History: Classics Have Their Uses

Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri's review of Lawless Republic: The Rise of Cicero and the Decline of Rome, Josiah Osgood, Basic Books, How a Republic falls (Engelsberg ideas) provides me with a good example of why we need to know history, even Ancient History. 

The book’s central concern is the relationship between law and political violence. For Osgood, the principal reason for the Republic’s fall was the dissolution of legal order: ‘Like other citizens in democratic societies, Romans struggled to balance a desire for security with respect for civil liberties.’ While this is true, a further dimension, particularly relevant to Cicero’s own lifetime, might have been explored: the knock-on effects of imperial expansion. As Machiavelli would later observe, libertas and imperium seldom co-exist. Eighteenth-century historians, too, recognised that the Senate’s authority had been weakened by the corruption stemming from conquest and colonial wealth. Maintaining a standing army to defend a far-flung empire required strongmen, and with Sulla and Caesar came a new kind of politics, one driven not by law but by loyalty, patronage, and power.

 Consider these headlines (do read the stories):

Eric Adams' case dismissal shows the importance of judicial independence under Trump (MSNBC)

‘Loser’: Musk endures wave of gloating on X after liberal judge wins Wisconsin race | Trump administration (The Guardian)

Outrage grows over Maryland man's mistaken deportation to El Salvador prison ( AP News)

Impeach the judges: Trump has to take the nuclear option to save US democracy (Telegraph UK)

Wide majority of Americans oppose impeaching judges who rule against Trump (CNN Politics)

Willkie follows Skadden and Paul Weiss to reach deal with Trump (The Lawyer)

Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss (The White House)

Human nature has not changed. How we govern our nature so that we can enjoy the fruits of civilization has evolved, but the reasons for knowing why choices were made comes from having read history. The Founders knew their history. They knew the faults of the Roman Republic, and of the other forms of governments because they knew their history.

Americans do not know their history, let alone that of others. We rely more on myth than history. The strength of myth has an expiration date. Time to wise up. No, it is past time.

sch 4/3

Ludmilla P!

 The Paris Review released a story by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated by Anna Friedrich, Two Sisters, which I strongly urge you to read. I read a collection of her short stories, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby, while in prison, and I have never read anyone like her. If you think the Russians are impossible to read, give her a try.

sch

Trash, Tom Joad's Ghost, Sheep, and CC - Sunday in Muncie

I picked up the apartment and started a writing project before church. CC had called Saturday night, she is (again) out of rehab. I agreed to see her after church. Only I did not get back when I thought I would. It was closer to 2 than 1 PM. I did too much talking. It was close to three when CC showed up and about 7 when she left. We took a walk down to the convenience store, it was getting cold. Snow started spitting while she was there.

Long talks about what her addiction problems and religion and her legal issues. She enjoyed my vegetable fry up - but I still have leftovers. She also tried hummus for the first time. We had a good talk, but I am still uncertain if she will follow up her talk. She can argue both sides of the argument - usually against herself. 

It was the longest time she had been here since mid-summer.

Her visit did keep from getting any work done. Writing took up another two hours. Then I decided I needed to call it a day. If I helped CC, it was time well spent. Today, I must get work finished.

Some readings I want to pass along:

 The American cultural boom a century on: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos and Louis Armstrong (EL PAÍS English) - I have few quibbles with the writer (Dreiser's An American Tragedy is not completely unreadable but being prison when I finally read the novel gave me the time to work through this slab of a novel; and I think Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer may be easier to read now by younger readers used to mixed media; but on the whole a very good introduction to the writers and works of 1925)

New York Dolls: New York Dolls Album Review (Pitchfork) for those who love The New York Dolls and those who have not heard of them.

