How The 2021 Post-Election Quarrel Can Be Evaporated

By Bruce L. Cohen, 6 January 2021 • Opinion

It could all be so simple.

It’s the bombast that has to go. Both Parties need to stop yelling and start providing.

Evidence any side has for any gripe needs to be provided in open, unbiased due process.

That is quite literally all that is needed.

Republicans cry, “Fraud!”

Democrats yell as often as possible in mass-media, “There is no evidence.”

Republicans are shouting back, “There is evidence: we cite it, and you won’t publish it! You just keep saying on CNN “none exists.”

Democrats scream, “But there is none! We say so! And Trump won’t concede because he’s insane!”

Republicans counter with, “Stacy Abrams lost in Georgia for Governor years ago, and she has still not conceded that election! Where’s the objective standard, right for all Parties in all seasons?

Democrats deflect with, “That’s changing the subject!”

Republican FoxNews adds more fuel to the fire with, “The Hunter & Joe Biden Influence-Peddling Evidence and Scandal was kept out of the news by a left-leaning media conspiracy!”

CNN & MSNBC retort, “Getting back to how crazy the President is for not conceding …”

Fox parry-thrusts with, “Hunter Biden’s partner came forward and filed and affidavit under oath, just like Ramsey Davis came forward during the Chicago Seven trial, that Hunter took pay for play over and over again, and Joe Biden was involved and aware.

CNN reacts, “That’s not evidence,” and refuses to investigate.

The Right deals back, “See! Evasion of journalistic responsibility for one Party’s benefit!”

The Left answers, “There have been hearings, and the ballots have not been proven invalid!”

The Right rejoins, “The envelopes that should have been affixed to the ballots were thrown out, so there is no way now to differentiate an on-time or valid-address ballot from a late or fake one!

President Trump returns to the central fray, “There is massive fraud, and we have shown the evidence, but you won’t report on it to the American People!”

The Left counters, “There is NO evidence.”

And on, and on, and on the name-calling melée goes.

President Trump’s “Save The Country” Speech given at 12 noon today (6 January 2021) is a good example of the sheer waste of time and resources, and insult to rule-of-law, the shouting-match approach is. The President showered a crowed with allegation after allegation of specific frauds he was charging in specific locations at specific times. Those charges should have been provided to the appropriate judicial, administrative, and/or or law enforcement entities set by law in our Government.

At the exact same time, Vice President Michael Pence was issuing a statement that after rigorous study of our Constitution and history, it is clear that for the Vice President of one party to use his position as President of the Senate to void Electoral College votes would “run counter to the entire Constitution and history of our country, whose Founders dreaded abuse of power by interested parties. The Presidency belongs to The American People – and their duly-elected representatives should be the ones to sort out the nature of any given Presidential election.” Bravo, Mr. Vice-President, for discharging your duty in line with your Oath of Office.

Enough of the back-and-forth. Here is a simple pair of steps toward solution.

CNN needs to hire and assign Right-Leaning journalists to the Hunter/Joe Biden Influence-Peddling story, either to support or debunk it with clear investigative reporting according to the standards of the journalistic profession.

FoxNews needs to exhort the President and his Party to present their evidence as to Election Fraud or Biden Corruption in open hearings to the People Of The United States (via tv-broadcast Congressional hearings) – contrary to the game run by Congressman Adam Schiff (D – Calif), who in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, kept claiming he had clear, objective, incontrovertible evidence he had seen with his own eyes … but never presented it, and ended up being shown clearly to have lied about its existence … 

In sum: the Right Side Fraud Claimers need to put up or shut up.

And, the Biden Influence Scam evaders on the Left need to summon the journalistic integrity to do their jobs without passion or prejudice, so the American People can see clearly if the Hunter/Joe Biden Pay-For-Play story is real, or mere diversion.

It could be so simple.

However – one thing should easily be common value ground for both Parties. “The Big Lie’ Technique pioneered by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels – “tell a lie so loudly, so brazenly, and so often that people simply stop resisting it and accept it as true” – should not be adopted into the business-as-usual playbook of any American political party.

One citizen’s thoughts, who has spent his four-decade vocational life as a culler of meanings and truths from abstruse documents and complex situations.

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

6 January 2021

Raising Whining To An Art Form

And Trampling The Constitution At The Same Time

I have been silent for some time about the present political atmosphere in the United States during the pre-election frenzy – but the recent actions of The Left after the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg have risen to a new low (sic): mass violation of the oaths of office of public officials having sworn to “preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States.”

