Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

February 19, 2025March 2, 2025

Resuscitating Munich in The Art of the Deal

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (left) and German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler shake hands in this composite photograph at the 1938 Munich Conference in which Chamberlain agreed to allow Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland. (photo: The Daily Mail)

Trump and Putin shook hands Friday at the APEC gala dinner too, while both were wearing the now-traditional strange shirts that mark the annual meeting — Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin shake hands at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, 2017.

The prophet Jeremiah warned the people of Jerusalem of their impending doom, and included an admonishment that rings through the ages.

“From the least to the greatest,
All [people of Jerusalem] are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.”
(Jeremiah 6:13-14)

Then, here’s President Trump at Mar-A-Lago on Tuesday (2/18): “Today I heard [from Ukraine], ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.” (See #1) “You should have never started it.” What?!! A slip of the tongue? I didn’t realize that it was Ukraine that invaded Russia. The inverted logic is absolutely dumfounding, stunning.

It’s the logic of a businessman, not a statesman, who is practiced at cutting deals in the good ol’ USA, in the protective cradle of our rule of law. Deals in business frequently aren’t moral matters. Both sides make proposals and meet in the middle. In the arena of international relations, there is no rule of law, despite what Geneva and the ICC have to say about it. So, President Trump treats the bloody aggressor as the moral equivalent of the bloodied victim. It’s beyond foolish; it’s stupid; it’s dangerous.

“‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” Is a real and enduring peace a possibility under this mental deformity? “Peace” becomes the pause between the hungry wolf and the sheep with nowhere to run.

Peace, at this juncture, occurs without moral judgment. “Peace” merely becomes the bridge of moral equivalence between evil and innocence. The wolf is still hungry. Into the fray of the Ukraine War has entered President Trump and his people. Shuttle diplomacy is commencing between the wolf and his dinner. Separate meetings with Putin’s people are taking place in Saudi Arabia, then the scene will shift to Ukraine’s Zelensky. Trump’s negotiators are the “honest broker” between the wolf and his victim. This isn’t the first time for these purveyors of a morally monstrous “peace”. History lends many examples, and the results are disturbing, as usual.

It’s the kind of “peace” strictly defined as an absence of war, till the next time. Appeasement is the means to achieve a “peace” that does not deter, that does not matter. It was tried numerous times in the ancient world, such as during the campaign of Philip II of Macedon to unite the Greece under his rule (in the 350s to 330s BC), much like Putin’s ambition to reconstitute the Soviet empire. After the Battle of Crocus Field (352 BC), Athenians negotiated the Peace of Philocrates with Philip which made Athens a Macedonian ally and relinquished territory to him. The “peace” ended in 338 BC in the last-ditch Battle of Chaeronea and Philip’s final subjugation of Greece.

Moving forward in time to the late 20th century, a form of appeasement with no real “peace” came out of the Vietnam War’s Paris Peace Accords of January 1973, negotiated by Nixon and Kissinger. The result was a withdrawal of U.S. forces without a commensurate one for North Vietnamese forces in the South. Within two years, the communist North conquered the South and the red flag of the hammer and sickle flew over Southeast Asia.

The approach of Nixon and Kissinger in 1973 is eerily similar to Trump’s. In Trump’s Doha Accords of 2020 with the Taliban, the Afghan government had no direct involvement. Nixon and Kissinger were agreeable to freezing South Vietnam out of the talks as were Trump’s people the Afghan government. In both cases, the victims were “consulted”, and they even protested, but the U.S. decided their fate in isolated talks with their enemies. The U.S. agreed to a withdrawal from Afghanistan of our and NATO forces as well as restrictions on air strikes in support of our Afghan allies. In an Afghan army trained in the tactics of American combined arms, the hampering of air support would prove dispiriting and catastrophic.

Trump gave us the opportunity to relive ’75 Saigon. Biden carried it out, only this time it was Kabul. Biden crammed down Afghan throats Trump’s Peace of Doha like he jammed eco-fanaticism, transgenderism, and floods of illegal immigrants down our throats.

It happened to South Vietnam and Afghanistan, so what lies in store for Ukraine? The common ingredient is an antsy eagerness to leave which sets the stage for abandonment. I saved the most egregious example of disgrace for last.

The 1938 Munich agreement with Herr Hitler, der Fuhrer, screams at us. “Munich”, like “Hitler”, is worn from overuse. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t relevant when the parallels are too numerous to ignore. Let’s see, in 1938 Czechoslovakia was the next dish in Hitler’s buffet after the shredding of the Versailles Treaty, rearmament, the Rhineland, and the Anschluss. Next is defeat of the West and Lebensraum (living space in the East) and the immortal Third Reich.

Conquest is Putin’s forte as well. He gained power in 1999 and soon launched the Second Chechen War over Dagestan. He leveled Grozny like Hitler did Warsaw. An independent Chechnya is no more. And soon to follow was Georgia in 2008. Reaching deeper into the North Caucasus, he ripped off a couple of provinces. All this sets the stage for Ukraine in much the same manner as Hitler eyed Czechoslovakia. 1935-9 parallels 2014-present.

For both Hitler and Putin, expansion is the goal, but standing in the way are the victim and her allies. These allies, however, had their valor stripped by previous wars. They were anxious to cut a deal in Trump’s Art of the Deal. Britian’s Chamberlain and France’s Daladier joined Hitler and Mussolini at Munich to construct “peace with honor”. Czechoslovakia’s friends were much more eager for a deal (remember Trump’s Art of the Deal) than either the Czechs and Slovaks, and the wolf. Without support and now isolated, the victim was forced to accept the dismemberment of their country with the loss of the country’s defenses abutting the lair of the wolf, the mountainous Sudetenland. Soon after marching into the Sudetenland, by March of 1939, the wolf had the whole enchilada. No more Czechoslovakia.

Standing athwart Putin is the U.S. and NATO, and the moxie of the Ukrainians. America’s Chamberlain, Donald Trump, has sent his reps to Saudi Arabia to cut a deal (remember the Art of the Deal), absent the Ukrainians. Picture this: the bloody seizure of Crimea, followed by the Donbas, with the aid of proxies (like Hitler used Konrad Henlein and his Sudeten German Party), and then a full-scale invasion.

Putin reads history books. Trump rereads his Art of the Deal.

