Torturous Thoughts

The NY Times article "Donald Trump Faces Obstacles to Resuming Waterboarding" causes several ideas to collide in my head.  Isn't it odd that nobody ever questioned the efficacy of torture until the United States thought to use it?

The morality of torture is altogether another question, and not a trivial one, or an obvious one.  But, when other countries were known to use torture, or at least suspected of it---I'm thinking of Saddam Hussein for example, but there were and are plenty of others---the bien pensants would tut-tut about what monsters they were for doing it, but nobody suggested they were idiots for doing it.  Only the United States, George W. Bush especially, are fools for using a tool that does not work.

That the United States is uniquely characterized as idiots for using a tool that "everyone" knows doesn't work, by people who want the United States to fail, should be the first clue that torture works very well, indeed.  In the whole of my intellectual life, from history books to James Bond movies, absolutely positively everyone assumes that torture works.  Every insurrectionist organization, from WW II partisans to the Italian Red Brigades, organized on a cell structure in order to limit damage to the larger organization that is likely to arise from torture.

A revolutionary organization, like the Red Brigades in Italy, or the notorious Baader Meinhoff Gang in West German, will organize in small groups, of maybe five or six individuals, called cells.  All individuals in a cell are completely ignorant of all other cells.  They may know they are a part of the Red Brigades, but that is all.  With one exception.

One member of the cell will be able to contact one person at the next level of organization, but maybe not even that.  He may only be able to recognize when he is being legitimately contacted by a supervisor to receive legitimate instructions.  Even the leader of one cell will have no knowledge of other cells, and will not be able to contact them.  As you might imagine, this is a difficult organization to maintain and to manage.  Why do they bother?

They bother because they know that if an individual is captured, he will break under torture.  Sooner than later, everyone breaks.  Everyone.  Well, if the captured individual knows a lot, the entire organization could be compromised.  If he knows only his own cell, only that cell would be compromised.

In the larger society, from government ministries to operational units of the army, everyone works on a "need-to-know" basis.  In large, heterogenous units, you cannot depend upon everyone's ideological commitment, so there are people who might divulge state secrets for money or sexual favors.  Or, they will break under torture.

Soviet-era army units were famously more fragile than their American counter-parts because of the very high level of paranoia in the USSR.  Surprisingly high levels of officers were kept ignorant of essential operational intelligence for fear of losing that sensitive information to the enemy.  Enlisted men, even sargeants, were not even given maps.  This meant that if a lieutenant or captain were killed in action, that unit was effectively decapitated, and therefore lost to operations, until new officers could find them and assume command.

All this because everyone in the real world knows that torture works.

In another line of attack, people have asserted that torture is worthless because a tortured person will say anything.  He is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.  Torture is a tool like any tool.  It has its strengths and weaknesses and it takes years of training and experience, and some amount of talent, to use it well.

The purpose of torture is to inflict intense pain without killing the subject.  Clearly, death is a catastrophic failure since dead men don't talk.  Furthermore, it may be perfectly true that you might not get what you want if you have only minutes or a few hours to work.  This is a limitation of the tool.  But, if you have the time, you will certainly learn what the subject knows.  Exactly how much time depends upon how gentle you need to be with your subject, and probably other factors of which I know nothing, but I feel sure we are talking days or at most some weeks.  Certainly not months or years.

Finally, there are, of course, some maniacs out there, like a Saddam Hussein, who will inflict pain for the sheer joy of it.  Lumping them in, with the scientific use of torture for extracting valuable information, is the same category error as forbidding guns to criminals and policemen alike, because guns kill.

I am far too removed from the details of such operations to say whether the U.S. should or should not use torture.  But the arguments against torture are idiotic, and that makes me suspicious.

Happy Socialist Thanksgiving

The New York Times' Thanksgiving Day report on Venezuela, "Hungry Venezuelans Flee in Boats to Escape Economic Collapse".  Of course, the headline should read, "Hungry Venezuelans Flee in Boats to Escape Socialism."

