For the last few days the local paper has been full of stories about “elder abuse”. Specifically the one that is drawing ink around here pertains to an eighty-five year old woman who was discovered in her home, unbathed, covered with her own filth.
The son who was supposed to be taking care of her is being charged. The son who “hadn’t visited in years” eventually discovered her and called the police.
The last two sentences say a lot. They should be reread and thought about. They tell us that, of whatever family she had, the woman had only ONE caretaker. The other brother who hadn’t bothered to come by for a long time obviously took no responsibility for her care. At all.
That left one. Does anyone stop to think what a job—literally a 24/7 job with no vacations, no days off—it is for one man, very likely in his sixties himself, to take care of someone so elderly she has lost continence and is unable to get to the bathroom herself? (He was obviously feeding her.)
If you were hiring that kind of care, it would legally require a weekly staff of eight or ten, with fill-ins for holidays, sick days and vacations. (If a patient needs to be lifted onto the toilet, it legally requires two caretakers.) That’ how many people that one man—now being charged for criminal neglect—was expected to fill in for. Anyone who charges the man with a crime had better first be willing to take his place for six months or so.
Well, you’re likely thinking, if he couldn’t handle it, why didn’t he call in the welfare people? I’m sure the judge and prosecutor will spare no amount verbiage to tell this miscreant how vast a system of social services we have available in the State of Michigan, and how it was his legal and moral duty to call upon them.
Let me tell you a personal story. By the early 1970s, my own mother became almost totally incapacitated by Multiple Sclerosis. My father who turned sixty then took over the duty of assisting her with her bathing, eating, dressing and personally lifted her on and off the toilet several times daily. (I his only son, lived 50 miles away.)
He did not leave the house for more than four hours at a stretch for twenty-five years. The rest of us could see that he was wearing out and, at the least, needed a few days off. He located one of the most highly rated nursing facilities in the country, only a mile from his home. This was in 1985.
It had assisted living quarters that were fully as luxurious as their home. There were people who could step in and assist if he needed time off or to rest. The home was run by the same religious denomination as they had attended all their lives—and several of their life- long friends were already living there.
The money was right—proceeds from their home would pay for the new condominium apartment, dollar for dollar. My dad was so excited he could hardly contain himself. He asked my wife and me to accompany him while he brought the matter up to my mother.
My mother heard us out and then lashed back. “You don’t love me!” Terrified of leaving her home, she ripped at every feeling and emotion we had. He dropped the issue of assisted living and resigned himself to life-long imprisonment. We could not talk him into taking any steps on his own. When home nursing services were located, he refused them. She had broken him.
Depression set in, but he did his duty—determined to prove that he did too love her. When he was not actively assisting her, he just sat and stared blankly. She would allow no medical personnel to enter the home—perfectly aware of what a professional might see and report.
Alzheimer’s set in. He began referring to her as his mother; he lost his driver’s license, dependent on others to get to the grocery store. She would not acknowledge he had any problem (her fear was palpable by now). She directed his most minute actions, but sometimes when he had put her on the toilet he forgot where she was, let alone who.
She, in the meantime, became blind. The weekly maid was writing out the checks (I was not permitted to see the books). Queries from the Internal Revenue Service begin piling up on her desk.
I called their pastor. He refused to help—even telling concerned parishioners to “stay out of it”. I called all manner of acquaintances and friends involved in senior services or adult protective services (by now we were afraid he would burn the house down). I got the same answer, even from practitioners as far away as California.
“There is nothing you can do. Go into court now, and the judge will side with them. All you can do is wait until there’s an emergency and they collapse.” My father lost continence; the house reeked; the carpet was ruined. The weekly maid would throw open all the doors to air the place out.
I finally bit the bullet, paid the $2500 legal fee and went to a lawyer. He took it to court. The court sent a Guardian ad Litum to inspect their home. Her report was appalling. When she arrived, my father could not find my mother. A judge took one look at her report and appointed me guardian and conservator. Even now, other relatives were calling me and berating me for trying to push them out of their home.
I had kept up contact with the nursing home. We made an appointment to talk about removing them from their home. The day before that appointment, they collapsed. A neighbor called the police and cut his way into the house. The police called me; acting on my three-day-old legal authority, I told them to take my parents to a hospital.
They were checked over (malnutrition, broken bones, Alzheimer’s, MS, and my father’s foot so badly injured that they considered amputation) and immediately put in full time nursing care (1998). Until she died two years hence, my mother never stopped berating me for taking her out of her home and stealing her money.
I strongly suspect that the man in the current news story did not have the education or the contacts that I had going for me. He may not have had the money for the lawyer or court. All of that availed me nothing. Let’s think long and hard before we convict this poor man for “elder abuse”. From the condition my mother and her house were in, they could have convicted my dad—or me.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
The Fear We Have To Fear
We’re coming up on the beginning of the Obama presidency. As I watch this happen, there are a few contrasts that come to mind, not all of them comforting.
When Franklin Roosevelt took office, the American gross national product had dropped 50% in four years, international trade was all but dead, and the possibility of a radical revolution in the United States was real. As he sat through Hoover’s lame duck period (November until March), I do not recall him ever saying anything like, “This recession could last for years. We’ve got to have a plan fully implemented by the day I take office. His situation was much worse than Obama’s.
He didn’t say, “We must pump billions into the economy NOW or this will become a catastrophe.” Roosevelt never said anything like that—before or after March 4, 1933. His inaugural address pointed out many difficulties facing the nation, but he wound up saying, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”
That was admittedly simplistic. But it showed the attitude of a man who was far from paralyzed by any fears of his own. Roosevelt was not a terribly bright man. Walter Lippmann coined the phrase: “A second class intellect; a first class temperament.”
Roosevelt shared with several other members of his class a sensible attitude toward experts and very intelligent people. He saw them as useful “tools”. He was not impressed, awed or frightened by them—and he had people among his advisors and cabinet members who could have intimidated many men.
