No One Turns Me Madder Than You

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You say you love me, 

So why am I blue?

You think you own me,

But that aint true.

No matter what I try to do,

No one turns me madder than you. 

I give you money,

And all of my time. 

But it don’t stop you, 

From all your lyin.

No matter what I try to do,

No one turns me madder than you.

You talk about me, 

To all of your friends.

And what I’m hearing,

Deeply offends.

No matter what I try to do,

No one turns me madder than you. 

I ain’t done nothin,

To cause you pain.

But all your talkin,

Drives me insane.

No matter what I try to do,

No one turns me madder than you. 

So please I’m beggin,

Stop all your games.

Puttin me down,

With your false claims.

No matter what I try to do,

No one turns me madder than you.

I say I’m leaving,

You knew I would. 

And I say this time, 

That it’s for good.

No matter what I try to do,

No one turns me madder than you. 

The Buggy-Whip's Revenge

One of the Allan Lichtman's favourite claims about his 13 Keys to the White House system is that it's robust and time-tested, developed from looking at 165 years of presidential elections, he claims, 'since the days of the buggy whip.' He uses 'the buggy-whip' phrase in response to critics who ask if it's possible whether technology will force him to change the system, for example, because of the way information is conveyed today compared to earlier years. Lichtman has argued that the Keys cannot be changed on the fly. He says, 'the Keys worked before there was radio, before there was television, before there were computers and the internet.' Actually no it didn't. 

The Keys have actually only worked since 1984, Reagan's reelection, the first election he predicted correctly. Exactly forty years later, with the unexpected result of the 2024 election which the Keys (or more accurately Allan using the Keys) got wrong, he is forced to reconsider his position and claims. And I began to think about what he missed and why. 

Lichtman has come to the conclusion that the main reason the Keys failed this time was because of the  impact of disinformation, which he calls 'unprecedented'. His reasoning is that the Keys are based on the performance of the incumbent government not the campaign. But that basis gets called into question when voters are unable to accurately assess the performance of the governing party. If they are besieged by misinformation and disinformation it makes a fair assessment impossible. The speed and pervasiveness of disinformation is why he believes we are living through 'unprecedented' times. 

But are we?  

If disinformation is the problem, then first off, he'd have to admit that his correct predictions going back to at least 2016 were just lucky. Disinformation was certainly prevalent back then. Lichtman has argued that it wasn't as prevalent as it is today, which may or may not be true. But then he'd have to explain exactly when the disinformation tipping point occurred and why.

I began to think that Lichtman actually has it backward. He's wrong today because he is right, in a way. He's right to diagnose the problem of the Keys as being the disinformation environment. But he's wrong to say that it's unprecedented. In fact, disinformation and bias was much worse a hundred years ago, and even worse at the time of 'the buggy-whip'. My guess is that the Keys would not have worked as a predictive system back then. I'd argue that the only reason why his system has worked at all since the early 80s is because most information was consumed in a centralized and more or less homogenous way since the advent of television. The era of mass-media through television was the first time that most Americans got their information in the same way and through only a handful of trusted sources that adhered to journalistic standards. The 'Walter Cronkite' era of news and information has not been the rule in American history, it's actually been more the exception.     

There have been several distinctive eras when Americans have lived with pervasive disinformation and inside information silos, and they were associated with political and social upheaval:

1. The Era of Radio (1914 - 1945)

The first massive technological shift in the widespread dissemination of information. With the rise of radio, governments and media outlets heavily regulated and censored news to rally public support and maintain morale during the two wars. News outlets leaned into nationalistic and, at times, propagandistic tones. War-time propaganda often left out nuanced perspectives, leaning heavily toward the government’s stance on both domestic and international issues. During World War II, news coverage was patriotic and promoted the Allies’ goals, with critical information about the war effort or allied mistakes often downplayed or omitted.

2. The Era of "Yellow Journalism" (1890s - early 1920s)

Yellow journalism was characterized by sensationalized stories, exaggerated headlines, and little regard for factual accuracy, with newspapers competing for readership, especially in rapidly growing cities. This era’s reporting often shaped public opinion through dramatic and often misleading coverage. For instance, yellow journalism played a significant role in stirring public support for the Spanish-American War in 1898.

3. The Partisan Press of the Early Republic (1780s - 1860s)

Newspapers during the early years of the United States were explicitly partisan. Papers were often funded by political parties or prominent politicians, and their primary role was to advocate for a particular political viewpoint rather than objective news reporting. Partisan newspapers played an essential role in political mobilization, with many acting as mouthpieces for emerging political parties (e.g., Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists, then later Federalists vs. Democratic-Republicans).

Many argue that today’s era represents a peak in news bias due to the sheer speed, reach, and personalization of information through social media and digital platforms. It's perhaps more accurate to say that information bias has ebbed and flowed throughout history. Rather than thinking our time is 'unprecendented', perhaps it's more instructive to take a deep dive into the preceding eras to explore how they have been impacted by information bias, and how they have responded to it.

trump 2.0 - A Good Thing

I'm strangely sanguine about trump 2.0. 

Part of it probably has to do with how in recent days I've become wary of the five-alarm fire mode that I get from my online information sources. Post-election, I'm more attuned to the fact that the outrage machine is as much a phenomenon of the center-left as it is of the far-right, and during the campaign it was on overdrive. These days I have my intellectual filters on. I'm trying to look at things with a bit of perspective.  

Part of it might also have to do with eating humble pie - I was so convinced that Harris was going to win the election, and trump was going to either be fitted with a prisoner monitoring anklet or spend the rest of his days fighting in the courts to stay out of jail. But instead we learned what we already knew, rich people don't often go to jail, and there are two justice systems one for the wealthy and well-connected and one for everyone else. It stings to see it confirmed for the umpteenth time, but in retrospect it's not that surprising. Trump has already achieved his main re-election goal: To stay out of jail. We had hoped otherwise, but we knew it was always very possible. 

I don't think this version of trump means America will sink into full-on authoritarianism. It's true that trump has autocratic aspirations, but let's face it, the guy is an unhealthy, disinterested octogenarian. He's got golf on his mind, not absolute power. He's not an ideologue with a strategy and program, like Victor Orban in Hungary. He covets all the trappings of success, wants money and fame and the image of power. But I think he's too venal and lazy to want the responsibilities and hassles associated with actually wielding power. You can already see this in his first picks for his Cabinet. A hodge-podge of characters, most of whom have no or little experience for their positions. Their main qualifications are that they look good on television (Peter Hegseth, Kristi Noem), straight out of central casting, as trump likes to say, and they were lapdog loyal to trump. It's always about image with trump, never substance. Substance is too much work. With trump there is always sure to be a lot of incompetence. And that's a good thing.

Don't get me wrong, I think trump 2.0 is going to be bad. Probably worse than his first term, but maybe only a little bit worse than Dubya Bush, who sunk America into a war from which it could not extricate itself for two decades. Bush was probably the most ignorant President of my lifetime until trump. He did a lot of damage. But unlike Dubya, trump is positively allergic to war. He is certainly capable of fumbling into one, that's true. He'll get a lot of pressure from his buddy Bibi to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, but I think he'll resist. On the foreign policy front, Putin will make a fool of him (it's already started), and the instant peace he claimed he could achieve in Ukraine and the Middle-East, will be exposed for the nonsense it always was. But hey, if trump is capable of bringing peace and security to the world, I'm all for it. That would be a good thing.

Trump's second objective this election, after staying out of jail, was always the grift. He will do whatever he can to leverage his office to make money in whatever way he can. This will likely mean selling access to foreign leaders, compromising national security in any number of ways, further enriching his friends and coterie of loyalists. This presidency will far exceed the corruption of his first term. But I suspect it will be on full display, or at the very least, easily uncovered. And that's a good thing.

Where trump will do his most damage is domestically, and especially to the people who voted for him. He's already effectively signaled his intention of handing the keys to the administration to Elon Musk who will be in charge of something called the Department of Government Efficiency, a non-governmental 'agency'. Elon views government as a bloated inefficient corporation. His objective, in the words of Speaker Mike Johnson, will be to 'take a blowtorch' to the adminstrative and regulatory state. Of course that means getting rid of, or severely cutting back on, all of the programs that benefit the most disadvantaged citizens. To quote Elon from the campaign, 'it will mean hardship in the short term'. I trust that Elon (and his partner in crime Vivek Ramaswamy) will do what he says they will do. I also expect trump will go full steam ahead on the deportations, the tariffs, and the tax cuts for the rich. The more successful the implementation of all this is (which is doubtful), the more it will effect and alienate a large part of trump's constituency and present a gaping opening for the Democrats. That's a good thing.

So all in all, a lot to be sanguine about. Of course, there are always surprises, and four years is a long time. Actually, I expect it will be two years that trump has full control of government and can do his most damage. I'm in a sit-back-and-watch mode, because I'm feeling like the more damage he and his crew do, the better it will be politically for the Democrats. And that's a good thing.

