Yesterday, July 10, 2016, Rudy Giuliani fell into the media trap set by the implied emphasis in the slogan, “Black Lives Matter.”

He said in a televised statement, “Saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ is inherently racist.”

Mr. Mayor – saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ is not racist. It is mandatory.

What I believe you meant to say was that the BLM stance demanding the view “(Only) Black Lives Matter” is inherently racist; and you would have been correct.

Less than one lifetime ago, civilization fought a world war losing multiple tens of millions of lives to stop a militant political movement believing only kind of lives mattered. The Nazis believed only Aryan blond haired, blue eyed people of northern European extraction in perfect health and typically-developed lives mattered: Jews, Blacks, Gypsies, Mentally Retarded, Neuologically Atypical, Disabled, LGTBQ – all others were logs for the ovens next to the gas chambers where lives that did not matter were extinguished en masse – just as the white and police lives in Dallas were extinguished en masse a few days ago.

And – accusing people who say any other lives matter of anti-black racism is not so much racist as it is market-manipulative sloganeering and profiteering.

Coming up with a snappy slogan is easy: policy is hard.

Once people see the BLM sloganeers have no actual solutions – their “fifteen minutes” will be up.

Just as the LGTBQ community has widely succeeded in stigmatizing everyone who morally disagrees with homosexuality on ethical grounds as insane “phobes” or medieval “bigots” – the BLM leaders, who now get and keep their fifteen minutes of fame only if their motto gets and keeps traction, are manipulating the marketplace with the direct lie that to say the only humane sentence possible – “All Lives Matter” is racism equal to shouting the “N-Bomb” – is mere manipulation to keep the spotlight on themselves, and the cash and attention rolling into their organization.

Unbelievable how even people like Rudy Giuliani are losing their way right now.

I was a teenager in 1968.

It feels like that year is reemerging.

We must not lose another Martin and Bobby again to slogan-energized maniacs. We must not lose another Malcom and Jack again. We must not see more Medgars lost. We must not see another set of idealistic young Jewish civil rights workers murdered for giving their efforts to enfranchise communities of color. It must not become the Sixties again in the early Two-Thousands.

Black lives matter. White lives matter. Blue lives matter. Jewish lives matter. Gay lives matter. Yazidi lives matter. Boko Haram victim lives matter. ISIS-beheaded and burnt-alive lives matter.

All lives matter. Say otherwise – and you are de-facto, a racist.

We must not be market-managed into saying any one racial group is the only group that matters or truly suffers meaningful, relevant wrong, or deserves attention or remedy– which is what it means to “matter.”

Who in BLM wants to go to the wife and children of the Dallas policemen shot to death by a madman inflamed by rhetoric de-humanizing white policemen, and tell that wife and kids their husband’s death “does not matter?” I’d love to be there when they try. And – for the record – those white policemen who were there to protect the right of the blacks who were protesting to do so unharmed and unharassed – were the only people to run toward the source of the gunshots. Let me say it again: they ran toward the gunshots – to protect the black and other lives that mattered enough to them to risk and suffer death to insure their rights.

Who in BLM wants to go to the parents of Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a young teenage girl whose throat was slit in her sleep in her own bedroom in Israel just for being a Jew in a Jewish land – and tell her parents Jewish lives do not matter?

Who in BLM wants to tell the Veterans of every race who cannot get adequate post-duty medical care that their lives do not matter?

All lives do matter. We will not be manipulated by schoolyard snap-fight tactics out of saying the only sane, humane sentence available: “All lives matter.”

All means all. Black lives are included in the word “all.”

Let us be clear-thinking: any African American honest and honorable efforts toward their cause’s importance not being minimized or made backwater are certainly valid; but saying or implying “only” their lives matter is merely and only wrong. Moreover, threatening violence if any other lives or causes are stated to be legitimate other than theirs is frankly, evil. I know that is what America’s Mayor wanted to say – but he fell into the trap. He said the wrong thing on camera. Now the profiteers and exploiters will step in and make even more hay of it for the coming season.