Now, where have we seen this, before?  Oh, I remember, this Floating Truck is an image, one of thousands, of Cubans desperate to escape their Workers Paradise, abandoning free health care and everything.

As I have written before, more than a few times, the great mystery in my mind is how anyone can be a socialist today.  Several friends recently provided some insight.

I had long assumed that modern Westerners simply were ignorant of the horrors of the Iron Curtain.  Frankly, I still suspect this.  Oh, they may have some sense that all was not well under communism (shortages of Xboxes and whatnot), but I still doubt they know the Chinese were eating babies during "The Great Leap Forward".  And no, that is not a joke.  Not a joke.  Not a joke.  The Chinese were eating babies when 50 MMMillion people starved to death.  Just as Cubans were starving before reforms.  Just as Venezuelans are starving now.

Socialism fabricates shortages.  For some reason, this a big joke when people have to queue up, for hours, for toilet paper.  It's a lot less funny when there is no food in the stores and no medicine in the hospitals.

It turns out that my socialistically-inclined friends do not see a connection between policies and results.  Two of my friends specifically asserted that they see no analogy between the proposed policies of the Democrats, especially people like Barack and Bernie Sanders, and what had transpired behind the Iron Curtain or what is transpiring in Venezuela today.  It cannot happen here, they say, and I do not know why.  Is it the air we breath?  The water we drink?  Does the sun shine differently in the U.S.?  The socialists do not believe in American Exceptionalism, and yet they do.  For some magical reason, the same policies that have yielded destruction there, will work out gloriously here.  We are exceptional after all.

Another friend outright dismissed socialism as the cause of Venezuela's agony.  Corruption, she says, is the explanation.  Her explanation sent chills down my spine, and let me say why.

It has been long explained that the essential element of the scientific method is model building.  You build a model of how the world works, and you make predictions based on that model, and the better the predictions the better the model.  This is a plainly inadequate description of the scientific method.  Everybody builds models of the world.  Religions build models of the world, and there is the Christian model, the Hindu model, the Muslim model, etc.

It was Karl Popper who explained that the key ingredient in model building is falsifiability.  That is, are there certain phenomena that, if observed, would cause you to reject your model of the world?   Scientific models have it, religious models do not.  Since religion begins with faith---belief based on inadequate evidence---naturally there are no criteria of falsifiability.  With rare exception, there is nothing you can tell a True Believer to make him stop believing.

On the other hand, there is the famous example of Albert Einstein who, when he published his theory of General Relativity, was first in the line of skeptics.  Einstein asserted that he could not believe his own theory until certain tests were performed.  Those tests were performed, and only then did Einstein believe.  Many other tests were performed, and Relativity Theory went on to become one of the most thoroughly tested theories of the Cosmos.

So, does socialism look more like science or more like religion?  Socialism looks more like religion, and we have the evidence to prove that.

Deep down in the marrow of their bones, socialists Know how to organize society for the Greater Good.  And they have had 100 years (the centennial of the Russian Revolution is next year) and several billion people to prove it.  Each time they implemented socialism, it did not work out well.  In fact, it worked out very badly, indeed.  In fact, it failed catastrophically.  So, when things failed to work out as their model of the world predicted, the socialists had a choice:  they could revise or reject their theory, or they could suppose that some especially evil-minded individuals---Enemies of the People---were conspiring to sabotage socialism.  For a socialist, rejecting socialism is never an option.

Well!  If you are working against the welfare of millions of your fellow citizens, you are a very evil person committing a very heinous crime.  You deserve death.  And the socialists started killing, and killing, and killing.  That is why Lenin murdered more people in his first six months in power than the Tsars killed in the previous 100 years, why Stalin murdered more Russians during peace-time than Hitler murdered during wartime, why Mao murdered more Chinese during peace-time than the Japanese murdered during wartime, why Pol Pot murdered a quarter of the entire Cambodian population, etc., etc., etc.