He intuited their limits and understood that it was his job to direct them—as one might direct any useful implement. The Kennedys, Rockefellers and men like Ronald Reagan—none of them equipped with mighty intellects—intuited the same thing. They valued the brilliant, often highly, but they never lost sight of just who was boss, who had the final say.
A story about Roosevelt absolutely delights me. He landed on the president’s desk on March 5 without any real plan in view. He sat down at his desk knowing only one thing for sure—he was boss. There was a row of buttons on the desk, one of the first hints that the electronic age had dawned in the White House. Each button was wired to a different White House office. If he pushed one, that person came.
Just for the fun of it—with the entire national bank system sliding into collapse around him—Roosevelt gleefully pushed all of them. He roared with laughter as his entire staff rushed into his office.
I wish I could see more of that in Obama. At first, after Election Day, we thought he was being terribly wise in surrounding himself with teams of high powered economic advisors. Then even members of the media began to sense that he was spending a lot of time listening to some of the same people who got us into this mess in the first place.
Every so often, the president-elect would stick his nose out and tell us how dreadful things really were. When he came to Washington he had already devised an economic rescue plan that, if it were not enacted by close of business January 20, would leave us forever shipwrecked.
I rather appreciate the Democratic members of Congress who are saying: “Wait a minute, we allowed ourselves to be panicked into right now—do not think or ask questions—action last October and it hasn’t done anything useful (the Paulson bailout).
“Let’s take a moment to ask some questions this time. Let’s us do some analyzing and evaluating of what needs to be done—and whether this plan is the proper course of action.” After all, the Constitution requires Congress to have input—and mandates that money bills originate in the House.
What I sense is that, like Paulson in October, several of Obama’s chosen experts on fixing the economy are essentially scared to death. I sense also that some of their panic (the urgency to act RIGHT NOW, THIS VERY SECOND) has rubbed off on Obama himself.
(Roosevelt never took his advisors all that seriously. He listened to them, but he stayed above their fears. When he gave a speech on going off the gold standard, he had two written—one by an expert in favor, another by an expert against. Then he had a third speech writer combine them. I see nothing of that kind of detachment –from the advisors—in Obama.)
I’m concerned—and this is going to sound paradoxical—that Obama, a very bright man, has too much respect for his intellectual peers. His own intelligence makes him too self-assured to be able to allow himself to look at other, equally clever men and imagine that they could possibly be wrong.
After all, they are like me—how could they be wrong? If they are afraid, I’d better be scared. Roosevelt (or Jack Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, or Ronald Reagan) would never have fallen into that trap. Obama may not even realize that such a trap exists.
If he has absorbed their fears—then he must remember what Frank Herbert wrote in his novel, Dune, “Fear is the mind killer”.
When Franklin Roosevelt took office, the American gross national product had dropped 50% in four years, international trade was all but dead, and the possibility of a radical revolution in the United States was real. As he sat through Hoover’s lame duck period (November until March), I do not recall him ever saying anything like, “This recession could last for years. We’ve got to have a plan fully implemented by the day I take office. His situation was much worse than Obama’s.
He didn’t say, “We must pump billions into the economy NOW or this will become a catastrophe.” Roosevelt never said anything like that—before or after March 4, 1933. His inaugural address pointed out many difficulties facing the nation, but he wound up saying, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”
That was admittedly simplistic. But it showed the attitude of a man who was far from paralyzed by any fears of his own. Roosevelt was not a terribly bright man. Walter Lippmann coined the phrase: “A second class intellect; a first class temperament.”
Roosevelt shared with several other members of his class a sensible attitude toward experts and very intelligent people. He saw them as useful “tools”. He was not impressed, awed or frightened by them—and he had people among his advisors and cabinet members who could have intimidated many men.
He intuited their limits and understood that it was his job to direct them—as one might direct any useful implement. The Kennedys, Rockefellers and men like Ronald Reagan—none of them equipped with mighty intellects—intuited the same thing. They valued the brilliant, often highly, but they never lost sight of just who was boss, who had the final say.
A story about Roosevelt absolutely delights me. He landed on the president’s desk on March 5 without any real plan in view. He sat down at his desk knowing only one thing for sure—he was boss. There was a row of buttons on the desk, one of the first hints that the electronic age had dawned in the White House. Each button was wired to a different White House office. If he pushed one, that person came.
Just for the fun of it—with the entire national bank system sliding into collapse around him—Roosevelt gleefully pushed all of them. He roared with laughter as his entire staff rushed into his office.
I wish I could see more of that in Obama. At first, after Election Day, we thought he was being terribly wise in surrounding himself with teams of high powered economic advisors. Then even members of the media began to sense that he was spending a lot of time listening to some of the same people who got us into this mess in the first place.
Every so often, the president-elect would stick his nose out and tell us how dreadful things really were. When he came to Washington he had already devised an economic rescue plan that, if it were not enacted by close of business January 20, would leave us forever shipwrecked.
I rather appreciate the Democratic members of Congress who are saying: “Wait a minute, we allowed ourselves to be panicked into right now—do not think or ask questions—action last October and it hasn’t done anything useful (the Paulson bailout).
“Let’s take a moment to ask some questions this time. Let’s us do some analyzing and evaluating of what needs to be done—and whether this plan is the proper course of action.” After all, the Constitution requires Congress to have input—and mandates that money bills originate in the House.
What I sense is that, like Paulson in October, several of Obama’s chosen experts on fixing the economy are essentially scared to death. I sense also that some of their panic (the urgency to act RIGHT NOW, THIS VERY SECOND) has rubbed off on Obama himself.
(Roosevelt never took his advisors all that seriously. He listened to them, but he stayed above their fears. When he gave a speech on going off the gold standard, he had two written—one by an expert in favor, another by an expert against. Then he had a third speech writer combine them. I see nothing of that kind of detachment –from the advisors—in Obama.)
