Category: History

Is Voting a Right, or a Privilege Granted by the State?

The Daily Escape:

Manzanita Beach, OR – 2021 photo by Taysian Photography

A new Pew Research poll asks whether voting is a fundamental right, or a privilege. Like most things in America today, the answer is that it depends on your age and political affiliation. Self-identified Republican voters skewed more toward “privilege” while self-identified Democratic voters said “right.” See this chart:

Overall, 57% of Americans over 18 say voting is a “fundamental right for every US citizen and should not be restricted.”

  • Younger adults are most likely to say voting is a fundamental right, peaking at 64% among 18-to-29-year-olds. Sixty percent of 30-to-49-year-olds agree. But for people aged 50 or older, only about 50% say voting is a fundamental right.
  • The biggest gap is by political party affiliation. Fully 78% of Democrats say voting is a fundamental right versus just 32% Republicans.
  • A 67% majority of Republicans say voting is a privilege that can be limited.

Isn’t it shocking that most Republicans don’t think voting is a fundamental right? Maybe that explains why they find it acceptable to re-litigate the 2020 presidential election, or to suppress the votes of those they think will vote against them.

Although the majority of Republicans view voting as a privilege that can be limited, younger Republicans and Hispanic Republicans are more likely than older Republicans to say that voting is a fundamental right for every US citizen:

44% of Republicans and Republican leaners under 30 say it is a fundamental right, compared with 37% of those ages 30 to 49, 29% of those 50 to 64 and just 22% of those 65 and older.

The Atlantic quotes historian Eric Foner, saying that since the country’s founding, Americans have been torn between: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…voting as a right and voting as something that only the right people should do.”

Foner says that every step forward in human rights has given birth to a desire to “purify the electorate.” After the Civil War, Northern Republicans wanted to exclude “disloyal” pro-Southern Democrats and newly arrived immigrants from the ballot, while Southern Democrats were adamant that freed slaves should not vote.

The Constitution mentions “the right to vote” five times. But people on the Right often observe that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say, “All individuals have the right to vote.” It simply rules out specific limitations on the right to vote. A right not guaranteed in affirmative terms isn’t really a “right” in a fundamental sense, they say.

But if the rule is that the Constitution must say, “here is a specific right and we hereby guarantee that right to every person” then there are few rights in the Constitution. The Constitution does more “rights-preserving” than rights-proclaiming.

States shouldn’t be able to pick and choose who gets to pick and choose our elected representatives. Taking away people’s right to vote would further increase corruption, simply because the government would have an easier time targeting those people. It isn’t inconsistent that states can make rules about conduct of elections, but they shouldn’t be able to decide who gets to vote. That should be unconstitutional.

This question has become a full-on political battle with Republican states pushing for more control over who gets to vote, mostly based on the Big Lie.

Let’s close today by remembering Dusty Hill, the bass player of ZZ Top, who died on Wednesday. He, along with the other two band members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in 2004.

ZZ Top probably has the longest-running unchanged band lineup in rock and roll history. Dusty told the Charlotte Observer:

“People ask how we’ve stayed together so long…I say separate tour buses. We got separate tour buses early on, when we probably couldn’t afford them. That way we were always glad to see each other when we got to the next city.”

And when they were playing, you didn’t take your eyes off Hill. Not just because of his luxurious beard. He was a great bass player, and his raw vocals were unforgettable.

This recording of their hit “Tush” says it was recorded in 1975, but they’re playing Dean guitars in this video. That didn’t happen until the 1980s. Still, it’s worth listening to Dusty live on lead vocals and the great guitar playing:

RIP Dusty.

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 19, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Morning Glory Geyser, Yellowstone NP, WY – 2021 photo by Edwin Buske Photography. The geyser used to be blue, not green. Tourists throwing things into it have changed it’s color. The debris affected water circulation and lowered the geyser’s temperature. That caused a bloom of orange and yellow bacteria.

The Republicans won’t stop fighting Critical Race Theory (CRT), which examines the history of institutional racism in America. From Roll Call:

“…on Monday, GOP Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) sent a request to the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee asking the panel to prohibit funding for instruction in critical race theory for service members in its fiscal 2022 defense spending bill. He argued that service members “should not have to be subjected to discriminatory intersectional exercises that try to politicize our military.”

It’s worth remembering that The Former Guy issued an executive order in September 2020 that restricted the federal government and its contractors from teaching CRT. And that Biden rescinded that order on the day of his inauguration.

This represents a widening of the Republicans’ war on CRT. In recent weeks Republicans have passed legislation in Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas, placing significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms and, in some cases, in public universities.

We’ve seen this before. The CRT insanity is reminiscent of 2010 when Fox News and the GOP went berserk condemning the so-called Ground Zero Mosque being built in New York City.

