Art is 80

Well, this is the last day that I have to avoid talking about the person about whom I have a lot to say. Since the no-you-know-whom week started on Monday, “how does it end just on Friday?”, you might ask. Well, the answer is “just because”.

I guess I really don’t have a lot today this morning about anyone else. This week has been graduation week. Michelle’s two step sons, Oli and Ian, graduated from high school and middle school. Hannah’s two children, Joan and Izzy, graduated from elementary school and preschool. Yesterday, I put something on Facebook congratulating Joan, and I received about 50 likes. The amazing thing about Facebook (with all of its many, many, many flaws) is that it does put you in contact with people with whom you would otherwise have little or no contact, even if fewer and fewer of my “friends” seem to post things of their own (and, I assume, fewer and fewer of them look at Facebook very much, if at all). But the likes I received are so widespread that it is a shame that Facebook has let itself be captured by disinformation bots and worse. The responses to Joan’s graduation that I received come from (in no particular order): Pennsylvania, DC, Washington State, Ontario, Missouri, Illinois, Denmark, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, California, Germany, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas.

This all makes me wonder how many of these “friends” read my daily blog, if at all. I can’t answer that question because there are two essential sets of facts I don’t know. While I get statistics each day that shows me how many people go to my site, and while I know who has “subscribed” to my blog and receive it via email, I don’t get the identity of those who open it up, and I don’t see how long they stay on the site after opening it. Or, perhaps better would be to say that if these statistics are available, I don’t know how to retrieve them. And I am not sure I would want to. I also don’t know how many of my Facebook friends receive daily notices of my blog posts in their news feeds. It may be that those who have not opened them on a regular basis do not see them at all. Because Facebook’s algorithms are obviously necessarily arcane, I don’t know how to check this, and I am not sure how to expand my readership among my Facebook friends.

Obviously, the goal of this blog is not to join the million readers crowd. Far from it. I don’t mind strangers reading it (or I would not be putting it on WordPress as I do), but I would rather have more friends and relatives look at it. Or friends of friends, of course. But I am not trying to compete with those who have a bevy of readers, who have to carefully fact check everything they do, who rely on their blogs for income, or who draw in the biggest numbers. In fact, drawing big, big numbers would require a different kind of writing, I think.

All this reminds me of something that Rabbi Jacob Neusner said years ago (and I paraphrase): if you compare the Jewish population with the Chinese population, we lose. And that’s fine.

The other big news today, of course, is that Elon Musk, through the Space-X IPO, is positioned to become the world’s first trillionaire. In fact, being a trillionaire is so rare, that WordPress does not even recognize trillionaire as a word. I don’t at all understand how someone so weird and unlikable can reach this summit ($1,000,000,000,000 is a big number and a lot of money), and because I view Musk as at least 50% evil (and maybe more so), I don’t see him handing out $$s to the groups I would support.

Of course, $1,000,000,000,000 is not what it used to be. The United States National Debt, after all, is now approaching $40,000,000,000,000. Musk, even if he wanted to, couldn’t put a dent into it.

One of the enticements to investing in Space-X is putting a colony of about 1 million people on Mars. Remember those who wanted to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge?

But if you suspend your disbelief for a minute and imagine 1 million Martians, maybe those million will all be Trumpublicans, and the city named MMGAville. And maybe that would be good for everyone.

Uh-oh! I am getting too close to my self-defined limits. So…good-bye for today.

1. I am committed to continue this week to make sure that my posts do not concern or name the President who loves inflation. So, in spite of all the temptation, I am not thinking about that president at all. I have to concentrate on other things.

We have watched the first four episodes of a Netflix series titled Untamed. It is pretty good so far – a mystery of how a young woman fell or was pushed off the top of El Capitan in Yosemite Park. This is not a review of that series, but I am mentioning it only to tell you something that I learned watching. I can’t really call it a tidbit or a factoid because it’s is larger than what those words conjure up, and I can’t call it an interesting piece of trivia, because it is far from trivial. Here it is:

Do you know that Yosemite Park and the State of Rhode Island are just about the same size? Rhode Island is about 1,214 square miles and Yosemite is about 1169 square miles (corroborating source: Google AI). I have never been to Yosemite, and very little of Yosemite is available for the general public to see, but it never occurred to me that it was that large. Even though Rhode Island is small, as we know.

Digression: This is perhaps an unimportant and completely unnecessary digression (in fact, you can strike the word “perhaps”), but do you know that the name of Rhode Island was not Rhode Island until sometime in 2020? Before that the name of Rhode Island was Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. It took a constitutional amendment to shorten the name. End of digression.

But enough about Rhode Island. Let’s talk about Yosemite. Having realized how large Yosemite is, I went to a list of National Parks and discovered that Yosemite is not the largest (I never thought it was, but I never thought it was as large as it was). In fact, the United States has 15 National Parks larger than Yosemite. The largest (one which I guarantee you have never set foot in) is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. which is about 13,000 square miles, or the size of ten Rhode Islands. And Gates of the Arctic National Park (never heard of that one either, huh?) is almost the same size.

Of the 15 largest National Parks, 7 are in Alaska. Of the others, Joshua Tree in California and Big Bend in Texas are only slightly larger than Yosemite, and Olympic in Washington, Glacier in Montana, and Grand Canyon in Arizona somewhat larger than those. But by the time you get to the Everglades, you have significantly exceeded the size of Rhode Island, and when you get to Yellowstone, you have doubled the size of the State of Rhode Island. Death Valley National Park is the size of four Rhode Islands.

Yellowstone and Death Valley are, in fact bigger than not only Rhode Island, but bigger than Delaware or Connecticut. And Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is larger than eight states.

By the way, the source I used for the National Parks used kilometers squared, while the source for the States used square miles, so I had to convert them all to square miles, and there is a reason I am not a mathematician. So, don’t quote me without doing your own research.

I find these statistics as interesting as I find thinking about the President who is attacking Iran in self defense because they are not negotiating fast enough during a ceasefire. But, of course, I am nothing thinking about that President at all.

2. I guess this post is long enough as-is, but I had a second subject I was going to write about. The very mysterious death of author/activist/monk Thomas Merton in 1968. He was 53, in Thailand to give a speech, and found dead in his hotel room. While I am not sure that he was naked, he had just showered, had a severe wound in the back of his head which had bled a lot, and had a large fan across his body, still spinning. The story given was that he fell bringing the fan down with him, hitting his head and being electrocuted by a faulty wire. The death report says he had a heart attack. There was no autopsy because the US Embassy would not allow it before flying the body back to his monastery in Kentucky. There were persistent rumors that he was murdered, either by a Belgian bishop who disappeared on the day Merton died, or by CIA operatives. Nobody knows.

If that doesn’t clear your mind of 47, nothing will.

I saw an article this morning on my Google page that listed the best museum cities in the world, starting with Paris, Madrid, London and New York. Washington was not on the list, and frankly I don’t understand that.

Just off the top of my head, Washington has the following first class art museums:

1. National Gallery of Art
2. National Portrait Gallery
3. Smithsonian American Art Gallery
4. Phillips Collection
5. Renwick Gallery
6. Hirshhorn Museum
7. Kreeger Museum
8. Hillwood Museum
9. Art Museum of the Americas
10. Rubell Museum
11. Glenstone Museum
12. National Museum of Women in the Arts
13. Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art
14. Smithsonian Museum of African Art
15. Freer Gallery
16. Katzen City American University Museum

Then there are the history museums:

1. National Museum of African American History
2. Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
3. Smithsonian Museum of American History
4. Capital Jewish Museum
5. Spy Museum
6. National Museum of the American Indian
7. National Air and Space Museum (two locations)
8. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
9. Museum of the Bible
10. National Building Museum
11. National Postal Museum
12. National Archives
13. Library of Congress
14. Children’s Museum
15. Planet Word
16. DAR Museum
17. Dumbarton Oaks Museum
18. National Geographic Museum (about to reopen after renovation)
19. George Washington U. Textile Museum
20. National Law Enforcement Museum
21. The Society of Cincinnati Museum
22. Jewish War Veterans Museum
23. Navy Memorial Museum

And there are those that I have forgotten about, and many more smaller ones that I have not mentioned.

Have I visited all of these? No, but I should. Would a visit to each of these make a good series for Artis80.blog? Yes. Is such a series likely. Not really. Too bad.

Will watch the Nats game on TV this afternoon as they try for a sweep in San Francisco. The Nats, predicted to lose 100 games this season, now stand at at 35-33. We have tickets for Saturday’s game.

Trying hard to avoid you-know-who this week. And why isn’t it you-know-whom, anyway? But…..

If you-know-whom has his way, there will be, if nkt another museum, a new site/sight to behold as you cross the river heading to Arlington Cemetery. Here it is (hold your nose!):

Well, we are dog sitting this morning, as Michelle and family are off to Oli’s high school graduation. For reasons unknown, Montgomety County high schools are all holding their graduations in Baltimore this year, and Michelle didn’t want Zeke to wonder where everyone was while he was locked up in his cage. In fact, graduation is also being streamed, and I asked Zeke if he wanted to watch. He gave me his “are you kidding me?” look and just walked away to the closest window.

Speaking of high school graduations, mine was on June 6, 1960. Maybe someone remembers it better than I do. Everything I write about may be fiction, but I recall it as a two part event. The first part was called baccalaureate. AI tells me that a baccalaureate ceremony is an “intimate, reflective” ceremony held a day or two before graduation. I don’t remember it that way, and I don’t even remember if we got our diplomas there or at graduation, but I remember we participated in some sort of procession at the baccalaureate ceremony, I think in cap and gown. I was paired in the ceremony and the preceding rehearsals (we marched by twos) with Linda Weissman (I have changed her name to protect the innocent. Her real name was Linda Weisman. Oops.) This felt a bit weird, maybe to both of us, because I don’t think we had ever said one word to each other before that. But it turned out we got along very well. As I recall, our caustic senses of humor complemented each other’s and we had a surprisingly good time. Of course, we never spoke to, or saw, each other again. Such is life.

I turned on the basketball game last night, and lasted about 45 seconds. Let’s be honest. When you are 7’4″, it is not difficult to put a ball in a net that you can reach just by standing up and raising your arm. Hardly a sport.

Of course, the highlight of the evening was Avery Wilson’s courageous rendition of “Oh Say, Can You Boo?” But I can’t talk about that. This is still no-Trump week.

