Campus Protests

Posted on May 6, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 6, 2024

I was an undergraduate at Columbia College from 1960 to 1964. Columbia College was then the men’s undergraduate arts and sciences part of Columbia University. With just under 3,000 students, it represented about 8% of the total student body when I was there. We were very young – many incoming freshman were only seventeen or even younger – and like most kids in the early sixties, there was a lot we were passionately angry about.

In my class, the angry passion had an anti-military tone. Fifteen years after the end of WW2, six after Korea, most of us had lost family members or had seen fathers and uncles return home with physical injuries or psychological and neurological traumas. With nothing better to do when we were done studying, we staged protests against the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC.)

Columbia was expensive, especially for a kid like me whose family never had a penny to spare and who could have gone to City College for free. ROTC offered to pay students’ expenses in exchange for a year of military service for each year of support they received. In today’s world, that sounds like a fair offer, but in the early sixties, with civil rights workers being murdered, our growing involvement in Vietnam, and the Russians arming Cuba with missiles, the largely left-wing student body needed a target for their anxiety, and ROTC fit the bill perfectly.

I confess: the protests were fun and a welcome relief from the stress of studying physics and math in the pressure cooker environment that was Columbia. When there were no ROTC people around to harass, we remembered that Barnard College was just across Broadway, so we went on late night panty raids, which tells you how seriously we took our protests. That sounds benign, but the seeds of much louder and more violent protests had been sown, and the year after I graduated, Columbia erupted in demonstrations that looked a lot like the ones we’ve seen in 2024, and the same thing happened later at Cornell, the year after I graduated.

Columbia student Mark Rudd had founded the Weathermen from the ranks of the anti-war group Students for a Democratic Society. From 1965 on, they were among the loudest and most violent groups protesting the Vietnam War. At Cornell, in rural central New York, there was less to protest directly, so the demonstrators tried hatching a plot to blow up the Niagara Power Station.

Sixty years later, Columbia was again at the center of a storm of protests that spread around the world, this time, allegedly, in support of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. In the sixties, Mark Rudd was one of many home-grown activists, but it was clear that he and his followers were also being aided and incited by political agitators not connected to the university. The pro-Palestinian protestors are also largely radical students, but in recent days, local police departments have reported that more than half the people arrested on campuses were outsiders.

Many Americans, including people like me, Jews who have supported Israel throughout our lives, look on the current protests with two minds. One is extremely sympathetic to the plight of Palestinian civilians who are becoming collateral damage in Israel’s attempt to defang and eradicate Hamas. We do not approve of much of the tactics being used in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force. Like the protestors, we are horrified by the thousands of deaths and injuries suffered by Gazan civilians.

But unlike the protestors, we have not forgotten how this all began. All the death and destruction in Gaza stems from the unprovoked terror attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 Israeli citizens, injured thousands more, and resulted in more than 300 being taken hostage. We support the destruction of Hamas. In that regard, Gazans have only themselves to blame, because they chose Hamas to lead them. Hamas has never been secretive about it’s attitude toward Israel, yet, despite the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians crossed the border every day to work in Israel, they did nothing to rein in the terrorists who run Hamas.

I’m reminded of the way Americans thought about German civilians after the Nazi atrocities in WW2. Hitler came to power because the majority of Germans voted for and supported him and his policies. No one advocated the wanton slaughter of “innocent” Germans after the war, but it was difficult to have a lot of sympathy for the survivors wandering destroyed German cities.

The pro-Palestinian protestors have a point, but they’ve made it loud and clear over the past few weeks. They would do their movement more good, now, by leaving our campuses and remembering who is really to blame. When they speak out against Hamas and Iran, I’ll be able to hear their anger with an open mind.

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The Bursting of Trump’s Bubble of Dominance

Posted on April 20, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Znedell, April 20, 2024

For nine years, our nation and the world watched Donald Trump defy tradition and political norms, and except for passing the Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell tax cuts, support positions and policies that were clearly at odds with the desires of the majority of Americans. He has a predator’s nose for weakness, grievances, petty anger, and anxiety, combined with a shameless willingness to pander to the kind of racism, bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia that our country hasn’t seen since the 1930s.

His well-documented ability to sow chaos and discord often put our nation at significant risk. He enabled the awakening of marginalized groups and belief systems that we thought we had relegated to our past, as our nation emerged from its adolescence. In his lust for power and desperation to regain the White House to avoid felony convictions and potential prison sentences, Trump pulled out all the stops in his war against truth, decency and the primary responsibility of an American president – defending our Constitution.

He courts autocrats and disses our allies. He craves absolute power and disdains democracy, because he will never capture a majority of the popular vote in an honest election. He stokes voters’ anger and appeals to their venal self-interest with policies that dangerously weaken our standing in the world, and will ultimately result in economic consequences that will hurt everyone, like the January 6th insurrectionists who drank the Kool Aid and didn’t realize they were being led down a path to self-destruction until they faced incarceration.