Today, it’s the same thing all over again with CRT. Eric Boehlert via his indispensable “Press Run”:

“When Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis moved to ban critical race theory from classrooms in the Sunshine State, the Miami Herald reported, ‘Superintendents across the state have said they do not teach critical race theory in their schools’. But that did not stop the State Board [of Education] from considering the rule to ban it.”

It’s the same everywhere: Republicans are saying they must make moves to protect students from CRT. But Republicans can’t find examples of it actually being taught in high schools. Once again, we’re seeing conservatives pushing a concocted claim and the entire Republican Party playing along.

Let’s not mince words about what Republicans are doing. They’re passing laws that amount to speech codes. They’re trying to control public education by banning the free expression of ideas. Education is by its nature political. To try and “cleanse” it from politics will give us citizens who lack civic knowledge and the civic responsibility that comes with it.

Censoring information makes informed choice impossible. It takes away the opportunity for people to learn and become mature and caring citizens.

When Christians were trying to add “Intelligent Design” into public school science curricula as an alternative theory to evolution, they often said schools should “teach the controversy“, implying an equivalence between the two. That failed, not because Creationism was debunked, but because it didn’t belong in the same category of knowledge as science.

At the time, nobody argued that Intelligent Design should be banned, just that it be discussed in its appropriate context: In comparative religion, not in biology class.

We can learn from the Christians this time though. If we frame America’s origin story as “teaching the controversy“, it might well be the best approach. It’s the only one that retains the nuance, contradictions, and complications necessary to provide an understanding of America and the experiences of its peoples.

There will always be disagreement about our nation’s history. We should welcome that debate in our public schools. It would be a violation of our shared vision of America as a nation of free and open debate if we resort to using state governments to wall off that discussion.

It’s impossible to create a neutral, non-controversial curriculum because real education aims to develop critical thinking. Critical thinking requires us to understand controversial viewpoints on the one hand, and the arguments for and against them on the other.

People have the right to get the education that they want for their kids, but that doesn’t mean legislating CRT out of existence. Instead, why don’t we teach kids how to spot and critique propaganda?

Time to wake up America! We can’t let one political party control our curricula. To help you wake up listen to Nina Simone perform “Backlash Blues” live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 1976. The lyric of this song is the poem, “Backlash Blues” by Langston Hughes:

Resentment over the pace of the civil rights movement in the 1960s came to be known as white backlash, and it’s still with us today.

Lyric:

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash

Just who do you think I am

You raise my taxes, freeze my wages

And send my son to Vietnam

You give me second class houses

And second class schools

Do you think that alla colored folks

Are just second class fools?

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Thoughts on the Cuban Demonstrations

The Daily Escape:

Apartment block, Havana Cuba – 2014 photo by Wrongo. Most buildings in Havana are made of concrete and their outer walls are deteriorating from the salt air and deferred maintenance.

Cuba was in the news last week after tens of thousands took to the streets all across the country. Reports say that they were chanting for freedom and food. Wrongo and Ms. Right visited Cuba in 2014 and while we didn’t come away as experts in the country or its people, Wrongo has some thoughts about what’s wrong there today. And it isn’t a thirst for democracy.

First, Cuba is suffering from hyperinflation. Prices have skyrocketed and inflation is likely between 500% and 900% this year. This is on top of the economy declining 11% in 2020, and apparently continuing to fall further in 2021. The economy’s shrinking is due to Covid hurting tourism and to the continuing Embargo by the US; but the inflation is the Cuban government’s doing.

Cuba ended their dual currency system at the beginning of 2021. Before that, they had a domestic peso called a CUP, and Cuban convertible peso called a CUC. A dual currency system allows one currency to be used for purchasing domestic goods and services, and the other for foreign goods. The purpose is to make sure that a country doesn’t spend more money on external goods than it is earning from its exports of goods and services.

In a single currency system, when there’s way more demand for foreign goods than export earnings, if you allow people to purchase whatever they want, your single currency will lose value, leading to inflation or hyper-inflation. After Cuba transitioned to a single currency, Cubans could buy more foreign goods, but it has also led to hyperinflation.

Cuba’s caught in a trap: they don’t have enough of anything, including food. Their primary ally, Venezuela, can no longer help (also suffering from hyper-inflation). But shortages are shortages. Moderate inflation prices some people out of the market for a product. As prices go up, the demand goes down. Hyper-inflation imposes the costs on a different group of people, those who can’t get foreign currency, usually the poor.

This is one reason Cubans are in the street.

Second, housing is also a major issue. Most people live in an apartment or house that has been passed down from their parents. All children share equally in the inherited building, so homes are sub-divided into private spaces by the next generation. That means living space is very cramped. Arch Daily reports that:

“The average age of a home in Cuba is just over 75 years old, and three of them collapse every day. Cuba’s housing crisis is perhaps one of the most unique examples of urban inequity in the world.”