The facade of Metro headquarters has some interesting, if hard to explain, protrusions (is that a word?).

We were there yesterday to get a new Senior Smartrip card for Edie after the mysterious disappearance of her original one. I assumed that would take 30 seconds, but no. It is a process. Like waiting at the DMV, or a doctor’s office. They first have to agree that you are at least 65 years old. Once assured, they can proceed.

Digression. A week or so ago, for the first time in quite a while, I bought a bottle of wine at Whole Foods. The clerk asked me for my ID. I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation about the possibility I was younger than 21, so I gave her my driver’s license. She took it, and scanned it into the Whole Foods data base. Now, researchers of the future will be able to affirm all of my personal data (eye and hair color, et al) and tell you what kind of wine I bought and how much I overpaid for it. Big Brother Jeff B is watching us all. End of digression.

Back at Metro headquarters, where they too seem to know too much, they make you sign an affidavit (“lie and you die” sort of thing). And then they tell you that they are cancelling your old card, so if you find it, destroy it, or else!

I never thought of how much WMATA must know about my Smartrip card? They must know every trip I have taken on the 15+ years when I have used that card.

My question is. If I demanded to see my Whole Foods wine records or my Metro trip records, would I be allowed to? It seems to me that I should be able to know as much about me as they do.

Back to graduations. Of course, 1960 and 2026 are very dissimilar. But if Oliver Curtis is marching today along side of a 2026 version of Linda Weissman, is their marching and their conversation being recorded for future use? Will it be shared with Jeff Bezos? Will it one day be encrypted on their Smartrip cards?

This talented group of singers, each an experienced performer and member of the Washington theater community, last night put on the 11th annual Congregation Har Shalom Cabaret.

Here are the women of the group, with Michelle Hessel at the far right. There were 26 numbers. The performers chose the songs. The rules were simple. You had to select a role that you always wanted to play, but never had the chance to. Michelle chose songs from Peter Pan, Rags, Mame, and City of Angels.

So, it was a busy weekend. Friday night services honoring Rabbi Luxemburg’s 50 years of service, a 60th anniversary party in Annapolis, and the Har Shalom Cabaret. This week promises a lunch with a Haberman advisor, the Haberman Institute’s Annual Meeting, a half day of dog sitting, two graduations (one from elementary school and one from pre-school), a Haberman lecture by Rabbi Fred Reiner on “What Do Jews Believe Today?”, and a baseball game Saturday afternoon. Rabbi Reiner’s talk will be on Thursday at 2 p.m. EDT on Zoom, and you can register (no charge) at http://www.habermaninstitute.org. I would love to see some of you register and watch (I do see a list of everyone who does). Fred Reiner is the rabbi emeritus of Temple Sinai, the first congregation in Washington that Edie and I joined. He developed a statement of beliefs during the early days of the Trump administration that has been signed onto by over 600 rabbis and cantors. I am curious to know what it says. How can any statement of beliefs attract so many signers?

Temple Sinai is located on Military Road NW, just a few blocks from our first house, also on Military Road. When we joined in the 1970s, the chief Rabbi was Gene Lipman, best known for his solid devotion to human and civil rights, and (at least known to me for) his “my way or the highway” approach to most issues. Beloved by some and turned off by others, he had a “kitchen cabinet” that met together on Sunday mornings where he could pick up ideas of what those he trusted thought he was doing right and doing wrong (I guess they could tell him what he was doing wrong). Edie was a member of that kitchen cabinet and used to go to Sinai for an hour or so almost every Sunday (I think almost every Sunday). She could never quite figure out how he selected her (I could, of course). She said it was a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, and her.

We were very young then, of course, but somehow my law partner Ed Berkowitz, who was fairly active in the congregation, got me nominated to be the Assistant Secretary of the temple. It was the first time I was ever on a board of a real institution, and let me tell you how I felt: completely and totally lost. I understood absolutely nothing that was being discussed, and certainly didn’t understand the budget (or any budget). I don’t remember who the treasurer was, but if he had croaked and I had been thrust into his position, that would probably have been it for Temple Sinai.

I did learn during the two or three years I held that position that synagogue politics was nothing to get involved with. I saw how tempers flared when the sensibilities of board members were offended, and that for every opinion, there was an opposite opinion. For example, I remember that there was a very active congregant who did everything that you would want a congregant to do, and she did it with great knowledge and a smile and unflagging energy. So it was not surprising when she was elected to the board of directors. Only then was it discovered that she wasn’t Jewish (I think she was brought up Quaker or some such thing), but that her husband was and her children were being raised Jewish, and no one knew until after her election. You don’t think that started a controversy?

And then there was the time when the part time Associate Rabbi broke a clause of his contract by officiating at (in a far off location, I believe) a mixed religion wedding. Now, what? Continue his contract, or fire him? For once, Gene Lipman did not appear to have a firm opinion, so he said (and the board agreed) or maybe the board said (and he agreed) to put it to a congregational vote. Can you believe that? A big congregational meeting with hundreds in attendance and speeches about whether this Associate Rabbi should be retained or let go? You can imagine it if you try hard enough. At the end of the meeting, there was a secret vote (little tabs of paper handed to the ushers), and the Associate Rabbi was fired by (if I remember correctly) a vote of several hundred people with a difference of three. Something like 175-172 (I don’t really remember the numbers; we are talking over 40 years ago. Both rabbis and most congregants are long gone.)

Other than that, Temple Sinai was a fine place, and still is. Rabbi Reiner replaced Gene Lipman, and served the congregation for 25 years before retiring. Of course, Lipman had been rabbi for 26 years. He won. After he retired, Lipman became a vegetable farmer, growing vegetable for local homeless shelters. Not sure how Fred Reiner spent his time; perhaps we shall find out. My guess is he has not been farming.

I will say this about the positions I held at Temple Sinai. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who remembers I was on the board or the assistant treasurer. And I don’t remember anything about my service other than being in a daze the whole time and wondering how I got there. But when we moved to Adas Israel and I became a board member and then vice president (until I was asked to step aside – that’s even a juicier topic), I guess my Sinai service gave me a hint of what was going on.

Which brings me to the last story of the day, tying in the treasurer position I first held at Temple Sinai (I have since, by the way, been treasurer both of Haberman and of American Associates for Ben Gurion University of the Negev), with my service to Adas Israel and with last night’s cabaret at Har Sinai.

At Adas Israel, I was for a while on the board’s budget committee (not as treasurer, but as a board liaison) and I remember a day when various Adas employees came before us to explain their departments’ budget requests. Each one came in with charts showing how funds were to be spent, what was needed, what the past years’ expenditures were like and so on. Quite detailed. But then the director of the congregation’s pre-school came in. She had no charts, no figures, no nothing. Except for a scrap book with a picture of th.e pre-schoolers. Here is why I need the money, she said, pointing to the pictures And she got every penny.

Her name was (still is) Shelly Remer. Her husband, Stuart, is one of the two long time producers of the Har Shalom Cabaret, where they now belong. So, yes, it is a small world.

Okay, two days. No Trump. Will I make the week?

The NYT crosswod this morning was a real slog. How I got through it, I don’t know. The theme was a total mystery to me, which meant I couldn’t rely on six of the horizontal lines and had to solve it relying on the “down” clues. If you are thinking about starting to do the Times Sunday puzzle today…..don’t. Wait until next week.

The small amount of rain that fell last night did not get in the way of Don and Gail Kohn’s 60th annivesary party at their waterfront home outside of Annapolis.

Music by Elixir, led by Nils Fredland, son of college roommate Eric Fredland. Of course, Eric had help from Wendy. Actually, four of us college roommates were there last night…besides Eric and me, Doug Frame was there (about to take off for his annual four months in Nova Scotia) and Bob (and Nona, of course) Nicholson.

The post-shower sky was beautiful, and we left early enough to get back on Highway 50 before dark.

I thought we had a quiet at home day today, but it turns out we have 2 p.m. theater tickets. And tonight, it’s off to Congregation Har Shalom or an evening of Broadway show tunes, sung by Michelle Hessel and others. 7 p.m. Y’all come.

I have as usual been reading books no one else reads. Now, it is the autobiography of Mark Van Doren, long time Columbia University professor and literary critic and editor. He was also the father of  Charles van Doren. Those of us 80 or older remember when Charles, who won the equivalent of well over $1 million on the NBC quiz show, Twenty-One, admitted he had been given all the answers in advance.

Mark was born in Hope, Illinois in the late 1890’s. Don’t know where Hope is? It was a stop on the railroad, right between Faith and Charity. Faith and Charity, by the way, are gone. Hope lingers on, but is hanging by a thread. Its current population is (drum roll!) …. 18.

Van Doren’s book is a pleasant read, mentions many New York intellectuals of the first half of the 20th century, especially those who were connected to Columbia, orvwho contributed to The Nation when van Doren was its literary editor.

I am not mentioning Donald Trump today. Not even thinking about Donald Trump today. Donald Trump is the furthest thing from my mind.

The highlight of next week will be Tuesday’s Maine primary. Both Graham Platner and Janet Mills will be on the Democratic ballot. It will be interesting to see how many Democrats now decide to vote for Governor Mills, who suspended her candidacy weeks ago. And even if Platner wins, which he probably will, on Tuesday, the question of who will be on the November ballot may still be open.

Well, I have finally discovered the cause of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is Donald Trump.

Now that we have behind us, we can get on to some other things.

First, it looks clear (very clear) that the next mayor of Washington will be Janeese Lewis George. I find this problematic in various ways. She is too young (38), even though she is older than Mayor Mamdani by four years. She seems, in what I have seen of her, to lack some maturity and perspective. She is a self-declared progressive, which would not bother me in most instances, except that the city of Washington is suffering from the Trump administration’s cutting of government jobs, and is in need of some business and employment attention, which I am not sure she will give it sufficiently. She is extremely anti-Trump (which of course, I am, too, but I am not running for mayor), which I am afraid will set the city on a collision course with the federal government over the next two years. But she is ahead in the polling by double digits, and the primary is only 12 days away.

Secondly, the price of oil has fallen a fair amount, and the stock market has continued to gain, even though the war between the U.S. and Iran and the war between Israel (and maybe Lebanon – hard to tell) and Hezbollah have not slowed down a bit. Can anyone explain that to me?

