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Donald Trump

His Party’s Platform: It’s Always about Him

August 26, 2020
by Peter Feinman
He is the party platform. It's always about him. (Evan Vucci AP)

Presidential conventions normally are a time of party platforms. Naturally, nothing is normal this time around. In this regard I am not referring to such obvious promises not kept as building a wall, having Mexico pay for it, or bringing back coal, steel, and other manly jobs. Instead, I mean various other promises made. I began listing them at the conclusion of some blogs on May 4 and added a few as time went on. Below is the status on each one rearranged by topic with some recent convention-related addiions.

CORVID-19: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

We have prevailed!!!!

4/6   There is “light at the end of the tunnel” [the father]
8/24 There is more work to do, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. [the junior son]

In the May blog, I asked when we would see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now the end is in sight. The pandemic is over at Fox. The pandemic is in the past tense per Larry Kudlow. The heroic bold leadership of the incumbent President has ended the crisis. Trumpicans believe the virus is under control even without a vaccine. In fact Trumpicans know that the so-called crisis always had been overblown by the media.

These claims are true in the real world in which the Trumpicans live. It is not an alternate reality or parallel universe as elitists dismissively claim, it is their real world. How many of the deceased are Trumpicans? If you tracked the dead by county using 2016 election results, what would the results be? Do individual Trumpicans even know anyone personally who was infected and died?  If Secret Service agents, White House staff and athletes who are infected recover, doesn’t that prove Corvid-19 is like the flu? My position has been all along that unless Trumpicans are dying in droves, they will not wear masks or accept the virus as a crisis. After six months it hasn’t happened. Nothing different should have been done. Mission accomplished.

5/17 “After November 3rd, coronavirus will magically, all of the sudden, go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen. They think they’re taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which is to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000 people every time. They will milk it every single day between now and November 3rd.” [the other son]
8/23 Democratic governors only imposed shutdowns to hurt his political chances in November: “I guarantee it on Nov. 4, it will all open up.” [the father]

Like father, like son. So not only will November 4 be the beginning of legal filings on the most rigged and corrupt election in American history, it will be the day when all Covid-19 restrictions will cease according to the father and the other son.

October 2020: announce vaccine cure in Election Day surprise – still on target
January 1, 2021: begin distribution of miracle vaccine – still on target

HEALTHCARE

How many times have we heard about the beautiful beautiful new healthcare program that will replace the worst healthcare program in American history? I first wrote about it on June 19, 2019 in Iran Does Not Watch Fox: The Real World and the 2020 Elections.

“You’ll see that in a month when we introduce it. We’re going to have a plan. That’s subject to winning the House, Senate, and presidency, which hopefully we’ll win all three. We’ll have phenomenal health care.”

Now we have the target as surely as they did for William Miller on October 22, 1844 with the Great Disappointment. We know the date. July 16.

July 16, 2019 has come and gone. So has July 16, 2020. Still no health care proposal. In fact, on July 19, 2020, he was back at in an interview with Chris Wallace.

TRUMP: Pre-existing conditions will always be taken care of by me and Republicans, 100%.
WALLACE: But you’ve been in office three and a half years, you don’t have a plan.
TRUMP: Well, we haven’t had. Excuse me. You heard me yesterday. We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do.
So we’re going to solve — we’re going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan and various other plans. And nobody will have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks.
The Supreme Court gave the President of the United States powers that nobody thought the President had, by approving, by doing what they did — their decision on DACA. And DACA’s going to be taken care of also.
But we’re getting rid of it because we’re going to replace it with something much better. What we got rid of already, which was most of Obamacare, the individual mandate. And that I’ve already won on. And we won also on the Supreme Court.

Is it two weeks yet since that interview? Four weeks? Will there ever be a healthcare proposal? Will the Supreme Court strike down the world’s worst healthcare plan before the election? At least we know that the vaunted red wave will win the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.

ECONOMY

May 8 2020: “Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon.”
June 2020: Back to Normal economy
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now: “We will transition into greatness. That’s a phrase you’re going to hear a lot, because that’s what’s going to happen.”
August 20: “We are doing well. We’re doing well. We got hit by this China plague. But other than that. I mean, we were rocking. And now we’re going to be rocking again very, very soon.”
Fourth Quarter 2020: economy will be tremendous – still on target.

If he had confined his predictions to the stock market instead of to the economy he would have been right.

OBAMA CORRUPTION 2016 and 2020

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted: still on target

According to Kayleigh McEnany, Obama’s spying on Trump was “the greatest political scandal and crime in U.S. history.” The same view was expressed once again on the first day of the Republican convention.  “We caught them doing really bad thing. Let’s see what happens. They’re trying it again.” If there is damaging information about Obama which was discovered in Hawaii, wouldn’t now be a good time to release it? At least with his loyal Attorney General, there is a guarantee of Election Day surprise indictments that won’t be a surprise. Expect an all-out blitz by Fox, vindicated at last!

ELECTION RESULTS

November 3 2020: Deploy army of real Americans to suppress vote of…you know…those people – Vote Suppressors to become a TV reality show: still on target (some details have emerged on how my prediction will be fulfilled and by whom)
November 3 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS: still on target
January 20 2021: Nancy Pelosi becomes President – still on target

2024 ELECTION PREDICTIONS

1. Biden will abolish the suburbs.
2. Biden is good for Iran, ISIS, and great for Communist China – Nikki “Please choose me” Haley.

OTHER PREDICTIONS

October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING

Despite all the time spent in court in New York and Washington, no action has been taken. So far there has been one judgement to pay over $40,000 in legal fees for one woman and a second woman’s lawsuit is proceeding through the court system slowly but surely.

January 20 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers – still on target but the suggestion of ankle monitors and confinement to Trump Palace also has been mentioned

The key to the predictions is not what you believe to be true but what Trumpicans believe to be true. Second, what will happen with the economy and Corvid-19 between now and Election Day? If the pandemic is in the past and the economy is improving, the 42% vote for the incumbent will increase. It’s still too early to measure the drapes.

SHEAR CHAOS: A Culture Wars Train Wreck for a History Organization

August 19, 2020
by Peter Feinman
SHEAR Conference 2020 (New Mexico Central Railroad train wreck, ca. 1912 reddit.com)

When a history organization makes the front page of the Arts Section of The New York Times, that is big news (“Clash of the Historians Over Andrew Jackson,” July 27, 2020, print). It wasn’t because of some exciting new archival discovery. It wasn’t because of some exciting new archaeological discovery. It wasn’t because of some exciting new book or article that provided new insight into an historical puzzle. Instead it was because of a good old-fashioned knock-down culture wars encounter. As the NYT put it:

[I]t set off a firestorm that led within 72 hours, to set off the ouster of the group’s president, as well as the publication of open letters denouncing the talk and counterletters protesting the ouster. It also caused debate over whether the distinguished academics society was experiencing an overdue reckoning with racism or abandoning its commitment to robust scholarly debate in the face of a Twitter mob.

When the history of the culture wars is written, this incident is likely to be an episode in it.

SHEAR

SHEAR is the Society for Historians of the Early Republic. It was formed in 1977 to provide a focused venue or scholars concentrating on the Early Republic. As the name suggests, the starting point for the time period was the aftermath of the American Revolution. The period that comes to mind is the First Party System, the time of Federalists and Republicans, of presidents from Virginia and Massachusetts. Gradually it became a society of the Second Party System as well, the time of the Whigs and the Democrats. There was no real fixed endpoint. SHEAR drifted into the Jacksonian years and the ante bellum period but not the Civil War. It really ended wherever the roughly 600 members decided their interests took them and that no other history organization claimed.

I am not a member of SHEAR. I have attended some of the annual conferences and written about them.

The General Public and the Early Republic Historians (SHEAR Conference) August 23, 2016

“The Year without Summer” (1816): When Republicans Recognized Climate Change Existed (SHEAR CONFERENCE) August 24, 2016

Teaching Slavery: A SHEAR Perspective September 12, 2016

Universities and the Legacy of Slavery (SHEAR Session) September 22, 2016

The American Revolution: An Academic Perspective October 31, 2019.

I very well might have attended this year’s conference in geographically accessible Philadelphia if it had been held. Obviously, it too was a victim of the coronavirus.

SHEAR ONLINE CONFERENCE

With the cancellation of the in-person conference, SHEAR then had some decisions to make.

1. One Online Session

The first decision was to have one and only one online session. This decision can be questioned. Other conferences have been cancelled and/or rescheduled as virtual events without such a drastic reduction. Conferences can be held over multiple days and involve multiple sessions. SHEAR originally preferred to have multiple sessions. The now-former president of SHEAR expressed this hope:

When the 2020 program was postponed until July 2021, we wished to sponsor a few events to demonstrate that we remain a vital and important organization, even in this troubled time.