As you can see from the photo below, thousands of Cubans live in derelict homes.

Source: ArchDaily

Cubans are questioning how new housing will be built, or where the funds come from to repair existing structures. They are also seeking less state control over the homeownership process.

This is another reason Cubans are on the street.

Finally, Cuba has great home-grown Covid vaccines, thought to be 92% effective against Covid in clinical trials. It is administered in three doses, with two weeks between each vaccination. According to Dr. Guillen Nieto, inventor of the drug, 2.2 million Cubans have already received their first vaccination, 1.7 million their second and 900,000 the third dose. There are 11 million Cubans.

But Cuba just agreed to send 12 million doses to Venezuela, precisely when Covid cases are growing at home. In April they reported 31,346 cases and 229 deaths, compared to 12,056 cases and 146 deaths in all of 2020.

Another reason why people are in the streets. So far, none seem to be about democracy.

Now, Republicans are again bleating about Cuba. It remains to be seen whether the protests are a unique event that will be quashed by Cuba’s regime, or if it’s the start of a meaningful movement.

The US embargo has been our single strategy with Cuba since 1959, and it hasn’t worked. Hoping the population feels hungry enough and desperate enough to revolt against its government is cruel and capricious. The Cuban embargo has been one of America’s biggest foreign policy failures. If you want to change Cuba, you should flood it with American money.

That was starting to happen under Obama.

Based on Wrongo’s 2014 visit, Cubans like American goods. They like American dollars. They’d like access to better food than what they get under the government’s food subsidy program. Under Obama, it was starting to happen.

Trump put a stop to all of that because of Florida’s anti-Castro clique. They still think that cutting off ties to the regime will make a difference, notwithstanding 60+ years of failure.

So far, Biden is just continuing Trump’s policy. Florida didn’t vote for Biden, and its Governor, state legislature and Senators are all Republicans. Biden should just end the embargo and be done with it.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 11, 2021

The Right is in hysterics over “critical race theory” (CRT) possibly being taught in public schools. They’re using it as an excuse to try to take over local school boards.

We’re seeing headlines saying, “Republicans push back against critical race theory”. Social media has photos showing “parents” being loud and stupid at school board meetings. You’d think they were protesting because their kids were being forced to eat vegan in the cafeteria!

But instead, what they were protesting is the remote possibility that their kids could be exposed to the truth: that there’s a great deal of racism in America’s past. Sadly, most of those who are making a stink about CRT are either ignorant of what it really means, or simply want to whitewash racism.

In other words, while the use of the expression “pushing back” makes it sound as if people are on the defensive against some odious assault; that isn’t the case at all. These people are on offense.

When the press reports Republicans are “pushing back”, in reality, they are launching a batshit campaign of disinformation and hysteria about whatever the subject is: vaccine policies, fake news, election fraud or, this time, teaching about the impact racism has had on our society.

They have conjured another imaginary monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nation’s defenders from the fictional monster.

Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny”, had a column in the NYT looking at the current brawl about teaching US history. He sees American conservatives creating what he calls “memory laws”, something that is familiar to students of Russian history:

“This spring, memory laws arrived in America. Republican state legislators proposed dozens of bills designed to guide and control American understanding of the past. As of this writing, five states (Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma) have passed laws that direct and restrict discussions of history in classrooms. The Department of Education of a sixth (Florida) has passed guidelines with the same effect. Another 12 state legislatures are still considering memory laws.”

And this isn’t the first time. For many decades, conservative southern school boards have put great pressure on textbook publishers to favor “Intelligent design” over evolution/natural selection (and before that, the Biblical version of creation), and to downplay slavery and emphasize states’ rights in discussing the origin of the Civil War.

GOP politicians should take a beat and remember how the GI Bill discriminated against Black veterans. They should learn how redlining limited where Black vets could purchase homes.

Should we “forget” the compromises in the US Constitution, like the 3/5 clause that southern states required in order to formally ratify it?

Should the reality that the zip code you live in greatly influences the quality of education you receive, also be ignored? These things are all part of the nation’s history. All should be examined so that we can continue moving toward the ideal of being a nation with liberty and justice for ALL. On to cartoons.

The Republican plan:

How their plan will look in the classroom:

The GOP slavery curriculum:

The Supremes remove another monument:

Memories of Saigon return as we leave Afghanistan:

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Saturday Soother – Fourth of July Weekend Edition, July 3, 2021

The Daily Escape:

People in the Sun – 1963 painting by Edward Hopper. Notice that they are not dressed for summer.

(The Wrongologist will be taking a break for the July 4th weekend. Regular ranting will resume on Tuesday, July 6.)

