"The Durham Report and History"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Durham Report and History”

May 30, 2023

 

“Who controls the past controls the future.

Who controls the present controls the past.”

                                                                                                                                George Orwell (1903-1950)

                                                                                                                                Nineteen-Eighty-Four, 1949

 

In his 1982 story of a small Irish village, Passing the Time in Ballymenone, American historian Henry Glassie (1941-) wrote: “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view…” All histories reflect the author. But good historians account for that, differentiating between actual events and their personal opinions. The Founding Fathers were conscious of history when they selected Washington as the capital of the new United States in 1790. It was a “federal enclave,” separate from both the commercial/industrial north and the agrarian south. It was not beholden to one party or one faction.

 

However, over time, as its bureaucracy increased and as public sector unions took sway, Washington changed; so that today in the District, according to the Pew Research Center, Democrat registrations, among federal government employees, outnumber Republican registrations two to one. While the leaders of Washington’s agencies reflect whichever party is in power, permanent federal government employees are, on balance, sympathetic to the Democrat Party. 

 

The purpose of the Durham Report was to shine light on nefarious attempts to affect the outcome of the 2016 election – to address the widely accepted view that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to affect the outcome of the Presidential election that year. It also offers an alternative (and more accurate) perspective on subsequent efforts to undermine Mr. Trump’s Presidency. The Report details how the nation’s premier investigatory and intelligence services, in cooperation with the Clinton campaign, falsely implicated Mr. Trump as having colluded with Vladimir Putin to sway the election.   

 

While unsurprising to those of us skeptical of accusations of Russia collusion on the part of the Trump campaign in 2016, findings in the Report should concern all Americans. The idea that a few senior officials in Washington’s intelligence services would try to influence the outcome of a Presidential election campaign should send shivers up the spines of anyone who believes in our Constitution and the democratic process. I recognize there are those who believe Donald Trump was and is so vile a person that any means to keep him from office were and are justifiable, but that line of thinking leads to totalitarianism. 

 

Like many at the time, I was skeptical that Mr. Putin would prefer the mercurial Mr. Trump, a man he did not know as a politician, to a woman he did know and with whom he had dealt. The accusation, on its face, seemed absurd. What we did not know, and what the Durham Report tells us, is the extent to which leaders in Washington’s intelligence bureaucracy would go to provide federal support for one Party’s candidate. 

 

Forty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously wrote in The Washington Post: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  But facts can be misconstrued, mislabeled, or falsified. “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth,” is a law of propaganda, something known to psychologists as an “illusion of truth.” The Durham Report did not include indictments, but I suspect Special Counsel John Durham was concerned first with preventing another illicit attempt to use government employees to affect an election, but also with how history would recall the 2016 election and its aftermath. The Country does not need to be divided any further than it already is.

 

In a recent article for the Manhattan Institute, on a different subject, Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufman wrote as to how facts can be “framed or contextualized” to increase political polarization. Compare, for example, mainstream media’s reporting on January 6 to their reports on Russian collusion. Both January 6 and the Russian collusion were undemocratic and violated the spirit of the Constitution, if not its actual principles. But one was performed in the open, for all to see. The other was done in secret, with falsified documents and lies to Congress. The January 6 riot was an illicit, but ridiculous unarmed attack on the Capital. It was not an insurrection, as the media likes to call it. The rioters were unarmed and there were no political or military leaders. The Capital police were armed, with one policeman shooting and killing an unarmed woman as she climbed through a window. The attack had no chance of succeeding. The best barometer we have to measure any shock to the nation is the stock market, an impartial assessor. On January 5^th, 2021, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages (DJIA) closed at 30,391.60. On January 6, they closed at 30,829.40, up 1.4%. On the 7^th, they rose again to 31,041.13. A week later they closed at 31,060.47.  In contrast, following the attacks on 9/11, markets were shuttered. When they re-opened six days later, the DJIA declined by 7.1%. On December 8, 1941, the Monday after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the DJIA closed down 3.5%. 