I’m concerned—and this is going to sound paradoxical—that Obama, a very bright man, has too much respect for his intellectual peers. His own intelligence makes him too self-assured to be able to allow himself to look at other, equally clever men and imagine that they could possibly be wrong.
After all, they are like me—how could they be wrong? If they are afraid, I’d better be scared. Roosevelt (or Jack Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, or Ronald Reagan) would never have fallen into that trap. Obama may not even realize that such a trap exists.
If he has absorbed their fears—then he must remember what Frank Herbert wrote in his novel, Dune, “Fear is the mind killer”.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Time to Get Tough on Israel -- ?
As gas prices start climbing again in my neighborhood—up to $2.00 a gallon (regular) for the first time in weeks, there is less and less doubt in my mind. How easy would it be for the people who take American dollars and buy rockets and guns for Hamas to tell Hamas to start a shootout with Israel? The dust up will put oil profits at least part way back to where they were this summer.
Use rockets bought with American money (spent for oil) to kill Israelis and, when Israel shoots back, get the same Americans to pressure Israel not to retaliate. Newsweek Magazine has a cover headline this week that reads, “Time to Get Tough On Israel.”
The author of the piece insists it just isn’t nice of Israel to make life miserable for civilians in the Gaza strip while the insurgents among them are left unrestrained to send Israeli citizens into their bomb shelters a dozen times a day. Oh Pish and Tosh.
This nonsense comes from a nation that made life hell on earth for civilians in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki after their military bombed Pearl Harbor. A nation that may have killed as many as half-a-million women and children in a single day of bombing Hamburg after the Nazi military bombed London and Rotterdam.
We invented unrestrained retaliation. Going back to the Indian Wars and Sherman’s March through Georgia and the Carolina’s, American military doctrine has been: Discomfit and kill enough civilians and their military will become discouraged and quit. (Didn’t always work, but we never stopped trying.)
And our World War II retaliation didn’t just raise our oil prices, it got us rationed to something like two gallons a week. The Japanese took over Indonesian oil fields; German subs sank oil tankers from the Middle East and Latin America. Now there’s an argument for restraint in dealing with the Axis. Maybe if we’d been nicer to Hitler and Tojo, they’d have kept our oil supplies plentiful.
Just as an aside—since we went into Iraq in the first place, the traditional American strategy of making war on the civilians might have been a better strategy than the one we employed (assuming we had one). MacArthur and Napoleon both had a point when they said, If you’re going to send your sons to fight and die in war—win it. At whatever cost to the enemy.
The blood of our boys is too precious to be sprinkled about willy-nilly, in confusion. If we feel we must spend it, let us be certain we get a terrible return on our investment—one that will make others fear to open that account. Caesar, Grant, Roosevelt, MacArthur, Genghis Khan and nearly any military commander in history worth his salt understood this bitter reality.
War should be an absolute last result; but if it must be waged, it is waged most successfully completely without restraint. Wars in which you must restrain yourselves probably should never be fought.
Oh, how I would have loved to have been a fly on the White House Wall the day after Pearl Harbor had some coalition of uninvolved nations decided it was time to “be tough on Roosevelt”—that it was his duty to show restraint.
Let’s understand that in a tiny nation like Israel, rockets exploding over every inch of their territory is an even more serious attack—for them—than Pearl Harbor was for us. For them, restraint means more Israeli death. American talk isn’t going to stop Hamas rockets.
Oh, but there must be a political solution, they say. Well, if a political solution is so possible, why didn’t we seek one after Pearl Harbor or Fort Sumter? Why didn’t Churchill seek one after Dunkirk? When the Arabs have announced in a dozen Arabic Mein Kampf’s that they will accept no other political solution but the destruction of Israel, what political solution do you suggest for the Jews? Mass suicide?
THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION POSSIBLE in the Near East until the Arabs renounce the Islamic faith that forbids any lands once claimed for Allah to fall into Infidel hands—or the Jews get on a boat and sail off somewhere.
Or, God help us (and our oil prices), one side or the other wins such a total victory that the other is no longer capable of getting back on its feet. That is, admittedly, too a grim a possibility to contemplate. But the other two are equally unlikely.
You want to be President Obama for a week or two? That’s only one of the sheer impossibilities he faces. I’ll pray and hope for the man, but I wouldn’t be him for the world.
Next time, (I did say it would be this time—but other considerations intervened) let’s take a look at the genesis of Arab/Jewish hostilities. You can go back about 4,000 years to when Isaac’s mom got Ishmael’s mom kicked out of camp, left to starve with her child in the desert. Hagar and Ishmael, progenitors of the Arabs, survived—but it is doubtful there were any warm feelings left for Sarah and Isaac, progenitors of the Jews.
But we’ll start tomorrow with the Arab incursion on Jewish, Ammonite and Edomite lands after a Babylonian king carted everyone off to Babylon (Iraq). That was in the sixth century before Christ.
Use rockets bought with American money (spent for oil) to kill Israelis and, when Israel shoots back, get the same Americans to pressure Israel not to retaliate. Newsweek Magazine has a cover headline this week that reads, “Time to Get Tough On Israel.”
The author of the piece insists it just isn’t nice of Israel to make life miserable for civilians in the Gaza strip while the insurgents among them are left unrestrained to send Israeli citizens into their bomb shelters a dozen times a day. Oh Pish and Tosh.
This nonsense comes from a nation that made life hell on earth for civilians in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki after their military bombed Pearl Harbor. A nation that may have killed as many as half-a-million women and children in a single day of bombing Hamburg after the Nazi military bombed London and Rotterdam.
We invented unrestrained retaliation. Going back to the Indian Wars and Sherman’s March through Georgia and the Carolina’s, American military doctrine has been: Discomfit and kill enough civilians and their military will become discouraged and quit. (Didn’t always work, but we never stopped trying.)