“You should have never started it.” Can you believe that it came out of the mouth of a U.S. president? Trump has a problem distinguishing the rapist from the victim. The U.S. met three rapes of the same victim with relative passivity and only decided to provide real assistance after the serial rapist tried to seize every inch of the woman’s body for his own. In steps Trump with a counteroffer: we’ll allow you to take an arm and six toes. After all, it’s the Art of the Deal, and the two sides meeting in the middle. It’s beyond disreputable. It’s disgusting.

In one final note, Putin cheerleaders on the Right bellow that they’re tired of the war. Tired? Not one drop of American blood has fallen in Ukraine. These mental midgets can’t be referring to American body bags. There aren’t any. The victim is only asking for the guns to stop the attack. In Trump’s twisted universe, the girl is at fault for exposing too much skin in her prom dress. How else can you get to, “You should have never started it”?

This is shameful, shameful, but it’s not as if we haven’t been here before.

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RogerG

Sources:
1. “’You should have never started it’: Trump seems to blame Kyiv for war”, Reuters, 2/19/2025, at https://www.yahoo.com/news/never-started-trump-seems-blame-075955974.html
2. A summary of Putin’s history of aggression can be read at “Vladimir Putin’s history of conflict with former Soviet nations: the timeline and human cost”, Stacker, 2/19/2025, at https://stacker.com/stories/world/vladimir-putins-history-conflict-former-soviet-nations-timeline-and-human-cost

December 19, 2024December 23, 2024

My Grandson Michael in the Army and Yama Sakura 87

May be an image of 3 people and text — Opening ceremonies, 12/5/2024, commanders of national commanders in the exercise

* Yama Sakura 87: Joint military exercise between the U.S., Australia, and Japan. My grandson Michael is in the Army, in Public Relations, currently in Japan to chronicle the operation.

We’re said to be in an age of skepticism about international engagement for purposes of trade and national security. However, polling of the general public does not support a broad popular distrust of our partners, but vociferous pronouncements by the winners of the ‘24 presidential sweepstakes would lead a person to conclude that America Alone is in the offing. “Tariffs” rolls off their tongues as much as “thank you”. Criticism of alliances (“NATO” coupled with “fair share”; “our allies are robbing us”) and praise of thugs (“Xi is smart”; Putin is a “genius” and “savvy”) round out a troubling and dismissive stance toward those with whom we have common ground.

How much of this will disrupt the strategic linkages with our Pacific neighbors who are equally threatened by a rising CCP? Tariffs will not rescue the Rust Belt and its unionized workforce when the decline has more to do with our uncompetitive taxes and zealous over-regulation. Tariffs will do nothing but attempt to throw American enterprises back into the arms of the EPA and the UAW, and send our partners scrambling to retaliate.

Whew, what foolishness. Do we anymore have the capacity to produce statesmen? Is the current crop of politicos capable of it? Yet, necessity can moderate political boilerplate. A rising CCP and its desire to dominate Asia’s First Island Chain (the Philippines through Taiwan to Japan) is a dagger at the heart of more than the U.S. That’s the reason for Yama Sakura 87.

* All photos taken by Spc Michael Graf, 24th Theater Public Support Element, in his official capacity and available to the general public.

May be an image of 4 people and text — Opening ceremonies

May be an image of 8 people — U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III speaks with representatives from U.S. Army Japan at Yokohama, 12/10/2024

May be an image of 2 people — Staff Integration. And I quote from Spc Michael Graf, “Training and readiness are essential to generating integrated deterrence in an increasingly complex regional security environment, and Yama Sakura is an important sign of the collective strength of the U.S.-Japan Alliance.”

May be an image of 6 people — From opening ceremonies

May be an image of 3 people — Staff coordination

RogerG

December 17, 2024December 23, 2024

Irrational Exuberance without Coattails

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cheer as they watch election returns during an election night rally.

Allan Greenspan, Fed chairman, in a 1996 speech spoke of “irrational exuberance” when referring to the bull market of the 1990s. He said, “How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions … ?” What is true of asset markets can be equally true of the aftermath of elections.

I voted for Trump, mostly because the Democrats have made themselves toxic to civil order. I voted against the Democrats by voting for Trump. How many other Trump voters made the same calculation? Yet, Trump enthusiasts are in ecstasy over his victory calling it “historic”, “a blowout”, “a mandate”, “a landslide”. Was it? No, an emphatic no.

Start off with the popular vote. He won the national total vote . . . by 1.5%, a first for a Republican since George W. Bush, but not a landslide.

Secondly, as I’ve stated before, the guy has never shown any coattails. If he’s so popular, why are the results so lackluster down ballot, such as in the House and Senate? Looking at the Senate, in a map favorable for Republicans, they only managed to flip four seats: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana. W.V., Montana, and Ohio were gimmes, all deeply red from the get-go. Penn. was the only contestable race. In the other swing states that Trump won, the Democrat carried the day in the Senate race.

In the House, the Republican majority fell from 222 after the 2022 elections to 220 in 2024. It was basically a wash.

More comparisons are necessary to get a fuller picture. I would classify the 2024 election as a change-of-course election like the one in 1980. In both periods, the Democrats were popularly accused of making a real hash of things. A case could be made that Reagan had coattails in 1980. The Republicans flipped 12 seats in the Senate that year. And Trump boosters are cooing over four.

The favorability ratings of Trump aren’t encouraging. Trump has always carried with him a rather high detestability factor. In a good year during his first term, his favorability still hovered around 40%. In the afterglow of this so-called “landslide”, it jumped to between 47% to 55% (see #1-#2). Some polls still show him underwater.

What of other presidents? Reagan entered the White House with a 67% to 73% approval rating depending on the poll. Bill Clinton enjoyed a 58% favorability upon his election in 1992. It sunk to 40% in his first term but recovered to around 60% throughout much of his second. As for Trump, most polls today show him at around 50% as he approaches his second inaugural.

The gushing Trump boosterism in the afterglow of victory has caused some enthusiasts to lean way over their skis. It’ll lead to great disappointment if Trump and his followers start believing their own rhetoric. The ancient Greeks described this susceptibility of victory turning into failure in the Hubris → Atis → Nemesis → Tisis cycle. Succinctly put, success leads to pride, pride leads to overconfidence, and overconfidence sets up your doom.

