The Evolutionary Path

Sometimes I feel like I am becoming cynical in my dotage. Fortunately there are still enough pleasant surprises to foil my falling into a cynicism laced miasma. Recently I was chewing the fat (which is maybe my best skill) with a Mennonite gentleman for whom I had done some work. When you do work for a Mennonite you can rest assured that he has already done everything he knows to do and only the hard stuff is left. Anyway, our conversation turned to matters more esoteric and I said to him that I had decided my true calling was to be a philosopher. He looked at me seriously and asked why I thought that and I told him that I thought about things a lot and that it didn't require a degree as far as I knew. He asked me what kind of things I thought about and I told him that my philosophical musings took me far and wide. He nodded sagely and said, “me, too.”

Many of you know that my musings often take a political tack. I don't think of them as overtly political but more of a social consciousness nature. Being of a certain philosophical mindset those dissonant thoughts often coalesce into a form that is misunderstood by many and ridiculed by quite a few too.

My entire life I have believed that humans are innately capable of being rational people and if one's arguments are cogent and persuasive enough that one's mind could be changed. I have begun to call that premise into question. I have encountered quite a number of people who refuse to accept rationality and instead cling to a notion and seem incapable of being swayed. When I present a premise or argument it is as if I have said nothing and when pressed for facts to support their premise they seem to be able to offer either nothing or something easily refuted. The percentage of minds I have been able to change is so small as to be infinitesimal. Now I know that you may say that I always think I am right and that is absolutely true. But I also believe that I am capable of changing my mind when faced with irrefutable facts that demand a different position.

There has been a lot written about the human mind and how our minds reach conclusions that are strongly held. Much of it is attributed to an ancient inclination to tribalism which was at one time an evolutionary survival trait. We banded together to increase our safety and to repel others who would endanger us. We are unaware of it usually but we still retain many of those traits it being that we simply have not had enough time to begin to lose those traits. The evolution of inherent traits can often take much longer than we have had time to change. Given that argument, and it seems reasonable, our notion of free will and our ability to make rational choices in self governance can be called into question. I suspect that in time our inclination to tribalism will wane and we will become evolutionarily more equipped to tasks that involve making decisions beyond those that affect us directly and which may require us to view benefits of a society as a whole.

I am faced with this dilemma in our current political discourse. To me one position is logical and supported by facts and the competing argument is ruled by emotion. It is never as simple as that but it seems that many are unable to bring cognition to bear and will reject any attempt to query them about their references.   Often only by asserting the falsity of the other. My lifelong assumption of innate rationality seems to be in error and if it is then what are we to make of our lauded ability to decide our own paths? Is it simply evidence of an evolutionary path that will eventually lead us either to a better existence or return us to a prior state? An evolutionary dead end so to speak.

Often I speculate on the FOUNDERS. I place that word in all caps to emphasize the reverence in which we hold them. They were mighty thinkers, products of the relatively new period of enlightenment but it should be remembered that much of their discourse took place in taverns over copious quantities of ale and that is fertile soil for grandiose thoughts. However, they led us to revolution which we celebrate as the throwing off the yoke of King George but which was in many cases just rattling over philosophy. It is estimated that at the beginning of the Revolutionary War only about a third of the people really wanted to separate from Great Britain. Most thought things were pretty good if the Brits would just let us ply our trade as we wished and have a little self governance. We all know how that turned out and the grand experiment in self governance began. No matter how we gussy it up it still comes down to opinions strongly held whether valid or not. We have made decent choices as often as not and I suspect it is the moribund state of bureaucracy that keeps the wheels from flying off. Self governance seems to be guided by the law of averages that allows us to be right as often as not. How I wish there existed a means of debating these great questions in order to winnow out the chaff and bring revelation to light but we have yet to develop the political will to do it.

My Take is that it takes great perseverance to pursue the path of vision and not succumb to the comfort of tribalism. What are your thoughts on this matter?