The Party of Radicals

So the Democrats are no longer the party of the working class. That seems to be the worrisome consensus of the political mavens and pundits. If they want to win elections they have to learn how to speak to working class voters again. It was always thought that wealthy and upwardly mobile people who have an interest in maintaining the status quo would vote Republican, and the working classes who are more interested in progressive policies that contribute to economic redistribution would vote Democratic. We're being told that has now reversed. Let's look at the evidence from recent elections: 

#1: Until this election, Democrats won the popular vote in every election since 2004. 

#2: Democrats won the working class vote in 2020 against trump.  

#3: Democrats received the endorsement of most major unions in 2024. 

You can slice and dice the results in any number of ways, but these data points suggest that it's not a 'working class problem' per se. Maybe we need to take a step back to get proper perspective. 

Traditionally, the Republican Party stood for promoting government restraint ie. less involvement in the lives of citizens, less taxes and less government regulation. They want more free-market enterprise, barrier-free international trade, and culturally more traditional (family, religious) values. The Democratic Party stood for the principle that government could be a force for good in society. They support government programs that make society more equitable and just, programs that help the economically disadvantaged and promote the rights of minorities. In the last 100 years it was the Democrats who were responsible for the two greatest efforts to re-shape American society; the 'New Deal' under FDR in the 1930s, and the raft of legislations under the banner of the so-called 'Great Society' of the 1960s enacted by LBJ (civil-rights etc.) In sum, the Republicans were deemed conservatives, the party associated with a go-slow, cautious approach to governance, and the Democrats were pegged as progressives, pursuing social and economic transformation. But is that actually the political dynamic? I think there may be another way to understand it. 

FDR's elections in the 1930s was a response to the excesses, scandal and economic mismanagement of the 'roaring' 1920s, a decade of Republican administration (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) which led to the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression (1929). Similarly, Obama's improbable election as the first African-American President in 2007 was preceded by the Great Recession financial crisis of 2007 after 8 years of the Republican George W. Bush administration. Even Reagan ran up huge budget deficits in the 1980s, and Clinton balanced the budget and ran surpluses. Historically-speaking, Republicans almost always make the economic messes that the Democrats find themselves having to clean up. In the process of political and economic housecleaning that follows the drunken Republican frat-party of spending and tax cuts, Democrats used their opportunity, not just to sweep the floor and throw out the trash, but also to re-arrange the furniture and put the house properly back in order. Democratic policies and programs have never been the political, economic and social engineering they are made out to be. They ensure greater systemic stability. 

Take Biden's victory in 2020 for example. I've argued that trump would have romped to victory in 2020 if not for the unforeseen economic disaster created by the Covid pandemic. Biden certainly didn't win the election because he ran a stellar campaign from his basement. It was a case of the American voter turning out in record numbers to mandate the Democrats, led by the supremely competent and experienced Joe Biden, to clean up the mess left by a Republican. Same old story. And he did a magnificent job. What was the Democrat's reward for putting the house back in order? The re-election of trump and the Republicans sweeping back into power. This is the ebb and flow of American politics.

Time and again, the Republicans have won elections by branding the Democrats as 'radicals'. It's classic projection. In truth, the Democrats have always been and remain the party of the working-class, the party of stability, the party of fiscal responsibility, and it's been the Republicans who have been the radicals. Trump isn't a break from that, he's a continuation, an updated version. The radicals are the ones who want to impose 200% tariffs on all imports. The radicals are the ones who want to deport 12 million 'illegals'. The radicals are the gun-toting cowboys who want to take away the bodily autonomy of women. The radicals are the ones who will pardon the mob that violently attacked the US Capitol and called for the hanging of the Vice-President. The radicals are the ones who want to put an anti-vaxxer in charge of national health policy, and do away with the Department of Education. The radicals are the jurists who confer an unconstitutional 'presumed immunity' on the President. The radicals are the ones who would elect a convicted felon to hold the highest office in the land, in charge of preserving and protecting the Constitution. The radicals want to implement Project 2025. 

And when the dust settles the Democrats will once again have to clean up the mess. If they are given the opportunity, that is. 

The Enemies List

As with so much in your personal life, so often politics comes down to mood. 

There was an inevitably about this election. One that I admittedly refused to acknowledge (because I don't believe we should be governed by mood). The Democrats and Harris (or Biden) were never going to win no matter what they did. It didn’t matter that they passed historic legislation on infrastructure, manufacturing and lowering drug prices. Legislation to relieve student debt, and historic investments in clean energy. It doesn’t matter Biden led the world in a coalition to help Ukraine fight against Putin's illegal war of aggression, and he strengthened and expanded NATO. It doesn't matter that Biden inherited an economy in total collapse, and notwithstanding the dire predictions of most economists that a recession was inevitable, piloted it to a soft landing, creating record numbers of American jobs. He is handing his successor an economy that is the envy of the world. He never got credit for any of it. The highest approval rating of Biden's presidency was the day he was inaugurated and basically dropped after that (it actually started dropping six weeks later, in mid-March). Biden had the shortest 'honeymoon' period in presidential history. Today his approval rating stands dismally in the mid thirties, almost historically low.   

The pandemic had a lot to do with it, and still does. I agree with Vlad Vexler (belatedly) that this election was the second term election that trump would have won handily had Covid not intervened. Biden rode pandemic anger and fear against trump to victory in 2020. The American people remained angry throughout the Biden administration, and trump has now rode that post-pandemic anger to victory in 2024. There was nothing the Democrats could do about it.

The 'To-Do List' versus the 'Enemies List' - a line from the Harris campaign that sums it up perfectly. Democrats always naively believe that Americans want their president to work on their behalf. But that premise is wrong, particularly in the post-pandemic period. If the Democrats failed at anything in this campaign, it's a failure of imagination: they could not imagine that Americans would prefer an Enemies List over a To-Do List. But they did. This election showed that Americans want a president who will be an avatar for their mood. One who expresses the anger, victimization and hostility they are feeling. It's not more complicated than that.  

I hope the Democrats, who are now going through an election post-mortem and 'soul-searching', don't draw the wrong conclusions. I've been hearing all sorts of nonsense from talking heads and pundits about how Democrats are no longer the party of the working class, or how they are out of touch with the average American. They ran a positive campaign that offered hope, optimism and solutions. A campaign that was supported by the largest unions in the country and addressed the concerns of the average family. But that campaign was beaten by a campaign that was underwritten by billionnaires and expressed anger, grievance and victimization. 

So what is to be learned from soul-searching? For one thing, I hope the Democrats learn that in this election there was nothing they could have done differently to win. 

I also hope the Democrats learn one important lesson from the Republicans, and that's to double-down on exactly who they are. The one thing I know about voters is that they hate inauthenticity. Democrats fundamentally believe that government can and should work to benefit the collective good. They believe government can solve problems. They are all about the To-Do List, and I hope whatever changes they decide to implement to fight future elections, it involves adding to that list. There will come a time soon when Americans want a President who enters the Oval Office carrying a To-Do List instead of an Enemies List.  

Getting it Wrong

Pretty much everyone got it wrong, terribly wrong. 

CNN released 7 battleground state polls in the last 48 hours before the election: 

Wisconsin - Harris 51%-46% (+6)

Michigan - Harris 48%-43% (+5)

Arizona - Harris 48%-47% (+1)

North Carolina - Harris 48%-47% (+1)

Pennsylvania - Harris 48%-48% (tied)

Nevada - Harris 47%-48% (-1)

Georgia - Harris 47%-48% (-1)

All very wrong. CNN was not alone.

All the professional pollsters got it wrong, some very very badly. Most, like Nate Silver, said it was essentially a coin toss. It wasn't a coin toss. In the final analysis the respected 538.com aggregate of polls had Harris ahead nationally by a little more than one percent. I know that this doesn't sound like much, and is well within the so-called statistical 'margin of error' - a euphemism for it could be off by as much as 6-8 points in either direction ie. pretty much useless. Turns out it was.   

J. Ann Selzer the lauded pollster whose forecasts of Iowa elections have been uncannily accurate for decades, got it horribly wrong. She came out with her final poll for the Des Moines Register on the weekend before the election showing Harris up by 3 points in a deep-red state trump won in 2020 by 8 points. The result sent shock waves through the pundit class. Trump ended up winning Iowa by more than 13 percent, a difference of 16 from Selzer's result.   

Another state maven Jon Ralston, editor of The Nevada Independent, is respected for understanding and accurately forecasting Nevada's unique voter patterns. He doesn't use mathematical modelling like Selzer, nonetheless, he wasn't shy to predict the outcome of this election to the tenth of a percent, with Harris winning 48.5 percent to trump's 48.2. His reasoning was that it all depended on how non-major-party voters break, and he believed they would break for Harris. He was way off. So far, trump is beating Harris by more than 4 percent in Nevada (the race hasn't been officially called yet).