In a triumphal parade in Rome for a Roman general, a slave would stand behind the conquering hero in his chariot and whisper, “Remember, you are mortal.” Trump and company need someone to remind them.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. FiveThirtyEight’s latest update of polls as of 12/17/2024 at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
2. An Emerson poll for 12/17/2024 reported a Trump favorability of 55%, at https://nypost.com/2024/11/26/us-news/donald-trumps-favorability-jumps-to-post-election-high-while-president-bidens-slips-to-four-year-low/

December 2, 2024December 3, 2024

The Hunter Biden Pardon: Politics Produces Hypocrites (Or Hypocrites Produce Politics)

May be an image of 6 people and beard — Pres. Biden, son Hunter, and an inset photo of the Biden clan

Far removed from Plato’s dream of the “philosopher king”, and his notion of politics as an avocation for the wise and godly, is the harsher reality of self-dealing in politics. Biden finally did it: he pardoned his son. Are you surprised? If so, stay off the cable buying channels. Someone else should handle your finances.

Honestly, I expected Biden to do it, or arrange some deal with the incoming Trump. Did you really expect the son to spend a dime in penalties and serve a day in jail? The charade of high-mindedness from Biden and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was for the sycophants and the “unwashed masses”, which is how the party of the masses actually views their masses. My guess is that most of us aren’t shocked.

We’ve grown used to the truth of our politics: it’s long been a lucrative (as in “lucre”) career path, especially for long-in-the-tooth politicos like the Biden clan. FDR had a well-heeled aristocratic lineage, and thus his quasi-socialism was an act of condescending patronage for the plebes. But for LBJ, politics was his ticket out of the poverty of his Texas hill-country hardscrabble life. He sold himself by using other people’s money to purchase other people’s loyalty. Imagine it, using other people’s money to reward still other people, and all of it for fun and profit. Adjusted for inflation, upon his death, he was worth $100 million, quite a haul for a coarse back-slapping politician from Texas’s version of Appalachia at the time.

1960s Pop Culture: Lyndon B. Johnson: The Most Interesting & Crazy of Them All — The “LBJ technique” of haranguing a person to get his way.

Self-interest and greed are alive and well, particularly among people whose public platform has long been a bellicose attack on self-interest and greed. Nancy Pelosi provides another case in point. A scion of Baltimore’s D’Alesandro political dynasty, her elevated social caste helped bring her into marital union with Paul Pelosi of the moneyed class. Elite colleges, prep schools, etc., you get the picture. It’s a form of social incest. Power and money have always had a potent attraction. You don’t need feudalism or capitalism to make it happen. Quasi-socialism, as well as the unadorned kind, works too.

So, Nancy can regale us with the glories of a totalitarian lockdown by pointing to her $15,000 fridge filled with exotic, expensive, chic ice cream. No run-of-the-mill Dreyer’s for this gal. She gets her hair professionally coiffed while everyone else is shut in dealing with their zoomed children. Like the nomenklatura of the Soviet Union, the old aristocracy was swept aside to make room for the Party aristocracy. La noblesse oblige thrives under new labels. The flotsam always floats to the top no matter the political scheme.

Nancy’s Vacay On Taxpayers Dime: Shows Off 2 Huge Fridges & Tons Of Ice Cream | Opinion — Nancy’s refrigerator and ice cream during the lockdowns.

These paragons of equity- and equality-mongering, of concern for the poor and “oppressed”, end up rolling in the dough. So much so that they can no longer ravage Republicans as the party of robber barons. For at least the last few election cycles, the Democrats have nationally outspent the GOP by around 100%, or more. The Harris campaign had raised $2.15 billion when you add Biden’s billion in the early part of the campaign season, and still ran a $20 million debt. Trump’s paltry $338 million, about half of it from donations $200 or less, seems like an embarrassment in comparison.

The party of government is also the party of the hyper-wealthy. Their complaints about “money in politics” and their serial attacks on Citizens United were dropped from the Party’s talking points. It couldn’t be sustained when the Brahmins of wealth lined up behind them. So, the ritual excuses for the loss shifted to “misinformation” and “disinformation”. In other words, they want to censor views and information that they don’t like. It’s scandalous, but it’ll still has currency in Big Media. They demand censorship and an ongoing alliance with Big Money and Big Media. Why don’t they just come out and say it? They want Orwell’s Ministry of Truth [propaganda] and Ministry of Love [persecution] (from Orwell’s “1984”).

They don’t realize that many of their beliefs are revolting to a large swath of the public. There’s too much out there to turn your stomach. Transgenderism – the idea that you can feel and think your way into another sex – is to be assisted by taxpayer dollars and forced into anything designated “woman/girl”. The Leviathan is the strong arm for gender confusion and porn to adolescents.

They wrecked the economy, which everybody has experienced at the gas pump, utility bill, and supermarket. As for crime, they only seek ways to facilitate it, not combat it. People look around themselves and see disorder, filth, and violence. Who wants to raise their kids in that?

The fact is, they suffer the disadvantage of their own minds. Fewer want what they’re selling. It doesn’t take a genius to roll out the videotape. And they gaslight us by calling it “disinformation” and “misinformation”. They demand that campaigns keep it airy, abstract, filled with generalities. “Joy”, joy about what? Trump is Hitler, and it’s the end of “our democracy”. When you confront them with their own statements and actions, they demand a Ministry of Truth. Who’s the real danger to democracy?

Here’s the truth: big government breeds big money in politics which breeds more big government. More big government breeds more lucrative avenues for the unproductive, people who produce nothing but the myriads of ways to take money and opportunity from one group and give it to their voting blocks. Now that’s the real scandal.

In all of this self-dealing, is there any wonder that they save their own from the hoosegow? That’s a minor matter compared to what they have in store for the rest of us.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. Charles C.W. Cooke’s piece in National Review provides some insight into the scam that is our politics: “The Misinformation Racket”, 11/21/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2025/01/the-misinformation-racket/

December 1, 2024December 1, 2024

The 1990s Mass Psychosis

McMartin Preschool Trial on emaze — The child sexual abuse mania that began in 1984 but would stretch into the 1990s

“Against stupidity we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it. Reasoning is of no use. Facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved -indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be brushed aside as trivial exceptions.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“All one’s neighbours [sic] are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear. . . In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.” — Carl Jung

Was there something in the water during the 1990s? Episodes of mania abounded. Looking for causes, Bonhoeffer emphasizes a stubborn belief in things that aren’t true, a kind of stupidity. Jung looked to the role of fear in animating a broad sense of hysteria.