Thirdly, new jobs are up (172,000) last month, twice what was predicted. I have never understood how that is possible. The predictions come from sophisticated companies like ADP and typically have come in pretty close to the mark. Why now the consistent discrepancies? Of course, I have never understood the job figures. Ready for a challenge? Figure out how to go back to my post of February 3, 2023, and see what I said about the job report calculations there. My thoughts have not changed.

Now, let’s flip subjects completely for a minutes (I will do this one quickly). Last night, Edie and I went to Temple Beth Ami, a large Reform congregation in Rockville, to help celebrate the recognition of the 50th anniversary of the rabbinic ordination of Rabbi Jack Luxemburg, rabbi emeritus of the congregation. Jack is currently the vice-president of the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, of which I am president, so he and I work closely together and I have been able to learn to appreciate his many strengths. The Friday night Shabbat service also included something at least as special, maybe even more so, the dedication and acceptance of a new Torah, written by an Israeli Torah scribe over a two year period with the assistance of many Beth Ami congregants, as a result of a very generous bequest by congregant, David Jaffe. With this bequest, there were sufficient funds to commission the Torah, to make is small and light (that is more expensive than having it big and heavy), to scan the entire Torah so that (for example) Bar and Bat Mitzvah students can have a scan of what they will actually be reading from, even when they are not looking at the actual Torah, for new Torah covers for usual and High Holiday use for the Congregation’s seven scrolls, and for the establishment of a Torah maintenance fund. This is all quite impressive, as was the service itself which featured an address by Andrew Rehfeld, the President of Hebrew Union College. Rehfeld, who is 60, was previously a Professor of Political Science at Washington University and the CEO of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis (of course, until I looked him up this morning, I did not know that). More than that, Jack Luxemburg was the rabbi who led the Saturday morning service when Andrew Rehfeld had his Bar Mitzvah.

Small world.

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

No, I did not make that up. I have heard it before. But until yesterday, I thought it was just one of those throw away lines. No more. I now realize why Aesop or Homer or Socrates or whoever coined the phrase. He (I know, “he” is an assumption on my part. Perhaps wrong.) was thinking of the then not even in utero American Congress.

Yesterday, on a party line vote, the House of Representatives voted to provide an unneeded additional $70,000,000,000 for immigration enforcement (think ICE and detention centers), and failed to kill Trump’s $1,776,000,000 criminal reimbursement fund. Yes, the same House of Representatives who voted this very week to curtail the president’s power to continue the war with Iran.

Of course, Trump will ignore the Iran vote as the Republicans who supported the measure expected him to. He says that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional  and impractical and they (and Trump’s Supreme Court) undoubtedly agree. And by voting for the end of the war, the few Republicans who voted with the Democrats have proven the invalidity of another saying that I have not coined. They have shown that yes, indeed, it is possible to have your cake and eat it, too.

But back to the unhatched chickens. The chickens are, if course, the cowardly Republicans who are afraid to buck Trump in any meaningful way. The warning against counting them prematurely is directed to those Democrats who were sure, until yesterday, that Trump was losing his grip on the world.

There is only one way to rein in Trump, and that is by electing a Democratic Congress (both Houses) in the mid-terms this November. Let’s call it a Disney Congress. One that can truly make Donald duck.

Two weeks ago, I suggested that the Democrats adopt as their slogan “Just This One Time!”, a campaign directed at Independents and at the 30% of Republicans who don’t back Trump. Tell them to vote Democrat in 2026, even if it is only just this one time. 2028 will take care of its self. Perhaps the targets of this campaign should be expanded to include those Democrats who think that certain Democratic candidates are too progressive, or not progressive enough. And of course, there should be a massive get out the vote campaign.

To those who say the Democrats should also develop their own positive issue campaign, I again quote Scarlett O’Hara: Fiddlesticks. Democrats this year should avoid all divisive policy debates. Stick to the one issue all Democrats, most Independents and a few Republicans agree on. And you know what that is.

Otherwise…..what’s that saying about things coming home to roost?

I have a new cell phone. I entered the T-Mobile store at about 1 p.m., and exited it at about 4:15. All the while, Yash/Josh (a friendly young man from Hyderabad) was transferring data (“Boy, do you have a lot on your phone!”) from my old phone to my new phone. And that means, I spent over three hours in the T-Mobile store without a phone. I sat, I stood, I talked to Yash/Josh, I walked around, I sat, I stood…….

(In the meantime, they counted votes in California.)

I told Yash/Josh that I wanted to stick with an Android phone, and he said, “then stick with Samsung, because you won’t have to learn anything new”. So I did. He also didn’t say “Here are the Samsung phones we have….take your pick”. He said “We have a promotion on this phone, and you will get a new phone and also pay less per month than you have been paying.” I simply said “okay, sounds good”, because…..it did.

Why did I get a new phone? I got a new phone because my old phone told me, every morning when I turned it on, that the storage was full, and I should get rid of some apps. I tried to do that, but the message didn’t change.

I haven’t even checked out the capacity of my new phone, but Yash/Josh told me it was about twice the old phone, and I took him at his word. It has everything on it that my old phone did, and hasn’t told me it is full, so I guess it isn’t.

(By the way, they are still counting votes in California)

The phone seems to work well, it is a little larger than the old one, but, truth be told, it is not yet my friend, and I am not yet its friend. It came loaded with a bevy of game apps, each of which I deleted. I think this hurt its feelings, because I have taken away its fun. But it’s my house and my phone.

You probably don’t remember, but yesterday I ended my post with a quote from Antonio Gramsci. What I don’t think that I told you is that I had never heard of Gramsci. Now, I am telling you.

Gramsci was an Italian scholar/Marxist who was born in 1891 and died in 1937. He became a socialist while at the University of Turin and then became one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party. He was imprisoned for the last dozen or so years of his life, which meant that he never really had much of a life, because he was also sick from birth with a spinal disease (he was a hunchback and under 5 feet in height) and many cardiac and gastrointestinal diseases, and suffered from debilitating headaches. Nevertheless, while in prison, he wrote 30 volumes of prison notebooks. He was very influential in Italian intellectual circles.

Because (just because)……, when I turned on YouTube yesterday to find something to accompany me in the car, the first thing that showed up was an hour and twenty minute class called “Antonio Gramsci: the Imprisoned Philosopher”, taught by a young Pakistani man (age 44), Taimur Rachman, and is a class being given in English at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, where he has taught for many years. I mention this because Rachman is also apparently the general secretary of a Pakistani Communist party, and the lead guitarist of a progressive rock band Laal (I will have to listen to it). A few other things about him. He is a graduate of (no, I am not kidding) Grinnell College in Iowa, and several English universities, his grandfather was Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court, and his wife is a radio hostess and singer. And, oh yes, he is maybe the most engaging university professor I have ever listened to.

He started his class on Gramsci by asking how many had read the 32 page reading assignment, and how many had started and given up in the middle. His sympathy, he said, was with the latter (he probably didn’t believe the group that told him they read it start to finish), because he said that there were two problems with the assignment. (And no, it wasn’t because it was written in Italian and no one in the class knew Italian.) First, he said, Gramsci refers to other Italian intellectuals and their, sometimes arcane, arguments; it is like, as a reader, you are entering a debate in the middle, and you haven’t heard the other side. Second, he said, because these writings were written while Gramsci was in prison and had to pass through the censor, he disguised what he was really saying by using code words and code phrases; there is no way you know what he was really saying just by reading through the assignment.

Clearly, there was a lesson here.

I should also say that, for the first 30 minutes of the class (that is all I heard yesterday), Rahman is very interesting as he talks about Gramsci’s writings and background. You may want to give the lecture a try.

Or you may not.

And they are still counting votes in California.

Getting rid of Donald Trump as president is crucial, and can be accomplished (but won’t be, of course) in a number of ways. Getting rid of the Supreme Court is more difficult. And while explaining Donald Trump is relatively easy, explaining the Supreme Court is simply impossible (IMHO).

Perhaps the first villains in the piece were Anthony Scalia and his pals at the Federalist Society who (for reasons understandable to me) fooled the entire judicial and political worlds by inventing a way of looking at the Constitution which they called originalism. They convinced the entire judicial world that originalism was a real thing, a real way to interpret documents, and that it wasn’t simply a fiction designed to allow them to decide whatever they wanted and call it the result of originalism. It was like developing a religion, convincing everyone that there is a new god-like being that no one noticed before, but that really exists.

This set the stage. Now, the Court could do anything it wanted, call it originalism, and people would say things like “well, I don’t agree with that, but they reached that conclusion because they are originalists”. As Scarlett O’Hara famously said, “Fiddlesticks”. Like the Wizard of Oz could have said: “Fooled ya’”.

What the originalists really had in mind was not a way to analyze documents, but a trick to stop this country from becoming what it was becoming: a multiracial, multicultural, bilingual, globalized country. They wanted the America of their youth, the America their parents and grandparents knew (even if they had to reconstruct their parents and their grandparents). They wanted a white, English speaking America, with enough Spanish speakers to do the laundry, pick the crops and mow the grass, and with a native Black population which (except for Booker T. Washington’s talented tenth) would know their place and be kept there.

And lo and behold, it looks like they succeeded.

Well, not exactly. They didn’t succeed because the America that exists is in fact multiracial, multicultural, bilingual (at least) and globalized. So, they had to resort to extreme measures to reach their goal. We see that in ICE and we see that in the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, etc., etc.

Having convinced the judicial world that originalism was a real thing and, in fact, THE real thing, they then convinced the financial elite that they should support originalism and that, in fact, originalism supported them. Just look at the Citizens United case that allowed unlimited amounts of money to come into American political campaigns, and how much of that money could be “dark”, i.e., its source would not have to be disclosed. Yes, now all of the moneyed class can now selfishly support originalism, because originalism supports it (you see, Donald Trump was not the inventor of transactional thinking).

Now that the wealthy could put unlimited funds into American politics and not have to account for their contributions, they could direct all that money to politicians who would support originalism, i.e., who would support trying to move the United States back to more heterogeneous place. And of course, the politicians they selected would, in turn, select them for special favors, making them richer and richer, while they gave the politicians more and more support.

Everything went along its merry way, until something new happened. That something new is called Donald Trump, and it charmed its way into their circles, enshrining originalism more and more as The Way, the Tao of the 21st century. But he was so unique, so out of his element, that the originalists had to make another decision. Do you support this weird and crazy guy? Or do you support some form of normality and sanity.

