Opiate For the Masses

Posted on October 16, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 16, 2023

Karl Marx said it first. As part of his philosophy that money and power should not reside solely in the hands of the wealthy, he described religion as a tool of the ruling class. Marx claimed religion pacifies the downtrodden, falsely promising succor in this life and an afterlife that is far better than our physical lives, which anyone can earn simply by following the dictates of their faith. By promulgating these beliefs, religion, especially Christianity, became a weapon of oppression.

Leon Uris described how the reactionary Catholic church in Ireland oppressed its people in his poignant novel, Trinity. European monarchs used religion to distract the masses from their real enemies – the rulers and other elites whose lust for wealth and power were limitless. Lest we forget, the United States was settled in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mostly by people seeking religious freedom and an end to persecution, as our Bill of Rights clearly implies. Today, the story is repeating itself in the Middle East. The two thousand year old universal persecution of Jews is at the heart of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Hamas are surrogates for the Shia prelates who govern Iran, who vow to kill Jews everywhere.

Researchers at Cornell University found that religious conditioning is more of an oppressive force than an opiate. Sociologist Landon Schnabel used the issue of abortion to illustrate how religion has shaped political views in America. He discovered that despite being affected far more by abortion policy, women are less likely than men to support abortion rights because they tend to be more religious. Similarly, he found that Blacks and Hispanics, especially at the lower end of the economic spectrum, are more susceptible to pro-life conditioning because they also tend to be more religious. This, despite the fact that the ability to control the growth of their families is critical to their well-being.

Then, there’s the current political crisis in the United States. As two wars rage, a small minority of political extremists have paralyzed our government for more than two weeks, and one extremist senator has blocked our entire military promotion apparatus. In the latter case, abortion is the sole issue; in the former, it is one of several that drive the so-called Freedom Caucus. The Republican Party’s majority in the House only exists because they used abortion rights to court Christian voters, despite having leaders like Donald Trump, who have no respect for religious values.

Religious intolerance and bigotry are what drive hate crimes. Anti-Semitic and anti-Arab violence are rising at an alarming rate throughout western nations, and anti-Semitic and anti-Christian rhetoric drive most of the anger in the Muslim world. Wars result from two basic causes: competition for economic resources and religious differences. Religion enabled and justified the genocide committed by individuals as diverse as Christopher Columbus and Adolf Hitler. I can’t prove it with numbers, but I believe that throughout history, more blood has been shed because of religion – the Crusades, the European conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, Northern Ireland, and the perpetual conflicts around the Holy Land – than any other reason.

At the individual level, most clerics use religion as a force for good. But far too many use it for predation and control. Witness our own recent history of murderous religious cults and people who use religious control to abuse women and children. Still, today, organized religion is both an economic and political weapon that reinforces poverty and limits the power and agency of the lower economic classes. That’s not Marx’s Communist Manifesto talking; it’s the reality most people live with. It’s also at the heart of the worldwide trend toward autocracy and divisiveness, like that promoted by Hungarian President Viktor Urban and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

The evil in this drama is neither spirituality nor belief in a supreme being. Those are very personal matters, and our Constitution guarantees that everyone has the right to their own values and beliefs.

The true evil is the effect of human nature on organized religion. Power invariably corrupts most leaders, and religion has a unique ability to foster such corruption because we all contain remnants of the primitive terrors that made humans invent religion in the first place.

It’s time the human race grew up. A big step in that direction is distinguishing humanism from religion. Valuing each other, caring for those in need, and remembering that everyone has an equal right to health and happiness are much more powerful forces for good than edicts handed done by Ayatollahs or Popes.

We don’t need opiates. We need to end hate, greed, and envy and stop trying to control each other.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why Hamas Must Be Destroyed

Posted on October 14, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 14, 2023

It’s not complicated. When there’s a cancer eating away at your body, you employ every means available to excise and kill it. If you don’t, it will kill you.

Harsh words, but appropriate. Hamas’ charter says it exists for the purpose of killing Jews and destroying Israel. As the governing body of Gaza for eighteen years, instead of focusing on the health and well-being of more than two million Palestinians, Hamas devoted itself to killing Israelis. The attack on Israeli towns near Gaza that began ten days ago is unique only in its scale, scope, and inhuman brutality.

Palestinians and Israelis both have a long history of grievances. Half of the world’s thirteen million Jews (as of 1940) were murdered by the Nazis, with about half of the survivors still in Europe when the war ended. As to the territory that includes Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, we have the dying gasps of British imperialism to thank for today’s mess.

During WW1, the British guaranteed Arab sovereignty in the Holy Land in exchange for the uprising that ousted the Turks. In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed a Jewish homeland in the region, and in 1920, the League of Nations mandated all of Palestine to Britain. The British, with help from America and the rest of Europe secured the United Nations mandate that created the sovereign nation of Israel in 1948, but they reneged on their promise to the Palestinians who drove out the Turks. Instead, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank became protectorates of Egypt and Jordan.