Before I proceed, let me say I am “Pro-Choice” with sane medical and ethical limits. I am a Moderate, with views peppered with aspects of both Conservatism and Liberalism: call me a “Liberative” American. I don’t fit into any specific box on a category list. So, I am not writing this because I favor the current Administration, or its Opponents.

The politicians presently working the American public with sentiment-based appeals to postpone selection of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s successor to the Supreme Court bench, such as Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Chuck Shumer, are making statements that the President has “sunk to a new low, not respecting the dying wish of a great American woman.”

No American elected official, or high Appointee of such an official, gets to pick his or her own successor. That is how dynasty is created, which is why the Founders and Framers did not allot such a power to anyone. The Constitution of the United States reserves that right for The People of The United States, who make the choice during elections.

In sum, the US Constitution provides that a Supreme Court Justice is appointed by The President, and the Senate is to advise and consent. An approved Justice serves a term for life or retirement at his or her own discretion. 

Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life ended a few days ago. Her term ended when she passed away. What are the two Democratic Party arguments the current President and Senate should not appoint her successor until after the coming Election?

1. The President and Senate are too close to an election that might replace them, to make such an important choice.
2. Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s alleged dying wish was that she would not be replaced until after the coming election.

Both arguments are short work to nullify.

Firstly, there is nothing in the Constitution saying a President and Senate should stop thinking of themselves as President and Senate at some arbitrary barrier point on the timeline before a Presidential election. The line of thought is purely self-serving rationalizing in defiance of the direct prescriptions of The Constitution.

Democratic President Jimmy Carter was in a flurry of fully presidential action until mere minutes before Ronald Reagan took the Oath of Office; and Carter was a one-term lame duck at the time! Talk about “lack of mandate!” Carter was acting to rescue the lives of the hostages held for 444 days in Iran. He was fully Presidential until 12:01 on Inauguration Day for Ronald Reagan.

Senator Schumer said as recently as 21 September, “This President and Senate have no right to fill the vacancy.” This is nothing more than a lie.

It is, according to the Constitution, their duty to fill the vacancy. Not merely their right – their duty. They took oaths to “preserve, protect, and defend The Constitution of The United States.”

Secondly, to Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s alleged dying wish – “alleged” because we only know of it through the reportage of her one granddaughter’s testimony that Ginsberg said it.

Imagine President Trump being stricken by Covid 19 and dying mere days before the election: and being alleged by Ivanka to have said just before dying, “My most fervent wish is that Mitch McConnell would succeed me as President.” 

The President does not have the Constitutional right to pick, or even influence the choice of, his successor: that right belongs to The People of The United States, who picked his successor during the last election: the successor is the Vice-President of The United States; and if there is an election, the successor is whoever The People of The United States elect.

Justice Ginsberg is a great loss to The Left. That is no joke.

Yet – she does not get to pick her successor; and there is no ethical mandate to follow her wish; and there is the solid anti-dynastic concern of the Framers to countervail such a dying statement, if it was, indeed, spoken.

However, there are fully Constitutional remedies available to the Left: the Senate (presently Republican) advises and consents to the presently Republican President’s choice ––– but, The House of Representatives sets the number of Justices on the Supreme Court.

If Joe Biden wins the coming election, The House can increase the number of Justices from nine to eleven –– and Biden can then appoint two liberal lions to replace Ginsberg.

The real fear among the Democrats is that if the coming election ends up before The Supreme Court as did the Bush v. Gore election – a Republican majority on The Court bodes ill for Democratic hopes of victory. This seems the real reason for the Democratic sentiment-barrage, more so than fears of loss of Roe v. Wade.

I would say to the Democrats – who represent a goodly number of my own platform ideals: please stop acting like low-life schoolyard kids in a “snap-fight” – and start acting like educated, rational adults seeking to enfranchise crucial ideas that might literally have the fate of the human race in embedded in them?

We can continue to labor for “a more perfect Union” ––– without resorting to maudlin appeals to sentiment in defiance of the direct prescriptions of our Constitution – or whining.

Please –no more of the whining from people presently out of power.

If you want to be in power in the United States, you simply need to figure out how to get your side elected by The People of The United States.

We, The People, are right here. We will vote. Convince us.

To get a majority of our votes for sound reasons, you must convince us your ideas are better than those of your political opponents. It is as simple as that.

I emphasize “political” opponents, because we are all on the same side: the American side. I echo the dying wish of the recently passed Senator John McCain, who pleaded for both houses of our Congress to “return to the normal order of business” – in which both Parties call the people of the Other Party, “my fellow Patriots across the aisle” and “my Learned Opponents.”