In 2015, following a handful of Dolls reunion shows, Mojo reporter Alan Light asked Johansen if he felt “a kind of justice” in selling out large venues decades after the band’s “commercial disappointment.” Johansen might have focused on the Dolls’ undeniable clout, or counted the punk and hair metal bands they’d inspired. He might have heaped the blame on a dim audience, or heroin, or Malcolm McLaren. But he just rejected the construct of success altogether. “‭This is the frigging psychosis of the times,” he said. “We were certainly not shooting for commercial success; we were in the ground floor of this‬‭ revolution that was going on, and it was the opposite of commercial.” He continued: “People can’t wrap their head around that, [it’s] an idea that’s alien to most people. People are so into‬‭ getting and spending that I don’t even know if, when they’re on their deathbed, they realize that they’ve been shoveling shit for the man for the last 70 years. But there’s a lot more to life than that.‬” Johansen, who died earlier this year at 75, spurned the shovel, and New York Dolls flamed out before commercial success was even on the horizon. How very punk rock.

 Wool Aliens of the British Empire (History Today) - let us say globalization has its woolly side.

Meet Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, the ‘Jazz Witch’ Who Captivated the Art World

She was known as the “Queen of Chicago” by some, and the “jazz witch” by others. Born the daughter of itinerant opera singers, she took root in Chicago. Living in a four-story Victorian brownstone of fading elegance in the city’s eclectic Hyde Park neighborhood, Abercrombie (1909–1977) established herself as a salonnière in the tradition of Gertrude Stein (the other Gertrude was a huge influence on her, too), hosting the city’s energetic jazz scene with musicians from Charlie Parker to Dizzy Gillespie staying, and sometimes playing at her home. A tall woman, who’d been made to feel plain by her mother, Abercrombie often dressed elaborately, with leopard print coats, capes, and even pointy witch hats accessorizing her wardrobe.

The art work is fascinating. 

Muncie Protest Update: 3 p.m. (Woof Boom Radio News) - exactly what it says, and proof that not all of Indiana remains under Trump's spell.

Well, I was up at 4 AM and it is now 5:37. I should get some breakfast besides Coca-Cola, having done one post and rambled through yesterday's email.

Ah, it is Monday.... I wonder what will get done and undone this week.

sch

 

American History Lessons

In Americans knowledge of their history, let alone world history, I have little faith.

Steve Schmidt has more hope than I do (and is even splenetic about Trump than I am) in his American history can't be erased by Donald Trump and JD Vance.

The days ahead in America will be brutal and the crisis will worsen.

Yet, the ending is not in doubt.

It can’t be.

The country has always produced its Donald Trumps and Pete Hegseths, and every other version of a Trump minion.

What those people underestimate is that it has also produced people like Medgar and Myrlie Evers and James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. They are not forgotten.

The Forgotten Dystopian Vision That Explains Trump’s Canada Obsession (The New Republic) has me doubting MAGA's interest in history as more than their own inbred fantasies.

We’ve been here before. In the spring of 1941, as Hitler’s armies swept across Europe, American conservative James Burnham published a book outlining his vision for a new global order: a post-democratic world centered around a few powerful blocs he called “super-states.” These great powers would exercise complete dominion over their designated regions while locked in perpetual rivalry with each other. The United States, Burnham thought, should “draw a ring” around the Western hemisphere, securing the Panama Canal and reducing Canada to “a satellite.” This new order would be governed not by international law but by personal dealings among the great powers, who would control the sovereignty of weaker states and suspend it as they wished.

And if that scenario sounds familiar:

George Orwell used Burnham’s bleak vision as the geopolitical setting for 1984, in which three giant autocratic empires live in a state of permanent conflict. And now, the real-world global order is starting to take on a disturbingly similar shape.

But then the rest of the article does point out how little Trump knows or cares about history. It was not 19th Century Great Power diplomacy that made us great, but Wilson's ideas that became the cooperative system we have lived under since 1945.

 sch 3/31

The Rewards of Serendipity - Free Speech.

 Indiana's Bill of Rights has a slightly different version of the First Amendment. 

Section 9. No law shall be passed, restraining the free interchange of thought and opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print, freely, on any subject whatever; but for the abuse of that right, every person shall be responsible.

That provision has been most ignored between 1851 and 1993. Then came Price v. State, and the limitation clause came into focus.

Though earnestly given, the promise that § 9 shields all expression from penalty save that which impairs a state prerogative may appear illusory, given the broad sweep of those prerogatives. The State may exercise its police power to promote the health, safety, comfort, morals, and welfare of the public. State v. Gerhardt (1896), 145 Ind. 439, 44 N.E. 469. In furthering these objectives, it may subject persons and property to restraints and burdens, even those which impair "natural rights." Weisenberger v. State (1931), 202 Ind. 424, 429, 175 N.E. 238, 240. Further, courts defer to legislative decisions about when to exercise the police power. See Peachey v. Boswell (1960), 240 Ind. 604, 167 N.E.2d 48, and typically require only that they be rational. From this, one might conclude that the Indiana Constitution permits punishing expression any time the courts are willing to indulge the presumption that the statute which penalizes it is rational.

Such a conclusion fails to recognize, however, that in Indiana the police power is limited by the existence of certain preserves of human endeavor, typically denominated as interests not "within the realm of the police power," see Milharcic v. Metropolitan Bd. of Zoning Appeals (1986), Ind. App., 489 N.E.2d 634, 637, upon which the State must tread lightly, if at all. Put another way, there is within each provision of our Bill of Rights a cluster of essential values which the legislature may qualify but not alienate. See Palmer, supra, at 65-66. A right is impermissibly alienated when the State materially burdens one of the core values which it embodies.[5] Accordingly, while violating a rational statute will generally constitute abuse under § 9, the State may not punish expression when doing so would impose a material burden upon a core constitutional value. We now proceed to apply this standard to Price's case. 

Price at  959 -60.

Today, I was reading Is this free speech? (Engelsberg ideas) when I glimpsed a different history for Section 9:

From there, Dabhoiwala contrasts the bluntness of the US First Amendment with the sophistication of its contemporaneous equivalent in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, drawn up in revolutionary France. ‘Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom’, asserts the Declaration, ‘but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.’ That ‘but’, on Dabhoiwala’s account, is all-important. On one side of the Atlantic, we have an ‘absolutist’ account of free speech that broaches no limitations; on the other, a ‘balanced’ one that ascribes responsibilities to free-speaking citizens. On one side, protection against government interference; on the other, protection all round. On one side, American exceptionalism; on the other, European egalitarianism.

First, that such language is the product of egalitarianism. That Indiana's Bill of Rights begin by incorporating the Declaration of Independence's preamble, 

 Section 1. WE DECLARE, That all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that all power is inherent in the people; and that all free governments are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and well-being. For the advancement of these ends, the people have, at all times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government.

I say our state Bill of Rights is also a product of egalitarianism. Then, too, there is the idea of "protection all round". That would see not to have a part to play in discussing Indiana's free speech rights. Our Bill of Rights limits the power of state government, right? Yes, kind of. 

The same Bill of Rights addresses libel.

 Section 10. In all prosecutions for libel, the truth of the matters alleged to be libellous, may be given in justification.

Libel affects private interests, too. 

And some more history, of which I was unaware of:

And that’s it? Not nearly. What is Free Speech? is a complicating text; Dabhoiwala revels in highlighting the hypocrisies, ironies and paradoxes of theories of free speech. Its best pages detail the non-unanimous and almost-accidental way in which the US First Amendment came into being, and then how it was jettisoned almost immediately by individual states. It was Pennsylvania, in 1789, that first drew on the French Declaration to draft its own law that included a reference to citizens ‘being responsible for the abuse of that liberty [of free communication]’. Many others followed, to the point that, as Dabhoiwala writes, ‘By the middle of the twentieth century, almost every state constitution defined free speech as a qualified right.’ Which is to say, there was push and pull before the First Amendment became what it is today, an almost religious precept. The course of free speech never did run smooth.

Case law and the 14th Amendment establish a floor for state interpretations of their free speech provisions. Federal precedent is based on the theory that only governments are affected by the First Amendment.

Interpreting the abuse clause, then need must look at state interpretations of their abuse clauses. What particularly interests me now is the extent of protection given to private actions, and then the line between abuse and protection of free speech.

The Price court referred to other states in footnote 3: "Margaret A. Blanchard, Filling in the Void: Speech and Press in State Courts prior to Gitlow, in The First Amendment Reconsidered 14, 20 (Bill F. Chamberlin & Charlene J. Brown eds., 1982)."

