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Real Republicans Should Nominate a Third Party Ticket: Romney and Cheney

October 10, 2023
by Peter Feinman
Welcome to the zoo (https://www.vgyoga.com)

Third party talk is in the air. Due to the dissatisfaction with the two likely candidates for President by the Democratic and Republican parties, there is a not-so-quiet whispering campaign that perhaps the time is right for a third party presidential ticket for people who prefer an alternative to the obvious frontrunners. In fact, it is not even a whisper.

The source for the angst varies. For Democrats the biggest cause for concern is the age of the President. The problem is not with the policies per se of the current administration, although there is disagreement there. The problem instead is that a person moving along in the ninth decade of his life is starting to resemble the Foxhub depiction of him. The death of Diane Feinstein and freezing of Mitch O’Connell only serve to reinforce the view that it is time for a younger candidate.

On the Republican side, the situation is different. Here the candidate only is in the eighth decade of his life. Soon he will be in the ninth too and already there are some signs that he is slowing down. Since the immature child with the emotional maturity of a three-year old always has been an incoherent moron, the dumbest person in the room, it is difficult to discern whether his recent outpourings on social media are a sign of mental deterioration or whether it is simply the stress of being under indictments which is taking its toll on him.

So question here is how many people simply have had enough. People are exhausted by never knowing what loony tune comment he will make next. People are tired of the constant increase in law suits. Who wants to keep track of the number of trials yet alone the charges with more to come. He has been exposed as pond-scum slime and fraud in his business career even before he became President. People are catching on to if the self-made man had simply taken the $413 million given him by his father and just invested it in the S&P 500, then he would be far wealthier than he is today. But then no buildings would have his name on it. ENOUGH!

THIRD PARTIES

Third parties come in different flavors. Sometimes they may be gadfly parties. These are nuisance parties that turn out in close elections to make the difference. Ralph Nader in 2000 and Jill Stein in 2016 come to mind. Though they had no chance of winning a state yet alone the nation, they attracted just enough votes in battleground states to detract from the Democratic candidate and enable the Republican to win.

Politicians still debate whether Ross Perot took more votes from the reelection of George Bush to throw the election to Bill Clinton or not. Think of how different things might have been without Perot and the reelection of Bush:

Colin Powell as the nominee to succeed Bush in 1996
No Monica Lewinksy
No Florida battleground in 2000
No invasion of Iraq
No Obama to question the invasion of Iraq…
The list of hypotheticals goes on and on. In hindsight, then, the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot may have been the most significant third party in American history.

The Robert Kennedy candidacy falls into this category. Both parties are frightened of the votes he may draw from their respective candidate. The Kennedy name still resonates with many Democrats. His anti-vaccine conspiracy positions attract MAGA who may have grown weary of the Trump baggage. The quick condemnation of him by the Republican National Committee and Trump reveal there is another populist candidate around who could harm the MAGA one. The issue, of course, is not how well Kennedy would fare nationally, but how he would do at the state level.

George Wallace in 1968 also deserves scrutiny. His election marked the turning point when LBJ’s prediction started coming true. Confederates switched their votes from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. We can see that battle continues to unfold in the gerrymandering such as in Alabama or in the Republican takeovers today in many Democratic cities.

In this regard, the 1948 third party candidacy of Strom Thurmond was a party before its time. Truman still won regardless of what the Chicago Tribune claimed.

The last of big third party candidates in the past century was that of Teddy Roosevelt in 1912. This future Mount-Rushmore president did fairly well as a second-party candidate but not well enough to defeat Woodrow Wilson.

CLOWN SHOW

The 2024 election is unprecedented, a term frequently heard. Besides the shortcomings of the ticket at the top, there is the ticket at the bottom.

The MAGA Party has been a clown show ever since the Republican Party took control of the House earlier this year. It should be noted that “clown show” is a term Republicans themselves use about their own party.

Let’s consider some of the highlights of the MAGA performance so far this year:

1. the 15 round battle to elect at Speaker to start things off
2. the elevation of Hunter Biden to the second-coming of Seth Rich as some kind of mastermind criminal dynasty figure
3. the impeachment of Joe Biden, a much ado about nothing, there is no there, Seinfeld feeble attempt to manufacture something out of nothing effort
4. the almost shutdown of the government over nothing
5. the evacuation of the Speaker position, when eight, count them, eight, MAGAs held the Republican Party hostage against the wishes of 96% of the Representatives
6. the vacant Speaker of the House during the latest battle between Israel and Hamas ensuring that nothing can be done that requires Congressional approval: there is more to the world than Ukraine.
7. Hundreds of military positions remain open even as the United States is involved in Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and China.
8. Ambassador positions remain open precisely the Middle East where war rages.