As we head into the 4th of July weekend, let’s remember that in a remarkable coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the Declaration of Independence who later served as presidents of the US, died on the same day, July 4, 1826. That was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. Four years later, James Monroe, also a president and founder of our country, but not a signatory of the Declaration, became the third president in a row to die on July 4th in 1831.

For many, Jefferson and Adams dying on the same day seemed too coincidental. After all, the chances of two people dying on the same day is 1 in 365, but dying on a significant date that was the historic anniversary of an event for which they had intimate involvement? That seemed suspicious.

Some suggested a conspiracy among both physicians and family members to help the patients make it to the 4th. Margaret P. Battin observed in a 2005 Bulletin of the Historic Society article, that Adams’ granddaughter reported their doctor gave her grandfather an experimental medicine which he said could either prolong his life by as much as two weeks, or bring it to a close within 24 hours. Others wondered if something more sinister had been afoot. In a letter, John Randolph mused that Adams’ death was “Euthanasia”, adding “They have killed Mr. Jefferson, too, on the same day.”

Americans love conspiracy theories. Today, none more so than the ongoing belief that Trump won the 2020 election. Or that Democrats are Marxists, or pedophiles. Or that Obama was from Kenya.

In 2021 America, politicians always seek to amplify their differences with the other side, regularly accusing their rivals of deliberately trying to harm the country. And these conspiracies have trickled down to the rest of us, so much so that we’ve become a country at war with ourselves.

People speak with complete contempt about others. Some express contempt for the president, and the entire US government. What we hear routinely today is a level of contempt that in the past, we have reserved for enemies in a time of war. But now, we’re continually contemptuous of our fellow citizens. Contempt is particularly toxic because it implies that the attacker has a position of moral superiority, and through that, has the agency to attack another, possibly even physically.

So, on our most patriotic day, put down that hot dog, and ask the question: How do we unify a secure, wealthy country that is playing a zero-sum political game?

Our true patriots are those very few who are fighting to preserve our voting rights.

They’re the people who are adding new jobs in our jobs-short economy.

They’re the military who return time and again to the front lines, enduring the unendurable. They’re the families of those military personnel.

They’re people who serve on school boards, zoning boards and town councils, who get mostly only a psychic return for their efforts, compared to national politicians who are working hard to become millionairess – assuming they weren’t millionaires when they were elected.

They’re average Americans who see the decline of our institutions and infrastructure, wondering where to turn if we are to reverse all of these bad trends.

Is anyone ever “High as a kite on the 4th of July” with patriotic feeling anymore?

Since it’s Saturday, and the start of our national summer holiday, let’s hit pause for a few days before jumping in to the second half of the year. Let’s spend these days enjoying the end of lockdowns, and the revving up of our economy. Here in northwest Connecticut, on the 4th, we’re looking forward to going to our first indoor performance, an afternoon concert by the Shanghai Quartet at the wonderful Music Mountain in Falls Village, CT.

But to start the weekend, we all should listen to Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful“. His version of the song is spiritual, emotional, soul stirring and amazingly timeless. Here, Ray is performing it live on the Dick Cavett Show in September 1972.

 

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Yellen Says Higher Interest Rates Are OK

The Daily Escape:

La Jolla, CA – photo by Russ Harris photography

Janet Yellen made news for a second time, announcing on Sunday, in an interview with Bloomberg, that higher interest rates would be a “plus” for America. She probably has a fairly good idea of how the Federal Reserve is thinking, since she was its Chair prior to becoming Treasury Secretary.

The issue in her interview was whether inflation would continue growing if Biden’s infrastructure bill is passed, and we spend an additional $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Yellen said that it wouldn’t create enough inflation to cause economic concern. She said that the current spurt in prices powered in part by the Covid stimulus, is just temporary, and would fade next year.

But Yellen also said that if current price increases turned out not to be temporary, and it triggered more persistent inflation, the concomitant higher interest rates wouldn’t be a bad thing:

“We’ve been fighting inflation that’s too low and interest rates that are too low now for a decade….We want them to go back to a normal interest rate environment, and if this helps a little bit to alleviate things then that’s not a bad thing – that’s a good thing.”

Current Fed Chair Jerome Powell must surely see this as political cover for any near-term rate hikes, but opinions differ today on whether we’re in for a new run of inflation. We have some data that’s worrisome. Economic theory explains why we probably should be worried. And yet, we have plausible-sounding explanations as to why things are actually okay.

The younger generations may have trouble believing how dark things seemed in 1979 when President Carter appointed Paul Volcker Fed chairman. Some of us remember inflation that hit 14% in 1980. Unemployment trended up to 9.7% in 1982. Oil prices had jumped off the charts.