Israel became the homeland for survivors of the Nazi holocaust and the Jews who staged a four-year long uprising against British occupation in 1943. In 1948, all of its Arab neighbors declared war on Israel, and a state of war has existed unabated for seventy-five years. Part of the problem is religious differences around the control of Jerusalem, which became part of Israel. Long-standing grievances exist on both sides, and religious extremists, both Muslims and Jews, exacerbated the situation, but two things are clear.

Israel built a society based on democratic principles and the rule of law, tamed a desert, and created a strong economy and quality of life for its citizens. It has never attempted to occupy its neighbors’ territories except when it has been invaded, while Israel’s neighbors have repeatedly attacked them, from firing rockets into civilian settlements to full-scale incursions. Even so, Israel reached peace accords with Egypt and Jordan after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the UAE in 2022. The current normalization talks with Saudi Arabia are likely what triggered Hamas’ attack.

The war currently raging in Israel and Gaza has some interesting nuances. While it is heavily supported and supplied by Iran, Hamas appears to have acted on its own. Hezbollah, another terrorist client of Iran has not entered the war directly, and while it constantly provokes trouble in the Mideast, Iran’s leaders know better than to directly engage with Israel and its allies, militarily. They supplied Hamas with thousands of rockets and other munitions, but the bigger message is that whether Iran intended that they be used to kill innocent civilians, Hamas used them to murder indiscriminately.

Hamas is far more dangerous than other terrorist organizations. We’ve been reminded all week that on a proportional basis, Hamas’ massacre of more than a thousand Israelis is fifty times as significant as nine-eleven was to America, and it was only the first action in what Hamas hoped would be a general Arab uprising. Most terrorist acts are relatively localized, but Hamas would love nothing more than to initiate a region-wide war with serious global implications. Hamas is obsessed with destroying Israel and Jews everywhere regardless of the cost to Palestinians, and it is willing to imperil the entire planet to achieve its goals.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the most serious concern of the United States and Europe was what would happen to its nuclear weapons. While much of that problem was resolved by President Clinton and Premier Gorbachev, no one had illusions about how many might still be out there. Ask yourself, based on their eighteen years of ruling Gaza, what would happen if Hamas acquired one or more of them. Is there any doubt that they would fire them directly at Tel Aviv?

Hamas has no respect for either human life or the rules of war and diplomacy. Allowing them to exist in a world in which almost anything can be traded on the Black Market threatens the existence of everyone on Earth. They have lost all reason, and are being driven by pure hatred. Like an out of control gang rumble, it no longer matters whon started it or why. Israel must destroy Hamas’ ability to kill. We should be grateful that they’re undertaking the task for us.

And while our otherwise divided government seems united in defense of Israel, Donald Trump has seen fit only to criticize Israel’s leaders and praise Hezbollah, this week.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s Time for Saudi Crown Prince MBS to Step Up

Posted on October 7, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 7, 2023

The United States and Saudi Arabia have been strange dance partners for several decades. Are they friends? Enemies? Business Partners?

The Saudis have always acted in their own interest, as has the government of Israel, although in the latter case it’s not clear that the actions of the various incarnations of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have acted in the country’s interests as much as in the interests of his Likud Party’s right-wing coalition. If that sounds like Donald Trump’s presidency, it’s not coincidental. A few years ago, when both leaders found themselves in serious legal jeopardy, they were each other’s principal supporters. They’re both populists, ruthless politicians, and seemingly willing to do whatever it takes to hold on to power.

Thirty years ago, two critical events impacted Israel’s future. One was the Yom Kippur War, in which a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria nearly overwhelmed Israel. The other was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Revolutionary movements like Hamas are big on symbolism. Thus, Hamas chose to attack Israel, today, on the 30th anniversary of the first Yom Kippur War.

The Soviet Union’s collapse shifted the balance of political power in Israel. Israelis were weary of forty-five years of war with their Arab neighbors, and a younger generation who favored accommodation with Arab governments were on the cusp of having a voting majority. In 1993, Israel’s population was about five million. But the collapse of the Soviet Union enabled millions of Jews to leave, and three million of them chose to emigrate to Israel. Having escaped from the oppression of communism, they were determined to never be under anyone’s heel again, and their militancy changed Israel’s politics from rapprochement to right-wing extremism. They solidified Netanyahu’s political base, and he’s played to it ever since.