Who is ready for their lives not to matter?

If BLM’s implied (“only”) keeps getting traction from people who equate concern for any other race than black with racism, and like the “New Black Panther Party” threaten “No Justice, No Peace” violence and rioting – then we must steel ourselves to wake to another announcement like the one that came from the Ambassador Hotel in the summer of 1968 – that we have lost yet another Bobby Kennedy. Or like the news we got from Memphis – that a walking miracle like Martin Luther King, Jr. has been taken from us. America cannot afford to lose MLKs and RFKs to sloganeering profiteers with no solutions – which gains them attention and cash, but does not proffer any useful fixes for the problems. One of the Black Lives Matter co-founders, Ms. Johnson, walked up to Bernie Sanders at a Sanders rally, pushed him away from the microphone his campaign paid for – and said, “You gonna let me speak, sucka – or you are against Black people.” So –on camera – she stole a microphone she did not pay for, stole a podium belonging to someone else, and demanded things that were not hers, and the Sanders Campaign was stuck with a nightmare p.r. decision. Tell a thief on camera she needed to go buy her own microphone, pay for her own event, and exercise her right to free speech without stealing things paid for by others: or be called a “racist” by a BLM leader on-camera. Bernie Sanders, with a bewildered look on his face and no words to reply, simply stepped aside and gave the thief what she demanded by use of law-breaking and threats of various kinds of harm if he did not do her will. It was an on-camera mugging.

This conduct, Ms. Johnson said in an interview on Fox News, is her ‘solution.’ She said, “You all gotta give up some of what you’ve got to us.” That simple slogan-like, unidimensional thought is an old, stale, unoriginal and totally invalidated solution called “redistribution of wealth”–––  and it is usually accompanied by crowds of the less-affluent carrying the impaled bodies of the more affluent over their heads on pitchforks while they chant whatever slogan someone has conjured to legitimize mass theft. Hieruslama Esta Perdita! (Jerusalem is lost!) was the cry that legitimized the anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe, killing Jews and taking some or all of what they had: the Jews (people who didn’t matter) supposedly had possession of Jerusalem (actually, at the time, Turkish Muslims had control of most of it). The Jews who didn’t matter needed to be thrust aside by the Christians who did matter: or, in our current season, by the post-Arabians who matter more than Jews do. Currently, ISIS is killing everyone who does not believe exactly what they believe: because to them, only their stripe of Islam matters – and chillingly, even a Muslim head of State has declared, “We are not loyal to ‘Iran’ – we are loyal to Islam. If ‘Iran’ must burn to the ground so that Islam may prevail,  Alla’hu Akhbar! (God is great!).” We live in an era of increasingly acceptable casualties: up to the nuclear devastation of an entire country. The Iranian Head of State offered his entire country as a casualty for the sake of his ideology: the reply was to the specific question of how Iran plans to attack Israel once it acquires nuclear weapons, when Iran knows Israel has the ability to launch a counter-strike that would turn Iran into an Iran-shaped smoldering pool of radioactive ash and glass. Iran’s view is, “Iranian lives don’t matter.” Certainly, the parents of suicide bombers are telling their own children, “Your life doesn’t matter.” No message any life doesn’t matter is legitimate. It is an heroic irony that the white and police lives which did not matter to the extent they were extinguished by the Dallas sniper were lost as they gave their lives willingly to protect the rights and the lives of the mostly-Black crowd – which Black lives, to the targeted, dehumanized white victims, most certainly did matter.

So – while ex-Mayor Giuliani may have marginalized himself to a yet-undetermined degree with his unwisely framed comment – I hope America can move past the blood-in-the-water response to something more constructive.

We need to keep our collective national eyes on the ball.

To slightly paraphrase how Aaron Sorkin closed his movie modeling an intellectual meritocracy in the White House when it was assaulted by sloganeering profiteers: “We have serious problems, and we need serious people to solve them. And to those who only want to tell you who to blame for it and who to hate for it – your fifteen minutes are up.”

