disdain for questions about war, no coherent rationale for it
Over the past two and half months, Mr. Trump has ordered thousands of strikes against another country and killed its leader.
The war has roiled global energy markets and drained American munitions stockpiles.
Yet despite its scope and stakes, the president continues to show disdain for members of Congress who ask questions about the war and has not even provided a coherent rationale for it.
Congressional Republicans deserve significant responsibility for the situation. They could and should do much more to constrain him.
Congress could pass a resolution expressing its disapproval of the war and hold hearings investigating it, raising the political pressure on the White House.
It could refuse to confirm nominees or fund Mr. Trump’s military priorities until he adheres to his constitutional duty to work with the legislature.
Otherwise, members of Congress are participating in America’s slide from democracy.
According to the NYT, The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
I am reminded of the author Garrison Keillor who wrote about life in a small town and in discussing the life of one person in this small town, related how the mother of this person would say over and over … why don’t you DO something with your life?
This went on for years.
Then one day, Mom said something different.
Mom asked, why DIDN’T you do something with your life?
This piece isn’t warning that American Democracy could be in trouble.
This piece isn’t warning that American Democracy could be seeing some issues.
This piece pointed out that American Democracy is already in its slide and sliders, if you didn’t know, always take you down.
to me, was wholly simple, without vanity, grandiosity
To me he seems one of the two or three greatest men ever born of our blood.
You will observe that I am talking as if we were one household and speaking of our blood, for no drop ran in his veins which was not British in its ultimate origin.
I like to think that in him we see at its highest that kind of character and mind which is the special glory of our common race.
He was wholly simple, without vanity or grandiosity or cant.
He was a homely man, full of homely common sense and homely humour, but in the great moment he could rise to a grandeur which is for ever denied to posturing, self-conscious talent.
He conducted the ordinary business of life in phrases of a homespun simplicity, but when necessary he could attain to a nobility of speech and a profundity of thought which have rarely been equalled.
He was a plain man, loving his fellows and happy among them, but when the crisis came he could stand alone.
He could talk with crowds and keep his virtue; he could preserve the common touch and yet walk with God.
There is no such bond between peoples as that each should enter into the sacred places of the other, and in the noble merchantry of civilization let us remember that, if we of England have given Shakespeare to America, you have paid us back with Lincoln.
From Two Ordeals of Democracy, an address delivered on the Alumni War Memorial Foundation at Milton Academy, Massachusetts, October 16, 1924 and republished in his book Homilies and Recreations by John Buchan (Books For Libraries Press. Freeport, NE, 1926).
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (born Aug. 26, 1875, Perth, Perthshire, Scot.—died Feb. 11, 1940, Montreal) was a statesman and writer best known for his swift-paced adventure stories. His 50 books, all written in his spare time while pursuing an active career in politics, diplomacy, and publishing, include many historical novels and biographies.
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (born Aug. 26, 1875, Perth, Perthshire, Scot.—died Feb. 11, 1940, Montreal) was a statesman and writer best known for his swift-paced adventure stories. His 50 books, all written in his spare time while pursuing an active career in politics, diplomacy, and publishing, include many historical novels and biographies.
According to Wikipedia, “Outside the field of literature he was, at various times, a barrister, a publisher, a lieutenant colonel in the Intelligence Corps, the Director of Information—reporting directly to prime minister David Lloyd George—during the First World War and a Unionist MP who served as Governor General of Canada, the fifteenth to hold the office since Canadian Confederation.
Canadian history professor Roger Hall noted in a book review that “a great deal of [Buchan’s] success resulted from the extraordinary person he was, adding that “not many of our contemporary [Governor General] candidates come with those credentials” and “in the end it is Buchan’s role as a moral compass that seems most worthy.”
Buchan’s moral certainty was, as historian Sir John Keegan wrote, “one of his strengths as a writer [giving] him the power to achieve something particularly elusive: moral atmosphere”
John Buchan was and is an “inspiring example of a life lived for others”, as Ursula Buchan has written, from humble origins “without money or family influence, he nevertheless carved out a hugely successful writing and public career … His strengths, underpinned by a sincere and unwavering Christian faith, were his intelligence, humanity, clarity of thought, wit, moral and physical courage, a capacity to get on with everybody, from monarchs to miners, and an elegant prose style that appealed to a very wide readership.
Mr. Buchan saw something in Mr. Lincoln.
I think often of Mr. Lincoln today.
As President, Mr. Lincoln governed a nation that was so split, that a good part of the country fought tooth and nail to stop being a part of the country.
Luckily or maybe unluckily, the feelings were regional and the divide by feelings accommodated the geography.
He was wholly simple, without vanity or grandiosity or cant.
Wholly simple.
Without vanity.
Without grandiosity (what a great word).
Without cant.
In this case, one source states: cant here means insincere, fake, preachy, or hypocritical talk, especially moralizing language someone doesn’t truly mean.
Not insincere,
fake,
preachy,
or hypocritical talk,
especially moralizing language someone doesn’t truly mean.
Buchan’s moral certainty was, as historian Sir John Keegan wrote, “one of his strengths as a writer [giving] him the power to achieve something particularly elusive: moral atmosphere”
In this moral atmosphere of Mr. Buchan’s was Mr. Lincoln.
