DON’T BRING A KNIFE TO A GUN FIGHT

 The evolution of life on this planet has always been about survival of the fittest and survival of the fittest has always involved conflict, which is generally defined as “a struggle or clash between opposing forces.” Civilization throughout human history has been an attempt to regulate conflict, to make it less destructive, based on the realization that human beings need each other to survive and prosper and, if only the strongest individuals survive, there won’t be enough of us to survive as a species.

Civilization regulates conflict by establishing norms, rules and laws and a system to enforce them. That system can be authoritarian and operate by the use of force, or it can be democratic and operate by shared consent. Regulated conflict is called competition and is a part of daily life in every civilized society. When conflict is unregulated, either because there are no norms, rules or laws or because they exist but are unenforceable, we call that war; and there has never been a time in human history that there wasn’t a war going on somewhere in the world.

Regulated conflict (competition) and unregulated conflict (war) are absolutely incompatible in the sense that unregulated conflict will defeat regulated conflict every time. You can’t stop a coup d'état with a lawsuit. That’s the intended message of the title of this post. The “Don’t bring a knife to gun fight” line was made famous by Sean Connery in The Untouchables and demonstrated by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Why do I bring this up now? Because that is what we are facing in the United States right now. The MAGA movement is pursuing its agenda without regard for the Rule of Law while those opposed to the MAGA movement are still playing by the rules. 

Allow me to digress for a moment with a brief civics lesson. The President of the United States does NOT have the authority to decide how our tax dollars will be spent. Authorizing expenditures and appropriating funds to support those expenditures is totally and exclusively the responsibility of Congress; and both the House and the Senate must agree on every authorization and appropriation. These decisions by Congress are called laws. The responsibility of the Executive Branch of government, led by the President, is to implement and enforce those laws. The responsibility of the Supreme Court is to ensure that the laws enacted by Congress and the way in which they are implemented and enforced by the Executive Branch do not violate the Constitution and its Amendments. In other words, what Donald Trump has been doing since he took office, shutting down government programs and agencies authorized by Congress and freezing funds appropriated by Congress to support those programs and agencies, is illegal. He does NOT have the constitutional authority to do that.

So, there are only a couple of questions that should matter right now to the American people who care about maintaining our constitutional republic. One, will Donald Trump honor federal court orders to stop what he is doing and, if he doesn’t, will the Republican controlled Supreme Court uphold the Constitution and respect the legal decisions made by lower federal courts? Two, if it doesn’t, or if it does and Mr. Trump still refuses to obey the law, will the Republican controlled Congress act to take back its constitutional authority? It would only take a half dozen Republican members of the House of Representatives and a dozen Republican senators joining with the Democrats to impeach Donald Trump and remove him from office. They would still have a Republican President and could still pursue a conservative agenda, but JD Vance is not Donald Trump. He is an articulate, educated opportunist, not an ignorant, malignant narcissist and he is much more likely to play by the rules than Mr. Trump, especially if Mr. Trump is impeached for not playing by the rules. Our constitutional republic will survive four years of competing over policies no matter which side wins or loses. It won’t survive the hostile, lawless takeover of our government.

If the Supreme Court and Congress do not support and enforce the Rule of Law then we, the American people who still believe in our constitutional republic, will have to go to war and do WHATEVER IT TAKES to win that war, in order to save it. And we, I say we because I am one of them, will have to make that decision and act on it the instant the Supreme Court or Congress fail to support or enforce the Rule of Law. If we wait, if we keep playing by rules that are no longer enforceable, if we bring a knife to a gun fight, we will most certainly lose the battle and you can bet your bottom dollar there will not be midterm elections for Congress in two years or a Presidential election in four years; and our constitutional republic, the envy of the free world, will be reduced to just another “banana republic” in the  Americas.

The writing is on the wall. During his campaign, while referring to his own lie about the 2020 Election being stolen on his Truth Social media platform, Donald Trump called for “the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He also told attendees at a Christian Convention in Florida, “If you vote for me, you won’t have to vote anymore. It’ll be fixed.” We have been warned and we need to heed that warning and be ready to respond accordingly. We will have only ourselves to blame if we don’t.