Top data gurus got it terribly wrong too. Analyst Tom Bonier who runs a website called TargetSmart specializes in analyzing the early vote numbers. He said that the hard data of actual votes (not models of 'likely voters') showed a significant gap between women and men in voting, and the numbers indicated that the abortion issue was probably a huge motivator that could make the difference for Harris. It didn't. The gender gap was more or less a wash for both candidates.

So scientific modellers, the data analysts and the pundit/journalists got it completely wrong. Surely academics fared better. Well, a certain very prominent one didn't.

Allan Lichtman is the renowned historian some have called the 'Nostradamus of US elections'. He developed The 13 Keys to the White House which had an unblemised record of predicting the final result of presidential elections since the early 1980s (with one exception in 2000, the so-called 'hanging-chad' election decided by the Supreme Court that ended when the count was abruptly ordered stopped with a 536 vote margin in favour of George W. Bush). Lichtman brashly says that we can throw the polls in the trash because they aren't worth a damn thing. He was right about that. He claims that it's governance that matters, not the candidates - except a once in a lifetime superstar like FDR, Kennedy, or Obama - or campaigning. On the face of it, his method sounds questionable, because that would mean, in theory, campaigning could never change the outcome of an election, so what's the point of wasting all that time and resources? But his method, developed by examining 165 years of presidential election history - 'from the days of the buggy whip' as he puts it - ensures the robustness of his system over time. In September, before the debate (because debates don't matter) he announced that according to the 13 Keys, Harris was a shoo-in. This time his method was just as wrong as those useless polls. 

Notably, the online offshore betting markets turned out to be more accurate than the professional pollsters. I consider this purely serendipitous. 

The one respectable commentator who got it right was a fellow from the UK on YouTube named Vlad Vexler, who calls himself 'a baby public intellectual'. I started following him at the start of the war in Ukraine because he has a special interest in Russian politics and great insight into what makes Putin tick. Vexler said he thought trump always had the advantage, even after Biden left the race, and never wavered from his belief that trump would win. At one point, he even looked at Lichtman's 13 Keys and showed how the inventor could be mis-using his own system. He said he believed that the Keys actually predict a trump victory. As a social scientist/political philosopher, Vexler takes a broad historical view, believing that there are identifiable and undeniable trends that compel events. These forces cannot be easily taken off course (except by cataclysm, for example, a world war.) The salient political trend we are seeing for decades now, he argues, is 'democratic backsliding' precipitated by a retreat of the US from the global order it established after 1945. The force of this trend has been accelerating due in part to profound changes in the information environment. He calls the period we are experiencing, Post-Truth Populism. In 2020 he believed trump would be re-elected easily, if not for the global pandemic. But the pandemic didn't halt the historical trend of democratic backsliding. Rather it was a bump on the road, and therefore he predicted, failing another such major event, trump would handily win in 2024. He nailed it.  

Notwithstanding his expertise in Russian politics, I thought Vexler was completely off base. There was no way you could apply analytical tools about historical world events to the particularities of this US election. Turns out I was wrong, he could, and with accuracy.         

This is the 3rd election in a row  - 5th if you count the 2018 and 2022 mid-terms, especially the one where the 'red wave' never materialized - when the polls were inaccurate. Is it something about trump that makes his candidacy unique and difficult to model? Is it something about our unique information (and disinformation) environment that makes gathering accurate responses to polling unusually difficult? Is it a psycho-social phenomenon, like a herd mentality, in which analysts and pollsters are afraid to be too far outside the margins from their competitors, so they adjust their approach to be similar to others? Is it all of the above?

Whatever the answer(s) - and I don't have one - I can only say that in my experience, the social media algorithm seems to have a lot to do with the skewing. This election was a sort of litmus test for me. A test of my ability to stay objective and seek out accurate information on the state of the race so I could make up my own mind about the outcome. I failed the test miserably. I was caught in my own information bubble. All of my sources of data and analysis reinforced my hopes and beliefs about what I thought would happen. My opinions hardened. When one of my favourite commentators, someone who I respected tremendously for his insight, voiced a dissenting perspective, I thought he was off his rocker and paid him no further heed on the subject (although I'm still an avid watcher of his channel). He was right and I was wrong. The experience has taught me something meaningful about myself, and about the subtle and not so subtle dangers of the world we live in.

Deep Breath

The first time around, I thought the American people had chosen change, and that felt like explanation enough. Trump was the shiny new object, a relative unknown (except as a third rate celebrity), and there was a clear sense that people were willing to take a chance on someone different and entertaining over someone who’d been around a long time and seemed unappealing. But now, nine years later, that can’t be said. This time, the choice was as clear and stark as possible. No hedging, no excuses. Voters knew exactly who and what they were supporting—and they did so with more enthusiasm and in greater numbers than ever. And that’s what makes this election so difficult to swallow.

This time, the American people knowingly and enthusiastically endorsed hatefulness and division over joy and unity. They endorsed anger and grievance over positivity and hope. They endorsed vulgarity and dishonesty over civility and decency. They endorsed blame over personal responsibility. They endorsed the crass pursuit of wealth and power over humility and service. They endorsed selfishness over selflessness. They endorsed fear over optimism. They endorsed authoritarianism over freedom. 

And they rationalized their endorsements in a variety of banal ways. Some said it’s because they thought the price of eggs was too high. Others said it’s because he is better for Israel. The choice reveals very little about the chosen and a lot about the chooser. 

Expect a lot of hand wringing and blame over the next few days and weeks. Some will say the loss was attributable to strategy. Others will say it was the candidate and her performance. A friend of mine explained to me that the Democrats lost because they were too arrogant and didn’t listen. So I asked him, what part of their policy demonstrated they weren’t listening? Was it the tax breaks for the middle class? Was it the help for a down payment on a home? Was it childcare and healthcare assistance? Lowering prescription drug prices? Enhancement of the Affordable Care Act? I said to him, better yet, can you name a single policy that showed Trump was listening? 

I don’t buy any of it. 

I believe Harris ran a great campaign, nearly flawless. One of the best I have seen in my lifetime, second to Obama in 2008. I believe her message was pitch perfect and her policy proposals were well conceived and attractive to exactly the people they were designed and needed to reach; the middle class. I also think her opponent ran one of the worst, most appalling and distasteful campaigns in history. Fumbling and listless and disorganized. Second only to his terrible 2020 campaign. So what was the problem?

Well, today I’m thinking of Allan Lichtman, for whom I have particular sympathy. He, of the famous 13 Keys to the White House, who, after more than 40 years of nearly flawless prediction, finally got it wrong. Maybe, as Lichtman says, campaigns and candidates don’t really matter. Elections are ultimately about the performance of the governing party. And maybe that’s precisely what changed in unprecedented fashion this time. There was a paradigm shift (happening over the last few election cycles) that rendered his infallible system fallible. In effect, Lichtman was wrong by being right. It wasn’t the performance of the governing party that was missed, it was the perception of the performance of the governing party. By almost every metric that supposedly matters to voters, many that are measured by the 13 Keys, the Democrats have performed exceptionally well. While we were told a recession was inevitable after Covid, the Democrats managed a soft economic landing. Inflation is moderating, wages are up, unemployment is down, and the stock market is booming. Biden had a number of remarkable legislative achievements. So why do Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction? Why do they rate Biden so unfavourably? It’s almost as if huge chunks of the electorate are living in an alternate reality.

The one thing I heard over and over again during the campaign was ‘We don’t know enough about Harris’, ‘we don’t know her policies and agenda’. Strange considering that she’s been the Vice-President for four years, and was on television daily for three months during the campaign, including at a nationally televised debate in which she performed very well while her opponent acted like a doddering incoherent fool ranting about immigrants eating pets. She spoke at massive rallies in front of hundreds of thousands of people, and did all manner of media interviews. But I believe them when they say ‘we don’t know enough about her’.

Because in all likelihood, on their media ‘feed’ (the word always reminds me of pigs at a trough) she was nearly absent, while her rival was nauseatingly ubiquitous. And that’s the nature of our information environment. Trump was covered by every media outlet all the time. While Harris was only covered by the center-left half and intentionally either ignored or covered negatively by the others. Anecdotally - and I’m sure someone has done or will do a more scientific survey - Harris garnered a fraction of the media attention that Trump did during the campaign.

I suspect this is why the message never penetrated. Half the country lives in an impenetrable and self-reinforcing hardened information silo. Trump, the spotlight hog that he is, has mastered the recipe for being a magnet to all types of media all the time. Normie politicians like Harris may as well exist in this world as apparitions.

Of course, it still comes down to voters making choices. Making an informed choice always took some effort. Nowadays, the effort is Herculean. Wading into the turbulent seas of lies and disinformation takes extraordinary breath-holding effort and stamina like oyster diving for pearls. 

Scared and In Shock

Today I am in shock and I'm scared.