Saudi Arabia has been the lynchpin of OPEC since its formation in 1960, which gave it enormous power to control the price and flow of the oil most of the world depended on. But as a Sunni Muslim nation, relations between them and the Shia Muslims, led by Iran, were almost as hostile as their mutual hate of Israel. That resulted in the Iran-Iraq war that lasted for nearly the entire decade of the 1980s, in which the United States sided with the Sunni Iraqis, and by implication the Saudis. In 1990, the relatively secular Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, which was a direct threat to Saudi Arabia.

Suddenly, the United States and Saudi Arabia were allies, flying bombing sorties together and making a public show of mutual support. A couple of years later, however, when Israel was attacked on Yom Kippur and the Saudis had an opportunity to play a constructive role in a peace settlement, they chose to sit on the sidelines in silent support of Egypt and Syria. Inserting itself into that conflict was not in the interest of their control of the world’s oil, on which their entire economy depended.

What a difference another thirty years made. The worldwide shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy completely changed Saudi priorities. Demand for oil will decrease continually through 2050, and that will devastate the Saudi economy.

Knowing this, the Biden administration initiated accommodation talks between Saudi Arabia, Israel, and some other interested partners. Earlier peace agreements between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan had proved beneficial to all sides. But for years Washington had buzzed about the close relationship between the Bushes and the Saudi royal family, and we learned that most of the nine-eleven terrorists were Saudis, as was their leader, Osama bin Laden. Finally, there was the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which led straight to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known popularly as MBS.

The Saudis weren’t particularly helpful when Russia began reducing oil shipments to Europe; in fact, they’ve kept prices at near record levels for most of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Again, it’s reasonable to ask, are they our friends, our enemies, or a trading partner that always puts itself first? If the Saudis recognize that their best future includes a stable peace in the Mideast, along with the ability to benefit from Israeli technology, they must be aware that Politico and other sources believe Hamas may have timed its deadly attack on Israeli civilians specifically with the intent of scuttling any agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s record on Israeli-Palestinian relations has been abysmal. He has undermined or discouraged every proposed agreement put before him, which gives credibility to the Saudi claim that Israel has only itself to blame for the attack. Perhaps, but a terrorist attack that kills or injures thousands of innocent civilians has no justification and must be condemned by every neighboring nation. It’s time for MBS to stand up and accept responsibility for being a world leader whose goal is peace and stop supporting the destruction of Israel.

Whatever else he is, MBS is smart and well educated. He needs to make it clear that terrorist actions by Hamas (and Hezbolah) will not be tolerated, and the perpetrators will be treated as murderers and war criminals. Then he can go back to the negotiating table and save his country’s future, along with the entire Mideast’s.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Life Under the Bus

Posted on October 3, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 3, 2023

Whether in business, politics, or personal relationships, one of the worst things we can experience is being betrayed by people we trust. What could be more damaging than investing heavily in someone only to be thrown under the bus when they no longer need you? Very few missteps are more hurtful than misplacing trust or committing ourselves to people for whom loyalty is purely transactional. Today, that most clearly applies to everyone who ever took a knee in service to Donald Trump and to the parties and factions that make up our House of Representatives.

The former President has spent his life demanding unflinching loyalty from everyone in his orbit and discarding them when he no longer had any use for them. He has always believed that between his powerful allies and his money, he was untouchable, no matter how much he hurt people who had sworn fealty to him. Based on stories that are dominating the news this week, he’s finding out he was wrong.

Former loyal aides like Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah Griffin have been speaking out since the January 6th insurrection, stating clearly that Donald Trump was responsible and unfit to be president again. The fact the they’re both attractive young women must have been a particular blow to Trump’s ego, and he’s hasn’t been stingy with bombast and degrading comments about them. Respected generals like Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley and Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly both spoke out passionately this week about Trump’s incompetence, lack of character, and narcissistic self-interest. Their conclusion was familiar: Trump has no respect for our men and women in uniform and no idea what America stands for. He is unfit to lead.

Trump’s former Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, and former Attorney General, Bill Barr both described Trump as dangerous and a threat to our Republic. And in what has to be a classic case of the deliciousness of revenge served cold, Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who spent three years in prison for his loyalty to Trump’s illicit business schemes and was thrown under the bus by his former boss, will now testify against Trump in the civil fraud trial brought by the New York Attorney General. The result of all of these prominent people speaking out at once can only have the effect of giving cover to hundreds more who fear telling their stories. Trump’s knee-jerk attacks on all of them on TV and social media have to be getting old. I expect that to show up in the polls any day now.

Unfortunately for the United States of America, the disease of behaving like Trump has spread to the House of Representatives. It took years for many to realize that Trump couldn’t be trusted. Hundreds of people have invested their careers and legacies in serving the former president only to discover that with Trump, loyalty works in only one direction. Given that model behavior, it was no surprise when extremist Trump supporters, cheered on by Trump, staged a mutiny in the House Republican caucus. If the furor over January 6th centered around anything, it was the spectacle of an elected leader betraying his oath of office.

