The Soul of America

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

I enjoyed listening to American historian Jon Meacham, the author of The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels, on CBS Sunday Morning. Robert Costa interviewed Meachum, asked him right off the bat, “What is the state of the American Soul?”  Meachum’s answer was appropriately blunt: “We are in a dangerous place. There was no ‘once upon a time’ in America. There is not going to be a happily ever after.” No those are for fairy tales.

 

Meachum did say that these are times where history is very important. History is always important, in my opinion. Hiding the truth as Donald Trump urges is not the answer.  Ugly truths must be confronted; not swept under the carpet. Meachum acknowledged to Costa: “there are times when you and I can agree what can be replicated. This is not one of those times”.

 

The television show included an outrageous claim by Charlie Kirk when he was alive: “Donald Trump is the guardian of western civilization.”  Even though Kirk has now been lionized by the right, that is a statement from a man who did not appreciate history. He also said, “the entire Democratic project [referring I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he was referring to the Party, not the system] is how quickly can we turn America into a hell hole.”  I know people in America who would drink up such stuff. Stuff like that is very popular on the right, though it is patent nonsense.

 

Costa asked Meachum why America reacted with such violence so often. To this Meachum said,

 

“Political violence erupts in America when there is an existential question—who is an American? Who deserves to be included in ‘We the people,’ or ‘All men being created equal’? When that is in tension, when we don’t have common agreement about that, then, if you look at it historically, violence erupts.”

 

Meachum said, instead, much more wisely, “We don’t want to end up in the situation where because you do not agree with someone you pick up a gun.” If America reaches such a stage—and it certainly looks like it might—the American project is bankrupt.”

 

Meachum asked a very good question of Costa: “Are we going to be able to see each other neighbors?”

 

Or will they only be able to see each other as enemies? If the latter, that country is dead.

 

Meachum put it this way:

 

“When we lose the capacity to engage in argument and dissent and debate peaceably, we are breaking faith with the American covenant. And the American covenant is that we live in contention with each other, but we’re not at each other’s throats.”

 

I wonder though if Meachum is right. It seems to me he is being a bit of a Pollyanna.  Meachum said, “this is why history is important.  There is not much in the current moment that we want. The country is about dissent, and respecting each other; it is not about hunting each other down.”

 

More and more, I see Americans as hunting each other down. More and more I see anything else as fairy tales.

 

 

Recurring American political Violence

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

As we all know, America has been inundated with violence, including, of course, political violence. It is everywhere and it keeps coming back.  The left blames the right; the right blames the left. But they are both responsible.

 

Here are a few incidents that stand out, but there are many. Usually more than one every day.

 

An assassin with a rifle tried to kill the candidate for the American presidential election, narrowly missing his head and nicking instead his ear. Some think God changed the direction of the bullet so that the bystander behind him was shot instead.  The American left is lucky Trump was not killed.  Had Trump been killed he would have been revered as a political hero for a century.  When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in 1968, he was not liked by 83% of the population. He has been a hero ever since.

 

Some acts of political violence have been incredibly violent. For example, the man who walked into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house and assaulted him with hammer. His wife had an armed detail, but that night she was in Washington, so he had no protection.   Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump made jokes about it. Another man walked up at the home of Representative Gerry Connolly in Virginian with a baseball bat looking for him and his staff members. Someone lit the door of Bernie Sanders’ house on fire. An obviously unwell man came to the house of Supreme Justice Kavanagh looking to harm him but was talked out of it. The list goes on and on. It will go on and on. Because Americans don’t want to do anything about it.  Except pour more guns into the fray to protect their leaders.

 

Americans are largely content with this. That is the only thing that surprises me.

 

Scientific Refugees

The Sleep of Reason, The War on Smart

 

I recently posted about the cuts of the Trump administration to the National Institute of Heal (‘NIH’) and the National Science Foundation which it funds. In that  post I mentioned how bad this was for the health of the world.  Now I want to point out another uncomfortable result.

 

As a result of the cutbacks entire labs have already been shut down and many more are on the way. And with them goes all that incredible scientific research which will go unfunded. Many scientific grants have already been rescinded and many more will soon face the same fate. Scientists on the ground or in labs are already being shut down.

 

According to Dr. Leana Wen, some of them have been shut down for highly dubious grounds. For example, if their research contains Trump-despised keywords such as “gender” or “health equity” or “coronavirus” or “vaccines” or “HIV,” they were the first ones on the chopping block. At the same time billions in funds to American universities, once widely recognized as the best in the world have been frozen. Many universities have had to slim down their budgets. As a result, there are hiring freezes at these universities with funding to graduate students and post-doc that are also frozen. As Wen said,

 

“there are already really significant impacts on American scientists and also on young scientists, many of whom are now saying, well, they don’t know if they want to stay in the sciences because they don’t know if a future for them here.”

 

 

As a result, places like Europe, China, and even Canada are aggressively trying to recruit American scientists. Wen said,

 

“My own anecdotal evidence is that China has been laying out the red carpet for all the graduate students being kicked out of America…I think the brain drain is real.”

 

Imagine that. For decades the United States has poached scientists from around the world. Now they are being poached! It is clear that this will lead to the end of American supremacy in science.

 

As Dr. Wen said,

 

“The European Union is investing 600 million euros to recruit American scientists. The French parliament has a bill to establish a new category for scientific refugees from the US. And I just have to say, this is really unimaginable.

 

And those scientists will help countries like China to develop the best technology, including military technology. This could herald the end of American dominance.

 

Trump is Making America Stupid Again, and it could pay a hefty price for that.

 

In the world of dumb, Donald Trump is king!

 

Hummingbirds are Magical

Birds, Hummingbirds, Nature

The American PBS show Nature once had a special on Hummingibrds.   It was indeed special because the subject of the show, hummingbirds are really special. Hummingbirds truly are “a magical work of nature.” Science and technology have struggled to keep up with them. Some modern movie cameras have revealed amazing things about their flight.

Hummingbirds have not stopped evolving. They are like no other birds on earth. Or better yet, hummingbirds are like no other birds in the sky.

“The more we learn, the more fascinating they are.” It has been a great summer. So far.

 

Wisdom from Comedy News

Extremism, Left-wing Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

I know I have commented a lot on right-wing extremism.  But that is not to deny that left-wing violence is real as well. Recently, America experienced some and it was ugly. It was the shooting of young right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk by distant rifleman.

 

On the day after the shooting The Daily Show hosted by Michael Kosta had some interesting things to say. Some of it was even wise. Imagine that, wisdom from Comedy News.

 

First, they pointed out that presidents from both parties made good comments about what had happened. I particularly liked what president George W. Bush had to say:

 

“Today, a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views. It happened on a college campus, where the open exchange of opposing views should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square.  Members of other political parties are not our enemies; they are our fellow citizens.”

 

But what did the current president have to say:

 

“For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we are seeing in our country today.”

 

Not as impressive as Bush. He was quick to blame the other side.

Kosta suggested that this was like saying, “My fellow Americans we must come together to destroy each other.” He carefully added, “I am not singling this guy out. This is how our society behaves now. A tragedy occurs instead of digesting and trying to understand everyone sets their feet and starts throwing punches immediately.”  Both sides immediately blame the other side except for the wiser ones like George W. Bush.

 

Kosta was reluctant to blame rhetoric, as bad as it is. It might be something complex that actually requires thinking.   He said, “Political is not going to go away if the people on the other side say exactly the right words from now on.” Of course, there was a lot of unhelpful rhetoric from both sides. Some on the left suggested Kirk was asking for it by his rhetoric. Some on the right said “they” were asking for it. Who do they mean by “they?”

 

Fox News host Jesse Watters,

 

“It’s happening. You got trans shooters. You got riots and L.A. They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us.  Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. Trump gets hit in the ear. Charlie gets shot dead. They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle to his neighborhood. They went after Musk’s cars.”

 

I am always surprised that people on right often completely forget about violence  on their own side. Same, of course, goes for people on the left. After all there has also been plenty of violence on the right and even, many like me, suggest, much more violence comes from the political right.

 

To this Kosta had a pretty good response: “I’m sure people in the media would like to talk about how they are responsible for what they’ve done and how they had better watch out, or else they’ll get what’s coming to them. But I think it would be better if we as a country understood that we have a problem with political violence. And we need to start thinking less about what they should do and more in terms of what we have to do.”

 

I wish I were better, but I know I have been as guilty as anyone in blaming others. Them in other words, rather than us. I must do better. We must do better. Turning such tragedies into a game of us against them is not very helpful. We have to get together and work together without turning them into the enemy. If we can’t do that we are done.

It would be nice though if our political leaders, like George W. bush got on side, rather than pouring fuel on the flame.

 

 

America Can’t be Great if America is Stupid

Death of Truth, reason, The Sleep of Reason, The War on Smart

 

America has been the center of knowledge and thinking and frankly, brains, for a long time. What Americans have done is astonishing and ought to be celebrated.  But what it is now doing is cause for deep concern. America seems bent on destroying what it has built up and has no one to blame but itself.

 

Frank Bruni is a columnist for the New York Times and a professor at an elite University, namely, Duke University. Now in some circles that is about equivalent to saying Bruni is a child molester. What could be worse?

 

That is how the Trumpsters feel about such a person. They don’t like smart. They prefer dumb. Bruni pointed out that,

 

“But Trump doesn’t seem to get that. Doesn’t want to get that. Gets only that the wonky and effete denizens of the world of ideas aren’t his people, aren’t guaranteed supporters, don’t lavishly praise him and sometimes dare to disparage him. They need their comeuppance, no matter how much damage it does to everyone else.”

 

 

Bruni justifiably criticizes Trump for that, but he seems to think this is all Trump’s fault. The sad fact is the happy Trumpsters by and large feel the same about such smarts as Trump does.

 

Bruni pointed out validly that for decades, at least 60 years if not more, America has been known around the world for the quality of its universities. They are not perfect, they at times slip into anti-semitism, though not as often or as consistently as Trump claims nor his supporters. American universities have been a driving force in the steep rise in quality of economic life during this time. And that has given The US an incredible global economic advantage over its rivals. As Bruni said,

 

“Among our most significant competitive advantages are our scientists, our laboratories, our system of higher education. They’re a kind of superpower, their output an engine of our wealth — of frontier-expanding technology, medical breakthroughs and production innovations that enrich companies as they improve lives.”

 

No one should try to claim that they can’t be improved, but frankly to defund our scientists and universities is about as stupid as defunding the police would be.

 

The most important thing is not to cherish ignorance. Both the left and the right can do better.

The only thing we have that resembles a super power is our smarts.

As Frank Bruni said: “America can’t be great if America is stupid.”

 

Israeli Barbarism

Extremism, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

Israel attacked Hamas today inside Qatar, which is not only the staunch ally of the United States, but the mediator in the war between Hamas and Israel. Israel attacked Hamas just as its leaders were staying in Dohar to consider the settlement proposed by Israel and the United States.

 

But the Israeli strike in Qatar targeted the very Hamas political leaders who could have helped end the war diplomatically. They were considering a new U.S.-Israeli backed cease-fire plan for Gaza that President Trump had called, ominously,  a “warning”. If members of Hamas can’t go to Qatar to consider a peace proposal where can they go? Then peace is impossible. And this is exactly the point. Israel did not want Hamas to consider the proposal.

 

Hardliners in Israel cheered when they heard the result.  They don’t want a peace either. Those same hardliners have been pushing Netanyahu to abandon peace talks and achieve total victory over Hamas. By that they mean the death and destruction of every single member of Hamas. This shows how extreme the forces that support Netanyahu so vigorously are. They want total victory and see this as an opportunity to get exactly that.

 

This is war without limits.

 

This is barbarism.

 

 

It shows Netanyahu is actually opposed to peace. It wants war so it can destroy every last member of Hamas. This is a hopeless goal. Mona Yacoubian, Mona Yacoubian, director and senior adviser of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank on PBS News Hour, said, “For every leader killed another 6 appear on the scene.”

 

Qatar is the one and only country in the region that is respected as a mediator by both sides. It is a tiny little country between the large countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia. It had not choice but to become a mediator to survive.

 

As Yacoubian, said,

 

“Let’s note this is now the second time in just a few months that Israel has undertaken military strikes in the midst of negotiations, whether it was the U.S. and Iran or now the Qataris seeking to negotiate between Hamas and Israel.”

 

And is this an accident?  Here is what Yacoubian added, “I think the negotiations have been set extremely far back. Any hope for a cease-fire now is just a distant prospect, at best.”  There is little doubt that this has killed all hope for the hostages either.

 

Is there any doubt that Netanyahu has no interest in a peace settlement? And why would that be?  He wants instead to obliterate Hamas. He, together with his extremist partners want to kill every last one of Hamas members no matter what. And that is the problem with this strategy? It is born out of extremism.

 

As Canadian expert Janet Stein said today on CBC’s The National: “This kills the peace process.”  I would say that is what Netanyahu wanted. He and his extremist partners heard too many say they wanted to see negotiation and a two-state solution.  No, Israel wants it all. I think I am just connecting the dots.

 

 

Arrogant Ignorance

Death of Truth, Moral Humility, The Sleep of Reason

 

Andy Borowitz has written a book with a very interesting title: Profiles in Ignorance: How American politicians got Dumb and Dumber. With a title like that it is hardly surprising that the author is pretty arrogant. Horowitz has looked at how Americans have embraced anti-intellectualism. He thinks it is so bad the nation is in danger. He was interviewed by Walter Isaacson on Amanpour & Co. to discuss the subject broadly.

 

Borowitz said he could have gone back to the birth of the nation to show how this developed, but he held back and basically started with Ronald Reagan. That is as good a place as any.

 

Isaacson focused on the last 50 years of ignorance: ridicule, acceptance, and celebration. According to Borowitz Ronald Reagan really kicked off the ridicule phase. Until Reagan in the ridicule stage, politicians had to pretend to be smart. Reagan was good on TV. That was why some California millionaires recruited him to run for Governor. However, as Horowitz said, “…he did not know anything; he knew very, very little.” That did not matter to the millionaires. They wanted to sell the sizzle if they could not sell the steak. They liked what they saw.  Reagan sizzled.

 

As Horowitz said, “they had to pump him full of information. It seemed like he knew stuff and he won the election by a million votes. That really got the whole party started.”

 

Walter Isaacson challenged Borowitz on this claim. He asked him to say who was smarter Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan? After all, Reagan won the election. Did that not make him smarter? Borowitz said clearly Jimmy Carter was smarter, which of course, millions of American conservatives would never accept. Horowitz acknowledged that he was not a neurologist so was not qualified really to give that opinion, but of course, he was not shy about making it. He added this,  “And that is usually reflected in how much you read.”

 

According to Horowitz Jimmy Carter read a ton.

 

Ronald Reagan did not open a single book in college. That is deliberate ignorance. When his Chief of Staff James Baker prepared a briefing book for a big economic summit, he didn’t touch that and  then James Baker said, “Why didn’t you read that last night?” Reagan replied. “Well Jim the Sound of Music” was on TV.”

 

He was not ashamed of that. He just was not very curious about economics or policy. He was interested in how he sounded on TV. That is what mattered. That might have been smart. At least politically smart.

 

Again, Isaacson pushed back, and said Ronald Reagan was a very successful president even though he didn’t read much. And his adoring fans did not care that he read so little.  He was able to get done what he wanted to get done. Often Carter did not. In fact, according to Isaacson “Jimmy Carter was remarkably unsuccessful.”

Horowitz did not think Reagan was a very successful president. But he did get his agenda through. According, to Horowitz “that agenda was very redolent of his own ignorance.” He let the AIDs crisis spiral out of control because he was very unaware of what Aids was. As well, he really created homelessness in this country, according to Horowitz. He told David Brinkley, “the homeless just want to live outside.” That sound very doubtful to me.

Reagan was much better on TV than Jimmie Carter. He will be able to get an agenda through but his agenda was hopelessly inadequate. “That is why it would help, according to Horowitz, if he actually read a book.”

To this Isaacson posed an alternative  book, written by David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.  These were those guys that John F. Kennedy relied to get his agenda done. You don’t’ get smarter than those guys but they were disastrous when in power and drew America into the swamp of Vietnam.  There was not much good about that.

To this Horowitz said, “Well smart people make mistakes.” Very true but is that enough?  Horowitz said Carter was an elitist who wanted people in power to be smarter than he was. According to Horowitz the guys who have been allergic enough to learning and who refused to read a briefing book and refused to read a book of any kind got us into a lot of trouble. They got us into things like the War in Iraq one of the biggest boondoggles in our history. At the same time, they ignored things like Aids and the Coronavirus. “Yes smart people make mistakes, but …I would still rather put my money on the guy who has read a book” he said.

 

Some are very smart and have very bad judgment like Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush didn’t read the presidential briefing book that said Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US. And the US paid a very heavy price for that ignorance. Ignorance can be very costly, particularly when wedded to power.

 

Horowitz said that FDR was not that smart. He graduated with Cs in High school. But when he had to deal with a big problem like the Dust Bowl which the country had never seen before, FDR was smart enough to surround himself with experts who were smart. He wasn’t like Donald Trump who pretended that he was smarter than everyone else when he clearly wasn’t. “Arrogant ignorance” is a terrible disaster. This is what Trump exemplified he said. Horowitz said “that FDR was an example of a person who had intellectual humility.” That is a sign of being smart and it is something Trump definitely does have. I agree that this is very important. More leaders should have humility.

 

Now when I listened to Horowitz, I could not see him as modest or humble. Far from it in fact. So he does not qualify as smart.

 

When people think they are the best and the brightest and they don’t have anything more to learn that is very dangerous. As Horowitz said, “Smart people sometimes fall into that trap.”

 

According to Horowitz, with the arrival of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin we moved into the age of acceptance. Bush learned that accepting his ignorance was actually a political advantage. He bombed early in his career when he was unable to name some foreign leaders to a radio host, exposing his serious ignorance. His advisor came out and said “we are electing the president of the United States not a Jeopardy contestant”.

 

This led to an era where political candidates said I don’t know very much but I am like you. We have come to the place where political leaders who profess to be smart have a big disadvantage. Many people don’t like that. This is also dangerous.  Ignorance should never be glorified. Too many people do that now.

 

Who would you rather have a bee with. Al Gore a pointy headed intellectual or George W. Bush?  To most people in America the answer was clear. Sarah Palin moved us into the celebration phase.  As Horowitz said, “She really embraces the fact that she did not know many  things. She replaced facts with non-facts.” Embracing ignorance is very dangerous.  That to me seems to be our current status.

 

As Horowitz said, “With the celebration phase which we are now sadly in, ignorance now has become such an asset that it is preferable to people being well-informed.”  Americans like ignorance. It’s not just Trump. Many Americans agree with him on this point.

 

As Horowitz said, “Donald Trump has never read, he doesn’t know very much, so he combines ignorance with arrogance that he thinks he knows more than the generals and scientists and every expert. Marjorie Taylor-Green also comes very naturally to this phase. She is extremely ill-informed, and she thinks that a Petri dish is a peach tree dish and that Hawley, or a Ted Cruz, or Ron de Santis who have the finest education that money can buy in America but are wilfully trying to sound dummer than they are. That sort of spectacle is so regrettable. We looked up to people who we used it to look up to people who were smart, to experts.

 

This of course brings us to the ultimate question. What can we do about it?  Horowitz suggested we stop watching so much cable TV That is sound advice. Don’t spend so much time on Twitter. And we have to start getting active in our democracy. Stop always nationalizing our problems. We get obsessed with the national elections, but the other elections are very important. We have to start working locally where democracy really is at its best. As Horowitz said,

 

“In a town meeting you really can’t be jerk, because you might meet that person next week. I have to curb my natural tendency to be caustic and contemptuous and I have to be civil instead. I think that is the answer. We have had trickle down ignorance in our country where our leaders have said ignorant things. And we as a population have grown more ignorant because of that.”

 

The most important thing is not to cherish ignorance.