We, who knew what Trump was from the outset, believed that eventually, when voters and legislators were forced to face the real implications of Trump’s madness, they would see the light and reject him. It has come down to the wire, but finally, we see it happening. The likely consequences of allowing Russia to defeat Ukraine, of failing to provide Israel with what it needs to defend itself, and not sending a message to China that we place the same priority on Taiwan’s independence have come crashing down on the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Mainstream, responsible politicians from both parties always knew that recklessly allowing to Trump to take over our values and policies would lead to bad outcomes for the country. The question has been how long it would take, and what circumstances would have to exist for them to stand up to him.

It was clear that once the true Republicans that have not been driven from government demonstrated the courage to rebel against Trump, the bubble of his dominance would be broken. The revolt of Republicans who believe in responsible government against the maniacal domination a vile minority of Trump supporters played out yesterday and today.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, with whom I disagree on virtually every policy, has my full support on the issue that is most important to all of us. A man who supported Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and his attempts stymie Congressional action to deprive President Biden of legislative victories, finally understands that Trump is a malignancy that will eventually destroy our country if it isn’t excised.

Johnson is a right-wing ideologue, but he’s also an American who takes governing seriously. He understands that supporting Ukraine, (and therefore, NATO,) Israel, (and therefore, the enemies of Iran,) and Taiwan are vital to our identity as a nation and to the global fight of democracy against autocracy. Most important, he understands that loyalty to America trumps loyalty to Trump. Today, Johnson brought the bills to the floor and they all passed, Ukraine aid by 311 to 112, Israel aid by 366 to 58, and the Indo-Pacific alliance by 385 to 34.

It was a huge victory for the United States and a crushing defeat for Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, and the rest of the MAGA terrorists. Even the brash, outspoken Greene seemed to sense that she’s done, announcing that she’ll now leave the issue of Johnson’s speakership to the voters. Former Republican Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, who came to national prominence by denying Trump’s charge that the 2020 election was stolen, told CNN that Donald Trump will lose the 2024 election, and it’s up to Republicans to get their party out of the ditch he drove them into.

The bubble of Trump’s dominance has burst, as has the power of the MAGA minority in the House to dominate the majority. Outside of the primaries, Trump is on an impressive losing streak. All his court challenges have been rejected, and his daily rants against judges, jurors, and witnesses have him looking more pathetic every day.

His trial for covering up hush money payments to porn stars to influence an election that begins on Monday is the least serious of all the felonies for which he has been indicted by New York, Georgia, and the Department of Justice. But it is the most damaging to his character. After the trial, a lot of people who voted for Trump while holding their noses in the past will find the stench too difficult to overcome this time.

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Speaker Mike Johnson – a Man of Integrity

Posted on April 18, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 18, 2024

During his relatively brief tenure as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R, LA) has been somewhat of a mystery. From the outset, we knew he was pretty far to the right on the political spectrum, he was acceptable to the MAGA terrorists, he was staunchly opposed to abortion, and he was an election denier who tried to help Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election.

He began his term with a five-vote majority which has since shrunk to one. To make life even more difficult, he inherited the legacy of Kevin McCarthy, who allowed the MAGA crew to force through a Rule that allows a single member, with or without cause, to call for a vote of confidence in the Speaker.

I wanted to learn more about Johnson’s views. I could have read his website or listened to his speeches, but I thought I’d get a clearer picture of his politics by looking at how the larger advocacy groups evaluate him. Here’s a summary of what I found in actions reported since March 1st of this year. Johnson was rated:

  • 100% by the Independent Petroleum Association of America
  • 100% by FreedomWorks, a Conservative, Libertarian group originally funded by the Koch Network
  • 100% by The National Retail Federation
  • 100% by The Coalition of Franchise Associations
  • 97% and 84% by the Club for Growth, a Conservative Economic group focused on lowering taxes
  • 92% by Americans for Prosperity, a Conservative, Libertarian group
  • 90% and 72% by Heritage Action for America, a Conservative policy group
  • 29% by NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
  • 13% by Foreign Policy for America, a group focused on avoiding military conflicts
  • 12% by the Humane Society Legislative Fund
  • 4% by The Alliance for Retired Americans
  • 2% by Progressive Punch
  • 0% by the League of Conservation Voters, a pro-Environment group
  • 0% by the American Federation of State, County & Municial Employees
  • 0% by Planned Parenthood Action Fund
  • 0% by National Education Association
  • 0% by NORML, a marijuana legalization advocacy group
  • 0% by Defenders of Wildlife.

Johnson came out strongly in support of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, and in support of Israel’s war against Hamas, but despite his support for both issues, he initially refused to bring President Biden’s supplemental defense bill to a vote, although it passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support. He laid out conditions for an immigration package which, he said, had to be passed in parallel with the defense bill, but when the Senate passed a immigration bill that met nearly every condition laid out by Johnson, the heavy hand of Donald Trump intervened. Trump ordered Johnson and the entire MAGA crew to vote against it because he thought it would give him an advantage in the coming election, and he knew he needed Putin’s help to win in November.