I also hold another idea that make Indiana's Article 9 broader than the federal First Amendment: it protects a citizen's conscience. That idea still needs to be explored.

sch 3/29

 

Meatloaf Asked What Happened to Saturday Night

No, I did not go to the protest. I did not leave the apartment until around 8 PM. The back stiffened up, so I napped and then spent time with the heating pad. I finish with a headache, such a one that I want to do no more writing than you will find below.

Steve Schmidt:  Photo gallery: “Hands Off” protests 

Closer to home, from The Muncie Star Press: 'Hands off' protesters gather at Wheeling Avenue and McGalliard Road

From Can Europe save Ukraine? (The Article), I learned:

How strong are the Three? Let’s look at their economic strength. The GDPs of the Three are about 3 trillion dollars for France and the UK and 4 trillion for Germany. Russian GDP stands at around 2 trillion, one fifth of the joint GDP of the Three. This means they can stand fast, they can outlast Russia.

Let me just say a few words about Putin’s most chilling pronouncement. He said that he will put all the men who fought in the Ukrainian Army against Russia on trial for treason in special courts. And that is not without parallel. It has been done before. The most notorious example in the Soviet Union is the Volga-Moskva canal under Yagoda and Franco’s Mausoleum built in Spain by prisoners of the ex-republican army. Putin would be delighted to put that threat into practice. As for Zelensky and the Three: it is time to act.

Yeah, Putin is the victim and Ukraine started the war. No, he sees Ukraine as an affront to Russian imperialism. 

“The book wasn’t put together to make anyone comfortable”: An Interview with Louis Bourgeois by Mike Puican (Another Chicago Magazine) makes me glad of where I did my prison time, but it is time for you who think prison is the solution to crime to think otherwise.

Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison is a collection of writing and artwork not for the faint of heart. Anthologist Louis Bourgeois entered one of the country’s most notorious prisons, Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman, and led writing classes for those who would be considered the worst offenders, those in solitary confinement. For three years, Bourgeois worked with over fifty inmate students individually, going from cell to cell. Many of these men had never read a piece of literature, let alone written one. As Bourgeois told me, “We’re talking about poverty gone insane and distilled in this place.” The result is a collection remarkable for the humanity expressed by those living in one of the most bleak and cruel environments imaginable. 

***

Finally, what would you like the reader to take away from reading this book?  

I want the reader to be disturbed. I don’t want them to feel okay about reading it. We’re talking about the actual reality of Parchman, regardless of the crime. We’re talking about poverty gone insane and distilled in this place. The book wasn’t put together to make anyone comfortable, even enlightened people. The reader should come away being physically affected by the writing. 

Gaming Japan's bloody past (Engelsberg ideas) did not go where I thought it would - but I had no idea of any controversy over Assassin's Creed - other than a history of Japan I already knew. Then came the final paragraph.

 It is tempting to suggest that Ubisoft’s inclusion of violence against a Shintō shrine has been read in Japan as yet another instance of foreigners either misunderstanding or deliberately disrespecting Japanese culture. One can see their point, and perhaps on balance they were right to remove the shrine-smashing scene from their game, as they are reported to have done. At the same time, given the extraordinary power of video games to immerse people in the past and whet their appetite for history, it would be a great shame if we find ourselves being presented with sanitised versions of the past. Confusion about who we have been risks feeding confusion about who we are now.

Americans have little stomach for the bad and dark and ugly aspects of our history. Most of the attacks on "woke" culture have been about sanitizing our history - brushing out the slaves and the dead Native Americans and laboring men killed by the government seems their ultimate goal. Trump's anti-DEI pogrom has already moved against the achievements of American women, people of color, and the Enola Gay; for Trump only white men have earned their regards and distinctions. American is living proof of what happens when we confuse what we are with what we were.

As with Canada, so with Australia? The new reality dawning in Australia: it can no longer rely on the US (The Guardian)

An Australia Institute poll released this month found three in 10 Australians (31%) think Donald Trump is the greatest threat to world peace (more than chose Vladimir Putin (27%) or Xi Jinping (27%)).

It found nearly half of all Australians (48%) were not confident the Trump administration would defend Australia’s interests if Australia were threatened, compared with only 16% who were very confident that it would do so.

And China is closer than the US; presumably China, not the Solomon Islands, would be attacking Australia. We are learning just how scared the world is of us. Scared people tend to militantly react to what scares them.

Patience advocates building new alliances in the region, forging stronger ties with other liberal democracies, in particular South Korea and Japan, and developing a “sophisticated diplomacy” with China.

“I think Australia is in very serious trouble because of this naive belief in America. We’ve been such fools living in this imagined American paradise for so long.”

Thanks to Trump, we cannot be sure these kinds of alliances would benefit America.

But JD Vance put on an impressive performance in Greenland: Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous (Timothy Snyder, The Guardian).

The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The US has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last 80 years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk and Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the US will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And, of course, wars rarely turn out the way one expects.

***

... We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?

As this blog is about my continuing education, let me say what I learned from that article:

1. That with Trump, the art of the deal is to start a war rather than to say please.
2.  That we demand a thank you from Zelenskyy for American weapons, but cannot thank Denmark for it people killed on our behalf,

But I learned even more from Trump’s chaos-inducing global tariffs, explained in charts (The Guardian) and Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists (The Guardian).

1. That Trump has not only defecated on his own doorstep, us, but on the world.
2. That I know as much world economics as the people who came up with Trump's tariffs.

There are multiple problems with this – not least that it vastly oversimplifies the drivers of trade deficits. Trade deficits occur when a country buys more than it sells abroad. The US has run a deficit persistently since the 1970s. Typically trade deficits balance over time, as they create downward pressure on a country’s currency (as the result of demand for foreign currency, to buy imported goods, outstrips demand for domestic currency).

However, sitting atop the global reserve currency – used throughout the global financial system for payments and international trade – the US has managed to run larger trade deficits than other nations would be able to.

But I already knew the gist of this paragraph:

“This is not serious trade policy or grand strategy,” said Tooze. “The boss hates trade deficits and his team of willing sycophants came up with a formula, however idiotic, that ticked the box.”

My left eye throbs. No idea how long before the ibuprofen kicks in. This is what happened to this Saturday night. 

sch 

 

A Wet, Grumpy Saturday Morning

 I overslept by two hours. Probably the better for it, if I did not have things to do. The laundry, some cleaning, some research might have been started in the past 90 minutes, if I had not started on thinning out the email. That just made me grumpy after reading Sheila Kennedy's Will Obvious Insanity Be A Turning Point?, who dissects a Paul Krugman piece. Krugman always makes sense of economic issues, and Kennedy and Krugman point out the illogic of Trump's own rhetoric of tariffs. I felt reassured that my own sensibility was on the right course.

But what got me grumpy was the first comment to Kennedy's post, which asks a few questions about Trump's supporters that I will restate here, with more emphasis.

So why did half the country apparently not see Trump's insanity? 

Could it really be that such a large segment of the population saw a reflection of themselves in Trump and liked what they saw? 

Did they see Trump making them “winners”…. potential “winners”?

Did they see Trump as someone with their own principles, standards, morals? 

Did they see Trump as someone whose behavior they could excuse because they had never taken responsibility for their own? 

Did they see Trump as a rich, successful version of themselves?

No one directly asks MAGA these questions. American journalists fail us.

Not everything that glitters is gold, Trumpists: 

All the talk about owning the libs speaks volumes about the lack of seriousness in American voters. The same with the professional wrestling thinking. People will die, they will be ruined economically; the country will be shamed and alone and disgraced. All that thanks to your decadent, weak-minded, superficial thinking. We need a better people.

I have a nephew who I spoke to only once since my return from prison; he told me he was very much for Trump. He has never explained why. He married a Mexican woman - he loudly, proudly declared she had come in the right way. They have two children.

I wonder what he would like about ICE descending on a school and taking Hispanic-looking children out of classrooms: Welcome To The Gulag (Sheila Kennedy, again).