I have this feeling that had Mr. Buchan been around today and asked to describe that current man in office, he would take up his pen and think and put it down and take it up and think and put it down and finally, give it up.
What can one do when your subject lives outside any moral atmosphere.
the greatest city, the greatest nation, nothing … like us ever was
It has happened before. Strong men put up a city and got a nation together, And paid singers to sing and women to warble: We are the greatest city, the greatest nation, nothing like us ever was.
And while the singers sang and the strong men listened and paid the singers well and felt good about it all, there were rats and lizards who listened … and the only listeners left now … are … the rats … and the lizards.
And there are black crows crying, “Caw, caw,” bringing mud and sticks building a nest over the words carved on the doors where the panels were cedar and the strips on the panels were gold and the golden girls came singing: We are the greatest city, the greatest nation: nothing like us ever was.
The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,” And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. And the only listeners now are … the rats … and the lizards.
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind, #3 by Carl Sandburg as published in Smoke and Steel in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1970).
We don’t carry One Dollar bills any more but I had Professor back in college where I studied United States History who gave a one hour lecture based on the back of the One Dollar Bill.
He hit on the In God We Trust and pointed out the Mason’s All Seeing Eye at the top of the unfinished pyramid.
Then he hit on Novus ordo seclorum and that meant, The New Order of the Ages.
And finished with Annuit Coeptis or God has approved our undertaking.
Well sir, it has happened before.
The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,”
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are … the rats … and the lizards.
I will also mention the Great Seal of the United States.
Notice the Eagle looks towards the olive branches.
This was a change made by President Truman after WW2.
Had anyone in the current administration had any education in the Presidency, they might have caught and changed that too.
doing the small things trivial matters of heart, near things of this living
In a letter to his brother, EB White wrote, “I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace.” (Letters of EB White, New York: Harper and Row, 1976).
And I thought, if I changed just a few words …
I discovered a long time ago that doing small things of the day,
the trivial matters of the heart,
the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the best kind of creative work which she could accomplish with sincerity and grace.
Would be a fitting description of the role my wife has played in the kaleidoscopic lives we live with the kaleidoscopic lives of our children and grand children.
Because she does for me, the kids and the grand kids, the small things of the day.
The trivial matters of the heart.
The inconsequential but near things of this living.
The best kind of creative work which she accomplishes with sincerity and grace.
mighty effort to rigidify society to protect the top
Adapted from the book, The Road Home by Jim Harrison (New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988) where Mr. Harrison writes:
It struck me for the thousandth time that when you were on the move you noted the bottom third,
at least a third it seemed had become social mutants and were scratching along as minimum-wage menial laborers and without any reliable way to get anyplace else for a fresh look;
those in Washington who could help simply had never noticed these people,
that there was something about the xenophobic power trance in politics that made them unable to extrapolate any other reality than the effort toward reelection.
They were making a mighty effort to rigidify the society to protect the top, and the bottom third were being openly sacrificed.
It struck me as I read this how hard folks who have ‘got there’ work to maker sure their place is secure rather than look to help anyone else ‘get there’, where ever your ‘there’ is.
Tom Wolfe writes in Back to Blood how the simple act of being able to gain access to a road through the ‘Owners Gate’ gave satisfaction to rich people as they passed the long line of cars in the ‘Employees/Guest’ Gate.
Me?
I am with Bob Dylan and got nothing so I got nothing to lose as I continue to bankroll my kids best I can one my way to bankruptcy so its easy for me to say we should remember the poor.
So it was with some satisfaction when I read in today’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd’s column, My Ted Talk, as she recounted the life and times of Mr. Ted Turner.
Mr. Turner was rich and he knew it but he lived a life that, in contrast to other rich lives currently in the news cycle, lived free of law suits and court filings.
Mr. Turner was BIG.
And I am not sure he was ever small in the ways that get you negative headlines aside from his manic Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way mantra.
For me, he was that sailor guy who won the America’s Cup sailing races for the New York Yacht club, owner the Atlanta Braves and created CNN.
The mouth from the south but also seemed to be real if you know what I mean.
Ms. Dowd writes …
He was generous — another quality missing from many modern plutocrats. In 1996, at his friend Tom Brokaw’s urging, I called Turner to write a column on a pet peeve of his: the parsimony of fellow billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
Turner had, two years earlier, forked over $200 million to charity. He told me that he empathized with the fear of giving away so much money that you would fall off the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans.
But he challenged his peers — or “ol’ skinflints,” as he called them — to shut down that fear and open up their purse strings.
He suggested a list focused on who did the giving rather than the having, proposing an “Ebenezer Scrooge Prize” to embarrass stingy billionaires and a “Heart of Gold Award” to honor the biggest givers.
“Scrooge felt a lot happier when he saved Tiny Tim and bought the turkey for the poor family, right?” he said. The column I wrote spurred Michael Kinsley, then the editor of Slate, a pioneering online magazine, to start the Slate 60, a list of the most generous philanthropists. The following year, he donated $1 billion to the U.N.
Now lets do some creative imagining and imagine that current man in office saying, “Scrooge felt a lot happier when he saved Tiny Tim and bought the turkey for the poor family, right?“