MLK’s words resound, even from the grave: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

MLK’s mentor, Mohandas Gandhi put the same thought into the language of personal commitment: “I can think of many causes for which I would be willing to die; but I cannot think of a single cause for which I would be willing to kill.”

So, sloganeers – please exit the stage.

Policy-wonks – if there was ever a time for you all to figure out how to capture the attention and support of the public, now is such a time.

Presidents’ Precedents
Having Ethics vs. Using Ethics
by Bruce Louis Cohen

RE:     THE UNITED NATIONS SUMMIT THIS WEEK
THE DISCUSSION OF ISIS AND SYRIA

The speeches of Presidents Obama and Putin in the UN this week bring into stark relief for us the difference between genuinely having ethics and merely using ethics.

President Obama said in his speech at one point, the Syrian people cannot be expected to look past massive and horrible and long-term brutalities inflicted on them by Assad’s regime, and go on with that same abusive regime in power. A government using chemical weapons to subdue its own population from dissent is a government having lost the right to continue in power.
President Putin’s position is an absolute paradigm that “No President of America or France or any other nation is a citizen of Syria, and therefore has no right to choose who governs Syria.”

Putin’s idea sounds so moral, does it not?

His own country only survives because they actually do not believe, and have not practiced this precept.

In the case of the American President – a law professor by previous profession – his ethical position is clearly a legal concept called, “fruit of the poisonous tree.” It is not sound legally or ethically to permit wrongdoers to profit in the present or future from their misdeeds: one cannot murder someone, then write a best-seller telling the story, and rake in the profits for one’s own or one’s family’s benefit. The Assad regime has passed the line of no return on atrocity: they have lost their moral right to govern. They must move or be moved aside. Retention of the privileges of power is unthinkable, morally. If the Syrian people were allowed to hold a free election, it is inconceivable they would elect Bashar al-Assad. They would most likely vote in a new government, and call for the former leaders to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, in Syria, and at The Hague.

For such a government as Assad’s to continue in power with the assent of the civilized world is tantamount to civilization validating barbarism.

President Putin’s case to the opposite of President Obama’s is ridiculous to an extreme, and downright hypocritical, ignoring Russia’s own active past in similar matters.
Putin maintains no outsider has the right to move out a government of a sovereign nation, and install one different than the internal mechanisms of the country have led to being established.
Adolf Hitler had been democratically chosen by the German people; yet Russia played a major role in having the Nazi regime destroyed and its leader erased.Why then, did they not stop attacking Germany once the German advance against Russia was halted? Why did they cross the border into Germany? The answer is obvious: Hitler’s government was hegemonistic and immoral, and had done deep harm to Russia. From pragmatic need to deprive the German aggressor of resources to renew his efforts, and from the desire for justice and vengeance for the suffering Hitler inflicted on Russia, and his betrayal of his former Russian ally – these were all reasons Russians could see the situation clearly back then.

Putin claims not to see it now – because he is repeating the error that got Russia into bed with Hitler as an ally less than one lifetime ago: there is presently benefit for Russia in not seeing Assad’s nature or history.

They will.
When, Assad’s regime becomes toxic to Russian interests as did Hitler’s, then will Russia under Putin or whoever succeeds him: but at far greater cost. A despot does not think in terms other than self-aggrandizement and advancement of self-interest. There is no greater cause for Assad than Assad-maintenance and Assad-aggrandizement. Eventually, those agendas must clash with Russian aggrandizement and the advancement of Russian interests. As the old cold-war proverb goes, “The Russians can always and only be counted upon to do one thing: act in their own self-interest.” This precept governed all policy efforts in relation to Russia – including the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost destroyed civilization.

Despots are always ticking bombs: it is never a matter of if they will blow up in your face – only a question of when.