Trump set the example for everyone else. He told us it was okay to use any means to avoid paying taxes and to cheat everyone he did business with. He told us the oath to support the Constitution isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. He demonstrated to the world that it’s acceptable for a leader to be driven solely by raw power and narcissism, but mostly, he showed us that the only way he knows how to govern is through chaos and complete disregard for our democratic values.

Thus, today, Matt Gaetz and ten other Republican extremists committed to Trump’s kind of governing voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy. It was a vote born of vindictiveness and faithlessness with no clear purpose other than punishing McCarthy, whom they have been abusing publicly throughout this Congress. The entire charade is anti-American. Not only is it the polar opposite of balanced bipartisan government, it’s anarchy. Gaetz’s gang know they will never have the votes to elect someone they approve of to the Speakership. They haven’t even put forth a replacement, because that’s not what they’re about. Like Trump, all they know how to do is obstruct and destroy.

I tried to give McCarthy the benefit of the doubt, but it seems that like Trump, he will pander to anyone, make any necessary promise to secure what he wants. And like Trump, he won’t hesitate to break promises and throw allies under the bus when a better deal comes along. McCarthy may be just as likely as Trump to screw anyone who gets in his way, but poor Kevin’s just not very good at it. If it were only his misfortune I wouldn’t care, but his behavior puts us all at risk.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Happy New (Fiscal) Year

Posted on October 2, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 2, 2023

Many people begin a new year by partying hard and watching football with the next day’s hangover, but there is also a tradition of atonement associated with turning over the calendar. Some make new year’s resolutions about everything from losing the weight they gained the previous year to treating family and friends better. Jews and Muslims have a prescriptive approach to atoning for past sins. Observance of the Jewish Yom Kippur and the Muslim Ashura, both of which occurred two weeks ago, includes a day of fasting and a week of self-reflection, apology, and even compensation.

Ringing in a new fiscal year is different. In recent years, the end of September has become increasingly contentious and vitriolic, with the negativity centering around the coming year’s budget. Ever since tribalism and divisiveness began defining our politics, morality, and social interactions, the beginning of a new fiscal year has been a battleground with potentially serious consequences. The government shutdown that was averted on September 30th could have done mortal damage to our economy, our military, the security of our transportation system, our trade relationships, Ukraine, and our struggle with inflation.

To some of our leaders, acknowledging past wrongs is a sign of weakness. Thus, a small minority of extremists encouraged by a former president, who care nothing about either our Constitution or their oath to govern responsibly, rung in our new fiscal year with a rear-guard action to prevent our government from functioning. The MAGA movement, led by Donald Trump and populated by people who cling to his coattails, was in full battle mode.

But Trump and his congressional wrecking crew lost a major battle on September 30th. I believe the start of FY 2024 may be the beginning of the end of MAGA proponents’ attempts to replace our republic with a fear-based autocracy. They pulled out all the stops trying to shut down the government, and they will undoubtedly continue their efforts, because Trump’s chances of winning re-election and the Republicans’ chances of controlling Congress depend on the same chaos, confusion, and lies that defined the 2020 campaign. But what Kevin McCarthy, Hakeem Jeffries, Mitch McConnell, and Joe Biden pulled off Saturday was a clear statement that they will not permit a rabid minority to control the governance of the United States.

The new fiscal year was also marked by three other events which signal the ultimate end of Trump’s dominance of our politics. Moderate, sane Republicans in both the House and Senate finally began speaking out against the tyranny of an extremist minority and the likelihood that nominating Trump in 2024 will sink the Republican Party, not to mention the nation. And yesterday, in a powerful, passionate defense of democracy and our Constitution, retiring Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley made it clear that he believes Trump is unfit to serve again as president and represents an existential threat to America. Finally, today, Trump appeared for his civil fraud trial in New York, after viciously verbally attacking both the judge and the State Attorney General outside the courthouse.

Unless Republicans not named Trump figure out a way to stop him from getting the presidential nomination, we’re going to choose between Trump and President Biden again, next year. Some Americans, possibly a third of us, have bought into the Trump narrative, but people who identify as Independents or genuine Conservatives will be up for grabs on Election Day. That leaves me feeling pretty good, about avoiding the disaster of a second Trump presidency and forcing the MAGA movement back into its caves. Rabid supporters liken his legal struggles to the persecution of Christ, but it’s hard to imagine everyone else not abandoning him in the end.

When the best many former Trump voters can say is “I don’t like the man, but I like his policies,” I have to believe the next few months of watching him abuse judges, prosecutors, and anyone else who disagrees with him will end his reign of terror. For some, it will be what the media call “Trump fatigue.” For others it will be an overload of disgust and the realization that he really is as dangerous as his critics claim. Anyone who has a child who throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way will ultimately recognize Trump for what he is.

