"Anger"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Anger”

June 28, 2022

 

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in

which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Mark Twain (1835-1910)

                                                                

The essayist and author Lance Morrow recently penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal: “Could this be an Antebellum Age?” It certainly seems that way, though with luck a Civil War will not break out as it did in 1861. Nevertheless, anger dominates our politics, media and our culture. It separates friends and divides families. It affects judgements and makes impossible civilized debate. It permeates school board meetings, clouds differences regarding climate change, denies respectful discussion of gender politics; it was the impetus behind the January 6 riots and the subsequent, eponymous Congressional commission, and it has distorted the meaning of the Supreme Court’s decision rescinding Roe v. Wade. 

 

It is through the airing of differences that a consensus is found. Debate is integral to our government and our way of life. In his 1990 autobiography, An American Life, Ronald Reagan, wrote that when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, he “learned while negotiating contracts you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’ If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later...” 

 

In a country as large and as diverse as ours there will always be differences in terms of what constitutes the best way forward. It is why we have elections, and it is why, at least nationally, power ricochets back and forth between the two political parties. Compromise has worked in the past, Consider the relationship between two politicians who had in common only their Irish American heritage, Republican President Reagan and Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neill. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was based on mutual trust and compromise. Similarly, a decade and a half later, Democrat President Bill Clinton reached out to Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and the result was the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Yet, similar discussions between President Biden and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are as impossible to imagine as President Trump inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a quiet sherry and constructive talk.

 

The “woke” left pontificates about diversity, yet they disrespect those whose opinions diverge from their own; they speak of equity, yet they call those with whom they disagree “deplorables;” they urge inclusion but are intolerant of those who express views contrary to their own. We, who once had the ability to laugh, have grown fearful of provoking offense.

 

Why have we become so divided, so angry? Politicians find it useful to incite their bases, but why does the media not provide perspective instead of fanning the flames of hatred? Is it because profits come before civility? Why did Speaker Pelosi not allow the minority party to appoint members to the January 6 Commission, as had been done with all former such investigating bodies? Was she trying to hide her role regarding security for the Capitol on January 6? Why do some people choose to believe that nine un-elected judges make better decisions than a free, self-determining people through their elected state legislatures? In truth, the decision regarding Roe v. Wade will have little impact on the lives of most people. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in dissent: “States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so.” In seventeen states, the right to abortion on demand is protected by state law. In most others, it is permitted through the first trimester. More states will pass laws protecting abortion rights. Sadly, some will not. But the world will not end.

 

We should not let anger destroy the fabric of this special nation. Joseph Joubert (1754-1854), the French essayist and moralist, once wrote: “The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.” His words were true when he wrote them and are true today. Turn off the TV; shut down your computer, silence your cell phone, place The New York Times on the floor of the bird cage, take your loved one by the hand and go for a long walk. Let nature blossom, not your anger.

"Troubled Water" by Jens Mühling

 Troubled Water proved a pleasant surprise. It is short (299 pages), highly readable and packed with information.

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Burrowing into Books

Troubled Water, Jens Mühling

June 25, 2022

 

“I’ve seen the Black Sea from all sides,

and from none of them was it black.”

                                                                                                                                Jens Mühling

                                                                                                                                Troubled Water

 

This book is timely. It was access to the Black Sea that was behind Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. It is control of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports that is a goal today. Ukraine is the world’s largest producer of grains, almost all of which is shipped across the Black Sea, through the Bosporus, to the Mediterranean and beyond. The Ukrainian economy depends on access to its largest ports, and the world depends on its grain.

 

The Black Sea is an unknown region to most of us in the west. We associate it with the 1854 Charge of the Light Brigade, with the World War II conference in Yalta in February 1945. We learn that it is fed by the Bosporus, which divides Istanbul into a city that bridges two continents. Two other rivers that feed the Sea are the Danube whose delta separates Romania from Ukraine and the Dnieper, which rises in Russia, flows through Kyiv and enters the Black Sea near Kherson.  We learn that the Sea dates back eight thousand years, and that all life lives near its surface, as 90% of the water volume is clinically dead, because no oxygen percolates down.