In the Two Testaments of the Bible – the “spirit of confusion” is when people on the same side fight each other instead of their true enemies. And the New Testament delivers the caution, “Take care that you not bite and devour each other, lest you fully consume each other.” If every Democrat and every Republican destroys their counterparts – no functional version of America may survive.

Let us not forget: The United States of America’s constitutional republic is still “the last, best (governmental) hope of humankind.”

Bruce Louis Cohen

22 September 2020

New York City

Is CoronaVirus The Earth’s Biosphere Rising To Protect Itself?

The map above from Space.Com offers a staggering Climate policy related idea. China’s pollution footprint has, within mere weeks, dropped to “Green New Deal” level advocated change: and CoronaVirus is the cause.

The earth, itself, may be shouting a violent and effective “Amen” to Greta Thunberg’s mantra, “Business as usual is no longer moral.”

In Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller, The Hot Zone, covering the Ebola Zaire outbreak that made a path from the remote Kitoum Cave in Kinshasa, Zaire to Reston, Virginia, where it was literally one wall away from becoming a pandemic in the USA –– Preston closed his book with what seemed a whimsically poetic epilogue.

Preston said it seemed to him when humankind invades too deeply into the earth’s body, the earth hits back with a response not unlike the human body releasing antibodies to attack the invaders.

Greta Thunberg and “The Green New Dealers” have been shouting that massive and immediate change is the only choice that would leave a reasonably habitable earth behind. In response, the major political parties are choosing business-favoring candidates for the economy’s sake on the Right – and either moderates on the Left, or multi-front radicals who want to change every trait of the Western capitalist economy, and climate change is the proverbial tree lost in the forest of change-everything-now tirades.

CoronaVirus has, in a very focused way, forced the very kind of air-pollution change at the needed rate of implementation, to which human desire for “business-as-usual” has been the biggest obstacle. 

Coincidence?

My bailiwick is Biblical exposition. I cannot help but think of where the text of the New Testament records Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth speaking of the distant human future with this observation: “Unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved.” (NT Mark 13:20) We also see in Genesis a bargain between the patriarch Abraham and God, in which Abraham wrangles a promise from God that “if there are ten decent people found in two vast cities (Sodom and Gemorrah), I will spare everyone.”

It seems perhaps there may be enough decent – but politically powerless – people, so that some kind of dread champion is rising on their behalf to rescue the many from the greed of the few.

I would not want this view to diminish in any way the pain felt by the loss of any individual lives to this new pathogen. This essay’s focus is to highlight the recent, incredibly accelerated rate of change in China, in stark contrast to the kind of attitude Greta Thunberg has been facing mere weeks ago.

We see the same mañana attitude expressed in an earlier era’s events in Biblical text where King Hezekiah reacts to the prophet Isaiah’s forecast of long-term disaster for Israel resulting from the King’s policies with the following self-serving conclusion: “Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good, because” he thought, “at least there will be peace and truth in my days.”

Politicians in their 70s will not be facing the consequences of the industrial pollution decisions of today: their children and grandchildren will. Greta Thunberg will.

And now – the earth herself seems to be shutting down their self-serving, short-sighted “business-as-usual” preservative approach to climate change.

China’s industrial juggernaut has been decked by a perfectly-aimed punch, and is on the ground: business as usual is as impossible for them as it was impossible for Sonny Liston to rise from the blow Muhammed Ali landed on his jaw.

(Above graphic from: Space.Com)

Tourism (made possible by travel via fossil-fuel driven air and land vehicles) is contracting to minuscule percentages of mere months ago.

Business, itself, in-person gatherings are being reduced to absolute necessity, and virtualized or cancelled and done via digital means: the resulting decrease in fossil-fuel based travel of all kinds is beyond immediate calculation.

Hand washing and basic sterile habits are becoming an obsession everywhere in the world.

And more.

In other words – virtually everything The New Green Deal would have wanted to accomplish in China, and possible around the industrialized world, is being compelled by the earth, herself, to be done NOW – not later, and not incrementally: now.

Coincidence?

I remember thinking when reading Preston’s Hot Zone, that his epilogue, while seeming too poetic to be real – had something pulsing underneath it that rang, somehow, more true than mere rhapsodic rumination to give a non-fiction book a good closing cadence.

CoronaVirus may be whatever Higher Power in which you may believe – whether Deity, or some kind of embedded self-preservation engram – rising up and saying to humankind, “The earth is not here ‘for’ you. You are only part of its community: and your intelligence does not entitle your short-sighted greed to poison it for all its other tenants.”

The thing about viruses is – they are immune to political sophistry and economics arguments.

And – when they vote – the ballot they cast is devastating to the human status quo. They simply don’t care.

In a dreadful irony, the meaning of CoronaVirus’s unspoken voice seems to say: “This is good for me (the virus) now: and I simply don’t care that what is good for me makes something horrible happen to you.” The fact this horrible thing happening to us might actually save the entire biosphere from extinction due to our activities makes for a fascinating karmic contemplation – and, this author hopes, an effective cautionary tale to prevent the future from merely reiterating the past, once the crisis has passed.

Bruce Louis Cohen 4 March 2020

THE AMERICAN LEFT AND ITS MEDIA ARE ALREADY SCRAMBLING TO PRE-ASSIGN SMOLETT’S MOTIVE FOR HIS STAGED HATE-CRIME FRAUD AS MERE CAREER-AMBITION ENTWINED WITH GREED – SEEMINGLY INTENT ON PREEMPTING ATTENTION FROM THE OBVIOUS DRIVE OF THE FRAUD – HARMING THE CURRENT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND HIS PARTY.

I write this essay with concern for our nation, as a political Moderate who is not a fan of our current President; but who is being careful as an American and merely a person not to let hatred infiltrate my political opposition of acts or policies.

The fraud Jussie Smolett attempted is a clear example of the recently enfranchised value, Your politics are SO evil, that any choice by me to do EVIL to YOU, is actually an act of good.

Let’s be clear: fraudulently reporting a crime that never happened is an act of evil.

Police being sent on wild goose chases wastes public funds, decreases public safety, and through misallocation of valuable resources creates potential disaster. For these reasons, misreporting to the police is a felony: a crime with a mandatory punishment of a year or more in prison.

Outside the political world, such deeds are usually motivated by a mentally unhealthy desire for importance, or hatred of authority, or sundry other psychopathies.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson assigned Smolett’s motive to be inflation of his salary: he called it a “publicity stunt intended to further his career.” In my view, it was not. And Johnson said, “It only got the attention it has received because of his celebrity status.” I also disagree. These two statements disguise what seem to me the real reason for Smolett’s charade. His career in Left-Dominated Hollywood would have surely benefited; but that is chiefly for only one reason:

because his staged-crime was massively useful to the Left’s current narrative against the Right. This would have made him a hero in Hollywood.

Brit Hume stated on morning network news 21 February 2019 “the reason Left Media is reporting ceaselessly on THIS story is because it is yet one more iteration of the ONE AND ONLY story they are currently ever reporting: that President Trump is evil and must be deposed.”

In the current political climate, for a person of color to claim falsely that a group of MAGA hat wearing, white nationalist, anti-same-sex rednecks committed felonious assault as a hate crime, has a clear motive:

harm the current The President of The United States and all powers ancillary to him.

The reference to the MAGA hats is diagnostic: we must remember, there were no actual criminal assailants.  The MAGA hats were deliberately scripted into a professionally crafted fraud. Smolett’s script’s obvious goal was to assign responsibility to the current President and his cadre. Thus, the goal of Jussie Smolett’s reported hate crime that never happened seems to be a criminal act nearly rising to the level of treason.

It was a one-man attempted coup d’état.

The clear hoped-for result of saying the assailants were wearing MAGA hats was to poison the 2020 Presidential Election, and as many intervening elections as possible in a taint-by-proxy ploy, assigning blame for what Smolett called, “a modern day lynching” directly and firmly to The President Of The United States. 

I again echo the late United States Senator John McCain: “let us return to ’the normal order of business.’”  Let us cease demonizing our opponents. Let us again learn the skill of “crossing the aisle” and creating solutions in cooperation with, and respecting the patriotism and interests of the other side of matters we handle.

Let us cease equating every “no” to our side as an evil “–ism” of some kind.

A no to the Right is labelled, “anti-patriotism” or “radical socialism” and a no to the Left is name-called “racism” or “hating” – both sides plentifully using many other such memes.

Malcom X said four decades ago that “chickens come home to roost.” If we inflate youths like Jussie Smolett with the idea that political opponents are evil incarnate – all the moral exclusions of fighting apocalyptic evil come into play. Knowing it is evil to lie, we gladly admit, “If Nazis knocked on my door and asked ‘Are there any Jews here?’ in order to take them prisoner and execute them – I would lie and say, ‘No!’” Of course, we would lie and we would even kill, in order to keep a tyranny like Hitler’s Nazism from overrunning the planet.