I am in shock because Americans chose to give an overwhelming mandate, including a victory in the popular vote, to the oldest president in US history, who is clearly suffering from a form of dementia, not to mention malignant narcissism, which will undoubtedly progress into his 80s. A lying, twice-impeached, indicted insurrectionist, convicted felon, fraudster and adjudicated rapist. Competence and character seem to mean nothing to Americans when they elect individuals to fill 'offices of public trust'. He was running for office principally to evade legal accountability, and he has succeeded.  

I am scared because if Trump does in his second term half of what he says he will do it will be devastating to America and to the world, politically and economically.

He says he will be a fascist on day one.

He says he will replace the administrative state with loyalists.

He says he will send the military after 'the enemy within'. 

He says he will deport 12 million immigrants (effecting up to 40 million family members).

He says he will impose 200% tariffs on all imported goods.

He says he will destroy the ACA putting millions of people off healthcare.

He says he will appoint billionaire Elon Musk to take a blowtorch to the regulatory system which will mean 'hardship' for the middle class.

He says he will appoint anti-vaxxer crank RFK Jr. as healthcare czar.

He says he 'knows nothing' about Project 2025, yeah right. 

He says he will end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. I wonder what that looks like.  

I'm scared.

The Women Rule

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Trump said at a rally in Glendale, Arizona yesterday. “And let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.” His election campaign has come down to this: Execution of a political opponent, a woman. 

Five days before the US election and what has happened in the last few weeks is that the battle between Harris and trump, between the Democrats and the Republicans, has devolved and been distilled down to its very essence: A battle of the sexes. 

There was always going to be an element of that. It was determined with the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that stripped American women of their universal right to an abortion. But until Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party nominee in unprecedented fashion, no one could know how central to the election campaign that issue was going to be, and how motivating to American women. But a few things have happened in the last few weeks and months that crystalized this war of the sexes. 

I'd argue the very first thing that happened, post-Dobbs, was the chutzpah of a woman, Nikki Haley, to challenge trump for the Republican nomination. Although she was a very far longshot from the start, Haley's campaign against trump gave him all kinds of headaches, and created an anti-trump permission structure within the Republican Party that may ultimately play a major role in his downfall. Haley eventually endorsed trump unenthusiastically, but did not campaign for him at all (because he didn't want her to, like a scorned ex-lover, which I'm sure came as a relief to her). She effectively released the almost 4.5 million supporters she amassed in the primaries to vote against him in the general, and it appears that a significant number are doing just that. 

The second key event was the reintroduction of Michelle Obama to the national political scene. The former first lady has been the most popular Democrat for many years, and her stirring speech at the DNC reminded us why. Many felt it was the best speech of the entire five-day gathering, and maybe even one of the best speeches ever. She has been an extremely effective surrogate for Harris, as evidenced by trump whining about her - 'She made a big mistake by being so nasty'. 

Third, was Liz Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris and the two campaigning together. The effectiveness of Cheney as a Harris surrogate is what brought out trump's ire against her. Cheney's sober response was pitch perfect, “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.” It must have been so hard to hide her glee.

And finally, in the last week we have had even more (26 at last count) accusations of sexual assault against trump, these by SI swimsuit model Stacey Williams, and former Miss Switzerland competitor Beatrice Keul. And to jog everyone's memory of the October surprise from 2016 (the infamous Access Hollywood tape) trump obliged by telling a Wisconsin gathering yesterday that he will protect women "whether they like it or not." 

But most important of all, trump has been doing his part by increasingly leaning into his sexist boys-club base. It's part of the strongman routine he is so desperate to project. And his desperation has been getting worse with each humiliation he suffers on the campaign trail at the hands of women. It started when Harris wiped the debate stage with him and forced him to back out of a second debate. The coward that he is, trump has had to resort to denigrating and insulted her personally, her intelligence and her ethnicity, which is a sure sign of the degree to which he's being embarrassed by her. Harris's massive crowd sizes are emasculating him, so he has turned to his cigar-smoking podcaster buddy Joe Rogan and washed up wrestler Hulk Hogan to restore his sense of manhood and Bro-cred. It won't work electorally.  

The best chance trump ever had of winning the election was to keep the focus on the failures of the Harris/Biden administration, such as they are perceived, and to talk about immigration and the economy. The Harris campaign was hoping that trump would do what trump always does - make everything about him. True to type, it's exactly what happened. His misogyny could not be kept in check. The lady's played him like the very tiny fiddle he is. 

As 2020 has become known as the election in which Blacks saved democracy, this one will be remembered as the election that women finally won, and I expect that it will represent a tectonic shift in the political landscape. If the Republicans learn anything from it, and it's questionable, expect Nikki Haley to be their nominee in 2028. Wouldn't that be something, a choice between two women for President. And a much needed and missed return to political civility.   

_________________________________________

Post Script - November 6th 2024

Turns out my post was just a dream. 

Car Crash Blues

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

Bought myself a car as soon as I could,

Bought myself a car as soon as I could,

I drove that car and man it felt good.

Got myself a girl and she liked my car,

Got myself a girl and she liked my car,

Told that girl together how we would drive far.

Me and my girl in the passenger seat,

Me and my girl in the passenger seat,

I never thought she was the kind to cheat.

So I drove my car as fast as I could,

Yeah I drove my car as fast as I could,

I drove my car and man it felt good.

I miss that car and I miss that girl,

I miss that car and I miss that girl,

Cause I drove too fast and misjudged the curve.

October

 On this day (and every day) I remember my mother Arleen Solomon Rotchin z'l with a poem. 

On the Sixth Day

AND GOD CREATED HUMANKIND in his own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.

And God gave them, the male and female, brains to think and hearts to feel. And he knew that this might be a problem, because the feeling heart and the thinking brain would not always agree, and sometimes they would disagree vehemently, and He knew (because He knows everything) that it would give them trouble. God didn't see a way around it. And anyway, the 'heart' was really the brain, it was just another aspect of it. 

And God knew humankind needed to possess agency - the ability to make decisions about how to live life and to act. Plus, humankind needed to possess awareness of having agency, otherwise what was the point of giving agency?  He didn't want to create a humankind that only followed instructions, not even if the instructions came from God. He didn't want to create automatons or robots. And the awareness of agency God called consciousness.

And God made the source of humankind's agency the heart, for it was emotion that would distinguish humankind from being just a thinking machine. For God realized that it was the experience of sadness and joy that gave life meaning to humankind. And this is what is meant by in 'His own image'. Humankind was not a creature of instinct, and not a slave to a master, but humankind had to be free to inquire about the meaning of life, the way the image of a face in the mirror inspects its own face. And this was the essence of the relationship between humankind and its Creator, and this pleased Him.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Riverbank Blues

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

 

We went down to the riverbank my little gal and I,

We went down to the riverbank my little gal and I,

We went down to the riverbank,

Where I made my gal cry.

You know the river's so deep, how did she make it across,

You know the river's so deep, how did she make it across,

You know I love that little girl so much,

Won't get over my loss.

Sometimes I ask myself, how could I stoop so low.

Said I ask myself, how could I stoop so low.

You know it's so hard,

When you're livin alone.

Told her I loved her before she went away,

I say I told that girl I loved her before she went away,

You know that little girl,

Took my secret to her grave.

I go back to the riverbank, and I fall down on my knees,

I go back to the riverbank, and I fall down on my knees,

I go back to the riverbank,

Where I hope she hears my pleas.

Bertha Lee

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

Charley was a man, small and mean,

Worked the cotton field, when times were lean,

Drank moonshine, tried to stay clean, 

Sang us a song 'bout how to be free.

 

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

He fought with the man and was thrown in jail, 

Said the devil called from the fires of hell,

Asked to repent when they rang the church bell,

Dropped a coin in the wishing well.

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

There's a good woman waiting for me,

Wondering all night long about where I'll be,

Ain't much sense to all that worry,

Livin ain't easy, on this we agree.

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

One In Two

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Another one bites the dust,

And by another I mean marriage.

There's an inevitability about it, like rust,

On the creaky wheels of an old carriage.

So why be surprised about this news?

When statistically we know the score.

It happens to one in every two,

A partner decides they want more.

I thought this couple had the right attitude, 

Vow-bound for twenty-five years.

Thought they'd reached cruising altitude,

With their engines humming in low gear.

A notary and a stay-at-home mom,

Who delivered Meals-on-Wheels.

Two kids and a dog, fluffy as a pom-pom,

A suburban house with curb appeal.

They seemed to have it all,

By the standards we're taught to admire.

While behind closed doors and thick walls,

Whispering remorse of the buyer.

 

We talk, the wife and I, and look around,

At our neighbours and sometime-friends.

To gauge the happiness we think we've found, 

Before wondering when for us it must end.

We see in each other the well trod path -

Our climb uphill in sun and rain. 

Count our steps, do emotional math,

Feel, at times, like we're crate-trained.

Sure we each crave the freedom,

That comes from desires unleashed.  

To break the ordered calm,

To feel that sense of release.

  

But like an elastic that rebounds,

Or else it's bound to snap.

We eventually settle down,

To avoid a fatal mishap. 