Either way, certain periods of history seem susceptible to a kind of mass psychosis. The 17th-century Salem Witch Trials were but one example. Throughout the Reformation period, executions by burning at the stake were frequent except in the 16th-century Dutch Republic and northern Poland-Lithuania, so much so that one historian referred to the two as “state[s] without stakes”. The climate-change frenzy of today is only the latest episode in the recurring epidemics of madness. Though, the 1990s, for whatever reason, exhibited multiple occurrences.

From the 1980s into the 1990s, across the country from California to Florida, child day-care was allegedly and suddenly plagued with the most fantastical charges of child sexual abuse. Janet Reno rose to fame from Florida DA to Bill Clinton’s Attorney General, and then her oversight of the Branch Davidian siege and inferno in Waco, riding her “Reno method” to secure many false child-abuse convictions, alongside ruined lives, numerous lawsuits, and subsequent legal judgments that nearly bankrupted many guilty local jurisdictions (see #1). It was a disaster all around.

May be an image of text — he PBS website for “The Child Terror” which chronicled the frenzy about child sexual abuse at day care centers

May be an image of 1 person — Janet Reno, Florida DA and US Attorney General, a key figure in child-abuse mania and the Waco inferno

May be an image of fire and text — The inferno at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco in 1993

Then in 1996 during the Atlanta Summer Olympics came the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Security guard Richard Jewell was turned from hero to goat by the FBI’s fixation on him as the culprit, all recounted in Clint Eastwood’s 2019 film, “Richard Jewell” (see #2, #3). In this case, a powerful institution fell under the spell of the “somebody within” trope to single-mindedly focus on Jewell, going so far as claim that he was afflicted with a mysterious “hero syndrome” (or complex), hounding him and placing his life under a microscope only to discover the real offender a couple of years later. Organizations can suffer from a self-imposed group myopia among its “professionals”.

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Credentials and training don’t immunize a person from half-baked notions taken as truth. Today, we see entire professional associations oblivious to the necessity of a block-chain of evidence that ties it to a relevant conclusion, the essence of science. Instead, we’ll see them endorse the fashionable ideas of many of their broader demographic peers and stubbornly persist in logical quicksand.

Then we have the JonBenet Ramsey murder case from 1996. The phenomenon repeats itself. Netflix has brought the incident to light in “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?”. Watching all three episodes makes clear that the treatment of the case by law enforcement has much in common with the 1990s’ day-care child abuse mania and the Jewell persecution. The case had gone cold because of the time wasted by Boulder PD detectives on a preoccupation with the parents, one or both, as the killers. If that wasn’t enough, the media played along in wild speculations about the family as they were fed derogatory leaks in order to intimidate the Ramseys into confessions. Delinked from empirical evidence, CBS’s “60 Minutes” went on a wild ride to blame JonBenét’s older brother only to suffer at the wrong end of a lawsuit.

May be an image of 2 people, television and text — On Netflix

Similarly, after a few years, the Boulder PD’s lead detective on the case tried to make another kind of killing by writing a book that tried to accomplish what the Boulder DA and PD couldn’t in a court of law: pin blame on the parents. Like the 60 Minutes’ smearing of the brother, this too ended in a lawsuit with the author and publisher penalized with a sizeable award for the Ramseys.

Don’t think for a moment that we have progressed beyond these barbarities of a few decades ago. Remember the 2020 summer of riots fueled by a noxious, mysterious, hidden, and unconscious racism? What of transgenderism and the assertion that one can feel or think themselves into another sex, all assisted by the rhetorical hocus-pocus of “sex-at-birth” and the invention of a separation of gender from sex? It’s hard to imagine a greater child abuse than placing our children under its spell and sanctioning chemical and surgical interventions and transgender mind manipulation. Welcome to the Island of Dr. Moreau (see H.G. Wells’s story)

May be an image of 5 people, fire and crowd — The 2020 George Floyd riots in Portland, Ore.

George Floyd protests: crowds gather in Washington, DC — Protest in Washington, D.C., June 2020, against “racism”

MAGA has its own fancies. Tariffs are seen as a ticket to national prosperity. They want America to be great again while abandoning Eastern Europe to Putin. Reunionizing the workforce to gain the political allegiance of union bosses and boasting of a return to fiscal sanity while avoiding the trainwrecks of the entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, half the federal budget) is proof that Alice isn’t alone in her Wonderland. They like armies and navies so long as we don’t do anything with them. It doesn’t get much more insane than this.

There’s more. Climate change has the same popular pull as were charges of heresy for the Spanish Inquisition. Think about it. To get from a gradual increase in atmospheric temperatures to herding everyone into electric vehicles and the experiences of blackouts and bankrupting utility bills requires the hasty conclusion that humans are bringing an end to Gaia. The empirical relationship between the apocalyptic hucksterism and warmer weather is, to put it kindly, shaky.

Will any of the so-called remedies do any good? For every 100 electric cars sold in California, China is building a new coal-fired electricity plant. Ditto for India. Any estimates of climate improvement from the bankrupting of the California population are nothing but proof that 17th-century witchcraft is alive and well. Yet here we go with Biden bringing California absurdities to the nation.

Three decades on, we’re still as foolish as ever. Don’t go around holding your head high. Mass psychosis might be in our social DNA. Higher ed, more college degrees, greater “professionalization”, more credentials, and exuberant education spending is hardly a cure. It’s proven to be an accelerant. The country’s next mass mania is just around the corner.

RogerG

Sources:

1. An excellent rendition of this gross prosecutorial misconduct during the time can be found at “The Child Terror”, Frontline, PBS, at https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/terror/.
2. The Wikipedia page on “Ricard Jewell” affords a description of the basic facts.
3. “THE ‘HERO SYNDROME’”, Sergeant Ben D. Cross, Arkansas State Police, 11/1/2014, at https://www.cji.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/the_hero_syndrome.pdf
4. “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?”, now showing on Netflix; website at https://www.netflix.com/title/81705443

November 24, 2024December 1, 2024

It’s the Beliefs, Stupid!

MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024 after the election was called for Trump. — MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough called “the scope and scale” of Trump’s victory “sweeping.”

In the 1992 political war room of Bill Clinton, James Carville famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid!” It became a cliché. To a certain extent, it’s a key factor this year. But more lies underneath the public’s fixation with the economy. A troubled economy can be the product of the wrong sort of beliefs. Furthermore, a constellation of beliefs underlies a whole range of issues as a person addresses their ballot. At this point, it’s gone way beyond the economy. It’s the beliefs, stupid!