That is why Venezuelans are launching themselves into dangerous waters in dangerous boats.  And that is why my dear friend's comment, that "It's the corruption, stupid," sent chills down my spine.  We have seen this all before.

Socialism is the problem.  And if you do not see the connection between socialism and death, then you are the problem.

Gender Pay Gap and a divided Nation

We are a divided nation.  And it's hard to reconcile when you cannot even agree on essential facts about the world we live in.  For example, most Leftists believe that women earn 80 cents for every dollar men earn, and take this as evidence of the War on Women.

Now, it would be one thing if the truth were buried in technical journals of the American Economic Association or the National Bureau of Economic Research, or the World Bank, while the nonsense is spewed all over the popular press, but, it's not like that.  It's true that partisan organisations promote the bullshit, but the truth really does exist in mainstream media.  For example, just in April of this year, the Washington Post published "What's the real gender pay gap?" in which the facts are laid out rather nicely.

Other publications include Forbes Magazine, "Don't Buy Into The Gender Pay Gap Myth", the Wall St Journal, "The 'Wage Gap' Myth That Won't Die", even CBS Money Watch, "The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth".

The "Huffingon Post" responds "No, The Gender Pay Gap Isn't A Myth---And Here's Why" by studiously, nay aggressively, ignoring the arguments of even the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress, whose ranking member, Democrat Carolyn Maloney, signed off on their report, "Gender Pay Inequality".

How does the Huffington Post, and others, do it?  Everybody begins with the basic fact that the average pay of all women is 80% of the average pay of all men.  But, unless you believe that a doctor's medical assistant should earn as much as the doctor, there is something to figure out.  The HuffPo will not do that.

Friends, I'm sorry to have to say this, but that is what intellectual dishonesty looks like to me.

Now, some of the reports, that correctly analyze the gender pay gap, will segue into the difficulties that women face for being poor.  Yes, let's do something about poverty.  But why are the Left lying about the specific point that women are paid less **FOR THE SAME WORK**?

No, no, no.  My friends are not lying.  The problem is they believe the lie.  Life is plenty hard enough for too many people.  Let's do something about that.  But nothing good can come of starting with a lie.  And, it's very hard to resolve political differences when we live in different intellectual worlds.

The Bible Predicted Donald Trump

If you listen to the Establishment intelligentsia, the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States is a mystery, a shock, a surprise.  I get they don't like it, but how could they be surprised by it?  This surprise must be the first clue that "the best and the brightest" among us are just not that bright.

Who am I to judge my betters?  I share your skepticism.  But, here is the thing:  I saw Trump coming a mile away, and they did not see him at all.  Oh, alright, I did not see Trump, exactly, but I absolutely did see the Trump phenomenon coming.  Of course, I did not know that it would be specifically Donald Trump, and I did not know it would happen exactly in 2016.   But, since November 2008, I was completely sure that somebody just like Donald Trump, or worse, would arrive on the political scene sooner than later.  Frankly, I am surprised it took this long.

How could the intelligentsia be so far off the mark?  Here is David Remnick of the "New Yorker", on the night of November 8,

On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit.

Now, let me tell you what I saw.  First, I don't give a fig about Barack Obama's personal qualities (or Donald Trump's, for that matter, or George W's).  This is not about being friends with the guy, golfing with him;  my son will not marry one of his daughters, he will not write a recommendation to law school for my niece, or anything like that.  And anybody who turns the political into the personal should be instantly disqualified from ever voting again.  Or writing for the "New Yorker".

As I write this essay, one week after the 2016 election, the Left is firing all their ordnance against Trump, criticizing him from the dandruff in his hair to the corns on his toes.  But, as an objective fact, Trump brings much more to the presidency than Barack ever did.

Whether he has done well or ill, and he seems to have done a whole lot of both, Donald Trump has done things.  He ran businesses, he built buildings, he hired and fired people, etc.  Donald Trump is an executive officer of one kind looking to turn himself into an executive officer of another kind.