If you’re a sailor, you might call this weekend a sea change. If you’re a mathematician you could think of it as a positive shift in the second derivative. If you work hard to support your family, you’ll finally realize that Trump and his cohort have no interest in you; it’s all about their egos and lust for power. If you’re everyone else, you’ll just breathe a sigh of relief when Trump goes down, defeated and bankrupt, as he deserves to be.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bipartisan Politics

Posted on September 30, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 30, 2023

It wasn’t too many years ago that politicians ran for office promising to work across the aisle. They believed it would put them above the partisan fray, and voters rewarded them for it. But so far in the twenty-first century, the culture of divisiveness spawned by extremists at both ends of the political spectrum seems to have convinced voters that compromise is weakness.

Both parties practice extreme politics, although Progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fight hard for what they believe, but they have never attempted to take over their conference. In the end, their priorities are doing the job they were elected to do – governing. Egged on by Donald Trump, however, right-wing extremists led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz believe a leader’s job is to fight relentlessly for what he wants and never give in.

Gaetz attempted to hijack the Republican caucus in the House and hold the entire Congress hostage. The opposition party always tries to prevent the party in power from achieving all its goals, but the MAGA movement wants to control everything. There are twenty-one MAGA members in the House, less than five percent of the total, yet this small, rabid minority nearly brought our government to a halt this week, regardless of the consequences to our economy and military.

Their extreme views on cutting taxes to benefit the wealthy, restricting women’s health, immigration, the federal safety net of social programs, and cutting support for Ukraine against Russian aggression are not popular with American voters. The MAGA crowd knows they’ll never achieve a majority to pass their programs, so instead, they resorted to extortion. I can’t fault their tactics – they knew Kevin McCarthy desperately wanted to be speaker, and they forced him to eat crow to get their votes, including accepting a rule that allows Gaetz to initiate a vote of no confidence by himself.

No one knew how far the MAGA crowd would go, but early on it seemed that McCarthy’s appetite for public humiliation was limitless. They obstructed all of his attempts to move legislation, and it was easy to accuse him of caring more about his personal power than doing his job. Gaetz, who has never accomplished anything significant in Congress, was drunk on power. As long as McCarthy kept caving to him, nothing would get done. Any reasonable observer could see that the only solution to the debt ceiling and budget crises forced by Gaetz was cooperating with Democrats on a bipartisan bill, but the Republican Caucus had a majority of only four seats, and they were determined to retain control of the House.

Because I care deeply about our country, I choose to believe that McCarthy’s strategy all along was to give Gaetz enough rope to hang himself and then crush him. Working quietly behind the scenes with the White House and his Democratic counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, McCarthy offered Gaetz every possible attempt to behave reasonably, but like his idol, Trump, Gaetz continued to ridicule and belittle the Speaker from the House floor.

McCarthy deserves a heap of praise for the way he handled the situation. He held out until that last possible moment. Then, armed with assurances from Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and President Biden, he brought a bipartisan continuing resolution up for a vote. The resolution, which keeps the government operating until November 14th, received 209 Democratic votes and 126 Republican votes, while 90 Republicans and one Democrat voted “No.”

There’s one glitch, however, and McCarthy still has to prove that he can keep promises he makes when he negotiates with Democrats. The one concession to the MAGA right was withholding additional funding for Ukraine in the CR, but we’re told McCarthy assured the president it would be in the final budget. That promise should be easy to keep, as a significant majority of House members and voters want to support Ukraine.

Gaetz and MAGA lost, and everyone else – the rest of the Congress, the White House, and the entire country won today. We’ll have to wait and see whether Gaetz puts on another show over the final budget and Ukraine funding. People like Gaetz and Trump are shameless narcissists whose behavior is hard to predict. But for now, I applaud McCarthy’s mastery of the situation. I care more about his support for a bipartisan solution to avoid a shutdown than the specifics of his politics.

I’ve often said that Donald Trump is the most dangerous person in America. It’s people like Geatz and his MAGA mob that make Trump so dangerous. They’re the potential Brownshirts in Trump’s fantasy of being America’s first dictator. I believe Kevin McCarthy has neutralized them. They’ll still obstruct everything they can, but we learned two things, today. McCarthy’s strategy worked, and bipartisanship is alive and well at crunch time.

Finally, Hakeem Jeffries deserves as much praise as McCarthy. He avoided harsh rhetoric as Gaetz was trashing McCarthy and the Democrats, and when the CR passed, he was gracious in praising the bulk of his Republican colleagues.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How Did We Get Here?