And our World War II retaliation didn’t just raise our oil prices, it got us rationed to something like two gallons a week. The Japanese took over Indonesian oil fields; German subs sank oil tankers from the Middle East and Latin America. Now there’s an argument for restraint in dealing with the Axis. Maybe if we’d been nicer to Hitler and Tojo, they’d have kept our oil supplies plentiful.
Just as an aside—since we went into Iraq in the first place, the traditional American strategy of making war on the civilians might have been a better strategy than the one we employed (assuming we had one). MacArthur and Napoleon both had a point when they said, If you’re going to send your sons to fight and die in war—win it. At whatever cost to the enemy.
The blood of our boys is too precious to be sprinkled about willy-nilly, in confusion. If we feel we must spend it, let us be certain we get a terrible return on our investment—one that will make others fear to open that account. Caesar, Grant, Roosevelt, MacArthur, Genghis Khan and nearly any military commander in history worth his salt understood this bitter reality.
War should be an absolute last result; but if it must be waged, it is waged most successfully completely without restraint. Wars in which you must restrain yourselves probably should never be fought.
Oh, how I would have loved to have been a fly on the White House Wall the day after Pearl Harbor had some coalition of uninvolved nations decided it was time to “be tough on Roosevelt”—that it was his duty to show restraint.
Let’s understand that in a tiny nation like Israel, rockets exploding over every inch of their territory is an even more serious attack—for them—than Pearl Harbor was for us. For them, restraint means more Israeli death. American talk isn’t going to stop Hamas rockets.
Oh, but there must be a political solution, they say. Well, if a political solution is so possible, why didn’t we seek one after Pearl Harbor or Fort Sumter? Why didn’t Churchill seek one after Dunkirk? When the Arabs have announced in a dozen Arabic Mein Kampf’s that they will accept no other political solution but the destruction of Israel, what political solution do you suggest for the Jews? Mass suicide?
THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION POSSIBLE in the Near East until the Arabs renounce the Islamic faith that forbids any lands once claimed for Allah to fall into Infidel hands—or the Jews get on a boat and sail off somewhere.
Or, God help us (and our oil prices), one side or the other wins such a total victory that the other is no longer capable of getting back on its feet. That is, admittedly, too a grim a possibility to contemplate. But the other two are equally unlikely.
You want to be President Obama for a week or two? That’s only one of the sheer impossibilities he faces. I’ll pray and hope for the man, but I wouldn’t be him for the world.
Next time, (I did say it would be this time—but other considerations intervened) let’s take a look at the genesis of Arab/Jewish hostilities. You can go back about 4,000 years to when Isaac’s mom got Ishmael’s mom kicked out of camp, left to starve with her child in the desert. Hagar and Ishmael, progenitors of the Arabs, survived—but it is doubtful there were any warm feelings left for Sarah and Isaac, progenitors of the Jews.
But we’ll start tomorrow with the Arab incursion on Jewish, Ammonite and Edomite lands after a Babylonian king carted everyone off to Babylon (Iraq). That was in the sixth century before Christ.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Herod, Jews and Magi
Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas (Twelfth Night—beginning the night of January 5) or the Feast of The Three Kings (who weren’t kings), Russian Christmas or The Epiphany (the revealing or unveiling). That’s a lot of names for one miserably wet and slippery day in winter.
It commemorates the arrival of Magi (magicians, Zoroastrian priests) from Persia (modern Iran) to salute the recently born Christ Child—or, as they called him, the King of the Jews. They were astrologers who read in the stars that a new king was born. They came to honor him.
Herod and his Jewish subjects had seen them before. Their arrival caused King Herod, “and all Jerusalem with him”, to be troubled. Those are wonderfully diplomatically nuanced words. They must have rocked with something very close to pure terror.
Two things tell us they weren’t looking at three old crocks sitting on a camel. It’s very safe to say that these Magi had with them as escort more troops on the ground than Herod had. After all, the Roman legions were up in Syria and down in Egypt. In Judea, all Herod would have had is a battalion or two of auxiliaries—think National Guard.
The Magi would have been escorted by battalions of the finest cavalry of their time. The first thing that tells us this is so is that the Magi—following a star’s direct path—would have come across the Arab-held Jordanian desert. The Nabataean Arabs were tough customers.
They had conquered parts of modern Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. They had licked Jewish armies, Roman armies and held their own against Alexander the Great. In their spare time, they enjoyed raiding caravans that crossed their territory. You didn’t cross it without a large, formidable escort—like battalions of Parthian (Persian) cavalry.
The Parthians were nasty customers too. They fought a seven hundred year long cold and hot war with Rome, giving as good as they got. Forty years before the birth of Christ they had gone on an expansionist kick. They overwhelmed Marc Anthony (one of Caesar’s top generals) and drove him out of modern Asiatic Turkey. Another column conquered Jerusalem and Judea, sending young Herod running for his life.
During this episode, the Parthians (the Magi were very important figures in their culture) killed Herod’s father, tortured his older brother so badly he beat his own brains out on the walls of his cell, and nearly captured Herod and his mother. Herod escaped—in a run worthy of an action movie—and found his way to Rome.
Here he was given an army, made “King of the Jews” (under Roman authority), and sent back to recapture Jerusalem. He besieged Jerusalem for three years, before Anthony—who had recaptured Asia Minor—came down to help. During the siege of Jericho, the Parthians killed Herod’s younger brother.
The Herod family remembered the Magi very, very well. The Parthians had kept dabbling in Judean affairs, leading an ever more suspicious Herod to kill his favorite wife and several of sons to head off plots against his throne—some of which were real.
By the time the Magi came, about two years after Christmas, Herod was a sick old man, wracked with excruciating pain and paranoia. (His staff wouldn’t even let him have a bread knife for fear he would kill himself with it.) Someone was always trying to take his throne away, his subjects hated him because he was not Jewish, and back came the Magi to announce a NEW king of the Jews (read threat).