This kind of prioritizing, which invariably places Trump’s self-interest ahead of everything else, is typical of Trump. What’s different, here, is that he is usually so successful at strewing chaos that he’s able to mask his true intent from most voters. This time, however, there can be no mistaking what is occurring.

Johnson’s speakership has been under siege by Trump’s minions since day one, with Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R, GA) spearheading the opposition. Greene is Trump’s principal agent of chaos, who has been heard virtually quoting Vladimir Putin’s propaganda, though it’s not clear that she either realizes it or cares. But as former Representative Adam Kinsinger (R, IL) said yesterday, Greene is persona non grata among mainstream Republicans, yet she has been able to wield enormous power until now.

Iran’s recent failed missile attack on Israel brought all this into sharp focus. America’s lawmakers have a clear choice: either submit to Donald Trump’s will or act in the best interests of America. Johnson wasn’t ready to break with Trump, so he traveled to Mar-a-lago and bent the knee to the wannabe dictator. But at the slightest sign that Johnson cared more about America than what Trump wanted, Trump did what he always does, and left Johnson hanging out to dry.

Johnson’s decision to finally bring the defense appropriation to a vote in the House, where it will surely pass, was in complete defiance of Trump and the MAGA terrorists. Whether or not he was influenced by the realization that Trump can never be trusted, I prefer to see his decision as an act of integrity, something we’ve seen far too little of in the House. I also agree with Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) that it was an act of true courage.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel wrote that unlikely heroes always come along when their nations most need them. Could he have been anticipating someone like Mike Johnson?

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Netanyahu Must Step Down

Posted on April 13, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 13, 2024

For decades, most politicians subscribed to the myth that being Jewish was equivalent to unwaveringly supporting Israel. That’s true to some extent – I don’t know any Jews who want to see Israel destroyed. As an 81-year-old Jew, I have a lot of experience observing angry relatives and friends gesticulating and screaming at each other no matter what the topic was. Put ten Jews in a room, and you have ten different opinions, a lot of noise, and very little interest in compromise.

I also understand antisemitism. I got my first real job while an undergraduate at Columbia in 1960, at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Laboratory, their leading-edge solid state physics research facility. On day one, I was informed that since I was Jewish, the only place I could work was the stockroom (until I got my PhD in physics.) Almost all the senior researchers at the lab were Jewish.

Antisemitism, and conspiracy theories about Jews infiltrating governments and financial institutions have been around for thousands of years. But it took the Nazi’s systematic extermination of six million Jews to trigger enough world guilt, that even the British, no friends to Jews prior to World War II, concluded that surviving Jews deserved a homeland of their own. They dusted off the Balfour Declaration and pushed the creation of Israel through the United Nations.

In one of the most bafflingly stupid decisions ever made, the fledgling UN created Israel in a desert with almost no natural resources surrounded by enemies that have screamed “Death to Israel” ever since. No need to catalog all the wars Israel has had to fight or the constant state of war that exists along Israel’s borders with Hamas-controlled Gaza, Hezbolah-controlled southern Lebanon, and Syria. Over the span of Israel’s existence, innocent Israeli civilians have been besieged by constant, unprovoked rocket attacks. The common denominator in all that is Iran which has spread terrorism through the Middle East for decades.

While many Israelis would prefer to live in peace with their neighbors, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scuttled every attempt to create a Palestinian state and a lasting peace. As a young boy and a teenager, Netanyahu lived in Philadelphia, and later, graduated from MIT and worked for a Boston Consulting group. Sounding like a Jew from New York, he became the darling of American Jews and was instrumental in garnering and preserving American support for Israel.

America’s seventy-five-year long commitment to Israel built Netanyahu’s popularity in Israel and the United States. But over time, he grew more extreme and nationalistic and became a ruthless, power-obsessed politician. Once a champion of Israel’s growth and prosperity, he is now extremely unpopular at home, and has been indicted on felony charges by Israeli courts for corrupt business practices. It’s no coincidence that he and Donald Trump are political allies.

When Iran-backed Hamas murdered, wounded, raped, and kidnapped thousands of Israeli civilians last October 7th, everyone including Hamas and Iran knew exactly what Israel’s, that is, Netanyahu’s response would be. He formed an emergency war cabinet that controlled the government and protected him from criminal prosecution. On October 7th and every day since, Netanyahu vowed that Israel will not end its invasion of Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.

At first, that goal seemed both reasonable and justified, but Netanyahu’s callous disregard of the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza has eroded American and European support for his war of revenge. It has also eroded support for Israel among American politicians. Netanyahu strained his relationship with the United States, and created a tinderbox that could explode the Middle East. The final straw was an attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Netanyahu has demonstrated he has no limits or filters, and that he cannot be relied upon as a stable, rational ally.

Last month, Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz. Last week, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid came to Washington to meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and SC Senator Lindsey Graham. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall during those meetings.

