We refuse to honor the 2024 election even though Dolon Mump is now sitting in the White House. We call on people to march on the Capitol, put our feet up on Mike Johnson’s desk, threaten to hang the vice president, assault police officers, break windows, pepper spray anyone within two feet of us, carry a spear and wear a horned fur hat.
We claim that there can be no votes found for Mr. Mump in any state, election precinct or a single ballot box.
We further claim that everything Mr. Mump is doing is illegal, unconstitutional and stupid. We don’t want our personal data turned over to 20-year-old DOGGIES. We don’t want half the federal workers laid off to find a few pennies when there are millions of dollars in oil and gas subsidies, in Mr. Mump’s contracts with the United States and in the rooms rented for Mr. Mump’s Secret Service agents at his hotels.
We further insist that Mr. Mump retire to a golf course full time and turn the leadership of our country over to someone not out to destroy it. Mr. Mump, call an election. You damaged the Constitution so many times, what’s one more.
Thanks to a recommendation from a high-school classmate (Hooray to the Liberty Center Class of 1966!), I read “American Midnight” by Adam Hochschild, a book that foreshadows what is going on in the world today. Some of what Hochschild wrote seems worth passing on:
On truth and falsehood:
“Honesty was not high on the CPI agenda. One of its architects, the journalist Arthur Bullard, had written, with revealing candor, ‘Truth and Falsehood are arbitrary terms . . . There is nothing in experience to tell us that one is always preferable to the other . . . The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little whether it is true or false.’”
The CPI was the Committee on Public Information, something formed by President Woodrow Wilson to sell the idea of the United States entering World War I. The chief of CPI, George Creel, a former newspaperman, said, “If ads could sell face cream and soap, why not a war?”
(Editor’s note: Bullard and Creel represent what happens when journalists go over to the dark side, selling things instead of telling the truth.)
Later in the book, Hochschild quotes from a dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
“. . . that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market . . . We should be eternally vigilant against the attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.”
Key to politics:
Hochschild quotes John Maynard Keynes on this:
“A moment often arrives when substantial victory is yours if by some slight appearance of a concession you can save the face of the opposition.”
Keynes found Wilson incompetent in this regard. Is “doubling down” by Trump any better?
Immigrants:
Hochschild quotes General Leonard Wood, who was brought in to end a steel workers’ strike, which Wood blamed on foreigners:
“The great need is keeping this kind of cattle out of the country and getting those who are here out of it . . . Every man of this type ought to be summarily deported.”
Then Hochschild turns to Washington State’s very own congressman, Albert Johnson, who had attained chair of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization:
“Offering no evidence but pandering to an enduring streak of American paranoia, he claimed wildly that ‘aliens were being smuggled across the Mexican border at a rate of 100 a day, a large part of them being Russian Reds who had reached Mexico in Japanese vessels.’”
One more quote on immigrants comes from Francis Fisher Kane, a United States attorney in Philadelphia, who resigned after immigrant raids:
“It is one thing to debar an alien coming into this country . . . but it is quite another thing to deprive a man who has been in this country a long time, and who perhaps has a wife and children here, of what we are accustomed to think of as constitutional rights, irrespective of a man’s citizenship.”
College professors:
No matter where you stand on opinions you loathe or on Truth or Falsehoods, this quote, especially the part about modern college professors, is true, true, true. I’m basing that on my time as an adjunct professor at four institutes of higher learning:
Woodrow Wilson “had spent decades as a college professor – in an age when someone in that role was not a performer struggling to draw students’ attention away from their cell phones, but a source of moral authority, like a member of the clergy.”
Interview with the author:
Jennifer Rubin, no longer a columnist with The Washington Post, interviews Adam Hochschild on The Contrarian, her new digs:
Now dialing in to youtube.com for the weekend’s highlights, which I have not completed.
However, in looking at the minimal information on Tribe Sports, the number of yellow and red cards handed out over the weekend has colored their game summaries. In five games, there were 14 yellow cards and three red cards. New Orleans and San Diego teams led with three yellow cards apiece. The Miami Sharks, Chicago Hounds and New England had red cards.
Is this because the refs are calling rules tighter or because we have hooligans in the gentlemen’s game?
The Seattle Seawolves rugby team has no game next weekend, which means they will have plenty of time to work on things. There are plenty of things to work on.
When they departed San Diego Sunday afternoon, they left behind a 40-26 defeat administered handily by the Legion. It could have been worse. The Seawolves, down 28-0 at halftime, did not get on the scoreboard until 57 minutes into the match. That was helped along by San Diego serving two yellow cards at once, leaving only 13 Legion players on the field.
Seven minutes into the game, San Diego had two tries and two conversions. Another converted try at 13 minutes and once more at 27 minutes as the Seawolves could not figure out how to stop the overlaps the San Diego backs were putting together.
Once Cameron Orr opened the scoring for the Seawolves, they rolled on for 21 more points in the second half with tries by Eddie Fouché and two by Jesse Mackail. Fouché kicked two conversions, and Rodney Iona had one.
It could have been 28-21, within seven of the winner and a bonus point in the standings. But that would mean the Seawolves needed to stop San Diego from scoring. They did not, as the Legion added 12 points for the 40-26 final. The Seawolves come away with one bonus point for scoring four tries.
Next Seawolves game is in Houston against the Sabercats, who lost Saturday to the Chicago Hounds, 25-22.
Let’s suppose that Trump knows what he is doing, that the control of Greenland, Panama Canal and Canada is needed to win World War III, which has started, according to a believable column by George F. Will. That climate change, which Trump has previously called a hoax, has suddenly come alive in his Troy Donahue encased brain, and is now melting the ice covering of Greenland and Canada, exposing rare metals, oil and natural gas as well as opening new sea routes north of the Arctic Circle. Better to have the oligarchs of Musk and Trump, the MUMP Administration, digging for these resources than Putin’s. Better to have U.S. naval vessels filling those sea lanes rather than Russia’s or China’s. And better to have control of the Panama Canal to quickly move the U.S. Navy from ocean to ocean.
Let’s say that all worked out, and the United States wins WWIII.
But where does Gaza Strip fit in?
Will U.S. ownership of this beach front property help win WWIII? Will this help the United States, the Mideast or the world do anything at all?
First of all, the new landlord would have to clear out the present tenants. Some of them, the hostages, would gladly leave if they can be found. Alive. But the others on the property have no new addresses. Assuming the Palestinians eventually find a new home (Guantanamo?), then the clearing of the rubble, created by Israel using U.S. supplied bombs, rockets and drones, would have to be undertaken. Invest in heavy-equipment manufacturers as they ramp up production of bulldozers, front-end loaders, cranes and dump trucks to scrape away the war remains. Then the building begins, estimated by some to take 15 years. At that point, Trump would be starting his sixth term as head of the U.S. government, if it still exists. Or, he could step down, move to the Rivera of the Mideast and return to his former occupation as a casino owner where he has had so much previous success.