Party Politics

Debbie Wasserman Shultz.

There is lots of furor right now over the behavior of the current Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Shultz. From what I can tell it's the people who supported Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination that are the most offended. Bernie has been alleging unequal treatment by the committee for quite some time and it appears he was right. It comes as no surprise to me now and I found it a credible accusation then given that Clinton and Wasserman Shultz are friends. I don't know if it was direct discrimination but I'm sure there was at least a passive preference by the DNC for Hillary Clinton. The DNC is supposed to equally support all Democratic candidates without preference but there is a little more to the imbroglio than that.

Bernie is a registered Independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate. Why does he do this? Why doesn't he just go it alone? The reason is that there is advantage in allies, in having numbers of people who will help you further your goals. Bernie declared as a Democrat and was allowed to campaign as a Democrat by the DNC. The DNC did not have to allow this but it did. Bernie was permitted to participate in the debates as a Democrat and to seek delegates as a Democrat. Why didn't he just do it as an Independent? Because it would have been impossible to have participated as a major candidate that way. He chose to forego that route and be governed by DNC rules which he found to be somewhat stifling.

Now, unfair though it may be, there were those in the DNC who did not see Bernie as a true Democrat. He had not placed himself on the line for Democratic causes and Democratic candidates. Most of the time he was not even a Democrat so it is easy to understand why a person charged with furthering the aims of the Democratic Party may not be so obliging. On the other hand, Hillary has a long history of supporting Democratic causes and candidates and has raised gobs of money for the party. When one looks at the issue in this light the picture becomes a bit clearer. Debbie Wasserman Shultz's aim is to put a Democrat in the White House and a Democrat that is clearly defined as a Democrat. Her assessment was that Bernie could not win and Hillary could.

So, what did the DNC do that created disadvantage for the Bernie Brigade? Things like scheduling debates, publicity and maybe even pressure to drop out. But Bernie has run a remarkable campaign that has energized young voters and new voters and has managed to raise millions of dollars from largely small contributions. It was the kind of campaign that we like to think is still possible and the Bernie Brigade feels cheated. Well, they were. Maybe not cheated out of the nomination because he was trounced in the South and lost some other very significant contests but perhaps cheated out of some deserved dignity and respect.

But the real issue here is not that Bernie was disrespected and cheated but, rather, the state of party politics in the USA these days. Political parties came about quite early in the history of the republic. John Adams was notoriously against them but Jefferson and others saw the advantage of banding together to increase power to nominate. The lust for power and the advantages of having allies led to political parties and we have had them ever since. For the most part it has been a contest between two parties whatever they may have been called unlike our cousins across the sea and to the north who use an parliamentary system in which many parties can flourish and compromises are made to bring about a majority. I don't see that as any better than ours and perhaps more disruptive. Parties have worked fairly well. Until recently the leaders of the parties were able to enforce adherence to party objectives and legislation but with the death of earmarks and the rise of instant communication the means of discipline and the surety of being discovered have had a profound influence.

Not being able to reward compliant members with earmarks has freed the legislators to seek reward in another way and that way has been by massive lobbying forces that define a legislative preference and fund it with unseen cash. Those who will not align themselves with the lobbyists suddenly find themselves the subjects of negative campaigns and a lack of money with which to mount a campaign.

It seems that the bugaboo is the money that corrupts the campaigning and legislative processes. Without those influences the legislators and campaigners would have to actually plead for the approval of the voters which, ideally, is the way it is supposed to work. The parties can be seen to facilitate legislation for without them there would be endless debate and a great din of voices. The parties allow for the movement of legislation when there may be enough support that it has a chance of succeeding. But these processes have also been corrupted by House and Senate rules of self governance which may prevent debate and amendments. The so called Hastert rule which forbids the GOP from bringing a vote on any issue without a majority of that caucus is a stumbling block that prevents non-partisan agreement. Whoever in control of the Senate controls what comes up for debate and what does not. Harry Reid was notorious for that and the GOP now won't allow debate to confirm a Supreme Court nomination. The rules must be changed.