Some contracts are written in glue,

Others on brittle autumn leaves. 

Your name is signed in me and mine in you,

At least that's what I believe.

Post Script and Palette Cleanser

A Post Script for October 7th.

A brief political rant. Did you watch the October 7th commemoration from Ottawa that was broadcast on the CBC? I was pleasantly surprised to see that they aired it. The Israeli ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed spoke movingly, connecting the Leonard Cohen song Who By Fire - which is borrowed thematically and inspired by the High Holiday liturgy 'Unetaneh Tokef' - to the tragedy of the murders on that horrific day. The refrain 'who shall I say is calling' was repeated to express the pain of our incomprehension and also the urgency of our responsibility to combat evil. He pulled no punches, taking the government to task for being too wishy-washy in their public pronouncements of support for Israel and against the perpetrators. Next came Justin Trudeau who was thoughtful and appropriately solemn, paying sober tribute to each slain Canadian by name and talking about them individually, giving us a sense of the kind of people they were and the magnitude of our loss. He denounced anti-Semitism and reiterated the support of all Canadians for Israel and the Jewish community. Then Pierre Polievre spoke, using his time at the podium to shamelessly turn the event into a political rally. It didn’t help that he was cheered on. I was frankly embarrassed by the community, and appalled at his lack of discretion and aplomb. Polievre ended by reciting a cheesy poem in 6th grade rhyming quatrains which purported to envision Israel living in peace in the year 6785 (1000 years in the future on the Jewish calendar, God help us if it takes that long.) He exited the stage with an air of triumph when he should have slinked off in humiliation. 

There is very little chance I will vote Conservative in the next election.

Okay, now for a palette cleanser.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced, and congratulations to us Canadians, it was co-won by a fellow named Geoffrey Hinton who we can apparently claim as one of our own. I think he’s British by birth, but lives here and works at the University of Toronto, so we can celebrate, together with the Brits. What makes this even more interesting is that Hinton won for his work on neural networks in Artificial Intelligence (AI), in other words computer technology, in other words not physics in the traditional sense. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder riffs on this in her inimitably sarcastic fashion on her YouTube channel. She’s been railing for some time about how physics, for the last 50 years or so, has made zero actual progress in its field. (I say 50 years because that's when the Higgs Boson particle was proposed. To be fair, it was finally experimentally confirmed in 2012). Instead of experimental breakthroughs, the last number of decades has been spent making up untestable unfalsifiable theories using complicated math to show… well, that we’ve gotten good at complicated math. In other words physics seems to have given up on the physical. But for Sabine the most maddening part is that so many physicists don’t seem to understand that they are working on nonsense because they get paid handsomely for working on nonsense. Now, by giving the prize for physics for work that’s not physics, the Nobel Prize committee seems to be acknowledging what Sabine's been talking about. It reminds me of a few years back when they gave the Nobel in Literature to singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. The Walrus magazine even asked me my opinion. You can probably guess what I said. All this probably means something, about the relevance of the Nobel Prize (can anyone remember who won any of the Prizes last year?) or award culture and the proliferation of prizes for all kinds of things in general (grade inflation?) and maybe about Andy Warhol's famous dictum that in the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes. Or maybe this year's Prize in Physics tells us that living virtually has clearly become more important to us than living physically. Anyway, I fully expect that they will soon be giving the Nobel in Chemistry to a pastry chef in the not too distant future.   

The One Year Anniversary

 

The entrance to my office building this morning. The riding office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs is my tenant. So a couple of people with a flag, two folding chairs and some chalk - perhaps there will be friends arriving soon - have set up camp. They have decided that the anniversary of a massacre of Israeli Jews was an appropriate time to protest against Israel and Canadian government policy supporting Israel (in whatever minimum, ambiguous way they have). They write "365 days of Joly (the name of the Minister) Genocide," which of course, is inaccurate. It's actually been 365 days of captivity for Israeli hostages, 365 days since a pogrom by Hamas terrorists, since a barbaric slaughter was unleashed against innocents while they danced at a music festival and families while they slept in their homes. Do I go down and point out the inaccuracy? The revision of history? The repugnance of trying to flip the script on the anniversary of a bloodbath that has set in motion so much anguish and heartbreak across the Middle East and around the world. I would go talk to them if I thought it would accomplish something. But I think they know exactly what they are doing. And that's the worst part. Not their ignorance, their shamelessness.

World War 3

I've been wondering what World War 3 might look like, and whether we are already here. And if true, that would be a good thing.

Trump talks about it all the time on the stump. Of course, that's just hyperbole designed to scare people so they'll vote for him. Maybe he's actually on to something, just not what he thinks. 

After World War 2, which culminated in the United States dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, the United Nations was established. It had a couple of main objectives, and one of them was not to establish A Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that came later. The two objectives were, first to create a forum of international deliberation in order to avoid the cascade of events that degenerated into World War 2, and could lead to World War 3. The second objective, related to the first, was to make sure nuclear weapons are never used again. It was understood implicitly that WW2 had changed the rules of engagement, and any war could henceforth potentially lead to a catastrophic conflagration that would destroy most, if not all, of humanity. Since World War 2 the UN has largely been successful. Wars have been contained to certain areas and regions. And nuclear weapons have not been used. So far so good. 

For most of the post-WW2 period, the world was bi-polar, organized around two rival ideological spheres of influence centered on the two major nuclear powers, The US and the USSR. That came apart with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, and for the last 30 years or so the new global order has been shaking out. During the Cold War terrorism and proxy war became a mainstay of international conflict. The nuclear powers engaged in it, as a way of avoiding direct conflict with each other, and minor political actors were only too happy to accept the support of the major powers.    

I began thinking about this because of what we are seeing currently in the Middle-East, as Israel and Iran climb the escalatory ladder of war. Analysts are warning about the situation becoming a regional war, as Israel contemplates its target for retaliation in response to the unprecedented ballistic missile attack by Iran. Seems to me that we are already in a regional war, one that has been waging since at least 2005/2006, when Israel unilaterally evacuated from Gaza (2005) and Hamas took over, and there was a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon (2006). The analysts say that it can get much worse, there are many more rungs to climb up the escalatory ladder. No doubt about that, there are many more bombs to drop and ballistic missiles to launch, from both sides. But in a conflict that is fundamentally ideological, not territorial or existential in nature (and won't be, remember Israel is a nuclear power), this conflict will remain a game of tit-for-tat, two sides punching at each other until they decide they've had enough. 

Israel's main concern in this conflict has been about re-establishing its military reputation and deterrence after the humiliation of October 7th, and not just with regional rivals (and allies) but also with its own citizens. This is the process of escalation in action. It's the reason that the defeat of Hamas in Gaza, even if that means destroying most of Gaza, and the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon (even if it means destroying large parts of Lebanon) became such a pressing objective for Israel. One can imagine alternative pathways that the conflict could have taken. One that was focused on the return of the hostages instead of the restoration of Israeli deterrence. Imagine that Israel chose not to bomb Gaza to smithereens and instead took a longer more tactical and gradual approach to choking off the supply of arms to Hamas. Imagine that it gave Egypt an ultimatum to respect its peace treaty or it would occupy the Philadelphi corridor. Imagine that it worked for a regional political solution with the US and other Arab allies (Jordan, Saudi Arabia) rather than a military one. It was at least within the realm of possibility. Very little time was afforded any possibility other than taking the military route, for particular reasons.  

It may be that what turned this ongoing regional ideological conflict into a 'World War' is the role played by the UN, which is extremely ironic of course. Such a statement depends on how we define 'war', which in the post-WW2 period was broadened from destructive physical conflict to include "Cold War". The globalization of war gets expressed in our age through the UN, which sometimes acts as fuel to simmering regional conflict and expands it in the global sphere. Through the UN, terrorist proxy groups became legitimate global political actors, under the guise of the Palestinian cause. UN-affiliated agencies, UNRWA in Gaza, and the failed UNIFIL in Lebanon, became a permission structure for the activities of terrorists, or in some cases became directly associated and even active with terrorist groups, by aiding and abetting them. In the broader context, Iran and its radical allies have leveraged the prestige of the UN and its agencies (including, most regrettably, the ICC and the ICJ) to promote an anti-America/anti-Israel agenda and to organize and amplify its messaging. This has spread the wildfire of hatred and anti-Semitism to the streets of western cities and on to university campuses. The Palestinian cause planted the seed of corruption that grew and spread across the planet. Iran and its ideological allies have run with it. They don't actually care about the Palestinian cause, they just use it for cover because it carries such currency in the context of the UN. This is what World War 3 actually looks like, facilitated by the UN. 

The UN is not unredeemable, but it needs major reform to stop being an agent of hatred and destruction. The first step is to recognize that the UN is not simply a disinterested political forum. Its founding and mission is an expression of the values expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and those are the values of human progress, and that's democracy. There is no peace and security without human rights. The two go hand in hand. So until the UN starts to take concrete steps to promote democratic values and combat the regimes dedicated to opposing those values, it will fall prey to manipulation, and risk becoming complicit by fomenting global conflict. 

