(1) Did you watch CNN this morning? I thought Jake Tapper’s guests said some interesting things. First, there was now Independent Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. While the main topic, of course, had to do with Joe Biden, Manchin said some other interesting things as well. He praised Biden for his past service and said he thought that the last 5 months of his administration could be very productive, but he thought that, as far as the upcoming election, it was time to pass the torch to the next generation. He said there were many qualified individuals, and named not Vice President Harris, but Governors Beshear (Kentucky) and Shapiro (Pennsylvania) as two of them. He also said that he “didn’t leave the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party left him.” “This is not my father’s Democratic Party.” (As usual, my quotes are not quotes, but paraphrases.)

Tapper was then joined by Congressman Jim Clyburn, who had a very different take. Clyburn, a long time Biden ally, stood by Biden as the candidate saying that he would support someone else only if Biden decided not to run. He did not say whether or not he thought that Biden should step away. But he did say one more thing. He agreed with Joe Manchin (whom he “respects” greatly) that today’s Democratic Party was not “his father’s” Democratic Party, but – as opposed to Manchin – he didn’t remember the old Democratic Party with the same degree of nostalgia. To Clyburn, the old Democratic Party was an anti-Black party, not something to be looked back upon as part of the “good old days”.

An interesting differnce, I thought. For Manchin, the old Democratic Party was simply more centrist, less leftist. For Clyburn, it brought up old memories of second class citizenship.

By the way, Manchin, who left this Democratic Party and declared himself an Independent sometime last year, said that he was waiting for the Democrats to encourage him to return. I had not heard that before, but as he is not seeking reelection, does anyone care?

(2) I finished a book yesterday titled The Fall of the Shah, by Fereydoun Hoveyda. It’s not a new book, published in 1979, almost immediately after the Shah left the country in April, and clearly before the attack on the American Embassy in November. Hoveyda was an Iranian diplomat living abroad at the time. His brother, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, was the prime minister of Iran (under the Shah) from 1965-1977, and was executed shortly after the Shah left the country.

It’s a very interesting book, showing the run up to the internal revolutionary movement which toppled the Shah’s regime. Reza Pahlavi took control of Iran in 1941, when he was only 22 years of age. He ruled with differing amounts of success over the next 38 years, often tussling with his prime ministers, including Mohammad Mossedeq, whose power eclipsed his own, and who was removed from power with the help of the CIA under invitation from the Shah in 1953. According to to Hoveyda, the Shah’s attitude and life style became more and more grandiose in the 1970s, leading to more and more resentment and to the increasing power of SAVAK, the Shah’s police force.

I am mentioning this not to go into detail (although I could) but to compare the Shah, when it became clear that he could not stabilize his control over the country, and President Biden today, who may be in a similar position. Of course, the situations could not be more different, but that is not the point. The point is that each of them started with denial that they weren’t still in control, denial that they weren’t still popular, denial that anyone else could take their place, support from their family members and from all of the upper level government officials whose fates were tied to the fate of the shah and whose loss of their own jobs seemed to be a major factor in their continuing support, and – as time went on – more and more resentment of any of their former allies who turned against them or who determined that there was not way for them to retain their position. But the Shah was adamant that all would work out well, until the day he got on a plane and flew to Egypt for “a vacation” (that never ended).

I write this to show how difficult it must be to give up power, for so many reasons, whatever the circumstances.

And, by the way, I thought the last paragraph of the book interesting: “The fears which I expressed in my epilogue are beginning to be realized. Not only has all hope of liberalization vanished, but the provisional government is leading Iran into a regime of which the fascist character is daily more marked. Its vindictiveness, intolerance and repression far surpass the excess of the preceding dictatorships, and in its hatred of the Pahlavis the new regime has destroyed even the positive advances of the last fifteen years. With each passing day economic paralysis, anarchy and corruption take a greater hold on the fabric of the nation……If the Iranian people do not wake up soon, their long struggle against oppression will be brought to an end by the establishment of a monstrous tyranny without precedent in modern history.”

(3) For those who are interested, let it be known that our new microwave has been unboxed and installed and heated part of last night’s dinner, and that our new vacuum cleaner seems to work just fine. And I must commend the Shark vacuum folks for putting together the best set of instructions of any piece of equipment that I can remember seeing. As to our microwave, which is Farberware, no instructions were necessary – take it out of the box, plug it in, put in the glass plate, and start pushing buttons.

On a different note, I must say that I got nowhere with my new Carego ear buds. I followed instructions carefully, I charged the ear buds successfully, I paired the ear buds with my smart phone successfully, but I can’t figure out how to make sound come out of my ear buds and not out of my phone. I will take a few breaths and start again today to figure this one out.

The other two pieces of equipment (the cell phone holder for my car and the TV fire stick) are still waiting for me to free them from their packaging.