Russia – having tried to use Hitler also – will fulfill the Santayana maxim that “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” and we all will be stuck with the New York Subway graffiti addendum to it: “and those who do learn from history will be stuck dealing with the mess created by those who did not learn from it.”
Meanwhile – speaking as an American – while the world is lambasting our President Obama for appearing “weak” and letting Putin appear to play the “stronger man” getting the upper hand; I am proud to be a citizen of a country with a leader saying in the open that a Syrian mass-murderer getting richer and more secure through mass murder should not be rewarded by the world with assistance in the retention of his presidency.
The Syrian people, and the world, need a Syrian president with the agenda of caring for and advancing the well-being of the Syrian men, women, and children who wake up every day praying for a government that cares more about them than about shallow victories and self-glorification.

The American President acts as a leader having ethics.
The Russian President seems merely to be using ethics – or the aped appearance of them.
His stated ethical basis for his country’s policies and actions is obviously not their real motivation at all.

President Putin will, at some point in the future, learn the lesson Aesop taught in the Turtle and The Scorpion. Why did the scorpion sting the very creature permitting him to make and survive his journey across the river? Because it was his nature.

As for President-Professor Obama – thank you, Mr. President, for teaching the world that ethics are not a side-show, and strength is not only a function of position-play and ego-driven display-behavior.
My President lost no prestige in my eyes at the UN this week: he made me proud.

 

Bruce L. Cohen

29 September 2015 • Manhattan

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” – United States Constitution, 2nd Amendment, 1791

The 2nd Amendment must be well-read to be well-understood.
The Framers were genius-level intellects who chose their words with precision bordering on supernatural ability. The words and phrases they penned, in the order they penned them, give us understanding on the basis of written communication unrivaled outside mathematical notation.

With the United States yesterday experiencing its first on-air murder-by-gun of journalists, the country again churns the question of gun safety through the mill of public discourse.
It is surely time to stop the madness.
The educator in me yearns to believe perhaps a careful reading of the actual text in the Constitution would be a liberating experience for the American public: however, sadly, many Americans mistake the ability to decode the letters on a page for the skill of reading. They are not the same: true “Reading” goes beyond mere word-recognition or phrase-recognition to include contemplation of the nuances of meaning in the words, phrases, idioms, and word order, as well as the historical context within which the words were written.

The 2nd Amendment as written by The Framers simply does not give the American citizen the right in as unhindered a manner as possible to own and use firearm weaponry at whim: to assert so is to demonstrate a fundamental inability to understand written thought.

• The 2nd Amendment begins with the idea of not only regulation, but regulation done well. Regulation of people engaged in activity with firearms is put first in order of importance by The Framers: to assert otherwise is to fly in the face of the written page.
• Possession and use of deadly weapons of any kind is set by The Framers within the context of use in a militia: a non-private, organized military force under orders from superior authority in The State: gun use is not ascribed to private use based on private motivations.
• The above is not to say that people who demonstrate a legitimate need for weapons – for self-protection in dangerous vocations, or for hunting in responsible ways – might not be able under local, state, or federal regulation to obtain firearms. However, the main idea expressed in the 2nd Amendment is not the most regulation-free environment for private use of deadly weapons: it is well-regulated use within official military units acting in defense of The State.
• Now that the Armed Forces and National Guard and Police of the local, state, and federal authorities own and issue their own firearms to their military or para-military personnel, there is simply no militia-driven need for private citizenry to stockpile weapons and ammunition in case they are called up by their State to serve in the State’s militia.

The Framers could have written the 2nd Amendment thusly: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The fact they chose to put before those words this phrase, “A well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free State …” demands that the following idea be considered within that context. “Well-regulated” was the first priority in their minds and hearts for anyone engaged in any activity describable as military in any manner, or involving the use of arms: it does not specify firearms – it refers to anything describable as armament.

Consider parallel applications of the same formula:

• “A well-regulated atomic energy industry being necessary to the security of a free nation. the right of the people to mine and process fissionable materials shall not be infringed.”
• “A well-regulated auto industry being necessary to the prosperity of a free State, the right of the people to own and use motorized vehicles shall not be infringed.”
• “A well-regulated medical profession being necessary to the well-being of a free State, the right of the people to own and carry sharpened cutlery shall not be infringed.