* * *

Post-Script on the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

From the National Post:

"When he died, Sinwar was wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying an UNRWA identity card... The two other, also killed in the building, have been identified. One was a senior official with the Hamas-run Ministry of Defence. The second was a teacher with UNRWA (also carrying his UNRWA identity card.)" 

The Right Side of History

Something I've heard from pro-Palestine (usually) young people: "I know I will be on the right side of history” (or conversely, “I know you will be on the wrong side of history.”) I have to laugh at how ironic that statement is coming from people who have experienced the least amount of history, and are generally uninformed about it. Still, it's something I always feel I need to address in a thoughtful way.

They are saying it, because they have been convinced that the founding of the State of Israel was a catastrophic injustice done against the Palestinians. They believe the displacement of Arab residents, who they claim are indigenous, renders the State of Israel illegitimate. Everything they believe flows from that premise. This is questionable on a variety of grounds, chiefly whether the resident Arabs were more 'indigenous' than the Jews who can concretely trace their presence to that region from about 1500 BCE. 'Palestinian' actually only became a widely accepted political identity around the time of the establishment of the State of Israel. 

Still, the matter of 'conquest' is problematic (or as some call it 'settler-colonialism'). There were Arab communities that existed in Mandate Palestine (pre-State of Israel) that were either liquidated, displaced or absorbed when the State of Israel won its independence during the war. The same process, more or less, as happened in the United States, Canada, every country in Central and South America, Africa and most of Asia. In other words, if you have a problem with Israel, you should have a problem with most, if not all, of the modern global map, which I believe renders the argument absurd or moot. If not, you have to admit to having a double-standard bias against Israel.

But let's say we agree with the principle that every self-identifying 'People' has a 'right' to self-determination, and let's say the Palestinian People qualify. Certainly the Jewish People do too. So why don't people see it that way? Do the Palestinian people have 'more' of a right to self-determination than the Jewish people? Or again, is a double standard at work?  

They typically answer, sure the Jewish People deserve the right of self-determination, just not there, on Palestinian land. Ok, then where? Surely, displacement or occupation of territory belonging to someone else is inevitable anywhere you choose for the Jews (except maybe Antarctica). In this case, what's really meant is nowhere.

Double-standards toward Israel abound on a variety of subjects - in the past year it's concerning what Israel may or may not do in the course of self-defence. Israel is expected to adhere to standards of war time behaviour that no other country has ever been expected to comply with. Do all these double standards constitute anti-Semitism? Perhaps. I don't want to get into questions of psychology, and I think anti-Semitism is largely a socio-psychological phenomenon. Let's stick to the question of the 'legitimacy' of the State of Israel, inasmuch as any state can be said to have 'legitimacy'. 

Israel has been fighting for its existence for 76 years now, since it won a War of Independence in 1948. Actually, 76 years is not a very long time. You might say that the country is still in its turbulent adolescent stage of finding an identity. But so far, I would argue, despite efforts to brand it as an 'apartheid state' and a 'racist state', what we have seen is actually the steady march toward global acceptance. As its Arab neighbours have modernized and wanted to join the international community, they have either made peace treaties with Israel (Jordan, Egypt), recognized Israel and established diplomatic relations with it (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco) or are on the road in that direction (Saudi Arabia). The trend is clear. The countries that continue to oppose Israel are the most dysfunctional and backward Muslim countries, in particular Syria and Iran, because it serves the political interests of their autocratic leaders. Especially the theocracy of Iran, which considers Israel to be the pebble in the sandal of its project to establish a Muslim Caliphate throughout the Middle-East.

What this indicates is what is at stake in the fight for Israel's legitimacy and existence. Israel is the frontline of the battle to maintain progress and modernity in the Middle-East, a place where modernity clashes with tribalism and ethno-religious loyalties and hatreds. Israel's fight is literally the fight against a worldview that promotes intolerance, strict adherence to Islamic Law and the abrogation of individual human rights. In other words, it's opposition to turning the clock back on 1000 years of social and political progress. 

Israel is the vanguard of the West. It represents western values and acts internationally in accordance with western standards and the rule of law. The Israeli leadership engages in conflict, not out of 'hatred' and pledges to 'annihilate' a 'Great-Satan' as the mullahs of Iran declare. It does not claim to act according the will of God. Israel does not wage war via proxies, it has no imperialist ambitions, and does not engage in terrorism abroad, as Iran does. While Israel's rivals seek its extinction, Israel has only ever sought to live in peace and security with its neighbours. Every military action Israel has ever undertaken has been defensive in nature, even when it's been preemptive it has been to stop an imminent attack. Or as with Gaza and Lebanon conflicts currently, it has been in response to a direct attack(s) against its sovereignty and citizens. 

Which brings us back to the question of Palestinian self-determination, the cause celebre of university students and Islamic studies professors in the west. One thing of which I am certain, Israel is not going anywhere and time is not on the side of the Palestinians, contrary to popular opinion. Israel will emerge from the current conflict stronger than ever, and the anti-Israel coalition will be weaker. The opportunities for a negotiated political solution - a process in which Israel repeatedly engaged in good faith for decades - are becoming fewer and farther between. The next round, which will involve the rebuilding of Gaza, may well be the last. The right side of history and the future is clear.

Public Media's Shameful Bias

As the old saying goes, if it bleeds it leads.

We can't turn away from tragedy because our Darwinian brains are genetically programmed to pay extra attention to potential threats and dangers, even to exaggerate them. It's not just morbid fascination. Social media takes advantage of this with their algorithms to keep us watching and sell us things. If we accept that it's in our genes to be drawn to danger, and I think it's undeniable, people can't be held entirely responsible for their difficulty in resisting this tendency. But the purveyors of information certainly can.

I'm talking about this because I'm disgusted by the mainstream media's coverage of Israel's current military actions in Lebanon. Especially disappointed by public broadcasters such as PBS, BBC and CBC, who I typically prefer to watch. They've interviewed citizens on the streets of Beirut and emergency room physicians treating the injured. They've shown the destruction of homes and buildings in Southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is embedded, and from where they have been launching rockets at the communities of northern Israel for decades, but particularly since October 8th. What they haven't shown are the abandoned towns of northern Israel, because there's not much to see. They haven't shown the damage done by the thousands of rockets fired into Israel, because frankly, there hasn't been that much (although there has been some). Israel has spent decades and billions of dollars building the Iron Dome missile defense system and it has proven extremely effective. That's a great story, but protection against destruction (as opposed to actual destruction) isn't terribly exciting. 

The mainstream profit-driven media can be forgiven for their morbid obsession with covering tragedy and destruction, but not public broadcasters. If money isn't the reason, then why the obvious bias? The answer is found in the mission of taxpayer-funded media, which typically centers on telling the stories of the marginalized, the under-represented and minorities. In some ways this makes public media even more susceptible to a certain kind of oversimplification, one that characterizes some people as victims and others as victimizers. It's quite astonishing to witness how readily public broadcasting has fallen into the trap of creating a moral equivalence between the State of Israel and terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas. One side a democratic state accountable to its citizens and the rule of law, the other side outlaw non-state actors accountable only to their patron. One side whose mission is to protect its constituents from harm, the other who exploit their constituents by promoting harm to them. The country defending itself against terrorism is thus portrayed as the aggressor and the homicidal/suicidal terrorists are depicted as aggrieved. It would be absurd if it wasn't so shameful.    

The consistent media bias against Israel, I don't believe, is due to systematic anti-Semitism, and I'm very wary of calling everything and anything anti-Semitism. There are plenty of stories about Jewish people that are fair and positive. The bias of public media against Israel is more closely related to the impetus of publicly-funded agencies (whether in Canada, the UK or the US) to apologize for being associated with power. It's about having guilt for regrettable historical injustices, and wanting to makes amends by acting as an agent of contemporary social change. The result is the predominance of stories that elevate perceived victims. In Canada it's noticeable in the way stories about our indigenous minorities feature so heavily in public media. These are stories that implicitly romanticize the aggrieved and portray them as inherently righteous. But so much of the truth gets glossed over and whitewashed in the narrative. 

And so it is with Israel. Because Israel has an army dedicated to the defense of its citizens and borders, and because it is effective, it is seen as the aggressor, and the terrorists that use innocents as human shields and embeds in civillian communities are seen as victims. The latter is the war crime, not the former. The latter is genocidal, not the former. It's mindboggling that public media can't or refuses to figure this out.

Sweet Tea

The late morning sky 

is blue

soft as a mattress -

we sit together  

on the 7th floor balcony 

enjoying a sip of sweet tea

       the sunshine

            golden

the clank of spoon

against ceramic cup

stir            scream

                                 F-35

                point

    wait

Beirut.

Paging Sanity

It's my 60th birthday today, so I have to say something - "speech, speech" isn't that what they cheer after you've blown out the candles on the cake? As if you have some new wisdom to impart at your advanced age...