My Take is that Debbie Wasserman Shultz is simply the face of a more divisive problem. The cancer of campaign funding and the archaic rules of the House and Senate. Change these and the problem goes away.

Tragedy and Confusion

The killings, whatever name you call them by, in St. Paul, Baton Rouge and Dallas are horrendous. The overload of the killings occurring on successive days boggled the mind and made it very difficult to express oneself without allowing prejudices to play a part. If you will look and examine each incident you will see that the relevant issues are few and they are the same issues that we have been struggling with for several years now.

Firstly look at “Black Lives Matter.” The name does not suggest that only black lives matter but that they matter as much as others. The incidence of police assaults and killing of African-Americans is statistically much higher than with Caucasians. The assertion that there is a different standard of treatment for African-Americans seems to be obvious. This proven fact is the central point of conflict in our recent violence. We have seen African-Americans stopped, manhandled and killed. Even when the person is guilty of a crime the level of violence used to subdue the suspect is over the top. In many cases it seems clear that a deescalation of violent maneuvers was possible and the choice was made to use force and even when force has been used it has culminated in deadly force. In some cases it appears that deadly force was applied when there was no actual threat.

It has to be made clear that police are the protectors of the people and guardians of a civilized society. They should be part of that society and not enemies of it. The people should be able to look on them with respect and appreciation and most, by far, do just that. But the police are thrust into situations that causes them to act in a fraction of a second and make the right decision. Is that decision influenced by a miscalculation of racial threat? It seems to be just that.

In the use of deadly force the police are held to a standard that seems ridiculously low. In most jurisdictions it is only necessary that the officer genuinely fear for his life. In Cleveland, St. Paul, Baton Rouge, Baltimore and other cities it appears disingenuous to claim that standard was a reality. But the perception of fear by the officer seems to be the linchpin. The bar should be higher than that. It is a rare occasion that a police officer has been held to have responded illegally. Yes, it's a job fraught with danger. Yes, decisions must be made in a split second. But those decisions must be right. If the police are perceived by the people as using one standard for Caucasians and another for African-Americans then the relationship between the police and the people falls apart.

The shootings of the police officers in Dallas weren't caused by Black Lives Matter except as it existed in the mind of this one African-American ex-soldier. In his mind, however deranged it was, it was time to take the battle to the streets. Black Lives Matter has been a largely non-violent movement focused on gaining equality of treatment under the law. What we saw in Dallas was murder but in the mind of the murderer it was revolution against the oppressive white society. What we see with the Black Lives Matter movement is revolution also but one that expresses non-violence.

So, the goal of the Black Lives Matter movement has been clouded by the actions of a black man in Dallas. What he did was no service to the movement, rather it has harmed it by inciting more hate of the African-American community. They are not to blame. In Dallas the police surrendered their lives to protect those participating in the Black Lives Matter march and that is as it should be. They gave their blood and lives to protect the people. They deserve great honor but it must not cause us to be lax in our pursuit of justice for all.

If we can put away our spite and dangerous rhetoric long enough it is critical that we, as a people, discuss and determine what kind of force we are going to accept to keep the peace and protect the people. Angry voices and racial bias must be put aside in an effort to come up with some usable and enforceable standards for proper use of police force. The inequality of the application of force must not be allowed to continue to exist. This is not a battle between conservatives and liberals, law enforcement and crime or cops and people. It is a matter of public justice and equality for all. It is serious business and we must deal with it without the usual partisan clownishness that we so often see.

It bears mentioning that the weapon used was not an assault type weapon as we currently think of them. It did hold 10 rounds and it would be better if the limit was 5. But we have to recognize that without that gun those people are still alive. All of them. But, in addition to this there is the matter of using a robot to deliver a bomb. No matter how you color it this was the use of a drone to kill an American citizen on American soil. How long before some agency flies a little helicopter in the window to kill someone? Lots of people say we must have guns in order to be able to revolt against an oppressive government. My Take is this. This is what revolution looks like.