While blaming the other side for economic problems can catapult a party to victory, as it did for Clinton in 1992, it can also hide disturbing party ideas that’ll only appear once in office. It didn’t take long for Bill Clinton to uncloak the Democrats’ fetish for government control of almost everything – in this case, healthcare, 17% of the economy. Remember Hillary Care? People didn’t vote for this in 1992. It brought to an end the nearly 40-year Democrat reign of the House in 1995. Welcome to Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Forward to 2024, in the attempted postmortem of Democrat losses, donkey party enthusiasts can’t come to grips with the reality that this radical Left version of the party isn’t popular. For instance, transgenderism swiftly took corporeal form under their tutelage and began wrecking girls’ sports, their bathrooms and locker rooms, and in tandem with the propagation of gender ideology in the schools, adolescents were exposed to porn and gender “transition”. Gender confusion for children and Hustler-grade picture books aren’t winners. Duh!

What were they thinking? The Democrats chided Republicans for bringing it up as if the issue was concocted out of thin air by the GOP and Democrats have nothing to do with it. Really? Rachel Levine (born Richard) as Asst. Health Secretary, Biden’s “God bless you” to Dylan Mulvaney after his endorsement decimated Bud Light, a transgender celebration at the White House, and the manipulation of Title IX to sanction XY “girls” in every place with a Girl/Woman identifier are but a few eyebrow-raisers while parents watched their daughters losing to girls of the XY variety in women’s sports. A hard volleyball smash to the face by an XY “girl” changed a real girl’s life forever. Women’s track and swimming were distorted beyond recognition. Women’s Olympic boxing was nearly turned into a murder scene.

May be an image of 11 people — Transwoman Rose Montoya, who bared her/his breast implants at the June 2023 White House pride event.

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The muddle of broad American sentiment on transgenderism began to crystalize into general opposition, particularly when asked about specifics. The view hardened as we approached the November 5 election. In 2024, after discussion intensified and baleful stories of the ill-effects of transgenderism accumulated, support for the reality of sex at birth increased to sizeable majorities (65%) (see #1). In 2023, almost 70% of respondents to a Gallup poll viewed biological sex to be the determinant of athletic participation (see #2). YouGov in February 2024 chronicled large majorities opposing the “transition” (“gender affirming care”: psyche control, chemical and surgical interventions) of their children by authorities.

Not only were their daughters threatened by the donkey party but government was herding them into cars that they didn’t want and delivering bankrupting energy costs all around. It seemed that the worst of California had come to their neighborhood, their garage, their schools, the intimate spaces of their homes, in many more ways than the price of eggs. The border was erased and the illegal immigrants were rewarded with plane and bus rides to the interior. Towns and cities and schools and housing and streets were flooded with foreign nationals who simply walked across without our approval (violating our laws). Crime spiked. Who voted for this in 2020?

But somehow, much of the after-election analysis skips all of this and wonders into incoherence. Typical of the foolishness was AP’s Matthew Brown in his “An influx of outsiders and money turns Montana Republican, culminating in a Senate triumph” of 11/22/024 (see #4). He essentially blames newcomers and outside money for Montana Democrat Sen. John Tester’s loss and the state turning red. In fact, as of October of 2024, the Tester campaign had outspent Sheehy $69.6 million to $19.7 million. Groups external to the candidates’ campaigns, all of it outside money, broke roughly even between the two. Adding it up, Tester had the money advantage (see #5).

May be an image of 1 person, dancing and crowd — Supporters cheer at election night watch party for Republican Tim Sheehy

It showed. Sitting on my perch in northwest Montana, I watched 4-5 Tester ads for every Sheehy one, whether streaming or broadcast.

And what of those “newcomers”? “Newcomers” don’t automatically turn a state red. “Newcomers” attracted to Santa Fe/Taos ambience and the “Rocky Mountain High” turned New Mexico and Colorado reliably blue. It’s also quite possible that the migrations of the 1990’s and the early 2,000’s (to NM and Colorado for example) are politically and philosophically different from those of the last decade and a half. The bulk of recent relocators could be classified as “refugees” fleeing the shift to the radical Left on the west coast, myself included, to outposts in Idaho and Montana. Once again, it comes down to beliefs.

The west coast shifted hard Left after the end of the Cold War. The state of Governor Ronald Reagan began to resemble today’s Venezuela more than the Beach Boys. The counterculture rose to prominence as the governing philosophy. The phenomena spread to Oregon and Washington State.

What was true of the west coast simultaneously occurred in metropolitan areas and college campuses across the country. Our cities became hotbeds of grime and violence. Blue states became infatuated with climate-change ideology and its attendant central planning. Taxes, regulation, and misgovernance spread like wildfire, including the literal wildfires.

Colleges morphed into satraps of the Frankfurt School. What’s that? Marxist academics in the 1920s and 1930s coalesced in Frankfurt, Germany, and formed a “School”, a Marxist think tank hewing to the reformulated Marxism of the Italian Antonio Gramsci. It came to the U.S. as its advocates fled Hitler and took positions in America’s elite colleges such as the University of California, Harvard, NYU, etc. Thus, “woke”/critical theory/CRT/DEI arose as a rigid orthodoxy throughout academia. It’s everywhere, unquestioned, inescapable. It passed down the social digestive tract from faculty to student to K-12 to the commanding heights of the culture. You can’t watch an ad, or most anything from Disney, without exposure to it. The c-suite is consumed by it which explains why, for instance, Wells Fargo ads are filled with their various ways to reinflate the housing bubble of 2007-8, and Big Sports’ infatuation with the oppressor/oppressed schtick.

This Leftist groupthink is manifest in urban nodes where we also find the training schools – the colleges – and corporate headquarters. When put into practice, the orthodoxy drives people away. The consequences overwhelm any initial surface appeal. Local economies are warped as sensitive groups like the middle class, the skilled trades, and manufacturing flee to more hospitable states.

Media people such as the AP’s Matthew Brown, infected as they are with the orthodoxy, don’t get it. The dynamic of push/pull is as evident in politics as it is in economics. People are pushed every bit as much as pulled in a particular direction. Maybe “pushed” is more powerful this time around. Could it be that voters were more repelled by the what the Democrats have become than any great affection for Trump? In other words, has the Democratic Party become repugnant?