All the above usable-as-armaments materials are well-regulated – and the most dangerous one, to an extreme degree. Certainly no one sane would advocate for as-unhindered-as-possible private use of fissionable materials, automobiles, or concealable weapons-grade cutlery: the atomic and automobile industries are deeply regulated, the carrying of weaponizable cutlery is also subject to state and federal regulation: minors are in many states and cities prevented from purchasing such blade-weapons at all, and the FAA will confiscate any such weapon before permitting the owner onto any aircraft. You can’t even board an aircraft with a nail-file, let alone a manifest blade-weapon. No substantive complaint is made in regard to these obviously-needed legislative envelopes for the sake of public safety.

The language of The Framers was not to insure that private citizens would, in the most unregulated environment possible, be able to own, stockpile, and use-at-whim deadly weaponry.
Given the number of gun deaths by accident or violent intent visited upon private American citizenry outside any “militia” context of any remote nature – it seems likely that if The Framers could be directly consulted about the current United States gun violence problem, their answer might be similar to that of Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth as reported in Matthew 19:4, when asked a manifestly inane question about a concept in The Bible: “Have you not read?” was asked in reply.

I imagine The Framers, varying only slightly – with Jefferson’s surely the representative voice asking incredulously, “Can you not read?”
Can you not read?
In accord with John Adam’s plea that “none but honest and wise men ever rule under this (White House) roof”  –  it is the American hope in regard to excessive gun violence that politicians of good will and wise, honest hearts will rise up above financial and political interests to save us all from further such preventable pain and loss.

We grieve with the bereaved families and friends – and look with hope for better laws leading to better days.

 

Bruce Louis Cohen, 27 August 2015

Michael Douglas’s recent LA Times piece on “Confronting Antisemitism” elicited a response from a Middle East policy blog called, “Mondoweiss” that offers a clear example of how pro-Israeli ideas are spun in the media to be made to seem without merit. It is a combination of public-relations techniques called, “The Straw Man” and “Moving The Show.” One creates a false idea to replace the actual subject of discussion – directs all discussion to the false idea, refuses to discuss the original idea – and thus prevents the original idea from any further consideration.

The response on Mondoweiss to Michael Douglas’s LA Times piece on “Confronting Antisemitism” was perhaps even more revealing than the Douglas piece, itself; the Respondent treated Michael Douglas’s call for an end to irrational hatred of Israel as EQUAL to demanding an end to criticizing Israeli policy.

In Douglas’s recent speech accepting The Genesis Award, his launch point was a criticism he offered in regard to Israel’s Ministry of the Interior’s Orthodox policy on Jewish identity. Douglas demonstrated in real-time that a person devoted to Judaism who considers Israel “home” can also critique the Israeli status quo – in the presence of the Prime Minister, no less – with both intensity and grace.

Douglas did not call for an end to critical interaction with Israel as a modern State within the community of nations: he called for an end to irrational hatred of Israel being used as a predicate to legitimize antisemitic violence against Jews everywhere.

Equating radically different ideas as did Mondoweiss is the same public-relations tool that the LGTB community used to de-legitimize any dissenting moral opinions about same-sex romance: they simply name-call any who disagrees in any way with any aspect of their policies or practices a “phobe” – a person in the grip of a pathology. Thus, to disagree instantly results in being labeled literally mentally ill.

The danger inherent in such spin-for-invalidation is obvious: one cannot speak against antisemitic violence if the perpetrators in any way declare their motivation to be any less-than-ideal aspect of the State of Israel: thus, killing Jews in a kosher market in Paris is protected from identification as the overtly racist hate-crime it is – and why? The murderers – who slaughtered innocent French citizens of Jewish faith or ethnic background shopping for food and coffee – have their crime re-defined as an act of (justifiable) anti-apartheid patriotism.