 

THE BLAME GAME

 It appears everybody has an opinion about why the Democrats lost the 2024 Presidential Election, but nobody seems to want to address the obvious facts in the matter,,,,”out of kindness I suppose.”[1]

The Democrats lost the 2024 Presidential Election when Joe Biden broke his campaign promise to the American people to be an “interim President.” Millions of Democratic voters felt betrayed by his decision to run for reelection, and it only got worse after that. As Biden continued to insist he was up to the task, could defeat Donald Trump and serve four more years as President when it was obvious he wasn’t and couldn’t, that sense of betrayal turned to disappointment, then resentment and eventually disillusionment. When he was finally pressured into stepping down it was much too little and much too late. In retrospect, his stepping down wasn’t selfless. His choosing to run for reelection was selfish.

Let’s remember how this all happened. The country was hemorrhaging under the Trump administration. The COVID pandemic was killing hundreds of thousands of people, the economy was collapsing and White House staff and Cabinet members were being replaced almost daily. Nothing was getting done. Despite the turmoil in the Trump camp, none of the Democrats running in the Primary had gained any traction with voters. That’s when Joe Biden reluctantly (he had already retired) entered the race promising to use his enormous experience as a senator and Vice President and his political relationships to stop the bleeding, get the country back on course and position it so that voters could select a new generation of leaders. He made it clear he wanted nothing more than to be an “interim President”, get us through the crisis and pave the way for new leadership.

His campaign message was well received. Almost 12 million more people voted in the 2020 election than in any previous Presidential election in our history and Biden won the popular vote by a little over 7 million votes as well as the Electoral College. As soon as he took office, he went right to work doing what he promised to do.

When the mid-term elections rolled around two years later, despite the pundits predicting a “red wave”, the Democrats had unprecedented success. That was a vote of confidence for the Biden administration and shortly after the mid-terms Democratic voters were expecting him to announce that he would not be running for reelection and that he was launching an open Primary with VP Harris at the top of the list of potential candidates. But, that’s not what happened. In April of 2023 Joe Biden announced he was going to run for reelection and not a single Democratic leader or official questioned of challenged that decision.

Joe Biden eventually withdrew his candidacy, but when and how he did it deprived Democratic voters of the opportunity to select a new generation of leaders. Kamala Harris was an extremely qualified candidate and ran an excellent campaign. She might very well have won an open Primary, but Joe Biden didn’t give voters the opportunity to make that choice. He made that choice for them and that only intensified their feelings of betrayal, disappointed, resentment and disillusionment. As a result, 4 million of the voters that gave Joe Bident a 7 million vote margin of victory in 2020 didn’t vote in 2024; and another 3 million of that 7 million margin of victory in 2020 voted for Donald Trump in 2024, along with about a million new voters, giving Trump both the popular vote and Electoral College victory.

Those are the facts! That’s what happened.

So, what conclusions can we draw from those facts? Obviously, you can draw your own conclusions, but here are mine, The Democratic Party was clearly not in touch with a large segment of the Democratic voters in particular and American voters in general. The party and its leaders were oblivious to the disappointment, resentment and disillusionment millions of Democratic voters were feeling as a result of having been betrayed by a man (and a political party) they had trusted and had given unprecedented support. Democratic leadership also hadn’t, and still hasn’t, recognized that, despite all the progress that has been made, Women’s Lib has still not reached the poorest and least educated states and counties in the country, which is where most of the MAGA base resides. And the fact of the matter is, until Women’s Lib reaches those parts of the country a woman is not going to be elected President of the United States of America.

The irony of this election is that had Joe Biden kept his promises it is very likely he would go down in history as the President who saved our American democracy. Because he broke his promises he could very possibly go down in history as the President who lost it.

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[1] Poncho and Lefty by Townes Van Zandt

GAZA – Part 2

It’s one thing to read about World War II and the Holocaust. It’s just a story about something that happened a long time ago, as is all history. If you have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, you may have a slightly better understanding of what actually happened, but even that experience is nothing like having lived through that period in our history, even if you were very young, as I was. What the Nazis did to the Jews, not only in Germany, but in every country they occupied, which was most of Europe, is so unimaginably horrific it would make the worst horror film you can ever imagine look like Barbie. And the worst part was that nobody, not the German people and not the rest of the world, did anything to stop them, at least not until the rest of the world was attacked by the Nazis or their allies, Italy and Japan.