No guarantees here. But I do remember that I made a blog post about turning 50. It's interesting to look at again. It was a short, lighthearted, humourous list of reflections and observations. Nuggets like "I appreciate a good pair of shoes," and "I believe more in fate, intangibles, positive energy, karma." Clearly I wasn't getting any wiser with age. I can only assume I am less so now, by a decade. But I will say one thing about my 50 year old self - I seemed content. My post ends with "I am happier to be exactly where I am." 

These days I'm feeling grumpier.

I can only assume it's because since turning 50 I've experienced 10 years of chaotic politics and social media madness. Actually, I officially retreated from social media in the summer of 2019, when I deleted my FB account. But even with minimal exposure on my personal devices, the social media ecosystem has a way of making an unavoidable impact wherever you are.  

And so it was last night. Of course the talk of the house was the stunning, ingenious and lethal Mossad attack on Hezbollah targets. Thousands of pagers suddenly exploding on the hips and in the hands of militants and operatives all over Lebanon and Syria. At last reporting there were as many as 3000 casualties from the attack, with 31 dead, including 19 members of Iran's RGC, and 3 children (plus reports today of 9 more killed and 300 injured from exploding walkie-talkies.) The media went nuts about it, calling it James Bond spy movie stuff etc. Surveillance camera footage of pagers detonating went viral. We see them blowing up in market places, stores, at fruit and vegetable stands, on the street and in cars. People were killed and injured inside their offices and homes. 

The unprecedented ingenuity and craftiness behind the attack is certainly something to marvel at. In the grander political scheme, Israeli intelligence had to do something jaw-dropping to reestablish deterrance after the catastrophic failure of Oct 7th, and this certainly fit the bill. Like the assassination of Haniya in Tehran, it demonstrated a capability no one predicted.

Today I'm feeling disheartened. 

As we spoke about the attack last night, my wife checked her phone and laughed. What's so funny I asked. She showed me a 'witty' comment made by someone online, along the lines of "That took some balls!" Another one was, "We were inside Haniyah's bedroom and now we're inside Nasrallah's pants." I shook my head, and asked her why she found this funny. She said, well, they deserve it (I paraphrase). I said that I didn't find it funny at all, which elicited some tension between us. She said she understood why people wanted to make light of the attack, and celebrate a moment of 'look how good we got them!' I told her that bombs detonating in public places, killing, injuring and maiming thousands of people (many totally innocent) wasn't something to joke about. As I left the room I added, "This is a war." 

Actually, I felt shame and disappointment that glee was the response of so many Jews online. 

Since October 7th, each time the Jewish community has gathered to publicly demonstrate against the war in Gaza, the message has been to bring the hostages home. It hasn't been against Palestinians, or to kill Hamas militants, or even to get the mastermind Sinwar. It's been all about the safe return of our brethren. We have used our public voice to show our resilience in this time of great heartache, not to drum up anger and hate against anyone (as others have done). This has made me very proud of my community.

With this on my mind, I listened to the first part of Sam Harris's latest podcast called "Where Are the Grown-Ups?" My question exactly. In it, Harris talks about his latest dip into social media (like me, he swore it off a few years ago). What he finds scrolling through X (formerly Twitter) is a carnival of racism, violence (mostly by 'immigrants'), and conspiracy. He comments: "If I had to summarize the intent of X's algorithm at this point, it would be twofold: First, to make Elon Musk more famous than he already is, and second to make every white user of the platform more racist." 

The conventional wisdom is that social media has made us more angry, callous, impolite, racist, unsympathetic, tribal, aggressive and ignorant. It is not by sheer coincidence that someone like trump ascended to political power in this environment. I have been feeling encouraged that Kamala Harris's more positive approach to politics has been gaining traction. People are getting tired of the hostility and divisiveness. 

I think I will revive my 50-year-old self's sentiment - "I believe more in fate, intangibles, positive energy, karma."  Let's hope that includes, justice for trump after November.

Jihadism Is Psychosis

"We care more about the lives of their children than they do, and they weaponize that." A corollary is Golda Meir's famous statement, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." Still so true.

The line is from an interview with Sam Harris on Dan Senor's indispensible Call Me Back podcast, and it has stuck with me. I've commented about this paradox before, in a blog talking about dying as a political tool. I'm thinking about it now as more than just a despicable military tactic.

It sums up so much of the moral dilemma and paradox faced by Israel, and by extension the west. It sums up how fanatical and nihilistic the enemy's ideology is. How contrary to basic morality and humanity it is. How the stakes of this battle are actually so much greater than just territorial or political, it's civilizational. And it summarizes how the enemy uses our values against us, to destabilize our society and in some cases, like mine, family relationships, not in spite of, but because of our empathy, sympathy and decency. Our morality is the fuel for their iniquity and that's a problem.

I think of my daughter who asks, rightly so, why don't you care as much about the reported 41,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza as you do about the Israelis? I'm proud of her for asking that question. It's the right question for anyone with any basic sense of human decency and empathy to ask. I'd be worried if she didn't ask it. 

My first response is obvious, we're Jewish. We need to care about our own. And as the global response to this war shows, we have plenty of enemies, people who want to do us harm, anti-Semitism is alive and well. But as justified as that answer is, that sort of tribalism also feels like part of the problem. It offends even my own sense of humanity, something I learned from being Jewish, which is also presumably why so many Jews are so sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. (Tellingly, we aren't seeing any Arab sympathy for the Israeli victims of Oct. 7th.) 

What my daughter is implicitly saying with her question is; even if the enemy doesn't care about their own women and children, it's morally incumbent upon us to care about them. If they intentionally put them in harm's way, it does not negate our basic moral responsibilities to our fellow human beings. We can't sacrifice our decency and humanity in a fight against their indecency and inhumanity. If we are like them, or if we are worse, according to the scale of carnage and destruction that we are inflicting upon them, then they win. 

Yes and no. 

Our problem as a society is that we think of them in 'normal' terms. We have sympathy for them on that basis, which is only natural. We say, look at the squalor they live in, the oppression, Gaza is overcrowded, an 'open-air prison' (no mention of the border with Egypt.) Is it any wonder they are angry and will go to such extremes to fight for their 'freedom' and self-determination? This is 'normal' thinking. But if they were normal in their thinking, if their goals were the security of their families and a better way of life, would they have launched a suicidal attack against an obviously superior military? Would there be such pride in sacrificing their women and children for their cause? Would there have been such maniacal glee in their Go-Pro filmed brutality and bloodlust?

The only possible answer is that this is a type of madness. 'Normal' does not apply. Jihadism is a form of psychosis. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, "Psychosis refers to a collection of symptoms that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality... a person's thoughts and perceptions are disrupted and they may have difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not." Jihadism is a mental illness like other types of pervasive delusional thinking, dangerously divorced from reality, and with homicidal/suicidal tendencies. That's the proper framework within which to view it. Can a society, or large swathes of a society, be psychotic? (the clinical term is 'Mass-psychosis') I think history has proven definitively that the answer is yes.   

It's 'normal' to have sympathy for those suffering from mental illness. But only if they can and want to be helped. The delusional, psychotic, unrepentant, murderous Jihadist is a danger to his loved ones and society, and needs to be either put away or, if armed and rampaging, neutralized. No one can live with a murderous psychopath next door, or god-forbid in their own house. And what we know about dealing with psychopaths is that they will not stop until they destroy themselves, their loved ones, and everyone around them. And that's when sympathy becomes at best enabling and at worst self-destructive. That's what we're dealing with. 

Is The Fever Breaking?

Is this what happens when the fever is breaking?

That was my first thought after hearing that there was another attempt on trump. I was not surprised to hear that the suspect of this attempt had voted Republican. When they don't like something, Democrats tend to carry protest signs, Republicans tend to carry guns. 

Trump's singular achievement as a politician is that he activated and initiated the lunatic fringe into mainstream American politics. The guys (they are mostly white guys) who existed on the margins of society, the portion of the electorate who were rural, depoliticized and preferred to hate the government from their well-stocked and well-armed Doomsday bunkers, had a champion in the White House for a time. They became Trump's personal power base and the most ardent Republicans, elbowing out the centrist establishment normies. After his defeat in 2020, rather than step down as most losing candidates do, trump did the opposite, he consolidated his base of support and his takeover of the Party was complete. The only problem is, now that you are the Party, you own whatever happens to it. What happens when the promises you've been making all these years start being replaced by excuse after excuse? What happens when your supporters get tired of the familiar, old, boring, racist tune you've been singing, and you don't know any other lyrics to sing? And worse, what happens when you keep losing, and they stop believing your claim that every loss is actually a win?

First, they stop coming to your shows. Then they stop buying your merch. Finally, the most ardent of your supporters want you out of the picture for good. Trump is not only running to stay out of jail, he's literally running to stay alive. 

So what happens after trump loses (again)? Trump will say the election was rigged (again), as he is already doing. But this time no one will listen. He is not the president so this time he can not leverage that position for the purposes of disruption. There might be some protests, but there won't be riots in the streets. Chances are it will be like the protests he called for when he was in court in New York, meh. The only civil war we are likely to see will be in the Republican Party. Trump won't let go of the Party, he can't. It's his main family business. He's been trying to diversify the business for a while (bibles, sneakers, NFTs), mainly with the media division, and now a cryptocurrency (?), which suggests a pivot away from politics to some degree. The politics has always only ever been about the money. But he's never gone gently into that good night, ever, and he will fight to keep control of the Party because it's a formidable marketing infrastructure, and he has money problems on the horizon too. Unfortunately for him, his legal problems will eventually catch up with him, both financially and in terms of his liberty. Trump still has a few years of court ahead of him with appeals etc. before he is remanded into custody. But his legal problems will ultimately end his political career once and for all, if a heart attack or one of his followers doesn't end it permanently first. 

Since narrowly being elected to the Senate, JD Vance has seen himself as trump's heir apparent. That's what being trump's running mate has always been about for him. Trying to figure out how to take hold of the trump base with trump's blessing has been his objective. I can't see how that happens, even if trump is in jail. At best, he will become trump's mini-me,  and trump will make sure everyone thinks that he is calling all the shots, no matter what. But the normie faction of the Republican Party is still around. They were the Nikki Haley voters in the primary. Plenty of them will either vote for Harris (to vote against trump, like Adam Kinsinger and Lynne Cheney) or just stay home this election. They will reemerge after the election, and my guess is that they will get behind Nikki. She will come out of this political cycle well positioned to battle for leadership. Between her and trump/Vance, my money would be on her. But it will be a bloody, ugly fight. 

Harris vs. Haley in 2028. Another unprecedented election, but in a good way.

What we never learned from Plato

Everything is power. Whether we like it or not. It’s hidden in the pretext, subtext and context of every relationship, every book, every great work of art. No place for beauty or truth. No place for love or virtue. No such thing as an ideal. And so we sit around the fire in cold darkness of our cave, scratching ourselves, thinking of the next hunt, what meat will fill our bellies. And in our spare time, we fight over the shape and meaning of the shadows reflected on the wall of our cave, created by the figures who stand outside in the light near the entrance. We argue about whether they are friend or foe, we talk of our fears, and even our words are corrupt and deceptive. Sometimes, when the disagreement and distrust has reached a heightened pitch inside the cave, we fashion tools of power to gain the upper hand, and use them to bloody each other for the sake of our mistaken beliefs, convictions and desires. In our ignorance, of our ignorance, we forever fail, each other and ourselves. 

Political Frankenstein

It's been almost 10 years since that man rode the golden escalator down to the awaiting commoners to announce that he was running for President of the United States and I still can't get my mind around it. 

Realizing that he would be the most destructive and divisive president in modern American history, I came to grips with the possibility of his election in 2015, because he was the new thing, and Americans love a new thing. The desire for change is a powerful force. So they voted for a lying, gutter-talking, sex offending (on tape), draft-dodging, tax-cheating, pseudo-celebrity businessman, with a record of bankruptcies, stiffing suppliers, and conning customers, and who never did a day of public service in his life.   

But it's 2024 now. Haven't we had enough of his chaos and innumerable outlandish lies? After all, it's post pandemic debacle, in which over a million Americans perished (by many estimates, half needlessly), post two impeachments, post January 6th in which he fomented a violent insurrection against the Capitol and attempted a government coup, post stealing classified documents, post 36 felony convictions for covering up his affair with a porn actress, and, and... I haven't even mentioned post stripping away women's reproductive freedom by a Supreme Court he appointed. 

And this race is still neck and neck? Within the statistical margin of error? Is there nothing that disqualifies a person from becoming the President of the United States? Tax evasion? Bankruptcy? Adultery? A criminal record? Insurrection? I mean he's running while out on bail.

But all this doesn't actually say much about the candidate. It says much more about the electorate.

As I've mentioned before, I started reading Allan Bloom's 1988 book The Closing of the American Mind to try and understand how our standards have sunk so low during my lifetime. I sensed that the story begins way back, around the time I was born in '64, and came to fruition around the time I graduated university in '86, which is exactly the period that Bloom writes about. This is from a chapter in the last quarter of the book: "The professors, the repositories of our best traditions and highest intellectual aspirations, were fawning over what was nothing better than rabble; publicly confessing their guilt and apologizing for not having understood the most important moral issues, the proper response they were learning from the mob; expressing their willingness to change the university goals and the content of what they taught." You'd be forgiven if you thought he was describing the way universities (mis)handled, actually tolerated, the anti-Semitic and destructive pro-Palestine encampments on the university campuses this past year. Actually, he was writing about a chaotic 1968 civil rights demonstration at Cornell that he witnessed.

Reading Bloom made me realize something. We've been primed for a candidate like the Monster From Mar-a-lago for at least 50 years. I realized that this candidate isn't an anomaly. We've been creating him for decades. He's a composite, a political Frankenstein that we've stitched together from the unsavoury and unseemly characteristics of almost every president we've had since LBJ, just more so. Think about it. He is corrupt like Nixon, contrived like Reagan, adulterous like Clinton, clueless and inarticulate like Dubya, and inexperienced like Obama. Left off this list are Ford, Carter and GHW Bush. And that's because they are the exceptions that prove the rule. They were decent, honest, and forthright presidents. They paid their taxes, served their country honourably in war, and ran scandal free administrations. And they were all one term presidents. In other words they weren't really presidential material, at least not in the way my generation seems to prefer occupants of the Oval Office. 

I guess we'll see soon enough if standards have changed. The debate looms and the thought of the deformed ugly creature of our making once again standing behind a podium and being respectfully asked serious questions that concern all of us, as if a genuine answer can be reasonably expected, is to my mind an indictment. But not of the politician. The monster was never the creature, it was always his creator. 

Plato predicts the internet

"O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for the discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories, they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."

Plato, Phaedrus, circa 370 BC

The Candidate Who Laughs

Fellow citizens of this great nation, I give you the candidate!

He is the very image of leadership. Tall, well-fed, well-dressed, with a head of carefully coiffed hair. He is not a career politician. He knows nothing about governance or how government actually works, and like most everyday citizens, has contempt for career politicians. He is a wealthy businessman, and relishes the symbols of his status. He cultivates a 'self-made' image, even though his wealth was entirely inherited from his father, but in our great and wealthy nation there is nothing wrong with intergenerational wealth. Like all citizens he is addicted to media and craves fame. He even starred in his own television show based on the image of success he publicly cultivates. In other ways he is quite common. He loves making money. In fact, making money is the only thing he really understands or cares about. He enjoys all the trappings of celebrity and power, living in a large house, having a private jet, a limousine and servants, in other words, he is the embodiment of every American's idea of success and he understands the power of projecting this image, and relishes the limelight. He has only one genuine skill, how to sell things, which is quintessentially American. He holds only one credo - everyone and everything can be bought for a price. He understands that to sell you must speak plainly but always with utmost confidence no matter what you are saying. His sentence structure and grammar are elementary-school level and filled with hyperbole to demonstrate force of expression, also an American trait. He uses a lexicon of simple words that he repeats over and over. His words are never meant to explain or clarify, rather they are meant to obscure, so he can deny what he has said before, or say the opposite and declare he was previously misunderstood. He never communicates to convey any particular idea or belief, because his aim is to never commit to anything. His only commitment is to himself. He communicates to leave an impression, not to be understood. He lies repeatedly, about everything and anything, no matter how small or big, because outside facts don't matter when your only objective is self-interest. Repeatedly lying is an effective way to inure people to all lies, and muddy the truth. He thinks people are lazy, ignorant and uninformed, because he is lazy, ignorant and uninformed. His most devoted supporters are exactly like him in this respect, and this is why he has contempt for them. What his supporters love about him is his authenticity, and by authenticity they mean his capacity to say anything he wants without any regard to the facts. They wish they could live like that. His world is a world of make-believe, like a child's, no matter how absurd or ridiculous. His adolescent existence extends to a total lack of responsibility. Like a child he thinks he is the center of the universe, and at the same time, like a child, he is completely incapable of accepting any responsibility. Whatever happens it's always someone else's fault. He has no sense of accountability, someone else is always to blame, he is the victim. Because his world is make-believe, the media is his main ally, because they also trade in make-believe. They either fabricate drama out of whole cloth or amplify it into a crisis because it's good for ratings. The candidate is skilled at tailoring his messaging to attract and hold the media spotlight. Maximizing attention, through the media and at political events, is the only metric of performance that matters to him. When he performs for his supporters he tells jokes, usually to insult or demean the opposition. His supporters love him for that. They wish they could live without consequences too. But he never laughs. He is incapable of laughter because laughter shows vulnerability. Nothing is more threatening to him than showing vulnerability, because he knows deep inside that he is fragile and weak.

You can vote for this candidate, or the one who laughs.