If so, well, we’re back to, “It’s the beliefs, stupid!”

RogerG

Sources:
1. “Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election: 5. Gender identity, sexual orientation and the 2024 election”, Pew Research Center, 6/6/2024, at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/06/gender-identity-sexual-orientation-and-the-2024-election/
2. “More Say Birth Gender Should Dictate Sports Participation”, Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup, 6/12/2023, at https://news.gallup.com/poll/507023/say-birth-gender-dictate-sports-participation.aspx
3. “Where Americans stand on 20 transgender policy issues”, Taylor Orth, YouGov, 2/16/2024, at https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48685-where-americans-stand-on-20-transgender-policy-issues
4. “An influx of outsiders and money turns Montana Republican, culminating in a Senate triumph”, Matthew Brown, AP, 11/22/2024, at https://apnews.com/article/montana-republicans-wealth-democrats-8a1fdd90ef328701127d8a21ebb82dd3
5. “Montana Senate race shatters spending records at $309 per registered voter”, Aubrie Spady, Fox News, 10/24/2024, at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/montana-senate-race-shatters-spending-records-309-spent-per-registered-voter?msockid=287a0b967a9564c61c991f537b2f65ee

November 21, 2024November 21, 2024

The Los Angeles Nullification Crisis of 2024

Yes, history seldom repeats, but there are recurring similarities in events mingled with the unique contemporary twists. Post November 5, a historical pattern reemerged in the gambits used by locally empowered militants to thwart federal authorities and their delegated powers. Prior to the Civil War, it was called “nullification”, as in the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Today, “sanctuary city/state” is the favorite nomenclature for thwarting the federal exercise of federal powers. Where else but in the deepest of blue California – Los Angeles specifically – can a city council mimic the 1832 South Carolina legislature?

Clearly, Los Angeles hates Trump as South Carolina came to hate Lincoln. “Hate”, indeed, is the proper word. What else can motivate a claque of local politicos to such extremes?

On November 19, a sanctuary city ordinance passed on a 13-0 vote of the Los Angeles city council. Strangely, history is rhyming with the 1832 South Carolina legislature and their Ordinance of Nullification, only LA is targeting federal immigration law instead of a tariff. Admittedly, there are differences between “nullification” and “sanctuary city”, but let’s not forget that the intent is the same: the thwarting of the enforcement of constitutionally sanctioned federal law by state or local governments. In that sense, sanctuary from immigration law has much in common with sanctuary from a tariff law.

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At a time of the uncertain delineation between state and federal powers in the Constitution, South Carolina hung its hat on the idea of the country as a compact with states having the power to prevent enforcement of federal laws that they declare unconstitutional and against their interests – i.e., nullification. The notion can be traced back through the ruminations of Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, and the cultural elites of the antebellum South. California’s Democrats come by the idea honestly. This latest generation of Democrats running sanctuary cities and states is following in the footsteps of their slave-owning political ancestors.

Southerners had the approval of 19th-century states’ rights apologists. LA is hiding under the Supreme Court’s Printz v. US of 1997: states and localities can’t be compelled to expend their resources for federal initiatives (i.e., gun background checks). So, what is to be done when city employees are asked to expend work hours to honor a federal subpoena for the taking into custody of illegal immigrants in their jails? Or to prevent the mayor from announcing an ICE sweep before the onset of it – an obstruction of justice – as Oakland’s mayor Libby Schaaf did in 2018 (see #1)?

According to the radical LA city council member Hugo Soto-Martinez on his link at the city’s website back in 2023, city employees would be empowered to obstruct federal immigration authorities “unless it’s legally required” to do otherwise (see #2). I assume that means some kind of judge-approved warrant. The feds will have to have their ducks fully aligned before they will be allowed to enforce federal immigration law in Los Angeles. If a suspect turns violent, it’s a grey area as to whether the city employee is forced to remain a spectator.

These latest firebrands have to be very careful that they aren’t setting the stage for another Gettysburg. The upshot of the first go-around in upsetting the Constitution (1861-5) was that nullification and secession are losers. The 1865 mad dash by federal authorities to bring into custody Jefferson Davis could be repeated this time with Hugo Soto-Martinez’s name on the arrest warrant.

What is a Perp walk - YouTube — Not Hugo Soto-Martinez, but you get the picture.

If the State of California, proudly grasping South Carolina’s brass ring from 1832, interferes in like manner – for they have their own nullification-lite ordinance in SB 54 (see #3) – it too might be forced to choose between their political obsessions and The Constitution. They too, like LA, must tiptoe between noncooperation and obstruction. And, really, is there a practical difference?

Clearly, nullification and sanctuary city have the same purpose which is to thwart the enforcement of federal law. Under Trump, or any sensible chief executive, local caterwauling about the “safety of our residents” can’t work as an excuse for the nation’s people to be obstructed in the enforcement of their laws. This isn’t merely a conflict of jurisdictions. It’s settled: federal immigration powers are exclusively the province of the federal government, period. No state or locality can pick and choose which ones, especially if delegated by The Constitution to the federal government, will be enforced in their jurisdictions.

If certain states and localities are deluded otherwise, there might be more than a few perp walks to a federal detention facility and federal district court. Wouldn’t it be rich to see a manacled Mayor Karen Bass, or the 13 members of the city council, or Gov. Gavin Newsom, or AG Rob Bonta, or the Democrat supermajority in the state legislature in ICE vans on their way to the nearest federal detention facility? Next time, LA and California voters, show signs of a better understanding of your place in our federal system of government. South Carolina and the ten other states of the old Confederacy learned that lesson the hard way. Are you next? You might be in for another “Lost Cause”.

Welcome to the LA Nullification Crisis of 2024.

May be pop art of 3 people and text — Here’s looking at you LA city council

RogerG

Sources:

1. “Oakland’s Mayor Warned Her City Of An ICE Raid. She Doesn’t Regret It.”, Hamed Aleazaz, BuzzFeed News, 12/26/2018, at https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/oaklands-mayor-warned-her-community-about-an-ice-raid-she
2. “What does it mean to be a ‘Sanctuary City’?”, Hugo Soto-Martinez, 3/11/2023, on the City of Los Angeles website, link to Hugo Soto-Martinez, at https://cd13.lacity.gov/news/what-does-it-mean-be-sanctuary-city
3. “California Sanctuary Law Divides State In Fierce Immigration Debate”, Samantha Rafelson et al, NPR, 10/17/2018, at https://www.npr.org/2018/10/17/657951176/california-sanctuary-law-divides-state-in-fierce-immigration-debate#:~:text=SB%2054%2C%20called%20the%20California%20Values%20Act%2C%20essentially,law%20and%20other%20cities%20actively%20defying%20the%20state.