We all know what was decided. From the perspective of the originalists, Donald Trump was a loon, for sure, but he was “our loon”, so we will support him and he, in turn and in his odd way, supports them. And, to support him, the originalists (Congress and Courts) need to become more and more and more extreme. And that is what they have done.

So, now we have an inevitable contradiction. The decisions of the Supreme Courts of the past, upholding the Constitution and sometimes molding parts of it to fit the times, have been, one by one, thrown out and overturned. Pretending to be originalists, the Supreme Court is rewriting the Constitution to suit their own desires. This isn’t a brand new phenomenon. It started with decisions that said that corporations are like people and have personal rights, that the Second Amendment allows all sorts of fancy weapons that have no business in a civilized world, and so forth. And where it stops, nobody knows.

Donald Trump has two more years to cause chaos and havoc, and the Court will support him, as will so many uber-wealthy individuals and interest groups. In fact, he will probably have the opportunity to appoint more Supreme Court justices, more compliant and much younger than those currently on the Court, who will be able to stifle the progress of the country for more decades than I will ever see.

UNLESS! Unless, the Democrats can take control of the House and the Senate following the November mid-terms. And especially, the Senate, where the Democrats will be able to block the dangerous appointments that Trump will undoubtedly decide to make to the Court and elsewhere. This is why the Just This One Time! campaign that I suggested a few weeks ago is so important, and should be supported. All Independents and all non-Trump Republicans must support the Democratic candidates in November, everywhere. They can go back to voting otherwise in 2028, but this year, their vote must go to those who will vote against Trump’s nominations and legislative proposals which make so little sense and are so dangerous.

Otherwise, where are we going to end up? As Antonio Gramsci once said: “The old world is dead. The new world is not born. Now is the time for monsters.”

Yesterday morning, we were part of a group of about thirty who heard a presentation by retired Israeli Brigadier General Yoni Shimshoni on the current state of the State of Israel. Yoni spoke as a representative of a group called Commanders for Israel’s Security, made up of approximately 600 former high ranking Israeli security officials, from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the Shin Bet, Mossad, and elsewhere. They have been operating as an informal non-partisan “think tank”, providing advice and expertise to whomever will listen (which apparently does not include Benjamin Netanyahu) on the current situation in which Israel finds itself trapped. Yoni (“call me Yoni”) was born in Israel to American-born parents, is completely fluent in English, has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Princeton, and served in the active and reserve IDF for 45 years. I did not take notes during his presentation, so even my usual attempt for, say, 80% accuracy may fall apart here. But let me try to give you some of what he said.

Perhaps most importantly, he said that Israel today (and by Israel, he means Israel under its current government) has changed the definition of security on its head, to the consternation of The Commanders. For 75 years or so, Israel has concentrated on its defensive security – warding off large and small scale attacks from its Middle East neighbors, keeping its borders secure, engaging in “short wars” (his term) where necessary. Now, on the other hand, Israel is no longer engaged in defensive security, but in aggressive security, and this is obviously a result of the October 7, 2023 attack from Hamas in Gaza. Now, Israel is not trying to keep its borders secure, but is trying to destroy any potential attackers or scare them out of its immediate neighborhood. This means that Israel is no longer only engaging in “short wars”, but is engaging (with Iran, in Lebanon, etc.) is “forever wars”, and engaging in them aggressively and ferociously. This is a major change – from border protection to a search for ultimate victory.

In the process of doing this, he says, Israel, which has always striven (sometimes more successfully than other times) to have allies (allies in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, and the United States), has decided that allies are not necessary at all. It has alienated virtually the entire world, and does not seem to care. The attitude is: they all hate us and always will, so why pretend otherwise? Even, he says, the United States is no longer a reliable ally – just look at all of the anti-Israel sentiment showing up on both the left and the right in the United States. And, yes, he says, it is the right as well as the left – just as there is a debate about Israel going on within the Democratic Party, there is a similar debate going on in the Republican Party (much quieter, I assume), where there is a growing split among the Evangelicals about how Israel is now using its power.

Israel, says Yoni, has only one ally left. And that ally is Donald Trump. Period. No country, no government. Just Donald Trump.

Digression: after Yoni’s presentation, there has been news of a very harsh conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, where Trump yelled at Netanayhu and told him, were it not for Trump himself, Bibi would be in prison now. And, as a result of that conversation, Israel cancelled or postponed its planned attack on southern Beirut in order for conversations between Washington and Tehran to restart. End of digression.

But what are the goals of Netanyahu and his coalition? Yoni said that, within Israel, there is real talk about annexing the entire West Bank (the Commanders think that would be a big mistake, for all sorts of reasons), but little talk about annexing Gaza (although a minority of Israelis would like to put some settlements in the north of Gaza), the reasons being that Gaza has more people than land and the West Bank more land than people (although there are a lot of people there).

Yoni does not purport to say what will happen if Israel goes ahead with the dismissal of the current Knesset and a new election in the late summer or fall. He says that none of the issues regarding war or annexation are uppermost in the minds of the electorate right now, and there is in fact more focus on domestic issues, and on issues involving the structure of the government (role of the Supreme Court, powers of various governmental positions, drafting religious Haredi into the military, and so forth), and I don’t think he expects that to change.

In response to a question about a two-state solution, he said that, while he thinks (not sure he was talking for the group here, but perhaps he was) the time is not right to lobby for a two-state solution today, but eventually that time will hopefully come. Clearly, in addition to everything else going on, there is a perceived lack of Palestinian leadership that could bring about a viable state; he has no confidence in the Palestinian Authority, not that they don’t have members who mean well and think well, but they simply do not appear to have any influence or following among the Palestinian people.

There were many things that were not discussed (how much can you do in about 90 minutes?), including antisemitism and the effect of Israel’s current activities on antisemitism abroad, Iran, Jordan and Egypt, the Abraham Accords, and so forth. And we did not talk about failure of Israel’s traditional security systems that permitted the Oct 7 attack (think how different everything would be today if that attack had been nipped in the bud).

I found Yoni’s presentation depressing (as I am sure does Yoni), but informative, and it gave me a few new angles from which to view the situation. My take has been that Netanyahu and his guys are doing what they are doing because (a) they believe Israel is militarily at its strongest (and Yoni does say that technically, the IDF now is extraordinarily ahead of the times), and (b) its neighbors (largely the Iran proxies) at what might be their weakest (although Hezbollah seems anything but overly weak), and (c) now is the time to take advantage of that big difference and try to end threats to Israel now and forever. I believe that Netanyahu does this with confidence (of course, perhaps misplaced – time will tell), and that if he is successful, he will be a hero forever, and if he isn’t, he will be dead and won’t care. I believe that my theory and Yoni’s analysis complement each other, although I did not bring this up in the discussion.

What I did ask is: with all the support for what the IDF is doing within the Israel population, and the growing concern for what Israel is doing among the diaspora, what has happened to the world Jewish community? Have Israeli Jews changed so much that they are radically different now from Jews outside of Israel? (Okay, so this isn’t really the way I asked the question; this is the way that I should have asked the question.) I didn’t really get an answer to my question (obviously not, since I didn’t ask it the way I should have), but got an answer that kinda, sorta said that the overall Israeli mentality is not as one-sided as I have posited it to be, and that with change, there will be changes. (Okay, so this isn’t really the way he answered the question, either. But he could have.)

The rest of the day was spent with friends Ken and Larry preparing a Thursday presentation on the US elections, and then watching a really good Haberman Zoom talk by Geraldine Gudefin on the history of the “right of return” in Israel. (www.habermaninstitute.org)

I read the NYT obituary of Colombian folk singer Totó la Momposina this morning. She was 85. I have never heard of her. I have never heard her music. But already she is my favorite Colombian folk singer. By far.

My relationship with Colombia is weak at best. My old friend MJB (I use his initials because I don’t know if he would want to be associated with me in print. We have only been friends for 80 years. Yes, you read that correctly.) and I went on an Amazon River trip 50+ years ago that started in Colombia, took a quick look at a town in Brazil, and wound up in Peru. We flew from Miami to Bogota, and through Cali (or was in Medellin?) to Leticia, a small town in southernmost Colombia on the river.

The trip was arranged through a company that had placed a small ad in a periodical, and it worked out pretty well, as long as you weren’t expecting too much in creature comfort.

Digression. I flew to Miami from DC, MJB from St. Louis. His plane was delayed, and I remember sitting on the plane waiting to take off to Bogota wondering where he was. We had no Plan B, and no cell phones. I don’t think we had any pre-arrangements in Bogota. If he missed the plane to Bogota, there was a chance he would miss the plane to Leticia, which I believe was scheduled only a few times a week. Just before the plane to Bogota was about to leave Miami, he appeared, worn out from running from the St. Louis arrival gate. End of digression.

I don’t remember what I expected Bogota to look like. I remember being surprised at tall buildings, and visible tall mountains. I remember the flight from Bogota to Leticia as being uneventful, but I remember thinking that Colombia was clearly one big beautiful country.

Here is Bogota today.

And here is Leticia

Yes, Leticia was small 50 years ago, and looks like it has not grown much since then. Wikipedia says there are about 30,000 people today, and it is an “eco-tourist” hub. In the 1970s, tourism there in the upper Amazon was just beginning.

Digression #2. To get to Leticia, you have to fly or arrive by boat. There is no road connection to the rest of Colombia, even today. End of Digression #2.

We stayed several days at a “resort”. The resort had a number of white frame cabins (a small number), a building where meals were served (not that I remember them), and a rather simple swimming pool. It was in walking distance to the river and to a simple residential area with small frame houses that looked similar to the cabins.

When we flew into Leticia, we were met by two young Americans. We were about 30. They were probably in their twenties, one male, on female. The female was very cute, and I remember thinking that the resort we were staying at was going to be more pleasant than I had assumed. It turned out, I think, that airport pickups were the extent of their jobs at the resort.

But what were they doing there? It took naive me a few days to get suspicious, but it became clear to me that they were there because of drugs. Were they only consumers, or something else? That I don’t know, but I later learned that Leticia was the heart of Colombia’s cocaine industry in the 1970s. And I think our pickup crew sensed immediately that we were not there to get high, so they stayed as far away from us as possible.