 

Yet prosecution of the January 6 participants proceeds. While participants in the Russian collusion are enriching themselves, giving speeches and selling books, more than a thousand January 6 rioters have been charged, with some languishing in jail without due process. The contrast is stark between Merrick Garland who weaponized the Justice Department and Special Counsel John Durham who chose not to indict those who had misused their power and position to pursue a false story. One abetted a polarized nation; the other helped soothe differences. What will history say?

 

The biggest scourge that faces us is not January 6 or even the Russian collusion hoax – it is wokeness, with its attack on free speech and its confiscation of the English language. It has polarized and bifurcated our nation. We need the healing that Mr. Durham offered, not the lies and the salt-in-the-wound that is the preference of Mr. Garland and minions like Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney. In Reason and Common Sense, George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not knowing John Durham, I cannot be certain of his intent, but the consequence of his Report, as I see it, is an attempt to set the record straight as to exactly what happened and who truly colluded with Russia during the summer of 2016, and to prevent such iniquitous activities in the future. Durham did not seek retribution. He provided the nation with an honest rendering of the facts. Let history be the judge.

"Time"

 With so much going on – debt negotiations, a Presidential race on the gathering horizon, war in Ukraine, failing schools, and corporations and universities that have lost their moral compass – it may seem trivial to write an essay that lacks gravitas, but we all need a break, so this seemed timely.

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

More Essays from Essex

“Time”

May 23, 2023

 

“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here

before it’s June. My goodness, how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

                                                                                                         Attributed to Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel, 1904-1991)

 

Time is both precise and ambiguous. Computer scientists measure it in zeptoseconds, the time it takes a particle of light to cross a hydrogen molecule, which has an ionic radius (don’t ask) of 0.208 nanometers, one billionth of a meter. The longest measurement of time is a supereon, three billion years. For us, time is finite. In my 83^rd year, I have lived just under 730,000 hours, barely a nanosecond for a paleontologist.

 

Stopwatches are used to measure the time it takes a runner, skier, race car, or horse to cross the finish line. But the word can be vague: ‘She won’t give me the time of day,’ ‘Will the doctor have time to see me?’ ‘My love for Caroline, my children and grandchildren is timeless.’ “And indeed there will be time,” wrote T.S. Eliot in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, “to wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and Do I dare?’” A Tale of Two Cities begins: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” While ambiguous, we know what Dickens meant. And then there is this quote from Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, which reflects his time in the trenches during the Great War: “‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’” 

 

While every hour has sixty minutes and each minute sixty seconds, hours and minutes spent in childhood seemed longer than those spent in adulthood, probably because each hour of childhood was a larger percent of our lives. And time continues to accelerate as we age. Nevertheless, we have more time than did our great grandparents. In 1860, life expectancy in the U.S. was 39.4 years. By 2020 it had doubled to 78.9 years. Will it double again for our great grandchildren? And time varies by species. An hour represents about 4% in the life of a Mayfly, while for Jonathan, a 190-year-old Seychelle giant tortoise, an hour represents only 1/1,664,400th% of his life. It is possible that future scientists might learn from the immortal Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish, which, once it reproduces, reverts to a polyp stage and starts life all over again.

 

But we are not jellyfish. As we get older, old photographs capture the past – Caroline in her wedding gown, a child’s school play and another’s college graduation, our daughter’s wedding, and our grandchildren growing up – images of moments in time, moments savored that molded us into the people we have become. Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have once said, “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” Timely words from a wise man.

 

So, relax, take it easy, don’t worry. You have time. But, for me, now is the time to end this essay.

"Is Wokeism Dying?"

 First, apologies for the length of this essay. Over two hundred words were cut last evening and another ten this morning. Still, it runs to just over 1,600 words, about a third longer than usual. A disciplined editor with an acute eye and sharp blade could have removed more words but, alas, that was not to be.

 

The Durham Report was released yesterday, finally. While it found no evidence to justify the FBI’s launch of a full-scale investigation into the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign in 2016 and Russia, it also brought no indictments against those who launched the investigation, which cost taxpayers millions o dollars. Perhaps that was because if indictments were brought it would condemn the entire Justice Department and the intelligence services, and the swamp in which they thrive?

 

By the way, with 81-year-old Martha Stewart on the cover of Sports Illustrated, it suggests the 80s may be the new 40s, at least for a lucky few!  

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Is Wokeism[1] Dying?”

May 16, 2023

 

“At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically

gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.”

                                                                                                Elon Musk, Babylon Bee

          December 21, 2021 interview

 

For the last few years, the stench of wokeness has enshrouded our nation – in schools, corporations, politics, and cultural institutions. It arrived under the names “Political Correctness” and “Diversity;” as it came in on T.S. Eliot’s “little cat feet,” unobtrusively, but seductively and relentlessly, backed by the arrogance of the self-righteous. While many of its proponents want a world where racism does not exist, where sexuality is a choice, and where a sustainable climate allows mankind to flourish, the world they have created has the absurdity of Gulliver’s travels to the kingdom of Balnibarbi and the island of Laputa.

 

It is the folly of wokeness that augurs its demise: that slavery defined our nation’s founding, and that racism infects all white people, at least those who do not hew to a progressive line; that biology does not define a man and a woman, and that gender is a choice; and that unless we all give up gas stoves and drive electric vehicles the world will become uninhabitable. 

 

At the same time, we face real problems: failing public schools; a shrinking military; a permeable southern border; federal debt that, as a percent of GDP, is higher than at any point since World War II; persistent inflation; an aging population that will require more entitlement spending; a decline in global influence; a general sense of pessimism expressed in declining birth rates; and a President who, as Bruce Thornton recently wrote, “makes Chance, the Gardner look like Abraham Lincoln.” 

 

Students score poorly on international tests in math, science and reading, and they fail questions regarding history and civics. We have been divided into tribes, into oppressors and the oppressed. Those who are seen as victims (and their heirs) are condemned to victimization for all eternity. California has considered reparations to descendants of slaves, including those five to seven generations removed.  Ignored is the instinct for people to better themselves. Neglected is the Biblical admonition from Ezekiel 18:20: “The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father the guilt of the son.” 

 

While it will never totally disappear, racism has lessened over the years. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court held that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. Since then, interracial marriages in the United States, as a percent of all marriages, have increased from 3% to 19%. Executive order 11246, signed by Lyndon Johnson fifty-eight years ago, prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin. It was amended two years later to include women. The last half century has seen improvements in race relations and women’s rights. Since the 91^st Congress (1969-1971), the number of Blacks in Congress has steadily increased. Currently there are 60 in the House, or 13.8%, and three, or 3%, in the Senate. Parity has not been reached in the Senate, but progress is undeniable. Women make up 28% of the 118^th Congress. Eight years ago, they represented 19.4% of the 113^th Congress. Nevertheless, silliness prevails. Colleges have incorporated critical race theory into their curriculums; they have segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies. Black judges who do not adhere to progressive orthodoxy are ‘Uncle Tom’s.’ Mary Hamil Gilbert, professor of classical studies at Birmingham-Southern College, was quoted recently in The New York Times on the subject of black actress Adele James who plays the role of Cleopatra in the new Netflix docudrama, “Queen Cleopatra.” As a professional actress, it is a role she is entitled to play. Nevertheless, Ms. Gilbert felt compelled to add that, while Cleopatra was of Greek origin, she was “culturally black,” that “she was part of a culture and history that has known oppression, triumph, exploitation, and survival.” Who and what cultures do those words not describe? My lily-white ancestors came from Britain, where they had been conquered by Vikings and Normans a thousand years ago. As colonialists in North America, they were subject to “taxation without representation.” Does that make me “culturally black?” Of course not.