November 19, 2024November 20, 2024

Message to Biased “Experts”: If You Want to be Taken Seriously, Stop Being So Left Wing

Case in point: Penn law professor Claire Finkelstein. In an opinion piece on The Hill news site, she lays out an excuse for left wing prosecutors to go after public figures who disagree with her and them (see #1). Ignoring all prior precedence and guidance, she’s four-square behind arming the justice system against her ideological opponents. Let’s face it, she’s another one of these tenured types in a silo of habitual left-wing partisans.

She opines that a Trump firing of Jack Smith is obstruction of justice. She writes,

“If the sole purpose of the removal of a federal employee is to immunize the president against investigations into his own wrongdoing, that is a misuse of presidential authority, and one that is unrelated to the protections that the presidency is meant to afford.”

Borrowing a Biden word, this is “malarky”. It’s tantamount to open season for the left to target the right. I don’t think that she means for the same logic to be applied against anyone on the left – hint: Joe Biden, the entire Biden clan, Hillary and her home brew server and blatant obstructions, Stacy Abrams and the original “stop-the-steal” campaign. What about the retinue of New York and Atlanta prosecutors? Partisan use of prosecutorial powers is a form of obstruction of justice, also called “abuse of power”.

Hillary Clinton using a personal server was a genius idea-IndiaTV News | World News – India TV — Hillary Clinton from around 2015

Finkelstein advocates a freebooting expedition into an elected official’s intentions, his motives, as they exercise their constitutional powers, something clearly deemed constitutionally off-limits by the Supreme Court in Trump v. US earlier this year. How else can she prove “wrongdoing” or “misuse of presidential authority”? Do intentions and motivations bedevil left-wingers? It’s odd that this kind of rationalization only seems to crop up when Trump, or anyone on the right for that matter, wins office.

Where were they on Clinton’s perjury, obstruction, and impeachment, or Obama’s autocratic use of his “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone”, or the sweetheart deals that paved Obama’s way from activist/provocateur to Senator to the White House? Not a peep. No investigations, thus no indictments, thus no trials, thus no “convictions”, all of it buried deep, deep. Her legal inquisitiveness begins and ends with Trump. For all practical purposes, the difference between the D’s and R’s in her analysis is who won the election. If the D’s win, move on. If it’s the R’s, all guns ablaze. Finkelstein is just another political hack with tenure, another reason to question the rectitude of the faculty lounge.

She can’t wrap her head around the fact that the policies of the Left aren’t popular, especially when they’re given the chance to roll out. Even that deep blue bastion, California, can only stomach so much of the consequences of its left-wing prejudices. They tossed out the criminal permissiveness of Prop 46 (in Prop 36). That mecca of the counterculture, San Francisco, previously jettisoned some of the school board and sent its social-justice-warrior DA packing (Chesa Boudin). This time, it’s mayor London Breed seeking new employment. Across the Bay in Oakland, its mayor, radical lefty Sheng Thao, and Alameda County DA Pamela Price were sent to the exits.

All About Smash And Grab Robberies - TAL Global — Screenshot of a smash-and-grab in San Francisco

Los Angeles finally had enough of DA George Gascon. Apparently, serial assault and battery, smash-and-grabs, stabbings, shootings, and overall mayhem on the streets aren’t popular, even among a left-wing electorate. Of course, the usual suspects in power gaslighted us behind deceptive stats, such as the FBI’s crime report which relies on reported crime. Who reports crime if nothing will be done about it? Think George Gascon. Rather, honestly, trust your lyin’ eyes and vote the rascals out. They did.

As a result, Donald Trump’s showing in 2024 improved everywhere. I’m reminded of the scene on the MSNBC set on election night when asked to show the precincts or counties where Harris bested Biden’s 2020 showing. It was a blank map and startled the hosts. It was no less true in California. Eight counties flipped to Trump this time around. But the state is the Marianas Trench deepest of blue so there’s ample electoral breathing room to keep alive the leftist vision of life.

Nearly everywhere else, it’s appalling. Freezing parents out of parenting is a losing strategy for adults still in touch with reality. Tinkering with sensitive, impressionable young minds with trans ideology and treatments behind the backs of parents are flat-out losers. Recommending, pushing the ingestion of chemicals to interfere with a child’s natural development, and eventual surgeries, which are irreversible, are proving that barbaric teenage genital mutilation is alive and well in a hypothetically civilized society. Is it still civilized? I kinda doubt it, so any campaign running on it shouldn’t expect election-night celebrations.

Thus, boys-turned-girls – er, trans-girls, “girls”, XY “girls”, whatever – invade chromosomal girls’ spaces and battle them in competitions. It’s a replay of the Christians versus the lions in the Coliseum. I’m confused – and understandably so – because boy/girl is now relegated to a state of mind and having no relationship to procreation. It’s social suicide. They’re crazy. Any parent ushering their child down this path is practicing child abuse. Don’t expect a ride to victory on the back of this buffoonery.

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May be an illustration of welcome mat and text

It’s as if the Democrats are card sharks and knowingly dealt themselves a losing hand. The wild spending and its wild debt aren’t winners. Climate-change ideology (or actually theology) as a cover for bankrupting utility bills and the shaming for the purchase of practical and affordable family transportation doesn’t help. Inflation was met with a Salem-witch-trail pogrom against “price gouging”.

A housing crisis didn’t just magically pop into existence. It’s been building for decades thanks to the Democrats’ fealty to mammoth environmental regulation and empowered NIMBYs. California is home to the worst of it. Is Elon Musk’s embrace of Trump a consequence of the regulatory crazies in the one-party state who nixed an increase in Space X launches at Vandenberg? That’s the tip of the iceberg: try to build a Levittown in the state. It’s a nightmare. And you wonder why your young adult children are living in your basement.

Do I need to mention the Biden administration’s open invitation for the Third World to move to the United States en masse? What a goat rope.

The Democrats love what ails us. Barack Obama’s beloved Rev. Jeremiah Wright once crowed that “The chickens have come home to roost.” Well, the chickens are roosting as GOP victories. No amount of legal scheming by partisans in the ivory tower will give the Democrats what they dearly desire: power. Power is gained through elections and, right now, they’re not fit to be elected – except in bicoastal, metropolitan, and academic pits of despair.