The Amazon, by the way, was extraordinarily beautiful and the excursions on the river to various indigenous villages eye-opening. There was a lot of village craft work for sale and I decided to buy 80 Tikuna Indian animal bark paintings for $100. I brought them back and sold them, mainly to friends, for $15 each. It paid for my trip.

Enough for this morning. I am going to sit back, close my eyes, and listen to a little Totó la Mompasino. And await an email from MJB telling me that I don’t remember any of this correctly.

I have run into the name Deborah Tannen many times over the years. She has written several well known books about interpersonal connections – mothers and daughters, husbands and wives. That sort of thing. Her academic field is linguistics, and obviously linguistics and interpersonal connections and communications are closely related. She has written 10 books and many articles, and she has been on the faculty of Georgetown University for 47 years as a Professor of Linguistics. She is only a few years younger than I am. I have never met her, or seen her.

And I have never been interested in any of her books, which always seemed to me to be self-help books. This may be a good characterization of them, or it may not be. But that is what I always figured them to be. So I ignored them, and I ignored her.

But a few weeks ago, when I was wandering through books at a library sale, I came across her most recent book, Finding My Father: His Century-long Journey From World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow. That sounded interesting and I decided to read it. I just finished it.

I can’t say that I would recommend it wholeheartedly. The writing style and the organization of the book are, to me, a bit clumsy. But, on the other hand, there are some very interesting things in the book. I will tell you what they are, so you don’t have to read it yourself.

Her parents were both immigrants, her father from Poland, her mother from today’s Belarus. They were married for 71 years, and both lived long lives. Her father died at 97. For the majority of her life, she was much closer to her father than to her mother. In addition, her father was constantly putting thoughts (often autobiographical thoughts) on paper; her mother, on the other hand, did not like talking about the past at all.

She was raised in New York, and has two older sisters. Her father had a night school law degree, which he received during depression years, but needed to take other jobs (over 60 of them throughout his life) to make enough money to help his widowed mother and, eventually, his own family. They were never wealthy.

Her father was born in Warsaw into a family of Gerer Hasids. The Gerer Hasids. Gerer Hasidism was the largest branch of Hasidism in Poland and is today the largest branch in Israel. His American name was Eli Tannen, and he was raised by his mother; his father had left the family when Eli was only two and had died of tuberculosis when Eli was only 6. Eli’s mother had been a Kornblit, the daughter Chaziel Kornblit. If Deborah can be believed (and I assume she can be) her mother had 13 siblings who lived to adulthood, and at least four more who died at birth or as a child. For the most part, this large family split from their parents’ hasidism, and set out to pursue modern, often quite secular lives in early 20th century Warsaw. The idea that there was such a break from tradition in what clearly a very traditional and religious family surprised me.

Deborah’s grandmother, Sarah, for example, was the founder and the head of school at a Jewish school for Hasidic girls, the very first such school in Warsaw, where daughters in Hasidic families were generally given very limited education. Her sister Eva became the first female dentist and periodontist in Newark New Jersey. Her sister Dora became a Swiss educated physicist, who was a student in Switzerland of Einstein’s and had a close relationship with him both there and the United States (whether that relationship was an intimate one, and whether Dora aborted Einstein’s baby, is subject to speculation, but Deborah likes to believe that this, indeed, was the case).

As far as I know, Eva’s dentistry practice was a successful one. Other than that, in spite of their education and their modernization, things did not usually workout the best for the Kornblit kids. Eva was not a physicist in the US and Dora did not run a school. Ruchcia had 5 children of her own, but died in the 1918 flu epidemic. Bronka died of TB in the Caucasus. Rivka committed suicide, jumping off a balcony. Dina died at 14 in a kitchen fire. Joshua and his family were killed at Auschwitz. The three male Kornblits made it to the U.S. Two worked for HIAS, and one worked in a bank in Philadelphia. Magda, the youngest sister, became a communist, was jailed because of her political beliefs, and after her release and the communist takeover of Poland became a high ranking Polish government official.

Deborah’s father, as I said, went to law school at night. Because he was very bright, very verbal, always writing, and because he was working full time while attending law school, Deborah assumed he was a very good and very serious student, and was surprised to find out this was not true. One year, he almost flunked out of the school, he often did not read the assigned cases, and sometimes opted for a movie instead of a class. This really surprised her, it seems.

Maybe so, but what surprised me is what she wrote about her surprise: “…..But I assumed he studied hard, too. Then I think of how surprised people are when I tell them that I got C’s and D’s in college. It was a point of pride. I wouldn’t memorize anything, because I believed, with the hubris of youth, that memorization is not education, and I didn’t want to waste time learning anything I was not interested in. I wanted to get A’s in courses that I cared about, but was happy to get D’s in those I didn’t — or in those in which grades depended upon memorization.” Tannen went to what is now the University of New York at Binghamton for her undergraduate degree.

Tannen’s relationship with her mother (until her mother’s last years) was different. Her mother was depressive and, in Tannen’s words, manipulative. She cried and cried when young Deborah was about to join the Peace Corps, and young Deborah reacted by withdrawing from her Peace Corps assignment in Thailand the day before she was to get on the plane. She told 22 or 23 year old Deborah that it was okay if she moved in with her Greek boyfriend, as long as they told everyone she was engaged; otherwise it would be embarrassing, and they could always at some point announce that the engagement was called off, as this happened all the time. But after a few months, her mother told her that she had been engaged long enough. When was she going to get married? And Deborah and boy friend got married, although they didn’t stay married very long.

Her sources in writing this book were a combination of long talks (some recorded) which she had with her father in his later years, and access to all of his writings and journals and letters, which enabled her to put a lot together (although there are gaps that she tries to fill in by speculation). These includes the story of her parents’ courtship (which really wasn’t a courtship; her mother was the younger sister of her father’s best friend and they were just always together, and as her mother outgrew her early teens, she began to fixate on her father and, again, her mother’s apparently ability to manipulate showed up in Tannen’s narrative).

In fact, Eli had another girlfriend up until virtually the time that he got married, whom Deborah calls Helen, although is a made up name to protect the innocent. Eli had kept letters he received from Helen and copies of those he sent her, and they are laid out in some detail in the book. In addition, Deborah speculates about her parents’ pre-marriage sexual relationship, and her father’s relationship to his real girl friend Helen. I found all of this a bit over-the-top and a bit rude. Whether or not her father wanted Deborah to write this book (which she says he did), I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that he wanted Deborah to write this part of the book.

There is no question but that Eli Tannen led an interesting life, and came from an interesting Old World family, and that it worth recording and preserving. Whether it had to be presented in the way Deborah Tannen presented it is a question that I won’t try to answer, except to say: It didn’t.

It used to be that most news was bad. Now, it is just bizarre.

I say that as a resident of Washington DC, where the president of the United States:

1. Is building a ballroom with room to host almost 1000 people on the grounds of the White House.
2. Is painting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool “U.S.flag blue” and eliminating any relection.
3. Is going to build a victory arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery which will be 25 stories tall, taller than any building in DC.
4. Has plastered North Korea-size pictures of himself on government buildings throughout the city.
5. Is conflating his 80th birthday with the 250th birthday of the country.
6. Is building a platform on the White House grounds to celebrate with a UFC fight.
7. Wants to hold a celebratory concert on the White House grounds featuring musicians who do not want to perform.
8. Who wants American military troops to attend all these events, providing they are neither too short or too heavy.
9. Has determined that Dulles International Airport should be renamed after himself.
10. Who wants to rebuild Washington’s three public golf courses to be tournament worthy, rather than friendly public courses.
11. Who wants to take one of D.C.’s large parks and turn it into a sculpture garden with statues of 250  “American heroes”.

Now, it turns out there was a 14th item on the list – renaming the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center as the Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center, shutting it down for two years and rebuilding it into the greatest arts venue in the history of the world. Yesterday, a federal judge told him he can not do that on his own, and all Trump name references must be removed within two weeks.

Trump’s reaction surprised me. He didn’t say he would ignore or appeal the ruling. He said he would simply take his ball home and disappear. Now, Trump had fired everyone on the board of directors than ran the center, made himself chair, and hired toadies as board members. The regular KenCen performing groups, including the National Symphony, Washington Opera, Washington Performing Arts Society and others have made alternative plans and no performances have been booked for the next two years. What is going to happen next? The president does not care, it seems. Not his problem.

Washington has been badly hurt by COVID and then by Trump, with significant job losses and corresponding office, retail and restaurant vacancies downtown. Recovery will be slow and await Trump’s departure. I think our current three term mayor, Muriel Bowser, has done a very good job coordinating with an eccentric president in leading a city so dependent on the federal government. Her term will end in January and we are now wittnessing a campaign to succeed her. The two leading candidates (the primary is in a little over two weeks) are, in my view, both rather week. One is a progressive, and one more business oriented. The progressive is favored to win, and I think, at 38, she is too young for the job and her views too pre-determined. In addition, they are both engaged in an unfortunate bash-the-opponent campaign that I find disheartening. And, also unfortunately, they both engage in “Trump will not tell us what to do” rhetoric, which I think may hurt the city more when they take office.

So, yes, the news is all bizarre. But let me rephrase my starting statement. The news is also mostly bad as well.

1. As usual, on a Friday, I start my day by going to Breads Unlimited. I buy a challah, a danish, and a cup of coffee. The challah is $8.95, the danish just under $4, and the coffee $3. I don’t begrudge the shop a profit, but those prices are on the high side and have increased twice over the past year or so. They also have started to add a 3% credit card fee. When I go to pay with my card, I get another option. I can give the clerk (whose tasks were to put my choices in a bag, pour my coffee into a cup, and ring up my bill) a 20% or a 30% tip or a different tip that I have to determine and then input, or “no tip”. To me, “no tip” seems like I am insulting the clerks (whom I see every week). And of course, the clerks are staring at me (smiling in the friendliest of manners) as I am checking out.

Dear Ethicist: what should one do in this circumstance?

2. Do you know this man?

He is Taras Shevchenko, and was a major Ukrainian poet, painter, patriot, and cultural figure during the first half of the 19th century. He stands prominently on P Street NW, between 22nd and 23rd.

I decided to learn a little more about him. He was born a serf, was obviously both bright and creative, was freed as a teenager, studied art in St. Petersburg, where he met many cultural figures, got in trouble with the authorities, was exiled, got out of trouble, allowed back, etc. Just like a lot of cultural figures in 19th century Russia. He was a champion of the poor and of equal rights for all. He was not a full blown rebel, but was later idealized by the Communists.  He believed in pan-Slavic unification. He was well thought of by contemporary Russian-Jewish writers and he was against minority descrimination of any kind.

His earliest writings pegged Polish landlords and their Jewish agents as being enemies of the common people, but anti-Jewish sentiment seemed to vanish from later writing.

The statue was dedicated in 1964 as a tribute to growing ethnic patriotism in eastern Europe. Believe it or not, Wikipedia says 100,000 people, many of Ukrainian ancestry were involved in dedication day ceremonies. The head of the commission who pushed for the statue was Georgetown Professor Lev Dobriansky, whom I knew a little because he was a colonel in my Army Reserve unit.

Dobriansky was strongly and vocally opposed to everything about the Soviet Union and a patriotic ethnic Ukrainian. It is ironic that anti-Soviets lauded Shevchenko as a Ukrainian, while the USSR praised him as a champion of a classless society.

By the way, does anyone ever read anything Shevchenko wrote?

3. This will be qiick. I listened to Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Society on C-Span this morning. I think I disagreed with everything he said. The core of Roberts’ Heritage message is that the non-profit is simply upholding  and trying to restore American values. I understand that about half of Americans share many of Roberts’ positions. But another half share my positions, which constitute American values as much as his do. Can we just stop saying that those Americans we disagree with do not have American values?

Haven’t you always wanted a president bold enough to threaten obliteration to Oman? Yes, if they won’t do what we tell them to, Donald is going to huff and puff and blow them up. We win by numbers. Oman has an army of 45,000 and we have a military of approximately 1,300,000. We have over 300,000,000 citizens and Oman has just over 3,000,000 citizens. Almost 90 percent of Oman’s population is urbanized (the rest is, I guess, mostly desert), which should make it relatively easy to blow them up. After we blow them up, we can build resorts like the ones we were going to put in Gaza. Gaza turned out to be a little too complicated.

Now, as I understand it, the Omanis do not want to be blown up, and wondered if there was away to avoid their destruction. The answer is “yes, there is”, and Donald just told them how to do it. All they have to do is “behave like everybody else”.

Now pretend you are the Sultan of Oman. You don’t want to see your country blown up. You want to placate Big Don. You see his instructions and you order your citizens (and non-citizen residents, too, I guess) to start behaving like everyone else. Immediately, an important question arises. How does everyone else behave?

I asked ChatGPT. ChatGPT tells me: “There isn’t one way “everyone” behaves. Human behavor varies enormously by culture, personality, age, situation, incentives, stress, and biology……” Not much help.

Well, perhaps Donald simply means that Omanis should behave just exactly as he wants them, too, and perhaps he thinks that everyone else is behaving in that manner, with the sole objection of the Iranians, and, like potentially the Omanis, Donald is planning on blowing the Iranians up. Their entire civilization. Poof.

I read a really interesting article recently, based on an interview with psychologist and former Johns Hopkins assistant professor John Gartner, who seems to be clear that Donald is suffering from a particular kind of dementia, called “frontotemporal dementia” or, as the TV commercials would say, “FTD” (a term also used in connection with the delivery of flowers; you can, for example, send flowers to a person with FTD through FTD). I read the article carefully (not really), but John Gartner is only one guy, and it turns out that he has been talking about Donald Trump since 2015 and so far has failed to convince anybody that he is correct in his diagnosis of Trump. At least there seems to be no record that he has convinced anyone who didn’t think that something has been wrong with Trump from the beginning. So, I decided to put ex-Prof Gartner to the side, and go back to ChatGPT.’

After briefly describing FTD, Chat (I am going to call him Chat; he says it’s okay) describes the “Common Symptoms” of the disease:

BEHAVIORAL CHANGES

Acting inappropriately or impulsively

Loss of empathy

Poor judgement

Repetitive behaviors

LANGUAGE PROBLEMS

Trouble speaking or finding words

Difficulty understanding language

EMOTIONAL CHANGES

Apathy

Mood Changes”

The severity of these symptoms continue and worsen over time. While most people survive 6 to 10 years after diagnosis, some people have a much slower moving dementia and can live much longer.

In addition to observing behavior, neurologists look to the results of MRIs to look at brain activity. We of course remember that Donald did (or maybe did not) get an MRI at Walter Reed last year. He said he did, the realizing maybe he should not have said that, he said he didn’t remember what part of his body had the MRI, and then his medical team (or maybe his White House team) said it wasn’t an MRI after all, but at CT Scan. Who knows? He had another physical at Walter Reed this week. Did he have another MRI? Who knows?

I also read an interview with a nephew of Donald’s, Fred Trump (named after Donald’s father, perhaps,  or maybe just a coincidence), who said that there was quite a bit of dementia in the Trump family, naming a number of Trumps who had to deal with it, and said that, from his perspective, much of Donald’s behavior mirrors that of his father and other relatives. His father, I should say, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, not FTD, but I read that FTD diagnosis was first developed in Sweden in 1994 and, although Trump died in 1999, his dementia was diagnosed well before that.

At any rate, Chat told me that I had asked all the questions tonight that it was going to answer, but that it would reset at 2:55 a.m. if I had more. I am not planning on reconnecting, but if insomnia hits, I might ask Chat one more question, which is: is there any evidence that wanting to blow up Oman is a sign of FTD. (You may think you know the answer to that, but….you never can tell.)

In any event, we know that wishing to destroy Oman is a bad omen. Oh, man! (You can do better than that.)

On the other side of the world, things do look good in Texas.

Going through Facebook yesterday, I came upon a random post (maybe from an individual, maybe an organization, maybe a bot – who knows?) which had a typical anti-Israel message. I am used to seeing those, and looking at some of the comments, which vary from strong agreement to strong disagreement. I usually take them in stride. But one comment yesterday did bother me. It was a graphic comment, without narrative. A Jewish star, and equal sign, a swastika. Mind you, it was not the flag of Israel on the left. Simply a Jewish star.

I clicked the appropriate buttons to report this to Meta as a comment that should be deleted. I don’t remember which of their arbitrary reasons for objection I chose. Possible “hate”. An hour or so later, I received a response to my complaint. The response said that they would not delete that comment because it did not violate their “community standards”. I don’t know if I was disappointed, or surprised, or what. I shook my head (without moving my head) and moved on.

What are Facebook’s “community standards”? I suppose I could find out. And what kind of a standard is “community standards” anyway. Let’s say that 50% of “the community” (and that raises a separate definitional question) believes that a Jewish star (and what that represents raises a third question) does equal a swastika (we know what that represents). Would that mean that this post does not violate community standards? What if 50% of a community believes it is okay to kill all the first born? Does that make it conforming to community standards? If there is some other measure than whether a post is in cormance with what a set percentage of the community finds acceptable, what is it?

Putting community standards aside, how does “free speech” come into this? Does someone have any sort of “free speech” right when they put something on a platform such as Facebook? In developing its “community standards”, does Facebook have to take into account the First Amendment right of commenters? Or can they develop any means of censorship that they want? Or no means of censorship if that is what they want? Is there even a legal requirement that they adopt a set of “community standards” or are they doing that to try to tamp down criticism from governmental regulators or others?

And, of course, we have to remember that these companies do not just operate in the United States. In European countries where, for example, antisemitism is actually against the law, do they have different community standards, either for what they allow to be published for users in those countries, or for whether they allow comments which are illegal in the commenters’ countries to be published in other countries where the legality is not an issue?

The questions go on and on, we know. And they are not new questions. We have had these questions since Facebook and the other social media platforms were first created, and now they affect not only those platforms, but the many AI sites, albeit from a somewhat different approach.

And in fact, we even have similar questions when it comes to network or cable television, in this country. And I am thinking of this in connection with Maureen Galindo, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress who lost in the Democratic runoff yesterday, but whose campaign included a proposal to “put billionaire American Zionists who are funding the genocidal prison systems involved in trafficking into prison”. I don’t even understand that sentence, and I am sure she has explained it, but I did see that she denied that there was anything antisemitic about these comments because she said it would apply to all billionaire American Zionists who met these criteria, not only those who were Jewish.

Gallindo lost her race yesterday by a 60-40 margin, but that means that she did get more than 10,000 voters in Houston to cast their ballots for her. But here is my question. If a platform or a cable channel decides that their “community standards” do not permit someone with Galindo’s positions to be broadcast or published under their name, does that standard change if the speaker is running for public office? At what point should, can, or must an outlet say to a candidate: “Sorry, you are violating our community standards”?

Because these questions are so difficult to answer……

Strike that. Because these questions are impossible to answer, it puts more and more responsibility on our political and moral leaders to exhibit some sense of moral or ethical control over their own comments. One more place this is, of course, that Don John has failed us.

Onward.

The Macro Topic:

The New York Times just reported that the United States today bombed a missle launch site in Southern Iran. My “bold prediction” of Saturday morning has come true.

I say that with regret, because it does not seem necessary to start active warfare as negotiations are actively ongoing. But it was inevitable.

How did I conclude that? Well, I have been watching a German Netflix series Murder Mindfully, an odd comic noire series, featuring the adventures of a young Berlin lawyer, Björn Diemel, whose only client is an emotionally challenged mob boss named Dragan Sergowicz. Early in the series, Björn actually murders his client, but needs to pretend he is still alive, but off the grid, and that he has empowered Björn to follow his orders and act in his stead. Otherwise, how would he get paid (or stay alive)? Their ways of negotiating are very Trumpian. I will give you an example.

Björn and his wife are having trouble finding a pre-school which will accept their daughter Emily. No one wants the child of a Mafioso attorney in a class.

So what does Björn do? He, and one of Dragan’s henchmen, visit the school, and tell the head of school and two teachers that they are fired because Dragan is taking over the ownership of the entire school. They make them a generous financial offer, but three hesitate, so they break a couple of noses, and plant false material on the school website showing that the three are affiliated with several Nazi organizations. They also drastically cut the proposed financial terms. An offer that can’t be refused? Well, if it is, there is still one nose to break and worse things possible. And if, instead, they say “Okay”, that still might not be enough to curtail further punishment.

Trump has said Iran must completely surrender, but he has also said that if they open Hormuz, other issues may be settled later. Issues like the ones he went to war for – nuclear program, missle delivery systems, funding proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen, regime change. Only Hormuz may be solved, and the only reason there is a problem at the Strait in the first place is Trump’s war. Status quo ante, indeed.