 No Jail for Hillary

The Hillary Haters have had a tough couple of years. The outcome of eight (count 'em) investigations by various committees have cleared her of any culpability in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. Now comes the investigation by the FBI of the issue of her using a private server to handle her emails and it also finds that there is no evidence of anything warranting prosecution. If Social Media is any indication the Democrats won't have to worry about Trump winning the election in November. By then most Republicans with any passion will have died from heart attacks or dehydration from all the frothing at the mouth.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (rep) S.C.

There is no point in trying to use rationale and reasoning to point out the factors that led to these decisions. The Hillary Haters are not interested in rationale, they will be satisfied with nothing short of blood. The GOP allowed the fringe elements to provide the passion for their party under the false assumption that they could be controlled. They had no idea that there were so many of them until they started losing their own jobs. According to Donald Trump they ain't seen nothing yet. Those dastardly Republicans who have not become part of his fawning posse are targeted and have no chance at being reelected due to their reticence according to his edict.

There have been interviews done and articles written explaining how the presumption of innocence and the pesky thing about proof bear on the decisions made by those who are charged with that task. It is not enough just to take Rush Limbaugh at his word (why would anyone do that) or to believe that Sean Hannity is anyone even approaching a reputable source. Allegations don't do the trick no matter how many times you say them.

FBI Director Comey

Director Comey, who was an Assistant Attorney General under President Bush 43 proved to me that he is not beholden to any political power when he refused to be bullied by Presidential Counselor Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card into signing off of the legal justification for acts of torture committed under President Bush's administration. Only a man with a righteous sense of justice could face down that kind of pressure. It is to his commendation that President Obama appointed him Director of the FBI at a time when uncommon ability was required and he has acquitted himself honorably. I have disagreed with some of his statements but never his reasoned judgment. Now, because he once again did the honorable thing, he is called before Congress like a schoolboy to take a whipping and he took it with honor maintaining his composure and confidence. Legislators who once covered him with praise now accuse him of succumbing to the mysterious, magical power of the Clintons and soiling his pristine reputa

tion. The spectacle is nauseating to watch and a poor example to the world of what our political system is capable of. And now it seems that everyone on Social Media is an expert in investigations along with being a Constitutional scholar.

No, it will do no good to try to reason with these people. They are already aswoon over that protector of political incorrectness and stalwart defender of American borders who can say the most outrageous things and only those in the GOP who have failed to follow (as of yet) are even slightly distressed. Most of the rest realize that it would take something incomprehensible to deny Hillary Clinton the White House this time. The things most likely to be incomprehensible are more outrageous (the word is used so much now it loses significance) utterances for the mouth of Donald Trump. Most recently he was caught praising Saddam Hussein for being good at killing his own people. Perhaps people should be a little uneasy with having a President with those proclivities.

It is going to be a long, ugly summer. At the conventions it is expected that the Democrats will see protest from those Bernie supporters and they have some valid points to make. Bernie is doing a great job of withholding his blessing until he has squeezed every bit of value from it. The Republicans still have rumors floating about of a “Dump Trump” movement. It is scandalously tempting but if it happens it will fracture the GOP so badly that it may take 3 or 4 election cycles to restore it. Some are saying that this is the death of the GOP but I doubt that.

Hillary Clinton

Look, Ms. Clinton is far from perfect. Problem is that she has lived for forty years in the public eye and she has gathered up legions of haters. She has a lengthy record to peruse and anyone who cares can make an educated guess at what she would do as President. She has some things in her past I am uneasy with and I hope she has learned a lot from President Obama about restraint in using military power. Her opponent has very little to study of his public record and what can be studied is not what should be considered to be qualities for a President. He has made no policy statements to contradict anything that Ms. Clinton has said other than to call people names and act like the child you always thought needed a good spanking. He is outlandish.