In the elegant locution of the elegant Fouad Ajami, on the other hand, Barack Obama spent his life "unmaking and remaking the world in words."  He brought nothing to the presidency.  Not only did Barack never meet a payroll or lead men in battle, but as a legislator, both in Illinois state government and in the federal government, he brings to mind the Yiddish definition of a nebbish as the kind of nobody who, when he gets out of bed in the morning, doesn't even leave the sheets wrinkled.

In the history of the Harvard Law Review, Barack was the only editor to ever not write an article of his own.  As a professor of law, he published no papers.  His single accomlpishement before assuming the presidency, seems to be the unusual achievement of having written not one, but two autobiographies before the age of 50, and before he accomplished anything of social significance.  Even in the world of words, this is odd.

So, exactly what did Barack have that made the Left swoon after him?  Good ol' "Uncle Joe" Biden tells us,

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.  I mean, that's a storybook, man.

In other words, Barack had nothing but the color of his skin.  And from his long ties with the notorious "Acorn" (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), he had a been a race hustler.  He was, in other words, the quintessential race candidate.

I am convinced that very many people, Black and White, voted for Barack because he was the "Outside" candidate.  But he was a candidate at all because the opinion makers of the political Left promoted him as a candidate.  They promoted him with manic energy, and they did if for one reason and one reason only---the only attribute he had---the color of his skin.

Barack Obama was never the "post racial" president that the intelligentsia thought him to be.  Quite to the contrary.  And I knew that Barack, as an ol' timey race hustler of the Alinsky mold, would do as president the only thing he knew how to do:  rub raw the resentments of the people.  And that he did, in spades.

The backlash was coming just as sure as night follows day.

From start to finish, the intelligentsia saw none of this.  Well, why not?  I think, for precisely the reason Matthew gives in chapter 7, verse 4,

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

The Left is blind to their own racism, and Donald Trump is president-elect.

Donald Trump is Barack Obama

I am working on the theory that Barack Obama and Donald Trump are the same person, politically speaking.

If you get your information mainly from the MSM, the votes for Barack are one of the great mysteries of the 21st century.  Whatever you may think of the man as an individual, he had no resume going into the 2008 presidential elections.  His only evident attributes are that he is a socialist and---I hesitate say it, since political correctness has been described as the "war on noticing"---he is black.

The MSM made much of both.  They were euphoric about the prospect of having the first Black president, and they were industrious in portraying the man as a political centrist, so as not to frighten the horses.  But, secretly, we all know he is a socialist.

<<<nudge, nudge, wink, wink>>> 

Either way, he was not the kind of man we normally imagine mid-western Whites would turn out for, in large numbers.

Ah, but he was also something else.  Barack was an Outsider.  Or, so it seemed, at the time.  During the Democratic primaries of 2008, the man came out of nowhere to defeat the Establishment candidate, the anointed Democratic standard bearer, the notorious, HRH HRC.  (That's a little British lingo for you.  "HRH" is "Her Royal Highness".)  And he went on to defeat the other Establishment candidates, first John McCain in 2008 then Mittens Romney in 2012.

Looked at in this way, the political life of Barack Obama is not so strange or unexpected.  There have been plenty of signs, for years, that the American people have grown restless with the Established Order.  You may recall the 1992 elections and the peculiar candidacy of Ross Perot.  For all his quirkiness and suspiciously little commitment to his own cause, he garnered nearly 20% of the popular vote in the general election.  Lots of people commented at the time, and then Perot was forgotten because he did not persist, because no other capable independent candidate came forward, and because the Established Order wanted to forget.

So, when an apparent outside candidate materialize again in 2008, he got everybody's attention.  That outside candidate was Barack Obama.

The MSM, being ideologically motivated entirely by race and class and race and class and race and class, saw in Barack a candidate of race and class.  That is how they spoke of him, they assumed everybody else saw him just the same way, and that is how I saw him, too.