But today, with each of his goals out of apparent sight, Iran wants nuclear freedom, military weapon development freedom, the right to control and levy tolls on ships passing through the Strait, $25 billion in withheld funds released, sanctions released, and more. Trump does not seem on the cusp of resolving any of this. And what does he do now? He wants no more Israeli fighting in Lebanon (except for clear defense), and he wants Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon to join the Abraham Accords. Apples? Oranges?

Remember Yassir Arafat? He would negotiate a deal, but could never finalize it. Always walking away, one way or another, at the last minute. Trump may be our Arafat.

The great negotiator has met his match.

The Micro Topic:

A random walk around a random block. What are the signs of our time?

Also seen were a some bicyclists and a studious resident with big ears, and one more sign either with great meaning or no meaning at all (take your pick).

Yesterday was the Sunday before Memorial Day, and it actually stopped raining in the late morning, and the temperature was supposed to rise to a tropical 65 degrees. After lunch, we decided we should go to a museum, and I suggested our neighborhood museum (about a mile from the house), American University’s Katzen Center. But because it is a holiday weekend, and classes are over, I thought I should check to see if it was open. Google was it usual “the times may change for Memorial Day” helpful self, and the museum’s website equally informative. The phone number given for the Museum is the AU phone number (they transfer you to the museum), so I called it, and got a deep baritone voice telling me that the AU Information Center was open Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, but that I had a few options, the most seemingly useful being the university’s Operating Information Center. I pushed the correct key and this time got an alto voice telling me the following: “Thank you for calling the Operating Information Center. Everything at the University has been operating on schedule. Good-bye.”

We decided to go anyway, but it became clear when we pulled into the large parking garage and saw exactly three cars parked there. Onward.

This time, we thought we would go to the Kreeger Museum, in the Kreegers’ house on Foxhall Road, not far from American. David Kreeger was not only an art collector, but the founder and long time head of Geico Insurance. Their large house was designed by Philip Johnson, and easily adapted to a museum. But guess what? The gates in front of the house were shut tight; no Kreeger Memorial Day Weekend. Onward once more.

We had to travel to get to another museum. I knew that the Daughters of the American Revolution, down near the White House, had an exhibition geared to the 250th anniversary of the country, so that seemed like an obvious choice, providing we could find a parking space on 17th Street. Which we did. But……guess what? (I bet you can.) The DAR was locked tight, and there was a sign saying that it would be closed all next week because the building (which includes Constitution Hall, a 3700 seat venue) is hosting the Scripp’s National Spelling Bee next week. And there was a lot of activity at the Constitution Hall entrance, and media vans surrounding the building. Once more…must go elsewhere.

Because the weather was pleasant, rather than getting back in the car, we decided to take a short walk down 17th Street toward Constitution Avenue, past the headquarters of the Organization of American States. Our thought was to turn back at the corner, but we decided first to look at some of the sculpture on the lawn of the OAS. It’s a rather large collection, with three types of sculpture: modern sculpture and folk sculpture, which we ignored, and busts of Latin American literary and political figures (and a few others), which we explored. So the question for this post is: how many of these literary figures do you know?

Romulo Gallegos was the author of 13 novels, including Dona Barbara and Cantaclaro, and Canaima, his best known three. Only two of his books have been translated into English. He was also a politician, who served briefly as the first elected president of Venezuela in 1948 before being ousted by a military coup.

Teresa de la Parra, born to a wealthy Venezuelan family, was a rare feminist writer for her time and place. Her life was cut short at 46, when she died of tuberculosis, from which she had suffered for many years. Her book Iphigenia: Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored has been translated into English.

Ruben Dario was a Nicaraguan poet and short story writer, known as the founder of Latin American “modernism”. I have no idea what that means. I think only one book of his poetry is available in English. Dario, too, died young of pneumonia, and in poverty.

Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American poet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1945. She spent much of her life in Europe, working as a journalist and for the League of Nations, and was a well known international personality. Much of her work has been translated.

Pablo Neruda, like Gabriela Mistral, was a Latin American poet who won a Nobel Prize, his in 1971. He was also a Chilean Senator, a member of the Communist Party, and the winner of the Stalin Prize in 1953.

Cesar Vallejo, from Peru, wrote only two books of poetry, but to great acclaim. He was an activist and journalist during the Spanish Civil War, and a member of the Peruvian Communist Party.

How many did you know? And how many of you have wandered the grounds of the OAS?

This picture popped up this morning on Facebook, posted by someone on a St. Louis history platform. Intriguing, I found it, with unpaved streets, horse drawn carriages, and brick buildings (which may still exist) and gaps between them. A different world, to be sure. How did we get from there to today?

But then I realized that my grandmother and grandfather were both living in St. Louis when this photo was taken. My grandmother about 5, my grandfather about 9.

My grandfather died in 1953. I looked for a photo from the city then.

And my grandmother in 1969.

Okay, this is 1965, not 1969, but I like the picture.

And then there is the city today.

For those who might be interested, the view looks east toward the Arch, which is on the Mississippi. In the left foreground, you see the relatively new soccer stadium. On the right with the orange roof, it’s the former Union Station, now a hotel, an amusement park, an aqarium and a bunch of restaurants. Closer to downtown on the right, you see a concert venue, and where the ice hockey Blues play.

Why am I showing you this? I am not sure, except that St. Louis is about 6800 miles from Tehran, and I was looking for distance.

Metropolitan Tehran is, by the way, over 5 times the size of Metropolitan St. Louis, and looks it.

Tehran has changed since 1895, too.

Hopefully, it will never look like Gaza City does in 2026.

End of story.

It’s the perfect storm. And I am not talking about the weather (which is bad enough – high of 53 degrees on May 23, with constant rain). I am talking about the renewal of bombing in Iran, brought to you by the one and only Donald Trump (thank God, one and only).

1. The negotiations in Pakistan seem to be gaining little, if any, progress.
2. The raining weather in Washington means Donald can not play golf.
3. Nevertheless, Donald has decided not only to stay in Washington, but to spend the weekend at the White House, something rarely done, rather than at Bedminister, where he was planning to be.
4. His son, Donald Jr. is getting married today in Palm Beach, and Donald decided not to go because of the continuation of the Iran War (he said).
5. Congress was about to pass a War Powers resolution and had to recess for over a week to avoid it coming to a vote; the resolution could have limited Donald’s ability to play soldier.
6. When Congress comes back on June 1, the War Powers resolution might actually come to a vote, so Donald wants to act before that happens.
7. Netanyahu clearly wants to restart the bombing, and has been pressuring Donald to go ahead.
8. Iran says that it has “rebuilt its military”, and American intelligence says that Iran still has retained a lot of military capacity. Donald is afraid that time is not on his side.
9. It is Memorial Day weekend, and what better way to spend it than to show the power of America’s military.
10. The stock market is closed for the long weekend, so there will be time for it to regulate itself rather than suffer a rapid fall due to the resumption of hostilities.
11. Tulsi Gabbard “resigned”. She is a known opponent of the war.

For all of these reasons, and more, I think it is likely that the bombs will fall on Iran this weekend.

Or, on the other hand, maybe Cuba.

Books can be surprising things. Sometimes, you pick one up for no good reason, look at it with low expectations, and wind up enjoying the read, and absorbing something that can change your thinking, or can enlarge your worldview. This is the history of the book I finished yesterday, A Jewish Chaplain in France by Rabbi Lee Levinger.

Levinger was born in Burke, Idaho (yes, Burke, Idaho) in 1890 and died in 1966. He was a Reform rabbi, a graduate of Hebrew Union College, and a longtime Hillel director and employee of the Jewish Welfare Board. He also wrote a number of books.

But we can start with Burke, Idaho. Burke, Idaho, is a ghost town. According to Atlas Obscura, it was founded in 1887 (Levinger born only 3 years later), and was basically abandoned by the 1950s. You can visit it today. It is apparently quite picturesque, being situated in a very narrow canyon, which makes it rather unique. As we are planning to drive from Seattle to Glacier National Park in July, it looks like our route will be quite near Burke. Hopefully, we can visit and take a few pictures.

(I read a 1952 article that Levinger wrote in Commentary magazine about Jews in small town America. It was a very interesting article, talking about the spread of Jews throughout the country in small towns, where they started out as merchants, and where many of the next generation became professionals. Had he written the article today, he would have gone on and talked about the generation after that abandoning the small towns. He would not have been critical. Looking at all of this today, it seems inevitable. But his description of Jewish life in these towns, where a minyan might be unavailable, potential Jewish spouses lacking, and traditional Jewish learning minimal, was very interesting. You can find the article by Googling (as I did) “Levinger small towns”.)

But this has little to do with what I want to say today. Today, I want to recommend Levinger’s book about chaplaincy, which was published in 1922, and dealt with his experience in France during the first world war.

The first Jewish chaplains in the military were appointed during the Civil War, both by the Union and by the Confederacy. After the Civil War, it appears there were no Jewish chaplains until the United States entered World War I in April of 1917, and that the first chaplains went overseas in the summer of 1918, just about a half year before the armistice ended that war, and that there were chaplains who stayed in Europe after the armistice until the American forces could all be brought home. Levinger was sent to France in July 1918 and stayed for nine months.

According to the book, there were something over 100,000 Jewish military personnel sent overseas during World War I, out of about 225,000 Jews in the U.S. military. About 3000 were killed, and about 12,000 injured. There were, at the highest, 12 Jewish chaplains with the army in France.