Claire Finkelstein, Trump will fire Jack Smith if he’s still around, and you have no legal standing to stop it. Jack Smith was on the ballot only as a Trump campaign issue. Trump won and you and Jack Smith lost. Next time, try making your side more palatable instead of inventing new ways to obstruct the voters’ desire to be protected from you.

As a side note, how do you spend a billion dollars, end the race with a $20 million debt, and still lose? $1.02 billion wasn’t enough to sell this turkey.

Update: Harris collected over $2 billion, and her campaign contests any contention of leftover debt.

RogerG

Sources:

1. “Jack Smith must not drop the government’s charges against Donald Trump — here’s why”, Claire Finkelstein, The Hill, 11/12/2024, at https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4986125-doj-trump-indictments-jack-smith/
2. “No, Firing Jack Smith Would Not Be an Obstruction of Justice”, Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 11/16/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/11/no-firing-jack-smith-would-not-be-an-obstruction-of-justice/

November 15, 2024November 15, 2024

Hagiography and Its Consequences

May be an image of 1 person and text — Charlie Kirk

Case in point: Charlie Kirk. Right out of the gate, all aglow with power in the aftermath of victory, Kirk, like a tom with his chest bellowed, threatened the new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, with the following:

“John Thune is now Senate majority leader. If he does not support President Trump in these next 30 to 45 days to fill President Trump’s cabinet, we will remove him.” (See #1)

Who’s the “we”? It can’t be the American people. They didn’t vote for Charlie Kirk to be some sort of Tribune of the People. It can’t be a majority of the 76 million who voted for Trump. It’s pure fancy to assume that all of those voters are as enraptured by Donald Trump as he is. “The lesser of two evils” is a vote against something more than it’s a vote for. I’ll bet that’s where most of those 76 million reside. It’s a well-seasoned hunch.

A general distaste for the Democrats isn’t carte blanche for Trump to be crazy. Indeed, he can’t be any crazier than when he nominated the narcissistic, solipsistic Matt Gaetz, neo-isolationistic Tulsi Gabbard, and the magic-for-medicine RFK, Jr., to be in his cabinet. Charlie, these aren’t normal people, not normal in the sense that those 76 million would trust huge swaths of the federal bureaucracy in the hands of a young and dimwitted narcissist, a blame-America isolationist, and a kook in charge of Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the federal health care Leviathan. I think that I’m safe in saying that few people voted for this.

May be an image of 3 people and the Oval Office — Gaetz, Trump, JFK, Jr.

And how are you, Charlie, going to accomplish this forced act of fealty? The Senate isn’t supposed to be an adjunct of the Trump campaign, or an offshoot of Trump’s fickle brain. Charlie, it’s called separation of powers. It has the constitutionally guaranteed power of “advice and consent” for offices like these. Whose advise from the Senate did he seek? Gaetz/Gabbard/JFK, Jr. were out of the blue. No one, and I mean no one, had Gaetz, or any of the others, at the top of their list for anything. If you decide to act looney, don’t be surprised that consent isn’t forthcoming.

Maybe the Senate can save Trump, and the rest of us, from himself. I suspect that Trump was understandably scarred from his first term and immediately thereafter. Some of his troubles were of his own making (Jan. 6). He doesn’t want a solid conservative, learned and experienced on the law and the Constitution, as Attorney General. He wants a toady. No more these principled conservative legal minds such as Bill Barr who couldn’t, for clear lack of evidence, follow him down his imaginary yellow brick road to the land of Stop-the-Steal. If he gets his way, the rest of us will suffer in the chaotic administration of our – not his – laws. The same would be true at DNI and HHS.

The “disruptor” schtick belongs in the play pen, not the presidency. Trump, you don’t have a mandate to do this. And, Charlie, stop plaguing us with the lickspittle hagiography. It’s grotesque.

In graphic form, the 2024 election as a vote-against referendum:

RogerG

Sources:

1. “Charlie Kirk: If John Thune Does Not Fill Trump’s Cabinet In Next 30-45 Days, ‘We Will Remove Him’”, Tyler Stone, RealClear Politics, 11/14/2024, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/11/14/charlie_kirk_if_john_thune_does_not_fill_trumps_cabinet_in_next_30-45_days_we_will_remove_him.html

November 14, 2024November 14, 2024

The Gaetz Nomination: Does Trump play 4D Chess?

Matt Gaetz urges colleagues to abolish the ATF before it strips Americans of gun rights: 'Cannot ...

Does Trump play 4D chess? Possibly, but I have to be convinced. The subject was raised in connection with the puzzling Gaetz nomination for Attorney General. Occum’s razor might be the best path to a credible explanation for the farce. It stipulates that it’s far more likely that the simplest explanation is best when facing a quandary. The fact of the matter is that Trump may just like the guy. I don’t know. Who does?

How Jack Smith's three-dimensional chess moves outwitted Trump's legal strategy...

The JFK assassination is instructive. Some people have scrounged and sifted the mountains of evidence like an archeologist at Hisarlik looking for ancient Troy. They’ve connected the millions of dots into elaborate, twisting and turning plots. It’s made a lot of people rich. For them, it can’t be something as simple as a sociopathic Marxist exploiting an opportunity to make a big splash. There’s no money in that. There’s also no doubt Oswald did it; the rest of the mongering is overheated embellishment. Ditto for 4D chess and Trump?

I’m not dismissing any other scenario. Other alternatives can also be in full accord with Occum’s razor. It’s undoubtedly true that the bulk of people in both wings of the Capitol hold Gaetz in a much-deserved low esteem. Gaetz resigned his congressional seat after the nomination, so the House ethics investigation goes away . . . but not the evidence. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that rheams of that stuff will make its way to the Senate. Sitting in the Senate hearing, Gaetz will face some compromising questions that could force upon him the risk of perjury. Voilà, the House gets rid of a two-legged clown car and Trump still gets his second, maybe real, choice.

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That’s the best pro-Trump spin. On the other hand, in the meantime, Trump’s reputation takes a hit. Is it worth it to risk scarce political capital on a complicated venture that could blow up in your face? But honestly, it’s nice to know that Gaetz is out of the House and Gaetz’s nomination will be dispatched like so much junk mail. Now that’s a possible two-fer for the rest of us.

RogerG