Who convinced Jussie Smolett the the current President Of The United States and his cadre are so patently, endemically evil, any violence done to them is a good deed? The entire media and political climate is, at present, an ideal Petri dish for cultivating these kinds of organisms.

Let us return to the regular order of business.

Let us return to “the Golden Rule.”

Let us put aside Machiavellian “ends justify the means” values as enacted by Smolett and as stated recently by ex-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said, “The Trump administration is so evil, we do not need to return to ‘civility’ until after we remove them from power. Once we’ve done that, we can be civil again.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi told us “violence is a never-ending abyss. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Jussie Smolett and those having fueled his apocalyptic level of hatred for the MAGA side of American politics should have focused, and still should focus more upon MLK and Gandhi, and less on Rashida Tliab and Corie Booker. Violence cannot extinguish violence, and hate cannot expel hate, darkness cannot drive out darkness. 

A young man’s life is now destroyed.

An entire nation’s political atmosphere has been tainted and poisoned.

Passions making violence more likely have been inflamed.

Can we stop?

That person who disagrees with you is not a walking, talking embodiment of pure evil.

He or she is a person.

Talk with them, not AT them.
Shouting them down, or thinking up clever ways to put them down may work in the juvenile schoolyard for “cred” – but in the real, adult world, those tactics only create enemies or strengthen resentments. They are literally useless in the long term for solving any problem on the planet.

As the man who grew up in the same household of Yeshua/Jesus of Nazareth told us, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger: because human anger does not achieve the heavenly standard of right.” (Ya’akov/James 1:19) This is the opposite of the schoolyard “trash-talking” ethic. It is mature, not juvenile. It is respectful, not humiliating. It is relationship-enhancing, not connection-destroying.

Said Martin Luther King, Jr. “I’ve given up hate, and chosen love. Hate is just too heavy a burden to carry.”

Can I get an, “Amen,” somebody?

Bruce Louis Cohen

21 February 2019

The Natural Outcome of Abandoning Civility

By Bruce L. Cohen

“A harsh word brings forth anger.” – Proverbs 15:1b

“They have sown the wind, so they will reap the whirlwind.” – Hosea 8:7

“What seed a person sows, that crop shall he also reap.” – Galatians 6:7

This might just be the most obvious blog I have ever written: a real “no brainer.”

I am willing to risk being fatuous to effort fomenting public safety.

Unless both sides of America’s main political camps can find a way to dial back from the apocalyptic level of rhetoric they are firing at each other, it seems the recent spate of bomb mailings will most likely be only a beginning.

We can dissent and be civil.

We do not have to demonize to disagree.

Assignment of criminality should always be accompanied by sufficient and suitable proofs for filing of official process. No one should be called a criminal – much less, a super-villian – unless the accuser is willing to provide necessary levels of proof and follow process through to conviction or acquittal.

If name-calling is taught as improper even in the school-yard and debate team, then it has no place in the halls of government; and public assault on people as agents of evil has natural repercussions; especially in people on any opposing side of the argument who may be possessed of lesser or impaired powers of reason and/or self-control.

And if people keep labelling their opponents with epithets like “another Hitler” or “the soon death of the Republic” and other such jibes in order to obtain or retain power ––– then they may find they are signing their own death warrants. 

In a piercing irony, Hillary Clinton was targeted for one of these attempted murders by mail-bomb: and she said only weeks ago,

“We don’t need to be ‘civil’ with an enemy like the present Republicans, when our whole civilization is at stake! We can return to civility after we (the Democratic Party) have recovered power.”

It is chilling to think of the implications of using apocalyptic levels of vilification on one’s opponents. Perhaps even more chilling is to look back on the 2016 election are see the outcome of Mrs. Clinton – certainly one of the bigger brains in current politics – call a huge swath of voting America “a basket of deplorables” – apparently unaware or having lost connection to the fact that no candidate has ever insulted people into voting for him or her.

Unless we all immediately return to the basics of civility we were all taught in school is the bedrock of honorable dissent – there may soon be many fewer leaders to lead their respective camps forward in the good fight for “a more perfect Union.” As Malcom X said so chillingly in 1963, “chickens always come home to roost.” He was reframing the words of Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural, “it may be that every drop of blood drawn by the lash (of slavery) will be requited by one drawn from the sword (of our Civil War).”

It is time to prefer the teachings of Mr. Rogers over those of Mr. Machiavelli.

The end does not justify the means: and the cost of deliberately sustained, incendiary rhetoric war for votes will almost certainly lead to an inferno of yet undetermined breadth. 

I was around in 1968, when America exploded into barely-contained violence. I have no desire to return to the era having seen – and lost – “Bobby, Martin, and John.” Qualified national and international leaders are too rare to lose for no good reason.

Bruce Louis Cohen

© 24 October 2018

It is my understanding both sides of The Aisle (in the US Congress, the concentrations of the two major political parties, Democratic & Republican) have known for decades the Social Security & Medicare system is headed for bankruptcy some time early in this century due to the input vs. output ratio becoming unworkable; and by sheer math, they will be unable to make the promised payments.

For decades, for both sides of the aisle, Social Security & Medicare were “the third rail” of politics: touch them and die (politically): even mentioning fixing the ratio problem (by raising retirement age or altering payouts) would guarantee you lost your next election. So, everyone just avoided the problem.

Now, the train is still moving at 90mph headed for the wall EVERYONE knew was coming.

Spending bills require a 60/40 approval ratio in the Senate to pass. Some aisle crossing by someone to fix Social Security & Medicare is our only hope. Whoever chooses to do this will sacrifice his or her political future to save millions of lives. Here’s hoping there are some politicians who can rise to the ethical core of this situation in time.

Recommended reading: “Profiles In Courage” (Senator John F. Kennedy’s anthology of the stories of American politicians who made exactly this kind of choice.) Such courage and clarity IS possible. May we see it soon – for all everyone’s sake of every political party. Old age and illness have no political affiliation.

One citizen rhapsodizing on hope. 🙂

Bruce Louis Cohen • 19 October 2018

http://brucecohenwordsmusic.com/?p=1982

Nearly exactly 3 years ago, on 11 August 2015, I wrote this blog about the Donald Trump campaign for the Republican nomination for President. Donald Trump: The King Who Would Be President

This year (18 June 2018), Time Magazine published the magazine cover at left.

It’s nice to be right.

Here’s hoping influencers like Time Magazine don’t have it right too late.

Bruce Louis Cohen

21 August 2018

Post-Soviet Goals Without Noble Excuses For Them

“There no longer exists the sharp ideological divide between our two nations.” – President Vladimir Putin, 16 July 2018

This blog is intended to go beyond the rapid and basic post-game analysis being given everywhere in the media to the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki today. This is an attempt to look at the broad context within which that event and others connected to it are taking place: the heart and soul of concern in regard to Helsinki 2018 is not so much the day’s events as the nature of the current version of Russia participating in them.

From 1917 to 1991, the justification Russia gave the world for its aggression was its role as the primary agent of Marx and Lenin’s “Worker’s Revolution” addressing the terrible inequities visited upon the working class by the monied class. 

The Soviet flag said it all.

The hammer and sickle symbolized the workers, the star pointed to the five continents of the world, and the red backround represented the blood necessary to be shed in every country in the world to bring about that noble Revolution, and the installation of equity among human communities. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” is a creed beautiful, despite being unworkable thus far in human reality.

All that is over. 

Russia is no longer the captain-state of a Union championing an ideal.

What is left?

The Russian Flag now represents Russia – merely a nation: one among many.

Why then, does Russia “deserve” a great place in the world, greater perhaps than any other nation, and especially, primacy higher than the champion of democracy, The United States of America: a nation still formed around only a set of unifying ideas and ideals.

Germany accepted the Nazi re-definition of Germany as a rightful aggressor-state for three contrived reasons: (1) need for Lebensraum – land enabling the German people to live comfortably in, and feed their nation; (2) righting of wrongs: certain regions had been allegedly wrongfully taken from Germany, and it deserved them back – especially those humiliations visited upon The Fatherland by the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I; and finally, (3)  because Germany came to believe Germans were greater than every other genetic composition in the world. Their genetics allegedly made them the upper species in a Darwinesque view of a world in which the weak are rightfully eaten by the strong.

Their leader, Der Führer, meaning “The Leader” – was considered, and considered himself, a God-sent person intended by Heaven to lead his great-but-unjustly-crushed nation out of the humiliation of their defeat in World War I, and not only back into dignity, but beyond it into global domination.

What did Hitler’s rebuilt Germany do first?

Hitler’s machine killed off its internal opponents.

They then put Germany’s allies and the neighbor states into confusion with confounding actions and consistent breakage of treaties or understandings.

Then they attacked smaller, weaker states and disputed territories.

Czechoslovakia. Poland. The Franco-German Rhineland.

And onward to Poland, France, North Africa, and Russia.

And onward further into the global nightmare of World War II, necessary to stop the tyrannical German state from enslaving the entire world.

What has Putin been doing since coming into power?

He has been running Hitler’s playbook.

Internal enemies have been disappeared, or publicly poisoned with horrific toxins like Dioxin – driving opponents into exile, disability, or death. Then came Crimea. Meddling with American elections was a step straight out of Saddam Hussein’s delusional methods: as a puny weakling, pick on the hugest opponent you can find – then, at the last minute, back away – and thus “show the world” that you were brave enough to face off with the enormous champion. An exercise in pure ego and propaganda production.

Why has Putin been running Hitler’s playbook?

Why must Russians see Russia dominate the world?

Since Russia is no longer a champion of a noble ideal and goal, Russia’s only premises for aggression and expansion of influence are exactly the same three as listed in regard to Germany just above here. Russia must dominate because she is Russia. It is a tautology worse than 1930’s Germany’s, because Germany’s had specific justifying delusions in place. The Russian tautology begins and ends with one idea: Russian greatness makes Russia deserve to be great. There is now no idea of set of them for which Russian stands. She stand for Russia, and Russia’s interests: and that bald agenda is called “greed” and “ambition.”

Name any idea or ideal for which has Vladimir Putin stood.

I cannot think of a single idea or policy or political philosophy Putin has stood forth to champion. He advances the exaltation and power of the nation he commands – and by sheer osmosis, his own greatness as well.

The bedrock of United States foreign policy toward the Soviet Union was always that the USSR could only be relied upon for one thing: to act in its own self-interest. That interest used to exist under the masque of devotion to disseminate an allegedly health-giving political philosophy across the world.

Now – things are the same, absent the masque. 

There is no morality but loyalty to Rodyna (pronounced róe-dee-na “Motherland”). 

PRIDE COMETH BEFORE GETTING THY REAR KICKED

One of Sun Tzu’s precepts of successful warfare was to avoid underestimating your enemy. President Donald Trump seems to have committed that very basic error in regard to Vladimir Putin. The world can only hope he learns from the experience, as did some of his predecessors.

The meeting 16 July 2018 between Trump and Putin seemed a horrific mismatch.

It was like watching a schoolyard bully facing a hardened gangbanger.

Let’s be clear: Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer.

The K.G. freakin’ B.

To our knowledge, Donald Trump has never personally killed, nor ordered the murder of another human being. He is facing in Putin a man with a trail of dead bodies behind him –and those are only the ones we know about. If we could get access to Putin’s action record as a KGB officer, I am sure we would see a long list of people dead by his personal doing.

Trump needs to understand who he is facing in Putin, now and forward.

What every Bully needs is to face an unfearing citizen, willing to fight.

Bullies are, historically, incapable of a fair fight. They run for cover.

Khruschev learned the hard way what it means to face a man who can’t be bullied. Jack Kennedy was, frankly, smarter and tougher than Khruschev. Far tougher, far more willing to brave the risks of a nuclear fight than Russia had deceived itself into believing. 

Russia made the mistake of believing its own propaganda. They saw the American President Kennedy as Playboy-in-Chief of a nation of self-focused weaklings incapable of facing hardship for a greater cause.  Post-Stalin Russia and the survivors of “The Great Patriotic War” in which 25 million Russians died defeating the Nazi invasion of their country, had created an inner mythology out of their nightmarish winter warfare: only Russians really understood the meaning of sacrifice and hardship.

The real Jack Kennedy they faced was a man who survived in World War II having his patrol boat sawn in half in the middle of the night by a Japanese destroyer, and carrying so many of his wounded crewmen to safety on a nearby island, he permanently injured his back. The Jack Kennedy who surmounted debilitating and exhausting Addison’s Disease, and excruciating surgery, writing a national best-seller while recovering –and continuing to work on his political career despite horrific pain and great personal sorrows like the loss of his brother Joe, his sister Kick, and the lobotomizing of his disturbed sister Rosemary. No lightweight – a man tested by pain and battle. No mere playboy for Khruschev to kick around.

President Trump needs to stand close to Putin, tower over him, and call him an obviously over-bragging leader of a mostly 3rd-world nation trying to be great in all the wrong ways. President Reagan said it well: ‘The West in not perfect: but we have never had to build a wall to keep our citizens inside.”  The West is great because of freedom, not because we Dioxin-poison everyone who disagrees with us. That is the way of cowards who know they have no ideas of real value to offer.” Then walk away. Just walk away.