In 1936, when the Olympics were held in Berlin and the Nazis refused to allow Jews to compete, the rest of the world left their Jewish athletes home, showed up and competed anyway. In 1938, while the Nazis were rounding up Jews, confiscating their property and sending them to ghettos and from there to concentration camps, British and French Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier met with Adolf Hitler and signed the Munich Pact, which allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia, which they claimed would “guarantee peace in our time”.

After we had learned the true scope and horror of the Holocaust and the 6 million Jews who were enslaved, brutalized, used for experiments and murdered, the free world swore to “Never let that happen again.” However, in 1972, at the Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, a dozen athletes and coaches on Israel’s Olympic Team were taken hostage by a group of terrorists affiliated with Black September, a militant offshoot of the Palestinian group Fatah. Israel asked permission to enter West Germany and rescue the athletes and coaches. They were denied permission. The rescue was botched by the West Germans and the terrorists killed all of the Israelis they held hostage and then themselves.

Even today, when you listen to Israel’s allies and the United Nations talk about what is happening in Gaza, it’s all about telling Israel what it should or shouldn’t be doing to end this crisis. Declare a cease fire. Allow more humanitarian aid.  They are acting as if Israel were the aggressor in this war and not the victim. Hamas is the elected government of Gaza and nobody is telling them what they should or shouldn’t be doing to protect and help the people who elected them. Stop using its citizens as shields. Stop stealing th humanitarian aid intended for its starving and injured citizens. If I were Israel, I doubt I would see this as a very balanced approach to the problem. It wouldn’t surprise me if you felt the same way.

I can understand if you still have concerns about the collateral damage being done in Gaza (non-combatants suffering, being injured and dying), If so, please consider the following facts:

·         The collateral damage numbers are being provided by Hamas and have not been verified by an independent third party.

·         The single most important factor contributing to collateral damage in Gaza is that Hamas is using Gazan citizens as a shield and stealing as much as they can of the humanitarian aid being sent to help the citizens of Gaza and using that aid to support their soldiers

·        And, as a matter of perspective, the absolute, all-time, work record for collateral damage belongs to us, the United States of America, and Israel is nowhere close to breaking that record. Let me remind you. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in1941, which is how the United States got into World War ll, they attacked the naval base there. They did not attack the surrounding community. In contrast, when we ended the war, we did it by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither of which had significant military installations. It is estimated our bombs immediately killed more than 100,000 people and injured at least another 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom were non-combatant men, women and children; and those numbers don’t include the tens of thousands of people who died in the months and years that followed from injuries sustained during the bombing or radiation poisoning caused by the bombs.  We did that so that our troops would not suffer the high casualty rate that would have resulted if they had invaded Japan to end the war. And you know what? Nobody accused us of genocide or war crimes. Again, if I were Israel, I would likely see that as a double standard and find it both demeaning and unfair. You probably would feel the same way.

Given this context, it should not surprise you that the Jewish people in Israel might not have a lot of confidence in the rest of the world acting in Israel’s best interests at this particular time. It might appear to them that the “advice” coming from its allies and the United Nations is based more on keeping the conflict from escalating and possibly forcing them to get militarily involved, than on what is best for Israel and its people. If that is what they are wondering, now that you know the context, you really can’t blame them because that is exactly what has happened to them several times before; and it didn’t work out very well for them any of those other times.

Despite the fact that the Jewish people have been among the most persecuted people in all of recorded history, their culture and religion have survived for a very long time, as evidenced by the fact that we are currently in year 5794 of the Jewish calendar. Their continued survival was seriously threatened by the Nazis and continues to be threatened by persistent, and in some places escalating, anti-Semitism, especially among its neighbors. As I mentioned at the end of Part 1of this post, these threats have forced the Jewish State of Israel to become a warrior culture in order to secure the continued survival of the Jewish people. They have become a nation and a people committed to doing whatever they need to do to survive, regardless of what the rest of the world may think. In other words, they have learned their lesson and will no longer rely on anyone else to save them.

Make no mistake about it. Hamas and the people who lived in what was formerly called Palestine, who continue to support Hamas, are “the bad guys” and they need to be stopped. Israel and its Armed Defense Force (ADF) are “the good guys” and they will stop Hamas, regardless of the cost in theirs or anyone else’s lives. If the rest of the free world doesn’t want to get militarily involved, that’s OK, but they need to, at least, continue to support Israel and stay out of their way.