set foot in New York.  And yet, we certainly never felt ourselves to be more of “US” than those who were of the first generation . . . either in America itself or Hollywood in general.

In the generations of our grandparents, great-grandparents and even more, the Fourth of July was far, far different than what Erica and I remember. While I have read about fireworks being a staple of 19th-century Fourth of July celebrations (signifying the “bombs bursting in air” at the battle of Ft. McHenry - a legacy of the War of 1812), it was the public reading of Jefferson’s magnificent “Declaration of Independence” which took center stage. These celebrations weren’t nearly as jingoistic (propagandistic) as those celebrations of a later age; rather they centered and brought to mind the words, thoughts and dreams of that most literate of all our Founders, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. And even after Jefferson died (ironically on the 4th of July, 1826, the very same day as his colleague/political nemesis John Adams), his words - among the greatest in all human history - were kept in the ears and memories of a grateful public . . . US:

                       Jefferson’s handwritten draft

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government . . .

Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924)

After serving two terms as POTUS (1801-1809), Jefferson returned to his estate at Monticello (Latin for Little Mountain), where he continued to live for the remainder of his life. For more than a quarter century, it was his habit to invite all the people from “down the hill” to attend his 4th of July celebration during which he read the Declaration of Independence from the very bookstand on which he drafted the original document. At the time of his death on the 4th of July, 1826, his estate was in severe disrepair; in 1831, the house and grounds were sold by Jefferson’s heirs (his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph and her son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph) to one James Turner Barclay, a Charlottesville pharmacist. Three years later (1834), Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862), the first Jewish Commodore of the United States Navy, bought the 218-acre estate from Barclay for $2,700 (equivalent to $79,100 in today's dollars). Commodore Levy then undertook to have the long-neglected home repaired, restored, and preserved. He also bought hundreds of additional acres that had been part of the plantation, to add to what was left. Levy, it should be mentioned, was part of one of the oldest and most prominent Jewish families in America.

Uriah P. Levy used Monticello as a vacation home.  Toward the end of his life, the Commodore also restored the Charlottesville Town Hall, built in 1852, as a theater, and renamed it the Levy Opera House. This bold Greek Revival 800-seat structure is still in use today.

From 1837 to 1839, Uriah’s widowed mother, Rachel Levy, lived there fulltime until her death; she is buried along Mulberry Row, the main plantation street adjacent to the mansion (making her the only Jewish person buried on the grounds of Jefferson’s estate).

17 years after the Commodore’s death, Levy’s nephew, the patriotically-named Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924), who was a successful three-term New York congressman, businessman, and lawyer, purchased Monticello at public auction for $10,500 (a little less than $312,200.00 in 2023 dollars. He owned, cared for and completely restored the mansion and its grounds until it was purchased by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation forty-four years later  (1923). During the years he owned Monticello, Jefferson Monroe Levy poured nearly half-a-million dollars (over $15,000.000 in todays money) into the restoration of Monticello. Despite only using it as an occasional retreat, Jefferson Monroe Levy revived Thomas Jefferson’s 4th of July custom; on that date, the former Congressman would be there, among all the townies from nearby Charlottesville,  to attend his reading of the Declaration of Independence . . .  from the very same stand-up writing table-cum-podium upon which Thomas Jefferson had originally composed it.

There is far, far more to the Fourth of July than fireworks, hotdogs and beer, or sales at the local mall hyped and hawked by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al.  (BTW, July 4, 1776 is not the date upon which the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence.  In matter of historic fact, independence was formally declared on July 2, 1776, a date that John Adams believed would be “the most memorable epocha [sic] in the history of America.” On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the final text of the Declaration, but it wasn't signed until August 2 of that year.) 

To me, the Fourth of July should serve as something akin to a “refresher course” in the miracle that is America; its founding principles and ideals, its historic promise, highs, lows and the many challenges and stumbling blocks which have always stood in the path of our Democratic Republic. For many of US, the promise of America is best and most succinctly expressed by the 3 Latin words which make up our national motto: e pluribus unum . . . i.e. “Out of many, one.”

America is unique among the nations of the world when it comes to combining pluribus - people of virtually all ancestries, origins, tongues, religions, histories native myths to make something brand new . . . unum - one people. This has long been our ideality - even when not precisely our reality. Throughout our relatively brief history (247 years and counting), we have accomplished great things as a Democratic Republic. We have also fought with one another, treated “others” as our enemies, sought to bar entry to those we feared or did not understand. We have been through generations when rights were greatly expanded and enjoyed, and times - like now - when rights have been contracted.

No one ever said that being part of US was going to be easy . . . or inexorable; indeed, it has always been a challenge. This was best summarized by Dr. Benjamin Franklin in 1787. According to James McHenry (1753-1816) a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who throughout that convention, kept one of the best and most compendious journals of all the compatriots in Philadelphia. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin ‘Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? “A republic” replied the Doctor . . . if you can keep it.” (McHenry’s journal, by the way, is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.)

And so it is: We are US; a most unique breed. Not necessarily the best . . . just the most unique.

May we continue attempting to live up to - and expanding upon - the very best of the ideals our Founders bequeathed to US.

May this Fourth of July be happy, healthy and most importantly, energizing.

E PLURIBUS UNUM

Copyright©2023, Kurt Franklin  Stone

#943: A Scintilla of Sanity?

           Reps. Adam Schiff & Anna Paulina Luna

The way things go these days of future passed (a reference to the Moody Blues, not the X-Men franchise which is, btw, “. . . future past), many hopeful, potentially ground-breaking news stories never make it into the headlines, but rather - as Grandpa Doc used to refer to it - “ . . . just beneath the truss ads on page 47.” Case in point: While virtually every network, cable, and print media outlet made loud, large headlines out of FPOTUS Donald J. Trump’s pleading innocent to 37 federal charges in a Miami court the other day, little to nothing was mentioned about the fact that 20 - count ‘em 20 - House Republicans refused to support Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s (née Meyerhofer) censure resolution concerning Democrat Adam Schiff.

Seeking to vault herself into the topflight rank of MAGA extremists (ala MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, and Higgins) the first-term Republican who represents Florida’s 13th C.D. moved to expel Schiff - the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee and lead impeachment manager (prosecutor) in the first impeachment trial of then-POTUS Trump. In addition to seeking Schiff’s expulsion from the House, Luna’s resolution also called for the California Democrat to be fined an astounding $16 million. In introducing H. Res 412, Luna told an empty House chamber: “Adam Schiff lied to the American people. He used his position on House Intelligence to push a lie that cost American taxpayers millions of dollars and abused the trust placed in him as Chairman. He is a dishonor to the House of Representatives . . . The Durham Report makes clear that the Russian Collusion was a lie from day one and Schiff knowingly used his position in an attempt to divide our country.”

(n.b. The “Durham Report,” which was named after Trump-era special counsel John Durham, who was tasked with reviewing the origins of the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Four years after his probe began, Durham concluded the Justice Department and FBI "failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law" about the events during the 2016 election. He also found senior FBI personnel "displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities." And he concluded the FBI had relied heavily on investigative leads provided by Trump opponents. 

But much of the information disclosed in Durham's report had already been revealed in a 2019 examination conducted by the Justice Department inspector general into the origins of the FBI's probe into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. That investigation identified several procedural errors, but overall concluded there was no "political bias" at the bureau.)

Outside of attempting to earn some street cred and score some points with her colleagues on the LUNAtic right, I can think of no other reason why the Florida fresher would ever take on a man of Adam Schiff’s stature.  Ever since the days when Schiff, then serving as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California won a major conviction in the trial of Richard Miller, a former FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union, he has been on virtually every political cognoscenti’s watch list.  In many, many ways, Adam Schiff has always impressed me as the living embodiment of John Cheever’s "Larry Crutchman” (from his brilliant 1958 short, short story The Worm in the Apple): too good, too successful, too even-tempered, too meritorious to be true  . . . at least for cynics.  But like Larry Crutchman, with Adam Schiff, what you see is what you get . . . he’s just that good.  So in what world could a political neophyte like Anna Paulina Luna ever believe she could bring down a congressional colossus like the gentleman from California’s 28th C.D.?

She must have been dreaming . . . or else taking nips from the bottle of MAGA merlot.

In his more than two-decade House career, Adam Schiff has as mentioned above, served as chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, manager of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and as one of seven Democratic members of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6, 2021 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. In comparison, Ms. Luna, in addition to trying to expel Mr. Schiff from the House and fine him $16 million, has cosponsored H.Res.113 - Ukraine Fatigue Resolution, (sponsored by Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, which would suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately. She was also among 52 Republicans who voted in favor H. Con. Res. 30, (sponsored by Matt Gaetz) which would remove American troops from Somalia. In baseball terms, Anna Paulina Luna is the Aberdeen IronWorks (the Oriole’s single-A affiliate) challenging the Los Angeles Dodgers and expecting to beat them hands-down.   

In addition to all his accomplishments in the public arena, Adam Schiff is also a truly great writer and a masterly orator . . . when the situation calls for it. (At one point he wanted to be a screenwriter. I personally have had the pleasure of reading some of his stuff through the generosity of his father Ed.)  Adam’s concluding speech before the vote on impeaching Donald Trump the first time has received some of the highest accolades imaginable. He began his speech  with a quote from a letter that Alexander Hamilton wrote to President George Washington, at the height of the Panic of 1792, a financial credit crisis that shook our young nation:

“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

He also quoted Abraham Lincoln’s message to Congress in December 1862: “Fellow citizens we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

The response to Chairman Schiff’s speech was - except on the part of Trump supporters in the media - overwhelmingly - even historically - positive:

• Greg Miller national security correspondent for the Washington Post who contended that Schiff is perhaps the most “underestimated” politician California has ever produced, predicted that the speech “will leave a mark on history, exceeding nearly all contemporaries.”

• Richard Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine declared: “When we get back to teaching civics in this country—as we must do—Adam Schiff’s sweeping, beautifully-wrought opening argument, should be on the syllabus.”

• The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin insisted that Schiff had delivered “the most brilliant legal presentation I have heard. None comes close. The tone, the facts, the anticipated defenses. I am in awe.”

• Former Mueller probe investigator Andrew Weissmann, said that Schiff’s speech reminded him of a quote (perhaps falsely) attributed to Lincoln: “’To sin by silence, when they should protest, Makes a coward of men.’ That’s the people who are thinking it’s better to stay silent and ‘I can do better by trying to do the right thing.’ This is really an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment where people really need to stand up.”

• Former Bill Clinton advisor Paul Begala, claimed Schiff’s oratory was, “Sweeping yet specific. Eloquent yet clear. Relentless recitation of damning facts, but with a tone more of sadness than anger. Rooted in our deepest traditions – opening with Alexander Hamilton – yet as current as Trump’s latest tweet. Brilliant.”

And yet, despite all the facts favoring Adam Schiff - at least on paper would have him retaining his seat - the odds seemed long that the MAGA-controlled House would permit Rep. Luna’s H. Res. 142 to go down to defeat.  

And then, something remarkable happened: a scintilla of sanity swept over the House of Representatives. When the final vote was tallied, (20, count ‘em 20) Republicans voted to block the resolution of censure! The final vote was 225-196-7 in favor of killing the measure . . . at least for now. Schiff, in comments after the vote, said he was “frankly surprised.” “And I think it showed a lot of courage for Republican members to stand up to the crazy MAGA folks,” he said “I’m astounded by the vote frankly; it was basically almost 1 of 10 Republicans voted against this resolution,” Schiff later added.  Rep. Luna, who up until the day of the vote Adam Schiff had never met, has promised to come back with another try.

 For the record, the 20 Republicans voting in favor of tabling the resolution were: Reps. Kelly Armstrong (N.D.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), Juan Ciscomani (Ariz.), Tom Cole (Okla.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Kay Granger (Texas), Garret Graves (La.), Thomas Kean Jr. (N.J.), Kevin Kiley (Calif.), Young Kim (Calif.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Mark Molinaro (N.Y.), Jay Obernolte (Calif.), Mike Simpson (Idaho), Mike Turner (Ohio), David Valadao (Calif.) and Steve Womack (Ark.).

Interestingly,  Rep. George Santos, the House “Liar-in-Chief” who hours earlier had posted a video on Twitter arguing that Schiff needed to be investigated, wound up voting “present” - certifying that he was there, but chose not to vote. Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, who voted in favor of tabling the resolution, proved that it is possible for one to do the right thing for the wrong reason. In his statement explaining his vote, he said he would vote against the censure resolution, aligning with Democrats

 “Adam Schiff acted unethically but if a resolution to fine him $16 million comes to the floor, I will vote to table it. (Vote against it) In fact, I’m still litigating a federal lawsuit against Pelosi over a salary reduction she imposed on me for my refusal to wear a mask,” Massie tweeted.

 In other words, Massie couldn't vote for this idiotic censure/expulsion/financial fine measure because it might complicate his equally idiotic lawsuit against Nancy Pelosi. Gift horses, you know. Mouths.