Posted on September 28, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 28, 2023

In less than three days our government will “shut down.” I put that in quotes because it’s not a phrase that can be taken literally. An article by the Brookings Institution explains that the Antideficiency Act makes it illegal for federal agencies to spend or obligate any money without approval from Congress. If any of the 12 annual appropriation bills that fund federal agencies are not passed and signed by the president by the start of the new fiscal year, (October 1, 2023,) every agency not funded must cease all non-essential functions, though the definition of non-essential is up to each agency head.

Since debating and appropriating government funding is the primary role of Congress, a shutdown represents a total failure of Congress to do its job, although to be fair, the Senate has done its part impressively, and in the process demonstrated that bipartisan government can still work when lawmakers remember that they are elected and paid to uphold our Constitution and act in the best interest of the country.

Beyond that, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell upbraided his party’s caucus in the House of Representatives for their failure to act. McConnell said, correctly, that a government shutdown accomplishes nothing. I was a federal employee during the last three shutdowns, so I can confirm that there is no upside but considerable downside. Millions of federal employees and contractors don’t get paid during a shutdown, but they all receive full paychecks for the shutdown period as soon as it ends. The only real impact on them is being locked out of their offices when there is important work to be done.

The real harm is suffered by people who depend on federal programs, and to a lesser degree, by federal law enforcement and the military. Consider the war In Ukraine. A long government shutdown will affect our ability to support Ukraine against Russia, but even a short one has the effect of weakening us, both at home and internationally. Our allies can’t count on us when an extremist fringe is able to turn our policies upside down whenever they please. And no one will be happier about a shutdown of our government than Vladimir Putin. He smells weakness and instability like the predator he is, and he knows that the more Donald Trump’s influence grows the more his own power is enhanced.

McConnell implied but didn’t say explicitly that a shutdown can only result when extremists in his party put politics and power ahead of their sworn duty. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries characterized them as trying to shove their right-wing fringe politics down the throats of the large majority of Americans who oppose their views. Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who has assumed the role of outspoken leader of the group, behaves as if he believes he was elected for the sole purpose of disrupting and paralyzing the government.

Gaetz is carrying Donald Trump’s water in the House. He and his mob believe that Trump so dominates the Republican Party that remaining in his favor is their only priority. The only thing they care about is helping Trump win re-election, despite the fact that he is under indictment by two states and the U. S. Department of Justice for nearly a hundred felonies including conspiracy to overthrow the government, and a New York State judge confirmed, yesterday, that Trump’s businesses have operated fraudulently for decades.

Trump is famous for his delaying tactics and his ability to create chaos, and the Gaetz gang believe they can use the same techniques to win. But Trump is also famous for stabbing his loyalists in the back when he no longer needs them. Gaetz is clearly not as smart as he thinks.

The shutdown drama was reaching its peak in the midst of the Republicans’ second presidential debate. Voters may have hoped to hear meaningful policy discussions, but all they heard was a bunch of unimpressive also-rans screaming at each other. With a government shutdown looming, the debate was a perfect opportunity for any of them to demonstrate leadership and a commitment to the nation’s priorities by addressing the state of affairs in the House and the failure of their own Majority Leader to control his caucus. But not one of them had the courage to mention the issue, nor would they address the fact that the leader of their party is a dangerous criminal and a gangster.

If there’s any chance of saving our future, it depends on all of us honestly asking how we got to this place. How is it that a narcissistic hate-monger controls one of our major parties and the rest of our politicians act like craven cowards whenever he speaks? How is it that hate crimes and mass shootings have hit an all-time high in America? If you think those things are unrelated, I suggest you rethink it.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Polling

Posted on September 25, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 25, 2023

Voter preference polling is one of the media’s favorite tools for grabbing attention. It plays a vital role in ratings wars and attracting sponsors, but the lingering question remains: are the results meaningful? Public response to polling, especially more than a year out from an election and before a single primary vote has been cast, is mixed. Some people read polls on the edge of their seats while many others ignore them. Sadly, most people don’t understand them well enough to judge.

To people who do understand, particularly in a presidential election, national polls don’t mean much, because in today’s world, a handful of swing states determine the outcome. In 2020, the margins in five swing states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona) totaled 280,000 out of 155 million, less than 0.2% of the votes cast. They mean even less the further away the election is.

Some polls, like the just-released ABC-Washington Post survey on the 2024 presidential election, generate considerable controversy. There are many polling organizations, some that purport to be entirely objective, while others have clear biases. Those biases can manifest in the way sampling is conducted and in the way questions are worded. In virtually every poll I’ve participated in, I felt that most of the questions weren’t biased as much as worded in a way that I didn’t have a clear response.

The problem with the Post-ABC poll, which was conducted from September 15-20, was that its results were very different from polls conducted by other groups. The Washington Post acknowledged that simply by describing it as an outlier – a correct conclusion, but one that caused me to ignore it completely. Even if it had agreed with other, similar polls, I’d have had trouble taking it seriously. Why?

Consider how polls are conducted today. According to The Post, it used “a random national sample of 1,006 U.S. adults, with 75 percent reached on cellphones and 25 percent on landlines,” and the results have a margin of error of at least 3.5%, 4% among registered voters, and it’s much larger than that when results for smaller subgroups are presented. Four percent doesn’t sound like a lot, but that number is only valid if all the assumptions made in conducting the poll were correct.

The most important assumption is that the sampling universe accurately reflects the opinions of likely voters. One problem is that 11% of the people sampled for the ABC-Post poll were not even registered to vote. But the more serious problem is whether even the 89% who were registered actually represented the nation at large.

The Post reported that about 750 people were contacted on cellphones and roughly 250 on landline phones. Thus, the entire poll was conducted by interviewing people who answered their phones and were willing to speak to pollsters. And for people who work for a living, that means they could only be contacted outside their work hours. Does that sound like anyone you know is represented by the sample of people questioned? I and virtually everyone I know ignore phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize or those identified as likely spam or marketing calls. So, who is actually being counted in the results?

It sounds to me like the only people who respond are those who answer their phones every time it rings. Maybe they’re lonely or bored or have nothing better to do, given that more than nine times out of ten, the caller is either a robot or someone trying to sell you something you neither need nor want. But that group certainly doesn’t think the way I or most of the people I know do. Another factor is that even among those people who answer a pollster’s call, most are too busy or disinterested to take the time. My guess is that people who are willing to spend fifteen minutes talking to pollsters have intense feelings, usually including anger bordering on rage about one of the candidates or a hot-button policy issue.

I cannot take such polling seriously. I have no confidence that either the sampling universe used represents actual voters who enter a polling place or that the questions they posed really touch on what most voters think is important. As RCA Chairman David Sarnoff, in the movie Twenty One, says to the federal investigator who proved that the quiz show of the same name was rigged – No one ever said it was honest. It’s just entertainment.

I recommend that we view national polling the same way. State by state polls, for either primary or general elections, especially close to voting days are likely to be a lot more reliable, but in the end, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Your vote belongs to you.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ostriches

Posted on September 19, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 19, 2023

Ever since Donald Trump decided that his narcissism could only be satisfied if he became the first American dictator, I’ve been confounded by the way major events have evolved. How often in the past have we asked, “How could this possibly have happened?” How could we have spent the decade of the 1920’s hollowing out the bases of our economy until everything crashed and burned? How, in the 1930’s, could Europe and the United States have sat back and watched Fascism devour most of Europe and Asia? How could we have allowed Russia to beat us into space while we were letting ourselves be dragged into a decade-long conflict in Vietnam?

I could ask a dozen more questions like those, but my intention is to avoid having us all wake up one day in, say, 2028 and ask how we could have turned our country over to a bunch of nihilistic, right-wing extremists and shredded our Constitution. Our founders’ vision, flawed as it was by eighteenth century norms and values, was of a Republic based on majority rule and freedom to speak and worship (or not) as we choose. It was of a government that prioritized the common good and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.

If you need a clear example of how wrong things can go, recent polling revealed that while fewer than one in ten Americans believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, Tommy Tuberville, a football coach turned U. S. Senator has the power to scuttle our nation’s defense appropriation because he doesn’t like the military’s policy of granting leave to servicewomen who believe they require an abortion; an extremist rabble representing a small fraction of the House of Representatives seems to have the power to shut down the government until its demands on abortion, Ukraine, climate change, and public education are met; and most red state legislatures are attempting to enact bans on abortion and books they don’t like into law while recognizing that they do not represent the views of the majority of their constituents.

The problem is far deeper than a Republican Party at war with itself. Trump and his supporters showed us that the political system we have touted as the best and fairest in the world is seriously flawed and at risk. Our two-party system is incapable of defending itself and doing the people’s business when it loses its moral compass and openly supports a culture of lies. And it’s appalling that our media normalize the behavior of people who are willing to destroy our government for the sake of their own power and greed by referring to them as Conservatives.

These people are the anathema of Conservative leadership. Think about what the word conservative means – acting in a manner to conserve and preserve the things we need and value. Referring to radical extremists who prefer government by a fascist oligarchy that subjugates women and non-white populations while telling everyone who they can love and marry and censoring unpleasant truths from public education as Conservatives is a perversion of our language. The point was made clear by a tee shirt I saw while my family was touring the Naval Academy: Make Orwell fiction again.

Unfortunately, true Conservatives like Liz Cheney, Paul Ryan, and Jeff Flake were purged from our Congress because their gutless colleagues were more concerned with their own re-election than what was good for our country. And centrists, who for decades were the glue that held the warring factions in Congress together and enabled it to function, have decided to leave for greener pastures. I can’t say I blame them, but if we don’t react to those things as the glaring warning signs they are, the next generation of Americans will reside in a country we wouldn’t recognize.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President in 2012, said much the same thing in his new biography: Romney: A Reckoning. While roundly criticizing his Party, he revealed that at the times of Trump’s impeachments, not a single Republican Senator believed Trump to be innocent, yet he was the only one who voted to convict because the others were terrified of Trump’s base. That’s the same base that spawned the insurrection at the Capitol and who still threaten civil war if Trump fails to win a second term as President.

If you still wonder how once thriving economies and civilizations suddenly collapse, we’re watching the process unfold today. I don’t know a lot about ostriches, but I’d bet that burying its head in the sand never saved the life of a single creature that chose to hide rather than defend itself. If we try to hide from the danger of Donald Trump, we’ll be as pathetic as those ridiculous birds.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Circus is Back in Town

Posted on September 12, 2023 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 12, 2023

When I heard that the Ringling Brothers Circus was making a comeback, my first thought was that when I saw it as a kid, except for the tightrope walkers, I was underwhelmed by The Greatest Show on Earth. I’m even more discouraged to learn that the circus cloned itself, appointing a new tightrope walker-in-chief. We couldn’t have two circuses with the same name, so the clone found a new one. To all appearances, the cloned circus will provide even more balancing acts than the original, with the added dimension that not only will the performers be risking their own lives, but those of every American as well.

The new circus is called the United States House of Representatives, and its chief tightrope walker is Kevin McCarthy. As a kid, I never understood whether tightrope walkers were motivated by the challenge, a need for fame and public adoration, or a strong death wish. As I watch the cloned circus perform, I still wonder the same thing.

In the original circus, tightrope walkers had a safety net. If they fell, the worst thing they usually experienced was embarrassment, and given their training and experience, their actual “death-defying” feats weren’t as daunting as they looked. But McCarthy appears to be struggling for balance every time he speaks, and while a circus performer has the support of their entire cast, McCarthy’s lust for power left him out there on his own. Even worse for poor Kevin, in order to become Speaker, he had to grant one of his crew, Florida’s Matt Gaetz, the power to cut the rope out from under him on a whim.

If it were a real circus I would ignore it, but I can’t, because McCarthy has the power to create almost as much havoc as Trump does. And in addition to living on a tightrope, McCarthy added juggling to his act. He hasn’t dropped anything yet, but in the coming weeks his show will become more perilous every day. The balls he’s juggling include next year’s budget, without which the government will shut down, our federal deficit, and the civil war being fought between the Trump faction of the Republican Party and responsible Conservatives. Should one of those balls fall and shatter, it could take our entire economy with it.

This morning, Gaetz announced from the House floor that he has taken McCarthy’s balls hostage, and he intends to crush them if the Speaker doesn’t comply fully with his demands. I don’t know whether Gaetz’s arrogance or McCarthy’s impotence is more shocking. McCarthy is being held for ransom by a small gang of right-wing thugs, and his colleagues in the House seem as unable to deal with them as his entire party was when Trump steamrollered it.

If this weren’t bad enough, to gain favor with Trump, that same group of thugs has decided to switch sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. Any tightrope walker will tell you success is all about balance and knowing exactly where you’re next step is. Yet, McCarthy would rather waffle, saying one thing to appease Gaetz’s thugs one day, and the opposite the next day when saner Republicans react negatively.

Thus, on March 1st, when a Russian reporter asked McCarthy if his comments during the previous few months meant he no longer supported Ukraine, McCarthy said, “I support aid for Ukraine. I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing of the children, … and I think [Russia] should pull out.” One week later, on March 8th, after Gaetz and his gang read McCarthy the riot act, he rejected an invitation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit Kyiv to discuss F-16 fighter planes. McCarthy knows as well as anyone that support for Ukraine is a yes/no issue. He can’t have it both ways any more than a tightrope walker can survive if he constantly changes his mind about his next step.

Over in Ring Number 3, today, McCarthy ordered a formal impeachment inquiry over President Biden’s alleged involvement in his son’s business dealings when he was Vice President. House committees have been investigating the charges for nine months already. If they had found evidence of wrong doing, would the Gaetz mob have restrained themselves from crowing about it?

Eleven days ago, McCarthy said an impeachment inquiry required a vote of the full House, which was a repetition of what he said when Nancy Pelosi was getting ready to start one into Donald Trump’s actions. But poor Kevin presides over a badly divided House, and he didn’t have the votes, so he ordered it without asking the other members.

I fear that this could be the end of a viable Republican Party. If you’ve ever been to the circus, you know what’s left in malodorous heaps after the show ends. It takes a dozen strong men hours to shovel it all up.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments