#118 / The Enemy Of My Enemy

 

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You have probably heard the claim that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." That claim, of course, is subject to debate, and doesn't really make much logical sense, if you think about it, but there is enough truth in this expression that it has become a commonplace assertion since the late 1800's - at least according to Wikipedia. 

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., who writes for The Wall Street Journal, suggests that our current president's appeal to his political "base" may be directly related to this idea that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." In saying this, I am citing to one of Jenkins' columns, published on April 23, 2025. His column was titled, "Understanding Trump’s Trade War." My apologies if that link leads you to a prohibitory paywall.

The way that Mr. Trump has conducted what really has been a "trade war," does seem to need some sort of explanation. What our current president has done with respect to his on-again, off-again imposition of tariffs, coupled with other trade-related actions, and blustering threats, doesn't really seem to make much sense. Jenkins, though, does identify a likely political "upside" for Trump's controversial trade war, which would seem, on the surface, to disadvantage the very people who have supported him most strongly. 

Every president thinks first about his political standing, on which the whole enterprise rests. Mr. Trump is different in one respect only.... In the fight for personal survival..., one tactic has worked over and over for Mr. Trump, and that’s exciting the animosity and overreaction of the country’s elite groups. 

No matter how crass or gross his conduct, his enemies turn it into lemonade for him. Even his remarkable 2024 comeback doesn’t change this strange chemistry....

A column like today’s is a hard sell to newspaper readers used to the comfortable illusion that presidents are primarily focused on their carefully considered policies and how they will benefit the country. (Witness the hopeless piling up of commentary seeking the “strategy” in his trade actions). The argument, such as it was, for Mr. Trump’s second election was always: his enemies (emphasis added).

Our current president, in other words, is not trying to "sell himself" by touting all the postive things he is doing, has done, or will do. His biggest appeal is that he hates the "enemies" that are hated by his "base." 

I am your "friend," he seeks to persuade the dissatisfied (which includes LOTS of Americans). How are we, the dissatisfied, supposed to know how good Trump is? Well, look at the enemies he has! Those are YOUR enemies, too, right? You can back me, you ought to back me, Trump tells all those who are dissatisfied with how things have been going because "the enemy of your enemy is your friend."

I do think that Jenkins is on to something. Our current president is not very appealing as a national leader. He's impulsive, inconsistent, self-interested, and actually pretty "stupid," to pick out an applicable word. But boy does that guy hate the "libs." Boy, does that guy hate the "elites." Boy, does that guy hate the "bureaucrats." Etc.!!

You get the idea. Hating our "enemy," on our behalf, is the foundation on which our current president has built his political success.

Let me suggest something different. I am proposing to you a politics that is not based on "anger," or on opposition, or on "rage," but that is based on the idea that WE (we, the people) ought to be running the place. Self-government, which includes self-promotion of the people, trusting ourselves to run the government, is the way to build a political "base" that is not premised on that old, erroneous claim that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." 

If you don't like how this country has been run over the last half century or so, under both Republican and Democratic presidents (and I don't), and if you are tempted to blame various political "enemies" for how badly the counttry has been run, then let me invite you to take a peek into the most conveniently accessible mirror. 

There isn't any "enemy." Or, as Walt Kelly has so wonderfully put it: "We have met the enemy and he is us." 

Appealing to our hatred of our supposed "enemies" is not a secure basis for any politics of genuine power, for any politics of transformation and change. Love for ourselves (ALL of us) is the foundation of a politics that might - still might - save the world. Trying to establish our politics on the basis of a coalition that hates the some common "enemy" (including our current president, for those who see him as an enemy) is not going to solve our problems. In fact, it is going to get us the kind of government that has been produced by our current president. 

So, let us think again!

Instead of spending our political energies looking for "enemies," let's turn our efforts to the task of building a politics that can triumph over adversity, and over the daunting challenges ahead. We can begin to do that, and set our politics onto a firm foundation, by doing what I consistently call for in these daily blog postings. Here's what we need to do (first step):

Find Some Friends!

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Image Credit:

https://enemyofmyenemy.bandcamp.com/album/enemy-of-my-enemy

#117 / Our True Role On This Earth

  

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Enzo Maiorca was a world record holding free diver. That link to his name will take you to a Wikipedia write up. The following link will take you to a brief Washington Post obituary (Maiorca died on November 13, 2016, at eighty-five years of age). 

The following link will give you access to a true story about Enzo, published in late 2023, in The Denver Gazette. I first heard about this story from a March 28, 2024, Facebook posting by Lee Davis, passing along an earlier, March 14, 2021, Facebook posting by Tony M. Davis. 

Here is how the story was recounted on Facebook, with the following directive as a preface: "Pay Attention Humans..."

Italian diver Enzo Maiorca while diving into Siracusa sea felt something patting him on the back. He turned around and saw a dolphin, which he understood that he did not want to play but express something. The dolphin dived and Enzo followed. At a depth of twelve meters trapped in a net there was another dolphin. After managing with his wife to release it, as the two dolphins emerged they emitted an almost human cry (this is how Maiorca described it). Dolphins can be held under water for up to ten minutes then drowned. The trapped dolphin was a female who soon gave birth. The male surrounded them and standing in front of Enzo touched his cheek (like a kiss), a gesture of gratitude. 

Both versions of this story, the Facebook post just reproduced, and the slightly different version from The Denver Gazette, say that Enzo frequently quoted the Greek composer, Vangelis, to the following effect:

Until man learns to respect and communicate with the animal world, he will never be able to know his true role on this Earth.

We live, most immediately, in a world that we create ourselves, and we are, because of this, usually preoccupied with that "Human World," and with all of our own creations. 

Ultimately, however, we find ourselves alive, most mysteriously, in the "World of Nature" - the "World That God Made," as I often phrase it.

Our true role on this Earth? 

I think this story, told by Enzo Maiorca, should help us figure out the answer!

Enzo Maiorca

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://gazette.com/life/free-dive-record-holder-enzo-maiorca-rescues-a-trapped-dolphin-then-watches-as-it-gives/article_d94190c0-e763-11ec-9b51-8b2f4199e96a.html

(2) - https://blog.mares.com/free-diving-legend-enzo-maiorca-dies-at-age-of-85-2896.html

#116 / Inflection Point

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A story in the February 7, 2025, edition of The New York Times reported that a "Top Documentarian" had teamed up with "A Billionaire." The "documentarian" featured in the story is Alex Gibney, the owner of Jigsaw Productions. Gibney's new "billionaire backer" is Wendy Schmidt, who has now acquired a majority stake in Gibney's company.

Why does a billionaire want to make documentary movies? Well, according to the story in The Times, Schmidt wants Jigsaw to "broaden its editorial focus to include more stories on climate change and ocean health." 

"Human society, in my view," says Schmidt, "is at an inflection point. We are existentially threatened by the technology we've created as well as by the failure of systems on this planet to support us becuse they've become so compromised."

I have no doubt that we are at an "inflection point," as Schmidt says - politically, socially, economically, and environmentally. The way Schmidt phrases it, though, it almost seems as though she is blaming those "systems on this planet" for failing to "support us." 

Just to be clear, the failures begin with us, not "the planet." I am not speaking to Wendy Schmidt in particular, since I don't know anything about her, personally, but a lot of the systems that Schmidt says are failing "us" are doing so because we have failed "them." 

You could check my blog posting from yesterday for an example. It references an article in the February 7, 2025, edition of The Wall Street Journal that comments on the real estate activities of the "billionire class," in and around Palm Springs. 

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Image Credit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_puzzle

#115 / Mansion

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The Wall Street Journal runs a section, each week, that it calls, "Mansion." On Friday, February 7, 2025,  the headline story in the "Mansion" section was dedicted to "Smoke Tree Ranch," which is located in Palm Springs. The Journal identified Smoke Tree Ranch as "Real Estate's Secret Society." 

Pictured above is an image that ran in The Journal, in connection with that headline story. The picture depicts "the circa-1930s home of former Marvel Enterprises CEO Eric Ellenbogen and his husband Dominic Ramos-Ruiz ... the oldest house in Smoke Tree Ranch."

According to the article, "Smoke Tree Ranch [is] an under-the-radar community ... a far cry from the flashy, celebrity-studded enclaves Palm Springs is known for."

For those who are not billionaires themselves, I believe that it's fair to say that this rather downbeat description of the pictured home is what passes for billionaire modesty in Palm Springs. My own personal reaction is that the picture is plenty "flashy" enough, and I am pretty clear that this is not a home I could afford. In fact, in the newpaper, it is revealed that this home sold for $3.95 million in 2021. Admittedly, that is a lot less than some of the real estate featued in The Journal's "Mansion" section, but I don't buy the suggestion that Smoke Tree Ranch is a community of "just regular folks." Clearly, it's a community of, by and for the billionaires and near-billionaires who want to come across with a more "democratic" vibe!

Let's not be fooled! Here is what is happening in our society today - at least the way many see it. There is an ongoing and concerted effort by what Bernie Sanders has long called the "billionaire class" to consolidate its ownership and control over the United States of America, and particularly over its politics. 

Don't be misled. "We, the people" and "they, the billionaires," are two very different and distinct groups, and the political question now presented to us all is quite clear - and quite important, too. "Who's going to get to run the place?" 

Elon Musk (and our elected president) are playing for the billionaires. Unless we're willing to let those with the gold make the rules for all of us, we've got to suit up ourselves, and stake our claim to political, economic, and social leadership of the country. 

And we're not going to be able to do that "under the radar," either!

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Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/smoke-tree-ranch-palm-springs-3198e13d

#114 / The Temper Of The Times

 

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I have previously mentioned a book given to me by a friend, The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789. Click the following link to read that earlier blog posting, published on Halloween, last year. In that earlier blog posting, I called the book "scary." 

Robert Darnton, who wrote The Revolutionary Temper, ends his book, really, just as the actual French Revolution begins. The last chapter of Darnton's book is on the storming of the Bastille. A lot happened after that, and most people think of the Revolution as following, not preceding, the storming of the Bastille. If you'd like to read a book that considers a more complete trajectory of the French Revolution, you can click right here. That link will take you to my blog post discussing A New World Begins, by Jeremy D. Popkin. 

Darnton has a specific point in mind, as he ends his book just when others who have written about the French Revolution think that the Revolution was just beginning. Here is Darnton's point. What counts most, when revolutionary changes occur in history, is the changed "minds" of the people. The "actions" that accomplish what we come to call a "revolution" are only possible once the minds of the people have been changed. This review in The Guardian can give you a pretty good idea of Darnton's argument.

Let me also draw to your attention what Darnton says on Page 451 of his book, as he sums up his arguments in an afterword:

Most of us accept the world as it is and assume that it holds together firmly enough to constitute reality. 

This is, I think, an accurate statement. Revolutions (and the actions that cause them to occur) happen when what "exists" is no longer taken to define the limits of "reality," and when what "exists" is no longer taken to be "inevitable." Revolutions happen when people begin to understand that "reality" (in the "Human World" that we create) is not something that we need to accept, just because that is the way things are. Getting our minds around that thought, the idea that we can actually build a world that reflects things the way they are "spozed to be," is what actually makes revolutionary changes possible.

Or, as some protesters put it: 

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/26/the-revolutionary-temper-paris-1748-1789-by-robert-darnton-review-power-to-the-printed-word

(2) - https://www.facebook.com/memories/?source=shared_feed_story

Alan Holbert: A Wonderful Tribute

In Memoriam: Al Holbert

Beloved Educator, Visionary Technologist, and Shaper of Cabrillo College

By: Pegi Ard, Claire Biancalana, Rick Graziani, and Rock Pfotenhauer

It is with deep sorrow that we share the passing of Al Holbert, a treasured member of the Cabrillo College family, who passed away on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, at the age of 87.

Al’s journey at Cabrillo began in its formative years. Although he may have started teaching high school biology, it was Cabrillo College that became his true academic and professional home. Hired at a young age as a biology instructor, Al went on to serve in many roles—including Chair of the Natural Science and Health Occupations Division, Chair of Business and Computer Science, and ultimately Director of Computing Resources (CR). In each role, Al shaped the future of the college with vision, generosity, and tenacity.

As a teacher, Al was deeply committed to student success. His field biology courses—most famously the “Biology of the Sierras”—gave students powerful hands-on learning experiences, many of which were life-changing. Al’s quick action even saved a life on one of those trips, a testament to the responsibility he felt for his students, both academically and personally. His classroom wasn’t confined by walls—it was wherever students could grow.

Al also had an early and prescient interest in personal computing. When bureaucratic restrictions prevented him from teaching a computing course through the Computer Science department, he didn’t let that stop him. Instead, he taught The Biology of the Apple through the biology department—Cabrillo’s very first personal computing course. That creative problem-solving and refusal to be limited by roles would become a signature trait.

Al was instrumental in founding the Computer Science/Computer Information Systems (CS/CIS) department as a unified vision of how technology should be taught and accessed. In 1997, thanks in large part to Al’s advocacy and problem-solving, Cabrillo became one of the first 25 colleges in the country to offer Cisco Networking Academy courses. He secured the department its own dedicated Internet connection to support advanced instruction without disrupting the college's production network—a network still in use today.

Later, as Director of Computing Resources, Al revolutionized how technology served the college. He led the decentralization of computing services, making technology accessible across campus—from labs and classrooms to administrative offices and student services. He believed technology should empower its users, and his team worked under the guiding principle that it was their job to figure it out—no excuses and no passing the buck.

On a community level he was politically influential, promoting the college values in the community and the community values in the college. He served on successful bond committees and worked to interest community members to serve on the Board of Trustees.

Al didn’t just build systems—he built community. In the words of one colleague: “See something that needs to be done? Don’t let role definitions get in the way. Jump in, do something about it.” That was Al. Cabrillo was never just a workplace to Al. He helped foster a culture where faculty, staff, and students were part of a family. Al helped define a golden era in which people came to Cabrillo because it was where they wanted to be. And once there, they never wanted to leave.

Al Holbert leaves behind an extraordinary legacy: not just in the departments he helped build or the technology he implemented, but in the people he inspired, the community he nurtured, and the college he loved. He will be missed more than words can express.

oooOOOooo

If you’d like to donate in memory of Al, contact the Cabrillo College Foundation at foundation@cabrillo.edu. or 831-479-6338 to direct your gift to the Al Holbert Scholarship, supporting Cabrillo students in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, and Biology.

Image Credit:

Gary Patton, personal photo

#113 / "A.I." As "I.A." - And That Means What?

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Those familiar with Facebook know that this online social media and social networking service will often provide users with various items that a mysterious Facebook algorithm has deduced will be of interest to the recipient. Sometimes, these items really are of interest, too!

As an example, here is an item that appeared on my Facebook profile page a few months ago: 

That Facebook posting really was of interest to me. As most who are reading this blog posting will already know, and as as the online Encyclopedia Britannica tells us, ChatGPT is:

Software that allows a user to ask it questions using conversational, or natural, language. It was released on November 30, 2022, by the American company OpenAI and almost immediately disturbed academics, journalists, and others because of concern that it was impossible to distinguish human- from ChatGPT-generated writing.

ChatGPT, and similar software products, are commonly referred to as "A.I." That abbreviation stands for "Artificial Intelligence," and A.I. is quite controversial. It can allow students to "cheat" on writing (and other) assignments, and some believe that there is a real danger that A.I. will seek, at some early date, to supplant human beings entirely. "Artificial" intelligence, in this view, is "better" than human intelligence. Because of this, A.I. certainly poses a big labor issue, since A.I. promises to be able to eliminate the need for human workers, in many situations. 

As I looked at the Facebook post I received, and which is reproduced above, I suddenly realized that the abbreviation, "A.I." is not, actually, accurate. "A.I." should really be modified, and should be called "I.A." What these "A.I." software products do, in fact, is "Intelligence Amalgamation." The "Intelligence" involved is not actually "Artificial" at all. The "Intelligence" involved is human intelligence. The so-called "A.I." products being deployed are simply high quality and efficient search engines, which are "trained" to find what facts and opinions about any designated topic have been generated, in the past, by various human beings, then presenting what has been discovered in an easily readable form.

In the example above, the "wisdom" being provided through Artificial Intelligence is nothing other than a listing of the ideas of various wise men (and women) who, in the past, have been thinking about the topic of how human beings might best reach their full potential. 

If you follow me that far, then think about this. If we start confining our human search for wisdom to be nothing more than a search of past ideas, well-articulated and colorfully presented, won't we be missing "new" wisdom?

If you do follow me in that thought, it can be seen that the "danger" of A.I. is that it will, increasingly, foreclose new ideas, new thoughts, new efforts, new initiatives that were never ever dreamed of before, but that we can dream about now. 

What a real loss!

I am going to stick with "real" intelligence. Mine. And Yours!

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://itchronicles.com/artificial-intelligence/where-is-ai-used-today/

(2) - https://www.facebook.com/story.php/?story_fbid=1147260053633898&id=100050497419326&_rdr

#112 / Tech That Connects?

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Brian X. Chen, who is the lead consumer technology writer for The New York Times, authored an article that appeared in the November 11, 2024 edition of the newspaper. In the hard copy version of the paper, Chen's article was titled as follows: "How the Tech That Connects Us Has Set the Stage for Isolation." If you click the link to read the article online (The Times' paywall policies permitting, of course), you will find a completely different headline: "How Tech Created a ‘Recipe for Loneliness.’"

A very small amount of linguistic analysis indicates that something is just a bit "off" in those headline descriptions of Chen's article. A tip that this is so can be found in the incongruity of the two different claims apparently being made in the dueling headlines. If Chen's article is first asserting that there is a "Tech That Connects" (hard copy headline), the second version of the headline is apparently making a completely contrary claim, with "Tech" being identified as creating a "Recipe for Loneliness." 

Well, which is it? It has to be one thing or the other, right? Or is this another variety of the Schrödinger's Cat conundrum?

I think the answer is pretty simple. "Tech" does not, in fact, "Connect." 

"Tech" may provide us the illusion of a connection between us, but "we," human beings, exist in "real life," in a "real world." Person-to person connections, made within the physical world, is the only thing that truly "connects" us. "Connection," in other words, is different from "communication." A posting to a social media website, or an email blast, may well communicate very effectively to lots of different people, simultaneously. But that communication, no matter how many people may be involved, from two to two million, does not, in fact, "connect" those who are involved in the communication.

This understanding of the difference between "communication" and "connection" has an important lesson to teach us about our politics. Any real and effective political effort must be initiated and sustained in the "real world," with real world, physical connections an absolute requirement. People need to be in the same (physical) place at the same time, in order to "connect." Online won't do it. 

Let me (one more time) cite to Margaret Mead and to Octavia Butler as those who truly understand the nature of genuine connection - and how political, social, and economic change can be accomplished. 

As I often put it, tying my advice to some powerful fiction from Octavia Butler: "Find Some Friends." 

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/technology/personaltech/technology-loneliness.html

#111 / The Latest Bitcoin Bump

 

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I am, most emphatically, not a "bitcoin bro." Click right here for links to some of my past commentaries. If you click this link, you will be able to hear  from Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, the Chief Investment Officer of Wealth Management & Head of the Investment Strategy Group at Goldman Sachs. She is definitely part of the financial/investment world, and here is what she has to say: 

Crypto is nothing more than a means of speculation

Given that The Wall Street Journal has reported that our recently-elected president promises "to regulate in favor of crypto, eject the anti-crypto head of the SEC, and prevent any sales of bitcoin seized by law enforcers," I am suggesting that all of us should be quite concerned. 

In fact, if I am getting it right, I think The Wall Street Journal is concerned. At least, that is how I read a "Streetwise" column by James Mackintosh, which I have linked in the paragraph immediately above this one. 

Would our president actually invest our Social Security Trust Fund (to pick a high-stakes example) in the unstable and unpredicatable Bitcoin market? See why I think we (and Congress) should be paying attention?

Mackintosh and The Wall Street Journal question whether Trump is really so great for bitcoin - that's the main message in the article I have linked above. 

Here's what I think, though: I think it's pretty obvious that bitcoin would not be great for us!

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Image Credit:

https://www.morningstar.com/funds/election-results-add-growing-investor-push-into-crypto-etfs

#110 / When You Can't See The Wood

 

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There is a well-known expression that you might even have used yourself, when you wanted to provide a judgment on someone's failure to get the "big picture." It can happen that someone (all of us qualify) becomes so enmeshed in all the details of something - something they are studying, or that they are trying to tell someone about - that they fail to grasp the actual meaning and significance of the topic at hand.

I am betting that you have heard the following expression, and may even have used it yourself: "Can't see the wood for the trees."

Sister Penelope, CSMV, who is pictured above, wrote a book called The Wood:

This being Easter, perhaps the most important "Christian" holiday, it seems like a good day to introduce you to Sister Penelope's book, originally published in 1935. The book appears to be out of print, currently, but Amazon is willing to sell you a used copy, and so is AbeBooks - at least that's true as of the time I am writing out this blog posting. Good libraries may well have a copy, too.

Having quite recently read the book, I must say that if you would like a "big picture" statement about the Bible (both Old and New Testaments), Sister Penelope does a great job helping you to see "The Wood," and to avoid the potential bafflement that the Bible may engender, when read straight through on its own, with all of those Kings, Prophets, and other characters, both divine and all-too-human!

I went to theological seminary (just for a year, I confess, but nonetheless), and I don't remember coming across a better explication of Christianity and the Bible.

Anyone "Rounding Third," and many of my friends and I are doing just that, might like to give at least one last look at the Bible, trying to see "the wood," and not get too distracted by "the trees." 

Recommended!

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Image Credit:

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/literature/sister-penelope-in-expectation

#109 / My Complaint About Chris

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Chris Hedges, pictured, is a Presbyterian minister. Among other things! More notably, I would say, Hedges is properly appreciated for his past (and present) work as a journalist and political commentator. Here is an excerpt from what Wikipedia has to say about Hedges: 

In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005, and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism.

Hedges came to Santa Cruz County, once, to speak in person. I was in the audience, and I was impressed. He is an accomplished observer of what's going on in the world, and I think people should be paying very close attention to what he says. For instance, I think Hedges' January 18, 2025, posting to Scheerpost is very much worth your time. It was titled, "Chris Hedges: How Fascism Came." Click the link to read it. I don't think there is any paywall.

In the commentary I have just linked, Hedges calls out a number of problems. MAJOR problems. As I have just said, I think people should be taking Hedges' critiques seriously. However, here is my complaint about Chris. 

Let's start with the title of the piece I linked. The title, "How Fascism Came," uses the past tense. In other words, the way Chris Hedges lays it out, Fascism has already come. Its domination of our social, economic, and political life has already been accomplished. That's what the use of the past tense means. Whatever is spoken of in the past tense has already taken place. It's over. Done. If you think that Hedges knows what he is talking about, then you will deduce that the United States is now a fascist country. Is it? I don't think so, myself.

The rest of Hedges' commentary is similar, in that it describes the "loss of basic democratic norms." It states that American democracy "cratered years ago." There isn't any remedy, the way Hedges puts it: "It is not going to get better." Describing present problems as though they occurred in the past, and are now existing realities, suggests that there is nothing we can do now. Is that true? I don't think so, myself.

Here is a link to a February 18, 2025, follow-up. And here is a quote from Hedges' posting on that date: 

The Trump administration’s war with the deep state is not a purgative. It is not about freeing us from the tyranny of intelligence agencies, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world, predatory corporations or the end of mass surveillance. It will not restore the rule of law to hold the powerful and the wealthy accountable. It will not slash the bloated and unaccountable spending — some $1 trillion dollars — by the Pentagon....

We are repeating the steps that led to the consolidation of power by past dictatorships, albeit with our own idiom and idiosyncrasies. Those naively lauding Trump’s hostility towards the deep state — which I concede did tremendous damage to democratic institutions, eviscerated our most cherished liberties, is an unaccountable state within a state and orchestrated a series of disastrous global interventions, including the recent military fiascos in the Middle East and Ukraine— should look closely at what is being proposed to take its place.

The ultimate target for the Trump administration is not the deep state. The target is the laws, regulations, protocols and rules, and the government civil servants who enforce them, which hinder dictatorial control. Compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability are slated to be abolished. Those who believe that the government is designed to serve the common good, rather than the dictates of the ruler, will be forced out. The deep state will be reconstituted to serve the leadership cult. Laws and the rights enshrined in the Constitution will be irrelevant (emphasis added).

Here, my complaint about Chris should center on his use of the future tense, not the past tense. The critiques Hedges lodges against what has happened, and is happening in the United States, are largely correct, in my view, but "will" states a "certainty," not a "possibility." Chris Hedges does not issue a warning, which would come with the conditional tense. Chris says what WILL happen. That's wrong. "Might" (the conditional tense) is as far as anyone can go, or should go.  

Grammar does make a difference, and Hedges fails to understand the most basic thing about the realities in which we live. Whatever is happening, or has happened, can be changed. Whatever now exists can be changed. Whatever "may" happen can be prevented from happening.

That's my complaint about Chris. After diagnosing what is wrong, and all the past and continuing mistakes he calls out, he acts as if human freedom doesn't exist; he acts as if what now exists is "inevitable." The swinging door of history only goes one way, as Hedges presents his analysis. Hedges documents his past books and other publications, which provided good advice, and notes that this good advice was ignored. Who is to blame for that? Not Hedges (of course). The blame falls on everyone else - all those who made the mistakes he warned them about. 

Let me provide an antidote to a defeatism spun out of past and continuing mistakes. Despite everything, despite all that has gone wrong, and is still going wrong, we continue to have the ability to do something different. We always have the ability to change the world.

Let's try. 

Let's not believe that a future prediction, using the future tense, is a statement of inevitability. And let's not buy into the argument that the past tense rules and that "it's all over." 

It's not all over. 

Not until we give up.

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https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/18/chris-hedges-how-fascism-came-2/

 

#108 / Because I Say So

      

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Here we go again! Once more with feeling! 

I think I could write a blog posting on this topic every day. Every day, it seems, there is another example of how our current president has profoundly failed to understand what presidents are supposed to do - or, in the alternative, has decided to try to get away with things that he knows are wrong, and that are fundamental violations of what the United States Constitution provides. 

Presidents, by virtue of their election to our nation's highest office, are given significant power and responsibility. They are not, though, elected to "be" the nation, as a "king," for instance, incorporates in himself the entirety of the nation over which he "reigns."

Presidents, under the Constitution, do not "reign." They "execute." They "faithfully execute" the laws enacted by the Congress. That is their main responsibility, and the powers that presidents are given are limited to the powers necessary to do that. If you read many of my blog postings, you will remember that this is not the first time I have made this point.

An article in April 10, 2025, edition of The New York Times has sent me to my computer once again, to type out another mesage on this beloved topic. The news story was titled (hard-copy edition), "Trump Deploys Shortcuts As He Moves to Eliminate Many Federal Regulations." If you click the following link, to read the article online (and if no paywall defeats your efforts), you will find another headline: "Trump’s New Way to Kill Regulations: Because I Say So." Here is an excerpt from the article (emphasis added):

President Trump this week directed 10 federal agencies — including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — to implement a novel procedure to scrap a wide array of longstanding energy and environmental regulations. 