Vladimir Putin is the Adolf Hitler of a 2nd-rate Russia wanting desperately to return to the days of Yuri Gagarin and the pre-Cuban Missile Crisis presence Mother Russia was around the world, causing all nations to tremble. They long for that gravitas, even as Islamist fundamentalists long for the era of the caliphs and the expansions into Iberia and North Africa and everywhere Muslim armies marched and conquered. (They too, could not make their case for their ideas, so they too, used violence in place of cogent reason.)

Two US Presidents deeply dented Russia’s self-image into emotional and mental derangement:

President Kennedy faced-down Nikita Khruschev, a Soviet leader whose eldest son was older than the American President; and later, President Reagan spent the USSR into national economic collapse with his Star Wars missile shield program, his arms build up, and his space-race advancements. So – The Soviet “Bully” was faced-down in a real fight, and slinked away; and then, was openly given a beat-down in the schoolyard so to speak: the whole world watched the USSR forced to admit, in the words of their former Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev “The system we have been advancing for the last seventy years does not work.”

The flags say it all.

The flag of the Soviet Union was a statement of ideology.

The flag Russia adopted in 1991 after the erasure of the USSR, is a replay of what was supposedly the first “national” flag of Russia from 1668, and the flag used by the Russian “Tsar” (King), minus the royal insignia in the center.

Russia is now a “great” nation with a “great” leader – seeking to enfranchise itself with the “greatness” it “deserves” because of its “greatness.” If Putin could get away with it, I believe he would put his face in the center of the current Russian flag.

Sound familiar?

Aryan Supremacy was the fundamental belief that drove the German armies across the world.

The Aryans had a leader with an ego larger than the world could feed, a sense of entitled destiny.

Vladimir Putin is a bully who needs to be faced down in private, and  told by the American President who physically towers over him: “You are a short thug running an impoverished and failing 3rd world nation behind a thin 1st world mask. The only thing ‘1st world’ about Russia is its nuclear weaponry: and barely. I am a man who has created personal wealth and earned social prestige unimaginable by you, and I represent a nation that out-earns, out thinks, and outdoes you and yours in everything. Do not further test us, or I will do a Kennedy-Khruschev dance on your head in public that will take you out of power.” Then, walk out, smile for the cameras, and say, “We had a great meeting: it went exactly as the United States of America wanted.” And let Putin in public seem like a mighty genius. Putin needs that.

Like Kim Jung Il, Putin’s main concern is remaining President Putin.

Make that branch creak underneath him: he will not risk his power and privileges for ideals.

He is not a champion of ideals.

RECOGNIZING THE SEARCH FOR GREATNESS IN DISGUISE

The terrorists who flew the jets into the World Trade Center did not do so for God: they longed to see their people and their nations be great again. Religion merely served as the fuel and the excuse to be aggressors. What the militant Islamists want is for Islam to be exalted and Westernism to be humbled by their efforts in a way that shows Allah is “for” them, and their domination of the world. They will settle for nothing that puts Islam in other than the chair of human governmental and philosophical primacy – which naturally would mean, Arab supremacy.

Russia wants to be great again.

Its leader and people are heading down the old, wrong road that leads again to public humiliation after passing through misery and murder of millions. Hopefully, Russians will at SOME point – LEARN the lessons of history, like the Islamists who are trying to make Islam great by killing everyone who doesn’t accept their regressionist and repressionist agenda.

Like Khruschev with Kennedy in 1963, perhaps Putin will be awakened at some point. by something that does not go his way, and untie the knots of war he has been tightening. Even “Devil Anse” Hatfield came to understand there was no point to his multigenerational feud with the McCoy clan, and unilaterally declared cessation of hostilities from his side. Former Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev had the courage to look at the system he inherited and say aloud, “This is not working. We need ‘perestroika‘ (reconstruction).” He turned his nation from defending a failed system to exploring a renovated and adjusted one.

Perhaps President Trump will be sobered and opened to better advice by being humiliated this way in the open. Perhaps, in the days to come, he will stare into the White House hallway mirror in the residence and say to the reflection, “You got creamed in Helsinki. Time for Round Two – and it’s going to go differently the rest of the match.”

Jack Kennedy was seen by many in the world as a kind of Donald Trump figure in 1961. A rich, spoiled kid who got everything handed to him, for whom life had been far too easy.  They got Kennedy wrong in 1961. We can hope, some of what we are thinking of President Trump today, if not wrong, is at least within reach of remedy. President Kennedy learned from his first experience with Khruschev, and never made the same mistakes again.

Nothing in the world of boxing teaches you to “keep your left up” like getting hit by the other guy’s right hook, and finding yourself staring at the ceiling lights.

Bruce L. Cohen

16 July 2018