A truce with the Parthians had been signed by Augustus at Damascus twenty years earlier. There was official peace between them with a DMZ stretching from modern Georgia to Arabia. The Magi and their escort had slipped through a lightly guarded stretch along the Jordan River.
One more thing tells us they had more troops than Herod. Bethlehem, where the Magi were told to go look for a promised savior/king, lay a mere six miles from Jerusalem. Herod had the finest intelligence apparatus in the Roman Empire—he could track anyone anywhere.
Herod had to ask the Magi to, pretty please, come back and tell him where the new king lived. He couldn’t get a single spy through to watch where the Magi went. The Magi threw out a formidable screen of cavalry that nothing could penetrate. That’s a lot of troops.
So they came to the house where Mary and Joseph lived with their son. The Magi worshipped. They gave royal gifts—enough so that Joseph and Mary could support themselves after they escaped to Egypt to prevent Herod from killing their child. They probably had enough left to buy a business when they returned to Nazareth after Herod died.
The Feast is called the “unveiling” or “revealing” for here was the first time that the Christ Child was shown to non-Jews, to the Gentiles. It was deemed to be an “epiphany” for the entire non-Jewish world. That is why non-Jewish Christians celebrate it to this day. In the Eastern (Greek/Russian) Church it is considered to be THE Christ Mass celebration.
And that, boys and girls, is why Herod was so “troubled”. I had always wondered about that verse. There was a lot of history involved, some of it not so flattering to Rome, and Matthew being a good Roman bureaucrat (tax collector) trod very lightly when he told the story.
It commemorates the arrival of Magi (magicians, Zoroastrian priests) from Persia (modern Iran) to salute the recently born Christ Child—or, as they called him, the King of the Jews. They were astrologers who read in the stars that a new king was born. They came to honor him.
Herod and his Jewish subjects had seen them before. Their arrival caused King Herod, “and all Jerusalem with him”, to be troubled. Those are wonderfully diplomatically nuanced words. They must have rocked with something very close to pure terror.
Two things tell us they weren’t looking at three old crocks sitting on a camel. It’s very safe to say that these Magi had with them as escort more troops on the ground than Herod had. After all, the Roman legions were up in Syria and down in Egypt. In Judea, all Herod would have had is a battalion or two of auxiliaries—think National Guard.
The Magi would have been escorted by battalions of the finest cavalry of their time. The first thing that tells us this is so is that the Magi—following a star’s direct path—would have come across the Arab-held Jordanian desert. The Nabataean Arabs were tough customers.
They had conquered parts of modern Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. They had licked Jewish armies, Roman armies and held their own against Alexander the Great. In their spare time, they enjoyed raiding caravans that crossed their territory. You didn’t cross it without a large, formidable escort—like battalions of Parthian (Persian) cavalry.
The Parthians were nasty customers too. They fought a seven hundred year long cold and hot war with Rome, giving as good as they got. Forty years before the birth of Christ they had gone on an expansionist kick. They overwhelmed Marc Anthony (one of Caesar’s top generals) and drove him out of modern Asiatic Turkey. Another column conquered Jerusalem and Judea, sending young Herod running for his life.
During this episode, the Parthians (the Magi were very important figures in their culture) killed Herod’s father, tortured his older brother so badly he beat his own brains out on the walls of his cell, and nearly captured Herod and his mother. Herod escaped—in a run worthy of an action movie—and found his way to Rome.
Here he was given an army, made “King of the Jews” (under Roman authority), and sent back to recapture Jerusalem. He besieged Jerusalem for three years, before Anthony—who had recaptured Asia Minor—came down to help. During the siege of Jericho, the Parthians killed Herod’s younger brother.
The Herod family remembered the Magi very, very well. The Parthians had kept dabbling in Judean affairs, leading an ever more suspicious Herod to kill his favorite wife and several of sons to head off plots against his throne—some of which were real.
By the time the Magi came, about two years after Christmas, Herod was a sick old man, wracked with excruciating pain and paranoia. (His staff wouldn’t even let him have a bread knife for fear he would kill himself with it.) Someone was always trying to take his throne away, his subjects hated him because he was not Jewish, and back came the Magi to announce a NEW king of the Jews (read threat).
A truce with the Parthians had been signed by Augustus at Damascus twenty years earlier. There was official peace between them with a DMZ stretching from modern Georgia to Arabia. The Magi and their escort had slipped through a lightly guarded stretch along the Jordan River.
One more thing tells us they had more troops than Herod. Bethlehem, where the Magi were told to go look for a promised savior/king, lay a mere six miles from Jerusalem. Herod had the finest intelligence apparatus in the Roman Empire—he could track anyone anywhere.
Herod had to ask the Magi to, pretty please, come back and tell him where the new king lived. He couldn’t get a single spy through to watch where the Magi went. The Magi threw out a formidable screen of cavalry that nothing could penetrate. That’s a lot of troops.
So they came to the house where Mary and Joseph lived with their son. The Magi worshipped. They gave royal gifts—enough so that Joseph and Mary could support themselves after they escaped to Egypt to prevent Herod from killing their child. They probably had enough left to buy a business when they returned to Nazareth after Herod died.
The Feast is called the “unveiling” or “revealing” for here was the first time that the Christ Child was shown to non-Jews, to the Gentiles. It was deemed to be an “epiphany” for the entire non-Jewish world. That is why non-Jewish Christians celebrate it to this day. In the Eastern (Greek/Russian) Church it is considered to be THE Christ Mass celebration.
And that, boys and girls, is why Herod was so “troubled”. I had always wondered about that verse. There was a lot of history involved, some of it not so flattering to Rome, and Matthew being a good Roman bureaucrat (tax collector) trod very lightly when he told the story.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Jews And Arabs--An Ancient Feud
Two thousand years is a long time for a fight to go on. As Israeli troop push their way into Gaza in response to Hamas’ rocket fire, it’s here we go again. Actually, the first time Israeli troops pushed into Gaza was a bit over THREE THOUSAND years ago. But those weren’t Arabs. (Try Philistines.)
Hostile forces from Gaza have been a thorn in Israel’s side for millennia. Hostiles on the West Bank have harassed and threatened to cut Israel in two for even longer. Today’s headlines could have been written in Sumerian and ancient Egyptian dispatches.
In those days, marauders came on camel back and raided Israeli settlements; now they sit back and fire rockets. It probably feels all the same to the Israelis—whether you hide in caves from sword wielding raiders or hide in today’s mandatory cement reinforced bomb shelters in your basement.
Today’s Israeli forces face one disadvantage that their ancestors could never have dreamt of. No foreign powers or United Nations were around to urge “restraint”. (Can you imagine what Churchill’s response would have been to someone who urged British restraint in 1940 while German bombs were raining down on London and Coventry? Or Stalin’s a year later when the panzers were at the outskirts of Moscow? But we feel free to tell the Israelis, “Never mind those silly little rockets that blow up your houses and kill your children—show restraint.” How much would we show?)
We were all much happier with the Jews when they did show restraint—and lined up quietly for Hitler’s gas ovens. This was the Jew we had learned to deal with in the Middle Ages—when they had no means to resist the stake and the knout. We haven’t gotten used to Jews who act like King David (1000 BC).
If the Israeli don’t show restraint and if they go after the sites and people who shoot the rockets, our oil prices could go way, way up again. So we beg them to endure the shelling quietly and do nothing to seriously antagonize the oil-rich Arabs who buy the rockets for Hamas.
They had an interview on Fox News the other day with a young man who had once been privy to all of the inside information in Hamas. His father had run the outfit. He told the interviewer flatly that Hamas will never agree to any permanent peace with Israel. They follow the Koran.
Land that was once Allah’s can never, ever be allowed to go back to the adherents of any other religion. Jews must forever leave the area—or die. Hamas will call for truces, the young man said, so they can regroup and rearm—but just as this latest one ended with Hamas violence, so will they all.
Arafat used to talk peace when he spoke publicly to the Western World. But insiders know that he never stopped calling for the total destruction of Israel when he spoke privately, in Arabic, to his Arab friends. Hamas and Hezbollah have the same policy. Starting with the murdered Abdullah of Jordan (1951) and going through the assassination of Sadat (1981) it can be a lethal thing for an Arab leader to talk peace to Israel.
The irony is that this land of Israel that the Arabs want back so badly had been largely abandoned by them in the 1800s. When a relative handful of Jewish refugees from Russian pogroms showed up in the 1870s and started buying land from the few remaining Bedouin, they had to re-dig long forgotten wells and work desperately hard to make desert yield crops.
When Arabs saw that these tiny Jewish settlements were green and thriving where only bare sand had been for centuries before, they returned. Many “Palestinian refugees” have antecedents in Israel that are no longer than the modern Israelis.
They came back, said, “Oh, you can make it work? Well, then, it’s ours—now that it’s fertile.” By the 1920s and on into the 1940s they rioted and killed to make it so. British overlords, desperate to quiet the Arabs where they had oil wells, denied the Jews means to defend themselves.
It was, in many ways, Medieval Europe all over again. Unarmed Jews, armed assailants—with the cops definitely biased in favor of the thugs. Then came World War II, with the Arabs largely pro-Hitler (the Muslim Grand Mufti of Jerusalem raised two divisions of Waffen SS in Bosnia and ordered the slaughter of Yugoslav Jews and Serbs that directly led to the troubles of the 1990s—when the Serbs finally paid the Bosnian Nazis back.
The British were forced to turn to their one sure, pro-democracy ally in all the Middle East—the Jews in Israel. Jews were allowed to form a single brigade—but that was enough to teach Jews modern warfare. Officers from that brigade led the Israel Defense Force for decades.
(What happened to the murderous Mufti? After Hitler fell, he escaped to Cairo. There was talk of hauling him up before the Nuremburg Tribunal, but the Arabs threatened oil retaliation. He lived out his years sending a nephew to kill Jews in his old stamping grounds, a kid named Yasser Arafat. A lot of Arab leaders coming out of that era had strong Nazi connections: Nasser, Saddam Hussein, etc.)
I’ll leave you with a question for today. Do you think oil prices that declined from $140 to 40 a barrel in less than six months (and put Dubai out of business) have hurt Arabs in general? Could it be possible that the folk who have financed the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah for decades, said to Hamas, “Your truce with Israel ends in January, go mix it up, fire a few rockets and raise our oil profits.”?
As Lenin and Samuel Adams knew so well, if you can get a few civilians killed in the process, it makes such wonderful anti-Tsarist, anti-British or anti-Jewish propaganda. For those who seek the destruction of Israel, the present crisis seems to be win-win. (We’ll pay more for oil to buy more rockets.)
When did this hatred between Arab and Jew begin—when did Arabs begin to encroach on Israeli territory? (Arabs began moving in on Jewish territory around the time of Alexander the Great.) This is one of those stories that goes on and on and on. More next time.
Hostile forces from Gaza have been a thorn in Israel’s side for millennia. Hostiles on the West Bank have harassed and threatened to cut Israel in two for even longer. Today’s headlines could have been written in Sumerian and ancient Egyptian dispatches.
In those days, marauders came on camel back and raided Israeli settlements; now they sit back and fire rockets. It probably feels all the same to the Israelis—whether you hide in caves from sword wielding raiders or hide in today’s mandatory cement reinforced bomb shelters in your basement.
Today’s Israeli forces face one disadvantage that their ancestors could never have dreamt of. No foreign powers or United Nations were around to urge “restraint”. (Can you imagine what Churchill’s response would have been to someone who urged British restraint in 1940 while German bombs were raining down on London and Coventry? Or Stalin’s a year later when the panzers were at the outskirts of Moscow? But we feel free to tell the Israelis, “Never mind those silly little rockets that blow up your houses and kill your children—show restraint.” How much would we show?)
We were all much happier with the Jews when they did show restraint—and lined up quietly for Hitler’s gas ovens. This was the Jew we had learned to deal with in the Middle Ages—when they had no means to resist the stake and the knout. We haven’t gotten used to Jews who act like King David (1000 BC).
If the Israeli don’t show restraint and if they go after the sites and people who shoot the rockets, our oil prices could go way, way up again. So we beg them to endure the shelling quietly and do nothing to seriously antagonize the oil-rich Arabs who buy the rockets for Hamas.
They had an interview on Fox News the other day with a young man who had once been privy to all of the inside information in Hamas. His father had run the outfit. He told the interviewer flatly that Hamas will never agree to any permanent peace with Israel. They follow the Koran.
Land that was once Allah’s can never, ever be allowed to go back to the adherents of any other religion. Jews must forever leave the area—or die. Hamas will call for truces, the young man said, so they can regroup and rearm—but just as this latest one ended with Hamas violence, so will they all.
Arafat used to talk peace when he spoke publicly to the Western World. But insiders know that he never stopped calling for the total destruction of Israel when he spoke privately, in Arabic, to his Arab friends. Hamas and Hezbollah have the same policy. Starting with the murdered Abdullah of Jordan (1951) and going through the assassination of Sadat (1981) it can be a lethal thing for an Arab leader to talk peace to Israel.
The irony is that this land of Israel that the Arabs want back so badly had been largely abandoned by them in the 1800s. When a relative handful of Jewish refugees from Russian pogroms showed up in the 1870s and started buying land from the few remaining Bedouin, they had to re-dig long forgotten wells and work desperately hard to make desert yield crops.
When Arabs saw that these tiny Jewish settlements were green and thriving where only bare sand had been for centuries before, they returned. Many “Palestinian refugees” have antecedents in Israel that are no longer than the modern Israelis.
They came back, said, “Oh, you can make it work? Well, then, it’s ours—now that it’s fertile.” By the 1920s and on into the 1940s they rioted and killed to make it so. British overlords, desperate to quiet the Arabs where they had oil wells, denied the Jews means to defend themselves.
It was, in many ways, Medieval Europe all over again. Unarmed Jews, armed assailants—with the cops definitely biased in favor of the thugs. Then came World War II, with the Arabs largely pro-Hitler (the Muslim Grand Mufti of Jerusalem raised two divisions of Waffen SS in Bosnia and ordered the slaughter of Yugoslav Jews and Serbs that directly led to the troubles of the 1990s—when the Serbs finally paid the Bosnian Nazis back.
The British were forced to turn to their one sure, pro-democracy ally in all the Middle East—the Jews in Israel. Jews were allowed to form a single brigade—but that was enough to teach Jews modern warfare. Officers from that brigade led the Israel Defense Force for decades.
(What happened to the murderous Mufti? After Hitler fell, he escaped to Cairo. There was talk of hauling him up before the Nuremburg Tribunal, but the Arabs threatened oil retaliation. He lived out his years sending a nephew to kill Jews in his old stamping grounds, a kid named Yasser Arafat. A lot of Arab leaders coming out of that era had strong Nazi connections: Nasser, Saddam Hussein, etc.)
I’ll leave you with a question for today. Do you think oil prices that declined from $140 to 40 a barrel in less than six months (and put Dubai out of business) have hurt Arabs in general? Could it be possible that the folk who have financed the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah for decades, said to Hamas, “Your truce with Israel ends in January, go mix it up, fire a few rockets and raise our oil profits.”?
As Lenin and Samuel Adams knew so well, if you can get a few civilians killed in the process, it makes such wonderful anti-Tsarist, anti-British or anti-Jewish propaganda. For those who seek the destruction of Israel, the present crisis seems to be win-win. (We’ll pay more for oil to buy more rockets.)
When did this hatred between Arab and Jew begin—when did Arabs begin to encroach on Israeli territory? (Arabs began moving in on Jewish territory around the time of Alexander the Great.) This is one of those stories that goes on and on and on. More next time.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Housing--Who Can Really Afford One?
The kid next door wants to build a house. I call him “kid” because I’ve known him since he was tiny. He’s actually almost twenty-three, has a good job—secure as a five year government contract can make it, owns a piece of land, and has thousands in the bank.
The contractor is raring to go, but the kid cannot find a loan. Two years ago, with less seniority and cash, his brother built on the land next to his at a very favorable cost. (Contractors around here will build for around cost, just to keep busy.) The same contractor is ready to build—but no loan.
Things around here seem to have gotten worse since the Paulson bailout. Last May and June, I watched five houses near me sell within weeks. I almost said to myself, “What real estate crisis?” Nothing has moved since—and I walk, look, ask and watch.
A fellow near me took a job in Florida last September. His house stands empty and for sale—there’s no sign in the snow that anybody has driven up to look at it. (I’m sure he’s sell a house that he’s a thousand miles away from on very favorable terms if you want to buy it—it’s only two years old.) A group of three houses, one to four years old, stand for sale a block away. Another elderly man who wants to move into assisted living has had a sign up since summer, just around the block.
We certainly aren’t out of the real estate woods yet. By now it’s so dark under the trees, I suspect some folks can’t even see the path any more. If the tax assessor tells you your house is worth $180,000 or a quarter of a million, let alone a million, just laugh. It’s very funny money indeed.
Which brings to mind a question: exactly when did the cost of a house become funny money? Three months ago? Three years ago? At the end of the 70’s when housing costs began a violent escalation in places like New York and California? I remember a friend of mine from San Francisco saying to me then, talking about rising California housing prices, “The American dream is dead.”
He was wrong. The dream didn’t die. We stretched higher and farther to reach it—with the help of a lot of foreign loans. When I was a boy, banks felt that no more than 25% of income should go toward housing. Helped by an infusion of foreign cash, we stretched that figure ever higher.