Readers must be careful to vivisect such rants as this from Mondoweiss for the manipulation of first-glance similarity imposed on radically different ideas – purely as a tool for preventing attention to, discussion of, and redemptive action taken in regard to the actual idea served for consideration. If the current “Every Life Matters” effort to protect African-Americans from unjustifiable harm has merit, then it surely follows that “every Jewish life matters” as well.

Arguing this idea is not – on any level – a demand that the political world cease examining and critiquing the policies and deeds of the modern Jewish State. That idea is a true “Straw Man.” That effort is classic “Moving The Show.” In any debate, a moderator would interrupt the speaker and direct him or her to return to the actual idea in discussion. In the case of Michael Douglas’s LA Times essay – the idea he offered was simply this: imperfections in Israeli policy or action do not legitimize the murder outside due process of Jews anywhere in the world.

Every Jewish life matters, too.

The two pieces can be found at the following URLs.  http://www.msn.com/…/confronting-and-ending-ant…/ar-AA9SSwi… AND http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/response-michael-douglas

– or –

“The Donald” Near “The Button”

by Bruce L. Cohen ©2015 August 11

“A rich man can afford to answer roughly; but person of lesser means must practice courtesy.” – King Solomon, Proverbs 18:23

 

It seems to this writer the political world is missing the main point of concern regarding Donald Trump as a possible President, as highlighted by the aftermath of his exchange with moderator Megyn Kelly in the first Republican Presidential Debate on August 6, 2015.

Far more worrisome than Trump’s comment about where metaphorical blood might be coming out of Kelly, was the vicious, venal, self-indulgent outpouring of rage he threw at her the following day on his Twitter account, merely for being crossed. Trump claimed he was outraged for being “treated unfairly” – but it was clear, he was merely angry at the particular question Kelly asked him, which included quotes from Trump that were degrading to women. Trump did not respond as a statesman, saying perhaps the quotes were from unrelated situations sewn together into an inaccurate picture: Trump virtually confirmed Kelly’s question as a valid concern by launching a personal attack on her, calling her a “lightweight” and “bimbo.” The comedy of it is hard to pass up: it reads like a Doonesbury cartoon. KELLY: “Mr. Trump, would you care to comment on the allegation that you degrade women?” TRUMP: “Shut up and sit down, bimbo! Next question, anyone?”

What a person has long been trained to be, that is what that person will most reliably be.

Hard-wiring as a monarch seems a likely disqualifying personal history for a possible President. Donald Trump has spent his entire adult life as a king – hiring, firing, buying, selling, making decisions affecting individuals and whole communities – nearly always with unilateral and unconstrained authority. He owns it – he can do with it what he likes. If you cross him, “You’re fired.” It is his signature catch-phrase.

The trouble with a possible Trump presidency is that the United States of America is not something Trump owns: it is a structure designed to be the opposite of a monarchy, full of hindrances we call “checks and balances” – and it was created specifically to make it hard to move, and resistant to individual will.

The American Presidency is simply not a job for a king.

“I’m so rich,” Donald Trump boasted early in the present US Presidential Campaign – and let the sentence finish in everyone’s imagination, “I don’t have to care what anyone thinks.” This is the worldview of a king: his word is law, his edicts are unilateral, and woe betide the one who does not jump when he says, “frog.” While it may be true that Trump has no reason to feel genuinely threatened about reactions by journalists or in regard to lawsuits – it would not be true of a President Trump handling international affairs in which a misjudgment about the ego of an opponent could result in thermonuclear war. Trump would not own the chessboard of international politics: he would merely be one of the players. Integer inter pares – one among peers – is not a role among the world’s statesmen for which Trump is in any way formed to play.

Trump’s likely unfitness of character and temperament for the Presidency was brought into bold relief by his recent reaction to Megyn Kelly. In Trump’s reactions on the spot and in the day following, we all caught a glimpse of what to expect of “The Donald” in the ill-fitting suit of The President.