Who knows how much longer the clown show will last?

REAL REPUBLICANS

Now consider the plight of real Republicans. At the top of the ticket is a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, facing bankruptcy for his fraud immature child with the emotional maturity of a three year ranting and raving incoherently on social media who is even scarier when he is understood.

Running with him are candidates pledged to undo the 2020 election, convict the Bidens, trash the Constitution, and otherwise wreak havoc.

This is why a third-party ticket of real Republicans could prove impactful. Take New Hampshire for example. The lasted poll had Joe Biden up by 52% to 40%, a sizeable amount in a sometimes battleground state. Now add a third party Real Republican ticket of Romney-Cheney. What would the impact be? Would they take away votes from Biden while leaving Trump untouched? Unlikely. Suppose the popular Real Republican Governor supported the Real Republic ticket? If anything, the MAGA vote is likely to decrease the Republican vote total now that Real Republicans do not have to hold their noses and close their eyes before voting.

Or how about Georgia? Georgia is a slightly Republican state but not a MAGA state. Republican candidates win statewide elections. MAGA candidates do not. In 2020, over 30,000 Republicans voted but left the top of the ticket blank, more than enough to give Trump the state. The same scenario could repeat itself in 2024. But suppose there was a third party ticket of Real Republicans that people who would never vote Democratic could vote for? Take Georgia off the list of battleground states.

In battleground states where the Democrats did very well in 2022, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, a third party of Real Republicans is likely to strengthen the Democrats statewide at the expense of the MAGA candidates. The same is probably true of Wisconsin.

PREDICTIONS

A third party ticket of Real Republicans does not even need to be in all 50 states to seriously impact the MAGA Party and defeat Trump. To give Republicans the opportunity to vote for Real Republicans like Romney and Cheney would directly impact the total Republican Party vote in each state. The MAGA vote may be sufficient to win a gerrymandered Congressional district but it is not necessarily enough to win a competitive state. By offering Republicans a non-Democratic Real Republican alternative, the impact would be far greater than having a nuisance third party. It could rid the country of the wicked witch of the west wing once and for all.

Africans Are Not Indigenous: Is That Racist?

November 21, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Where everybody knows and uses your name ('Cheers' Credit: NBC)

To fully understand the term “Indigenous,” one needs to examine not only when the term is used but when it is not. This blog is a continuation of an analysis based on an “Exchange: which was published in the journal of the American Historical Association (AHA) [Violence and Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) and Native American and Indigenous Studies: Another Culture Wars Episode]. The more I thought about the issues directly raised in that exchange as reported in two previous blogs, the more I realized there were larger issues which extended beyond what was covered there. As part of this ongoing effort, I now turn to the apparent double standard in the non-use of the term in reference to Africans.

AFRICANS ARE NOT INDIGENOUS

As I mentioned in the previous blogs, I was involved with a local group formed in Westchester County, New York, as part of the 1619 quadricentennial. In the first meeting I inquired about the beginning of slavery in the County. During the course of events, I learned about an event in 1685 in the Town of Rye where I live involving the bringing ashore of nine “Angolans” to help build what became the Upper Mills, now Philipsburg Manor, on the other side of the County.

In my investigation of this event, I began to read about the African side of that event. To the best of knowledge, at no point in any of the articles and books that I read did a scholar refer to any of the African peoples involved as or use the word “Indigenous.” True, I was not looking for it at the time so I may simply not have noticed it. Also many of the readings were from the pre-Politically-Correct era of scholarship so at that time the only word used was “indigenous” in its traditional meaning.

As far as I can tell, African scholars follow the same path as European scholars. They routinely refer to the peoples, countries, kingdoms, and empires they are studying by their names. Actually, Indian scholars frequently do as well. But sometimes as brought out in the initial blog, the term “Indigenous” trumps all other considerations. Then the name of the Indian people practically disappears, a modern variation in the longstanding practice of the “Disappearing Indian.”

This contrast between the treatment of Indian and African can be seen in an event that occurred right as I was reading the “Exchange” in the AHA journal. The incident involves a statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The statue has Teddy Roosevelt on a horse flanked by two males, one African and the other Indian. All three figures are physically fit. The standing figures represent areas where Roosevelt had visited and are unnamed.

While I am not an expert in such things, the Indian appears to be a Northern Plains Indian. Scholars are familiar with the Plains Indians by that name. I reported on them in two previous blogs: the 2020 annual conference of another history organization, the Organizations of American Historians (see the blogs The Organization of American Historians (OAH) Conference: What Would Have Been Presented? and  Organization of American Historians Conference: II). While scholars can differentiate among Indians just as they do among Europeans, the general public has more of a tendency to lump all Indians together whereas they do differentiate between Nordic and Mediterranean white people.