Netanyahu is now a threat to the existence of Israel, the entire Middle East, and American interests. He believes that millennia of antisemitism and attempted genocide justify actions that risk plunging the world into nuclear war. He thinks he is the Judean God who destroys cities and floods the planet when he deems his enemies deserving of death. By provoking Iran and placing military and intelligence officers in every western country on guard against attack, he believes he can blackmail President Biden and our Congress into continuing to arm his war on Hamas. He’s wrong!

It’s a dilemma for Biden, but politics must take a backseat to pragmatic reality. Biden must re-affirm his full support for Israel and its people, but inform Netanyahu’s war cabinet that as long as Netanyahu continues as Prime Minister, there will be no further arms shipments to Israel. Our government claims it never gets involved in foreign regime changes, but that’s nonsense. The time has come to force Netanyahu’s ouster, for the good of Israel and the world.

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Eclipses, Ignorance, and Donald Trump

Posted on April 8, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 8, 2024

In Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the protagonist, Hank Porter, suffers a head injury and somehow wakes up in 6th century England. When he is brought to King Arthur’s court as a prisoner, the court magician, Merlin, decrees that Porter must be burned at the stake. As an engineer in 1887, Porter was well educated in a world that even then was still steeped in ignorance, fear, and superstition. In 528 A. D., in the court of King Arthur, Porter realizes he is probably the smartest, most knowledgeable person in the world.

Fortunately, Porter knows from his study of history and science, that there was a full solar eclipse that year, and as best he can reckon, it is about to occur. He uses his knowledge to proclaim that he has the power to control the sun, and the combination of superstition and the eclipse saves him from being burned alive.

Twain’s story, like most of his works, was a parody of the ignorance, politics, and social values of his time, made sharper by the enormous gulf of knowledge that separated the 6th and 19th centuries. Fast forward to 2024, and the contrast is even more stark. We knew the times and places today’s eclipse would occur to within seconds and fractions of a mile, and rather than greeting it with fear, millions of people, businesses, and media are celebrating it like a once in a lifetime event.

The public’s reaction to the eclipse tells me two things. One is that we no longer live in an age of scientific ignorance. The average American, today, understands that the eclipse is simply an astronomical accident, an unusual moment when a straight line can be drawn between the positions of Earth, the moon, and the sun. I find it uplifting to realize that at least in this area, truth and science have overcome fear and ignorance.

But back to Mark Twain’s perception of America in 1887, it makes me wonder if the joyous celebration of four minutes of darkness just after noon means we’ve actually evolved past the cult-like ignorance of the past. Sadly, when the calendar flips to April 9th, the bonding excitement of the eclipse will be in the past, and we’ll be back in our 2024 reality. Looked at objectively, that reality is almost as frightening as what Twain’s Porter found in the 6th century.

We may have learned that the sky is not the home of vindictive, sociopathic gods that spend their days toying with us mere humans. We may have learned that the only things up there are billions, perhaps trillions of stars, planets, moons, asteroids and a virtually infinite volume of empty space, but look at what we have forgotten.

What we seem most to have forgotten is that in a world with no absolute standards and values, everything eventually comes apart. That’s true in the physical world – the Second Law of Thermodynamics tell us that everything tends to randomness if we fail to enforce order. It’s equally true in the world of human interaction. In the absence of truth and facts that everyone can believe in, the only possible outcome is chaos and devastation.

It’s a cliché that “everything is relative.” That notion is effective in alerting us to different aspects and points of view. But in reality, taken to its limits, the lack of absolute truths we all believe in is as frightening a proposition as the idea of burning someone at the stake because they’re different from us.

Our nation is presently caught in a very dangerous trap. We appear to be forever stuck in divisiveness and impasse, because of a relatively small group of angry extremists. These people found a leader who understood that if you corrupt truth and replace belief in science with cult-like nonsense, when you’re successful, as Kellyanne Conway was, in convincing people that “alternative facts” are as relevant as real ones, it’s possible to undermine and destroy institutions and values that have defined us for 250 years.

This can only occur when we forget that everything we’ve fought for as a nation requires constant vigilance. Look away for a moment, and someone like Donald Trump will always emerge to fill the vacuum left when we’re too tired or lazy to fight to preserve our legacy.

Today’s eclipse is a wonderful, exciting moment in time that in a very real way represents the exact opposite of the world Donald Trump foresees. He wants to govern our nation as an autocrat, based on whatever prejudice or hateful thing occurs to him at each moment. He has no respect for the millions of people who have sacrificed to preserve the legacy we inherited. He can only win if we all throw in the towel and conclude that it’s no longer worth fighting for.

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NATO

Posted on April 5, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 5, 2024

As a student, and later, as a young man, my hero was President Harry Truman. Imagine if you can, what it must have been like for the brash Senator from Missouri, who became Franklin Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944 because then Vice President Henry Wallace was unacceptable to Democratic Party leaders. With Roosevelt’s health failing, it seemed likely that his Vice President during his fourth term would ascend to the presidency before the 1948 election. Thus, Truman, a high school graduate, farmer, piano player, and haberdasher became VP in March, 1945.