Volcker took dramatic steps to rein in the runaway inflation by tightening the money supply, which drove the Prime Rate to 21%. His actions led to not one, but two recessions before prices finally stabilized.

Nobody wants to see that type of inflation recur now, but low interest rates have increased wealth inequality in the US. Soaring stock and housing prices are a direct consequence of interest rates that remain reliably low. When this happens, people can borrow money for less than they can make by investing, and newly printed dollars that continue to pour into the markets ensure that prices will continue to rise.

And this low-rate scenario benefits those who already have lots of stock and real estate.

How could Elon Musk make $142 billion in 2020 when total revenues (not profits) at Tesla and SpaceX were less than half that number? Share prices in both companies rose with demand from investors with too much cash in their pockets. The growth in Musk’s fortune is based on the inflated share prices of both firms.

Yellen’s underlying message is that if the Fed maintains its low interest rate policy, more cheap money will flow into the pockets of people who really don’t need it. She’s correct when she says rates have been too low for a decade. It’s created an asset bubble, particularly in stocks and real estate. Today’s prices are no longer grounded in reality.

As for how to unwind the bubble? Good luck: Very few people will be happy if the stock market drops, or if the value of their home drops, say, just before retirement.

And like all things, inflation is political. House Republicans are working to undermine Biden’s economic agenda by zeroing in on voters’ latent fear of inflation. They are circulating a memo with the subject line: “Tie Biden Agenda to Inflation.” It tells members to “explain to voters how inflation is Democrats’ hidden tax on the Middle Class.”

The GOP is attempting to stir up fear of an impending economic downturn just as businesses are beginning to reopen after a year of being impeded by Coronavirus restrictions. They’re also saying that taxpayer dollars being put toward Covid relief and unemployment benefits will tank the economy.

The GOP is also using a WaPo op-ed by Larry Summers. Summers was Clinton’s Treasury secretary, and he was a former director of the National Economic Council for Obama. The article warns of the risk of sharply rising inflation expectations.

Ultimately, we’ll see if the inflation scare-mongering by Larry Summers is real.

What should we believe about inflation and interest rates? It doesn’t matter what we believe. What matters is what the market thinks. And if the market suddenly stops believing the explanation as to why these inflationary pressures are temporary, we’ll see rates rise bigly.

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The Disconcerting Truth About the Big Lie, Part II

The Daily Escape:

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Outer Banks,  NC – 2021 photo by Greg Kiser

We’ve talked about the Big Lie but in truth, there’s more than one. The Reuters-Ipsos poll released last Friday found that 54% of Republican adults surveyed agreed with this statement:

“…the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad.”

Only 30% of GOP respondents said they disagreed. Another 16% said they were unsure.

This is another Big Lie, like the one that Democrats stole the election from Trump. But Republicans remain believers in both. They think, as George Costanza said, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

To help distance Trump and Congressional Republicans from the riot, GOP members of Congress began blaming the Capitol insurrection on Antifa, decentralized leftist activists with no national organization, who became a focus of Republicans during the 2020 riots surrounding George Floyd’s killing.

The reason why Republicans do not want an independent commission to investigate Jan. 6 is because many of the individuals who have already been arrested for their role in the riot explicitly said they believed that Trump had invited them to Washington to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Let’s set the record straight. Since the Capitol riot, 494 people have been arrested and charged with crimes. The vast majority of those arrested have ties to the Republican Party, not to Antifa or to Democrats. Why would anyone think that Democrats would attack the Capitol, trying to prevent their own candidate from being certified as president?

Congressional Republicans would have you believe that someone else decided to try overthrowing the government to make Trump look bad while Trump happened to be down the street telling his people to well, overthrow the government. Not credible.

This is the largest attack on our country since 9/11. And it came from within, not from foreign terrorists. Potentially, it was also more damaging. From Matt Sheffield at Flux:

“Following the 9/11 attacks, the main question on all Americans’ minds was who was responsible. Once it was determined to be al-Qaeda, the second question that demanded an answer was how U.S. intelligence agencies had failed to anticipate such a large-scale violent act. Shortly thereafter, both houses of Congress overwhelmingly approved the establishment of an official commission to investigate. In the House of Representatives, the bill containing the authorization passed overwhelmingly, 366 to 3.”

Contrast that with today when few, if any, Republicans will vote to investigate the riot.

Once again, as we said yesterday, if a majority of Republican voters continue to believe the Big Lie(s), it raises serious questions about the future of American democracy, including whether it’s possible to have a shared politics when a large percentage of citizens believe things are true that are easily proven to be untrue.

Democrats most likely will lose the Jan. 6 commission vote since there may not be 10 Republican Senators who’ll vote to bring the House-passed bill to a vote in the Senate. At this point, the Dems are more likely to have a big political hammer to hit Republicans with, than a commission to determine what really happened on that day.

In a last-ditch effort, the two Democrats who oppose changing the Senate’s filibuster rules begged Republicans on Tuesday to support the bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot. In a joint statement, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) called the creation of a commission “critical” to prevent such an attack from occurring again:

“We implore our Senate Republican colleagues to work with us to find a path forward on a commission to examine the events of January 6th,”

If Manchin and Sinema are prepared to nuke the filibuster over this, Wrongo’s all for it. The commission and the voting rights bills hit directly at the GOP’s plans to weaken the electoral process and destroy our democracy. The Big Lie is the organizing principle of the Republican Party now. If this initiative by Manchin and Sinema fails, then perhaps the most effective way to save democracy is to continually tell the people the truth about January 6. Repeatedly using the subpoena power of the US House to investigate and provide the truth in the face of these Big Lies may be the only way forward.

And it may seem to be a fruitless task, but it’s worth the effort.

The Republican leadership must be made to confront their obvious lies. Because as George Orwell said:

“The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

And we can’t allow that to happen.

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Saturday Soother, Mondale Edition – April 24, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Flying Saucer plants at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson AZ – April 19, 2021 photo via Visit Tucson

This is a long post by Joe Trippi about Walter “Fritz” Mondale. Mondale died last Monday. You should read to the end.

Trippi is a Democratic political operative who managed the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. Recently, he was a senior advisor to Doug Jones’s successful Senate run in 2017.

Trippi cut his political teeth in Ted Kennedy’s unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1979. By 1983, he was 27, and working for Walter Mondale’s unsuccessful 1984 presidential run. After Mondale’s death this week, Trippi published this twitter thread with a picture of a boxing glove, and a personal story about the kind of man Mondale was. First, the boxing glove:

“1/ The story of these gloves will tell you the kind of man Fritz Mondale was and why he meant so much to me. Please take the time to read this thread – and wait for it. It’s worth it.

2/ In December 1983, I was in my 20’s and running Iowa for Fritz.
At the end of every campaign swing through Iowa – Fritz would almost always end the trip the same way
.

3/ After loading the campaign plane…with traveling staff and a huge press corps that were assigned to a front-running campaign back then
.

4/ Fritz would come down the steps of the plane and take me on a stroll around the tarmac 2 or 3 times before rebounding the plane to…some other state. The conversation always ended the same way


5/ Fritz explaining that he could not lose Iowa and that he was counting on “The Hogs” (the name Mondale Iowa campaign staff proudly called ourselves) to do everything we could to make sure he won a must win state. “Don’t let up. Keep fighting” and back on the plane he went


6/ But we also talked about all kinds of things before we got to the “no pressure, just don’t blow it” part. One day as we walked around the plane – we got to talking about my family. Fritz asked a dreaded question about my father
.

7/ I explained to Fritz that my father had stopped talking to me 5 years earlier, when I left college to join the Kennedy campaign in 1979. My dad was old school Italian — I was supposed to take over his flower shop — not go to college, or run off to become a political hack


8/ Fritz asked a few more questions and then joked with me that my dad was wrong about a lot of things but maybe I should have listened to him about going to work for Kennedy. I was one of only a handful of Kennedy operatives hired in the Mondale campaign


9/ I was lucky to have worked for them both. But at the time there was still a lot of bad blood – luckily, Fritz was joking. And I was relieved when he got to the – “win Iowa” part


10/ About a month Later, we won Iowa with 49% of the vote and with Gary Hart taking a distant 2nd, But that was enough to get Hart the media spotlight and the momentum he needed to win New Hampshire and the Hart rocket was roaring
.

11/ After a string of loses to Hart, “fighting Fritz” emerged as the narrative of the campaign. Mondale would walk on to the stage at rally after rally and thrust these gloves in the air and speak from the heart about who he was fighting for


12/ I remember traveling with him to a meat packing plant & Fritz bellowing ‘Show me your hands!” My jaw dropped as plant worker after worker thrust a hand in the air with fingers missing lost on the job. I had no idea, but Fritz did. And that’s who he was fighting for


13/And so the campaign put out the word to the press that Fritz would carry those gloves and carry on the fight til he broke the string of losses to Hart. Time and delegates were running out on us and the delegate rich Pennsylvania primary was looming as critical to our cause


14/ If I had nightmares about losing Iowa (and I did) they were nowhere near those I had in Pennsylvania. I was sent in as state director of Pennsylvania in March when we were down by 14 points. The Pennsylvania Primary would be held in April – months after winning Iowa


15/ And so for a month – Fritz and I did the tarmac walk thing again. No Pressure but fighting Fritz needs you and all the staff to “not let up, remember who we are fighting for”


16/ It was a comeback win of all comeback wins I have ever been part of — only Doug Jones win in 2017 compares to it. But Fritz won Pennsylvania – and with it regained the momentum to move towards being the Democratic nominee
.

17/ After the polls closed and the networks called Pennsylvania for Fritz. I got a call in the boiler room. David Lillehaug, then the aide that traveled with Fritz (and would later serve as an Associate Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court) was on the line


18/ “Joe, Fritz wants to see you before he goes down to the ballroom to make his victory speech, get up here quick”. I rushed to the elevator and up to Fritz’s hotel suite


19/ when I walked through the door there was Fritz Mondale, sitting down and explaining to an old Italian guy that his son was “in an honorable profession. Fighting for people who were down and hurting — he’s making a difference – I count on him and you need to know that ”
.

20/ Fritz Mondale had remembered a story I had told him months and months ago — eons in the life of a Presidential campaign. He had somehow gotten someone to locate my dad and get him to Philadelphia to be there on Primary night and bring us together to reconcile


21/ I still tear up thinking about this moment of my life that shows the kind of man Walter “Fritz” Mondale was. David Lillehaug broke the spell as my father hugged me… “Sir we have to get downstairs for your speech” and handed Fritz his “fighting Fritz” gloves
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22/ Fritz turned & said “I don’t need these anymore” took out a felt tip and wrote “To Rocky Trippi, with thanks” Fritz Mondale. Handed me the gloves , grabbed my dad, brought him with to the ballroom and dragged him on stage to stand with him as Fritz declared victory


23/ Years later when my father passed away, I gently tucked one of the gloves with him to rest with him.

This one remains with me as homage to a man that touched my life like few others. RIP Fritz”

Mondale didn’t have a chance against Ronald Reagan in 1984, but he had a long, successful career in the US Senate, as vice president, and as ambassador to Japan.

Most of all, he was a decent man who never took himself too seriously. May we all have such a legacy.

Let’s close with soothing Saturday music. Listen to “Take Five” written by Paul Desmond, and famously recorded by Dave Brubeck in 1959. Here it’s played by the Camaleon Bassoon Quartet, who are  members of the bassoon section of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. Who ever heard of Jazz bassoon?

 

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Leaving Afghanistan

The Daily Escape:

Cathedral Rock, Sedona, AZ – photo by Bill Beardsley

The WaPo and every other outlet reported that Biden has committed to ending US troop involvement in Afghanistan by September 11, 2021:

“The goal is to move to “zero” troops by September….This is not conditions-based. The president has judged that a conditions-based approach…is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever.”

We’ve been in Afghanistan for 20 years, and leaving means that the Taliban have won. It also means that they will wind up ruling the country for a second time, since the Kabul government will not survive without US and NATO support.

That’s unfortunate, but it’s just reality. Mistakes have been made in Afghanistan by every president since Carter, who in 1979, supported the mujaheddin rebels, Islamic hardliners against the Russians.

But there is some concern that withdrawal of our troops doesn’t end our efforts on the ground. The NYT has reported:

“Instead of declared troops in Afghanistan, the US will most likely rely on a shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives to find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic State threats…”

Stars and Stripes says that, according to a Defense Department report, more than 18,000 contractors remain in Afghanistan, while official troop totals had been reduced to 2,500. In essence, Biden isn’t ending the Afghanistan War, he’s privatizing it:

“About 4,700 of the contractors are Afghans hired locally, but nearly three-quarters come from outside the country, including about a third who are US citizens…”

This amounts to roughly seven contractors for every US soldier on the ground in Afghanistan. The US has announced intentions to retain at least two military bases in Afghanistan after the official troop drawdown. Staying in-country will help protect the profits of the US military-industrial complex.

We also covet the Afghans’ mineral wealth. A 2007 US Geological Service survey discovered nearly $1 trillion in mineral deposits, including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and lithium, which is used in the manufacture of batteries. The Grey Zone reports that an internal Pentagon memo stated that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

The Afghan government is largely a creation of the US. Its military is funded by us at a cost of around $4 billion per year. Unless Congress cuts it off, this support will continue alongside large-scale US foreign aid programs that amount to another $1 billion per year.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. The US doesn’t want to “lose” Afghanistan to Russia and China, which makes today’s calculation not very different from the 19th-century “great game” between Great Britain and Czarist Russia.

All presidents after Carter were involved to a greater or lesser extent in trying to turn Afghanistan into a modern democratic state. And all have failed. This should have been knowable to these presidents and to their military advisors.

The NYT had an Op-Ed by Timothy Kudo, a former Marine Captain who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Kudo remembered:

“…I once asked a village elder whether he knew why I was there. He responded that we’d always been there. Confused, I asked him about the attacks on America. He said, “But you are Russians, no?” After 30 years of war, it didn’t matter to him who was fighting but only that there was still fighting.”