My Take? Ms. Clinton has pulled some boners but the choice is clear.

Brexit v. Clinton-Trump

The recent unbelievable and irrational vote in Great Britain to leave the European Union should be a warning shot across the bow of the Clinton campaign for the Presidency of the United States. There are significant differences between the two countries that will ameliorate a direct comparison but there are enough similarities to warrant a cautionary outlook.

It appears that the vote in Britain is the result of a large turnout, over 70% of the electorate voted, with the older generations voting predominantly to leave while the younger portion of the electorate voted to remain in the union. It is just that they did not turn out in sufficient numbers to win although it seems that the vote could have gone the other way had they done so.

The correlation between the Brexit vote and our Presidential vote is not a direct one but rather one that can somewhat accurately gauge the sentiment of much of the electorate. I don't think that I have ever seen an electorate so riled up and disgusted with the inability of government to get things done. That frustration is expressed in different ways and in favor of different solutions and candidates but the root cause can be traced to a common source. For over 30 years now the middle class has been under attack from what seems to be all directions. It is a complex set of equations that have led us to the point that both of our political parties are claiming the system is rigged to favor the wealthy and statistics support that. The richest 1% of the population controls over 80% of the wealth in this country and they have convinced many that it is the result of government regulation. They have convinced people that anyone can realistically aspire to achieve great wealth and many of those people resist regulation designed to return a portion of that wealth to them.

Great Britain and much of the rest of the world is no different. The richest 62 people in the world control more wealth than the entire remainder of the world. You may say, “well, they worked for it” and that is most certainly not the truth. They have attained great wealth by using their wealth to convince legislators and others to pass favorable legislation to ensure more profits and the people know it. Voters in both major parties are upset that the representatives that they elect pay them no heed when it comes to voting for legislation that has the opportunity to make lives better. Even though the disaffected from both parties are disgusted they see the solutions to their problems differently. Indeed, they see the causes for those problems differently which gives rise to the virulent nature of the campaigns.

Those who identify as conservatives see immigration as a major issue. They love it when Trump calls people names and threatens to deport them all. When he stokes the fires of nativism they see our culture as being under attack from all comers. When there is an attack by terrorists anyplace in the world they see red that we still allow Muslims to enter our country even though we are forbidden to consider religion as a discriminating factor.

Those who identify as liberal see the wealth gap and the presence of great sums of corporate money as a cancerous influence on our democracy that results in favorable treatment for the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class and those who would aspire to that classification. They see greater government regulation as an answer and a return to higher taxation of the wealthy as a means to begin to restore infrastructure and create jobs for the people.

It is uncommon for there to be such anxiety and furor among the people and yet see so wide a disparity in the range of solutions. In the past it was simple to identify an issue and candidates were obliged to define policy solutions to address those issues. In these days the system for political campaigns has been turned topsy-turvy and we, as a people, have not figured out how to deal with it. The people have expressed their displeasure but their representatives choose to ignore them confident that they can push the correct buttons to achieve reelection. They perceive, correctly, that as long as they can keep a public persona that appeals to their electorate they are free to do whatever they wish as legislators or even nothing at all. Rather than being good at one's job the defining criteria for reelection has become more one of public relations.

No one, including me expected Donald Trump to be in the elevated position that he is but, believe it or not, here he is. Just about everyone expected Hillary Clinton to be in the position that she is despite a strong and spirited run by Bernie Sanders which revealed the underlying anger of the Democratic Party.

So, here we are, barely more than four months from electing a new President, and the electorate is in turmoil. We certainly can't expect most media outlets to be useful in helping us to make decisions since media is also in the game of public perception. Turmoil and conflict are the lifeblood of their ratings and service to the republic, the reason they were granted such extraordinary protection by our Constitution, cannot be expected.