In the press coverage of the statue, the reporting differed. The African figure to the right was always, as in every single time I read about or heard about it, referred to as an African. By contrast, the Indian initially was routinely designated as “Indigenous.” Africans are not Indigenous, Indians are. Over time, the Indian more and more was called a “Native American.”

A striking difference in treatment of African and Indian occurred on September 22, 2020, in the print edition of The New York Times. It would not have been as noticeable online. There was a contrast in the treatment on pages 8 and 9 respectively meaning when you held the paper up you could see both pages. The headline on the right side (page 9) was “Journalist Covering Indigenous Rallies Is Arrested.” The article repeatedly used the word “Indigenous” to refer to the protesters, the reporters, and the issues. In third column of the four-column article, the arrested reporter is identified as Haudenosaunee member of the Oneida Bear Clan. In the second column, another arrested reporter was identified as a member of Mohawk Turtle Clan.

The article on the left side (page 8) tells a different story. The subtitle is “Congolese Activist Sees Relics as Colonial Loot.” The opening sentence identifies the activist as Congolese. Throughout the article about the museum artifacts under question, they are referred to as African. There is no mention of “Indigenous.” Museums are African, artifacts are African, and people are African and/or Congolese. Africans are not indigenous, Indians are.

Can you tell where this person is from? The headline is: “A Lawman Carrying Indigenous Roots and a John Wayne Style” (10/12/20 NYT).  Want a hint?

And along with the tangibility of the physical environment, there’s the authentic feel of the [TV] shows depiction of the lives of the Indigenous characters, who make up the majority of the cast. That’s no surprise, given that both directors, and three of the five writers of the season’s six episodes are Indigenous themselves.

Give up? It’s Australia and the people are identified as Aborigines. This goes back the question I asked in the first blog of this thread: what is the value added of calling people “Indigenous” instead of using their names?

Barack Obama is Luo.

Joe Biden is Irish.

Kamala Harris is Jamaican-Indian or South Asian.

Evo Morales is Bolivia’s first Indigenous president (NYT 10/18/20).

Don’t Indians have proper-noun names? Didn’t they say that is what they preferred to be called?

AFRICANS ARE NOT INDIGENOUS: SCHOLARS’ VIEWS

This difference in treatment between Africans and Indians is known to scholars. In 2017 in the American Quarterly, Robert D. G. Kelley wrote an article “The Rest of Us: Rethinking Settler and Native.” Kelley takes issue with the way certain politically-correct terms have been defined and used in settler colonial studies. He calls to task the racism in the usage: “it presumes that indigenous people exist only in the Americas and Australasia. African indigenity is erased in this formulation through linguistic slight of hand.” He criticizes Patrick Wolfe, an intellectual giant and leader figure in the burgeoning field of settler colonial studies for having “settler colonialism on the African continent” fall outside the purview: Wolfe “eliminates the settler from African history.” He even takes settler colonialism to task for ignoring when it occurred in Europe among white people! (The subject of my next blog.)

The racism in settler colonialism is exposed in a 1966 article from the time before the concept even existed. The article by Roland Oliver in the Journal of African History is entitled “The Problem of Bantu Expansion.” The author was exploring the origins of the Bantu-speaking people of some 70 million who occupied most of Africa south of the Equator. Since the Bantu were not indigenous to the lands they now occupied, the question has been raised how did their language spread there? The traditional explanation has been through migration and conquest. Oliver cites one expert who pictured the event as hordes of invaders fanning out over the southern half of the continent as hordes of Zulu warriors had done in the 19th century. He notes similarity of some of the analogies used by scholars to what happened with European settlement in North America and Australia in case you didn’t make the connection.

Oliver explores the expansion of the Bantu from their homeland in one part of Africa in the northern woodlands south to other parts of Africa. They were aided in this effort with superior technology in iron that could be used for weapons, in hunting, and in fishing. As Oliver wrote:

…in was here in the southern woodland belt, that they achieved their first, main population increase. It was here that they established a bridgehead comparable to the bridgehead established by the European settlers on the Atlantic coast of North America…Their obvious success over against any earlier hunting, gathering and tenuously vegecultural peoples whom they found in this region would be more adequately explained by their possession of a rudimentary iron technology and a knowledge of cereal agriculture which enable them to take over…

Oliver refers to the “colonization” of the land by the Bantu as they spread across it. He noted the continued existence of “remnant populations.” Overall, it was “an unending sequence of migration, conquest and absorption.”

In an article entitled “Western Bantu Expansion” by Jan Vansina in the Journal of African History (1984), he asked about what happened to the “autochthones” before the Bantu expansion:

All the former languages spoken by these hunters and gathers have disappeared and most of their populations have been absorbed. How did this happen?

One answer was demography. The new settlers just kept coming and coming and their farm populations just kept growing and growing. The new crops and metal technology prevailed. Some oral traditions tell of wars but the bottom line is clear: Bantu settler colonialism displaced and overwhelmed the “Indigenous” people who are now a remnant.

These African-related articles highland the double standard in the treatment of Africans and Indians. Africans have retained their proper-noun names. Indians do still have proper noun names:

“Contact tracing saves Apache lives” (article title on 10/21/20 in my local paper from the Arizona Republic)

but the need to politically correct leads to some convoluted combinations:

Democratic Assembly nominee Marccela Mitaynes is asked by an interviewer:

“For you, as an immigrant, Indigenous Peruvian woman of color, what does it mean to have your voice represented in state government?” (City & State New York, 7/27/20).

Way to cover all your bases and check all the politically correct boxes. Notice that her “Indigenous” people in Peru are not named. In her answer, she spoke on behalf of “immigrants” and left the other identifiers out.

What can be concluded from all this?

1. “Remnant” is a better term than “Indigenous.”
2. Africans have “remnant” peoples too.
3. Same-race settler colonialism exists.
4. Indians should be referred to by their names.
5. The “Disappearing Indian” syndrome still exists when people aren’t called who they are.

This thread continues with an exploration of what happens where settler colonialism and “Indigenous” occur with white people when they can’t be called that.

Hotspur versus Bonespur: Having the Right Stuff to Go in the Arena

December 30, 2018
by Peter Feinman
Statue of Henry Percy "Hotspur" 1364-1403” Alnwick Castle (tripadvisor.com)

According to the Constitution, the American President is designated with one specific task: to serve as commander in-chief. In the 20th century, the title was expanded in the popular culture to include “commander in-chief and leader of the free world.” The expansion was due to America’s role in World War I, World War II, and World War III (the Cold War). We were on the winning side in all three wars and had a leading role in those victories. The abandonment of that role by the current President will be the subject of another post.

The phrase “in the arena” comes from a speech by Teddy Roosevelt on April 23, 1910:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

One famous example of a story of a person going into the arena consistent with the popular image did not actually err again and again but proved quite successful against all odds. The story of David and Goliath has become part of the vocabulary in the American culture. Closer to home, another figure did go into the arena again and again, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. Rocky has become a mythic figure in the American Civil Religion. His iconic image has become a tourist site at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In America, even ordinary citizens can attain the heights once reserved for the kings.

The phrase “the right stuff” comes from a book by Tom Wolfe with that title. It later became a movie with the same title. It refers to the military pilots in Project Mercury when America began its journey to fulfill a presidential challenge to have a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Mission accomplished.

Together these terms and images call upon the American President and the American citizen to reach for the stars, to fulfill the American Dream, and in this instance at least, to risk one’s life to do so.

How does President Bonespurs measure up against this standard?

Unlike John Kerry and John McCain but like William Jefferson Clinton, President Bonespurs did not serve. As always, he has not told the truth when referring to this event in his life.

His first real experience of going into the arena was not even a real event at all. It occurred in the professional wrestling arena, still his favorite venue. Here he followed a scripted sequence and faked having the right stuff to go into the arena in the real world. Thus his combat experience is as fake as his hair.

His second experience going into the arena occurred during the second presidential debate in 2016 (Predator in Chief, Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood: A Presidential Election Retrospective). In this competition he was pitted against the champion of the opposing political party. If you heard the encounter on the radio, then you probably would conclude that the Democrat won the war of words on the debate stage. Democrats frequently conclude that their side won and that mistake contributed to their defeat in the election.

Simultaneously with the debate “war of words,” a second confrontation occurred. This was the reality game “Survivor.” In this battle, the fight is not with words. Instead, it is a physical struggle. During the Presidential “Survivor,” a large male predator stalked his smaller female victim. As he prowled the stage, he marked his turf and asserted his dominion over this domain. People who watched THE DONALD in action came away thinking that he was the real deal. They still have not caught on that THE DONALD is an act, a persona Little Donnee-Wanee developed precisely for the purpose of conning people into thinking he had the right stuff to go into the arena.

Later the Democratic victim acknowledged her mistake in again being the victim as she had been for decades. Democratic observers took her to task for not standing up to the predator and putting him in his place. Unfortunately for the Democrats it was too late. Even to this very day, there are still people, especially Republicans, who think THE DONALD is not only a successful fighter but a real one…even as he cannot say “You’re fired” in person face-to-face and hides behind tweets instead.

His third experience occurred on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, in a press conference with Vladimir Putin (Putin and the American President: Who Has the Right Stuff to Go into the Arena?). He can now legitimately claim to have participated in the most humiliating summit with a Soviet/Russian leader in American history. Under ordinary circumstances such a pathetic performance would doom a president. He came across less manly than Dukakis in a tank. But for him it was just another embarrassment before moving on to the next one.

Now Bonespurs is faced with a real political battle against NanChuck. For the first two years of his administration there was no direct challenge to him. No Day of Infamy. No Cuban Missile Crisis. No 9/11. And no politician who confronted him in a showdown at high noon. So far the only person who may do so is Robert Mueller but President Bonespurs is girding up to prevent Mueller from exposing him.

With NanChuck the situation is quite different. The television reality show he hosted at the White House blew up in his face. Without even trying to, NanChuck got him to accept responsibility for the government shut down over the funding to build his wall. In that one public failure, he proved why he should not be allowed to testify under oath under any circumstances.

When Bonespurs subsequently was willing to reach a deal with NanChuck he was undermined by his own team. Fox, Ann, Rush, and the RHINO Freedom Caucus read him the riot act. They put him on notice that if he caved on his signature issue there would be hell to pay come election time. Instead of calling their bluff (whom else would they support in 2020?), he caved and boxed himself in. They forced him to toe the line but offered no way to get out of this showdown.

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN on December 20, presidential advisor Stephen Miller became quite agitated and intense in conveying the urgency of the current situation:

“Right now as we speak there is a surge of illegal immigration heading toward our country that presents a national crisis now.”

“Not a month from now, not a year from now, right now. And this president took an oath, like every lawmaker in Congress to defend the citizens of this country. How many more innocent people have to die in pursuit of an open-borders agenda?”

According to Miller and the various acolytes on the Bull Trump network, there is a crisis RIGHT NOW! Drug dealers are pouring across the border RIGHT NOW! Terrorists are pouring across the border RIGHT NOW! Criminals are pouring across the border RIGHT NOW! They are pouring across the border because Democrats believe in open borders so illegal aliens can vote not just once but multiple times by changing their hat and shirt as they run around the polling places.

Left unexplained in this emotional tirade about the desperate need to save the country RIGHT NOW is how a $5 billion spending bill will change anything RIGHT NOW! Will the $5 billion spending build a new wall RIGHT NOW! Will the $5 billion spending even build a teeny-tiny part of the wall RIGHT NOW! How will this authorization stop this NATIONAL CRISIS RIGHT NOW!

Do you Stephen Miller have a plan to stop this national crisis not a year from now, not a month from now, but RIGHT NOW?

Do you Fox, Ann, and Rush, have a plan to stop this national crisis not a year from now, not a month from now, but RIGHT NOW?

Do you RHINO Freedom Caucus have a plan to stop this national crisis not a year from now, not a month from now, but RIGHT NOW!

The advantage Bonespurs has during the shutdown is that he no more cares about the Americans than he does the Kurds or the Israelis whom he threw under the bus. Besides, the government employees who are furloughed or working without pay are Democrats and they support the shutdown for border security anyway. The very stable genius knows this because he is the smartest person in the room.

We have learned the hard way, from Charlottesville and Harvey, that Bonespurs is not capable of rising to the occasion. The difference now is that he has an actual foe in NanChuck. Plus he is boxed in. If the world’s greatest negotiator creates a deal and claims victory even though he has not won, Fox, Ann, Rush, and the RHINO Freedom Caucus will be there to call him out. He won’t be able to get away with conning his own side this time.

What then should he do?

What does an immature child do when cornered? He lashes out. “Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah! I’ll show you who is in charge! I’ll shut down the southern border.” The mind boggles imagining the world’s worst manager supervising the shutdown of the border. Can you imagine the chaos that would result? He does not even have 1% the managerial skills Herbert Hoover had. He lacks both the competence to shut down the southern border and the mental necessities to understand the consequences. Democrats should call his bluff just to expose his shortcomings and inadequacies for even Republicans to see.

There is a better solution.

How about asking China to fund the Great Wall of Trump? They would even build it too, if only Bonespurs would ask.

Putin and the American President: Who Has the Right Stuff to Go into the Arena?

July 18, 2018
by Peter Feinman
Trump, the Rough Rider Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

The “in the arena” image resonates with humans. Practically from time immemorial to the present, the stark binary scene of the confrontation to the death of two beings, humans and sometimes animal, grabs us by the gut and doesn’t let go [or “does let go” if I miswrote]. Where would we be without the stories of these one-on-one encounters?

These images stick. Achilles and Hector. David and Goliath. The Battle of O.K. Corral. The showdown at high noon. We know the images. We remember the stories. The names may change from culture to culture, from one time period to the next, but the story line endures. It is part of who we are as a species.

So how do/did our two presidential contestants in 2016 match up against this standard?

The first confrontation occurred in the second high school debate between the two candidates (Predator in Chief, Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood: A Presidential Election Retrospective). Democrats, in their typically misguided way, think their champion prevailed. Her talking points made her the superior warrior. She trashed the know-nothing simpleminded ignoramus in this one-on-one confrontation. To the victor belongs the spoils. She had triumphed over Trump. The presidency was hers based on the merits of her performance.

Democrats still live in this artificial reality. They still don’t understand. They don’t understand how the talking points could lose. Still unbeknownst to them, while this verbal debate ensued, a second battle was underway. The arena may have been the same stage but the game was different. This game was Survivor; its rules were not of the debate but of the warrior in the arena.

In the second high school debate a known predator roamed the stage.

In the second high school debate a known predator stalked his prey.

In the second high school debate a known predator feasted on his victim.

Everyone knows she was a fighter. She wanted to be a marine. She wanted to be an astronaut. She wanted to be an Olympic athlete. She wanted to be your champion. She would fight for you. Except when the moment of truth came, she didn’t even fight for herself. And everyone saw it live on TV.

As it turns out, her opponent and eventual winner had his “into the arena” moment live on TV as well. Summit meetings sound like confrontations among the gods. Actually, the first summit in modern times occurred on June 11, 1939 between FDR and King George VI at Top Cottage in Hyde Park. It’s a nice place to have dinner if you can swing it with the NPS. They met not as adversaries [or “as adversaries’] battling to be king of the mountain, but as allies seeking to prevent others from becoming king of the mountain.

Since that time, there have been numerous showdowns between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union in World War III. Nixon and Khrushchev meet in a kitchen debate at an exhibition. People feared the young Kennedy would be no match for the fearsome Khrushchev. People feared the old Reagan would no match for the fearsome Gorbachev. But lo and behold, contrary to the wisdom of the elitists of the 1980s, the world was not divided for eternity into two camps of “some people are capitalists, some people are communists, why can’t we all live together.” It was folly to think otherwise, to think we could prevail, that there would be no Soviet Union. All the experts knew that. Then the Iron Curtain collapsed.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

We have now experienced another such encounter between the leaders of the United States and Russia. This meeting scarcely qualified as a summit and nothing was expected of it. Perhaps the only issues were now that the American President had been played by Kim Jung-un, would he also be played by Putin. A second issue was what compromising material did the Russian have over the American. In terms of traditional geo-politics it didn’t seem likely that anything would come of the meeting.

Then the Friday before the Monday meeting, the Special Counsel investigating the Russian violation of the United States and possible collusion, perjury, and obstruction by candidate and his associates dropped the bomb: 12 Russian nationals were indicted for a comprehensive cyber assault on the United States in the 2016 presidential elections. The timing seemed like a setup coming so close to the scheduled visit, but here is where the story gets interesting and overlooked.

First, promptly in his opening monologue at 9:00 on the Bulltrump network, Trump’s Brain referred to “the so-called big news.” Really? Was December 7, “so-called big news”? How about 9/11? Instead we witnessed the immediate denial of any significance to the indictments. They simply were another example of the desperate actions by the Deep State to keep the focus on Russia instead of crooked Hillary. Imagine of all the ways to interpret the disclosure of the Russian assault on America, would ignoring the beneficiary of the violation and focusing instead on crooked Hillary be the first thought that came to mind?

Second, as it turns out, the Department of Justice had given the President a heads-up about the indictment. It even offered to defer the announcement until after the summit meeting if the Commander in-chief deemed it in the national security to do so. He did not and the announcement proceeded on schedule. That guaranteed that it would become a topic for the summit…or the press conference afterwards. Considering what has happened since, one can help but wonder if the very stable genius was played by his smarter Special Counsel.

Why did the target make that decision? To answer that question provides critical insight into the thinking of our narcissistic immature child-president. He genuinely believed that it would not be the big deal it has become. He genuinely believed that since neither he nor anyone associated with his campaign was indicted, that there was no downside to the indictments. He genuinely believed that since no Americans were indicted there was no downside to the indictments. He genuinely believed that since all the events occurred while Obama was president there was no downside to the indictments. Since it always is about him and there was nothing in the indictments about him, the indictments were nothing more than proof positive of Obama’s failures as president. They were part of a Deep State witch hunt against him that had turned up nothing. It never occurred to him that he had an obligation in the present to stand up for America against an adversary who had violated his country. His loyalty is to himself and not his country. Why should Truman care about a war that started under Roosevelt’s watch? So go ahead and make the indictment announcement. And then when it happened, Trump’s Brain and the Bulltrump network were ready to make it all about crooked Hillary and Obama and no one said anything about putting America first over Putin.

The problem is, everyone saw the press conference. The problem is everyone saw and heard a reporter expose the truth. The problem is everyone saw the weeny passive President defer to the stronger Macho Macho man. Everyone. Not just the usual suspects in the fake news media that almost always gets it right, but the media throughout the world. The headlines tell the story. The photograph tells the story. The actual words even with a “not” added tell the story. He no more stood up to Putin than his Democratic opponent had stood up to him during the second high school debate when he stalked her. This time, he was the one with his tail between his legs obedient to his master. And if Putin doesn’t have any compromising information on the American weeny, that only makes the American President deference to him worse.

From this point forward, it is easy to denounce our Commander in-chief for being a weeny wimp wus.

From this point forward, it is easy to call on his supporters to explain why they support a coward who lacks the right stuff to go into the arena and prevail against our Russian adversary.

From this point forward, it is easy to demean him for his lack of manliness. When he was 13, his father put him in military school in the vain hope that he would man up. It didn’t work. He is still the immature child he was then and now the world has witnessed his cowering before the dominant alpha male who helped elect him President.

The Trump Doctrine versus the Truman Doctrine

June 14, 2018
by Peter Feinman
How will THE DONALD adjust to the real world? https://www.imdb.com

Periodically during the course of American history, individual Presidents are remembered for a doctrine or mantra they have enunciated. The words are not necessarily legally binding in any way. Instead they provide insight into the thinking of the President as to how he (so far) views the world and chooses to guide himself. This vision or guideline may apply during his term and may be considered advice to future Presidents and the American people as well.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

The first such words were issued by our first President. George Washington recommended a policy of no entangling alliances. He offered these words based on a lifetime of experience being caught in the world of British and French interactions along with lesser actions by Spain and the Netherlands. Given the current situation after the French Revolution, it was difficult for him to imagine a Europe that was not consumed by wars. Even the ancient experience of the Thirty Years War would have confirmed that war in Europe is what European countries do so try not to get involved.

Our current President naturally is unaware of Washington’s words. A person who didn’t know Lincoln was a Republican, Frederick Douglas was dead, and the British burned Washington, D.C., cannot be expected to be knowledgeable about American history. Still he seems to share Washington’s aversion to alliances.

In so doing, he is not drawing on any personal experience in war and diplomacy. The serial draft avoider confines his physical competition to the scripted world of the professional wrestling arena and reality shows that aren’t real. What then is the source of his antipathy to alliances?

Once again, here is where it becomes necessary to recognize that we are dealing with an immature child and not an adult. Alliance is an adult term like separation of powers or oaths to the Constitution. These concepts have no meaning to him. It is not that he rejects them but that the seventh-grade smart-aleck/dumb-aleck does not have the mental necessities to grasp such adult concepts. Of course, he can say the word and use it in a sentence but he simply is unable understand its meaning.

Consider the recent words of Cheon Seong-whun, an analyst at the Asian Institute in Seoul:

He sees everything in terms in money but there are values other than money in an alliance (NYT 6/13/18).

Yes, there are values other than money in an alliance, but the immature child really is genuinely not capable of understanding that. The narcissistic seventh-grade smart-aleck/dumb-aleck operates on the basis of TRUMP FIRST, TRUMP ALONE. Relationships are measured in terms of loyalties by subordinates and money for customers/rivals/others. How much does South Korea pay for retaining the services of the United States to protect it? If it is not paying its fair share, then the deal is abrogated. There is no alliance. There is no friendship. There is no shared values or traditions. There simply are deals, transactions between two and only two parties; and if the transaction is costing him, meaning the United States, money, then America is out of there. Nothing else matters. If you were surprised by his unilateral actions in Singapore then you are admitting that you still seek to understand him as an adult instead of the immature child that he is. It is not fair to judge him by adult standards since he isn’t one: TRUMP FIRST, TRUMP ALONE.

If you have doubts, consider his comments about North Korea. Look at all the beautiful beachfront property! Can’t you see opportunity all over the place? Now is the time for the country between China and South Korea to take advantage of the possibilities to build resort communities. And in case you have doubts about who should develop those properties, have I got a real estate developer for you! Think how different the rescue efforts in Puerto Rico could have been had he had a resort there.

In case you still resist the idea of analyzing his actions as those of immature child, I call your attention to my description last August of the seventh grader and another 13 year-old, Tom Hanks in Big. Now consider the words of Roland Paris, a former foreign affairs advisor to the now rotting in a special place in hell Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau (didn’t Madeleine Albright use the same words to condemn (black) woman who didn’t support a female candidate for the Democratic nomination?):

Big tough guy once he’s back on his airplane. Can’t do it in person and knows it, which makes him feel weak. So he projects these feelings onto Trudeau and then lashes out at him. You don’t need to be Freud. He’s a pathetic little man-child (NYT 6/11/18).

Still not convinced he really is an immature child? Now consider NYT reporter Peter Baker’s words later in the same article almost paraphrasing my comments about forcing him to act adult in my Tom Hanks post:

Mr. Trump never really wanted to attend the Group of 7 meeting but aides [meaning adults!] pressed him to go even as they feared it would be a disaster because he was being forced to do something he did not want to do [know any parents who dread taking an immature child out in public?]. He rebelled by showing up late and leaving early….He arrived 18 minutes late for a Saturday session…and did not bother putting his headphones on for the translation [have you ever seen an immature child act out in public when forced to do something he doesn’t want to do?].

For Washington, no entangling alliances meant don’t enter into any so as to maintain peace in our country. TRUMP FIRST, TRUMP ALONE means there are no alliances, only transactional deals that are financially beneficially.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT

Roosevelt like Washington, led a vigorous life. Just as Washington drew on his own personal experiences before recommending no entangling alliance, so Roosevelt drew on his own life when he suggested Presidents should speak softly and carry a big stick. It is hard to imagine any words less appropriate to the whiner-in-chief. Not only is he a constant whining baby thanks to technology not available in Roosevelt’s time, We the People have the good fortune to be able to read every stream-of-conscious whine by the immature child.  We are all trapped in airline with a crying baby with nowhere to go and way to shut him up. I thought the Constitution forbade cruel and unusual punishment.

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE

Perhaps the most relevant doctrine to understanding our current President is the Truman Doctrine. Truman Burbank was a reality star. And unlike the current celebrity reality-star in chief, Truman’s ratings were boffo at the box office. The difference is that Truman didn’t know he was a celebrity reality star. He did think the artificial reality in which he lived was the real world just as the celebrity reality-star in chief thinks his alternate universe is the real world. The suspense and drama are in the moment of truth, the moment when the reality show star comes face to face with the fact that he is living in a no longer sustainable artificial reality and has to deal with the real world. What will he do then? Can he succeed in banishing the real world and in continuing to live a lie or will he have to adjust for better or for worse to the world as it really exists?

We know what happened to Truman.  SPOLIER ALERT! Through a series of events, the adult Truman seizes the initiative and takes control over his life. He sets sail into the open sea that has always frightened him only to bump into the sky and learn that someone has built a wall. He pierces it and enters the real world. In Truman’s case, the truth sets him free. He leaves the artificial reality that has governed his entire life, takes a chance on real emotions, and goes forth to live a better life.

Nothing like the Truman Doctrine will occur in the TRUMP FIRST, TRUMP ALONE reality. He will never take the initiative to leave the alternate universe for the real world where Russia violated the United States in the 2016 election, 5 million people didn’t vote illegally, and his parade was smaller. Why shouldn’t he remain in the alternate reality, look how far he’s gone?

Whereas Truman left his reality world for the real world, Trump seeks to extend the artificial reality to the world at large. He is likely to fail. But when and how?  Not everyone watches the Bull Trump Network. The seismic shock recorded from North Korea after the Singapore meeting was from the laughter of people who recognize that John Kelly and Rex Tillerson are right: the American President is a stupid ignorant moron. You can get something for nothing. Now the whole world has seen the deal maker in action. Now the whole world has seen the negotiator in action. Now that Iran has seen him at work, is it any wonder it is eager to negotiate a new nuclear arms treaty on the same terms offered North Korea? After all, Iran has beachfront property too. How many resorts do you want to build here?

At this point America’s allies know that no alliance has any meaning in the TRUMP FIRST, TRUMP ALONE universe.

At this point America’s foes know that they have nothing to fear in the TRUMP FIRST, TRUMP ALONE universe as long as they have something to offer him, like a Nobel prize and real estate development opportunities.

At this point America is learning about his fraudulent foundation to match his fraudulent university. Everything in his life is tainted. The world has seen the truth. The only mystery is when will We the People catch on.