 

Gender dysphoria is real but not widespread. From time immemorial, it has been a condition felt by young people as they went through puberty. A Pew Research Center poll found that 3.1% of adults younger than 25 feel they are a trans man or trans woman versus just 0.5% of those between the ages of 25 to 29. There have long been exceptions: George Jorgenson traveled to Denmark, in the 1950s, to become Christine Jorgenson. In the 1970s Richard Raskind was reborn as Renée Richards, and in 2015 former Olympian Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. However, we have reached a level when only the Babylon Bee or Alfred E, Neuman can do the subject justice: Schools, and some in the medical profession, permit surgery to transition to another sex (removal of breasts, uteruses, and penises) at great medical and psychological risk. Students are told that men can give birth and a statue of a naked, bearded man breastfeeding a baby has been placed in a public spot in Denmark. “Person” is substituted for “man” or “woman” regarding the production of sperm or eggs. Biological men are able to compete in women’s sports. And the Defense Department is more interested in pronouns than in military readiness. Interestingly, while the Woke have become more assertive in their adamancy, the same Pew Research Center study found that the number of Americans who believe gender is determined at birth has risen from 54% in 2017 to 60% in 2022. Will the Woke catch up to the people? 

 

Protecting the environment is a legitimate and welcome exercise, yet in a world of climate fanaticism, inmates now run the asylum. Historically, we were fortunate. Our democratic system of government and free-market capitalism allowed living standards to rise for all inhabitants – far beyond the expectations of our parents and grandparents. While the United States represents only 5% of the Earth’s population, we consume 30% of its energy and are responsible for 28% of carbon emissions. And yet, while we consume more energy per capita than did our forefathers, our rivers, shores, lakes, forests, and mountains are more livable than what they knew. Each year, clean energy technology improves, especially in natural gas, but that is not enough for the Woke who forget how we achieved what we did. Like Canute, who claimed to be able to stop the incoming tide, they say they can halt the warming (or the cooling) of the Earth – a planet that has been around for four and a half billion years – which has been covered with hot and humid jungles and, at a different time, with miles of ice, and where continents have shifted hundreds of miles. Yet the Woke claim that a ban on fossil fuels in the United States, which makes up less than 10% of the Earth’s land mass, will prevent seas from rising. At the margin, their efforts may have some small effect, but at what costs? Have they considered the amount of fossil fuels needed to extract cobalt and lithium (mostly sourced from China), and copper and zinc, to make batteries and solar panels? Have they considered the effect offshore wind platforms have on undersea life? Have they considered how higher energy costs will affect the poor in the U.S., and what those costs will mean to developing nations? Should not adaption to changing environmental conditions be part of their plan?

 

Christopher Rufo recently wrote in the Manhattan Institute’s “President’s Letter:” “Left-wing cultural politics is very good for affluent, single, urban professionals, the ‘avocado toast’ class, but when those people mature into the phase of buying a home and raising a family, I think they’re going to realize that those cultural politics actually work against their interests and values.” I hope he is right, and believe he is. With parents fighting back regarding schools, we have begun to see the beginnings of resistance. People are noting the difference between “equity of outcomes” and “equality of opportunity.” Trustees of pension funds in some states are awakening to the age-old maxim that returns on investment supersede political injections of ESG. Residents of high-taxed states – California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey – are experiencing out-migration, while low taxed states like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee are experiencing in-migrations. Missing from woke ideologies have been common sense, reflection, wisdom, respect for the opinions of others, along with simple decency. 

 

On February 3 of this year, I wrote an essay with a similar theme: “Is Sanity Replacing Wokeism?” I was heartened by what I felt were signs of optimism – parents of school age children fighting back; (some) university trustees assuming responsibility, and (some) state legislators cutting taxes. Heartened by today’s increasingly comical version of Wokeism, I remain of the opinion, with the pendulum swinging back toward common sense, that Wokeism is dying.