He told agencies that oversee everything from gas pipelines to power plants to insert “sunset” provisions that would cause regulations to automatically expire by October 2026. If the agencies wanted to keep a rule, it could only be extended for a maximum of five years at a time. 

Experts say the directive faces enormous legal hurdles. But it was one of three executive orders from Mr. Trump on Wednesday in which he declared that he was pursuing new shortcuts to weaken or eliminate regulations. 

In another order, he directed a rollback of federal rules that limit the water flow in shower heads with a highly unusual legal justification: Because I say so. “Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal,” Mr. Trump’s order said.

Another article, in the same edition of The Times, provided information on books that were removed from the library at the United States Naval Academy, based on a directive from the Secretary of Defense. This article also listed some books that were allowed to remain on the shelves. The books being eliminated reflected, presumably, our current president's operating principle ("because I say so"). Not to keep you in suspense, 381 books were removed from the library, including, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, and Memorializing The Holocaust by Janet Jacobs. Multiple copies of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler are still available for checkout (which, of course, I strongly believe should be available).

These two news items from a week ago have led me to this reiteration of my point about presidential power. The president is asserting powers that he does not, actually, have - but, of course, if we don't stop his abuse of his office, and the assertion of the non-legitimate powers he claims, we are actually giving away our own. 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/climate/trump-regulations.html

#107 / Where's Franklin?

  

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Anyone with kids, and a lot of people without kids, I am betting, have heard that urgent question, many times repeated: "Where's Waldo?"

When I read an April 6, 2025, column in the San Francisco Chronicle, my question was right along those lines, but a little bit different. My question was: "Where's Franklin?" The Chronicle column, by Sara Dant, was titled, "There’s nothing ‘unprecedented’ about Trump’s policies. They gave us the Great Depression a century ago." You may well have to be a Chronicle subscriber actually to read Dant's column, using the link that I have just provided, but you probably get the idea, just from the title of her column, alone. 

Dr. Dant is Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of History at Weber State University, located in Ogden, Utah. Dant's work focuses on environmental politics in the United States, "with a particular emphasis on the creation and development of consensus and bipartisanism." As Bob Dylan observed, in a somewhat different context, "I just said, 'good luck.'" The statement I have quoted about Dr. Dant's academic work, which was taken from the Weber State University website, antedated the 2020 election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency. As you can tell from the title on her column, she is not sanguine about what's coming for the United States, as our current president pursues his, "I, alone, can fix it" approach to public policy, which is the antithesis of an approach based on the development of "consensus" and "bipartisanism." 

Jill Lepore, another historian, wrote a column that appeared in The New York Times on April 6th, so I read what both Lepore and Dant had to say on the very same day. Lepore's column was titled, "The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk." Her column suggests that we really do need to find another Roosevelt-like figure, someone who believes in liberal democracy. 

The opposite of that kind of liberal democracy, according to Lepore, is "technocracy," which is not a "new" idea, but a failed past strategy. Let me introduce you to what Lepore has to say, below. by way of an extensive excerpt from her April 6th column in The Times. I think she is persuasive. 

After you read what Lepore says, I bet you'll be looking around, with me, raising this plaintive cry yourself: 

Where's Franklin?

oooOOOooo

The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk 

Jill Lepore - Dr. Lepore is a professor of history and law at Harvard and the host of the BBC podcast “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story.” 

Mr. Musk has long presented himself to the world as a futurist. Yet, notwithstanding the gadgets — the rockets and the robots and the Department of Government Efficiency Musketeers, carrying backpacks crammed with laptops, dreaming of replacing federal employees with large language models — few figures in public life are more shackled to the past. 

On the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Musk told a roaring, jubilant crowd that the election marked “a fork in the road of human civilization.” He promised to “take DOGE to Mars” and pledged to give Americans reasons to look “forward to the future.” 

In 1932, when civilization stood at another fork in the road, the United States chose liberal democracy, and Franklin Roosevelt, who promised “a new deal for the American people.” In his first 100 days, Mr. Roosevelt. signed 99 executive orders, and Congress passed more than 75 laws, beginning the work of rebuilding the country by establishing a series of government agencies to regulate the economy, provide jobs, aid the poor and construct public works. 

Mr. Musk is attempting to go back to that fork and choose a different path. Much of what he has sought to dismantle, from antipoverty programs to national parks, have their origins in the New Deal. Mr. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration provided 8.5 million Americans with jobs; Mr. Musk has measured his achievement by the number of jobs he has eliminated. 

Four years ago, I made a series for the BBC in which I located the origins of Mr. Musk’s strange sense of destiny in science fiction, some of it a century old. This year, revising the series, I was again struck by how little of what Mr. Musk proposes is new and by how many of his ideas about politics, governance and economics resemble those championed by his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy. 

Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants — indeed, all of government — with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. At technocracy’s height, one branch of the movement had more than a quarter of a million members. 

Under the technate, humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X Æ A-12.) Mr. Haldeman, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement’s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1. 

Technocracy first gained worldwide attention in 1932 but soon splintered into rival factions. Technocracy Incorporated was founded and led by a former New Yorker named Howard Scott. Across the continent, rival groups of technocrats issued a flurry of tracts, periodicals and pamphlets explaining, for instance, how “life in a technocracy” would be utterly different from life in a democracy: “Popular voting can be largely dispensed with.” 

Technocrats argued that liberal democracy had failed. One Technocracy Incorporated pamphlet explained how the movement “does not subscribe to the basic tenet of the democratic ideal, namely that all men are created free and equal.” In the modern world, only scientists and engineers have the intelligence and education to understand the industrial operations that lie at the heart of the economy. Mr. Scott’s army of technocrats would eliminate most government services: “Even our postal system, our highways, our Coast Guard could be made much more efficient.” Overlapping agencies could be shuttered, and “90 percent of the courts could be abolished.” 

Decades ago, in the desperate, darkest moment of the Depression, technocracy seemed, briefly, poised to prevail against democracy. “For a moment in time, it was possible for thoughtful people to believe that America would consciously choose to become a technocracy,” writes William E. Akin, the author of the definitive historical study of the movement, “Technocracy and the American Dream.” In the four months from November 1932 to March 1933, The New York Times published more than 100 stories about the movement. And then the bubble appeared to burst. By summer, Technocrats Magazine and The Technocracy Review had gone out of print. 

There are a few reasons for technocracy’s implosion. Its tenets could not bear scrutiny. Then, too, because technocrats generally did not believe in parties, elections or politics of any kind — “Technocracy has no theory for the assumption of power,” as Mr. Scott put it — they had little means by which to achieve their ends. 

But the chief reason for technocracy’s failure was democracy’s success. Mr. Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4 and immediately began putting the New Deal in place while calming the nation with a series of fireside chats. By May, E.B. White in The New Yorker could write technocracy’s epitaph: “Technocracy had its day this year, and it was characteristic of Americans that they gave it a whirl and then dropped it as they had dropped miniature golf. 

Nevertheless, technocracy endured. Its spectacles grew alarming: Technocrats wore identical gray suits and drove identical gray cars in parades that evoked for concerned observers nothing so much as Italian Fascists. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was a technocracy stalwart. In 1940, when Canada banned Technocracy Incorporated — out of fear that its members were plotting to undermine the government or the war effort — Mr. Haldeman took out an ad in a newspaper, proclaiming technocracy a “national patriotic movement.” 

Weeks later, when he tried to enter the United States for a technocracy speaking tour, he was denied entry at the border, possibly because of a new passport regulation that barred travel into the United States to “an alien whose entry would be contrary to the public safety” (something of an irony, given the current administration’s border policies). In Vancouver, British Columbia, he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to a fine or two months in jail. He later joined the antisemitic Social Credit Party, becoming its national chairman. 

Mr. Haldeman retired from politics in 1949 and soon began thinking about moving to South Africa, which in 1948 announced the policy of apartheid. In 1950 he moved to Pretoria, where he wrote and distributed typewritten conspiratorial tracts. (Most have disappeared, but in 2023 I discovered several in university and private collections.) In May 1960, for instance, he wrote a pamphlet called “The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and Its Menace to South Africa,” a response to the unrest after the Sharpeville massacre. During those protests, Nelson Mandela was among 11,000 people arrested and jailed. Mr. Haldeman suggested the uprising had been staged. 

He furthermore believed the West had been the subject of an “intensive mass mind conditioning” experiment, in which ideas he considered ludicrous, like the equality of races and the immorality of apartheid, were being spread by newspapers, magazines, radio, television and especially university professors. Convinced that the government was riddled with waste, he also proposed a finance committee to combat inefficiency, writing in all caps, “A watchdog financial agency is needed.” 

That Mr. Musk has come to hold so many of the same beliefs about social engineering and economic planning as his grandfather is a testament to his profound lack of political imagination, to the tenacity of technocracy and to the hubris of Silicon Valley (emphasis added).

Do we have any hope of finding an answer to that, "Where's Franklin?" question?

If we want any kind of a helpful answer, I think we are all going to have to take a good look in the mirror. After reading Lepore on the kind of answer that Musk and Trump seem to be prescribing, which Lepore persuasively argues is a "failed" approach, it's pretty clear that those titularly "in charge" of our society and economy don't have the remotest clue about an approach that might actually work. 

Foundation of Freedom

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franklin-D-Roosevelt