What I learned from this book included the following:

1. Many of the gentiles in the army had never met a Jew, and many of the Jews, particularly those from New York, who made up perhaps 40% of the Jews in the military then, had really never had contact with gentiles.
2. At least 1/3 of the Jewish soldiers in World War I were immigrants, and for most of them English was not their first language. Sometimes, there English was rudimentary.
3. He witnessed virtually no antisemitism in the military during the time he was in France. Jews and gentiles at every level seemed to realize that they were much more the same than different, and came to respect each other.
4. In this regard, the chaplain’s job then, as it is now, is to conduct religious services according to their own religions, but to serve, as chaplains, soldiers of all religions who are looking for guidance or assistance. And in fact, when it is time for a religious service, and no chaplain of a particular religion is available, chaplains will often conduct services for soldiers of different religions.
5. In addition, those who attended religious service often were of different religions. There could be Jewish services where there were more Christians than Jews in attendance.
6. There was enormous amounts of cooperation between chaplains of different religions, as well as with the Jewish Welfare Board, the Y.M.C.A., and the Salvation Army during the war.
7. The Jewish services were most often abbreviated and followed the abridged prayer books sent out by the U.S. government. They were mainly conducted in English, rather than Hebrew, and all Jewish chaplains were generally in agreement on this.
8. The majority of the Jewish soldiers had Orthodox backgrounds, but that same majority were largely not Orthodox themselves. Many, whose parents were as observant as they had been in Europe before coming to America, had not accompanied their fathers to the religious services he attended, and many could not read or understand Hebrew. This was clearly a transition time for many now-American Jewish families.
9. Services conducted by Jewish chaplains often were done in cooperation with local Jewish families or clergy in France, and this, too, was helpful, especially for Jewish families in small-town France, whose structure and lives had been so disrupted by the war.
10. Sermons to soldiers and sermons a rabbi would give to a civilian congregation back in the United States were very different; all chaplains soon realized this. Sermons given to the soldiers often involved back and forth with the soldiers themselves; something that rarely would happen in a synagogue at home.
11. The Jewish Welfare Board did an extraordinary job organizing everything in France at short notice.
12. The general responsibilities of chaplains were what you would think – services, funerals, religious ceremonies such as Pesach seders, visiting the sick, counseling, taking complaints and trying to resolve them. The soldiers were by and large very young. Communications with family back home was often non-existent for months at a time.

All in all, this book has a lot to offer. I found it at a library book sale and bought it for, I think, $2. But it isn’t an unknown book; you can read a lot about it on line. And it seems to be a book very well known to the National Museum of Jewish Military History, here in Washington. It is well written, and it will expand your thinking of the evolution of the American Jewish community in the United States at the time when Jewish immigration into the country remained at its height, but near the end of that time.

Anything missing from the book? Yes. Women. Except for local French Jewish women helping out here and there…..this was clearly a man’s world. If there were any women in the American military in France during the first World War, they never made it into Levinger’s book. Oh, and by the way, this book was not published by a small Jewish press. It was published by Macmillan; I found this also of interest.

The last two sessions of my Thursday morning breakfast group have been devoted to the Nuremberg trials, following the end of World War II, and the precedents they set for international criminal responsibility. It’s a complicated subject, and one that I have a hard time grappling with beyond thinking that winners or those with power have the ability to try and convict their enemies, whether or not they actually have the authority to do so. “Authority”, in this case, may be no more than a result of legal constructs created by those seeking to bring others to their sense of justice for bad actions committed (whether these bad actions constitute actual crimes is of course just another aspect of the same question). In Nuremberg, the four most powerful winning allied Nations (U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain and France) created the forum, the jurisdiction, and the trial rules, and gave themselves the authority both to conduct the trials and to dole out punishments.

There have been other trials following the general parameters of Nuremberg, often conducted through the International Criminal Court in The Hague, whose website states: “The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the greatest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national Courts.” Most countries have signed the Rome Statute that created and governs the Court, but the United States, Russia and Israel are among the few that have not. The Court has indicted Putin and Netanyahu, among others, but these potential defendants have not submitted to its jurisdiction and avoid travel to those countries where there is a risk of arrest.

As of yet, the ICC has not indicted any American officials. Perhaps, they could. They could, for example, determine that Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran were against international law or his attacks on fishing boats in the Caribbean or Pacific, but the risks to the Court in doing so would be high, even if the risks did not go beyond having to defend itself from financial and editorial attacks from Trump and his cronies. And interestingly, even those the U.S. does not submit to the jurisdiction of the Court, it does not oppose the jurisdiction of the Court over residents and leaders of other countries.

But the United States has, of course, its own concept of international legal authority. It thought nothing, for example, of bombing small Venezuelan boats or sending a team of secret agents into Venezuela to arrest President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, charging them with various crimes involving exporting cocaine into the United States. In order to effectuate these arrests, a team was sent into a foreign country without invitation and through a quasi-military invasion, the headquarters of the Venezuelan government was attacked, and the President and his wife were arrested through kidnapping, and dragged (not extradited) out of the country into the United States. At the same time, the United States  threatened Venezuela and its remaining leadership with dire consequences if they did not cooperate with the United States in various ways, including providing the U.S. with certain commercial rights that had nothing to do with the arrest.

Yesterday, an indictment was issued against former Cuban leader Raul Castro (President of Cuba from 2008-2018, and brother of former leader Fidel Castro) for his participation in 1996 in in the killing of four Americans when Cuban planes shot down two planes operated by an American non-profit, Brothers to the Rescue, an anti-Castro organization. Assuming Donald Trump is not just going to let this indictment languish, it seems that another invasive operation, like the one in January in Caracas, will take place in Havana (unless Castro, now warned, will be able to be hidden away).

If Trump does try to grab Castro and bring him to the United States, you can also assume that there will be further repercussions with Cuba, as there were with Venezuela. In Venezuela, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez (perhaps somewhat surprisingly) decided to cooperate with the Trump government to avoid further military action by the United States. In Cuba, the outcome of an arrest might be different. We shall see.

But once these individuals become subject to the American judicial system in the United States (the Maduros are being held in a detention center in Brooklyn; no clue where they might take Castro), we are no longer in the strange realm of international law, where the victors and the power can set whatever rules they want. In the U.S. courts, questions will be raised about the jurisdiction of the Courts, about the legality of the arrests, and of course about the facts of the case. It may be that the facts of the case against the Maduros is the stronger, although corroborating witnesses may be hard to find or to extradite for testimony. As to Castro, I have seen nothing that implicates him directly in this 30 year old event, and even if there were such evidence, 30 year old cases are hard to try. Witnesses have died, and others have less than perfect memories.

One of the legacies of Nuremberg is that proving that you were “just following orders” is not sufficient to get you off the hook, if you committed a crime. This has become obvious in the years following 1945, although the Trump folks appear to want this lesson to be forgotten, as their attacks on Senator Mark Kelly demonstrate. In the Castro case at least, the situation may be reversed. Here there may be no evidence that Raul Castro ordered the strike on the American planes (the strike itself may or may not have been illegal, under American, Cuban or international law – which one applies?), but he was both Minister of Defense and First Vice President of Cuba at the time. Will a potentially criminal act of a subordinate now become the responsibility of his superior? Under what authority? American agency law? How would this even apply?

So, the topic is complicated. The Trump administration will do what it can to simplify everything. But, if the Courts take their responsibility seriously, the Trump prosecutors may find that holding the Maduros or Castro responsible for their actions, and penalizing them here in the United States, may not be as easy as they wish.

There is one question we have been asking ourselves since Donald Trump (1) pardoned some of his friends who were indicted and convicted of crimes connected to their friendship to him, (2) since Donald Trump pardoned 1500 (or whatever the number was) of January 6 demonstrators including those who violently assaulted law enforcement officers, and (3) since Donald Trump has suggested that he is going to issue pardons to all of those sycophants working for him during his second term as president. That question is: can Donald Trump pardon himself?

Donald Trump apparently does not know the answer to that question (how could he?), but Donald Trump thinks that there are other ways to skin that cat, and he has decided to try to use one of them. You know what I am talking about? Here me out.

Donald Trump alleges that some information from his tax returns and the tax returns of the Trump Organization were improperly “leaked” to the public, and that this leak caused untold heartache, etc., and that he deserves reparations from the government. The apparent leaks occurred during the Biden years, and Trump claims he was being selectively targeted by a weaponized Department of Justice.

In order to obtain reparations, Donald Trump,  plaintiff, sued the same Donald Trump, defendant, asking for $10 billion of government money to be given him to compensate him for his losses and embarrassment. In other words, he is suing himself for an arbitrary amount that he pulled out of the air (and cannot corroborate in any normal fashion), and wants to be paid this sum out of government funds through a check from Donald Trump, as president, to Donald Trump, as, I guess, grifter.

But because they are not dumb, both Donald Trumps were afraid that any federal judge, even in Florida where the case was filed (and other than Judge Cannon, who was not chosen for this one) would throw the case out on Day 1, and because neither of the Donald Trumps wanted that result, they decided, perhaps by talking to themselves while taking a morning shower, that they should settle the case (albeit for a smaller amount) by coming up with an agreement to be signed both by the party of the first part and the party of the second part, in this case being the parties of the same part.

But the two Trumps realized that they probably weren’t going to get this arbitrary and outlandish amount of money no matter what they attempted to do, but thought they could look like they were being generous by (1) lowering the amount and (2) using the money to reward those January 6 rioters (excuse me, I mean followers) who had been convicted of a crime and whom they had previously pardoned by dividing the money among them. Basically, it seems that they want to give $1,000,000 to every pardoned criminal rioter and have a little left over for a few hundred other friends who can “prove” they were unfairly targeted by the weaponized Biden  government.

But, wait, there’s more. Should the Trumps receive some rewards for foregoing the cash themselves, for generously rewarding their criminal followers, and saving the Treasury $8,2 billion? Of course, they should! Just ask them.

How about saying that all the Trumps (including their wonderful children) and the Trump Organization be freed from the possibility of income tax audits (with any pending audits being closed) and how about those same Trumps being relieved of any possibility of being found responsible of any malfeasance or misfeasance whatsoever. In other words, you say, a presidential self-pardon and presidential family pardon?

Actually, it looks like a presidential super-pardon, because it looks like they will try to make it cover state as well as federal mattters, and civil as well as criminal matters?

Would this hold up, if agreed to by the two Trumps (who by the way share the same lawyer)? Maybe not. But maybe so. Sure worth a try.

Well, we all know that one day Donald is going to slip on the ice, crack his head and never get up in the morning. Or he is going to be hit by a golf ball, or a tree will fall on his head, or Iran will find him and zap him.

But until that happens, what Donald wants, Donald apparently gets.

Of course, both the Attorney General and the Vice President pooh-poohed any criticism of this, with Blanche saying that a three appointee panel would have to approve each payment, and that anyone, not just rioters, coukd apply. Vance agreed with that and with a straight face said “even Hunter Biden can apply”. So there you have it.

And, by the way, have you been following his insider trading scandal? His investments in companies which are subject to large government contracts or regulation, like Boeing and Intel. Keep your eyes on that one, too.