 

In his 2021 book, Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, Vivek Ramaswamy wrote: “’Diversity’ has become a term of art, a symbol, one so powerful that the symbol is now more important than the thing it was supposed to represent. Wokeness sacrifices true diversity, diversity of thought, so that skin-deep symbols of diversity like race and gender can thrive.” Churchill was alleged to have once said: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.” Wokeness has become mindlessly hubristic, which gives me hope that a more sensible world lies ahead – that the American people will do the right thing – so long as we do not self-destruct in the meantime. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Wokeism. noun. Usually disparaging. Promotion of liberal, progressive ideology and policy, as an expression of sensitivity to systemic injustices and prejudices.

"When the Going Was Good: American Life in the Fifties" Jeffrey Hart

 Sunday is Mother’s Day. With all the nonsense we hear today, motherhood is the most important role for the continuation of our species, or any species for that matter. Make sure you celebrate with your mother, or, if she is no longer with us, make sure to remember her with love. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“When the Going Was Good: American Life in the Fifties,” 1982

Jeffrey Hart 

May 11, 2023

 

“History is time memorialized…

And that, gentlemen, is why history must be told.”

                                                                                                                Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973)

                                                                                                                Professor of Philosophy, Dartmouth College

                                                                                                                As quoted by Jeffrey Hart

 

When history is written by those who experienced it, there is a freshness not available from those who write of the distant past. On the other hand, such histories lack the perspective that time and distance provide. However, like Only Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen’s history of the 1920s, this is a fascinating book.

 

Hart was born in Brooklyn in 1930, where he was a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and played tennis. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School, received both his AB and PhD from Columbia, but spent most of his life in New Hampshire where he was professor of English at Dartmouth from 1963 to 1993. In 1963, he began writing for William Buckley’s National Review. As well, he spent time as a speech writer for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and he was faculty advisor to the Dartmouth Review.

 

“By and large,” Hart wrote, “people felt good about themselves and their country during the fifties.” For sixteen years, from 1929 until 1945, the nation had experienced Depression and War. While the post-War period was interrupted by the Korean conflict, it was a time of strong economic growth, scientific advancement, and nuclear deterrence. Americans appreciated the role their nation had played in the War and in the post-War global recovery. Hart quotes Columbia history professor, the French-born Jacques Barzun’s God’s Country and Mine, a celebration of America: “…we have here a complete Europe – Swedes cheek by jowl with Armenians, Hungarians with Poles…No one can say that all is love and kisses in this grand mixture. In many towns there are two sides of the railroad tracks…But at what a rate these distinctions disappear…In Europe a thousand years of war, pogroms and massacres settle nothing.” “Barzun,” Hart wrote, “is well aware of the blacks, Chinese, Hispanics, and American Indians, but he sets against the darker spots the larger panorama…Like Gertrude Stein, Barzun sees America as the modern nation.” So has Hart.

 

The reader is provided a window on this “extraordinary period in American life.” We read of the Eisenhower Presidency; Korea; the McCarthy hearings; the Brooklyn Dodgers – their last game at Ebbets Field and Pee Wee Reese waving farewell; tennis lessons from Bill Tilden; Levittown; rock and roll; jet planes and TV; computers and air conditioning; the ‘Pill’; the Interstate Highway Act and Atom Bomb shelters; Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals: and how the deaths of Robert Taft and John Foster Dulles book-ended the decade in Republican politics. He writes of the intellectual life, of Lionel Trilling, Mark van Doren, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr: “Contrary to current opinion, the fifties were years of intellectual ferment and intense excitement…” They ended,” Hart wrote, “in extravagances of feelings and behavior.”

 

William Buckley wrote the introduction: “For those who didn’t live through this decade, or weren’t aware of having done so, this is the liveliest trot they could imagine.” The going was good; so is this book.

"TMI"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams 

More Essays from Essex

“TMI”

May 6, 2023

 

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.”

                                                                                                                Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, 1998

                                                                                                                E.O. Wilson (1929-2021)

 

TMI stands for too much information; it refers to the divulgence of personal data or an expression of boredom regarding particulars offered. For example, if I spoke inappropriately about someone or complained about a personal ailment, one of my children would say, “TMI, Dad.” This essay uses that acronym to express the fact that we are overwhelmed with a plethora of information, from books, magazines, newspapers (on-line and print), and from e-mails, texts, and all forms of social media.

 

Too much is tossed our way, yet our brain has not evolved to accommodate the increase. This is not new, as Professor Wilson (in the rubric) noted a quarter of a century ago. It has just gotten worse. Long before the internet and when there was far less data to consider, Sherlock Holmes was conscious of an overabundance of information. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes responded to Dr. Watson: “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out…” Today, the amount of information is multiples of what was then available, yet our cranial capacity is unchanged. We are deluged. Estimates are that the amount of information doubles every two years, most of it useless for individual purposes. 

 

Online subscriptions account for about half of newspaper and magazine sales, a trend that will persist as computer literacy increases. Nevertheless, the number of journalists in the U.S., according to a recent study at Northwestern University, has declined from 75,000 in 2005 to 31,400 in 2021. On the other hand, a Pew Research Center survey showed that the number of bloggers in the U.S. – those who offer opinions regardless of facts – has increased from 11 million in 2005 to 32 million in 2021. The consequence: we get less real information and more (to borrow one of President Biden’s favorite words) malarkey. 

 

This expansion of digital information appears unstoppable. Dr. Melvin Vopson, Lecturer in Physics at England’s University of Portsmouth, recently wrote on the subject for The Conversation: Each day, across the world, “we generate 500 million tweets, 294 billion e-mails, 4 billion gigabytes of Facebook data, 65 billion WhatsApp messages, and 720,000 hours of new content added daily on YouTube.” The enigma: How to wend one’s way through this morass?

 

The important thing is to not let your brain become cluttered with useless trivia. The good thing is that a headline tells us if the story is worth reading. If it is about Hollywood, Harry and Meaghan, a gruesome murder, or the Kardashians, I let it go. Except for following half a dozen people on Instagram, posting my essays on LinkedIn and a blog, and texting my children and grandchildren, I don’t use social media. As Andy Kessler recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Distraction is a curable affliction.”

 

If you read this far, thank you; but consider: You could have spent the time taking a walk, smelling a flower, or holding a loved one’s hand.

"Integrity"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Integrity”

May 1, 2023

 

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

                                                                                                                                Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

                                                                                                                                “Self-Reliance”

                                                                                                                                Essays: First Series, 1841

 

This essay was prompted by former deputy director of the CIA (2010-2013) Michael Morrell’s interview with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH). In that interview Morell said he had phoned Antony Blinken in October 2020 about the Hunter Biden laptop story, which had appeared in the New York Post on October 14, 2020. A consequence of that call was that a few days before the 2020 election fifty-one former intelligence officers signed a public letter (a letter prepared by Morrell), which claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story had all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation. As those officials have since acknowledged, the letter was written without any evidence of Russian involvement; yet those intelligence officers chose to propagate a false story to help Presidential candidate Joe Biden. Reporters from mainstream media were provided an out from having to follow up on the Hunter Biden laptop story. Integrity, where art thou? 

 

Why, I wondered, would someone with Antony Blinken’s pedigree stoop to such a dirty trick?  At the time he was a senior advisor to the Biden campaign, with hopes of a position in a Biden administration. And why would fifty-one former intelligence officers do something that may have affected the outcome of a Presidential election? Is integrity as rare among Washington’s bureaucracy as it is among elected officials?

 

When I first thought of Mr. Blinken, a man raised in privilege – educated at the Dalton School, École Jeannine Manuel, Harvard, and Columbia – abetting the manipulation of an election, my mind went to Eugene Field’s nursery rhyme, “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” only with names and words changed:

 

Biden, Blinken, and Harris

Sailed off in the Ship of State;

Sailed onward toward Utopia,

On a sea of deceit.