The Ego could not let go without his vengeance.

What if the offender of The Ego was the President of Russia?

Imagine an exchange between The Donald and Vladimir Putin? Two hyper-egos who cannot handle being seen as anything but “the guy no one messes around with?” Putin would tear off his shirt in Mussolini homage, and Trump would go into his bloviating default reaction – and what would the world experience as a result?  Can anyone sincerely envision a President Trump having the combination of foreign policy savvy and self-restraint necessary to do the kind of diplomacy that has kept the world from nuclear war for the more than half-century since the invention of The Bomb?

Perhaps the two greatest moments of American Presidential international diplomacy in the past half-century were when Presidents Kennedy and Nixon found ways to keep their personal egos and our national pride in check, and gave the Soviet Union a way to back out of conflict without intolerable loss of face. Kennedy averted the Cuban Missile Crisis escalating to war by treating Nikita Khruschev publicly as a sincere patriot serving his nation’s ideology, and Nixon prevented Soviet support for Syria during the 1973 “Yom Kippur War” against Israel by quietly putting every American soldier in the world on high alert rather than directing Russia publicly to back off. If either man had an ego the size and shape of Donald Trump – it is not only possible, but chillingly likely, that humankind in 2015 would still be living in recovery from nuclear winter.

Perhaps equal in concern regarding a possible President Trump are The Donald’s last two decades spent with one of his hallmark activities gaining him his objectives having been outrageous speech. He is hard-wired by his business life to shock and offend, because for a person in business or show-business, very often “there is no such thing as bad press.”

Donald Trump is a shock-jock: Howard Stern in politics. People are tuning in to Trump in the news for the exact same reason Howard Stern fans said they tuned into his radio show: “I just want to hear what he’ll say next.”

He is habituated into saying out-of-bounds things for three main reasons: (a) when his ego is crossed, rage and insult expression are natural to him, (b) he is habituated by his wealth not to care about the consequences of reckless speech, and (c) outrageous speech has been advantageous to his bottom line.

Do we all want a President regarding whom we are always either listening to spin of something he just said – or worried about what he will say next?” It was tough enough watching America’s emotional and time capital bled out by handling one Clinton scandal after another – do we really want a Commander-in-Chief universally seen as having a hair-trigger temper?

Do we really want someone in The Oval who makes Joltin’ Joe Biden seem like the Dalai Lama in terms of wise speech and self-restraint?

We do not hire our Presidents to go out and pick fights with people upon whose good will the American republic’s quality-of-life depends, and the actual safety of the world relies.

We hire them to make our lives safer and better, and make the world a safer and better place. It is not implausible that Trump might make some economic realities better. It is not even outside the realm of possibility that he might, with his “get it done” and “I can’t be stopped” atttitude make improvements in a political situation here or there. However – what is even more likely is that Trump as President would be persistently offending people with whom he needs good will, and that his ego under provocation when the tools of the most powerful man on earth would be within his reach would literally endanger every one of the six billion human beings presently alive.

The Donald in The Oval would simply not be worth the risk.

The likelihood is too profound that he would indulge his reflex for outrageous speech at our less-cooperative allies, and dismantle the peace-keeping international infrastructure, replacing it with an ill-will-soaked atmosphere through which his unimpeded ego would strut, consuming the political oxygen while the rest of the world asphyxiates.

The Donald is entertaining now.
We can only hope that when election time comes, America reawakens from its brief romance with this political shock-jock of the preliminary season – and moves toward focus on candidates with perhaps less media buzz, but more qualifications for the most serious job on our tiny, precariously continuing planet.
Let us hope our society is not so inculcated with mass-media values that we would elect a President based on his star-quality and market-share.
We need a President who can govern.
We need a person capable of seeing and acting upon nuance.
We need a Chief Executive who has silence and modesty in his political toolbox.
We do not need a king. We had one, a long time ago. What did America say to him?

“You’re fired.”

 

Bruce L. Cohen ©2015 August 11

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