 Whatever their reasons, the fact that one-in-ten Republicans turned against Rep. Luna(tic)’s resolution is a very good thing. Could it indicate that a measure of mental health, a scintilla of sanity has, even if but for a moment, returned to the House of Representatives? Could it mean that for the first time in a long time, merely being opposed to a person’s politics need not mean that the person you disagree with should have their career, their life’s work emblazoned with a scarlet letter . . . or in this case, perhaps, a yellow star?

 One can only hope.

 Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

#941: Ulysses S. Grant, Donald Trump, Kari Lake, Andy Biggs, Voltaire, Isaac Asimov and Stochastic Terrorism

Move over President Grant: As of this coming Tuesday, you will no longer be sui generis . . . in a class by yourself. For the past 151 years you have held the dubious distinction of being the only POTUS to have been arrested. If memory serves well, it was back in 1872 that you were arrested and taken into custody for speeding on a street in the nation’s Capitol. Truth to tell, you weren’t the only one racing a horse-drawn cart that day; a couple of your friends were engaged in competition . . . they likewise were cited. Your bail was set at $20.00 (the equivalent of $500.00 in today’s money) and you were released back to your residence: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The day after your arrest, you didn’t show up in court to answer charges, and thus lost your $20.00. Case closed.

This coming Tuesday (June 13, 2023), fPOTUS Donald J. Trump, along with his ‘Diet Coke valet’ Walt Nauta, will appear in Federal Court in Miami to answer a 49-page, 38-count Federal indictment (read here)  including 31 counts under the Espionage Act of “willful retention” of classified records at his Florida estate and other locations after he left office on January 20, 2021.  The product of more than 6 months of investigation under the leadership of special prosecutor Jack Smith the indictment is extraordinarily comprehensible; a word rarely associated with a Federal indictment  It is also extremely nerve-wracking and makes one wonder just how well the fPOTUS is sleeping. It can’t be very well. I mean, in addition to this latest packet of legal pain, Trump is heading into Miami with two of his best attorneys no longer on the case. He has but one currently working for him . . . far too few for such a hydra-headed beast. Who knows what legal jeopardy all his former attorneys are themselves facing? (Methinks MAGA stands for “Making attorneys get attorneys”).

And he still has all his troubles in Georgia.

In great detail, the indictment recounts how Trump stashed hundreds of documents marked “confidential,” “secret” and “top-secret.”  It also recounts how on several occasions (some were taped) he waved a document around in front of a visitor to Mar-a-Lago, telling them “This is really secret and I know I shouldn’t show it to you but . . .”  Many contained highly classified military and even nuclear matters which, it they found their way into the hands of, say, Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, could be potentially catastrophic. The precise reason why Trump squirreled away all these documents is anyone’s guess:

• For future sale?  

• As a form of “good-faith currency” for future business deals in foreign countries?

• To feed his own ego?

 Last night, Trump addressed several thousand Republican stalwarts in Columbus, GA  at a brick building that ironically, was once an ironworks that manufactured mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army in the Civil War. In this, his first public utterance since the indictment was released to the media, he resorted to using apocalyptic language, tying together a litany of personal afflictions and affronts - his indictments by prosecutors, his utter disdain for the DOJ and FBI, and his bid for the White House - as part of a “final battle” with “corrupt” forces that he maintained are destroying the country. “This is the final battle,” he told his supporters. I use the word “ironic” in describing the building in which he and his acolytes were gathered, because he is, of course, speaking in unguarded terms about a civil war.  

      Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778)

What the fPOTUS is verbally engaged in is what some call stochastic terrorism. Coming from the Greek stochastikos, which means “skillful in aiming” or “proceeding by guesswork,” stochastic terrorism commonly defined as “The public demonization of a person, or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.” To the best of my knowledge it first appeared in an article in the August 9, 2016 edition of Rolling Stone magazine in which author David S. Cohen used the term to describe Donald Trump's suggestion that "Second Amendment people" could "do" something about Hillary Clinton:

Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication "to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable."

Long before Donald Trump, there was Voltaire, the French Enlightenment writer and philosopher who understood stochastic terrorism vis-à-vis people like Donald Trump and his MAGAites when he wrote “Those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities” ("Ceux qui peuvent nous faire croire à des absurdités peuvent nous faire commettre des atrocités").  Along these same lines, Isaac Asimov, one of our times’ greatest polymaths knew that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” 

Try as I may, I cannot decide whether the fPOTUS’s mouthiest, seemingly most virulent cheerleaders - people like former Arizona newscaster (and failed 2022 gubernatorial candidate) Kari Lake, Arizona Representative Andy Biggs and Louisiana Representative  Clay Higgins, among others - are really, truly as fixated on the idea of breaking up the United States through violence as they seem . . . or are merely in need of staying on 45’s good side.  Speaking in lieu of former VP Mike Pence at the Saturday gathering in Columbus, Georgia (after Pence, at the last minute pulled out), she told the cheering crowd ““If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”  This is chilling  stuff, to be sure.  This is one wacky woman who has changed political affiliations and religions the way many of us change socks. She used to be a liberal Democrat (voting for both John Kerry and Barack Obama); now she is about as far right as you can get.  She grew up as a Catholic, at one time identified as a Buddhist  according to her friends, and as of 2022, she identified as a evangelical Christian

Then there’s Arizona Representative Andy Biggs, who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance (a most powerful position, considering what’s going on vis-à-vis Hunter Biden’s laptop).  He responded to the 38-count indictment with the words “Eye for an eye,” which he  wrote in a post on Twitter on Friday.  Perhaps the most unhinged stochastic voice out there belongs to Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins.  In a cryptic tweet that prompted thousands of angry responses – and confusion – online, Higgins called the arraignment "a perimeter probe from the oppressors." He also used language interpreted by one author as a call for right-wing militia groups to mobilize in support of Trump when he is arraigned Tuesday in Miami.  

In language that few (including yours truly) can translate, Higgins wrote: “President Trump said he has been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”  Though Higgins did not respond to a request for clarification, author, journalist and professor Jeff Sharlet took his words as a call for war. Sharlet is a scholar who knows of what he speaks: his latest book, "The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War," is an in-depth look at right-wing extremism. 

Parsing/translating Higgins’ highly jargonized tweet, Sharlet  wrote Friday on his Twitter account: “Take this seriously. ’Perimeter probe’: Higgins thinks indictment precedes bigger attack. ‘rPOTUS’: real POTUS, Trump. ‘Hold’: stand back & stand by. ‘Buckle up’: prepare for war. ‘1/50 k’: military scale maps (mostly publicly available that show nearby military installations). ‘Know your bridges’: militia speak for prepare to seize bridges.”

Indeed, we are living in extremely dangerous times. For many intelligent people, it is impossible to see how patriotic citizens could ever bring themselves to vote for such a flawed human being as Donald Trump for president. To understand how this could be, we return once again to the insights of Isaac Azimov:

“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti- intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone   # 🟦     

#940 Much Ado About Something #🟦

   Beatrice & Benedict:  “Much Ado About Nothing”

Without question, the past several weeks have put political brinksmanship (e.g. Politics as Chess) at center stage more than at any time in the past several decades. On one side: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, whose hold upon his ceremonial gavel is as mercurial as a rock climber scaling El Capitan, while his fingers are bedaubed with olive oil; on the other, the nation’s 46th President, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the apostle of bipartisanship, whose half-century political career is nearly unmatched in all American history. At stake: whether or not the United States would, for the first time in history, be unable to meet its fiscal obligations.

Without question, McCarthy faced the longest odds in the negotiation; he is saddled with a substantial faction of what used to be referred in political circles to as “bomb-throwers.” These neo fascisti - people like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, George Santos, James Comer and Jim Jordan - never tried to hide the fact that they cared not a wit whether or not the U.S. defaulted on its financial obligations. Their admitted aim was to “hold the nation’s economy hostage,” and blame it all on Biden and the Democrats in order to be a leg up in the 2024 elections. Meanwhile, President Biden - the so-called “adult in the room” - who made it known even before the first day of negotiations - that “the issue of raising America’s debt ceiling has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with lowering the nation’s deficit,” and reminded the nation that Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling three - count ‘em THREE - times during the Trump years.

As things turned out, the bipartisan agreement reached by the president and Speaker McCarthy - with the mature, yet rather low-key assent of Senate Majority Leader Schumer and his minority partner, Senator McConnell - passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress: 63-36 in the Senate and 314-117 in the House. Most telling, the vast majority of House Committee Chairs (who obviously would never have received their gavels unless they supported McCarthy from day 1) voted IN FAVOR of its passage. Whether or not they held their nose as they cast their AYE votes is not known . . . and really not all that important. What DID and DOES matter is that the son-of-a-gun passed. (It is interesting to note that Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert was one of two Republicans who did not cast a vote. When queried as to why she missed the vote, she said that it was a no-show protest vote.” Several days later, a video surfaced showing Boebert running up the Capitol steps while the vote was already in progress. When informed that the vote was closed, she continued running up the steps.)

On the Senate side - and quite predictably - the entire Republican “brain trust” (McConnell and his leadership team) voted in favor of its passage, while those who make the most noise (Senators Cotton, Cruz, Graham, Hawley, Johnson, Rubio and the two Scotts (Rick and Tom), Tuberville and Vance), like trained seals, followed their vaunted leader and voted NAY. (I am of course referring to the FPOTUS who commanded his true believers to let the U.S. default before agreeing to a compromise on government spending cuts.)

On the part of the Democrats, there were members of both houses who voted against passage of the bill; once they knew that it would succeed without their votes. Most made it perfectly clear why they were voting against the bill, referring to the specific add-ons. pork and budget cuts they were against. In no case did any Democrat voice anything but utter scorn over the idea of the nation defaulting on its fiscal obligations. Most voiced muted contempt for their colleagues on the other side of the aisle from attempting to tie a raise in the Debt Ceiling with budget negotiations.

I was always taught that the definition of a bipartisan bill is one which both houses pass and is then signed into law by POTUS. However, it is one which again, by definition, neither side loves, but both sides will have to live with . . . and live to fight out another day. Without question, the minutia found in the 99-page Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (its official name) contains many things which are odious to different factions. For some it neither contains enough of an increase in military spending nor cuts the nation’s deficit by nearly enough; for others it stinks because it permits an oil pipeline to wend its way through Virginia, puts student loan repayments back on the monthly list of bills to be paid, and restores a work requirement for older people receiving government assistance . . . and dozens of other things. In short, the Fiscal Responsibility Act is a classic case of bipartisan legislation: something for most and nothing for all.

So who won and who lost this political chess match? To tell the truth (something increasingly rare in this era of raging mendacity), neither side . . . nor both sides . . . depending on how one looks at it. So far as actual deficit reduction goes, the bill won’t cure what ails us: a mere $1.5 trillion worth of debt over the next ten years will be removed. That works out to an average of $150 billion per year. I mean, Hell’s bells!; together, Elon Musk and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos are worth a lot more than that. And so far as radically cutting the federal budget, forget it; the Republicans, as an example, wanted to eliminate the $80 billion earmarked for adding tens of thousands of new IRS agents (whose job it would be to ferret out the dishonesty of the hyper-wealthy). It was cut by a mere 8.75% (from $80 to $70 billion). Spending on Social Security and Medicare were held in check (Hallelujah!) and the dismemberment of several executive departments was ignored. And yet, Joe Biden left just enough within the final bill to give Speaker McCarthy and his team of Republicans enough to campaign on back home in 2024.

Biden and his team played McCarthy like a Stradivarius. So much so that in a moment of weakness, the Speaker, untested and inexperienced in high-stakes negotiations, actually said a few positive thing about the president, which could get him in Dutch with his party’s biggest blowhards who want the public that to know that President Biden is senile, the most corrupt president of all time, and hasn’t got the slightest idea about what’s going on. Instead, in his remarks to the press, Speaker McCarthy said: “And I do want to thank the president’s team that he put together. Very professional, very smart and very tough. Very strong beliefs that are different than ours. And I think at the end of the day people can look together to be able to sign it in the House and the Senate.” For many Republicans this is sheer heresy and just might get McCarthy thrown out of office. (Remember, it takes only one member of the House Republican Caucus to put McCarthy’s head and gavel on the chopping block.)

From where I sit, McCarthy and his staff were simply outplayed and out-strategized by Biden and his team. Biden started out by staunchly proclaiming that he would never link raising the Debt Ceiling to considering anything budgetary . . . like cutting or eliminating social safety-net spending in future budgets. McCarthy and his gang assumed that they would be able to out-maneuver Biden and his crew to back down, unless they wanted to be universally blamed for the economic catastrophe their political stolidity would wreak. What McCarthy et al never understood was that they were being set up by a political chess master; one who eventually granted them a few budgetary crumbs in order to let them save a bit of face while all the while saving both America and the world from certain economic catastrophe.

Of course, there was a winner in all this: the American (and thus, the global) economy . . . at least for now.  It’s truly remarkable how much time, tension, and strategizing went in to completing this match.  What’s even more remarkable, perhaps, is how little (outside of taking debt ceiling talks off the table for the next 2 years) was truly gained.  One could sarcastically name this episode Much Ado About Nothing, the title of a Shakespearean comedy first performed in 1612.  While certainly not his best comedy (to my thinking it would be a tie between Twelfth Night and A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream), it is nonetheless most satisfying.  In a nutshell, Much Ado is based upon deliberate lies and deceptions to fool someone to believe something that is not true.  Sound familiar? 

In the play, which is set in Messina, Count Claudio falls in love with Hero, the daughter of his Sicilian host. Hero's cousin Beatrice (a confirmed spinster) and Benedict (an eternal bachelor) are each duped into believing the other is in love with them. Claudio is deceived by a malicious plot and denounces Hero as unchaste before they marry.  When you boil things down, all the falderol leads the principal participants no further than where they started.  Sounds quite reminiscent of the recent chess match between Biden and McCarthy.

Except for one thing: Shakespeare’s comedy is a commentary on the silliness of human nature and human mating rituals. While serious things do happen during the play, ultimately everything is cleared up and the couples end up happy together. But in the end, what happens to the two couples means next to nothing.  In our current situation, the much ado, while certainly putting the silliness of human nature on display, ends up with something which should always have happened, actually happening . . . keeping the U.S.’s  economic trustworthiness alive and well. When the history of this match is written, perhaps some future wit will give it its proper title:

Much Ado About Something.  

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone      # 🟦            

#939 A Majority of One #🟦

Besides being the title of both a superb Broadway play that ran for 556 performances back in the late 1950s, and an even better motion picture that garnered 3 Golden Globes in 1962, A Majority of One, as a concept, doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. I mean, when you stop and think about it, isn’t a “majority of one” a rather clunky way of saying “unanimous?” It seems to be the living-breathing definition of an oxymoron.  I mean, how can a single “yeah” or “nay” vote be a majority? Actually, there has long been one place where a single vote can defeat unanimity: the United States Senate. 

Ever since 1846, the nation’s upper legislative chamber has  operated under terms of what are called the "Unanimous Consent” agreements.  As the senate website explains, these agreements "bring order and structure to floor business and expedite the course of legislation.”  Anyone who watches CSPAN has repeatedly heard an individual senator begin the day’s work with the words "I ask unanimous consent that the Senate dispenses with the reading of the previous day’s minutes.”  Then, the chair will silently count “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,” bang down the gavel and move on to the next item on the agenda . . . which may or may not call for a unanimous consent agreement.  No minutes will be read, thus saving the body from wasting at least an hour-and-a-half of its supposedly precious time. 99.999% of the time, that’s the way things work.   Rarely in its history has a single member of the United States Senate availed him/herself of right to hold up legislative action by being the sole individual to object to the unanimous consent agreement. This more often than not was done by a Southern member seeking to slow things to a deadly halt during the Civil Rights era.  

Frighteningly, a new and utterly eerie form of “Unanimous Consent” has begun emerging in political society, wherein a single citizen objects to something going on in the state, county, or town that gets the powers that be to pay immediate heed. Two cases in point: both of which involve book banning in Florida, the state where I have resided (not truly lived) for the past 41 years.

The first involves Amanda Gorman, the 25-year old poet, Harvard graduate, the nation’s first “Youth Poet Laureate” and youngest person to ever read a poem at a presidential inaugural. That poem, The Hill We Climb, immediately went viral, thus marking her as a dazzling literary talent who, like Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath as well as Thoreau, Sandberg and Emerson could easily become, in her time the American poet. What all these great poets had in common was an ear attuned to their own time and station, as well as being the quintessence of America.  The two things they did not share with one another was that they were neither African American, nor visible to millions via YouTube.     

Ms. Gorman composed the poem on short notice; she was invited to serve as inaugural poet in late December 2020. During such challenging times this was no small task. Gorman, as befitting a Harvard alumna, conducted preliminary research by reading the poems of previous inaugural poets (and talking to two of them, Richard Blanco and Elizabeth Alexander) and studying speeches of famous orators such as Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Winston Churchill. As reported by The New York Times, Gorman had completed about half of the poem when the January 6 events unfolded at the U.S. Capitol. The events spurred her to finish the poem late that night, with several new lines alluding to what had transpired. 

Despite all her breath-taking talent, her having taken center-stage at both a presidential inauguration and the U.N, General Assembly, a single parent’s complaint about her inaugural poem resulted in her book containing that poem being pulled from the library shelf in a Miami-Dade County (Florida) school.  The parent making the complaint (Daily Salinas) alleged that the book in which the poem was included, ". . .  would cause confusion and indoctrinate children.”  What precisely it might "indoctrinate” them into was never stated.  The form Ms. Salinas filled out in her complaint/warning wasn’t even filled out properly: for one question, asking whether she has seen professional reviews of the materials, she replied, "I don't need it."  She also claimed that the book was both written and published by Oprah Winfrey! (In reality, Ms. Winfrey wrote the forward).  Nonetheless, the book was pulled from the library shelf at the Bob Graham Education Center, the school where her two children attend. Despite all the flaws in both Ms. Salinas’ thinking and  paperwork, the book was put under a ban; neither the principal, school librarian nor many of the teachers wished to place their careers in jeopardy.  And so, a majority of one had its way.

The second instance of a “majority of one” removing a book from a public school library shelf - by a single complainant  -  recently occurred when the Duval County (Jacksonville - the state’s largest city) Board of Education removed some 176 books from their libraries.  The list of banned books includes stories of people who are Hispanic, LGBTQ, Asian, Muslim, Black and Native American, among others.

And by the way, there is one more group: Jews who observe Shabbat. 

The censored book, Chik Chak Shabbat, by Mara Rockliff and Kyrsten Brooker has an intended audience of kids who are 7 years old and younger. (And from here, I owe a debt of extreme gratitude to my colleague Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin - a most enlightened scholar whose many online essays [Martini Judaism] are brilliant).

Chik Chak Shabbat is the tale of a woman named Goldie Simcha. Normally, she makes her famous cholent (stew) for the Jewish sabbath, but as the book opens, she is under the weather. Hence, the neighbors in her diverse apartment building find a way to help. The book is categorized by online booksellers as being appropriate for preschool through second grade.  

What could possibly be wrong with a book about making a Jewish stew for Sabbath? (Cholent is a stew that observant Jews eat on Shabbat. It is a mixture of meat, beans, potatoes and anything non-dairy one might find in the fridge or a kitchen cabinet. You light the fire on the stove before Shabbat, so as not to violate the prohibition of starting a fire on the holy day, and then let it cook. It continues cooking, slowly, of its own free will throughout Shabbat.

Cholent is the bipolar opposite of fast food. You cannot do it chik chak, (Israeli slang for “in the wink of an eye”).  I’m not sure what in the world the members of the Duval school board found to be SO damnably controversial about this book other than the fact that (a): the cholent was made by a bunch of diverse people all working together to help Goldie (nascent Communism?) and that (b), most of them - including Goldie - are immigrants . . . outsiders. Whatever it was that bothered the members of the school board (whether they had, in fact, read it or not), was enough to pull Chik Chak Shabbat off the school shelves. Another instance of a majority of one (in this case, one school board).

A Majority of One, written by Leonard Spigelglas, tells a gentle tale of a middle-aged Orthodox Jewish widow (played on Broadway by Gertrude Berg and in the film by Rosalind Russell) and a Japanese multi-millionaire industrialist who is a practicing Buddhist (played on stage by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and in the film by Sir Alec Guinness). The unlikely couple have two things in common: both widowed, and both lost children during WWII . . . her only son was killed while serving in the Pacific Theatre; his only daughter in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  Despite their deep-seated cultural aversions, they manage to become friends - and more - through learning the lessons of tolerance, kindness, and forgiveness.  Against all odds these vastly dissimilar people become “a majority of one.” A great - though nearly impossible - lesson for our present time of political, cultural and demographic insularity.

                        H.D. Thoreau (1817-1862)

The likely origin of “a majority of one” comes from a poet mentioned above: Henry David Thoreau. In his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, Thoreau argued that citizens must disobey the rule of law when the law proves to be unjust. Thoreau drew on his own experiences and explained in his essay why he refused to pay taxes in protest of slavery and the Mexican War. Thoreau wrote that there are two laws: the laws of men and the higher laws of God and humanity. If the laws of men are unjust, then one has every right to disobey them. He is, of course, referring to an eternal, universal moral law, not one which is either temporal or purely political. The most telling line in the essay - and the one best remembered in light of this blog article reads: " . . . any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."

It should be noted that Thoreau’s “moral majority” has virtually nothing to do with that of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell; his “moral majority” was based not on universal principles, but rather a narrow view of American society as seen under the flawed microscope of fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity . . . for the sake of partisan political gain.

Banning books, making immigrants, refugees, members of the LGBTQ community and other “undesirables” the scapegoats of the present time is yet another form of a “majority of one.”  In this case, the “one” is the  “one way” to understand how society must be if it is to survive. And it matters not a fig if the vast majority disagree; the “majority of one” will always live, act and believe that they - and only they - have God on their side.

One of my all-time favorite British comedies is Are You Being Served? which ran on the BBC from 1972-1985.  It dealt with the misadventures of the staff of a retail floor at “Grace Brothers” Department Store.  Filled with stereotypic (at least for Brits) characters - the fey Mr. Humphries, sexy Miss Brahams, curmudgeonly Capt. Peacock and batty Mrs. Slocomb - the half-hour show was filled with hijinks, incomprehensible Cockney and more malaprops, double-entendres and catch-phrases than can be found in all the works of Sheridan, Shaw and Oscar Wilde. My favorite of all comes from the opinionated Mrs. Slocomb (Molly Sugden) who, whenever voicing her opinion, would conclude by saying "And I am unanimous in that!”

Sounds hauntingly like the cast and crew of MAGA . . . 

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone      #🟦

#938: Four Questions #🟦 (Copy)

It’s hard for the approximately fifteen to twenty percent of us - like readers of this blog - who are deeply involved in following “the chess game of politics” to believe - let alone grok - that an astounding 80%-85% of the American public follow it anywhere between “casually and not at all.” The New York Times’ editorial board refers to this as the “attention divide.” According to an astute - though deeply disturbing - editorial published back in October of 2022: “Most Americans view politics as two camps bickering endlessly and fruitlessly over unimportant issues.” If this is true - and I for one have no reason to gainsay their finding - is it any wonder that people like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are being taken seriously as presidential contenders; that more and more state legislatures have passed laws permitting the banning of books in public schools; that at least 14 supermajority Republican state legislatures have passed laws banning drag shows; and that despite more than 60% of those polled supporting a woman’s right to choose, more than 2 dozen state legislatures have already enacted laws banning the medical procedure?.

The precipice at which the American political process - and indeed, Democracy itself - currently lurches, has as much to do with the mega-billions now flooding the undertaking as the quality of its practitioners (at least on one side of the aisle), and the dumbing-down of its content. It’s not that the issues are too complex for the average citizen to follow; it’s more that the average citizen doesn’t feel they have any skin in the game. They don’t know what or whom to believe, and haven’t the slightest idea of what questions to ask of those soliciting their vote. For the 80%-85% who, in the words of the Times’ editorial, follow politics “casually, if not at all,” they can’t tell you why they support candidate X over candidate Y, except for the fact that the former is not the latter. If anyone contemplating suggesting that these folks are, in reality, supporting people who really don’t care a whit about their plight or needs, expect a concussion; this is the typical result of banging one’s head against a brick wall.

I for one long for the day when citizen voters can state positive reasons for supporting candidate X over candidate Y . . . instead of hearing “Well, at least he/she isn’t the other guy/gal.” Perhaps part of the problem is that neither citizens nor members of the professional press ever ask the right questions in such a way as to elicit a response . . . or make the pol at the mike come off as a first-class know-nothing.

Here are 4 questions that should be asked of every candidate at every press gathering or conference:

1. “According to almost every every recent poll - including - Fox News - a clear majority of the American public favors enacting a ban on assault weapons. While 45 percent of those surveyed said they would encourage more citizens to carry guns to defend against attackers, 61 percent said they favored banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Where do you stand on this issue, and how would you vote on any form of sensible laws concerning lethal weapons in the hands of citizens? And by the way, how much money did you receive from the National Rifle Association in the last election cycle?”

2. “A recent survey found that nearly 60% of registered voters prefer political candidates who will take action on climate change — including more than a quarter of Republicans. Do you see this as a major issue affecting the future of the planet? And if not, why not? How much money did you receive from the oil and gas industry in the last election cycle?

3. Many political analysts have suggested that the Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the 2022 midterm elections — which were held about five months after the Supreme Court’s decision which overturned Roe V Wade— stemmed partly from public dissatisfaction with the justices’ ruling. And there’s evidence that Democratic voters in particular were energized to vote because of the change in abortion policy. In recent polling nearly three quarters of adults (74%) and 79% of reproductive age women say that obtaining an abortion should be a personal choice rather than regulated by law. Where do you stand on the issue of a woman’s right to choose? Will you vote to fine and/or imprison women who receive abortions and/or their physicians who perform them? At what age will you vote to cut off abortions?

4. A recent USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word “woke” as a positive attribute, not a negative one. And yet, Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on "woke.” According to this poll, a 56%-39%, majority, say 'woke' means being aware of social injustice, not being overly politically correct. Republican politicians and voters alike have differing definitions of wokeism — and some struggle to define it at all. The rallying cry has recently been used to denounce everything from climate change policies and socially responsible investing to transgender rights, critical race theory, which books must be removed from library shelves in public schools, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Please explain your definition of “woke,” and justify how legislating so many aspects of people’s lives, education, relationships and individual choices is consistent with the classical Republican agenda of smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

At this point in time, it is more than evident that the gap between Democrats and Republicans is of Grand Canyon proportions. How so? Well, agree or disagree with them, Democrats have a pretty obvious ethical and legislative vision upon which to run. They have pretty clear-cut strategy based on both a a set of ethical principles - such as the moral trinity of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and the furtherance of Democratic values - and concrete political goals such as saving planet Earth for future generations, keeping assault weapons out of the hands of everyone save members of the military, supporting our allies and changing tax laws so that the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay what used to be called “their fair share.” These are all things which can be given expression without having to resort to fear and name-calling. Ask the four questions - or five or six or more - and then demand answers.

On the other side of the political gap, it seems there are no answers to the basic questions - just rhetoric and buzz-terms such as “Socialist,” “Communist,” “Woke,” “anti-religion,” and a laundry list of villains like “George Soros,” “Adam Schiff,” “LGBTQIA+” and pejorative nicknames (“Brandon,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Pocahontas.”(  Of course, to those of us who love the history of political nicknames, these show little wit and even less tact. Take for example a couple of the best: “Martin Van Ruin” (after America’s 8th president, Martin Van Buren . . . given that nickname after presiding over the “Panic of 1837”); “Rutherfraud” (America’s 19th chief executive, Rutherford B. Hayes who, despite losing the popular vote in the election of 1876 to Samuel Tilden, still managed to win the Electoral College); and “Slick Willie” (obviously Bill Clinton).

I urge all lovers of Democracy and fearers of Führers - whether journalists or just plain citizens - to dig in and ask the four questions at every press conference, town-hall meeting and Passover seder, and not give up until you hear some answers.  And if the questions are avoided or turned into attacks on the other side, remember to ask the best, most obvious follow-up question of all: “Why won’t you answer the question he/she just asked you?”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone    #🟦

The Judge Who’s a First-Class Payne in the Tuchis #🟦

(Many thanks to Alan Wald, one of my oldest, wittiest and easily, most literate friends, for bringing Judge Robert E. Payne and the case he presided over, to my attention.

First the facts, then the commentary:

    Federal Judge Robert E. Payne

THE FACTS: This past Wednesday, May 10, 2023, Judge Robert E. Payne of the Federal District Court in Richmond, Virginia (the home of my father Henry’s alma mater), handed down a 71-page ruling striking down federal laws blocking handgun sales to buyers over the age 18 and under 21. In the case, John Corey Fraser et al v Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives et al, Judge Payne, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, ruled that statutes and regulations put in place over the past several decades to enforce age requirements on sales of handguns, like the semiautomatic Glock-style pistol, by federally licensed weapons dealers were “not consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” and therefore could not stand. A citizen’s Second Amendment rights do not “vest at age 21,” he added.

In his ruling, Judge Payne repeatedly cited the majority opinion in the landmark case New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen which, employing a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment, struck down a New York State law that put tight limits on carrying guns outside the home. At the time when this ruling was handed down (June 2022), legal commentators, including the New York Times’ Adam Liptak noted that “The decision is expected to spur a wave of lawsuits seeking to loosen existing state and federal restrictions and will force five states — California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, home to a quarter of all Americans — to rewrite their laws.”

The Justice Department is expected to appeal Judge Payne’s ruling in Virginia, which, should it stand, would have a significant, if limited, impact on firearms purchases. The decision, which would not affect state age limits, will take effect when the judge issues his final order, which is expected in the next few weeks.

THE COMMENTARY: In my opinion Judge Payne’s ruling ranks right up there with Mr. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s  1857 Dred Scott decision (which a future Chief Justice, Chas. Evans Hughes, would characterize as the court’s "great self-inflicted wound”); Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision in the Citizens United case (which essentially opened the legal floodgates to all the corporate billions being contributed to political campaigns); and Justice Samuel Alito’s delivery of the Dobbs v Jackson decision (which overturned Roe v Wade) as one of the very worst, most short-sighted and asinine judicial renderings in all American history. Reading through Judge Payne’s decision, the one thing that sticks with you is his justification for ruling against the plaintiffs . . . about their position “not [being] consistent with our nation’s history and tradition.” In other words, what Payne was basing his decision on was a stagnant, motionless Constitution; one virtually immune from - and uncaring of - any historic change or growth made manifest through the reality of time and tide. His rendering of the 2nd Amendment (“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”) heeds only its first fourteen words, and virtually nothing of what follows (i.e. “. . . a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”)

Taking a single phrase from the U.S. Constitution without regards to a couple of centuries of court cases and decisions (“commentaries”) is akin to reading the Old Testament (also known as “The Hebrew Bible”) without engaging in the study of the so-called “Oral tradition.” Were it not for this oral tradition - debates, arguments and the parsing of both history and language of the Bible, we’d be stuck with such literal renderings as the so-called “Stubborn and rebellious child” (בֵּ֚ן סוֹרֵ֣ר וּמוֹרֶ֔ה) law (Deut. 21:18-21) which condemns an unruly child ”(one who will hearken not to the voice of its mother or father”) to death by stoning at the hands of the community elders.  Had not this section of the Bible been subjected to centuries of debate and commentary, all those youngsters who,  at one time or another, mouthed off to their parents, would have been sentenced to death.  Instead, centuries of sages turned the literal words into a frightful warning . . . thus abnegating a heartless punishment.

Imagine, if you will, if Judge Payne’s obiter dictum about “not [being] consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” were to be taken literally in a wide range of legal proceedings; to what might it lead?

(And here we return to my friend Alan Wald’s trenchant thoughts for which, once again, great thanks are proffered:

Next, will it be the re-imposition of slavery  because ending slavery is not consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” 

Or re-starting the Holocaust, because it was part of the German nation’s history and tradition

Or the paddling of elementary school kids by teachers in the cloak room:, for this too is part of our nation’s history and tradition.

How about giving smallpox and VD to the First Peoples of America by the first white settlers in America  which is part of many nation’s history and tradition?

Or taking away the right to vote from African Americans and women because this right is largely inconsistent with our nation’s history and tradition?

Feel free to add your own “How’s ‘bout’ to this list.

There is an old rabbinic tradition of never ending a sermon (a drosh) without a dash of uplifting compassion (n’chempta). Not wishing to ignore the sage advise of my early masters, I shall heed their admonition:

This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Santos-Zacaria AKA Santos-Sacarias v. Garland, unanimously  passed a decision that makes history not just for its impact on the law — but for its language about transgender people and non-citizens living in the United States.

Every judge — including the most conservative on the court — agreed with the court's ruling, and traditionally right-leaning justices co-signed the official opinion of the court, which uses proper she/her pronouns to describe a transgender woman who fled Guatemala after being assaulted and persecuted on the basis of her gender identity and sexual orientation.

The opinion also referred to the petitioner as a non-citizen, rather than an "illegal alien" (a dehumanizing term that has been in conservative opinions in the past).

Estrella Santos-Zacaria, the transgender refugee at the center of the case, had appealed a decision to deport her after she twice came to the U.S. seeking safety and a better life.

In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with Santos-Zacaria, allowing her another chance to fight the deportation decision and potentially remain in the U.S. if that bid is successful.

The decision is largely technical, but the language used in the opinion is historic, particularly considering the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ measures across the country.

For the moment, this news fulfills the need for ending with hope and compassion, gives us a bit of emotional respite from the inanity of the Federal Court’s gigantic Payne in the tuchus.

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone   #🟦

#936: Ten Trillion Here, Twenty Trillion There #🟦

Fairbanks & Chaplin: 1918 Wall Street Bond Rally

Mark Twain, that most notable and quotable of all American authors once wrote “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Because, so far as I know, he wasn’t referring to any contemporary situation in particular, his aphorism is thus both brilliant and timeless; it speaks to human nature in general.

In reflecting on how little time remains until the United States - for the first times in its history - defaults on its debt obligations . . . which, as of this past January, stood at $31.38 trillion and rising . . . Twain’s remark seems all the more tailor-made.

Trying to access blame – to determine precisely which side shoulders the greater burden in the nation’s titanic debt obligations – brings to mind yet another writer of renown:  the occasionally controversial cartoonist Walt Kelly. Kelly (1913-1973) put into the mouth of Okefenokee Swamp-dwelling oposum Pogo, his greatest creation, the immortal words “We have met the enemy and he is us!” (n.b. This is an abridgement of what Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry announced at the Battle of Lake Erie, when his small naval force had defeated the British in 1813: "We have met the enemy and he is ours.")

In other words, Democrats and Republicans alike share a mutual blame for America’s massive debt; it’s just that the former are more “tax-and-spend,” the latter “cut-taxes-and-spend.”  With America's Debt Ceiling about to be breached (it’s already been reached) by June 1, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy are about to sit down and see if anything can be done. POTUS wants a “clean bill,” wherein Congress passes an increase in the ceiling without any attached budgetary strings. Period. 

By contrast, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's "Limit, Save, Grow Act" of 2023, as recently passed by the House, would require broad-based spending cuts totaling $4.5 trillion over the next decade. President Biden had said in no uncertain terms that he will refuse to sign the act into law; he spoke truth-to-power when he referred to it as "dead on arrival" in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Speaker McCarthy wants to tie any rise to a series of draconian spending cuts which would most likely affect the poorest among us: veterans, children relying on food-stamps, students being crushed by debts, Medicaid Recipients, etc.  Moreover this act mandates dramatic cuts in monies already allocated for such things as climate change programs and the addition of 78,000 new IRS agents . . . whose purpose is to make sure that millionaires and billionaires are paying their fair share.  

Can you say “stalemate?”

The United States started running up debt long before July 4, 1776.  Someone had to help pay for General Washington’s troops and the creation of the Continental Congress. The Revolutionary War was, to a great degree, financed through the selling of “Continentals bills of exchange,” arranged for by one Hayim Salomon, a Polish-born Jewish businessman living in Philadelphia. Salomon (1740-85) risked his growing fortune to travel to Europe and broker these bills of exchange at rock bottom prices. For his services, Salomon - who also made interest-free loans to many of the Founding Fathers and himself died a pauper at age 46 - charged a measly one-quarter-of-one-percent. (BTW: In 1941, Howard Fast wrote an impressive historical novel about Salomon, called Hayim Salomon: Liberty’s Son. If you are interested, there are still copies available . . . )

From 1776 to the turn of the 20th century, the Treasury Department had to go to get Congress’ approval whenever it needed to engage in deficit spending. Then, in the early 20th century, the debt limit was instituted so that the U.S. Treasury would not need to ask Congress for permission each time it had to issue debt to pay bills. During World War I, Congress passed the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 to give the Treasury more flexibility to issue debt and manage federal finances. All over the country, people gathered to buy tens of millions of dollars worth of war bonds to help finance the Great War. The most famous such gathering was on Wall Street, where movie stars Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Marie Dressler, along with then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, reached out to an estimated 20,000 people crowded into Wall Street, doing their best to get them to buy, buy, buy, lend, lend, lend. Within two hours, the assemblage bought more than $3,000,000 worth of bonds. (The actuality at the top of this article is a photo of that historic event.) Similar rallies would occur all around the country.

The first debt limit was instituted by Congress in 1939. Congress consolidated limits on specific forms of debt (e.g., separate caps on bonds and shorter-term debt) into one aggregate debt limit. The first federal debt limit was set at $45 billion and gave the Treasury Department wide discretion over what borrowing instruments to use, so long as total debt did not exceed that level. From then until now, Congress has raised the debt ceiling with every passing war (whether Congressionally mandated or not) and crisis. During the 4 years of the Trump administration, the president and Congress increased America’s debt limit by nearly 25%, due in part to an unprecedented tax cut which he sold to both Congress and the American public by claiming that it would pay for itself by greatly increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by up to 6% per annum. He was wrong.

Indeed, raising the debt ceiling used to be most commonplace, least dramatic event of a congressional session. Why even during the Trump years, Congress increased the nation’ ability to borrow on 3 separate occasions. In matter of fact, when asked about threatening spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, he told reporters “I cant think of anyone using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge.” (Someone should have asked a follow-up question, like “Mr. President, can you explain to us precisely what the ‘debt ceiling’ is? Come to think of it, of all 46 presidents in American history, he likely knows more about debt than any of his colleagues . . . real estate empires are, after all, colossi of debt.)

Speaker McCarthy’s insistence that the House will never accept a “clean” bill unless the White House accepts massive spending cuts is, in the words of President Biden, “D.O.A.” . . . “Dead On Arrival.” The MAGA branch of the House appears to believe that they can actually sell the American public on this toxic witches’ brew. How is that possible? Don’t they know that raising the debt limit has virtually nothing - NOTHING - to do with future spending? That cutting spending from the next budget will have no effect - NONE, NADA, GORNISHT - on what we have already committed ourselves to spending? Or, even worse, don’t they really care? Are they more interested in winning the next election - even if it means seeing the American economy go up in smoke, thus triggering the loss of millions of jobs, trillions of dollars of losses in people’s retirement savings, a major stock market crash and ensuing global depression? Are they looking to finish that which January 6, 2021 began . . . the overthrowing of the government? Nothing provides greater fodder for revolution than economic uncertainty and collapse. But do remember, all fodder is, when one puts it under a microscope, nothing more than manure.

               $1,000,000,000,000,000.00!

To be certain, there are a couple of bizarre, dystopian suggestions on the horizon. Some economists (none I trust) have stated it's time for a break-the-glass option: a trillion-dollar coin. The coin — which wouldn't need to be bigger than an average coin, and can be made quickly — as part of a potential debt-ceiling loophole. The Treasury Department can mint platinum coins of any denomination. That's led to a school of thought that says Secretary Yellen should simply mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin and deposit it to pay off the debts until a more permanent solution can be found. Even conservative economists have found the notion to be “beyond silly.” The first problem, of course, is that it would have to get past Treasury Secretary Yellin; the second that the courts would, in all likelihood, shoot it down. But this is precisely the kind of simple-mindedness that MAGA Republicans believe they can sell their base on . . . even if they themselves know it is twaddle.

Then, there is a theory being discussed behind closed doors at the White House ,that the government would be required by the 14th Amendment to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients, government employees and others, even if Congress fails to lift the limit before the so-called X-date. This theory rests on the 14th Amendment clause stating that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Some legal scholars contend that this language overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which currently caps federal debt at $31.4 trillion and requires congressional approval to raise or lift. Top economic and legal officials at the White House, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department have made that theory a subject of intense and unresolved debate in recent months, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

It is unclear whether President Biden would support such a move, which would have serious ramifications for the economy and almost undoubtedly elicit legal challenges from Republicans. Continuing to issue debt in that situation would avoid an immediate disruption in consumer demand by maintaining government payments, but borrowing costs are likely to soar, at least temporarily.

Oh how I wish I had paid better attention to Dr. Daniel Suits’ class in “The Politics of Economics” 50+ years ago! All I know at this point in time is that playing “Debt Chicken” is an incredibly dangerous, economically lethal, game.

As of today, all I can hear is Ella Fitzgerald singing “Something’s Gotta Give.” Where oh where are the adults? There’s far, far more to politics than winning another term . . . or the White House, or taking back the Senate. Whatever happened to doing the right thing for the nation?

To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen (after whom a senate office building is named): “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone #🟦

#935 Let's Heed Florence Kahn's Advice (Satire) #🟦

           Rep. Florence Prag Kahn (1866-1948)

Of the more than nearly 225 Jewish men and women who have served in the United States Congress, one of my favorites, without question, is Florence Prag Kahn, who represented what would eventually become Sala Burton’s, Barbara Boxer’s and Nancy Pelosi’s District in San Francisco. In interviewing the three for my mammoth biographic works The Congressional Minyan (2000) and The Jews of Capitol Hill (2010) they all remembered with great fondness the many hours they had spent with their young children (and now grandchildren) at the Julius Kahn Playground and Clubhouse which was named after Florence’s late husband Julius, himself a member of Congress for 24 years. Located at Jackson and Spruce, the “JK” is the nation’s largest urban park.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 9, 1866, her parents, who had immigrated from Poland in the early 1860s, were actually friends with the Mormon leader Brigham Young.

Florence Prag Kahn lived a life of firsts:

• The first Jew born in Utah

• The first woman to graduate from Berkeley (class of 1887)

• The first woman to manage a congressional campaign (for her husband Julius, in 1899)

• The first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives

• The first woman to serve on both the House Military Affairs and Appropriations Committees.

Additionally, she was largely responsible for the funding of both the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay Bridges, and was so instrumental in the early funding of the FBI that its director, J. Edgar Hoover, always referred to her as “The mother of the FBI.”

Politically adroit, fearless and frumpy, Rep. Kahn also had a dry sense of humor and was known to possess the quickest wit on The Hill. Once, when asked how she was able to pass far more significant legislation than most of her male colleagues, she famously responded: Don’t you know? It’s my sex appeal, honey!” When assigned to the committee on Indian Affairs, she flatly turned it down, telling then-Speaker Nicholas Longworth III (the husband of T.R.’s daughter “Princess Alice” Roosevelt) “The only Indians in my district are made of wood and sit outside cigar stores . . . and I can’t do a damn thing for them! Put me on Military Affairs!” Then there was the time that New York Representative Fiorello LaGuardia accused her of being “. . . nothing but a standpatter, following the reactionary Senator Moses of New Hampshire.” Mrs. Kahn is reported to have wriggled loose from her chair, jammed her nondescript hat over her nose, and bellowed: “Why shouldn’t I choose Moses as my leader? Haven’t my people been following him for ages?” The House erupted into gales of laughter, LaGuardia - himself the son of a Jewish mother - included.

My favorite Florence Prag Kahn quip - and the genesis for this satiric posting - comes from the time when the House’s most ultraconservative - and least liked - member acidly asked her, “Would you support a birth control law?” Without taking time to draw a breath, she answered, “Yes I will . . . if you will personally make it retroactive!” I remember doing my initial research on Mrs. Kahn back in the early 1990s. I was occupying a tiny cubby on the top floor of Harvard’s Widener Library. When I came across this line I cracked up and almost fell out of my chair . . . so much so that there quickly erupted the sound of a couple of dozen people “shushing” me. Believe me, it was hard to stop laughing . . .

Frequently, Mrs. Kahn used her rapier-like wit as a cover for her revulsion or distaste; call it the verbal version of Bonaparte’s “iron fist in a velvet glove” . . . firmness being couched not with outward gentleness, but with wit. Alas, such is rarely the case within the halls and walls of Congress. Today, instead of wit and double-entendre zingers, we hear catcalls and shouts of “YOU LIE!” as well as inanities such as “a stepmother really isn’t a mother at all,” or “Women who support abortion rights are too ugly to need them. Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

       Stewart and Travers in “It’s a Wonderful Life”

The various members of Congress (mostly notably those who are members of the so-called “Freedom Caucus”) and nasty “influencers” who make these sort of comments - comments which drip with animus and ignorance - are perfect examples of the sorts of people to whom Florence Kahn was referring - those who would have made far greater contributions to society by never having been born in the first place. Think of the Frank Capra/James Stewart classic It’s a Wonderful Life . . . but in reverse. In the 1946 film (the best film never to have won an Oscar), Stewart’s character George Bailey sees his life fall apart so quickly that he contemplates suicide.  He reasons that his family - indeed, the entire world - would be better off with him dead. But the prayers of his loved ones result in his guardian angel named Clarence Odbody (played to perfection by Henry Travers) coming to Earth to help him, with the promise of earning his wings. He shows him what things would have been like if he had never been born.  And of course, being a Frank Capra film, everything comes up roses, sweet tea, and scones.

Now let’s reverse that by implementing Rep. Kahn’s sarcastic quip, and granting retroactivity to the births of those who are daily making the world more dangerous, less civil and stupidly intolerant by march, march, marching to the beat of deafening dictatorial drums. These are the merchants of mayhem, whose chief wares are fear, fanaticism provincialism and bigotry . . . four things the world can definitely do without.

Oh if only they had never been born!

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone                                                                                             #🟦

#934: Musophobia: Rhonda Santis and the House of Mouse #🟦

One obvious measure of success - or notoriety - for people in the public eye or historic spotlight is the acquiring of one or more easily recognizable nicknames. In politics, “Honest Abe,” “Governor Moonbeam” and “The Governator” are, of course, respectively, Abraham Lincoln, and former California governors Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In baseball, most fans can immediately identify “The Babe” (Babe Ruth), “The Georgia Peach” (Ty Cobb), “Mr. Cub” (Ernie Banks), “Mr. October” (Reggie Jackson) and my favorite, “The Splendid Splinter” (Ted Williams). Basketball fans have no trouble identifying “The Stilt” (Wilt Chamberlin), “Zeke from Cabin Creek” (Jerry West) and for my money, the best of the best, “The Round Mound of Rebound” (Charles Barkley.) For those who are gaga about classic Hollywood movie stars, there’s no problem in identifying the identities of “The Little Tramp” (Charlie Chaplin), “The King” (originally Wallace Reid, most famously Clark Gable), “The Great Profile” (John Barrymore), “The ‘It’ Girl” (Clara Bow) and “The Italian Marilyn Monroe” (Sophia Loren.).

One will note that historically, most nicknames were either descriptive (“The Stoneface” - Buster Keaton) or laudatory (The Father of His Country” (G. Washington). Today, nicknames can be either satiric or downright mean and insulting. Perhaps no one in recent history has bestowed more insulting nicknames on public figures than former President Donald Trump:

• “Lyin’ Ted” (Texas Senator Ted Cruz)

• “Disloyal Sleezebag” (Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell)

• “The Nutty Professor” (Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders)

• “Gretchen Half-Whitmer” (Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer) and

• “Maggot Haberman” (New York Times White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman).

Of late, the politician who has garnered the greatest number of potential nicknames - whether descriptive, laudatory or downright mean and insulting is current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who I almost always refer to as “Rhonda Santis,” due to his obsession with drag queens. Indeed, there is even a website devoted exclusively to his many sobriquets, both congratulatory and disparaging. Because he was, until late, considered to be Donald Trump’s strongest competitor for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, he is being most closely vetted by both the national media and the former president’s strongest, most steadfast allies. That’s how the game is played; any- and everyone considering running for high office had better know this . . . and have about them the hide of a rhinoceros. 

At this point, the question is whether or not Governor DeSantis is “ready for prime-time.”  Paying very close attention to what he has been doing, saying and mandating here in Florida, I would have to say the answer is a rounding NO! HE IS BY NO MEANS READY FOR PRIME TIME!! Anyone who is following DeSantis from the point of his being the Florida Governor will likely conclude that virtually everything he declares or does within the Sunshine State is meant to send a message to what he deems the Republican base. He seems to be not at all aware that running to the right of Donald Trump is not smart; that his advisors are little better than rank amateurs. Compared to the obnoxious, narcissistic, dumb-as-a-bag-of-hair, twice impeached Trump, DeSantis is little more than the former President’s “Mini-Me.”

That which keeps the MAGA wing of the Republican Party in Donald Trump’s shadow is mostly his audacity; his lack of concern about what anyone else believes or thinks about him.  Politically speaking, he is rara avis; the only politician I am aware of who, when he is indicted for 34 different felonies, actually gains in the polls!  To his followers, he is the future of an America which will soon become a minority/majority country. DeSantis, on the other hand, seeks to collect brownie points by attacking and punishing those who disagree with the Trumpian vision of the American future.  Back in 2011, when he was beginning his run for governor, DeSantis published a book-length screed against then President Barack Obama entitled Dreams From Our Forefathers. In this truly terrible, child-like tome, DeSantis screamed at President Barack Obama for 286 pages, implying he was a closet Marxist, and at one point wrote that Obama had "Muslim roots."  Even worse, DeSantis' book included justifications excusing the legalization of slavery in the U.S. Constitution, as well as repeated complaints about policies designed to protect women from rape and domestic violence.

We were warned as far back as 2011 . . . and still, 62 of Florida’s 67 counties voted for him in 2022.

But as the commercial tagline goes: “But wait . . . there’s more!”  In many parts of America - and even here in Florida itself - he is making himself look like the “Fool on the Hill” . . . 

“Nobody seems to like him, they can tell what he wants to do 
And he never shows his feelings. But the fool on the hill
sees the sun going down, and the eyes in his head see the world spinning 'round."

As Florida’s fool on the hill travels the country, ostensibly hawking his new book, The Courage to be Free (which contains a chapter entitled “The Magic Kingdom of Woke Corporatism”), he is becoming well-known for that which revs his political engine:

• Banning books in public school libraries;

• Putting the nation’s fifth most progressive institution of higher learning -  Sarasota’s New College - into the hands of a newly appointed board that wishes to remake it in the image of, say, Michigan’s Hillsdale College, a private conservative Christian school founded by members of the Free Will Baptists in 1844.  In a DeSantis dictatorship, he would ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) programs and the teaching of critical race theory, give New College trustees broader powers to review and fire faculty, and compel all state colleges to deprioritize fields deemed to fit a “political agenda”; 

• Making sure that any entertainment spot featuring performers in Drag while there are children present (even if brought there by their parents) will lose its liquor license;

• Threaten any teacher who teaches about anything involving sex, gender or what he calls “The WOKE history of the Civil War” will likely loose their teaching license, be fined and even subject to imprisonment  . . . and the most notorious, most puzzling and most publicized of ‘em all:

• His all out  war on the House of Mouse - by far the state’s largest single employer and payer of taxes.  