And what is your goal, voters did ask?

We have come for the power and glory,

And the gold that will follow,

Said Biden, Blinken, and Harris.

 

Politics and honesty have never mixed. One is reminded of Diogenes searching for an honest man. In his 1880 book, A Tramp Abroad (based on a trip to Southern Europe) Mark Twain wrote: “An honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.” Twenty-six years later, Ambrose Bierce published The Devil’s Dictionary. In it he defined politics: “n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” Written in humor but highlighting a truism.

 

Most politicians, I fear, will never meet Webster’s definition of integrity: “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.” This is not to say that there are no honest politicians, but, as a species, they are endangered. You are more likely to see an ivory-billed woodpecker out your window than an honest politician on Pennsylvania Avenue. They fabricate, dissemble, and tell half-truths. Elected politicians are accountable to voters, but they evade responsibility for bad decisions. They are masters of illusion and obfuscation. In his taped message announcing his re-election plans, President Biden said he wanted to “finish the job,” a frightening thought. Consider the examples these people set for our children – they lie, blame the other guy, procrastinate, and never take responsibility for bad outcomes. 

 

How will we disengage from this dank and dismal place? Finding honest politicians or government bureaucrats is a dream unlikely to be realized. Extrication may never be possible but if it is, it must lie with the media and education. The former could report facts and leave opinions to editorial pages. The latter could teach students to think independently. A reporter should be interested in uncovering the truth, regardless of where it leads. Will that happen? In today’s polarized environment, doubtful. The better solution – though also a stretch – lies with schools, colleges, and universities where students should be taught to think independently, to study facts, appreciate nuances, and then form and defend their own opinions. Sy Syms used to say, when hawking off-price clothes, “an educated consumer is our best customer.” Similarly, an educated citizen is the best way to keep democracy from collapsing. The most effective response to social media, biased reporting, and hypocritical politicians, is the ability to think for oneself, to read, listen, and to question. That may be wishful thinking, but it is our only hope.

 

Integrity is a personal trait, difficult to practice when society’s emphasis is on conformity; for example, being asked to put one’s signature on a letter that includes a false statement. Employees are warned about using correct pronouns; conservatives are banned from speaking at universities; universities have substituted social justice for merit. Individuals are subjugated to the state, as mandates are issued regarding gasoline-powered cars and as we are told how much electricity must come from renewable sources. Thrift is penalized; under Fannie Mae’s and Freddy Mac’s new rules, those with higher credit scores will be charged higher interest rates, so that people with lower scores can secure mortgages at lower rates – the socialization of credit risk, as The Wall Street Journal put it. Unnecessary government interferences impede free markets; regulations imposed by the Biden administration have had an estimated cost to the economy of over $200 billion, according to the Washington Examiner. Sensitivity readers are employed by publishers to ensure harmful words are eradicated. But perhaps there is hope? At the Time 100 summit last week in New York, Steven Spielberg spoke out against political correctness in the film industry: “No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are either voluntarily or being forced to peer through.” 

 

Technology is changing our lives, with so many “cultural and political earthquakes testing the cohesion of our society,” as Walter Russell Mead recently wrote in Tablet Magazine, that we need the guidance which fundamental principles provide. Integrity is one of those virtues, along with tolerance, fortitude, diligence, charity, humility, and others. In Emerson’s essay, from which the rubric above was taken, he wrote of the “need for each individual to avoid uniformity and false consistency and follow his own instincts and ideas.” In Hamlet, Polonius offered similar advice to his son Laertes: “To thine own self be true.”

 

Eisenhower is alleged to have once said: “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity.” It is a characteristic missing in almost all public figures, in the media, large corporations, banks and, perhaps most damaging, in schools, colleges and universities. Without principles to guide us, darkness prevails.