"Very Good, Jeeves," P.G. Wodehouse - A Review

 A correction of yesterday’s TOTD: An alert reader noted a mistake in the population of the European Union. The numbers used were for all of Europe. The European Union has a population of 449 million, which is expected to decline to 420 million by 2100. My apologies for the error. A corrected copy is attached.

 

Markets continued their downward slide yesterday, amid fears of a global trade war and a possible recession, or worse. While that is cause for concern, it may be meaningful to recall that P.G. Wodehouse – an author who needs no introduction – did much of his work during the three decades between 1914 and 1945, a time when the world was mired in two world wars, a global depression, and a time that saw the rise of Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

 

He brought humor to a suffering world. Open anyone of his books, and the furrowed brow will be replaced by a joyous smile.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Book

Very Good, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

April 5, 2025

 

“…Mr. Wodehouse has created Jeeves. He has created others, but in his creation of

Jeeves he has done something which may respectfully be compared to the work of the 

Almighty in Michelangelo’s painting. He has formed a man filled with the breath of life.”

                                                                                                                     Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

                                                                                                                     English writer, politician, historian

                                                                                                                     Introduction Weekend Wodehouse, 1951

 

P.G. Wodehouse has been part of my life since childhood. While Wodehouse biographer Frances Donaldson has written that women, as a whole, do not care for the “masculine fantasy” he specialized in, it was my mother and grandmother who introduced me to him. Most of my collection did not make the trip from Old Lyme to Essex, but I still have sixty or so titles on my shelves. And I continue to belong to an informal group of Drones in New York where me meet – less frequently than we once did – but we still quote “The master,” tell bawdy tales and throw rolls at one another.

 

It is hard to explain why Wodehouse has accumulated so many fans over so many years. Most of his 96 titles are still in print. Many assume he wrote of the Edwardian age (1901-1910), but Wodehouse fan, publisher and editor Roger Kimball, wrote in The New Criterion, that the world Wodehouse created is one that “never existed.” Regardless, it is his playfulness that is the draw. While we laugh at Bertie Wooster having to be bailed out of self-inflicted predicaments by his valet Jeeves, the humor is never mean-spirited, even when Bertie’s Aunt Agatha calls him a “chump” and tells him: “Don’t gibber!” As much as anything, the love for his books stems from the fact he is a “master of the ludicrous” (Richard Usborne, author of Wodehouse at Work) and, as Evelyn Waugh wrote, the “exquisite felicity of his language.” 

 

In this collection there are eleven Jeeves and Bertie short stories. The book was originally published in 1930, a decade and a half after the two were introduced in 1915, when readers met them in “Extricating Young Gussie,” a short story published in The Saturday Evening Post.

 

Some examples of his bon mots in this volume:

 

                   “There’s no time when ties do not matter.” – “Jeeves and the Impending Doom”

 

                   “…he broke a vase in rather a constrained way.” – “Jeeves and the Song of Songs”

 

                   “Ha!, and I said it rather nastily.” – “The Love that Purifies”

                  “You know how it is in these remote rural districts. Life tends to get a bit slow. There’s nothing much to do in the long winter evenings but listen to the radio and brood on what a tick your neighbor is.” – “The Ordeal of Young Tuppy”

 

The British author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams, once wrote: “give me Shakespeare for tragedy, Shaw for wit and Wodehouse for lighthearted comedy.” To which I add, Amen!

"Threats to Democracy"

 With the Iowa caucuses now behind us, the 2024 Presidential campaign is officially underway. Let the games begin. For the next ten months, the airwaves will be inundated, as will social media, with each candidate swathed in self-glorification, spouting lies, and bashing his or her opponent.

 

If the consequences weren’t so important, we should laugh at the pretentious political pontification to which we will all be subject, as candidates bluster inanities. My advice is to turn the channel to real comic relief, like watching old movies with the likes of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye, the Marx Brothers, or better yet, one of Mel Brooks’ classic comedies from the ‘70s and ‘80s, or John Landis’ 1978 Animal House. Remember, it was John Belushi’s character “Bluto” Blutarsky who is destined for the U.S. Senate, while it was straight-arrow jerk Douglas Neidermeyer (played by Mark Metcalf) who is shot by his own men in Vietnam.

 

My apologies to subjecting you to one more essay on a time-worn subject.

 

Sydney

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Threats to Democracy”

January 16, 2024

 

“The problem comes when the government is inhibiting 

innovation with overregulation and short-sighted policy.”

                                                                                                                Garry Kasparov (1963-)

                                                                                                                Deep Thinking: – Where Machine Intelligence Ends

                                                               and Human Creativity Begins, 2017

 

On January 6, 2024 near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, President Biden opened his 2024 election campaign: “Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time. It is what the 2024 election is all about.” Politico, the left-leaning digital newspaper, reported last month that comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler had become routine for the Biden campaign. Dean Karayanis, in the January 5^th edition of The York Sun, wrote: “When an incumbent president swings that brickbat, though, it raises the stakes to a dangerous level.” And Perry Bacon of The Washington Post, who believes the issue is legitimate, wrote in a recent column that such a focus “sidelines other important issues,” that a “general election is in many ways a national conversation between citizens.” But it also trivializes the horrors inflicted by Hitler and the Nazi regime. And remember, Hitler’s Nazis controlled the press and the universities. Trump and the Republicans do not.

 

Let me state at the outset, if Donald Trump were to be elected next November, which I hope he is not, our democracy would not be at risk. In the January issue of The Spectator, Roger Kimball wrote: “At the center of the totalitarian impulse is the belief that ultimate freedom belongs only to the state.” Trump is a bloviating blowhard, but he would not destroy democracy, even if that were his desire which I don’t believe it is. What would happen is that the mechanics of government would slow, and possibly grind to halt. Even before Trump took office in January 2017, the false Russian collusion hoax had been concocted by the Clinton campaign, which hampered his administration. Millions of dollars were spent on the Mueller investigation that unearthed no collusion, except that between the Clinton campaign and the F.B.I. Two impeachments were attempted; both failed for lack of evidence. Attempts by the Trump Administration to clean up the intelligence communities were stymied. Recall Senator Chuck Schumer’s prescient comments to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on January 3, 2017, when he insisted that Trump was really dumb for attacking the intelligence agencies: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” The unarmed rag-tag gang of men and women who entered the capital on January 6 slowed but did not stop the wheels of government. What Biden and his Progressive buddies have done, in reverting to the campaign slogan that democracy is at risk, is to lift a page from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who said that if a lie is repeated often enough, people will believe it. 

 

Yet changes in our culture – the re-writing of history, the obviation of standards of decency, a focus on DEI, the proliferation of identity politics, the offering of trigger warnings and the provision of safe places, the abandonment of universal truths, climate adamancy, ignorance of biology, and the willful use of the courts to destroy political opponents – do threaten the values that made this country a beacon to the world’s poor and persecuted. In his recent memoir, How Do We Get Out of Here, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. wrote that “…culture is more important to politics than politics is to politics…” The late British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that civilizations begin to decay when they lose their moral fiber. I would add that they also decay when citizens fail to appreciate the long arc of history. In the same issue of The Spectator quoted above, Daniel McCarthy wrote “…an entrenched liberal ideology has made modern life on these shores resemble a few of the worst features of the dystopias envisioned by [George] Orwell and Aldous Huxley.” Following the Battle of Bẽn Tre on the Mekong River in January 1968, an American Army officer is alleged to have said: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Is it not possible that Progressives have adopted that as their motto: We have to destroy American culture in order to save it. 

 

While both Parties have been responsible for the expansion of government, deficit spending, and the increase in federal debt, it has been Democrats who have been most persistent and most effective. It was President Reagan who, at an August 12, 1986 news conference, famously said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” It was Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, on November 8, 2023, who mistakenly claimed (deliberately or because of ignorance?) that Reagan had reinforced Democrats’ preference: “We’re from the government. We’re here to help.”

 

The two-party system has, generally, served us well, in that voters can change horses every two years. Over the past seventy-five years Republicans have held the White House forty years and the Democrats thirty-five. But in the House and the Senate, the two-party system has been less rewarding to Republicans. Over those same seventy-five years, Democrats controlled the Senate 56% of the time and the House 70% of the time. But what has really upset the two-party system has been the growth of the administrative state – the vast federal bureaucracy and the regulatory agencies they control. While every two years we elect 435 members of the House of Representatives and one third of the U.S. Senate, there are approximately two million civil servants, of whom only four thousand are presidential appointees. The rest – overwhelmingly Democrats – comprise the permanent (and expanding) federal employment structure. While theoretically non-partisan, those employees are not immune from the sectarianism that has infested our political culture. George Washington worried that partisanship would lead to a “spirit of revenge,” driven by a desire for personal power rather than governing in the people’s interest. His fears seem to have been realized. Extremists from the left and the right have become significant in both parties. Like communists and fascists, they share the same principles and the same methods of dealing with dissidents. A striving for personal power and monetary gain via the public arena has replaced the once common tradition of public service.

 

There is no question that democracy is fragile. It depends on an educated, enlightened electorate, the free flow of ideas, the rule of law, civilized behavior, respect for others, and adherence to the traditions that have allowed this Country to move forward over time. We must weigh humanitarian and social wants against the cost to pay for them through continued economic growth. The size of our national debt and the demand of future entitlements pressure growth. In the mid 1950s, total government spending – federal, state, and local – amounted to about 14% of GDP. In 2022, it amounted to 36.3 percent. In 1974 federal debt, as a percent of GDP, was 32%. In 2022, it was 127%. In 1974, US Debt was rated AAA by all three credit agencies. Today, two of those agencies have downgraded the debt to AA+. According to Trading Economics, in the 1950s and ‘60s the average US GDP growth rate was above 4%. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the growth rate dropped to 3%. For the past ten years, the growth rate has averaged below two percent. Low birth rates and subpar economic growth negatively affect the ability to fund future entitlements.

 

In his memoir mentioned above, Tyrrell quoted the late British philosopher and political theorist Michael Oakeshott: “To be a conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” While there is much in that quote that appeals to me, especially humor, I also believe in dreams and curiosity, that we must not be afraid of the unknown, to experiment and innovate, that change is inevitable and that we must be able and willing to adapt. But I believe we run unnecessary risks when we demonize our culture, its teachings, and the evolution of our history. Keep in mind, it was (and is) our culture – of which democracy is a part – and the economic opportunities our nation offers, that attract migrants to these shores. We rightfully complain about our open southern border, but it is instructional that there are no lines of migrants waiting to enter Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, or Venezuela. 

 

In 1854, William Anderson Scott published Daniel, A Model for Young Men, which included this famous line: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” The United States has become an angry place, and threats to democracy cannot be ignored, whether the source is an individual or whether the threat comes in the form of subtle but insidious changes to the culture that has allowed this country to become the beacon to the world. Care is warranted. 

"A Modern Industrial Strategy?"

 “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” is the opening line in a late 19^th Century Rudyard Kipling poem, written during British rule in colonized India. Those lines describe current differences between Democrats and Republicans.

 

With the indictment and (likely) impending trial of Donald Trump for willfully violating the Espionage Act, Democrats have sown seeds of a whirlwind whose ravages will mean a further fracturing of an already divided nation. Members from both parties have secreted documents, whether on an illicit server in Chappaqua, in boxes in a Delaware garage, or in a Palm Beach estate. This action on the part of the Department of Justice will result in an Old Testament retribution of an eye for an eye.

 

I feel sorry for the youth of our nation who will inherit what their progenitors have wrought.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Modern Industrial Strategy?”

June 15, 2023

 

“A modern American industrial strategy identifies specific sectors that are foundational to

economic growth, strategic from a national security perspective, and where private industry

on its own isn’t poised to make the investments needed to secure our national ambitions.”

Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser

Brookings Institution, April 27, 2023

 

The presumption in Jake Sullivan’s words, quoted above, are astounding – that there is a, yet-to-be-named, “modern American strategy,” which identifies “specific,” but unstated, “sectors that are foundational to economic growth,” which are “strategic from a national security perspective.” But since the private sector has neither the means nor the foresight to “secure our national ambitions” (whatever they are), then it must be left to the public sector to decide how much and where to invest, decisions prior administrations from both parties have left to markets. Sullivan refers to this as Bidenomics. In reality it is central planning.

 

Greg Ip, in last weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, wrote of Mr. Sullivan’s speech: “Sullivan’s target was what some in the policy world call neoliberalism: the free trade, laissez faire economic priorities shared by Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.” “Executive policy-making,” wrote Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, in the same issue, “has an ideological basis – that of ‘expertise,’ which holds that modern life demands government by expert administrators in place of amateur legislators.” When did Karl Marx replace Adam Smith?

 

Certainly, there have been times when government has had to take the lead – in times of war, in building the interstate highway system, DARPA, NASA, etc. But the concept that a state-mandated industrial policy is the wave of the future is to believe that Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. have brought to their people greater efficiencies, higher living standards, a cleaner environment, and greater financial opportunity and equality than the democracy and free market capitalism of the United States, and the West. Waste and inefficiencies are more common among government agencies than in private companies for which the threat of bankruptcy governs behavior. Shareholders can more easily dispose of their stock than taxpayers abandon their communities or states. Auditors from OpenTheBooks.com, an organization that accepts no government payments and uses forensic accounting and open records to hold government accountable, recently quantified that improper and mistaken payments admitted to by the 17 largest federal agencies in the U.S. since 2004 totaled $2.9 trillion. 

 

Power is an aphrodisiac, and the power of the American presidency has grown over the years, as federal agencies have assumed more responsibilities and as Congress has forfeited some of theirs. It is generally conceded that Democrats are the party of government expansion, and that Republicans have the job of reining in federal power; though both parties are attracted to the magnetism of power. Nevertheless, it is unsurprising that twice as many federal employees are registered as Democrats than Republicans. As for political donations in 2020, Democrats out-scored Republicans about 5-1. In the June 23 issue of The Spectator, Roger Kimball wrote, in what is not a total exaggeration: “Every honest person understands that conservatives are allowed to take office but not allowed to take power in the United States.” 

 

The claim by Mr. Sullivan is that free-trade and laissez-faire economics have, as Mr. Ip wrote, “hollowed out the U.S. industrial base, undermined America’s middle class and left the country dangerously vulnerable to climate change, Covid-19 and the weaponization of supply chains by hostile nations.” To deal with these problems, Mr. Sullivan urged a “modern” American industrial policy, in which “a more assertive federal government guides investment, industry and trade.” Keep in mind, these are the folks who destroyed our energy independence, locked down schools and businesses, bankrupted thousands of small businesses, spent trillions on Covid relief, raised the national debt by $3 trillion, and gave us the worst inflation in forty years. And these are the folks that have radicalized cultural and educational institutions. Should they be in charge of our industrial policy?  And how does a government mandated and run industrial policy differ from central planning, the essential tenet of socialism? And which has been better for individual freedom, a rising standard of living and a cleaner environment – capitalism or socialism? Where are air, rivers, and lakes cleaner? In Russia, China, and Venezuela, or in the United States, Britain, and Canada?

 

Mr. Sullivan couched his words and terms in tones acceptable to those who proudly display their moral superiority: He wants to do away with Republican’s “regressive tax cuts;” (according to the OECD, the United States has the most progressive tax system in the world). He wants to replace “deep cuts to public investment” (this after passing the $1.85 trillion American Rescue Plan) and eliminate Republican measures that have “undermined the labor movement” (which measures he did not disclose). He claimed that Bidenomics would produce “a just and effective clean-energy transition,” “restore the middle class,” and repair “faith in democracy and liberty.” Just how this was to be done we were not told.

 

Mr. Sullivan might argue that I have misinterpreted and/or overstated his proposal, and perhaps I have. But his words remind me of the Arabian proverb: “If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.” Like climate and like all living things, governments are not static. They are run by individuals, and personal growth is achieved when the institution, whether a federal bureaucracy or a private enterprise, expands. So, expansion in government is natural. That said, government expansion should be done with care, not willfully. Our government was founded on the premise that its power would be limited, and that individual freedom would be paramount. Keep in mind, it was the over-reach of His Majesty’s government that sparked the American Revolution. 

 

Over the past two hundred and fifty years, we have moved toward more government control, and that is probably to be expected as we have become a larger, more complex nation, with better communication and wider access to information. However, we are a nation founded on the principles that all men are created equal, there is a right to private ownership, we operate under the rule of law, one is innocent until proven guilty, and justice is meted equally. The risk is that we are moving away from those simple but eternal principles, toward more government control. And that is why Mr. Sullivan’s words are so frightening.

"Conformity - Death Knell for Freedom"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Conformity – Death Knell for Freedom”

April 4, 2022

 

“…for conformity is the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.”

                                                                                                                              President John F. Kennedy

                                                                                                                              Speech to the UN General Assembly

                                                                                                                              September 25, 1961

 

News sources seem unable to deal with more than one crisis at a time. Three months ago, and for the previous twenty-one months, airwaves were dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it is Ukraine. What has been happening in Ukraine is awful, but is it, as commentators on both Fox News and MSNBC have reported, the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II? Is it worse than China’s Cultural Revolution, which caused an estimated 20 million deaths? Is it worse than the Cambodian killing fields when the Communist-led Khmer Rouge slew as many as 3.0 million people? Does it compare to Islamic terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa where 3 million Christians have been displaced and 43,000 killed in Nigeria alone? Where is perspective? Evil is part of human nature. It was because of the existence of evil that the Founders put constraints on governmental power. Evil leaders – from Hitler, Hirohito and Stalin to Mao Zedong, from Kim Jong-un to Ali Khamenei, from Xi Jinping to Vladimir Putin – rule by forced conformity, with none of the restraints on their leadership necessary for people to live freely and securely. Dissent is not allowed. Opposition to prescribed doctrines threatens totalitarian leaders.

 

Lest one tags me as an anarchist, let me add that I do believe in conformity when it comes to adherence to civility – tolerance, decency and respect for others, regardless of opinions, gender or race. And I believe in the universal values, embedded in traditional concepts of virtue. It is not the superficial differences reflected in gender and race, but differences in the opinions we carry, that threaten progressives’ desire for conformity. The freedom to express those opinions in a civil manner is critical to a democracy. In his 2007 book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo wrote, “Research shows that the decisions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful; and creative when there is a minority dissent than when it is absent.” It is the premise behind the success of democracies versus the failure of authoritarian rule.

 

Politically, my preference is for Lockean free markets and individual liberty, but I realize our country and politics have grown more complicated, with government assuming responsibilities it did not once have – in voting rights, education, commerce, transportation, retirement, health, protections against fraud, etc. Nevertheless, and while I am in accord with many of government’s responsibilities, they have come with a cost. While the population of the U.S. has increased by a factor of 63 times, from 5.3 million in 1800 to 335 million, the budget of the federal government has grown at a far faster rate – from $11 million in 1800 to a proposed $5.8 trillion in fiscal 2023, or by a factor of over 500,000 times. As government has become more deeply rooted in our lives, elected officials have become less representative – from 106 House members in 1800 to 435 today. Yet there are 1000 times more unelected federal employees today than in 1800 –11,000 to over 11 million. One might argue that today’s social and international complexities warrant a relatively larger government, but this much bigger? And is it surprising that federal bureaucrats whose careers are dependent on ever-growing government, support politicians who favor government expansion?

 

The Left claims the threat to democracy comes from an autocratic Donald Trump and his far-right followers, but that is a red herring to detract from the greater risk that stems from conformity to a progressive manifesto, with tenets that preach gospels which must be obeyed – on climate change, critical race theory, ESG ratings, DEI adherence, mask mandates and digital IDs. Failure to comply with woke policies at universities, and in law firms and corporations, and on Wall Street result in an Orwellian world of cancellation and loss of employment. While Mr. Trump never attained my standards for civility, and his undisciplined use of words risked damage at home and abroad, he was never the threat to democracy that comes from the insidious reach for power that is the progressive state. In a recent op-ed regarding Anthony Fauci and COVID-19 but which is pertinent to today’s woke progressives, Roger Kimball wrote of frogs and boiling water. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. On the other hand, if you place the frog into a pot and gradually heat it, the “frog will linger languidly…as it is slowly cooked alive.”

 

Reversing the trend in federal expansion may be impossible but slowing its rate is doable, which should be the goal, as every service assumed by government reduces individual choice. At a time when the Left warns of threats to democracy, we should remember that democracy is not designed to be efficient or to have equal outcomes. It was designed with checks and balances. It abhors an invasive administrative state that demands conformity. It thrives on limited and unintrusive government, while it empowers the individual and encourages values found in families and personal faith.

 

The social, psychological and economic effects of the government’s mandates regarding COVID-19, the subsequent rise in inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had (and will have) real-world consequences for the well-being of the American people. “When the rock of green and woke ideology hits the hard place of reality, sheer madness always results,” wrote Victor Davis Hanson in an op-ed last month. Phrases like social justice, words like inclusivity, diversity and equity and acronyms like ESG and CRT lose their meanings when definitions conform to what the state deems acceptable. Is it right for transgender women to be allowed to compete against biological women in sports, or is it okay when parents are discouraged from instructing their children in traditional Christian values?

 

The French expression vive la difference is generally linked to distinctions between the sexes, but it could as well refer to the myriad opinions we all carry, views that reflect our individual upbringings, experiences, studies, readings and associations. It is the uninhibited flow of ideas that is the backbone of democracy. Conformity, in contrast, demands we relegate our minds to the imprisonment of those who would guide us.

"Who's in Charge?"

I have a copy of the book of cartoons I referenced. While still amusing, despite almost eighty years, the cartoons are a reminder that we need the ability to laugh at ourselves, not to take ourselves too seriously, something becoming more difficult in this age of political correctness. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Who’s in Charge?”

October 28, 2021

 

“Who’s in charge here?”

                                                                                                                    Herblock (Herbert Lawrence Block – 1909-2001)

                                                                                                                     Editorial cartoon, Washington Post, July 18, 1979

 

My parents had a book of cartoons titled, Who’s in Charge Here? Written in 1943, it is a compilation of cartoons by George Price (1901-1995) who had started drawing for The New Yorker in 1929 and continued doing so into his 80s. While Herblock’s cartoon was aimed at President Carter, the message could be directed at today’s White House. As last Saturday’s lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal put it: “…all Presidents stumble in speech. But Mr. Biden’s frequent public confusion about the major issues of the day is a reason for the growing public concern.” If Mr. Biden is mentally unfit, who is in charge?

 

Mr. Biden’s incoherence and mental lapses should concern us. Roger Kimball, the American art critic and conservative social commentator recently posed a rhetorical question: “Is it more worrisome that Joe Biden might not be in charge, or that he actually is in charge?” The White House website states that the power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States. Including members of the armed forces, the Branch employs more than four million Americans, more than any private company, and a number that exceeds the population of the United States when George Washington became our first President. (In total, according to the Brookings Institute, the federal government employs nine million.) The White House website reads: “The President is both head of state and head of government of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.” It is arguably the most powerful position in the world. The American people deserve to know who is in charge.  

 

It does not appear to be Joe Biden whose political reputation extends back over fifty years. During last year’s campaign, he ran as the moderate alternative to Senator’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He promised, like his predecessor Warren Harding 100 years earlier, a return to “normalcy.” However, his support of Critical Race Theory and gender-neutral pronouns, and his recent proposals for a “Green New Deal,” universal basic income, a wealth tax and a five trillion-dollar budget satisfy the most radical Progressives in Congress. They remind us of Barack Obama’s pledge in late October 2008 in Columbia, Missouri, shortly before his election: “…we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” While Mr. Obama later walked back those comments, they preordained Mr. Biden’s intent to “transform” our culture, schools and economy.

 

Despite his despicable behavior to Judge Robert Bork, when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987, Mr. Biden, through most of his career, shied from extremism. He is, though, prone to gaffes, plagiarism and disrespectful behavior, all excused by a mainstream media more interested in promoting an agenda than in reporting hard news. He has used political connections to enrich himself and his family. His affinity for coming close to women – touching them and sniffing their hair – earned him the sobriquet “Creepy Uncle Joe.” He has been condescending about and to blacks. In 2007, he was quoted in the New York Observer regarding Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean that’s a storybook, man.” In 2012, during the Presidential race, he told a largely black audience that Mitt Romney’s economic policies would “put y’all back in chains.” To Charlemagne the God on “The Breakfast Club, an American syndicated radio show, during the 2020 Presidential race, Mr. Biden said: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.”

 

With the exception of Donald Trump, who was falsely accused of Russian collusion by Democrats and mainstream media, Mr. Biden has become more unpopular more quickly than any President in recent history. Rasmussen puts his approval ratings at 43% and disapproval at 56%. His list of failures is long: Regulatory and monetary policies that have given rise to nascent but rampant inflation. The cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline and restrictions on fracking and offshore drilling have made the U.S. no longer energy independent and have given rise to higher gasoline and heating fuel prices. COVID restrictions kept children out of schools, and they have abetted a labor-starved supply chain, which created product shortages and kept millions of Americans sidelined. His Attorney General has accused parents of school children of being domestic terrorists. His mixed messaging about masks and vaccine mandates have created confusion with families, in places of work and in schools. In opening our southern border, he has permitted a record number of immigrants to illegally enter our country. “Defund the police” has resulted in high crime and murder rates, especially in minority sections of cities, along with low morale and an historic exodus of police officers. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in unnecessary deaths and abandoned 450 Americans to the Taliban; and it sent a message of American weakness abroad, giving rise to an obstreperous Russia and militant China. A vacuum of leadership overseas has allowed Iran to move forward on nuclear weapons and encouraged Europe to work more closely with Russia and China. Mr. Biden’s inarticulateness and refusal to answer questions have left millions in the dark as to who is piloting the ship. Given Biden’s recent polls, it is unsurprising why whoever is manipulating the puppet strings does not want to be identified. But that does not mean some one (or some cabal) is not in charge. 

 

Successful politics in a liberal democracy is always about compromise. It is what allows us to avoid being mired in an uncompromising past and prevents us from leaping unprepared into an unknown future. Compromise requires mutual respect and civility. But voters must know who represents us, not the cartoon figures provided by the media. Is Mr. Biden in charge, or is it another individual or an oligarchy that governs us? Not knowing is unfair to the American public. Consider how The New York Times and The Washington Post would report this story if it were a Republican President who had campaigned from his basement and now, as President, hides from the press. 

 

Perhaps I am wrong, and Mr. Biden has his mental faculties, and what we witness is simply a manifestation of his radical transformation. Perhaps. But most people do not become more radical as they age, and Mr. Biden will enter his eightieth year on November 20. It is more likely he is cognitively challenged, the extent of which is being kept from the American people. His interviews remind me of Lewis Carroll’s Alice (us) in her conversation with the inane Mad Hatter (Mr. Biden). The Hatter had Alice “very much confused. ‘I don’t think…’ [she says]. ‘Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.” Despite efforts by the Administration to confuse us with rants about climate, gender and race, we are beginning to think and to speak out, as parents in suburban Virginia have demonstrated.

 

However, the question remains unanswered: Who’s in charge?

"Cult of Personality v. Suppression of Voices"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Cult of Personality v. Suppression of Voices”

May 25, 2021

 

“The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.”

                                                                                                                                Alexander Berkman (1870-1936)

                                                                                                                                Author, The Bolshevik Myth, 1925

 

Olawale Daniel, founder of TechAtLast International, once said: “The most dangerous and powerful people in the world do not carry guns or shoot missiles; they write code to surveil and suppress opposing views.” There is no question that a commanding personality can become demagogic, especially when emotion supplants reason, and the goal is nefarious. But a demagogue only becomes dangerous when accompanied by a willing state, a compliant media and a culture of conformity that does not permit dissenting voices. So long as people are free to exercise their natural rights to speak, write, assemble and pray, people will remain the master and politicians the servants.

 

For four years the Left ranted about the risk to democracy, with a “demagogic” Donald Trump in the White House. They spoke of his coarseness, exaggerations, and his non-PC speech. Ignored were the facts he diminished government’s impact on individuals through deregulation and reduced government’s resources through lower taxes. A charismatic personality can camouflage a bad leader, as the world learned in the last century, with Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, but it can also magnify a good leader, like Churchill, FDR or Ronald Reagan.  

 

It is the suppression of voices that should concern lovers of freedom. In 1950, when the United States was experiencing a “Red Scare” and Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) was starting his infamous hearings, President Truman sent a special message to Congress on August 8: “…we must be eternally vigilant against those who would undermine freedom in the name of security.” Three years later, in the March 1953 issue of the Vassar Alumnae Magazine, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote: “Restrictions of free thought is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one Un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” Over the years, free expression allowed man to grow and expand his horizons. Freedom, progress and wealth are its progeny. It is a never-ending process, which will continue so long as man is able to think, speak and act freely.

 

In his concurrence in Whitney v. California (1927), Justice Louis Brandies wrote: “Man feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.” When universities ban books for fear of hurtful language, they do damage to those they purport to protect. When politicians repress opposing views with threats of investigations and inquiries, they do irreparable harm to our Constitution. When tech companies shut down social media accounts for those they dislike, they set precedents that affect all mankind. When mainstream media reports only the news that fit their narrative, they promote ignorance rather than knowledge. During the Trump years, the response of the Left was far more dangerous than anything Mr. Trump said or did, for they blocked dissent and suppressed speech. It is not just Mr. Trump who was treated in this manner, but those who supported him. This was done under a hypocritical flag of moral righteousness, abetted by mainstream media and a cultural environment that celebrated wokeness, and which canceled history and opinions when they did not conform to a predetermined narrative.  

 

Who is responsible for this state of affairs? Politicians? The media? Schools and universities? Churches? Wall Street and large corporations? TV personalities? Cultural institutions? Hollywood? Publishers? Eleemosynary organizations? All bear some responsibility. In a political environment inundated with conflicting opinions and no one to sort them out other than ourselves, we must, like Diogenes, conduct the search for truth alone, whether it is asking about the unpublished Durham Report, learning exactly what happened on January 6, or uncovering the origins of COVID-19. In an undated video, Carl Sagan (1934-1996), the astronomer and planetary scientist, spoke: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge.”

 

While Sagan was speaking about science, his words reflect the current environment of enforced conformity to woke ideas regarding equity, diversity, inclusion, victimization, race and gender. Roger Kimball, writing in the May issue of The Spectator, noted that at one time colleges and universities were dedicated to the “pursuit of truth and the transmission of the highest values of our civilization.” Today, the “mantra is ‘diversity.’ The reality is strictly enforced conformity about any ideas that might disturb the heavy moral slumber of wokeness.” The story of our past is cancelled, for fear it celebrates the whiteness of our European ancestors, thus denying today’s youth the history of man’s progress over the centuries. Today, some of the United States’ most successful individuals emigrated from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. It was here, within our culture and customs and under our government and our laws, that they flourished. Is not that something to recognize and celebrate?

 

History moves across a continuum, reflecting events and ideas, along with changing and unchanging values. We cannot know who we are without learning of our past, the good and the bad. Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter, under the banner of equity, would have us fall backward into a discriminatory and divisive past, when we should be moving forward toward a mutually respectful and tolerant future. In a recent column in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote: “When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all-too predictable future becomes terrifying.” Staying silent, when an enormous cloud of fairy dust is sprinkled on the people by woke elites, is not the answer.

 

While there is, at present, no mesmerizing politician on the Left capable of lassoing the current cultural environment of wokeness and suppressed speech, the landscape has been prepared and the gate is open. I am reminded of how the ground in Germany was furrowed and seeded in the half dozen years leading to Hitler’s Chancellorship in 1933. We must be vigilant. For, it is when the charismatic politician enters an arena with uncritical support from the media, universities, woke corporations and cultural institutions that we have to fear.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome Persists"

 This is being sent this evening, as I have an early morning doctor’s appointment – a routine checkup, but I do not want to be late. 

 

The rubric in the essay below is from Joseph Epstein, one of the best essayists writing today. It was selected before the Left’s deranged brouhaha over his reference to Dr. Jill Biden. Their attitude (the Left’s) certainly does not portend a return to normalcy, if normalcy is defined as civility and reason. In fact, I would suggest their forced and supercilious reaction indicated behavior in need of therapy. Of course, they likely feel the same way about me, which is what makes democracy so interesting.  

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Trump Derangement Syndrome Persists”

December 15, 2020

 

“In stage three [of Trump Derangement Syndrome], one is ready to believe anything

– anything pernicious or salacious, that is – about Mr. Trump and to reject anything

he has done that might be good for the country, if only because of the man who did it.”

                                                                                                                                                Joseph Epstein (1937 - )

                                                                                                                                                Wall Street Journal

                                                                                                                                                July 9, 2020

 

While I have not fussed much over last month’s election results, I believe, despite the Electoral College certifying the election, that there was fraud and other shenanigans. How else to explain halted vote counting in swing states; election rules changed without authorization from state legislatures; unsigned mail-in ballots, etc. Can we really believe that a candidate who spent much of the campaign in his home received ten million more votes than did Barack Obama in 2012? Congress and state legislatures should ensure that voter laws are explicit and fair. One is left wondering, not only about voter fraud, but about the size of the turnout. Apparently 156 million people voted, or 66% of registered voters, the highest percentage since 1900 and twenty percent more people than in 2016! Now, Mr. Trump’s options are gone; nevertheless, when politics smell fishy, it is usually more than a week-old Mackerel in the trunk of a car. 

 

Last Friday’s lead editorial in our local paper, The Day, stated: “But Trump has caused profound damage, having convinced tens of millions of people who voted for him that Biden is not a legitimate president.” Whether the statemen is true or not, I do not know, but the hypocrisy of the paper’s editorial board is heavier than a London fog. They, and most of mainstream media, never condemned the “Resistance” that for four years claimed Trump was an illegitimate president. They avoided the subject of Mr. Biden’s noticeable deteriorating mental acuity and stayed away from the Hunter Biden scandal. The Day posits itself as independent. Their masthead reads: “The newspaper should be more than a business enterprise. It should also be a champion and protector of the public interest and defender of the people’s rights.” Sadly, the paper, like so many others, has become a defender of the progressive movement and a foe of the messiness that is natural to the democracy of a free and independent people. In looking for potential threats to liberty, the media has a habit of ignoring peril from the left, like the hairbrained schemes of stacking the Supreme Court and doing away with the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Wannabe tyrants do not alienate the media and reduce the power of government, as Trump has done with his sarcastic remarks to the press, and as he did in cutting regulations. Budding despots befriend the media, and they increase personal and government power through rules and regulations, like Governors Cuomo and Newsom. 

 

Trump will leave office in January, but it is unlikely the media will move on. “The spirit of Trumpism,” as Roger Kimball wrote recently, “is not vanquished.” So, Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) will remain, as it has served to bolster the bottom lines of media enterprises. Do the New York Times and the Washington Post expect to maintain their reader and viewer-ships when their big stories are about the patterns on Biden’s socks, or querying about his mending ankle? Will mainstream media do an about-face and lavish praise on Mr. Trump for reducing black unemployment to record lows, for creating Operation Warp Speed that gave us a vaccine in record time, for getting four Arab nations to recognize Israel, for confronting China on stealing technology, or for marginalizing Iran in their pursuit of nuclear weapons? It is far more likely they will continue to hound the only U.S. President whose net worth dropped by more than a billion dollars while he served the American people. To do so is good for their bottom line. Will Mr. Biden be queried about his deteriorating mental state or his son Hunter who made millions, using his Dad’s influence, from a country that is America’s largest economic and military threat. Will Hunter be treated with the same disdain as President Trump’s children? Not likely, as that would offend ‘woke’ readers.

 

Joe Biden promises a return to normal. In May 2019, while seeking the Democratic nomination, he said, “The country is sick of division. They’re sick of the fighting. They’re sick of the childish behavior.” However, which Party sought to divide people by race, gender and sexual orientation? Which Party was behind the riots that devastated cities like Portland and Seattle? Was it not childish for Democrats to boycott Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017? Mr. Biden’s words were ones with which no one can disagree, but how to achieve conciliation in a nation where, as Walter Williams once said, “liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual,” not the right to free college and healthcare? Will Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer put politics aside, link arms with Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy and sing Kumbaya? Will the concept of diversity expand to include diversity of opinion? Will the police again be allowed to confront criminals without fear of losing their jobs? Will borders be opened to anyone, so long as they register as Democrats? Will Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia be admitted as states, to assure four more Democratic U.S. Senators? Will the Supreme Court be expanded to achieve a progressive majority? Will Black Lives Matter and Antifa recede into the shadows, as their usefulness has ended with the ascendancy of Biden and Harris? Will one-Party rule be the future for this rich and diverse nation? “But let there be no change by usurpation, for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed,” wrote George Washington in his 1796 Farewell Address?   

 

And what about our schools and universities? Will teachers’ unions put students first, even if it means sending them to non-unionized charter schools? Will colleges become venues for open debate? Will university professors’ welcome conservatives who might influence the malleable minds of students, yet untutored in their progressive, Orwellian world? As long as the spirit of Trumpism exists, it is more likely that dissent will be forbidden, no matter which Republican carries the banner. One thing we know – tyrants, from the right or the left, cannot abide those who disagree. 

 

Trump Derangement Syndrome says more about those who have it than about Mr. Trump. It is a condition in which an individual’s visceral hatred for Mr. Trump causes him or her to forsake logic and reason. It is held by those who see in Mr. Trump’s character a man who fights as hard and as ruthlessly as do they. And it will be around as long as Mr. Trump and what he stands for are perceived as a threat to the ‘deep state’ and a progressive agenda. But it is not aimed solely at Mr. Trump. It is what he represents, a threat to our cultural elite and the cozy lives of Washington’s insiders. Ulysses Grant was not liked by traditional West Pointers, but he was fearless; he had common sense, an abiding faith in ultimate victory, and he did not let up. Lincoln may not have admired his whiskey habit (though he offered to send a barrel of Grant’s favorite to his other generals), but he respected and needed his fighting spirit. The United States has had the same two Parties for the past two hundred and sixty-six years. Yet one Party dominates our culture, media, universities, public-sector unions, Wall Street, global firms, tech companies, ‘green’ businesses and Washington’s bureaucracy. In Trump, the American people found an individual who fights for the average American and helps reverse the slide toward stateism. A free people cannot live in a one-Party country.

 

One consequence of what we have witnessed: January’s Senatorial runoffs loom ever more important. As Monday’s Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial stated: “There is a time to fight, and a time to concede.” Now is the time for Republicans, including Mr. Trump and his supporters, to accept Mr. Biden’s victory and to focus on Georgia.