While Roosevelt was not expected to survive a fourth term, no one expected him to die five weeks after his inauguration. With World War 2 finally nearing its end, Truman became our thirty-third president on April 12, 1945. It was left to him to negotiate post-war treaties and to shepherd the America-led Allies into a future in which Europe was threatened by Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. But before he could do that, he had to make a decision that dramatically impacted the entire world.

Germany had surrendered unconditionally in May, but Japan vowed to hold out until the bitter end, and Truman’s military advisors told him that invading the Japanese homeland could cost tens of thousands of American lives, a prospect few could stomach after the U. S. military had already suffered over a million casualties. The alternative – use our two atomic bombs to destroy Japan’s ability to resist. Despite misgivings, Truman made that choice, which weighed heavily on him for the rest of his life. I had the unique good fortune to hear that directly from the lips of his widow, Bess Truman, years after his death.

Truman went on to be a driving force behind the Marshall Plan, which enabled Europe to recover from the devastation of the world war with remarkable speed, but looking back on his record today, his championing of a new western alliance to defend against Soviet expansion is what stands out most prominently. The new alliance united Europe, with the startling result, that after fighting two world wars among themselves in the space of thirty years, all the countries of western Europe have been united and at peace with each other since 1945. After decades of war and strife, the feature of the alliance that is most important today, is that every member nation pledged to defend every other member if it was invaded or attacked.

That alliance, which began with twelve nations and has now grown to a membership of thirty-three, is NATO, which came into existence on April 5, 1949. If you haven’t checked your calendar, today is NATO’s 75th anniversary. NATO has kept the world safe from nuclear war during all that time, and with its political counterpart, the EU, has fostered prosperity among the member nations and mutual respect for the rule of law. In 2024, as extremists fight over abortion rights and hypocritically attack each other over border security and defense of our democracy, the issue that will have the greatest impact on our children and grandchildren going forward is the health of NATO.

In terms of our coming election, we see a clear choice among our candidates. President Biden considers support for NATO critical to our future, while Donald Trump would withdraw us from the alliance. The issue of NATO by itself is enough to make me fear for our future if Donald Trump is re-elected. It’s time Americans starting prioritizing issues. Nothing in this year’s presidential campaign is more important than preserving and supporting NATO.

With that said, it’s worth comparing Truman as a president with the choices we face today. Truman, for all his direct, in-your-face approach to politics would be horrified by Donald Trump. The things for which Truman is best remembered have one thing in common – they were all forward-looking efforts to create a positive, peaceful future for all Americans and the allies whose blood was shed alongside ours. As politicians go, Truman was a humble man, much like our current president, the polar opposite of his narcissistic, self-serving opponent who has no respect for the rule of law.

Almost fifty years ago, three years after Truman’s death, our nation mourned his loss in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s cover-up (which Trump says should not have ended Nixon’s presidency.) The nostalgia for Truman was immortalized by the band Chicago in their hit song, aptly titled, Harry Truman. You can find the original Chicago rendition on U-tube. I listened to it five times while I was writing this, and I haven’t felt so uplifted in months.

The lyrics are as appropriate today as they were in 1975. See if you agree.

America needs you
Harry Truman
Harry could you please come home


Things are looking bad
I know you would be mad
To see what kind of men
Prevail upon the land you love

America’s wondering
How we got here
Harry all we get is lies
We’re gettin’ safer cars
Rocket ships to mars
From men who’d sell us out
To get themselves a piece of power

We’d love to hear you speak your mind
In plain and simple ways
Call a spade a spade
Like you did back in the day
You would play piano
Each morning walk a mile
Speak of what was going down
With honesty and style

America’s calling
Harry Truman
Harry you know what to do
The world is turnin’ round and losin’ lots of ground

Oh Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love

Oh woah woah woah
America’s calling
Harry Truman
Harry you know what to do
The world is turnin’ round
And losin’ lots of ground
So Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love

Oh
Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love
Harry
Harry is there something we can do to save the land we love

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Trump’s Shadow Government

Posted on April 4, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 4, 2024

A source I trust and frequently troll for ideas is historian Heather Richardson’s Letters From an American. She thoroughly researches and fact checks everything she writes and discusses current events in a historical context. Yesterday’s Letter sent a chill up my spine.

A majority of Americans strongly disapprove of Donald Trump ‘s behavior. We know that because he has never come close to fifty percent in polls or actual vote counts, and exit polls and voter interviews show that a sizable share of people who voted for him metaphorically held their noses as they cast their votes. His profane, amoral, no-holds-barred approach to politics allowed him to destroy the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, not by appealing to a majority, but by undermining it with lies, threats, and innuendo.

He wins by pandering to extremists and hatemongers, encouraging voter suppression in states controlled by his MAGA movement, and filling court dockets with lies and spurious challenges. Recalling the old Bob Newhart comedy sketches, I sometimes imagine trying to explain the phenomenon of his success to a Martian. How could I explain that although most of Trump’s extreme views are remarkably unpopular with Americans, he seems relatively unaffected by their disapproval?