It’s not that Rhonda is musophobic (i.e. overwhelmingly and irrationally fearful of mice and other small rodents);  I mean for crying out loud he and wife Casey’s 2009 nuptials took place at Disney World.  In his book. DeSantis explains that he grew disillusioned with the corporation as it moved “beyond mere virtue, signaling to liberal activists.” So how did it morph from being “The happiest place on earth” to being a coven of crazies? Simple: its leadership exercised their First Amendment right to speak their mind.  Now, the disparagement - if not dismemberment - of the house of mouse is a core part of his political identity.  Everyone remembers that it was Nero who fiddled while Rome burnt to the ground.  In the case of DeSantis, he פארקויפט (sold) copies of his new book while Broward County (which happens to be the most Democratic county in the state) washed away. It’s akin to Senator Ted Cruz vacationing in Cancun while Texas froze.

The latest imbroglio began when Disney announced it would halt its political contributions in Florida and pledged to work to get the “Don’t Say Gay” law overturned.  As in a game of chess between a beginner and a grand master, DeSantis took aim at the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which had overseen Disney World’s government services since the 1960s.

Vowing to end Disney’s “special privileges,” DeSantis had the stupid-majority Florida legislature pass a law to put the district under state control; Disney responded by reaching a development agreement meant to undo that law; mate, Disney.  Now, DeSantis is threatening to have the state take over safety inspections for rides and monorails at Disney World, or potentially sell off the company’s utilities . . . or even build the state’s largest prison right next door to the state’s most powerful tourist magnet. This comment made national headlines and became fodder for cartoonists and comedians.

It also has caused his polling numbers to plunge.

Not only is Disney the state’s biggest employer, its economic multiplier is vast.  Without Disney World, there would likely be no Universal Orlando Resort, no Sea World, no Disney Hollywood Studio, no Sea World Orlando, no Toy Story Land . . . as well as all the hotels, motels, restaurants and shopping areas servicing the area.  And don’t forget to think about all the thousands upon thousands of people who have jobs as a result of all these tourist attractions.

None of these places are cheap.  I well remember when Disneyland opened in 1955.  We went there shortly after it first opened its gates on July the 17th.  Then, the one attraction which drew the longest  lines was "Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” (it still exists); believe it or not, in 1955, a day’s ticket was $1.00 . . . $.50 for children.  If you were upper middle class, you might follow up a visit to Disney with a jaunt over to Knott’s Berry Farm in nearby Buena Park.  Situated on 57 acres, admission was free (until 1968, when the fee was $1.00 for adults and $.25 for kids).  And then, after a long, joy-filled day, you would go home.  Today, minus hotel and food charges, a one-day pass to Disney World will set one back anywhere between $109.00-$189.00.  This is to say that in 68 years, the price of a good time has gone from pocket change to a second mortgage.

And this is the ultimate cash cow that Governor DeSantis wants to punish for having the audacity to stand up for the rights of LGBTQ+ men, women and children . . . as well as their grandparents, friends and tourists to the Sunshine State.

 To my way of thinking, Ron DeSantis and his narrow-minded clique are even more toxic than the mice and other small rodents they so breathlessly fear . . . 

 Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone.     #🟦

#933: "A Toad Under the Harrow"

Matthew Kacsmaryk is a Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He is the jurist (?) who, just the other day issued a ruling in case No. 23-10362, called ALLIANCE FOR HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE et al v. U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION et al, by which he single-handedly fulfilled the hopes, prayers and genuflections of millions of “hyper-moral, liberty-loving Americans” by issuing a nationwide ban on the use of the abortifacient Mifepristone (Mifeprex, a progesterone blocker), one of two drugs (the other being Misoprostol, a hormone originally created to prevent stomach ulcers caused by anti-inflammatories [NSAIDs] which are  commonly used to medically terminate pregnancies. (n.b. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals quickly reversed part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, though the case will likely go before the Supreme Court for full resolution.)

Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling, to say the least, was and is both bizarre and deeply troublesome. Unquestionably, the most bizarre aspect of his 49-page ruling (much of it a listing of the various plaintiffs and defendants) was his repeated reference to the 150-year old Comstock Act . The Act is an anti-vice law passed in 1873 that prohibits the mailing of “obscene or crime-inciting matter.” Kacsmaryk’s effort to resuscitate this 19th-century relic, indicates that an antiquated law passed during the Reconstruction era, will play a central role in the post-Roe v. Wade apocalyptic landscape of abortion law.    #🟦

As described in a December 2022 memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the original Comstock Act arose from “the handiwork of Anthony Comstock—‘a prominent anti-vice crusader who believed that anything touching upon sex… was obscene.’”

Comstock—who helped found the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice—championed the initial version of the law which forbade the mailing of any drug, medicine or anything “for the prevention of conception, or for causing an unlawful abortion.” The prohibition on contraception and the word “unlawful” were eventually dropped. In its current form found at 18 U.S.C. 1461 (Mailing obscene or crime-inciting matter), the law prohibits “every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device or substance; and every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use” as well as advertising anything falling within these broad categories.

The most deeply troublesome part of his ruling, of course, is its central assertion: that in giving the legal stamp of approval for the use of Mifepristone in 2000, the FDA got it wrong; that the agency - whom many of the ‘hyper moral’ claim is run and staffed by liberal doctors, scientists and elitists with a pro-abortion agenda - all but ignored the possible bad (or even lethal) side effects (called “adverse events” in medical research jargon) for purposes of getting it on to the market.

In the first 18 years of its legal existence, the FDA reported that 24 women, out of approximately 3.7 million (0.000064%), have died after taking mifepristone for the purpose of medical abortion. However, as the FDA notes, “The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to Mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, coexisting medical conditions, and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient.”

In other words, Judge Kacsmaryk’s contention vis-à-vis bad side effects is utter stuff and nonsense.

The FDA first approved Mifeprex (mifepristone) in September 2000 for the medical termination of pregnancy through seven weeks gestation and this was extended to ten weeks gestation in 2016. The FDA approved a generic version of Mifeprex, Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, in April 2019. The agency’s approval of this generic reflects its determination that Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, are therapeutically equivalent to Mifeprex and can be safely substituted for Mifeprex. Like Mifeprex, the approved generic product is indicated for the medical termination of intrauterine pregnancy through 70 days gestation.

By extension, Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling could be used to call any FDA-approved drug or device into question. What’s to say that next week, some fundamentalist group of physicians, pharmacists or chemists wants to sue the FDA over the approval of contraceptive pills, hormones or medical devices because the pre-marketing research wasn’t as muscular as it should have been? Or that the major COVID vaccines and boosters cause far too many deaths? First they came for the press in order to get the public to distrust anything they said or printed. Next they came for the White House and the Congress until its ratings were in the sewer. Now, if Kacsmaryk and his “patriotic” cronies have their way, trust in the Food and Drug Administration (which, by the way, was never run by Dr. Fauci, as many of them claim) will also fall beneath the sub-basement.

(n.b. Yesterday (4/15/23) Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an administrative stay of Judge Kascmaryk’s ruling until the end of the day, Wednesday, April 19. The Department of Justice has filed paperwork with SCOTUS, arguing that Kascmaryk’s ruling is legally unsupportable, and thus should be overturned.)

Those of us who labor long and hard in the vineyards of research, clinical trials and medical ethics (which is not an oxymoron), know very well just how long, exhausting and thoroughgoing the process is for getting anything medical, pharmaceutical or technical approved by the FDA. Generally speaking, it takes years, billions of dollars, and innumerable trial phases (starting with laboratory animals, then healthy human subjects,  then  subjects having a particular disease or condition and finally, post-marketing statistics. Anyone participating in trials is fully informed as to what is going to happen if they voluntarily consent to enter a study. Any and all potential adverse events are spelled out; anything in a consent document that is even remotely pushy or fanciful is deleted. Every step along the way is evaluated and overseen by either a Board of Ethics or an Institutional Review Board. This is how I’ve been earning my living for several decades . . .  (And by the way, all consent documents contain a boilerplate comment to the effect that “there may be other potential adverse events that we are not currently aware of.”)

Debunking Judge Kacsmaryk’s contention that not all dangerous side effects were investigated prior to FDA approval of Mifepristone or Misoprostol is actually pretty easy: all one has to do is go to www.clinicaltrials.gov type in which ever drug, device or surgical technique you wish, and you will get a full history of any and every trial ever done. As but one example, if you go to the site and type in Mifepristone, up will pop 227 different trials and studies carried out over the years. You will discover that there are still active studies investigating other uses for this drug . . . including certain types of breast cancer, type2 diabetes and Adenomyosis. Type in Misoprostol and you will find 566 past, present and proposed studies on many, many issues affecting women.

(Please note: deciphering medical terminology can be difficult. If you go on to the clinical trials website, you may need to ask your family doctor, specialist, pharmacist or, in some cases, your rabbi (!) to translate things into understandable English.)

                Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (1977- )

At about the time Matthew Kacsmaryk was being considered for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench (early 2017) he submitted a draft article to a Texas law review criticizing Obama-era protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions. At the time, he had already spent several years working for a conservative legal group fighting legal fights on behalf those who demanded that their religious beliefs and scruples be protected as a matter of law.

The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”

But a few months after the piece arrived, an editor at the law journal who had been working with Kacsmaryk received an unusual email: Citing “reasons I may discuss at a later date,” Kacsmaryk, who had originally been listed as the article’s sole author, said he would be removing his name and replacing it with those of two colleagues at his legal group, First Liberty Institute, according to emails and early drafts obtained by The Washington Post. The article, titled “The Jurisprudence of the Body,” argues that religious physicians “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe” abortion medication “designed to kill unborn children.”  Kacsmaryk asked for his name to be removed from the article for “reasons I may discuss at a later date” and be replaced by two coworkers at the religious freedom-focused law firm

When Matthew Kacsmaryk appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, his dossier and collection of legal essays did not contain any information about “The Jurisprudence of the Body." It had simply disappeared from his record.  In swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, he told the assembled senators that his private religious beliefs would in no way affect his ability to make dispassionate decisions based solely on the law and legal precedents. In other words, like the 3 justices named to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett), Matthew Kacsmaryk lied; they too proclaimed that they would follow legal precedent when it came to Roe v. Wade.  And of course, all 3 voted in favor of its dismemberment.

I wonder how Judge Kacsmaryk or the current Supreme Court would respond to a lawsuit filed on behalf of plaintiff’s claiming that the drug Sildenafil should never have been approved by the FDA? Using the Texas judge’s legal logic, it should be banned.  This, of course, will never happen; it will never even be considered.  Why? Because Sildenafil is known by 2 generic names: Viagra and Revatio.

The next time we vote, please remember that positions on the federal bench are lifetime appointments. It is far too easy for ideologues like Kacsmaryk or G-d knows how many Trump/McConnell/Federalist Society appointees who urrent occupy seats and gavels which will give them the power to veto the wishes of vast majorities for at least the next generation, if not 2. This should become a major, major issue for the 2024 elections.

As to Judge Kacsmaryk himself, he should be feeling, in the words of the great British novelist and wit P.G. Wodehouse, like “a toad under the harrow” . . . like one soon to be chopped up into little pieces. Although Wodehouse was writing about Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de Burgh, twelfth Earl of Dreever, it could easily have been about Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk. Writing about the good Earl of Dreever, Wodehouse noted: “Nature had equipped Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de Burgh with one of those cheap-substitute minds. What passed for brain in him was to genuine gray matter as just-as-good imitation coffee is to real Mocha. In moments of emotion and mental stress, consequently, his reasoning . . . was apt to be in a class of its own.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

A Star is Born! (#932)

          Introducing John Wayne: A Star is Born

Because I am a “Hollywood Brat,” who has taught at least 2 film classes a week for more than 25 years, my thoughts and opinions have always held a lot of sway with my students. My favorite movie of all time? Casablanca. My all-time favorite comedy? Buster Keaton’s brilliant 1924 5-reel film Sherlock, Jr. Best musical? 1951’s An American in Paris, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron.  The best western of all time? Unquestionably, 1939’s Stage Coach, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne as “The Ringo Kid”  (top billing went to Claire Trevor, who played “Dallas,” a “lady of pleasure”).         #🟦                                           

 John Wayne (Marion Michael Morrison) and John Ford (John Martin Feeney) had a long, long love-hate relationship. The two originally met in 1929, when Ford went to direct a sports-themed film  called Salute at USC, where both Wayne and Ward Bond were members of the Trojan football team. He put the two to work hauling furniture and eventually started giving them uncredited bit parts in his films. After 21 walk-on roles, Wayne was signed to star in a major western called The Big Trail - a 1930 Fox Films stinker which, in old Hollywood parlance, “wasn’t released . . . it escaped.”

Ford was incredibly angry with Wayne for having been disloyal and signing with Fox without even informing him. For the next 9 years, Wayne had to learn his craft without any help from Ford. He wound appearing in 61 grade-B/C films, playing everything from playboys and mill workers to singing cowboys. Finally, in 1939, Ford approached Wayne, told him he was finally ready for the big-time, and hired him to play the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (based on Boule de Suif, a French story written by Guy de Maupassant). In order for the movie-going public to know that John Wayne was going to be a major star, Ford crafted an incredibly long-range “zoom shot” (a “star maker”) to hone in on Ringo when he first enters the picture. At that moment his face filled the screen, a star was born.

As I was watching in rapt - though horrified - attention as the overwhelmingly Republican state Legislature voted to expel two young, Black male representatives for their roles in leading youthful protests calling for gun control, after a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville which killed 3 nine-year olds and 3 adults, one thought kept going through my mind: “Two Stars Are Born” and both are named Justin, which, most fitting, is Latin for “just, honest.” (It should also be long remembered that the white Republican legislators voted not to expel the 3rd protestor, Gloria Johnson, 60, a white female lawmaker who had stood with her Democratic colleagues; nonetheless, her expulsion came within 1 vote of enactment).

During the Thursday debate, Democrats argued that the Tennessee Three’s actions were a mistake, but that expulsion would set a dangerous precedent for democracy. Republicans said expulsion was necessary to prevent further potential attempts to disobey the chamber’s rules. The GOP representatives used a more aggressive line of questioning during cross-examination of Jones and Pearson, calling the two lawmakers disruption makers and attention seekers.

In expelling 2 Gen Z-ers, Justin Jones, 27 and Justin Pearson, 28, House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the 2 to the rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. During debate, he called the “Tennessee Three’s” actions in joining protesters chanting “no action, no peace,” “unacceptable” and a violation of House rules of decorum and procedure. (It should be noted that Speaker Sexton and his Republican colleagues have repeatedly referred to the January 6, 2021 insurrection as nothing more than a “loud tour” of the Capitol by patriotic Americans.)

Tennessee, of course, is the state where the Ku Klux Klan first drew breathe in December 1865 in the town of Pulaski, and then, 60 years later, in Dayton, put high school teacher, John T. Scopes on trial, accusing him of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. Despite having elected such stalwart progressives as Senators Albert Gore, Sr. and Jr., and Steve Cohen, Tennessee has long been a state where racism and white supremacy refuse to die. Today, as in 1925, the state is once again a laughing stock. The Republican members of the state legislature should be hanging their heads in shame; they won’t, because their rendering of history and fundamentalist Christian values makes them, at least in their own eyes, filled with merit.

Rather than respond to – let alone even consider – changes to gun laws in the Volunteer State (especially when it comes to dealing with semi-automatic weapons), Republican members of the legislature are far more concerned with blaming transgender people for gun violence (the shooter at the Christian Charter School in Nashville was transgender), outlawing drag shows, removing “unacceptable” books from school libraries, and making abortion virtually impossible.  Tennessee leads the charge in passing laws which target LGBT rights. Their religious beliefs and principles force them to put partisan politics above people, and declare that a zygote is far more worthy of legal protection than an elementary school child. Indeed, for them, life begins at the very moment of conception . . . and ends at the moment of birth.

    The Tennessee 3: Johnson, Jones and Pearson

During the floor debate before his expulsion, Justin Jones - who represents parts of Nashville, where the three 9-year olds were murdered - told his colleagues: “This is a historic day for Tennessee, but it marks a very dark day for Tennessee because it will signal to the nation that there is no democracy in this state. It will signal to the nation that if it can happen here in Tennessee, it’s coming to your state next. And that is why the nation - indeed the whole world - is watching us, what we do here.”

Here, Justin Jones hit the nail on the head. Those who have been paying attention to Florida politics under Governor Ron DeSantis and his supermajority legislature, know what he has done to stifle both free speech and Democracy.  Florida’s government implemented new state regulations this year requiring groups that want to hold rallies or events at the Capitol to be sponsored by a state agency or lawmaker. Democrats and liberal advocates say that is hard to do in a state where Republicans control the governor’s mansion and have supermajorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate.

In Montana, Republican lawmakers are advancing legislation that would open up next year’s Senate primary to allow the top two vote-getters in the primary — no matter their party — slots on the general-election ballot. This is a bald-faced maneuver to stymie the reelection of Sen. Jon Tester, the long-serving Democrat seeking a fourth term, because it would only be applicable to the 2024 Senate election. Third-party candidates, who in the past have cut into Republican candidates’ totals, would probably not be on the general election ballot, which could set up a defeat for Tester, the sole remaining Democrat elected statewide.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) tried to force a county school board to hold new elections, which would have shortened the terms of members he disagreed with. State observers said the governor’s move, which failed, was unprecedented in the state’s modern history.

And so on and so forth . . .

Now, before we all join hands and leap off the front lawn, let’s look at some positives which might be beginning to percolate.  First and foremost, we are beginning to see the emergence of Gen Z-ers (or informally, “Generation Zer”) on to the political stage.  Up until last week, the most prominent was 25-year old Florida Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost (born in 1997) who has already made a name for himself for his wise-beyond-his-years understanding of how politics works, his ability to think on his feet, and his inability to back down on the issues which he and his constituents in Florida’s 10th District truly care about . . . like abortion rights, the abolition of automatic weapons, and the furtherance of Democracy. Then there are the two new “stars” who were birthed on the national and international scene just this week: Justin Jones and Justin Pearson.  They have already won rave reviews for their maturity, steadfastness of purpose, and poise.  Both will likely be returned to the Tennessee legislature shortly by their respective city council/board of supervisors. Having watched them being interviewed by the national media, I am deeply impressed with how passionate and articulate they both are; I cannot remember either of them yet say “um” or “you know.”

Representative Jones is cut out of the same moral cloth as the late Representative John Lewis; like his predecessor, he too is an advocate of non-violence who instills in  his constituents, Lewis’ concept of “good trouble.” (It should be noted that as a student at Fiske University, he was recipient of the “John R. Lewis Scholarship for Social Activism.”  Like his mentor, he stands every chance of becoming a lightening rod for his generation; young people of all colors and ethnicities who are largely pro-choice, pro-gun safety (and anti-automatic weapons), and above all, pro-Democracy. 

I am greatly impressed with the members of Generation Zer; to a great extent, they remind me of the political activists of the 1960s who became damn good organizers and, to this day (for those of us still alive) are still involved in politics.  These new activists are bright, well-educated, and, for the most part, both color- and gender-blind.  And, they will soon be running for school board, city council and county supervisor seats . . . and then on to state capitals and eventually Washington, D.C. 

Once John Ford gave John Wayne the zoom-in “a star is born” treatment in Stagecoach, "Duke” (his nickname came from the horse he rode in all those grade-z oaters) starred in more than 100 more movies.  Although his politics made me nauseous, I admired his filmmaking ability.  Eventually, he became one of the most popular stars in the world. 

This week, we have seen - I suspect - the birth of two new stars. They already have begun building up a following of twenty-somethings who can benefit from the likes of “The Justins,” and identify the "good trouble” which ultimately may well save Democracy for future generations. 

    #🟦

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

#🟦 Standing Up to Jewish Hate

         Standing Up to Jewish Hate

The word antisemitism was first popularized in Germany back in the year 1879. Its originator was a German agitator and journalist named Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904). As early as 1862, Marr, a Lutheran who was, for a short while, married to a Jewish woman, published an essay entitled “The Way to Victory of Germanicism Over Judaism” (Der Weg zum Sieg des Germanismus über das Judentum. Marr’s conception of antisemitism focused on the supposed racial, as opposed to religious, characteristics of the Jews. His organization, the League of Antisemites, introduced that into the political lexicon and established the first popular political movement based entirely on anti-Jewish beliefs.

(n.b. There has long been an uncertainty as to precisely how to spell the term; is it hyphenated or not? In German, French, Spanish and many other languages, the term was never hyphenated. The unhyphenated spelling is favored by many scholars and institutions in order to dispel the idea that there is an entity ‘Semitism’ which ‘anti-Semitism’ opposes. Antisemitism should be read as a unified term so that the meaning of the generic term for modern Jew-hatred is clear. At a time of increased violence and rhetoric aimed towards Jews, it is urgent that there is clarity and no room for confusion or obfuscation when dealing with antisemitism.)

Long, long before Wilhelm Marr, there was an Egyptian priest who likely lived in the Ptolemaic kingdom in the early 3rd century, B.C.E.  His name was Manetho, and he was rather famous during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled Egypt from 284-246 BCE.  During his reign, wrote Manetho the Aegyptiaca (History of Egypt) in Greek, a major chronological source for the reigns of the kings of ancient Egypt.

In one of the volumes of his work, Manetho presented a counter-narrative to the traditional story of the Biblical work Exodus. He depicts the Jews most negatively — as Lepers and Shepherds – exuding anti-Jewish themes. While the Hebrew Bible's Exodus tells of the Jews escaping Egypt, and thus, with the help of G-d and Moses - liberating themselves, Manetho tells a different story: that Egypt expelled lepers because of their impurity who then chose to revolt against Egypt pioneered by leader Osarsiph — later revealing himself as Moses. — who imposed various anti-Egyptian laws. Together with the Shepherds, they conquered Egypt in a 'barbarous manner…set[ting] the cities and villages on fire…roasting those sacred animals…and forced the priests and prophets to be the executioners and murders of those sacred animals." (For a thorough examination of Manetho’s counter-narrative, one can check out Flavius Josephus’ Against Apion.

Hatred against Jews and Judaism - as a people, a religion, a culture and (falsely) a race, is as old as recorded history. Sometimes it is a bit better, and others one hell of a lot worse. It is both omnipresent and universal; there have long been reports of societies, kingdoms and cultures which, although never having offered a home to Jews, have nonetheless despised them. The “whys?” range from “They were complicit in killing Jesus” (I’ve never understood how anyone can kill a supposedly divine being) and “they foment and finance revolutions everywhere they go,” to “they control the banks, the media and the food supply,” and “they are avaricious, incapable of telling the truth, and are the most malodorous people on the planet.”

Depending on time, place, and contemporary circumstance the reasons for upticks in Antisemitism vary. But they always lead to the same thing: hatred. Sometimes Jews are pilloried for having killed Jesus; at others, being blamed for “poisoning the water supply” (during the medieval Bubonic Plague), of destroying the economy or funding revolutionary causes . . . do note that the majority of actors, directors and screenwriters accused of being Communists during the post-war “witch hunts” were Jewish. And the capital-H Holocaust, in which the Nazis murdered more than 6 million Jews, was not the only lower-case-h holocaust in human history: the massacre of English Jews in York (and their eventual exile) in 1190; the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th century; the notorious Kishniev Pogrom of 1903 . . . and today, the rapid rise in Antisemitic acts here in the United States, Europe and South America.

Where once the name “Rothschild” and even “Roosevelt” (whom Antisemites tried to convince unlettered people was in fact, a Jewish family) has now been replaced by “Soros.”  As recently as this past week, diehard MAGA Republicans and the cheerleaders at Fox are claiming that Donald Trump’s indictment at the hands of a NYC grand jury and D.A. Alvin Bragg was “politically motivated.” What’s the proof? That D.A. Bragg had received campaign donations from none other than billionaire George Soros . . . which, they insist, means that the Jews are behind it all. I have had a couple of nauseating conversations with people who gladly mention Soros’ name in discussing Trump’s legal woes. “Who’s George Soros?” I ask, “and what does he have to do with the indictment?” Most just answer “You know . . .“ In response, I either remain silent or simply say, “No I don’t . . . please enlighten me.” So far, no enlightenment has yet come my way.

Over the past decade or so, Antisemitic acts, statements and beliefs have grown exponentially here in the United States. This is not to say that antisemitism was barely existent before  MAGA came on the political scene, for such is certainly not the case. It has always been there . . . but until recently, operating in the shadows. In his new book Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, Professor Matthew Dalleck shows how since the time of its founding in the late 1950s, the John Birch Society has fought tooth and nail against the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ to take over America, as well as promoting America as a Christian nation, looking to ban books which they found to be “unwholesome,” against international cooperation and against NATO and the United Nations, and funding candidates who would bind themselves to the eradication of the federal income tax, immorality, and federal funding for nearly everything save the military. Sound familiar?

What the Birchers did not have in their time were two things: first an internet, through which they could introduce, induce and inculcate tens upon tens of millions of potential supporters with their far-right ideas, and second, a potential base of radicals armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry. In the 1950s and 60s, Birchers could only hope for a second Civil War; today, their descendants are gearing up for one. In the 1950s, Birchers were against a democratic state because it was “communistic”; today, they are in favor of a fascist state because it is not “woke” . . . even if they cannot define it.