We should have left Afghanistan after the death of bin Laden. Staying when there could be no defeat of the Taliban made the war the same as Vietnam. We’ve been down this road before: The Taliban want a medieval society, an “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” and they have time on their side.

Like the American withdrawal from Vietnam, Biden’s decision will be seen as a sign of weakness, encouraging Russia, China, Iran, and others to challenge US interests elsewhere. But Russia left Afghanistan in 1989. Who remembers? Is Russia considered a patsy on the world stage?

Afghanistan has been the “graveyard of empires” since Alexander the Great, for long enough that the phrase’s origins are unclear. We should accept that an intervention-first mentality has failed here and will fail elsewhere.

Will leaving Afghanistan prompt us to rethink our country’s place in the world? Could it be the end of the era of our nation-building fantasies? Should our military always be the first tool out of the toolbox? What did the US gain from being enmeshed in the Greater Middle East as it has been for the past 50 years?

Biden’s decision should lead to a reckoning about these questions, and a consideration about what a more modest and realistic US foreign policy would look like.

But Biden will remain under pressure from the military, the Beltway Bandits, and many politicians not to withdraw.

He needs to hold firm.

And yes, this means there will be a “fall of Saigon” moment sometime soon.

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Monday Wake Up Call, the Silents Strike Back Edition – April 5, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Red Hill, on the Haleakala volcano. Maui, HI – March 2021 photo by vikings201

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. On that day 53 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. The day before, he gave his final speech to striking sanitation workers in Memphis:

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

At 39 years old when he died, Dr. King was an early member of the Silent Generation. Wrongo and Biden are also members of the Silent Generation.

The Greatest Generation preceded the Silents. They survived the Great Depression and won World War II. We’ve all heard quite a bit about their accomplishments. But they weren’t called the Greatest until Tom Brokaw invented the phrase in 1988 for marketing purposes. Prior to that they were known as the GI generation.

The Silents are sandwiched between them and the Boomers, and on the presidential level, we haven’t heard anything from my generation until Biden was elected. He is the first (and most likely, the last) Silent to be elected president. Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, and Trump were all boomers. Prior to Clinton, and after Eisenhower, they were all Greatests. As the first Silent to be elected, so far, Biden is hanging in there despite being an old guy.

Barkley Rosser at Angry Bear is the inspiration for today’s column. He quotes Robert Putnam, who says that there is an “I-we-I” pattern to our generational history that informs and motivates our political, social, cultural and economic activities: (brackets by Wrongo)

“….the “I-we-I” pattern, whereby there was an increase in solidarity and “we orientation,” cooperation, social capital, equality, and so on from the 1890s to roughly the 1960s, some variables peaking in the 1950s and economic equality peaking in the 1970s…[but] Since then we have basically gone downhill to an “I” orientation of greater inequality and polarization and unhappiness and low social capital…”

Barkley says that Putnam:

“…pinpointed cultural shifts as crucial and noted especially shifts in the mid-60s, even noting the contrast in themes of the early folkish Bob Dylan with his civil rights songs to the later electronic Dylan with his more personal emphasis, and supposedly a similar shift with the Beatles, especially when they broke up. This peak of “we” and the move towards “I” coincided with the rise of the Boomers.”

The quick conclusion is that the Greatests had lots of “we” orientation that drove much of their achievements. But they had a dark side: They were prejudiced, and many were racists.  By the time the Boomers emerge, we have the emphasis on the “I” that brings with it substantially lower levels of prejudice. One of the Greatests’ who worked for change was LBJ, who fought in WWII, winning a Silver Star, and then went on in the 1960s to sign into law the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

By Wrongo’s date of birth, he is a late stage “Silent”. But nothing about our growing up was silent. We helped lead the anti-war and pro-civil rights movements. We also were early but ineffective activists in the first stages of environmentalism. Along the way, we had to fight with many of the Greatests and a few of the other Silents who refused to hear the message.

The premise is that the Silents are a kind of golden mean, still following the “we” focus of the Greatests, while being the first generation to live through a substantial reduction in racism and prejudice. Being of the Silent generation may be part of the motivation that Biden is using to move the country back toward a less polarized “we” orientation.

But the “I” focus remains with us. Wrongo believes, however, that Covid has helped create more “we” forms of cooperation than we had at the start of the Trump era. But many people remain selfish. They refuse to wear masks, or to social distance, regardless of the outcome.

Republicans disparage Biden’s call for unity because they’re actively against his agenda, while having no agenda of their own. Time to wake up America, we need waay more “we” and a lot less “I”!

To help you wake up, listen to Santana perform George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” with help from India. Arie:

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