How did “a few events,” became one? The new president who normally takes office when the in-person conference concludes added some information.

At the time, we brainstormed about offering a few virtual events over the conference weekend, including the much-loved Second-Book Writers’ Workshop, and a graduate student meet-and-greet (both of which were, thanks to their organizers, great successes). We also asked the chairs of the 2020 Program Committee to recommend panels accepted for the conference that might not feel fresh a year from now. President Egerton approached the organizers of several such panels, but among them, only Professor Daniel Feller agreed to present his panel virtually.

So it was not the original intention to have one and only session. In effect, it was the SHEAR membership (panel organizers) that drove the decision. Given only one positive response, another option would have been to have no online sessions at all.

2. Which One?

At this point if SHEAR wanted to have an online session, it had only one possibility. That one topic seemed most appropriate. The now-former president of SHEAR explained:

The accepted panel on Donald Trump’s efforts to identify with Andrew Jackson struck some members of the program committee as a most timely panel, and one which may not be as relevant after the November elections. This was a stand-alone panel, and not the opening plenary, which remains scheduled for July 2021.

The new president added some information.

Although I was not privy to the specifics of this or any other proposed panel, I endorsed the plan to present it to the membership because I thought it was a timely topic and something that you, the membership, would appreciate. This was a mistake.

Exactly why is was a mistake in the mind of the new president is not clarified. Was it a mistake to have only one session? Was it a mistake to have this session? Was it a mistake to have this session with this presenter? Was it a mistake to have this session in this format? Should this person resign s one person suggested? It would help to know what the new president thinks the mistake in deciding to have this session was.

THE SESSION: JACKSON IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

The abstract for the session was:

Daniel Feller, Professor of History, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, and Editor/Director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee will present his [pre-circulated] paper, “Jackson in the Age of Trump,” which focuses on Donald Trump’s embrace of Andrew Jackson as his presidential model and how this has made Jackson a centerpiece for debate. Jackson has become, on both sides of the current political divide, in effect a stand-in for the American historical legacy. One side celebrates him as the progenitor of full-throated nationalism and insurgent populism, while the other condemns him as the archetype of American xenophobia, bigotry, and racism.

Neither of these portraits has much connection to the real presidential Jackson. Both reduce him to caricature not only by stripping off subtlety and nuance, but often by propagation of naked error. While Trump celebrates Jackson for purportedly raising tariffs and rattling sabers, critics decry him for originating Indian genocide, conducting public policy as personal vendetta in the Bank and nullification controversies, and propounding a uniquely vicious and virulent racism.

In short, we are now waging a public debate about Jackson—and, through him, about American history and character at large—premised upon a set of facts that are drastically oversimplified and even demonstrably untrue. Politicians and pundits have taken the lead in this distortion of the record, but historians have been acquiescent and sometimes directly complicit. Yet if we believe that the manipulation of history for presentist ends—even ones we agree with—is misguided and potentially dangerous, we should make it our business to speak out in defense of the integrity of our discipline, regardless of our present political sympathies.

This description does not match the words of the former president noted above: “The accepted panel on Donald Trump’s efforts to identify with Andrew Jackson.” Quite the contrary, the abstract posits a double dosage of Jackson misinterpretations by both sides of the culture wars.

The scope of the abstract is fairly ambitious…especially for one paper! Given the range of topics within the overall abstract, it would have made more sense to divide it into manageable parts. Each individual would have addressed one aspect of how Jackson has been used and abused by both sides of the culture war and what SHEAR should do about it. That is not what happened.

The initial portion of Feller’s presentation was on a book on Jackson by Walter Mead. Through Steve Bannon, this two-dimensional book portrait of Jackson was conveyed to Trump. At this point I thought about writing a blog on Jackson and Hamilton, Mead and Chernow, Bannon and Manuel-Miranda, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Hamilton, Trump and Obama. That probably would have made for a better session than the food fight that followed.

But the presentation didn’t stop there. My favorite response to the presentation is by the person who three times insistently asked online about Jackson and slavery. What are the odds that the president who thinks Canada burned the White House during the War of 1812, the flu pandemic in 1917 ended World War II, and who only recently learned that Lincoln was a Republican, was familiar with Jackson’s position on slavery? This question is an example of how the session spun out of control. Instead of being descriptive about what happened in last decade it became a fight over Jackson himself. I really didn’t tune in to hear people go on and on about his use of the word “pet.”

As reported by the NYT, a firestorm erupted after the session. A president stepped down. The new one apologized. The plenary speaker retired. His replacement intends to start a diverse advisory committee for people of multiple races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual preferences who share an antipathy towards Jackson perhaps with a token admirer. [I admit I could be wrong on this.] The organization that provides the free internet communication for SHEAR now is requesting a name change from H-SHEAR to something else. The notice of the change stressed the importance of moderated messages with identification of the message sender. This advisory may have contributed to the decision for the name change:

The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic’s virtual plenary was the most exciting thing to happen on Academic Zoom since COVID. Read about the controversy.

As for SHEAR, it intends to have “a second, follow-up virtual panel in the coming weeks” to salvage the situation though “salvage” is not the word used. Here are some thoughts for sessions.

1. Andrews Jackson and the Culture Wars (2000-2020)

This topic apparently was the basis for the session in the first place.

1. How have people used Jackson positively in support of their current political agendas?
2. How have people used Jackson negatively in support of their current political agendas?
3. How can SHEAR contribute to a full understanding of Jackson beyond caricature and cliché?

2. Trail of Tears: What Should Jackson Have Done?

This topic generates a great deal of passionate reaction. One of the comments in the plenary was:

As a historian of Indian removal, I can assure Feller that we know it wasn’t all Jackson’s fault; historians have for over a century traced the roots of removal policy to Jefferson’s administration, or even further, to the nation’s founding documents. More recent historiography on removal has amply demonstrated how a host of other actors – from territorial governors to missionaries to land speculators – helped build the policy that Feller seems to want us to reconstruct from Jackson’s papers alone.

Here we have the possibility of an excellent session that would be of value to the American public during these culture wars by going beyond the simple-minded vituperation he receives today.

1. What was the historical context in which the Trail of Tears occurred?
2. What could have been done instead? [No kumbaya suggestions, please, real world only.]
3. What does the recent Supreme Court decision mean for understanding the Trail of Tears?

3. The Scotch-Irish and the English Weren’t Both Just Whites Then

Our racist classification system obscures the reality of life two centuries ago. Today the Scotch-Irish and the English are just white people. That combination would have made no sense in Great Britain. These two folkways brought their tensions with them to America. Jackson’s victory at New Orleans wasn’t only as an American versus Great Britain but as a Scotch-Irishman versus the English. This topic wasn’t addressed in the session. One comment alluded to it.

Is there a danger among historians — most of us liberals when it comes to racial and gender issues — of underestimating AJ’s appeal to the “working man”: just as Americans today underestimate Trump’s appeal to a similar demographic? Thereby driving that demographic into the arms of the radical right?

English elites then loved to put down the Scotch-Irish as backwards and inferior much as elites-bicoastal elites-politically-correct-people love to mock them and their kin today. As it turns out people don’t like to be relentlessly denigrated. A session on how America’s first flyover people gained the White House would be beneficial.

4. The Torch Has Been Passed to a New Generation: The Need for Heroes

During the session, Feller mentioned Jackson as a military hero for America, the first one since Washington. People needed heroes. People need larger-than-life people who fulfill that role. It’s not enough to have Hollywood super-duper heroes on the screen. They are needed in real life as we have been reminded during Covid-19 and the nightly banging of pots. Jackson filled that role for many people. Two founding father heroes died simultaneously in 1826 on the fiftieth anniversary of the experiment they had created, the journey they had started. Who would replace them? Would the next generation measure up? Would the journey continue? I don’t recall hearing much of a discussion at the SHEAR session about this topic and Jackson’s role in it.

5. The Jacksonian Age of Art, Geology, Literature, Religion

There should be more to a SHEAR conference than politics, gender, and race. The Jacksonian Age witnessed a new and unique confluence of art, geology, literature, and religion before they became divided into separate “ologies” each with their own organizations, journals, and conferences. At the 2016 conference, I asked Daniel Walker Howe about the absence of the Hudson River School in his book What Hath God Wrought covering 1815 to 1848. There should be a place for culture at SHEAR.

SHEAR has the opportunity to rise to the occasion. True, it is a volunteer organization of people scattered mostly at various colleges throughout the land. It has no particular skill or experience that I am aware of in taking a leadership position in the national conversation during a culture war. That’s not what it was commissioned to do when it was founded in 1977 after the Bicentennial. That is what America needs it to do as we approach our 250th.

America Can Still Win World War IV: Harris Helps

August 12, 2020
by Peter Feinman
It Looks Like the Borg Will Win but in the End the Federation Triumphs

America can still win World War IV.