Jewish people in America are feeling far less safe than at any time since the end of McCarthyism.  When a former POTUS invites known, vocal Antisemites to his private club for lunch; when synagogues are being bombed and Jewish philanthropists put on the hot seat, this is indeed a cause for concern.

The question is: what can we do about it?  There are certainly going to be those - both Jewish and not - who will claim that since the former POTUS has a Jewish son-in-law and Jewish grandchildren, he cannot harbor any Antisemitic tendencies.  Stuff and nonsense; to my way of thinking, Trump/Kirschner was far more a merger than a marriage; tantamount to the old saw “Some of my best friends are Jewish.”

We now come to the “blue emoji,” which will be showing up on television and computer screens more and more in the days to come.  These blue squares are meant to fill about 2.4% of each square . . . equal to the percentage of Jews living here in the United States.  Despite this small percentage, 55% of all religious hate crimes in this country relate to Jews.  This is unconscionable, to say the least.  What we are hoping is that television newscasts, blogs and other communications will contain the  #🟦 as a way of keeping the message that we - both Jews and non-Jews alike - are #Standing Up to Jewish Hate.

Last week, billionaire Robert Kraft, owner (among other things) of the New England Patriot’s football team, donated $25 million  to create the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. which uses the blue square emoji, which is already on all smartphones, as a "simple, but powerful symbol of solidarity and support for the Jewish community."

The campaign's launch follows last week's release of a report by the Anti-Defamation League asserting that Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose 36% in 2022. The report tracked 3,697 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault aimed at Jewish people and communities last year. It's the third time in five years that the annual total has been the highest ever recorded since the group began collecting data in 1979.

The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, based at California State University, San Bernardino, reported last week that Jews were the most targeted of all U.S. religious groups in 2022 in 21 major cities, accounting for 78% of religious hate crimes.

During Kraft’s campaign, the blue square will take up 2.4% of television and digital screens, billboards, and social media feeds. That number as mentioned above, symbolizes that Jews make up 2.4% of the American population, yet are the victims of 55% of religious-based hate crimes. The foundation already has its own website: #StandUpToJewishHate - Uniting to Combat Antisemitism.  In announcing the creation of his foundation, Kraft said the campaign “is designed to raise awareness for the fight against antisemitism, specifically among non-Jewish audiences, and to help all Americans understand that there is a role for each of us to play in combating a problem that is unfortunately all too prevalent in communities across the country today,”  

Already, the blue square #🟦 is appearing on television shows, digital billboards and social-media sites.  The campaign is encouraging people to download the blue square and share it widely. You can also watch a clip on Twitter explaining it.

Said Kraft: “We must stand up and take action against the rise of all hate, and I hope everyone will post and share the blue square to show their support in this fight.”  Already, former New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady and former Heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson have joined the crusade.

Sadly, one cannot convince an avid anti-Semite to stop hating Jews; its a lethal part of their genome. One can, through knowledge, diligence and smarts, open the minds and hearts of those who never hated in the first place to understand that they can do their share to spread the word: a society that is not safe for Jews is ultimately not safe for anyone . . . of any color, any religion, any ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

Do check out the online ADL report Antisemitism Uncovered: A Guide to Old Myths in a New Era. To be knowledgeable is to be well armed. And while you’re at it, you may want to check out the latest statistical report from ADL about the horrifying growth of anti-Jewish, racist attacks in the United States. 

If antisemitism has grown exponentially with the growth of social media (it definitely has), perhaps we can fight it on social media as well.

 #🟦

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

Isn't Life Wonderful?

                A Scene From Griffith’s 1924 Film “isn’t Life Wonderful?” 

In early 1924, D.W. Griffith, the greatest of all silent film directors, led a cast and crew to Berlin, where they made what is now considered one of the greatest of all films: the ironically titled Isn’t Life Wonderful?  The film, based on a short story by British soldier/writer Geoffrey Moss, starred Neil Hamilton (who 40+ years later would play police commissioner Gordon on Batman) and Griffith’s protégé, the long-forgotten Carol Dempster.  Isn’t Life Wonderful? takes place in real-time: the post “Great War” ‘20s, when hundreds of thousands of refugees (such as the film’s main characters, “Inga” and “Paul” flocked to Germany in search of food and shelter.  Historically, this was the time when the Weimar Republic was beset by hyperinflation, caused almost entirely by Germany’s staggering ($33.3 billion) debt it owed the victorious Americans, Brits and French.  The inflation that held the Republic in a strangle hold for several years was unlike anything ever seen before . . . or since.  As an example, a loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923; by November 1923, one US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 (that’s a mind-bending  four trillion, two hundred ten billion, five hundred million) German Marks.  Paper money reached such a level that Weimar issued 50 trillion Mark paper. This is the Germany that Griffith chose to shoot his picture in.

And we kvetch and call for a radical change in government when the inflation rate stands at 6.04% (as it did yesterday)?

Griffith, ever a master at telescoping dire reality into  a few feet of celluloid, captures this monstrous hyperinflation in the scene pictured above.  In long shot, we see dozens of families pushing wheelbarrows laden with paper money to a bakery where there is already a long, long line.  Then, camera pulling up closer and closer, we see the baker emerge from his place of business every 30 seconds, wiping off the chalk board that bears the price of a single loaf of bread.  The figure gets larger and larger with each rewrite, as more and more starving families exit the line and go back to God knows where.  This is the brutality and apocalyptical doom which led the common folk to demand to know precisely who was to blame, and the followers of the soon-to-be Führer only too happy to provide the answer: the Jews.  From there, the slide to gruesome dictatorship was all but guaranteed.

Democracy is having a tough time all over the planet; from the world’s oldest (USA) to its largest (India) its newest and most raucous (Israel) to its least comprehensible (France), the forces of intolerance, bigotry and self-regarding defiance for the rule of law are making insomniacs of the masses.  “How is it,” so many of us ask, “that minority political factions are increasingly capable of turning their warped version of reality into the law of the land?  When was the last time democracy was attacked by so many bellicose bullies and would-be dictators?

We are all, of course, familiar with the scene here in the United States, the oldest of all democracies.  Day in, day out, the former president, the MAGA and Clown-Car-Caucus, are stirring the pot and shifting attention to how much freedom their followers at the hands of “Woke” - the new way of saying “Commie Bastard.” They spend their time convincing them that they are losing their freedom to choose what their children should read, learn, see or hear; their ability to carry automatic weapons without registration . . . let alone education.  And on and on.  We are daily witness to the diabolical commands of the former Commander-in-Chief that if he is indicted in any of a number of state and/or federal cases, his followers must "protest, protest, protest” and further warning that should this happen, the American public should “be ready for  potential death and destruction.”  Say what you will about our former POTUS; he knows his supporters well.

                                                   Rahul Gandhi

In India, the world’s largest democracy, P.M. Narendra Modi has summarily disqualified M.P. Rahul Gandhi (the leader of the party opposing the current P.M.) from serving in that country’s Parliament,  after a court found him guilty of defamation over his remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surname.  Now mind you, Mr., Gandhi isn’t just some garden-variety member of Indian society; his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) was India’s first Prime Minister; his father Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991) who served as India’s 6th P.M., was assassinated by a member of the Tamil Tigers, a radical Sri Lankan separatist group,  in 1991. In a sense, to be a Nehru/Gandhi in India, is the equivalent of being a Roosevelt or Kennedy in America.  Rahul Gandhi, who has served 19 years in the Indian legislature, was removed after he was found guilty of defaming Modi’s surname in a 2019 case filed by a politician in the prime minister’s party. Gandhi was convicted on the defamation charge this week and sentenced by a court in Modi’s home state to two years imprisonment, which, under Indian law, allowed the parliamentary speaker to suspend him from politics.  This is an unprecedented move; one which potentially fires an arrow into the heart of India’s democratic body politic.  Without question, this is an earth shattering event.  One simply does not disqualify a member of the Indian Parliament (especially one with Gandhi’s familial roots) simply because he attacks the P.M.  It is an example of anti-freedom that is all but unsurpassed in that country’s history.  Needless to say, many people in India are up in arms and accusing P.M. Modi and his judiciary of engaging in anti-democratic actions.

In France, protests involving upwards of 1.3 million people (out of a population of about 2.2 million) have become a fixture of Parisian nightlife after the French government rammed through a pension bill last week raising the retirement age to 64, from 62, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament.  The fact that President Macron did this without a parliamentary vote is highly unusual, and highly unlike how things are normally done in France.  The wild protests are part of a larger trend that has seen previously peaceful demonstrations growing increasingly menacing as the government refuses to back down on the pension overhaul. This past Thursday, nearly 1,000 fires were lit by protesters, about 440 police officers and firefighters were injured, and about the same number of demonstrators were arrested throughout France, according to the French interior minister. Those huge protests have shifted in character over the past week. They have become angrier and, in some cities, more violent — especially after nightfall.

                           French President Emmanuel Macron

These protests have been less about the fury felt over the raising of the retirement age to 64 from 62, and more about Mr. Macron and the way he rammed the law through Parliament without a full vote.  Finally, they have broadened into something approaching a constitutional crisis.  As a result of all this, the postponement of a state visit to France by King Charles III  became almost inevitable; the optics of President Emmanuel Macron dining with the British monarch at the Château de Versailles as Paris burned were not just bad; they would have looked like a brazen provocation to the blue-collar workers leading a wave of demonstrations and strikes across the country.  One must remember that the country’s far right, in the person of parliamentarian Marine LePen’s National Rally, which consistently blames France’s educational, social and economic problems on Macon’s immigration policies and left-wing predilections.  Sound familiar?

Then there is the Middle East’s sole Democracy, Israel, which has seen tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of people taking to the streets  protesting Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s changes to the Israeli Judicial system . . . all seemingly for the sole purpose of keeping him free of legal liabilities so long as he holds office.  For the past weeks, Prime Minister Netanyahu - sounding more and more like former President Donald Trump than David Ben Gurion or even Ariel Sharon - has defied critics of his plan to weaken Israel’s highest court. 

Earlier today (March 26), An Israeli good governance group asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption. The request by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel (התנועה לאיכות השלטון בישראל) intensifies a brewing showdown between Netanyahu’s government and the judiciary, which it is trying to overhaul in a contentious plan that has sparked widespread opposition.

                             Israeli P.M. Bibi Netanyahu

The Movement leaders have demanded that the court force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so. It’s repeated refrain is “He is not above the law” (הוא לא מעל החוק). The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and toward a burgeoning constitutional crisis. After the last election, Netanyahu put together a coalition larded with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties in order to maintain power . . . something which has many Israelis both angry and on edge. It has potentially buried a dagger into the heart of Israeli democracy. For the first time in the State of Israel’s nearly 75 year history, the words
”anarchy” (אנרכיה) and “dictatorship” (רודנות) are being heard.

As I’m editing this blog just prior to recording, word has gone out over the Internet that Bibi has abruptly fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for challenging his judicial overhaul plan. Gallant, a former senior general, had called for a pause in the controversial legislation until after next month’s Independence Day holidays, citing the turmoil in the ranks of the military. This is big stuff; Bibi’s government is pushing for a Knesset (parliament) vote this week on a bill that would give his governing coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. It also seeks to grant the Knesset the authority to override Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority and give the coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. Can you say “constitutional crisis?” (משבר חוקתי).  

Bibi and his allies say their plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and  “rein in” what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.  It sounds to me like they are taking  a page out of the MAGA/Clown-Car-Caucus  playbook

These are indeed perilous and most jarring times. Those who were once considered part of the extreme right are now considered the newly emerging center. Where once experience, education, good judgement, diplomacy, and civility were keys to successful leadership, brutishness, extreme commonality, narcissism, the use of fear and a “what’s in it for me” attitude have become central to attracting followers and acolytes . . . people who will follow come hell or high water.

Citizens in India and France, Israel and the U.S.A., have, of late, come to a breaking point; they are fed up with so-called leaders who refuse to listen to their voices, heed their majority wishes or act like adults. They see in these “leaders” men and women whose main concern is feeding their followers a daily diet of mis- and disinformation, and setting up straw dogs whom the public can both fear and hate. In this way, they believe they can keep their followers’ votes and their backers’ dollars. In so many countries, the concept of e pluribus unum (Latin for “out of many, one”) to Après moi, le déluge (French for “after me, the deluge” - King Louis XV’s bon mot which stands for leaving a place or job and predicting disaster or chaos after their departure). What a way to live life!

Much of what made Inga and Paul so desperate in Isn’t Life Wonderful? was that their reality had been turned upside down. Where once, despite their poverty, they led lives worth living, now they had to subsist on horse turnips or, if lucky, a single potato per day. But unlike many of we moderns, they refused to spend their days and nights trying figure out who or what was to blame for the vast changes their lives had undergone. Somehow, they understood that life’s complexities could not be overcome or fixed through vapid simplicity. Despite everything, the came to realize by the film’s end, that they had one another to love, to share with and cheer on . . . the basic ingredients which helped them conclude that indeed, Life is Wonderful.

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone