"The Mid-Terms: Some Thoughts"

 Apologies for taking so long to comment on the election, but below are my thoughts. I am a slow thinker and even slower writer. With Democrats in control of both houses,  but divided between Socialist/progressives and centrists, the next few months may be unsettling, as everyone learns the playing field. I just hope common sense prevails and the Republic remains strong. After all, we are all in this together.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“The Mid-Terms: Some Thoughts”

November 9, 2026

 

“Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read...”

                                                                                                                       “Ozymandias,” 1818

                                                                                                                         Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

 

When I woke Wednesday morning and learned of the night’s debacle, my first thought was of Shelly’s poem. Since my wife and I retire early, we did not listen to the returns. Instead we watched Frank Capra’s 1944 screwball comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.” We laughed while the Trump White House cringed.

 

Republicans took a shellacking, and the blame lies solely on President Trump. In my opinion, it was not the war with Iran, nor was it the economy or immigration. It was imperative that Iran be deprived of nuclear weapons, but Mr. Trump never adequately explained the purpose, nor did he execute the mission well. Of course, inflation was a problem, but the economy expanded at a 3.4% rate in the 3^rd quarter, besting analyst expectations, the labor participation rate rose and unemployment declined. Inflation, though, driven by energy prices, remained high at 3.7%. The border was closed, but Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) was ruthless in the deportation of illegal migrants. Even so. more than three times as many were deported during the eight years of President Obama’s term.

 

Despite having a 37% approval rating, Mr. Trump told fans at his thirty-odd political rallies over the past month to pretend he was on the ticket. They did, but so did the 63% who disapproved of his performance. It was a gross miscalculation by a self-indulgent individual high on the applause of his loyal followers.

 

It is not as though everything has been bad under the second Trump presidency. The border has been secured. Nicolas Maduro was captured. The Jones Act was waived, at least temporarily. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially rescinded its 50-year-old “gag rule.” Elite universities were confronted regarding woke policies. Iran’s nuclear ambitions were set back. China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere has been curtailed. NATO countries have increased defense spending. In contrast to other Western nations, the U.S. economy has done well. US GDP is 10% higher than two years ago, as are corporate earnings.

 

But the Iran war is at a stalemate. Ukraine appears to have been abandoned. China has increased its presence in the Pacific. The U.S. still spends less on defense, as a percent of GDP, than it did thirty years ago, five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. While GDP and corporate earnings have expanded over the past two years, so has the size of the federal deficit. Tariffs against neighbors and allies have damaged relationships and contributed to inflation. And the Trump Administration has shifted industrial policy, so that about $30 billion in public funds have been committed to dozens of public and private companies.   

 

In my opinion, the biggest cause for the Republican rout was President Trump – his ego, his desire for revenge and his corruption. Corruption plagues both parties and neither party is trusted to combat it. Yet John Fund recently noted in The Spectator: “A stunning 90 percent of voters said it was a crucial or major factor in their vote,” which neither party is trusted to combat. In his first term, President Trump was mercilessly attacked by Democrats and the media, yet he never personally benefitted from his position. In fact, Forbes estimated that his net worth declined by about a billion dollars.

 

In contrast, Forbes now estimates that his net worth has roughly doubled to about seven billion dollars, fed by cryptocurrency projects like World Liberty Financial, meme coins, and with alleged real-estate and licensing projects in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Trump’s two oldest sons are presumed to have ties to companies like Vulcan Elements, Unusual Machines and Powerus, which have received favorable contracts with the Pentagon. During the 2024 campaign, he railed against President Biden’s corruption and that of his son. But they seem pikers in comparison. And for God’s sake, why does he go on radio and TV selling Trump watches?

 

The Republican party has long been home for conservatives, those who believe in limited government, separation of powers, individual liberty, free enterprise, rule of law, tradition and social order, and strong defense. As conservatives, we see those values and standards forsaken. In fact, we have not had a President who abided by those principles since Ronald Reagan.

 

The Obama and Biden administrations ignored those principles. In 2016 Mr. Trump represented a change – perhaps not our first choice, but a disruptor to the coziness of Washington and K Street. In his first term he was restrained, with Mike Pence as Vice President, Michael Pompeo as Secretary of State, Nikki Haley at the UN, William Barr as Attorney General, and others. Nevertheless, he was treated ruthlessly by most Democrats and their friends in the media. In his second term, he is extracting revenge.

 

His selection of Stephen Miller to be his next Chief of Staff, suggests there will be no mea culpa. Unless something dramatic changes, his attitude seems to be – the hell with conservatives, the Republican Party and the Union. His demise – for that is what it is likely to be – is Shakespearean. From a man who over ten years ago descended the escalator to announce his run for President, to disrupt a status quo that had become statist, elitist and distant from the people, his greed and ego have destroyed him, at least for all but his MAGA stalwarts. The last three lines of Shelly’s poem are relevant:

 

“Nothing beside remains, Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

"Murder at the GRand Alpine Hotel," Lucy Foley (Agatha Christie)

 

 

As I wrote when I introduced this series ten years ago, these essays about books are not critical reviews; they are simply short pieces of books I have enjoyed.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel

Lucy Foley (Agatha Christie)

November 7, 2026

 

“It is ‘her rich understanding of character and psychology gained

from a lifetime of observing people that allows her to solve things.’”

                                                             Lucy Foley on Jane Marple, in an interview with Ellen Gamerman

                                                              The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2026

 

Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare, according to Wikipedia, are tied for best-selling authors of all-time. Estimates are that each has sold somewhere between two and four billion books. In all, Ms. Christie wrote sixty-six mysteries, including twelve Jane Marple stories, the first being Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and the last being Sleeping Murder, published after her death in 1976.

 

This novel represents the first full-length official Miss Marple-continuation-novel published in fifty years. The book was commissioned by James Pritchard, CEO of Agatha Christie Ltd. Agatha Christie died at age 85. Lucy Foley, 40, was born ten years after Ms. Christie’s death. 

 

Fans of Agatha Christie, and especially fans of her sleuth Jane Marple, will be delighted with this story. And if you have watched Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series, which aired from 1984 to 1992 on British television (and available today on Amazon Prime) with Joan Hickson (1906-1998) as Miss Marple, you will have what I believe is the perfect image of Miss Marple. 

 

Ms. Foley had to follow certain ground rules. Ms. Marple could not be young. She could not have a boyfriend. And she could be neither the killer nor the victim. In the interview with Ms. Gamerman cited above, Ms. Foley said that she read all twelve Miss Marple novels “at least four times.” In my opinion, Ms. Foley has captured the elderly, proper, observant Miss Marple. For example, here she is speaking to her friend Mrs. Bantry: “The English upper classes, in my experience, employ similar tactics to the breeding of young women as to horses.”

 

The time is 1950 (World War II plays a role), the season is winter and the setting a luxury Swiss hotel high up in the Swiss alps near the Italian border, reached only by cog railway. The guests are an assortment of British, European and Americans, most on holiday; others not. The story is told through the voices of four guests – Diana Glass (“the help”), Sylvia Sinclair (“the star”), Bruno Crane (“the friend”)), and Catherine Narracott (“the wife”). Jane Marple –  “the perfect image of a little old lady” – is there, of course, with her friend the widowed Mrs. Bantry and Mrs. Bantry’s companion, Diana Glass.

 

The story opens with a murder; more will take place. A storm cuts off all travel to or from the hotel, giving Ms. Marple time, using her powers of deduction she solves the crime. This reader, provided the same clues, was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, he had a delightful time, and I suspect you will too.

"Frederick Douglass's American Founding," Dennis Rasmussen

 A quote often misattributed to Albert Einstein has applicability: “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” Too often, we are rigid in our beliefs, even as we despair of those with equal rigidity for opposing beliefs. In this book, the reader is witness to one of the most brilliant minds of the 19^thCentury undergo change.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Frederick Douglass’s American Founding, Dennis Rasmussen

October 31, 2026

 

“Opinion shapers create the horizon within which politicians are able to act.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Dennis Rasmussen (1978-)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Frederick Douglass’s American Founding, 2026

 

Frederick Douglass, born a slave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1818, was a forceful speaker, a brilliant writer, and an advocate for abolition and social reform from 1838 until his death in 1895. The author of this short (170 pages of text and 24 pages of notes) assumes the reader has some knowledge of Douglass. Dennis Rasmussen’s, a professor of history at Syracuse University, purpose is to examine Douglass’s change of opinion regarding the Constitution. This he does.

 

In 1840, Douglass, who had taught himself to read while a child and who had escaped slavery at age twenty, came under the influence of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips in Boston. Both were abolitionists who believed the Constitution protected and promoted slavery. Douglass accepted their interpretation. In May he published his first book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. He then spent two years in Great Britain, speaking against slavery in the United States. He later wrote: “Whilst America asserted the doctrine that everyone was born equal, he would denounce her hypocrisy.”

 

He wrote and spoke of the four clauses he felt promoted slavery: the 3/5 Clause, the Slave Trade Clause, the Fugitive Slave Clause, and the Suppressing National Domestic Violence Clause. Abolitionists were divided regarding the Constitution. On one side were those who felt it was pro-slavery – men like Garrison and Phillips (who, ironically, were joined by southern slave owners who believed the Constitution justified their practice). On the other side were Abolitionists like William Goodell, Lysander Spooner and Gerit Smith who saw it as a document for liberty – that it should be read for its words, what it says, not for what it does not say. And there those like Lincoln, in the years before the Civil War, who believed that the Constitution was neither pro-slavery nor anti-slavery. 

 

Around 1850, Douglass came under the influence of Goodell, Spooner and Smith, and he began to read the Constitution more carefully. On July 5, 1852 he delivered one of his best-known speeches: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” It was, as Rasmussen writes “a devastating critique of America, but it is not a critique of America’s founding. “Far from regarding the founding and the founders as the source of the problem, as he once had, Douglass now saw them as a resource that could be used to remedy the problem.” 

 

All the clauses that he had once said supported slavery he now read as explaining why the Constitution was the “very vehicle for abolition.” The Nation needed not new principles, but a more rigorous adherence to those laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 

 

In their 1983 book Without Me You’re Nothing, authors Frank Herbert and Max Bernard wrote: “We define intelligence as the ability to adapt to change.” It is rare when we witness an individual with the intellectual abilities of Federick Douglass change his mind on so important a matter. Professor Rasmussen has done an admirable job.