America was on the winning side in World War I which may have ended due to the flu pandemic of 1917 causing no soldiers being able to fight according to the most ignorant President in American history.

America was on the winning side in World War II which may have ended after the flu pandemic of 1917 according to the most ignorant President in American history and who actually participated in a D-Day commemoration.

America was on the winning side of World War III (the Cold War) although Putin considers that loss to be the worst day in Russian history.

America could win World War III.02 if it had an adult President who was not an alpha male wannabee subordinate to alpha male Putin.

World War IV is different. China may not have the nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union or Russia but it does have formidable economic power. It is quite focused on becoming the leader of the world befitting its heritage as the Middle Kingdom.

KOBE AND CORONAVIRUS: MEANING FOR WORLD WAR IV (February 4, 2020)

This blog was the first one I wrote this year on this topic. At that time, China seemed to be on a roll in its quest for world leadership…just as it is now. The blog cited various articles written about this quest and noted some problems:

1. demographics
2. world reaction to its treatment of Moslem Uighurs
3. Hong Kong’s desire to be free
4. the coronavirus.

China also was aided by the United States. It had wreak havoc with its alliances, abandoned being the City on a Hill and had no interest in being the last best hope of humanity.

The one positive note from an American point of view was soft power. The global reaction to the unexpected death of Kobe Bryant was a dramatic if tragic example that the eyes of the world still were on the United States.  The world pays attention to what is happening in America more so than it does in China.

What has happened since then?

HONG KONG

Last August, I wrote a blog, When Will the Borg Assimilate Hong Kong?: Is Resistance Futile? At that point in time, the situation seemed fluid and it was possible to imagine a positive outcome. By this year, that optimism was silly.  Instead, the new circumstances were Borg to Hong Kong: Resistance Is Futile (Not in America), June 2, 2020. The situation now is more bleak. China is rounding up dissidents in Hong Kong the way the American authoritarian leader would love to be able to do in the United States.

CORONAVIRUS

What can you say about the Chinese and American handling of the coronavirus? Despite the horrid start back in February, China successfully has controlled the spread of the virus. The example of the United States is an embarrassment by contrast. America has shown the world that it is led by a simple-minded incompetent person who is out of his league in coping with the disease. For the first time in American history, other countries pity us. Yet 41% of the American public still accept the American President as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name. After all, there is no coronavirus on Fox. Problem solved. Meanwhile, the world laughs at us as it quarantines us.

GEORGE FLOYD

At first glance, one might think the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent demonstrations reflect poorly on America in the global arena. There is no doubt that Floyd and Corvid-19 have exposed an ugly underbelly of the American Dream and way of life. Nothing is hidden. Everything is revealed. The shortcomings and problems of the country are there for all the world to see.

That is exactly the point. This ugly America is also an example of America’s soft power. The ugliness is not hidden now but shown on American media and the internet which has no government firewall to prohibit it. It has sparked events in other countries as well. People in other countries would like the opportunity to protest freely. People in other countries also have issues with statues, monuments, memorials, and race. So while China is busy showing the world that it is just another authoritarian thug (with a lot of power), America has shown the world the right of the people to express themselves, rights which people in many countries do not have. America does not only mean the President of the United States, it also means the people throughout the country.

KAMALA HARRIS   

 Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris to be his Vice Presidential candidate and possible successor as President is another example of America’s soft power. There is more to the country than the white racist in the White House. This is not to deny his strong support for being a bigot, but to point out for all the world to see that he does not dominate the country as if it was limited to Lafayette Square. Harris immediately connects the presidential election to two other countries: India and Jamaica. Those ancestral ties link America to the world in a way that could never happen in China. She shows that immigrants to the United States really can live the American dream. From this point forward, her very existence becomes a continually shining soft power symbol of America that China cannot match.

AUTHORITARIAN LEADERS

There is one final example of soft power that can propel the United States into a position of world leadership if the country wants it. We have the opportunity to remove our authoritarian leader. We can do what China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and others cannot do. Furthermore we have the opportunity to do so comparatively peacefully through the democratic process. It is a shock that the United States actually has an authoritarian leader in the first place. There is no doubt that American democracy has taken a beating in the last 3+ years. There also is no doubt that the American authoritarian leader will do everything he can like any dictator in a Trumphole country to preserve his power. He may even be successful. I have written before about my doubts on whether or not the United States will celebrate its 250th birthday and with the same political boundaries it has today. Regardless of what the current polls say, it’s not over until the fat lady counts every contested ballot.

Even Steven Calabresi, co-founder of the Federalist Society, has written that the American authoritarian leader’s tweet on postponing the election “is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal by the Senate” (“Trump Wants to Postpone the Election. He Can’t,” NYT, August 1, 2020, print).  The day the Flying Monkey Attorney General indicts the Deep State should be the same day the Democrats begin the second impeachment and the removal of the Attorney General. This is not a time for the weak.

Wicked Witch of the White House Dispatching His Flying Monkeys to Secure the Election

So what does all this mean for World War IV? Right now this is the sweet spot for China just as it is for Russia. True the United States is fighting back against China but it has made no effort to regain its position as world leader. It has made no effort to mend its relationship with its nominal allies as it continues to do Putin’s bidding. All that can change in a few months. Vice Presidents are known for traveling the world although generally for funerals. Look for this one to travel the world to help Make American Great Again and regain for the United States the Number #1 position in the world.

The Five Faces of Mount Rushmore

August 10, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Whose Face Were You Expecting for the Fifth?

As with “The Three Faces of Eve,” Mount Rushmore has multiple personalities. It is like a Rorschach which tells different stories to different people according to John Taliaferro, author of “Great White Fathers: The True Story of Gutzon Borglum and His Obsessive Quest to Create the Mt. Rushmore National Monument.” It’s not exactly a palimpsest with hidden physical layers. It’s not exactly the story of the blind people and the elephant where no one can see the whole. But in way it is all of the above. It has multiple meanings simultaneously but one has to make the effort to see and understand them.

LUIGI DEL BIANCO

Probably the least familiar face of Mount Rushmore is that of Luigi Del Bianco, the chief carver of Mount Rushmore. His contribution to the creation of Mount Rushmore was long overlooked by the National Park Service (NPS). The Del Bianco family waged a tireless and ceaseless quest to have the family patriarch recognized in what at times must have seemed like a hopeless task. At last, the effort proved successful and Luigi Del Bianco now is officially recognized.

I became aware of this little known contributor to the carving because by chance I live in same village as he did, Port Chester, NY. In fact, it is the same village as his grandson Lou Del Bianco, the author of the book about his grandfather, lives. The grandson also was the driving force behind the creation of a village statue in his honor. I was there at the dedication.

Lou does reenactments of his grandfather. One fact that sticks in my mind, is how difficult it was for Luigi to get Italian food in South Dakota back in the 1930s! One should stop and pause for a moment and consider what it meant to this Italian immigrant to be working on this monument to America’s greatest presidents. He was doing so in the time of Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, and Columbus Day becoming a national holiday. In a different way, this story of Italian pride in being part of the American story is being repeated now in the journey of another people with the recent actions on Juneteenth, statues, monuments, and memorials to Middle Passage Africans, and the inclusion of their history as American history.

GUTZON BORGLUM

According to Stetson Kastengren, PhD student at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign and member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, (Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech showed why our battle over history is so fraught, Washington Post, July 5, 2020), historian Doane Robinson, who had written on South Dakota history, came up with the idea for the monument in 1923. Robinson envisioned a memorial directing tourism to a Midwestern state. He wrote to U.S. Sen. Peter Norbeck of South Dakota that the handiwork of one sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, would “‘sell’ the Black Hills and [Custer State] Park as nothing else could.”

He [Borglum] explained to an audience in Rapid City, S.D., in 1925 that the monument would honor the “empire builders” by celebrating the “founder” and “savior” of America — George Washington and Abraham Lincoln respectively — and Thomas Jefferson, “the first great expansionist” who had secured the Louisiana Purchase. The fourth president who would be featured, Borglum’s friend Roosevelt, had “thrust himself upon the western plains” as a grieving younger man mourning the deaths of his wife and mother, and had expanded the American empire via the Panama Canal. The sculptor proclaimed, “If you carve … these empire-builders the whole world will speak of South Dakota.”

Borglum brought his own baggage to the creation of Mount Rushmore. His connections with the Confederate monument in Georgia’s Stone Mountain and the Ku Klux Klan make his role in the creation of the national monument problematic. So whereas Del Bianco was overlooked in the NPS telling of the story, Borglum’s biography was minimized to ignore the more distasteful elements of his life. But here is where the NPS is missing an exceptional opportunity to tell the story of America. Just as the Italian immigrant celebrating the history of his new country is part of the Rushmore story, so too are the Confederates who sought to destroy that country and the KKK which sought to destroy the ideals of that country. Here is where the NPS could make the visit to Mount Rushmore much more than a drive by tour with photo-ops and a tourist shop. It could tell the full story of the Mount which would be much more compelling.

THE FOUR PRESIDENTS

The four Presidents are the most familiar part of the Mount Rushmore experience. Even people who have never been there are likely to have seen the image at some point. Yes, it is a heroic portrayal of these four white men and the country they led. The “shrine to democracy” expresses leadership during four phases of American development: birth of the nation, westward expansion, preservation of the Union and emancipation, and industrial revolution. This is the traditional story, one which the NPS is skilled at telling.

Naturally today, there is a Woke version about these four men as well. I addressed that in a previous blog (Woke American Exceptionalism Is Still American Exceptionalism, July 23, 2020).

SIOUX LAND

To the Lakota, Cheyenne, Omaha, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apache, the land is sacred.

The Great Sioux Nation consider the Black Hills a place of refuge that provides food, water, shade and sites to perform sacred rites. The hills belonged to the Sioux under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty that stated the territory consisting of what is today western South Dakota was “set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the Sioux Nation. (Kastengren)

IN the last few decades there has been various machinations in Congress and by the Sioux over land and money without there being much change.

As a result, some people want to turn the clock back and restore the land to the time before white people.

“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism, that’s still alive and well in society today. It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land, then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide,” said Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota, who wants to see the monument removed and the Black Hills returned to the Lakota.

Julian Bear Runner, the president of the Oglála Sioux, said that Mount Rushmore should be removed in response to the recent controversy.

Unless the Sioux hire ISIS and/or the Taliban, this is not likely to happen. There needs to be a more constructive resolution in the real world.

MOUNT TRUMPMORE

According to South Dakota Republican Governor and non-Vice-Presidential candidate in 2020 Kristi Noem, she was told straight-faced in 2018 by the current President that his dream was to become the fifth face (“Mount Trumpmore? It’s the president’s ‘dream,’ Rep. Kristi Noem says,” Sioux Falls Argus Leader, April 24, 2018).

“I shook his hand, and I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.’ And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’. “I started laughing. He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”

Apparently she even gave him a miniature Rushmore with a fifth face on it! There is a certainly irony in this dream or nightmare. He actually had the opportunity to be a Mount Rushmore caliber president (Mount Rushmore Opportunity for a Little Little Boy: Does He Know It? June 5 2020). When one considers the coronavirus, economic collapse, George Floyd, and China, he has had abundant chances to display leadership on a heroic scale. If he had the mental necessities, cognitive skills, courage, and strength of character to rise to the occasion, he would qualify as a Mount Rushmore quality president. But how can a child in the body of an adult with the emotional maturity of a three-year old (per Mary Trump) ever be worthy of a 60 foot carving?

MOUNT RUSHMORE: AMERICAN CIVICS TEACHING OPPORTUNITY

In the current issue of World Wildlife Magazine, Cindy and Harry Eisenberg, members of the WWF Northern Great Plains Advisory Committee, were asked about their interest in protecting the Northern Great Plains. Cindy responded:

“We fell in love with South Dakota when we visited Mount Rushmore.”

Harry spoke about a ceremony with local tribal leaders in 2005 when 16 bison were released on the plains of northern Montana, the first bison on the land in over a century.

The Northern Great Plains Indians were the subject of two blogs on the cancelled conference this year of the Organization of American Historians:

The Organization of American Historians (OAH) Conference: What Would Have Been Presented? April 22, 2020

Organization of American Historians Conference: II April 26, 2020.

There is both conservation and academic interest in land to say nothing of the event at Little Bighorn.

In short, there is a lot of American history connected to this site. That one mount with the four faces has ties to multiple facets of the story of who we are as a people as well as who we want to be as our journey continues. For the NPS, there is the challenge to go beyond the traditional to embrace all aspects of this one site. A land can be sacred to more than more people and for more than one reason. The reality is, for Americans, the land belongs to all us including Sioux, Italians, Presidents, conservationists, scholars and a host of others. The practical question for us a people is whether we are ready to tell that story in the fullest to build a better tomorrow or if we are to remain trapped in past.

Is Jonathan Swan Toto?: It Is What It Is

August 6, 2020
by Peter Feinman
"Yo! Semites." Rocky greeting his Jewish fans. (Phillymag.com)

Toto is perhaps the most famous dog in American cinematic history. She has become part of American mythology due to one scene in particular. Toto pulls back the curtain revealing the truth about the Wizard of Oz. This “revealing” is critical to the story. The Wizard is not the person he has been pretending to be.

In this example, the pulling back of the curtain does not reveal a bad or evil person, just someone who is not as great as everyone thinks he is.

JONATHAN SWAN

Jonathan Swan has performed the same service with his interview of the President of the United States. Spoiler alert: Toto and the Wizard were not real, Swan and the President are.

In this interview, the President of the United States, the commander in-chief and leader of the free world, and the wartime leader against the coronavirus appeared to a doddering grandfather in the White House Senior Living Home struggling to answer the questions posed by a visiting grandchild. One presumes whomever in the White House arranged for this interrogation will be fired. What was that person thinking to agree to such an exchange?

One might also ask, how is that the interviewee was so unprepared and ill-equipped to handle the expected questions from Swan. Obviously some preparation work was done otherwise there wouldn’t have been available all those nice, pretty, color graphs. Usually, it is the grandchild who shows off to grandpa all the things made in school back in the time when there was school. In this case the reverse scenario unfolded. This calls to question the skills of the staff who prepared the interviewee. They deserve credit for the failure as well. They were not compotent either.

WHY DID IT TAKE THIS LONG?

One also wonders why it took until well into the fourth year of the administration to have the shortcomings of the staff and interviewee exposed in this manner. One might think given all the public appearances during the primary, the election, and the administration, that there would have been ample opportunity for these weaknesses to be exposed. As it turns out, there wasn’t.

Consider the primary season. During that period, there were numerous public performances at professional public political wrestling arenas. Those performances resemble the smoke and mirror performances of the Wizard. There was no give-and-take during these events. There was no opportunity to pull back the curtain.

Then there were the primary debates. One problem was the presence of 10 people on the stage at once. Questions tended to be round-robin with no follow through. One-liners and crowd-pleasing zingers passed for substantive comment. There was some, but limited opportunity, to expose the Very Stable Genius as a simple-minded child in the body of an adult with the emotional maturity of a three-year old. But too often the showbiz aura trumped all other considerations.

The presidential campaign wasn’t much better. There again the public performances at professional public political wrestling arenas predominated. There were a few presidential debates. Even with two people, they suffered from the weaknesses of the format. Imagine instead of doing the debates as we do now, if over three weeks each candidate had to give three 30-minute speeches on domestic affairs, foreign affairs, and vision or theory of government followed by Q&A from the press on what was just said. Think how different that would be.

However, that is not what happened. Instead, the format was for brief answers on random questions. The most notable action occurred when one candidate stalked the other candidate as he roamed the stage and she did nothing. Nor did the moderator intervene. Think of it. A man known to harass women was given the freedom to physically intimidate a woman. In addition, despite her image as a fighter, she did not fight back and tell him to go back to his cage. So even though there was no Toto there was a revealing moment.

But what about all the interviews during the Administration? First, there were the helicopter interviews. These settings hardly provided a venue for follow-up. When the going got tough, it was easy to change the subject. Second, the few formal press conferences worked the same way. In these instances, it was possible on occasion to ask follow-up questions. I even witnessed a legitimate attempt to respond to such questions. However when the going got rough, there always was the old standby of reverting to being a seventh-grade smart-aleck dumb aleck and calling a reporter a “nasty cutie pie” from FAKE NEWS.

Finally, what about all the Fox performances? Wasn’t there a Toto opportunity there? The answer is “No.” In a typical example on Fox and Friends, the immature child was simply allowed to go on and on and on as if there were no off switch. These diarrhea of the mouth performances involved no fact-checking, no follow-up, and required no preparation by the hosts. They simply had to endure the bull trump until forced to do a commercial or the President of the United States finally decided he had something presidential to do. The same scenario played out with the Fox triplets in the evening.

Taken together, for approximately five years, there was no Toto opportunity. Then suddenly out of nowhere, Jonathan Swan was given that opportunity. Why there was an agreement to have a real interview with a non-Fox person remains a mystery. Why was Jonathan Swan picked to be that person is another question needing an answer. But we may also observe how flabby and out of shape everyone else connected with interview was including the woefully unprepared and inadequate staff. Collectively they appear to have no experience with such interviews. Perhaps they have been weakened through the constant appearances on Fox.

On the other hand, kudos to Jonathan Swan for keeping a straight face during the interview. When I heard “I read a lot,” it truly was laugh out loud moment. Similarly the claim “I probably comprehend more than any people you have interviewed” is another line destined for the funny room at the Unpresidential Library.

OTHER REVELATIONS

Jonathan Swan is not the only Toto to pull back the curtain.

Mary Trump revealed the child in the body of an adult with the emotional maturity of three-year old.

John Bolton reveal the blithering ignorance of a President who always puts his own personal interests first.

Manhattan DA Vance is in the process of revealing that the World’s Worst Businessman is worth less than he claimed, earns less than he claims, launders money, violates the law and deserves to be in prison.

Michael Cohen will reveal that the son of Fred Trump is a longtime bigot and white racist and who knows what else.

SO WHAT IF THE TRUTH IS EXPOSED  

Politically, all these revelations amount to nothing. When Toto exposed the truth, it made a difference. When Jonathan Swan did, it didn’t. Oh sure, it provided comics with some new routines to ridicule the biggest clown in American presidential history, but so what? What difference does it make politically?

Supposed after the 2016 election you made the following predictions about the United States under its new president:

1. over 160,000 Americans and counting would die because of presidential mismanagement
2. the economy would collapse as a result of that mismanagement
3. America would be the laughingstock of the world, a country other countries pitied
4. Swampbuilder would create the most corrupt government in American history
5. he would be the most racially divisive presidency in American history
6. the president not only would put his own needs above that of the country, he would put Russia’s needs over America’s.

The odds are if you had made those predictions in 2016 and saw them all come true, you would not then have predicted that 41-42% of the American people still accept him as their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name and would vote for him for re-election. That revelation may be the most difficult one of all to accept.

Who Will Be Biden’s Attorney General?

July 29, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Atticus Finch he’s not.

Right now the attention is focused on Joe Biden’s vice presidential selection. Any day now, we will learn who Biden has picked to be his running mate. At that point there will be a lot of discussion about the meaning of the choice. What does it mean for the future of the Democratic Party? What does it mean for the 2024 election? Strangely enough, the meaning for the 2020 election may be comparatively muted. Based on the polls, Biden doesn’t need any help to win beyond what he is already getting from his opponent, the incumbent. The polls indicate a potential, stress the word “potential,” landslide by even more than 306 Electoral College vote landslide of the 2016 election. I do not mean to detract from the significance of the vice presidential choice, but as we were reminded in the House hearings on Tuesday, the position of Attorney General can have a greater immediate impact than that of the Vice President in the operations of an Administration.

Biden’s Attorney General will have a heavy workload. While drapes should not be measured in advance, there is a benefit to exploring what will be on the Attorney General’s plate. The choreography of actions needs to be created. Who will ask for what, when, and where will it be delivered? There will be new Congressional committees come January, perhaps even a new majority in the Senate. Actions will need to be coordinated.

DOCUMENTS

Various entities have subpoenaed documents from this Administration which have not been forthcoming. Is there a list of these documents? Shouldn’t one be created if there isn’t? We know that it is possible to prepare boxes of documents in advance to be delivered once the Court gives the all-clear sign. If an accounting or financial organization can prepare to deliver requested documents even though the Court might rule in the negative, then the appropriate government entities should be able to prepare similar boxes of information. The signal will be once it becomes known sometime in November or December that there will be a change in government on January 20, 2021. It should be possible for Congress to develop a list of these documents and to serve the appropriate people and entities on January 21, 2021 if not earlier. The Department of Justice may have to wait or perhaps some of the districts will act immediately even before there is a new Attorney General.

PEOPLE

Various people have been subpoenaed during this Administration who have not been forthcoming. Various people have not been subpoenaed since it was thought to be fruitless to do so. If Biden becomes President, then presidential immunity and executive privilege for the former government employees are no longer issues. Similarly people who have been afraid to testify may be eager and willing to do so. While the personal lawyer may still claim attorney-client privilege, virtually everyone else is accessible. It should be possible for Congress to develop a list of these people and serve them with subpoenas on January 21, 2021 if not earlier. The Department of Justice may have to wait or perhaps some of the districts will act immediately even before there is a new Attorney General.

INSPECTOR GENERALS

Various Inspector Generals during 2020 have either left their position (and the government) or been squelched in their efforts to pursue investigations. Who are those people and what are those investigations? Again, the list needs to be compiled. Should someone be reassigned back to the former position? Should people be rehired to their former position? You can’t tell the players without a scorecard so someone needs to compile the scorecard and have it ready. Perhaps some of these people should be invited to the swearing-in ceremony as well.

INVESTIGATIONS

What are the investigations which need to be pursued? What are the investigations which need to be dropped?

For example, sometime before the election, perhaps in October, the current Attorney General will indict the Deep State. Based on the economy, the polls, and the number of people dead due to the coronavirus, these indictments may not carry much weight. The only people who may consider the indictments valid may be those who believe in demon COVID-19 cures and that 99.99% of the people infected are cured without any ill-effects so why shut down the economy. My prediction is the indictment of the Deep State will be the same game changer hydrochloric acid or whatever has been for the pandemic. It will seem like an act of desperation. Still these indictments may be open on the books of the Department of Justice if and when the Biden Attorney General takes command.

By contrast suppose the Mike Flynn and Affordable Healthcare Act cases are still active. There is a need to compile a list of the current (and expected) cases that will be dropped or reactivated.

Then there are the new investigations. Swampbuilder has done a superb job creating the most corrupt cabinet in the history of the United States…and some of those Secretaries may still be in office. But let us not forget the current Attorney General himself. How many investigations will there be into him?

CHOREOGRAPHY

In the event of a change of government, there is a choreography which needs to be worked out. I am not referring to the normal transition steps which are followed especially between Presidents of different parties. One can take for granted, there will be no cooperation at the highest levels between the outgoing and incoming Presidents. The outgoing one will not accept that he is the outgoing until his Court rules that he is.

Instead I am referring to the physical aspects of the transfer of power. If Joe Biden is sworn in as the new President, where will the former President be at that moment? He will not be there to watch the sleepy-creepy-corrupt person who has lost his mental faculties take office. It will be difficult enough for the current President to accept the concept that THE DONALD is a loser. Especially if he is a loser to someone who received more than 306 Electoral College votes. The loser will not participate in a public ceremony before a crowd bigger than his own inaugural crowd in 2016. He will not have the image of him as a loser become a defining one for him.

So where will he be? Will he be in Florida playing golf? Does Florida have an extradition agreement with New York? I ask because the moment he no longer has presidential immunity is the moment he can be served. Certainly by New York State and by the Department of Justice as well. If he resigns an hour before so his Vice President who is now President can pardon him, he is still subject to state law. He also still can be subpoenaed for investigations at the federal level. That means he will subject to contempt charges if he is a no-show and be confronted with a perjury trap if he does.

There is not an urgent need to select a new Attorney General, but it should not be postponed to next year either.  It is not too early to plan ahead. The immediate legal battle is the post-election one. It will be fought over a rigged vote. The issue will be not so much people here illegally but on mail-in fraud. It will be fought in the states where the claims in aggregate will make a difference in reversing the Electoral College vote. Many of those battleground states are governed by Trumpicans so it will be their ineptness which will be on trial. And if the fight does drag on for what purpose? A do-over election? What’s the remedy? How long can the current Attorney General drag the battle out? Maybe it will be Nancy Pelosi picking the new Attorney General after all! (Could Nancy Pelosi Become the First Female President?: A Constitutional Crisis)

IQ Test and Portland: Listen to Mary Trump

July 27, 2020
by Peter Feinman

People including the media should listen to Mary Trump. Oh sure, they buy her book, interview her, and cite her observations. But what they don’t do is incorporate her insights into their thinking. She said her uncle was child in the body of an adult. She said he had the emotional maturity of a three year-old. And, of course, she worried what he might do in a second term. She might have added what he would do in his only term if he thought that second term was in jeopardy.

Yet, despite these comments, the media continue to analyze the actions of the child in the body of an adult as if he were an adult. Consider the example of his “IQ” test. People have had a lot of fun joking about that “test.” They mock him for his claim that he aced the dementia test.

Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.

There is no doubt that “person, woman, man, camera, TV” has entered into American history. It may not quite rank with “Four score and seven years ago” or “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ but it will generate far more laughter. Quite possibly it will become the signature phrase by which this particular President is remembered. It certainly seems to be phrase of which he is most proud.

Think Child in the Body of an Adult

Let’s consider that phrase from Mary Trump’s perspective instead of the media’s rush to ridicule. Forget about what the test actually is in the adult world. Instead think about what it means to a child in the body of an adult with the emotional maturity of a three year-old.

Remember how excited he has been over knowing that Lincoln was a Republican. Remember how often he repeats that knowledge, how often he shares it with an audience as if since he only just learned something they didn’t know either. Now think of a child rushing home from school eager to share with Mom, Dad, or whomever about something exciting just learned in school that day. Think of how often the child bubbles up in wonderment and joy over this precious knowledge the child is sharing. Maybe you have such a child. Maybe you were such a child. Our President still is.

Tests are not his strong point. Who knows when he last took one? It wasn’t his SATs. It probably wasn’t in college either. Maybe he took one for his driver’s license. (Does he drive?) The very stable genius knows he wasn’t the smartest one in the class. He knows he did not do well on tests. Now look what happened. He aced one.

Again, forget about what the test is in the adult world. Think about what it means to a child in the body of an adult who never did well on tests. Everyone was amazed at how well he did. That probably means the testers did congratulate him on a job well done. After all, he was taking the test only because there was some concern that something had happened to his brain. We don’t know what it was (concussion, dehydration, vertigo, ministroke…).  Whatever it was, it was cause for concern. Once that concern was mitigated, yes, the testers probably did breathe a sigh of relief (Had the Vice President been contacted, just in case?). Naturally, our child in the body of an adult interpreted such praise as meaning everyone was surprised that he had done so well. Hardly anyone knew that Lincoln was a Republican. Hardly anyone does so well on the test either.

Keep in mind that an adult liar would never say the things he says. An adult liar would know better because it would be so easy to detect the dishonesty. A child in the body of an adult has no such qualms. Person. Woman, Man. Camera. TV. How many times did he say those words? Look at me! I am a very stable genius. I have been tested. [Think of how often Sheldon Cooper told the story of how his mother had him tested to prove he is not crazy.]

From the perspective of the child in the body on an adult with the emotional maturity of a three year-old, he is telling the truth. His world may be an imaginary one to you but that doesn’t mean it is not real to him. Instead of counting the 20,000 plus times he has been dishonest or misleading in the adult world, ask yourself if he has been dishonest or misleading in his world.

Maybe Trump Isn’t Lying

Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, took this approach in his article “Maybe Trump Isn’t Lying” (May 19, 2020). He begins the article with well-known whoopers told by our wartime leader. He then segues into the ways The Washington Post, MSNBC, and The Daily Beast attacked, ridiculed, and mocked him for his lying. At that point, instead of continuing on this well-worn and self-serving trail of no productive purpose, he does something different from what the media normally do and continue to do. He examines the coronavirus crisis from the perspective detailed by Mary Trump even if he doesn’t use her words or know of her yet.

But what if Trump isn’t lying? Americans ought to consider an alternative explanation for the president’s many untruths: He does not grasp the most basic aspects of the public-health crisis.

Cluelessness may, for example, better explain Trump’s statements on the expected COVID-19 death toll.

Exactly. Suppose he genuinely is a child in the body of an adult and lacks the mental necessities and cognitive skills to understand the coronavirus crisis.

To document the claim of “cluelessness,” Friedersdorf refers to the various predictions made on the expected fatalities from the disease. As we are now on verge of 150,000 officially dead, the projections seem laughable if they weren’t so tragic. The magnitude of the error in these numbers causes Friedersdorf to ask:

Why did Trump keep offering estimates so unrealistically low that they were overtaken by events mere weeks later, exposing him to mockery and providing fodder for attack ads? Lies are typically self-serving. Those statements were not. If he was trying to lowball death estimates so that Americans would reelect him, he needed to pick a number that wouldn’t be exceeded until after Election Day. Whether he intended to lie or attempted to tell the truth, he showed an inability to think just weeks ahead in an emergency that could last months or years.

Exactly. He is a simple-minded immature child. He does not have the temporal perception to make such a calculation. He is a “now” person. Imagine asking a teenager to think about the consequences of an action taken or forgotten. The brain isn’t yet wired to think in terms of consequences, just “now”. Friedersdorf is correct to point out that our wartime leader can’t think in those terms and therefore he says things even an adult liar would not.

At this point, Friedersdorf raises an issue that frightens Mary Trump as well.

I used to worry that Trump’s serial mendacity might harm the nation. Now I worry even more that he isn’t lying, but rather lacks the capacity to see errors in the most obvious falsehoods. He appears to be so impulsive and attuned to the time horizon of an individual tweet, television appearance, or news cycle that he cannot strategize over a longer period.

Some Americans are willing to forgive lies from the president, but even they shouldn’t shrug off the possibility that Trump simply doesn’t understand the pandemic clearly enough to respond to it effectively.

Exactly. The coronavirus is an adult issue. The child in the body of an adult lives in the “now.”

Friedersdorf then brings up the topics of testing. This was before the famous “slow the testing” plea. He posits that Donald Trump genuinely lacks the mental necessities and cognitive skills to understand how testing works and why it is needed. In other words, Trump genuinely lacks the mental necessities and cognitive skills to understand why other countries have safely opened schools and we can’t. Friedersdorf warns that there is no reason to believe that the situation will get any better. He pessimistically concludes:

Trump’s reputation for lying is well deserved. But many of the most glaring untruths that he has uttered during this crisis could be explained by ignorance and lack of foresight as easily as mendacity.

At 73, Trump is unlikely to stop his decades-long habit of lying. But assuming that all of his pandemic untruths are lies may obscure the degree to which he’s out of his depth. Is he fit to preside over the high-stakes effort to secure and roll out a vaccine? The many failures of understanding implied by his statements suggest that he is not.

His decision-making always will be made on what is best for him right now. That means what is best for a child in body of an adult with the emotional maturity of a three year-old. If he thinks his imaginary world is threatened and he won’t be re-elected, what will he do? Why is Mary Trump frightened? Remember when the protests were about police reform? Remember when the protests were about Confederate statues? Now the protests are about him. He dominated Lafayette Square. He called for the liberation of Michigan. Now he is taking back the country one Democratic city at a time. It’s always about him.

TrumpVirus, Lafayette Square, and Portland Statues, Monuments, and Memorials

July 21, 2020
by Peter Feinman
This is not a drill. The jack-booted thugs have landed. Repeat. This is not a drill. (http://www.quickmeme.com)

With all the talk about toppling statues and defacing monuments and memorials, it is time to start thinking about the new ones which should be erected. Typically, wartime leaders build just such markers to their greatness and their triumphs. Our wartime thinks he deserves to be on Mount Rushmore. However that possibility does not seem likely. Instead We the People should consider the statues, monuments, and memorials appropriate to his leadership.

TRUMPVIRUS

The first topic for consideration is the TrumpVirus. Here is an area where our wartime leader rates himself a “10” and would not do anything different. He often proclaims how we are the envy of the world for our handling of the virus. Surely that appreciation can be expressed physically with commensurate statues, monuments, and memorials.

Statue

The obvious statue which comes to mind is the image of our heroic wartime leader brandishing his most powerful weapons in the fight against the TrumpVirus. I am referring, of course, to Little Donne Disinfectant wielding the one thing the coronavirus fears above all else – disinfectant! The statue should be of our wartime leader holding a bottle of disinfectant while the coronavirus slithers away in horror.

Think of Nero. Nearly 2000 years later and he is still remembered for fiddling while Rome burned…EVEN WITHOUT A STATUE! Think of how long Little Donnee Disinfectant will be remembered with a statue in his honor.

Funding for the statue should be easy. How much would Clorox play so the bottle of disinfectant isn’t Clorox? Similarly, how much would Lysol pay so it isn’t Lysol? The major issue to be decided is the size of the statue. Should it be a life size statue or one larger than life? And if larger than life then how much larger? Statue of Liberty large? Washington Monument large? Trump Tower large?  The size is open to debate.

The statue also should be bathed in a heavenly aura. This glow will represent the divine assistance Our Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, each time he invoked heavenly help to effect a miracle cure. After all, it is hardly unusual for divine right-kings and son of God rulers to pray for divine assistance in the midst of or prior to a battle.

Monument

Commentators frequently note that the death toll from the TrumpVirus exceeds that of multiple American wars combined. Plus the number is still rising and will continue to rise in the indefinite future. Therefore building a monument comparable to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with 58,318 names may be impracticable. Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people will end up dead due to the TrumpVirus.

Perhaps instead of one national monument dedicated to all who died of the TrumpVirus, there should be multiple monuments throughout the communities and states of the country. Once upon a time, the coronavirus was comparatively contained. But now it has metastasized and is everywhere. So any single monument to reflect the experience of the TrumpVirus would have to be conceptual.

Or perhaps it could be digital. Instead of a stone monument to the deceased perhaps a digital monument could be built. It would show the increased number of deaths over time with a suitable caption or voiceover. Some of the cable shows already have done something like this. For example, the map might start with 15 dots becoming zero and then gradually increase to fill in the whole country. Think of the vaunted Red Wave the wartime general always is talking about. We saw it in action in 2018.  We are seeing it in action in 2020 as Trumpican Senate candidates exult in the boost to their own reelections derived from the wartime President’s superb handling of the coronavirus. The digital projection could show the same red wave color spreading as the deaths of Americans sweep the country each time the wartime leader says the coronavirus is contained and under control.

LAFAYETTE SQUARE

Lafayette Square is indelibly etched into the American national consciousness as the site of the greatest military victory by a sitting President ever. Of course, American Presidents prior to becoming President had great victories as generals. Of course, American Presidents presided over great victories led by others. But what President himself has personally had such a stirring victory as the one by this wartime leader? Plus it was not against the coronavirus or even foreigners, but against Americans themselves. The closest parallel may be George Washington’s leadership in the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania [where decades earlier he had launched his military career in the French and Indian War].

I predict that Lafayette Square will become a great tourist draw. Tourists will flock to the site where America’s wartime leader dominated the square as no leader had before him and none will since. They will reenact the strenuous march to victory following his footsteps painted on the ground. They will approach the history sign erected to mark this heroic victory. And then convulsed in laughter they will take a selfie next to the cardboard cutout of the wartime President proudly holding a Bible upside down thrust to the heavens. Truly it will be a site to behold.

PORTLAND

But our wartime leader did not stop with dominating a mere square. It was just the start of a more ambitious effort to take back the country. He would seize the Democratic-governed areas one-by-one if he had too before all bowed down before him and knuckled to his will. It would be like Cornwallis taking back the colonies one-by-one in the South. To mix war metaphors, Portland may be our Fort Sumter, the place where America’s Third Civil War, became a true battlefront.

Remember how often we have been warned about jack-booted thugs and their black helicopters. Think of the National Rifle Association (NRA) running a four-page ad in the center of its American Rifleman magazine in 1993. It showed goose-stepping, jackbooted legs under the question, “What’s the First Step to a Police State?” The NRA followed up in 1995 with a reference to federal agents as “jackbooted government thugs” in a fund-raising letter.

Now we know all the rantings and ravings of the vast rightwing conspiracy are true. Now we know all the warnings about the Government are true. Now we know that the incessant call for the American people to arm themselves against the Government are true. Our wartime President has made his move against Portland. Other cities are to follow. We could not celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre this year due to the coronavirus. But now we have an opportunity to relive it. The wartime President will crush the Patriots until only the Loyalists to him remain. Isn’t that worthy of a statue?

So let’s not just topple statues, monuments, and memorials. Let’s think about the new ones to create in recognition of our wartime President. He has triumphed over the TrumpVirus, dominated Lafayette Square, and is seizing the cities that defy him. Truly he is worthy of being on Mount Rushmore if only there was room for him.

Putin’s Pence: What Does He Get from the Relationship?

July 19, 2020
by Peter Feinman
THE DONALD and "Fred Trump" (courtesy https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com)

A Question That Won’t Go Away: Why Does Trump Love Putin So Much?

Following the news that Russia put a bounty on US troops, this old puzzle takes on new significance.

David Corn (June 29, 2020)

What does Putin’s Pence get from his relationship with Vladimir Putin? Everything is transactional. It’s all about the deal. Therefore it should be possible to determine what the American President gets in exchange for being submissive to the leader of America’s adversary.

WHAT DOES PUTIN GET?

On Putin’s side, it is relatively easy to determine what he gets or wants from his relationship with his American asset.

End of the sanctions
Restoration of the G8
Approval for the invasion of the Ukraine
Approval for Russia’s actions abroad including in Afghanistan, Africa, Libya, and Syria
Permission to violate the American elections in 2020 as he did in 2016
Approval for invading the Baltics should he decide to do so.

Plus whatever other actions Putin is doing or decides to do which a normal American President would oppose.

WHAT DOES PUTIN HAVE ON HIS PENCE?

In general, there is an assumption that Putin must have something on his Pence. In other words, the reason for the subordinate behavior is due to the risk of exposure or the withholding of some action that his Pence desires. While I do not agree with this assessment, it is worthwhile reviewing the potential areas of blackmail which have been identified.

1. Compromising Pictures

There has been an ongoing fascination over what happened when THE DONALD had the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013. At that time, he tweeted:

Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow – if so, will he become my new best friend? 11:17 PM · Jun 18, 2013

Strange tweet to be sure. It has led to investigations into what really happened. For example:

When Donald Trump brought Miss Universe to Moscow by Michael Crowley 5/15/16

Trump in Moscow: what happened at Miss Universe in 2013 by Jon Swaine in New York and Shaun Walker in Moscow (9/18/17)

Trump’s Miss Universe Gambit by Jeffrey Toobin (2/26/18).

Something had to have happened in the swirl of money, media, and babes. How could it not have? Even if there was some skullduggery in the selection of the winning contestant and/or the finances of the pageant, could that have been enough to turn the American President into Putin’s Pence?

Besides money and manipulation, could there have been compromising pictures that THE DONALD would do anything to keep secret just as he doing with his taxes?  Titillating as the idea is, the answer seems to be “no.” Let’s put the 2013 pageant in historical perspective.

2005 January 22 marriage to Melania
2005 September, Access Hollywood tape: claims he’s still got it
2006 March 20 birth of Barron
2006 Stormy Daniels, one night stand
2006 Karen McDougal, possible next wife

As best I know between 2006 and 2013, there are no allegations of grabbing, harassment, one-night stands, or affairs. What happened? At some point did THE DONALD simply cease performing as THE DONALD? I am not familiar with any reporting on why the change in behavior occurred or when. However the cessation of even specific accusations against him leads me to believe that for whatever reason, he was a different person in his sixties than he had been earlier. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that the idea of compromising pictures is wishful thinking

2. Trump Tower

The desire to build a Trump Tower in Moscow certainly was a pre-presidential goal. Is it still one? Whatever backroom maneuverings he undertook to secure approval probably weren’t that different from the way he was used to wheeling and dealing in the New York real estate market. The differences were in location and the government involved. It’s hard to imagine that he is subservient to Putin simply in the hopes of being able to build a Trump Tower in Moscow after he is no longer President.

WHAT DOES THE CHILD IN THE BODY OF A MAN GET FROM ALPHA MALE PUTIN?

Thanks to some recent reporting by Carl Bernstein and a book by Mary Trump it is possible to better document what was known and/or suspected all along.

Mary Trump describes the child in the body of a man as coming from a truly dysfunctional family. Fred Trump’s racism evidence in KKK associations and his rental practices are nothing new. The anti-Semitism may be a bit of a surprise given his daughter’s conversion and his support of Israel, but it is consistent with his stereotype of Jews.

What’s new is the extent to which Fred Trump was a person with serious psychological problems and to which they extended to his son. Not to repeat what she has written and said in interviews, but the atmosphere in that home must have been suffocating. One son was driven to alcoholism and died early. By contrast, THE DONALD figured out a way to survive and thrive under those conditions. As Mary Trump describes it, he carried that dysfunctionality with him all of his life. One might note that he added his own shortcomings to the mix.

Future biographers will have a field day trying to determine what was nature and what was nurture (or its absence) in the upbringing of the child. Mary Trump says he has he emotional maturity of a three-year old.  But that doesn’t explain why he has the mental necessities and cognitive skills of an immature child. Being emotionally immature doesn’t explain the inability to read a briefing book or need someone to take the SATs. Mary Trump suspects a learning disorder but he may just have a child’s brain that is incapable of functioning at the adult level.

How long would it have taken a skilled KGB operator like Putin to realize these shortcomings?

Mary Trump writes of his uncle as the “court jester from Queens.”  She mocks his inability to succeed in business without his father’s help. One might add that after Fred’s death, the Russian mob filled in the financial gap. Mary Trump writes of the tension between the dependent son in the real world with image of THE DONALD he wanted to be real. She claims his bragging and false bravado were really directed towards his long-dead father: Look at me! I made it! Look how tough I am! Look how I beat up on women! Aren’t I a real man!!?

How long would it have taken a skilled KGB operator like Putin to realize that Little Donne Waney was an alpha male wannabee and not the real thing?

Mary Trump asserts that her uncle was trained to hunger endlessly for daddy’s approval. Now she claims that father has been replaced by father figures who remind him of his real father, father figures like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. Once Kim Jong-un was little rocket man and THE DONALD bragged of having a bigger rocket and button. Then they became “lovers.” Who knows what they are now. But Jong-un is a son who succeeded in his father’s business.

Putin is the number one alpha male on the world stage. People who observe Putin and his Pence together readily ascertain which one is the dominant male and which one is subservient. Bernstein writes: “Putin ‘just outplays’ him.” The alpha male wannabee is focused on building himself into a macho-macho man who Putin will respect. And it was always about him, never about the United States, its allies, or being leader of the free world.

How long would it have taken a skilled KGB operator like Putin to realize that he didn’t need to put the alpha male wannabee on the Russian payroll? Putin’s Pence would be a Russian asset all on his own, so pathetic was the American President’s need for Putin’s approval. The alpha male dominated the child inside the body of an adult.

The three-year old will never grow up.  He will yell at governors for being weak. He will demand that they dominate the protesters. He will insist they not be losers. Then he will show them the way by dominating Lafayette Square as no President in American history ever has done. Wouldn’t Fred be proud of his son’s success?

Putin undoubtedly realizes that the time of his Pence as President may be nearing an end. He can read briefing reports. Putin’s window of opportunity for exploiting the complicit President is closing. What will he do before his Pence leaves office? Will he seek a final hurrah when he knows the United States will not respond? Invade the Baltics? Given the weaknesses of his own country, there may be limits to what he can do. When all is said and done, this brief interlude when his Pence presided over the United States may be remembered as the time when an immature child in the body of an adult desperate for the approval of his dominating father tried to the best of his ability to help make Russia great again.

City on a Hill to Trumphole Country: A Day in the Life of America’s Worst President Ever (July 10, 2020)

July 13, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Do Trumpicans Want to Survive? (Courtesy Simply Psychology)

One day there will be a story told of how the United States degenerated from a City on a Hill in the 1980s to the Trumphole country it has become today. It is a sad story of decline where the resolution is not yet known and the restoration has not yet begun. Whether or not the downward spiral of the United States will be halted or when we will begin to dig ourselves of the very deep hole that America’s worst President ever has dug remains to be seen.

It wasn’t that long ago when things were different. In the 1980s, President Reagan ran as a City on Hill President. He confronted the leader of the Evil Empire with the famous call in Berlin to “tear down that wall.” A short time later, both the wall and the Soviet Union collapsed.

By contrast, only a few decades later, Putin’s Pence is complicit in the Russian scheme that offered bounties to the Taliban for killing American soldiers. What once would have been unthinkable and an impeachable offense scarcely makes the front page given all the other actions or lack of actions by Swampbuilder. In addition, he is far from welcome in Germany today, a country he treats more as an enemy than he does Russia.

No one day can be definitively defined as the bottom of the barrel in this administration. There is always something new to startle us – see the Puerto Rico sale? Maybe China will purchase Puerto Rico after buying Iran in another coup for the American deal-maker.  In this blog, let’s examine just a slice of the decline by focusing on one day. It is an approach that can be used for any number of days. I choose to use the morning paper (NYT) of July 10, 2020, as an starting point to illustrate how much of a Trumphole country we have become.

The frontpage above the fold headline was deceptive: “President Is Not ‘Above the Law,’ Justices Decide.” Why should such a headline even be necessary? No one in their right mind would say that the President is above the law. My purpose in mentioning it is not to discuss the absurd claim made by the lawyers who should be disbarred that was shot down by the Court. Rather it is to note that by the time I sat down that evening to read the paper, the legal world had been turned upside down with the commutation of the sentence of renowned political operative and trickster Roger Stone.

The incongruity of trying to read the paper with that headline while listening to the talk shows was overwhelming. On the one hand, we were to congratulate ourselves for being a country of the rule of law despite the authoritarian proclivities of our leader; on the other hand, here was proof positive that, with the strong encouragement of key political advisor Sean Hannity, we really were a Trumphole country.

Unfortunately, going through the newspaper page by page painted a bleak picture.

CORONAVIRUS   

The first news pages (1, 4-10, 14) covered the coronavirus at home and abroad. This has become typical for the reporting format. At this point, the wartime President is in complete retreat. All he can do now is repeatedly claim victory, call for a miracle, and engage in happy talk about nobody in the world is doing better than he did. [It turns out he is capable of taking vigorous action: disparage Fauci! That will put the coronavirus in its place; for a preview of this attack see The Twilight Zone and the Coronavirus April 8, 2020.]

Back on May 21, 2020, I wrote a blog Friday Night Lights: Risking Lives for the Dow. It was written just after we celebrated V-Zero Day over the coronavirus per the White House Council of Economic Advisers. It was written just before we would be looking back at the crisis per the Vice President of the United States. I raised the issue of Friday Night Lights football as a canary in the mine prelude to the return to school debate. Come August, it would be time to start practicing. Even before classroom schooling was scheduled to begin in September, there would be this moment of truth. Schools would decide yea or nay on authorizing football practice. Football is an essential component of the social fabric of many communities especially in Texas where the book, movie, and TV series were set.

What has happened since then? Even though at the federal level, the fight against the coronavirus has ceased, at the state level it has not. Trumpican governors for the most part have been forced to abandon the happy talk for the real world. The situation is dire in many states. Not only were we late to the war, we fought it badly. At this point we have the national record for the number of cases daily. Florida exceeds New York at its worst. Florida each day surpasses many countries to date in total! Medical facilities are being maxed out. Medical personnel are being stretched to their breaking point and sometimes beyond. It’s as if April-June never occurred. What do we have to show for the effort then outside New York and some other states?

So on Thursday, the NBC headline was:

Friday night lights could go out in Texas as coronavirus threatens high school football

The superintendent of Dallas schools, Michael Hinojosa, says he doubts there will be gridiron action this fall.

The Dallas Superintendent channeled his inner Fauci in responding to questions about the potential delay. SHOW ME THE DATA! His decision would be based on the facts on the ground, not out-of-touch baby talk from our clueless President.

The decision goes beyond football. The vow that schools will open is backed by nothing. Then there are issues:

1. will parents obey the command of the wartime commander to risk their kids especially as the number of cases skyrockets? – STOP THE TESTING and the problem will be solved!

2. how many more teachers will take early retirement complicating the staffing problem even more?

Yes, parents would love to be able to send their kids back to school but they don’t want to commit suicide in so doing.

BOUNTIES

Headline: “Top General Says He’ll Be ‘Outraged’ if Bounties Are True” (page 13)

Will there be an impeachment in December?

SHARPIEGATE

Headline: “White Pressured NOAA Officials” (page 15)

How much longer will Inspector General Peggy E. Gustafson remain on the job? In addition, tampering with National Weather maps is a civil (criminal?) offense. While it is not an impeachable offense, it still is illegal. There will be a special exhibit in the Unpresidential Library about Sharpiegate.

Unfortunately, the significance of Sharpiegate is worse than that. If someone cannot admit error on a hurricane path, what are the chances of admitting error on coronavirus? If a person rates a 10 and wouldn’t change anything he did, what is his explanation for why there are over 135000 Americans dead now? Why did Europe quarantine us? There’s really nothing that could have been done differently? Ask him.

RUSSIA COLLUSION

Headline: “Judge Asks Full Court to Hear Flynn Case” (page 17)

Does anyone think Flynn spend any time in jail? There will be a special exhibit in the Unpresidential Library about Michael Flynn.

MORE RUSSIAN COLLUSION

Headline: “Ousted U.S. Attorney Recounts Tense meeting with Barr at Luxury Hotel” (page 20). There will be an entire room in the Unpresidential Library about the Russian Collusion.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS A REPUBLICAN

On Friday, before the commutation, the Very Stable Genius shared with the American people some unbelievable information he had acquired:

“Like people don’t remember, nobody ever heard of it until I came along, nobody remembered it for a long time, or they didn’t use it at least, I use it all the time: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. You know you say that and people say, ‘I didn’t know that’, but he was Republican, so we’re doing a great job.” 

He seems to repeat this claim frequently. Why he repeats this to his Confederate audiences, I do not know. Maybe he thinks they admire Lincoln along with Lee. Regardless, he is so proud of himself for this knowledge. It’s like acing his cognitive skills test that showed he was not demented. When I wrote about his knowing Lincoln was a Republican three years ago (My Birthday and the Day I Was Born Are the Same Day: Previewing the 2020 Election [Part 1] May 17, 2017), I asked why he thought Lincoln was a Democrat in the first place. My best guess is the Civil Rights March at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Imagine what Fred Trump must have said about that gathering to his teenager son. His lack of knowledge about Lincoln reinforces the claims of Mary Trump. When you don’t know Lincoln was a Republican, you damn well better hire someone to take your SATs.

The comment also shows a learning disability. He is capable of learning that Lincoln was a Republican. But he is not capable of learning that everyone already knew that. You would think after boasting about his superior knowledge once, he then would have shut up for repeating what seventh graders know [in New York, seventh grade social studies traditionally has ended with the Civil War].

And then to wrap up the day there was the Roger Stone commutation. There will be a special exhibit in the Unpresidential Library about Roger Stone, too.

It looks like we are past the moment of truth for the Trumpican Party. Back on June 8, 2020, I wrote Mitch McConnell: Howard Baker (Time to Go) vs Stay the Course (Go Down with the Ship). I suggested that McConnell had a decision to make as an adult who lived in the real world. I had no expectations that he would be a profile in courage and he hasn’t been. Since then, there was a teacher on Cuomo Prime Time who mentioned Maslow (the hierarchy of needs). She did so to express her concern for teacher safety and security in returning to the classroom. The unmentioned first level is for survival. Apparently no Republicans including McConnell are interested in it except the Never Trumpers.