Three-quarters of Americans believe a woman has a right to manage her own body and determine if and when she wants to have children. Two-thirds of Americans understand that allowing Russia to defeat Ukraine could be a re-run of the lead-up to World War 2 with nuclear weapons. The vast majority of Americans, while supporting Israel in its war against Hamas (and by implication, Iran,) are horrified by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s callous disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians. Yet, Netanyahu, who has for decades undermined efforts to achieve lasting peace with Israel’s neighbors, continues to have Trump’s unqualified support.

For three months, Trump’s hypocrisy over our southern border has been on display. A bipartisan bill containing most of the provisions demanded by Trump, passed in the Senate with seventy Yes votes, and knowing the bill would easily pass in the House, Trump forced Speaker Mike Johnson to prevent it from coming to a vote. Perhaps most important, Richardson reported that recent polls show ninety-eight percent of Americans support our Constitution and the right of every American to vote. In what other place and time could a candidate like Trump survive when most voters see his policies as undermining our democracy and the rule of law, and destabilizing the world order that has prevented a nuclear holocaust?

See why my Martian friend is confused?

Despite all the above, what got my attention, yesterday, is that Trump is running a shadow foreign policy that undermines the Biden administration’s attempts to protect our alliances and suppress the efforts of our adversaries. Think about that. Not only has Trump’s MAGA movement infiltrated state legislatures and used friendly judges to upend decades of legal precedent, he is attempting to do the same thing to America’s diplomacy and foreign policy. Richardson quoted foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum, who summed the situation up perfectly: “we have an out-of-power ex-president who is in effect dictating American foreign policy on behalf of a foreign dictator or with the interests of a foreign dictator in mind.”

The agent of this tactic is Trump’s former acting head of National Intelligence, Richard Grennell. The Washington Post reported that Grenell “is openly laying the groundwork for a president who will make common cause with authoritarian leaders and destroy partnerships with democratic allies.” Grennel appears to be Trump’s choice for Secretary of State if he wins the election.

Imagine that if while running for president in 1968, Richard Nixon had used campaign funds to send Henry Kissinger around the world assuring our enemies that if they helped him defeat the Democrats he would pull us out of Vietnam and leave our alliances in tatters. By any definition, that would have been viewed as treason. Yet, that is exactly what Trump is attempting to do now. He would assure Vladimir Putin that a Trump win would spell the end of NATO. He would assure Benjamin Netanyahu (an old family friend of his son-in-law Jared Kushner) that he would use all his influence to help him remain in power and scuttle Biden’s support for a two-state solution.

When will enough be enough? Donald Trump has told America what he intends to do if he is elected. He attempted to do everything he said he would when he was president, and his failure to mold the country in his own image was due to Congressional opposition. In 2024, Trump has made it clear that destroying our democracy is his highest priority, because democracy is not in the interest of a candidate who cannot appeal to the majority. His love for autocrats and his expressed desire to become a dictator on his first day in office are the real defining elements of his campaign.

Believe what Trump says, not the right-wing mouthpieces who claim he says those things only to anger his opponents. Trump means every word of it, and if he becomes president, we will be led by a mentally ill narcissist who will do everything in his power to destroy the America we know

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A New Inflection Point

Posted on March 23, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 23, 2024

When President Biden first uttered the phrase inflection point, I wondered how many Americans knew what it meant. I’d only heard it used in mathematics, where it is described as the point on a curve that separates concavity from convexity, where its second derivative is zero, or where curvature changes from falling to rising or rising to falling. None of those was what Biden meant.

He was acknowledging that when he took office, with COVID still a fearsome threat and our economy reeling from the pandemic induced shutdown, Americans feared for their health and quality of life. He intended to change their outlook from pessimism to optimism, a goal he achieved more effectively and quickly than even his most ardent supporters anticipated. In a typical election year, rising consumer confidence, record low unemployment, wages increasing faster than inflation, and soaring equity markets almost assure an incumbent president’s re-election. But this election is anything but typical.

This year, the incumbent president is running against a twice-impeached predecessor who is under indictment for more than ninety felonies and has been found guilty of fraud and sexual assault by New York Courts, for which he faces fines of over a billion dollars. Biden is running against a man who supports Russia’s attempt to destroy Ukraine and rebuild the Soviet Empire, whose threats have enabled a minority of extremists in Congress to prevent vital legislation from being passed, and who openly intends to attack our democracy and the separation of powers required by our Constitution.

Trump’s complete takeover of the former Republican Party is a model for the autocracy he plans to create, in his own words, with himself as dictator “on day one.” The Party is using campaign funds to pay his legal fees, which have thus far exceeded $8 million. More importantly, he has made the U.S. House of Representatives a dysfunctional laughing stock in which Republicans held captive by Trump have been clinging to a slim majority that threatens border security, our support for NATO and Ukraine, and our ability to support Israel and mitigate its deadly advance into Gaza.

With Trump overwhelmingly winning the Republican nomination for president, the trends felt ominous for Biden’s re-election and, in the minds of a majority of Americans, the future of our country. Despite that clear majority, Trump’s MAGA movement has proved adept at capitalizing on the flaws in our Constitution, which have allowed rampant gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, and most importantly, an Electoral College system that makes a mockery of democracy. All of the above enable an angry, aggressive minority to rule over the majority.

Things looked hand-wringingly bleak a couple of days ago, the trends definitely negative. The threat Trump poses to our democracy is real – he warns of a bloodbath if he loses the election. Even Hollywood joined the fray, rushing a new film, Civil War, for release right in the middle of an election year. I watched the trailer a couple of days ago – the film portrays our worst fears with terrifying credibility.  If ever the country needed an inflection point!

But wait. With another government shutdown looming, the House of Representatives passed its appropriation bill last night. In order to do so, a strongly bipartisan majority of House members scuttled poison pill amendments attached to the bill by MAGA extremists, and the bill passed with more than half the Republicans voting against it and 85% of Democrats supporting it. Immediately, one of Trump’s most extreme supporters, Marjorie Greene (R-GA) introduced a resolution to remove Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA.)

At the same time, two moderate Republicans, Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Ken Buck (R-CO) announced that they’re stepping down early, leaving Republicans with a majority of only one seat for the remainder of this Congressional session. Their timing was not coincidental. On his departure, Representative Buck threw his lot in with Democrats who filed a Discharge Petition to override Speaker Johnson’s refusal to bring aid to Ukraine and Israel to a vote. The Petition so far has 191 signatures. And yesterday, Trump’s rage over having to come up with more than $550 million dollars by March 25th to avoid having his properties seized by the State of New York exploded onto his Truth Social network.

We’re told it’s always darkest before dawn, another way of saying nighttime always leads to an inflection point at which things start getting brighter. We’re at that point now. The future of America may depend on the integrity of a few remaining genuine Republicans in the House. If two more of them sign on to the Discharge Petition, Trump’s hold on the House will be shattered. Democrats will support a bipartisan Johnson speakership if Representative Greene forces an ouster vote.

We can only be sure we’ve passed an inflection point in retrospect, so we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to be sure.

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Trump Needs More than His Rabid Base to Win

Posted on March 16, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 16, 2024

This week, the media have been trumpeting Donald Trump’s clinching the Republican nomination for president in 2024, and his complete takeover of the Republican Party. What they’re leaving out is that the Republican Party, like the Old Gray Mare, just ain’t what it used to be. It was never the majority party by popular vote, and today’s iteration of it is greatly diminished.

Three of the forty-nine Republicans in the Senate are on record refusing to support Trump, and there are surely more – it’s hard to imagine James Lankford (R-OK) supporting Trump after he scuttled Lankford’s hard-won border bill. Our present political climate in which the leader of the Party routinely threatens his rivals doesn’t foster openness. Thus, prominent centrist Republicans in the House, rather than fighting against the MAGA crew that took over their chamber, are running for the exits as fast as they can. All of the above means one thing: Conservative Republicans with a moral conscience who believe in our Constitution are no longer part of Trump’s Republican Party.

Even more striking is the number of former Trump Cabinet officers and senior advisors who have publicly said he is unfit for office and should never be allowed near the Oval Office again. When individual Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kissinger spoke out, people discounted them because they served on the House Panel that impeached Trump twice. But when CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip compiled a list in a video report, yesterday, it was difficult not to believe Trump has rough sailing ahead.

He’s defied expectations and logic before, when most of us had no idea how many angry Americans there were. Whether they were down on their luck, struggling with taxes, xenophobes, racists, misogynists, or fearful of change and too lazy to think for themselves, Trump skillfully pandered to all their hatreds and complaints. We were shocked to learn that about one in three Americans were in that mix.

Have a look at Ms. Phillips’ list and hear their own words on the video in the link:

  • Former Vice President and ultra-conservative Mike Pence, who believes Trump is a fake Conservative
  • Former Attorney General and long-time Conservative Bill Barr
  • Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was consider too right-wing for the Bush administration
  • Former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, who is highly respected throughout the military and diplomatic communities.
  • Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
  • Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis
  • Former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, who characterizes Trump as having no idea what America and public service are about
  • Former OMB Director and Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who was a vocal Trump supporter for five years and who now believes Trump is guilty of insurrection
  • Former Joint Chiefs Chairman, General Mark Milley, who describes Trump as a wannabe dictator who has no respect for the Constitution.

When Trump chased away traditional Conservatives, women who resent being told what they can do with their own bodies, and diplomats and military leaders who are terrified of Trump’s ignorance about foreign affairs and his worship of dictators, he was left with the same one-third of Americans who comprised his base from the start. By themselves, they’re not enough to elect him, even with the MAGA movement’s gerrymandering and voter suppression laws in effect.

My crystal ball doesn’t work any better than yours, CNN’s or Fox News’, but we don’t need one to see what’s ahead. First, an incumbent who, at 81, is susceptible to every vicious attack MAGA is capable of. He walks stiffly at times like most people his age, and he occasionally trips over a word during a long, passionate speech, more a reflection of his life-long stuttering affliction than evidence of dementia. His basic decency, compared to Trump’s sociopathic behavior, makes him look weak to some people, compared to his savage opponent who knows no limits. But his record speaks for itself – no American president since Franklin Roosevelt has been more productive or commanded more respect from foreign leaders, especially our allies.

In the other corner is Trump. There’s nothing to say about him that you haven’t heard or read ad nauseum. If Trump manages to win again, despite being on trial for 91 felony indictments, historians will beat their heads against a wall until they’re unconscious. The choice between Biden and Trump couldn’t be clearer. Before you cast a vote for Trump, imagine you’re a German in 1932, living under conditions far worse than any American is today. If you could look ahead fifteen years and see everything we now know, would that raging, Jew-hating populist with his absurd mustache still have your vote?

That’s the real choice we’ll face next November. Get it wrong, again, and it may be our republic’s last gasp.

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Israel’s Critical Decision

Posted on March 15, 2024 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 15, 2024

The current conflict between Israel and Hamas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran, has serious implications for the entire world. History will view it as a critical turning point for Israel, the Middle East, and the elephant in the room – the nuclear powers’ use of conflicts in the Middle East as surrogates for their own brinksmanship.

What makes this conflict so complex and dangerous is that in some manner, it touches everyone. It affects the world’s energy supply and international shipping, foments intense anger on all sides and spins off terrorist acts like funnel clouds on the edge of a hurricane. It involves generations-old deep-seated grievances and grudges, a two-thousand-year-old world-encompassing family feud. Multi-generational enmity isn’t new. The centuries-long conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, England and both Scotland and Northern Ireland, Japan and Korea, India and Pakistan prove the point.

But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is different and more complicated and confounding than the others. It involves two peoples who have been victimized by their neighbors for their entire existence. Antisemitism has existed since the time of Christ, and the Palestinians have been betrayed and abandoned by their Muslim neighbors for more than a century. An objective observer looking at the last seventy-five years would shake their head in dismay. The establishment of Israel as an independent nation was so badly executed by the fledgling United Nations, one might think it was deliberately set up to fail.

Only British imperialism could have conceived such an arrangement. Take a million or so Jews who lived in the “Holy Land” all their lives, throw in another five million refugees and survivors of the Nazi holocaust, and ensconce them on a piece land that looks strangely like New Jersey, surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who want to kill them. Stir in Cold War politics and the world’s thirst for oil and we had a recipe for disaster.

Yet, it is not the case that all Israelis and Palestinians hate each other. As in many such situations, the vast majority of people on both sides are decent people being driven by extremist elements with their own agendas. Hamas is a terrorist organization that has always devoted more of its meager resources to the destruction of Israel than to caring for its own people. Israel, on the other hand, was founded by people who had been persecuted most of their lives and were constantly under attack, so it was natural that many Israelis would appear to be right-wing militants to the rest of the world.  

After decades of conflict, younger Israelis craved peaceful coexistence. By 1990, Israel was evenly split between people who swore never to compromise and those who wanted to negotiate peace with their neighbors. That was the beginning of Benjamin Netanyahu’s career in Israeli politics. He spoke English fluently, sounding like he was from Philadelphia, where he spent much of his childhood, effectively cementing Israel’s wardship with the United States. He charmed us, especially Jewish Americans like my family who felt a kinship to Israel. We didn’t realize all the cheerleading on behalf of the defense of Israel masked a right-wing zealot with a lust for power that sometimes took precedence over what was best for Israel.

The Israeli peace movement might have prevailed, but for the collapse of the Soviet Union, which allowed three million Jews who’d lived under Communist subjugation and were as militant as the original Israelis of 1948, to emigrate to Israel. Netanyahu, a populist politician with Trump-like instincts, recognized his opportunity and took over the right-wing Likud Party which has dominated Israel’s coalition governments for thirty years. Whether or not Netanyahu really believes that risking making Israel a pariah to the rest of the world in his quest to eradicate Hamas is best for Israel, it’s his best chance to remain in power and avert criminal prosecution. It’s not a coincidence that he’s employing the same tactics as Donald Trump to remain in power and out of prison.

Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 was more destructive, proportionally, to Israel than nine-eleven was to the United States. That it was one of the most despicable acts since World War 2 isn’t up for debate. The issue is whether Netanyahu’s quest to destroy Gaza can be allowed to go unchecked with no regard for the lives of over a million civilians. Many people argue that there’s no such thing as an innocent Palestinian, just as Americans were propagandized to believe every German in the 1940s was a racist murderer. Netanyahu may believe that, but a growing majority of Israelis do not.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jew in our government, addressed the world, demanding that Netanyahu call for a new election to let the Israeli population decide who they want to lead them through this crisis. It was a courageous act, the kind of thing a great stateman committed to responsible governing does. Moreover, he was correct. Netanyahu is as toxic to the future of Israel as Trump is to the future of the United Staes.

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