 

Jens Mühling takes the reader on a 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) one-year trip around the Black Sea. He begins in the Russian community of Taman on the northeast coast and travels clockwise through six countries. He visits small towns and often stays with families he meets. He travels simply, mostly by bus but sometimes by thumb. He converses with ordinary people. He writes of ancient myths, of Jason’s search for the Golden Fleece, and of the Amazons whom Jason feared – “…bogeywomen galloping through the world of Greek myth.” We read of Ovid’s exile to what is today Constanta, Romania. He writes of the empires that included the Black Sea within their confines – Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Imperialist Russia. Over millennia, distant rulers governed this region, and we read of more recent life under Nazi and Communist rule. For example, while crossing the Turkey-Bulgaria border near Rezovo, he is told of how hundreds of East German and Hungarian vacationers tried futilely to cross the border into Turkey during Soviet domination: “Very few made it across, and not all of them were captured alive,” he is told.

 

In Crimea, he speaks with a man named Ruzhdi, a man “in his mid-fifties with a charismatically greying beard and barely suppressed rage in his eyes. He was born in Uzbekistan, in a camp settlement near Samarkand. His parents had lived through the 1944 deportations when Stalin had carted the entire population of Tartars – just under 200,000 people – to Central Asia after accusing them of collectively collaborating with the Germans. Many hadn’t survived the journey…”

 

Disparate People along the Black Sea are matched by the variety of its topography. “In Yalta,” he writes, “there was a huge Lenin memorial, which was ringed with palm trees and overshadowed by snow-capped peaks.” Russia’s Caucuses – which include Mt. Elbrus, Europe’s highest peak – descend to tropical vegetation along the Black Sea’s southeast coast. 

 

Jens Mühling leaves us with a sense for the Black Sea – its place, history, beauty and people. He provides, in the frontispiece, a self-drawn map, which allows the reader to follow the author on his journey. 

 

This is a book you will be glad you picked up.

"From Where Will Reason Come?"

 This is being sent at this time of day, because Nerds-to-Go just addressed a problem that Microsoft caused by downloading “New Outlook” last week, without including my contacts. I am now happily back on old outlook.

 

Yesterday I attended a meeting about Ukraine. Understandably, great concern was expressed for the people of that war-torn nation and anger directed at Mr. Putin. My sense as I walked away: We must be careful lest our compassion for the Ukrainian people, our hatred for Mr. Putin and our passion for the freedoms we enjoy disturb the delicate balance of a world with a plethora of nuclear weapons. For almost seventy-five years we have lived in a world where multiple countries are capable of blowing up the planet in a matter of minutes. We, and the generations that follow, will also have to live in such a world. That fact must always be behind the geo-political decisions we make.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“From Where Will Reason Come?”

June 22, 2022

 

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed

us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

                                                                                                                Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

                                                                                                                Letter of the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 1615

 

In an op-ed in a recent The Wall Street Journal, Ted Van Dyk, author of Heroes, Hacks and Fools: Memoirs from the Political Inside, wrote: “The country is desperate for pragmatic problem solving and at least an attempt by leaders to collaborate across partisan and ideological lines.” It is true. People are impossibly divided, and the effect is being felt among families and friends. It is unhealthy, individually and collectively for the nation. One consequence was the choices voters had in 2020 – On the right the polarizing figure of Donald Trump, who despite his accomplishments as President, has an insatiable ego and is overly sensitive to criticism, which make him unpalatable to many conservatives. On the left, Democrats nominated Joe Biden, a 77-year-old career politician with no notable achievements, but with noticeable cognitive challenges. Was that the best a nation of 330 million people could do? Questions need to be answered: Why has reason failed? Where does fault lie? Why are we in this place? What can be done? 