No, probably not that, to my great sorrow.

My oldest sister says she is a conservative as if she were declaring a religious faith. Never has she explained why; nor have I asked her. Some things are needed for familial peace. I do not think she sees anything needing torn born out of Trump:

The Statue of Liberty was a welcome sign. Now the U.S. vibe is 'stay out' - Los Angeles Times

The best I can see is that a plurality of Americans are weak-kneed, weak-minded sheep willing to see strength in the bellowing of an idiot, and protection for their resentment at failing to achieve what they think of as entitlements, which are actually the rewards for talent and energy and ambition, so they follow him into a new pasture where Trump will fatten them for his dinner table.

Strange how the Republicans used to trumpet the need for responsibility to the poor back in the days of Bill Clinton. That they always excused their irresponsibilities and hypocrisies even then (yes, I am thinking of Newt Gingrich) seems forgotten. Rush Limbaugh accusing his opponents of being sheeple made sheeple of his own listeners. The slaughterhouse calls for all of us now.

Trump’s tariff strategy is a surefire loser - Los Angeles Times

We let grown men with the mentality of toddlers drive the car. 

What is Trump trying to achieve with tariffs and does Smoot-Hawley have any lessons? (Fortune)

Columbia professor Brett House argues there’s another motive to Trump’s action, exemplified by the fact that the White House has implemented both individual and blanket tariffs. He told Fortune: “The president loves creating a situation where other countries or individuals have to come and bargain with him. By setting out different tariff rates on a country-by-country basis, it creates a situation where every country then has to supplicate and beg and negotiate with the White House on an individual basis. 

“This is the essence of the kind of power that a bully and an autocrat tries to create by dividing people and ensuring that it is very difficult for them to unite and negotiate with a single voice.”

Did none of the Trumpists manage to stay awake during their history classes? That reality is not owned by one man, even bullies cannot fight reality?

Trump's agenda grapples with political and economic reality (BBC)

The president, it seems, is willing to wait out the tempest created by his tariff plan. He appears confident that his economic vision of a rebuilt, job-rich American manufacturing sector protected from foreign competition - a vision he has closely held for decades - will ultimately be proven right.

And if it all goes wrong - as the non-delusional, non-MAGA cultist experts think will happen - what will Trump do? Blame everyone else. The delusional do that. His cult will follow him into the slaughterhouse. 

Did they not notice that what made us safe was our allies, and how we treated them?

Tariff troubles overshadow US olive branch at NATO – DW – 04/03/2025

DM wrote me just now:

Interest rates for 10 yr treasury fell from >4.3% to <4.0% just this week;  His real estate might be in trouble.  I heard one market analyst/investor predict the rates could get to 3.5%

The Daily Reid: Burning down the house

When are the Spanish bombs going to start falling on us?

Are you Trump voters getting what you wanted?

How Trump's tariffs rollout turned into stock market mayhem (CNBC)

A brain drain away from America? Europe to burned American scientists: We’ll take you in (POLITICO)

The Affordable Car Is About to Go Extinct in the US (WIRED)

Making us small and mean-spirited is not the way to lead the world:

Rubio dismisses criticism over US response to Myanmar earthquake

Lesotho, a Small African Nation, Expects a Big Hit From Trump’s Tariffs - The New York Times

 And if we are not leading the world, how have you made America great again?

And if we are going to war against the world, why should America see greatness in America?

And if you want to be a serf to plutocrats, how is that making America great?

I can think of nothing less American than serfdom.

Everything about MAGA will destroy America's greatness.

Time the Democrats got serious; time for serious American  stand up.

Twenty years ago, a former friend who was a dedicated follower of the Republican Party said that China would never attack us because it held so much of our bonds. I did not buy that logic then, and I think his argument is even less viable now. The same is true now of the rest of the world. Where our blunders and stupidities could once be written off against the profitability coming from being allied to us, we have now become red ink. Have we forgotten that we are not the whole of the world?

I think I will walk in the protest march today. Screw the dishes and laundry.

It is now the afternoon, I have spent the morning working on this post. I remain grumpy. Have I spent too much time on this to make the march?

sch