Look, when it comes to skepticism about the MSM, I take my hat off to no one.  But you can't be vigilant every moment of every day.  It's not as if I have gone out to lunch with Barack, regularly or ever, so I don’t know the man.  The MSM talk of Barack in terms of race and class, and I thought of Barack in terms of race and class.

But, here's the thing.  In 2008, not only did a whole lot of people vote for Barack whom you might not have expected would vote in that way, but a lot of those same people voted for Donald Trump in 2016.  Now, this is an odd thing, and you really have to think about that for a bit. 

If you think exclusively in terms of race and class, it's impossible to square this circle.  But, if you start to think in terms of the Outsider, if you remember Ross Perot and remember that Americans are becoming, are already, fed up with the Established Order, things start to make more sense.

It makes sense to think that the people who voted for Barack in 2008, because he was the Outsider, might very well vote for Trump in 2016, because he is the Outsider.  And poor Hillary lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 general elections for exactly the same reason she lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries:  she was the Establishment candidate, each time, in a time when voters were rejecting Establishment candidates.

So, in 2016 as in 2008, HRH HRC was the same Establishment candidate losing to the same Outsider in the age of the Outsider.  Barack Obama of 2016 is not the Barack Obama of 2008.  In the 2016, Barack is just another Establishment figure.  In 2016, Donald Trump is the Barack Obama of 2008.

Finally, a word about the MSM.  They are certainly important, but maybe not as important as they think of themselves.  In 2008, the MSM was in the tank for Barack and they appear to have succeeded in putting him into the White House.  But, in 2008 the MSM was working with the zeitgeist.  I.e., they favored the Outsider at a time when Americans favored the Outsider. 

In 2016, the MSM, for reasons best known to themselves, favored the Establishment candidate.  They worked against the zeitgeist, and America’s ears were closed to them.  No doubt, by their efforts the MSM made the race closer than it might otherwise have been, but working against the zeitgeist is always going to be very heavy lifting.  In the end, it was the zeitgeist that won in 2016 just as it won in 2008.  It was the zeitgeist each time, not the MSM.

Oldest Trick In The Book

This demonization of Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump before him, is the oldest trick in the book, if that book happens to be the indispensable "Rules for Radicals", by Saul Alinsky.  It goes like this:  pick a target, isolate him, and demonize, demonize, demonize.

The purpose is clear enough.  You want to control the debate, terrorize the other side, and eliminate a dangerous enemy.  Oh, you doubt people do this?  Then read up on the notorious "JournoList" (aka J-List),

Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent, stated "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists".

As you can see, the Left clearly understands that in a propaganda war, if you defend you lose.  As I have been saying all along, the ONLY successful strategy in a propaganda war is:  ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK.  And, facts do not matter.  The damage is done in the initial assault.  By the time the victim digs his way out of the pile of shit you buried him in, you have already won the fight.  

One of the great modern examples of this is Alaska senator Ted Stevens, who was indicted on "trumped up" charges (pardon the pun).  By the time he cleared his name, he had long-since lost his senate seat.

Of course, one of the things that makes the Left go blind with fury is that Donald Trump appears to understand this perfectly, whether he has a natural instinct for it or he read "Rules for Radicals".  First, you must absolutely, positively NOT give in to the attacks.  This only confers legitimacy to the attacks, further undermines your own credibility, and encourages more of the same.  It's like negotiating with terrorists.  Well, it is exactly negotiating with terrorists;  Saul Alinsky was a Terrorist Without Bullets (construction parallel to "Doctors Without Borders").

Second, you have to give as good as you get.  And that is obviously what Trump has been doing since the Republican Primaries.

Besides that Trump and his team are obviously wise to the propaganda strategies of the Left, the big news in 2016 is the American public.   I don't know whether very many Americans have read Alinsky or they just do not care anymore.  They have been suckered too many times, the pain is too great, and they just stopped listening.  So, to all my dear Leftist friends, forget these attacks on Trump and Bannon.  They are not true and they don't work.  Anymore.  And by keeping it up, you will only upset the horses.

The Rodney King Election

Let me try another argument for why it is wrong to make much of Hillary's lead in the popular vote.

As of 12:30 pm, 12/13/2016, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 630,877 votes.  It sounds like a lot.  In any state-wide race, like for the U.S. Senate, this kind of lead would be decisive if not overwhelming.  After all, the lead, itself, is larger than the entire populations of Wyoming (586,107) and Vermont (626,042) and nearly the population of Alaska (738,432).  But, in a nation of 324,720,797 people, who cast 127,203,552 votes, Hillary leads Trump by 0.5%---one half of one percent. Think of it this way.

Imagine the U.S. Senate is split exactly 50/50:  50 Democratic senators and 50 Republican senators.  Now, imagine that one senator changes his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican.  Now the split is 49 Democrats and 51 Republicans.  This creates a two vote difference in favor of the Republicans or a 2% advantage.  So, one senator crossing the aisle gives the Republicans a 2% advantage.

Hillary has a 0.5% advantage over Trump.  Her popular advantage is 1/4 the size of the Republican advantage in the example I just gave.  In other words, Hillary's advantage does not even rise to the level of one senator crossing the aisle.

Friends, there is no ground swell of popular support for Hillary Clinton.  Judging by the presidential vote, alone, we are one seriously divided nation.  That's all.

Furthermore, if you look at the larger political landscape, as I have argued in my blog essay, "Humility",  the reasonable assumption is that the American people have rejected the Democratic Party, and they have rejected Hillary Clinton with it.

The strange problem in the 2016 election is that the rejection of one candidate does not proportionately translate into the acceptance of the other.  The two candidates are structurally different.  Hillary Clinton was the leader of the Democratic Party.  If you reject the party you reject Hillary.  One clear result of the 2016 elections is that the American people have rejected the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump was not the leader of the Republican Party.  He may be that, now, but if he is that leader (and I am not sure that is true), he became their leader by beating them to a pulp with a spiked club.  I have in mind the grisly images of the annual fur seal hunt on the ice floes off Newfoundland.  (Look up those images only if you have a strong stomach.)  Thus, where rejecting the Democratic Party implies rejecting Hillary, favoring the Republican Party, as Americans clearly have done, does not instantly translate into accepting Donald Trump.

So, the result of the 2016 presidential election, alone, is unclear.  The only way to make sense of it, I think, is to put it into the context of all the elections:  state and national.  In that context, the American people rejected Hillary, and we are left with Trump by default.

It's a hell of a thing.  I desperately hope we will have greater clarity next time.  But that's where we are, today.  We have to accept Donald Trump, and all I can do is quote the notorious Rodney King:  "Can't we all just get along?"

Humility

The election of November 8, 2016 was a grinding experience for everyone.  A lot of people think Hillary is an awful person but Trump is worse, and voted accordingly.  A lot of other people think Trump is an awful person but Hillary is worse, and voted accordingly.  I don't see anyone actually celebrating the outcome.  At best, some people are feeling relieved.  Others are feeling an impending dread.  None of this is good. 

Worst of all, there are some vicious, malicious people rubbing salt into the national wound.  They are advancing their hatred of the American people by promoting the idea that Donald Trump stole the election and is, therefore, an illegitimate president.  It is important to understand why they are wrong.

Looked at narrowly, there appears to be an injustice done.  If you look only at the votes cast for Trump and Clinton, it appears that Hillary won the popular vote but the presidency is unjustly awarded to Trump.  There are several ways to think about this.

As of 10 am, 11/12/2016, four days after the election, the NY Times reports that Hillary leads Trump by 574,000 votes.  This does sound like a lot.  The entire state of Wyoming has a population of only 586,000 people, and a lead of 574,000 votes in any state-wide election, in any state, would be decisive.  But, in a country of 323 million people, in a national election that saw 127 million votes cast, a lead of 574,000 votes is about 0.46% of all votes cast.  It is far more meaningful to say that our nation is divided, than to suggest that the election was thrown to the undeserving candidate.

Another measure of the popular resistance to the blandishments of Hillary Clinton is campaign spending.  For many years people, especially on the political Left, have bemoaned the connection between money and politics.  The idea is that money too easily influences the weak minded.  This connection is still valid.  And yet, Hillary spent actually twice the money of Trump, to produce her 0.46% lead in the popular vote.  And her vaunted "ground game" came to nothing.  Well, not exactly nothing;  imagine the election outcome if the spending pattern were reversed or, at least, more even.  There is the distinct possibility that Trump would have garnered a dramatic advantage over Hillary.

Along this line, you must also consider that Donald Trump ran into unprecedented head winds.  He ran against the ENTIRE political establishment.  Obviously, he ran against the Democrats.  He also ran against the Republicans.  And he ran against the pundit class and against the entire Fourth Estate.  That the entire political establishment worked against him, and still he won, has to tell you something about the deep well of support that Donald Trump enjoys among the American people.

Finally, a broader view of the political landscape suggests there is no injustice, in the first place.  While votes for the presidency suggest an exactly divided nation, the results of elections for the  House of Representatives, for the U.S. Senate, and for state governments, reveal a more coherent electorate.  The American people have clearly rejected the Democratic Party.  As Vox.com reports, eight years of Barack Obama have reduced the Democratic party to “a smoking pile of rubble.”  We can reasonably infer that the American people also rejected Hillary Clinton.

To believe otherwise is to believe that the same people who installed so many Republican state legislators, governors, congressmen, and senators, would have looked upon the standard bearer of the Democratic Party that they had just roundly rejected and exclaimed, "Yeah!  That's our gal." 

I don't think so.  The American people rejected Hillary Clinton. Period.  Their acceptance of Donald Trump is another, more complicated, matter. 

People on my side of the political divide are entitled to feel some relief at the outcome of November 8.  People on the other side of the political divide should be feeling some humility.  Nobody has anything to celebrate.  Introspection, on all sides, should be the order of the day.  And what certainly should not be tolerated, is this small, vicious, malicious element in our society already working diligently to “rub raw the resentments of the people.”

No Vendetta Against Hillary Clinton

There is growing chatter about Rudi Giuliani becoming President Trump's Attorney General.  We should be so lucky.  Rudi Giuliani is a brilliant man with a spectacular record of accomplishments.  Seventeen years after he left the mayoralty, NYC still benefits from his enlightened leadership, whose effects are far larger than crime control, important as that is.

If Barack does not pardon her, one of the first questions that AG Giuliani must consider is what to do about the unindicted co-conspirator, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  This is not a simple question.  Even though she is, at this moment, officially a private person, even though putting her in jail may be the right thing to do, HRC was almost our president.  She was the vessel for the hopes and aspirations of fully half the American people.  And if President Trump is to have any hope of uniting this deeply divided country, this fact is not to be lightly dismissed.  I think AG Giuliani has a careful choice to make.

Of course, if Barack pardons Hillary, then the case is closed on her.  If Barack does not pardon Hillary, Giuliani must serious consider simply closing the case against her, anyway.  He should definitely purse, with vigor, the case against the Clinton Foundation, but not with the intention of jailing HRC, herself.  Of course, if HRC obstructs justice, lies to FBI agents, or commits new crimes, that is another matter, entirely.  But the case against the foundation should not assume HRC as a target.

The alternative is to investigate Hillary, along with her Foundation.  In that case, however, the investigation must be exquisitely punctilious and exhaustive.  The case against HRC cannot be probabilistic, it must be made beyond all reasonable doubt or it has be thrown out.  And, if it can be made beyond all reasonable doubt, it must be laid out before the public in a totally transparent manner.

There can be no hint of vendetta about the case against Hillary.  She must be seen, unambiguously as a criminal.  In the end, even her most ardent supporters must agree she is a criminal who deserves to go to jail.

I know that many on my end of the political spectrum would be deeply gratified to see HRC in jail.  But, as gratifying as that would be and, believe me, it would be "soooo good", to quote Michael Moore, HRC is not important any more (thank G-d).  Our country is more important.  And if letting her go free will help in the healing, then we must seriously consider that option.

Dayenu: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Donald Trump

At Passover, Jews sing the traditional song, "Dayenu".  The title is the Hebrew word meaning, roughly, "It would have been enough for us," and the lyrics go something like this,

If He had brought us out of Egypt, dayenu.
If He had executed justice upon the Egyptians, dayenu.
If He had executed justice upon their gods, dayenu.
If He had slain their first-born, dayenu.
If He had given to us their health and wealth, dayenu.

And so on for about ten more stanzas.  It is an expression of gratitude to G-d for all that He has done for the Jewish people.

Please forgive me if I sound a tad sacreligous, but even though Donald Trump was not my first choice, and he is certainly no one's idea of the ideal president, dayenu is sort of how I feel towards him.  Please let me explain.

I had the premonition some years ago, and in this political cycle I am thoroughly convinced, that issues are irrelevant to our political discourse.  We are in a post-issues political regime.

Debating issues, e.g., education policy, is merely a distraction.  Debate conveys the notion that education policy is maleable.  This has not been true for a very long time.  The Vested Interests (whom I call "The Education Mafia") have grown very large, very powerful, their roots run very deep in our society and in our politics, their ideology is ossified, and education policy will not change, now or ever, as it has not changed for the last thirty years, despite the evident fact of its abject failure.  Education policy is what the Education Mafia want, and nothing will change so long as the Existing Order remains intact.

In other words, policy is no longer the problem.  Policy has long since stopped being the problem.  The problem is the Existing Order of ossified special interests.

You can repeat this idea many times.  Large parts of the population want to restrict immigration, but restriction will not happen.  Large parts of the population are horrified by abortion-on-demand, but abortion-on-demand will continue.  Nobody cares, one way or another, about the statistically non-existent transgender "community", and people certainly do not want to re-organize their lives to accommodate it, but "they" will make you care.  And so on. I am not arguing whether any one element of public policy is right or wrong, I am just observing that things are as they are, whether you like it or not, and that is how it's going to be until something radical happens.

Always, there is bound to be some wiggle room between what people want and what public policy is.  In a democracy, however, when public policy becomes sufficiently disconnect from the will of the people, when that divergence becomes too great, we have a very serious problem.

We have a very serious problem.

The only solution I can imagine is that somebody, somehow has to break the back of the Existing Order.  And, until that happens, please don't bore me with policy discussions.  Such discussion are irrelevant and as pure a waste of time as one can imagine.

Enter Donald Trump.

In the 2015 presidential primaries, the Republicans had a number of hacks, like Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham, and several exciting candidates like Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker, men of real substance and accomplishments who held out the possiblity of real reform.  I would have been happy with any one of them.  My man was Ted Cruz.

However, what was of overarching importance was the defeat of the Establishment Republicans.  I'm sorry that Cruz, Walker and Jindall lost in the process, but Donald Trump did not merely defeat the Karl Rove/Jeb Bush wing of the Republican Party, he humiliated them.  Rove/Bush spent $130 Million and never got above 7% of the popular vote.  This was deeply gratifying and, for this reason alone, I am grateful to Donald Trump.

If Donald Trump had only defeated the Rove/Bush wing of the Republican Party, dayenu.
If the Republican Party is destroyed or radically reformed because of Trump, dayenu.

And now, if Donald Trump can do the same with Hillary Clinton and the criminal front group that is the Democratic Party, dayenu.