 

The fault, in my opinion, lies principally with politicians who thrive on a strategy employed by Julius Caesar, divide et impera, divide and rule, and by a media that has given up on reporting in favor of advocacy. It is easier for politicians to address the needs and wants of specific constituents than to discuss complex issues that affect us all. Such activity has led to divisive “identity politics” and away from the understanding that we are all, regardless of race, class or ethnicity, citizens of this republic and that we all have a stake in its continuance. The United States is unique among nations in that our ancestors came from every corner of the world. It is unique in its government forged out of a belief in individual freedom, a government – with its separation of powers, rule of law, and protection of private property – whose primary responsibility is to guarantee the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution. We have differences, as expected and as we should, but, as citizens of the United States, we have in common (or we should have) a reverence for this imperfect but rare nation. 

 

Perhaps it is the cynicism that comes with age, but I believe most politicians would prefer not to solve many of the problems we face – illegal immigration, gun legislation, climate change, healthcare and abortion. One might add education and election integrity. These are perennial issues, which when left undecided serve both sides, in that they inflame noisy partisans, the driving force behind both political parties, and who further divide us. 

 

The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack is exhibit A. This is not a committee trying to understand what happened – Exactly what role did Mr. Trump play? Why did not advanced warnings of trouble prompt enhanced security? If this was an insurrection, why were there no firearms found on the rioters? Why did the committee not investigate the claim of New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capital?” Why was an unarmed woman shot and killed as she entered a Capital window? What might be done to prevent a future occurrence? Will the committee investigate the rioting during the summer of 2020, which killed 35, injured 1,500 police officers and caused $1.3 billion in property damage? From the start, the committee was established to be a partisan hit job on Mr. Trump and his supporters, not a bi-partisan voyage of discovery. Ironically, the Committee’s shaming of Mr. Trump may well backfire on Democrats who seemed to have forgotten that a viable Mr. Trump is Republican’s biggest liability and Democrat’s greatest asset.

 

As Michael Barone pointed out in an interview in The Wall Street Journal, it was not too long ago that “Americans expressed great trust in their institutions and great belief and confidence in their leaders.” Mr. Barone suggests Watergate was “a historical watershed” that ended that trust. But no matter its origin and whether deserved or not, disillusionment in government has harmed the United States. I recall being in the Senate dining room for lunch in the early 1970s and seeing Democrats and Republicans dining together. It’s my understanding that rarely happens today. Political partisanship has destroyed friendships and disrupted families. Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis argued in last weekend’s The Wall Street Journal that the problem is less about polarization around “fixed ideological poles” and more about hostility toward individuals. Regardless, questions remain. Why have we reached this impasse and what, if anything, can be done to end it? It seems to me that our best hope lies in education, a return to reason, traditional values and a revival of patriotism.

 

Amidst this anger, we appear to have forgotten that free-market capitalism, within a democratic context, has made Americans wealthier beyond the wildest imaginations of those who lived a hundred and two hundred years ago. Few young people in the U.S. appreciate the lifestyles they live compared to that of their forebearers. They have little appreciation for the political and economic systems that make their lives comfortable. Do they ever think of the magic of capitalism, that a loaf of bread can be brought to a supermarket shelf for only three dollars? It is Adam Smith’s invisible hand that guides the farmer, miller, baker, trucker and merchant to work together. 

 

Reason has been lost as time-tested traditions and customs have collapsed. The concept of national service disappeared with the abandonment of the military draft. The Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of God Bless America (written by Irving Berlin in 1938 as a peace song) are no longer public-school rituals. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, only 22% of children today are living with two parents, both in their first marriage. Fifty-four percent are living with a single parent. Church attendance (including that at mosques and synagogues), which was 73% in 1937 when Gallup first measured it and 70% in 2000, fell to 47% in 2021.

 

Too many public schools are more focused on woke issues, like gender identification and “saving the planet,” than on the basics of reading and math, or simply teaching students to think independently. Apart from Luxembourg, the United States spends more money per student than any other country, yet we rank 13 out of 79 countries on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), behind countries like Estonia and Poland. In a financial literacy test, the U.S. ranked nine of eighteen. Teachers should be embarrassed; parents should be upset, and we should all be concerned.

 

In the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, which was based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey, Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow) asks, rhetorically: If we do not use our brain to reason, “why did God plague us with the capacity to think?” “What other merit have we?” We need politicians and members of the media, to treat people as adults, to approach problems, not as ideological opportunities to push preferred agendas, but as issues that need resolution. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Immanuel Kant wrote: “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” Politicians (and media types) appeal to emotion, especially personal vilification. Their focus should be on imparting wisdom, allowing reason to blossom. Instead, they bully opponents and the electorate into submission with emotion-ridden ideological tirades, and the press laps it up.

"The Decline of Merit as a Measurement of Value"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Decline of Merit as a Measurement of Value”

June 10, 2022

 

“We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe – 

some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re

born with it…some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.”

                                                                                                                                To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960

                                                                                                                                Harper Lee (1926-2016)

 

Ms. Harper wrote in a less politically correct age. The word ‘men’ does not refer to gender but to mankind. In this essay, I use the word as she did.

 

In the first half of the 20^th Century (and earlier), through the early 1950s, wealth and social class were more important determinants than merit, in terms of college acceptance, employment gained, and wealth accumulated. White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant men were favored. Appropriately, attitudes changed in the post-War years, with merit playing a bigger role. Colleges and employers looked more at innate ability, personal drive, and willingness to work hard rather than family connections or schools attended. Race, gender and religious prejudices still applied, but that also began to change in the 1960s and ‘70s, with civil and women’s rights legislation, color-blind applications, and with many single-sex colleges going co-ed. Now we appear to have reverted to earlier times when, once again, identity – race, gender, ethnicity, and even sexual orientation – is valued above merit. 

 

For colleges and universities, the use of merit – with SATs and ACTs as the standard measurements for educational potential – was an attempt to seek out the most qualified students, regardless of sex, race, or from whence they came. It is not a perfect system (no system is), but it has, at least, less bias than subjective measures. However, those exams now disproportionately favor Asians, so are deemed unfair, as they fail woke standards of diversity, inclusion and equity, standards which, by the way, exclude those with conservative political opinions and unsanctified cultural preferences.

 

Should merit alone be the standard for admitting a new student or hiring a new employee? Of course not. There are other valued traits: character, moral and common sense, integrity, diligence, loyalty. But, while many of those traits can be perceived through a subjective lens, the determination of merit is largely objective. It was almost sixty years ago that Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where he spoke of a time when his four little children “will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Six decades later, woke progressives insist that the color of one’s skin does matter. The implication being that blacks cannot compete without assistance from the state. It is false and demeaning. 

 

The world is not equitable, as Harper Lee implied in the rubric above and as Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss discovered; no matter how hard one searches perfection remains elusive. Nevertheless, we should always work at bettering our society, but we should do so while taking pride in our country and by building people up, not belittling them. How much more powerful would President Biden’s choice for the Supreme Court have reverberated throughout the land if he had said he would nominate the most qualified individual and then nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, instead of first saying he would nominate a black woman? No matter her brilliance, she will be forever stigmatized as being selected – not for her legal expertise or her personal bona fides, but because she was a black woman.

 

The concept of meritocracy has come under attack in recent times. In a new book The Meritocracy Trap, Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits, writes that meritocracy is simply “a pretense, constructed to rationalize an unjust distribution advantage.” Mac Margolis, a columnist for The Washington Post, suggests that merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege…that it is, at least partly like the old system, class-based. Parents with money, education and connections cultivate in their children the habits that bring meritocratic rewards. While there is some truth to what they write, is a return to racism – even when formatted differently – the answer? Merit should be encouraged, not belittled. Regardless of wealth or social station, we should all strive to improve ourselves. As a nation, we should strive for unity, not division. Sadly, today there are legions who believe that identity politics is more important than merit when admitting a student to an elite college or welcoming an applicant to a high-profile job. The woke are comfortable being racist (though they will never admit it), so long as ends justify means. 

 

It was merit that lifted man to the heights he has achieved, in terms of industry, scientific developments, and living standards. It was merit that formed our unique government in 1776. It was merit that has given us works of art, literature, music, and poetry. Man is not the “poor bare, forked animal” of King Lear’s imagination. Man is a human being, capable of thought and reason. He seeks opportunities because of the talents he possesses, so long as he has the freedom to express them and the legal framework to protect what he has produced. It was merit, not family connections, or racial or gender preferences, that saw – according to a 2018 Brookings Institute study – 44% of the Fortune 500 companies being founded or run by immigrants.

 

Merit, as I wrote earlier, should not be the sole basis for making judgments, but its importance should not be minimized. We want and need the best and the brightest to pursue and realize their dreams. Our future well-being depends on it.

"Foster"

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“Foster”

June 5, 2022

 

“No heaven will ever Heaven be, 

unless my cats are there to welcome me.”

                                                                                                                                Anonymous

 

We lost our first grandpet a few days ago. Foster, a black cat, was born ten years ago in a stone wall near the shore in Stamford, CT. She was the runt in a litter of five. For several months she, her siblings and their mother lived a feral life, until the kittens were found and brought to an animal rescue shelter, where our son and his family, then living in Greenwich, saw them and adopted Foster and her sister Clover. Three years later the family moved to Lyme, CT.

 

While her passing is cause for sadness, we must remember that Foster lived a happy life, one unimaginable to her mother, who, with the absent Tom Cat, had to scratch out a living on Stamford’s waterfront, while protecting her young from rats and other vermin. Safely ensconced in the Williams household, she and her sister were fed, petted and loved, especially by the four children. Because of coyotes, great horned owls and other predators, Foster and Clover became “indoor” cats. Wistfully, they would look out the windows at birds and squirrels, but if they wanted a snack, they trotted upstairs.

 

As a breed, cats look down on the human species, as Winston Churchill once noted. Like James Thurber’s “William the cat,” most feel that they are the center of the universe. But that was never true of Foster. Apart from an annoying habit of sharpening her claws on the furniture, she was without “attitude.” She was gentle and loved to be petted. 

 

Besides being survived by her sister, she also leaves behind Maisie, a rescued Maine Coon cat. Maisie, with her fluffy tail, has what P.G. Wodehouse called an “insufferable air of superiority.” She treats me with imperious disdain, as if my shirt were untucked, or my fly unbuttoned. A fourth four-legged member of the Williams’ menagerie is doleful-eyed Bailey. Like the cats, Bailey was not to the manor born. However, there must have been several Beagles in her immediate ancestry, as she would not be mistaken for a Doberman or a Dachshund. I doubt that Bailey was ever one of Foster’s closest friends, but they were certainly conscious of one another’s presence. Bailey may sleep more easily with Foster gone, but I suspect she will miss her.

 

One of the most difficult of life’s lessons is to learn that everything that lives must, at some point, die. For a Mayfly that would be 24 hours, while a Galápagos tortoise might live for 175 years. A spruce tree in Sweden has been dated by geneticists back 10,000 years. But it, too, will at some point die. Foster had ten years of quality life, not long for a house cat, but she left loved.

 

As with people, it is better to celebrate a life than to mourn a death. That does not imply a hardened heart; remembrance of a life well lived is the best way to deal with the heart break of death. Foster lived well and happily. She had a sister and a human family that loved her, along with Maisie and Bailey who respected her space. Sadly, Foster also had cancer. A transfusion and drugs, a few months ago, gave her more time, but the ravages of the disease caught up. Last week, her human family took her to the veterinarian, and she died peacefully in the arms of our oldest grandson.

"The Lost Summers of Newport," a Novel

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

The Lost Summers of Newport

Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White

June 4, 2022

 

“Like Sprague Hall itself, you never knew

what kind of rot lay behind the façade.”

                                                                                                                The Lost Summers of Newport

 

Like a Nova, Newport, with its enormous, newly-built mansions, exploded onto the social scene during the late 19^th Century; then that Gilded Age faded away in a matter of two or three generations.

 

This is the fourth novel written by three friends who, independently, are all New York Times best-selling authors. (A caveat – Beatriz is married to my oldest son.) As in their previous novels, this story unfolds over three time periods, in this case at Sprague Hall – 1899, 1957 and 2019 – on Newport’s Bellevue Avenue. While one of Newport’s “mansions,” Sprague Hall is not as imposing as its neighbors: It is “…tucked between Marble House and Rosecliff…a less significant house perched near a small curve of coast with the improbable name of Sheep Point Cove.”

 

This story of Newport’s extravagances and secrets is told through the voices of three young women, representing the three time periods: 1899 – Ellen (“…hoping the tremble in her voice would be taken for awe, and not fear.”) has been hired to give singing lessons to Maybelle Sprague. 1957 – Lucky (“Teddy was the only person in Newport who knew what Lucky really thought of Minty Appleton.”) is the Italian-born granddaughter of the American-born Princess di Conti. 2019 – Andie (“…it was clear I had traveled more than just the thirty-three miles separating my hometown of Cranston, Rhode Island from the coastal resort of Newport.”) is a young, producer on Makeover Mansions, a reality TV show about restoring some of America’s most lavish houses.

 

While chronology is important and the reader must keep track of multiple characters and generations, it is through Andie – her persistence with the remaining members of the Sprague family – that the mysteries of the house and its occupants (past and present) are unraveled. With chapters alternating between the three time periods, we begin to understand the family tensions and sense the secrets that underlie them. 

 

The stories of the three women blend as the reader proceeds, at an ever-quickening pace. Like the orchestral piece, Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, the novel builds toward a crescendo. This reader found his pulse quickening and his eyes moving ever faster down the page, as the story reached its climax, which was both surprising and satisfying.

 

The second season of Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded Age has been filming in Newport, making The Lost Summers of Newport timely. Incidentally, this novel will show up as number 15 on the June 5^th (tomorrow) New York Timesbest-selling list, possibly the first time that a novel authored by three women has made that list.

"Will He, or Won't He?"

 Apologies for two essays in two days. Yesterday’s “June” essay was written (and mostly edited) a while ago. But I promise you it will not happen again. I warn you, however, that on Saturday I will be sending a brief – 427 words – review of a new novel, The Lost Summers of Newport, written by my daughter-in-law Beatriz Williams and two of her friends, Lauren Willig and Karen White. On Sunday, the book will appear as number 15 on The New York Times’ best-selling list.

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Will He, or Won’t He?”

June 2, 2022

 

“The Republican Party…is a party ready to move on…It’s a party that loves leaders who

take on the predominantly liberal media, but it wants them to be effective policy makers too…”

                                                                                                                                Michael Barone (1944 -)

                                                                                                                                Rasmussen Reports

                                                                                                                                May 27, 2022

 

The question in the title, of course, is aimed at Mr. Trump and the 2024 Presidential election. While I admire what Mr. Trump accomplished as President and for the way he battled media vilification, I find his ego, language and bullying offensive.

 

Obviously, no one knows the answer to the question, including, in all probability, Mr. Trump. The election is thirty months away, with midterms coming first. Mr. Trump will turn 76 on June 14 – granted he would be younger than was Mr. Biden in 2020, but no longer in the flower of youth, nor even in the comfort of middle age. Mr. Trump remains controversial and divisive – not the soothing, empathetic figure the nation needs when it is fraught with division as to who we are and what we stand for. (Is it really alright to let young men in high school who self-identify as women use girls’ showers? The condoning of deviant behavior in the name of social justice, no matter what the LBGTQ community may claim, is aberrant.)

 

Mr. Trump remains the dominant figure in Republican politics. A poll of potential Republican primary voters taken in March of this year by Morning Consult, a global decision intelligence company, gave Mr. Trump 55% of the vote, Ron DeSantis 12%, Mike Pence 10% and Nikki Haley 7%. Ohio’s J.D. Vance appeared to have been helped by Mr. Trump’s endorsement in the May 3^rd Senatorial primary. Other Trump-endorsed candidates like Georgia’s Herschel Walker’s bid for the U.S. Senate and Arkansas’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s campaign for governor were successful. Yet Virginia’s gubernatorial election last November and Georgia’s primary on May 24th suggest Mr. Trump is not a fool-proof king maker. In fact, last week’s Harvard-Harris poll showed a preference for Mr. Trump had declined to 41% among Republican primary voters.

 

Nevertheless, Mr. Trump still dominates Republican circles, but his Party detractors, and others, are adamant in opposition. The January 6 protest (this was not an insurrection) added fuel to a “Never Trump” flame that had been kindled by Mr. Trump’s opposition to Washington’s insiders during his 2016 campaign and during his four years as President. More recently, Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger has led the “crossover movement,” which encourages independents and Democrats, as the Associated Press put it, “…to take down pro-Trump candidates in GOP primaries whenever and wherever possible.” Intra-Party debate, when it leads to compromise, is healthy, but when hatred becomes personal it leads to unhealable fractures. As Matthew has Jesus say in 12:25: “…every city or house divided against itself will not stand.”

 

Trump, as I have written before, has become a liability for Republicans and an asset for Democrats. Not for his policies, but for his character. His followers are loyal, vociferous and legion, but his detractors are plentiful. They control the Democratic Party, the media and cultural institutions, and a large swath of Republican and independent “Never-Trumpers.” 

 

Yet, what Trump instinctively understood is that people, collectively, make better political and personal decisions than experts, including government functionaries. He knew that elected officials are responsible to the people. He also understood that markets, reflecting millions of individual decisions, give us better products at better prices than economies managed by “experts.” Capitalism works better for more people than Socialism. Experts are important in business, education and government, but the latter should be subordinate to elected officials. Trump’s problem was capsuled by Senator Schumer when in 2017 he said: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence communities, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Did Schumer mean to imply that the intelligence bureaucracies were above reproach because of fear of retaliation? Over time, dozens of federal bureaucracies have grown large with no separation between legislative, executive and judicial functions, giving enormous power to the appointed officials that direct them. The consequence has been an abuse of power. Trump thought that addressing these issues could be a winning strategy – to return power to the people and away from Washington’s credentialed elite. It was, but the “empire” struck back.

 

None of what I have written speaks to probabilities posed by the question in the title. I don’t pretend to have an answer. But the issues that divide us are still there and pose a risk to democracy. Each month, I&I (Issues & Insights) and TIPP (TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics) conduct a unity poll. In the poll taken May 4-6, a mere 24% of Americans said the United States was “united.” These numbers, which show division deepening, confirm a PEW Research poll taken in 2020 that showed Americans divided over core American values. Extreme partisan candidates will not heal the wounds. Despite campaign promises, Mr. Biden has further divided an already divided nation. In fact, the Harvard-Harris poll, which gave Mr. Trump 41%, gave Mr. Biden only 24% among Democrat primary voters. Mr. Biden was the oldest person ever elected President and Mr. Trump the second oldest. But age has not brought wisdom to the White House. In the current instance, it appears to have brought senility. It is time to hand government’s reins to a new generation, willing to take on the Washington establishment with stamina and humor. For President we need an individual who can befriend more of their own Party and alienate fewer of their opponents. 

 

The task, especially for Republicans, will be difficult. The woke, who dominate our schools, universities and cultural entities, are selfish and unprincipled. They infest our government, tech companies and Wall Street. What is needed is a renewed effort in our schools and colleges on inclusion and diversity – of ideas. Only then will we head toward a more equitable society.

 

Will he, or won’t he? As I wrote, I don’t know; but I hope he does not. I wish Mr. Trump would graciously retire, confident that he accomplished a great deal and that he exposed the rot in Washington. But I suspect the word gracious is not in his vocabulary, nor will “never Trumpers give him credit for the good that he did. However, there are younger, talented, better humored (and thicker-skinned) Republicans who could pick up the mantle. Regardless, we are in for an interesting time, as both Parties deal with a divided nation and aged leaders. How all this plays out remains to be seen.

"June"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“June”

June 1, 2022

 

“June is bustin’ out all over!

The sheep aren’t sheepish anymore!

All the rams that chase the ewe sheep

Are determined there will be new sheep

And the ewe-sheep aren’t even keepin’ score!

……………………….

On account-a it’s June, June, June

Just because it’s June!”

                                                                                                                                Rodgers and Hammerstein

                                                                                                                                Carousel, 1945

 

Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics were racy, but not even he would have guessed that thirty years later June 2^nd would be recognized as International Sex Workers Day, after over a hundred prostitutes occupied Saint-Nizier Church in Lyon, expressing anger at exploitive working conditions. Sex and love, whether one writes of sheep or humans, are intimately entangled, especially in June. Fittingly, the month is named for Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage and fertility. Two of our three children were married in June. (Caroline and I, needing practice, wed in April, to be ready for June.) 

 

As the naturalist and nature writer Jean Hersey wrote in A Sense of the Seasons, “June is the gateway to summer.” It is the baptismal time for the start of summer, the month of graduations and summer vacations. Trees display their canopies of green. Below them, forest creatures search for food and mates. And in gardens, flowers bloom and summer’s produce pokes through the fertilized earth, reaching for sun and rain. On June 21, the sun will be at its highest point in the sky – mid-summer’s day – marking the summer solstice, the longest day in the year. (In 2008, Caroline and I, curtesy of a good friend, were in St. Petersburg, Russia on that date, when the sun rose at 2:00 am and set after midnight.) 

 

History was made in Junes: England’s King John set his seal to the Magna Carta in Runnymede Field on June 15,1215. On June 18, 1815, Allied forces led by the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon’s army at Waterloo. In 1876, on June 25, Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull defeated General George A. Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. Thirty-eight years later, on June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the throne of the Austria-Hungary Empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo, which led to the “guns of August” – the start of World War I. On that same date, five years and 40 million casualties later, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in Paris, ending what had been heralded as “the war to end all wars.” Sadly, that was not to be the case. On June 4, 1944, the Allies liberated Rome, and two days later 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified French coast in Normandy. The Korean War began on June 25, 1950. Medgar Evans was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963. Five years later, Senator and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5. In June we celebrate Fathers’ Day, Flag Day, and a favorite, World Sauntering Day.

 

Our youngest child and youngest grandchild were born in June, as were Adam Smith, Nathan Hale, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Maynard Keynes, Lou Gehrig, Cole Porter, Hattie McDaniel, Judy Garland, Anne Frank and George W. Bush. And my father-in-law, were he still alive, would turn 130 on June 25.

 

June is about fresh starts – the first of summer, new jobs for high school and college students and, for many, the chance to say, “I do.” The poem Easter by the American poet Joyce Kilmer, who was killed during the Second Battle of the Marne three months before the Armistice, captures the month:

 

“The air is like a butterfly.

With frail blue wings.

The happy earth looks at the sky

And sings.”