So, where does that leave us? My Take is that we are left in a position to try and understand issues that are complicated and internationally important. A job that we, as individuals, are poorly suited for. It will be incumbent upon us to be reflective and uncommonly sensible, something that we are not particularly known for. Anything else and we will look like Great Britain but exponentially worse.

Birds and the Human Condition

My wife, who is an inveterate worrier, remarked to me this morning how the life of birds is so simple. I think she may have been comparing her worries to that of the birds feasting at my bird feeders. Anyway, I responded that, yes, all they had to worry about was food and procreation. It seems like an ideal life but I remind you that if anyone you knew did the same you might not have flattering things to say about them. So, I took the opportunity to philosophize a bit and set off on a discourse on how we, humans, were once as the birds, seeking only food, shelter and procreation. Then as we began to find ways to feed ourselves more than abundantly our brains became free to engage in more far reaching concepts such as tool making which made our lives even easier freeing up more brain space for more esoteric endeavors such as art.

Now, I told her, we were at a critical juncture because we had a choice. Either keep life simple or move on into the brave new world. Sometimes I'm not sure we made the right decision and maybe should have taken the road the chimpanzees did but we didn't know then what we know now and so off to the adventure we went. What happened was that we found that by living in communities we could share the work load and live life large. What could go wrong? Right?

But now we had a small group of people with pretty basic needs but someone decides that it is way easier to allow someone else to do the work and just take his stuff away from him. He decides that about procreation also creating ill feelings among the people in the group who really didn't like that person taking their stuff and sneaking around when they were out hunting and foraging.

That is when a more advanced person came up with the idea that we should have a set of rules that told us what we could and could not do and if anyone broke the rules then the rest of the people would make him wish he hadn't. Pretty simple, right? What could go wrong?

Then they had to decide who would decide when the rules were broken and what was to be done about it. So, they had a choice to make. Now, remember, this is way before democracy so the strongest guy and some buddies decided they would be the right ones to do this. The rest of the people were kind of OK with that until some of the strongest guy's buddies decided they should get a larger share of the booty and, by the way, a larger share of the booty, also.

This is about where we find ourselves today. Oh, we've accumulated more stuff and ways to get stuff. We have lifted this ancient compulsion to a fine art. We've created more and more cultural groups etc. that have their own sets of rules and we are still searching for the one ring to rule them all. I mean, one set of rules that everyone can agree on so we'll stop trying to take away the other group's stuff.

So, I told my wife, here we are with our big brains and lots of rules that philosophers figured out by starting with the natural man (who was like the birds) who just took what he needed to survive and working their way up to our complex societies and all kinds of art, some of which most people even understood. Along the way the different philosophers thought about the different ways people could try to make rules and decide who is obeying and who is not. We now call this governing but I think that may be a charitable assessment.

Some of the philosophers called themselves libertarians since they thought that people should be free to gain whatever they could and not have to share it with others. This is probably the closest to pure humanism of any of the prevalent philosophies today.

Others called themselves socialists and thought that the very best of humanity could be only achieved by appealing to our higher calling and sharing all things equally. Well, sort of, because a lot of the time the strong guy and his buddies still thought they deserved more and the lazy people really couldn't see much point in working hard.

Some were capitalists who thought sort of like the libertarians but they could see how it didn't look good to have people begging for bread and dying in the streets so they felt like they could kick in a little to keep themselves from feeling too guilty.

So, then the rule makers (we can call them governors or some such thing) thought maybe we could take some ideas from one group and some from another and create something that didn't seem so stark and brutal. The philosophers thought long and hard on that one and came up with all sorts of ideas. Kingdoms, Religious Orders, Oligarchy and so on but for some the idea called democracy seemed like a good idea. This way the people could decide who would make the rules and who would enforce them and everyone would be happy.

I looked over and my wife's eyes had glazed over and she had this look on her face like WILL HE EVER SHUT UP? I agreed with her that the birds that we feed at our feeders do indeed have it made.

My Take is that sometimes you have to gauge your audience when choosing to pontificate.

You Have Got To Be Kidding Me

With the endorsement by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the third man in line to the presidency, of Donald Trump to be the nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States the charade is complete. Just last week Senator Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, declared that Trump is deserving of the nomination since he has obviously gone out and got the most votes. He then said that he would support the Trump candidacy.

The startling acceptance of Donald Trump as the candidate of one of the two major political parties in the United States speaks loudly to the bankruptcy of ideas in the Republican Party. To think that in this tremendously complicated and interconnected world the irrational blurbs that come from this man can stand in for policy statements reveals the intention of the Republican Party to do whatever shameless thing it may take to win the White House. It is unworthy of the long history of the Grand Old Party.

Beginning with the Tea Party, which the GOP handlers allowed to speak on the big stage with more rational people, the groundwork was laid for those who prefer to grind democracy to a halt rather than seek ways forward with other elected officials. The acceptance of those heedless stone throwers then created a favorable climate for the neo-fascist element to crawl out of the woodwork and the combination of those forces have propelled Donald Trump to the nomination. It strains the imagination to think that there are that many people who think that he makes even a reasonable approximation of one who is suited for the position of “most powerful man in the world” which would not be out of place with the “most powerful ego in the world.”

From his promise to build a wall on the border and make Mexico pay for it to his profound ignorance in stating that it is good for the United States to be unpredictable there have been dozens of incendiary statements that surely have the rest of the world wondering what in the world is going on in the United States. I am reminded of a statement by Zbigniew Brzezinski replying to Joe Scarborough where he says “your ignorance of the subject is so profound it is embarrassing.” Yes, it is embarrassing for the United States to be portrayed as imbecilic but it is, in a more profound sense, frightening. To think that a man who has not uttered one coherent proposal on domestic policy or foreign policy other than to proclaim that he will be the greatest can seek, with some hope of success, to rise to the office of President of the United States reveals the lack of sophistication of those who seek to govern themselves.

The leaders of the Republican Party are not ignorant men and women. I believe that they are fully aware of the beast that lays before them but are incapable of surrendering power to deny that beast the victory that will effectively change forever what the GOP is. It is an unfortunate and demented tale of the lust for power and the hubris to think there is yet some hope of taming the beast.

Donald Trump has intimated that he would not be against the idea of the use of nuclear weapons in the battle against ISIL. I suspect there are quite a few of our fellow citizens who are also of this mind. What if the President orders the use of these weapons to wipe Raqaa off the map? Should the generals obey him or should they refuse to act on the orders of the Commander in Chief? Not only would this be a military crisis but it would be a Constitutional crisis because, effectively, it could lead to a coup. In the long and distinguished history of our Republic such a prospect has never been considered. The very thought of having Donald Trump commanding our armed forces is anathema to thoughtful people. On the economic front he has made statements that he would not be opposed to a trade war to make American goods more competitive in the world. The idea that we want to be competitive economically is not in dispute the the heavy handed way in which he deals is not the way that cooperative economies survive and prosper.

The Republican Party has long insisted that its platform consists of a fiscally prudent and constrained path but now seems quite accepting of this brandishing of power to subjugate economies that we have asked to look to the United States for an example of how to live in the world. It is time for the leaders of the GOP to risk their jobs and reclaim their party.

The goodwill of the world toward the United States of America has not come from our willingness to bludgeon others into complying with our will but, rather, by the largess we have been willing to show to those less fortunate. It is due to the protection offered by the United States to prevent other aggressive countries from encroaching on those unable to defend themselves. We have not always been perfect but we have been the best available. Would we abandon that and encourage our allies to seek other friends? This is the future we face.

My Take is that it is mind boggling that our country is facing such a contrived crisis at a time when we are, without a doubt, the most powerful country in the world. How could one of the two major political parties come to a point where the lust for power exceeds the welfare of the nation?