We bought what we couldn’t afford to furnish. So we took second mortgages for that. And vacations, and college educations (when I was in college, a kid could earn his tuition with a summer job), and whatever else became necessary for the good life.
I’m not talking about the working poor and unemployed who were encouraged by zero down and teaser rates to buy expensive housing, I’m talking about middle and even upper middle class folk—like those trying to sell houses in my neighborhood. This is the class that found itself in such trouble last fall that the demographic spread that had given Republicans victory over the past 30 years went up in electoral smoke—in a brief week or two.
Conservatives do make a valid point ONE of the causes of the housing misery is a law that demand banks act like welfare agencies instead of banks. (Note I did not say this was ALL of the cause—like many conservatives do.) Specifically this charge is brought against the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. It was given teeth in 1994 and, under its provisions, banks were forbidden to redline.
Redlining was the practice of banks looking at the census data for neighborhoods to determine who could afford to pay back a mortgage. Neighborhoods with income and employment levels too low for reasonable loans had red marker lines drawn around them—and no loans were made there.
That sounds mean and discriminatory from the point of view of residents, but it is sane lending from the point of view of banks that are required to get their money back in order to have sufficient cash to stay in business. But the government was having none of it—lend to anyone who is in need, regardless of income level or employment. No more red lines indicating high risk areas.
That may be a worthy cause—but it’s not banking. The government persisted. Between 2004 and 2007, 40% of all housing loans were made by banks that were guaranteed by and under the direction of the CRA. This was called “fair lending”, and mortgage money poured into minority communities.
A worthy goal for a straight out welfare program, no doubt—but it wasn’t banking. Banks were under orders to comply with the “fair lending” programs of the government—and the subprime mortgage was made to order for that kind of compliance.
Some of the banks most heavily involved in “fair lending” were: Freddy Mac, Fannie Mae, Washington Mutual and Countrywide—all basically out of business as independent banking organizations today. But at least they avoided one of the worst consequences of not adhering to “fair lending” guidelines. Bankrupt they may be, but no one is calling them racist.
There are certainly many Americans who need help with decent housing. Requiring private banks to make loans that make no banking sense isn’t the best way. Ask the people who owned stock in some of the institutions that went down under the subprime collapse. Ask the tax payers who will be paying for that collapse for decades to come.
Let’s let charity be charity—and banking be banking. If you think for a moment, you realize they cannot be one and the same thing. (Should we require car companies to give them away to people who cannot afford to buy? How about grocery stores? Or clothing stores?) It can’t work.
But since this housing collapse is by no means limited to ghetto neighborhoods, could it be that there is a more fundamental problem here—one no one is talking about? Is it possible that housing prices had climbed to such a level that NO ONE could really afford one.
Some of the people living near me are hanging on by fingernails. Is it possible that they overbought and over borrowed just like those old redlined neighborhoods did? Have we got several billions in mortgages out there—in all sorts of neighborhoods, under all sorts of mortgage devices—that NO ONE could really afford to pay for no matter how extensively readjusted?
That’s a horrible thought that no one—liberal or conservative—has really addressed yet.
The contractor is raring to go, but the kid cannot find a loan. Two years ago, with less seniority and cash, his brother built on the land next to his at a very favorable cost. (Contractors around here will build for around cost, just to keep busy.) The same contractor is ready to build—but no loan.
Things around here seem to have gotten worse since the Paulson bailout. Last May and June, I watched five houses near me sell within weeks. I almost said to myself, “What real estate crisis?” Nothing has moved since—and I walk, look, ask and watch.
A fellow near me took a job in Florida last September. His house stands empty and for sale—there’s no sign in the snow that anybody has driven up to look at it. (I’m sure he’s sell a house that he’s a thousand miles away from on very favorable terms if you want to buy it—it’s only two years old.) A group of three houses, one to four years old, stand for sale a block away. Another elderly man who wants to move into assisted living has had a sign up since summer, just around the block.
We certainly aren’t out of the real estate woods yet. By now it’s so dark under the trees, I suspect some folks can’t even see the path any more. If the tax assessor tells you your house is worth $180,000 or a quarter of a million, let alone a million, just laugh. It’s very funny money indeed.
Which brings to mind a question: exactly when did the cost of a house become funny money? Three months ago? Three years ago? At the end of the 70’s when housing costs began a violent escalation in places like New York and California? I remember a friend of mine from San Francisco saying to me then, talking about rising California housing prices, “The American dream is dead.”
He was wrong. The dream didn’t die. We stretched higher and farther to reach it—with the help of a lot of foreign loans. When I was a boy, banks felt that no more than 25% of income should go toward housing. Helped by an infusion of foreign cash, we stretched that figure ever higher.
We bought what we couldn’t afford to furnish. So we took second mortgages for that. And vacations, and college educations (when I was in college, a kid could earn his tuition with a summer job), and whatever else became necessary for the good life.
I’m not talking about the working poor and unemployed who were encouraged by zero down and teaser rates to buy expensive housing, I’m talking about middle and even upper middle class folk—like those trying to sell houses in my neighborhood. This is the class that found itself in such trouble last fall that the demographic spread that had given Republicans victory over the past 30 years went up in electoral smoke—in a brief week or two.
Conservatives do make a valid point ONE of the causes of the housing misery is a law that demand banks act like welfare agencies instead of banks. (Note I did not say this was ALL of the cause—like many conservatives do.) Specifically this charge is brought against the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. It was given teeth in 1994 and, under its provisions, banks were forbidden to redline.
Redlining was the practice of banks looking at the census data for neighborhoods to determine who could afford to pay back a mortgage. Neighborhoods with income and employment levels too low for reasonable loans had red marker lines drawn around them—and no loans were made there.
That sounds mean and discriminatory from the point of view of residents, but it is sane lending from the point of view of banks that are required to get their money back in order to have sufficient cash to stay in business. But the government was having none of it—lend to anyone who is in need, regardless of income level or employment. No more red lines indicating high risk areas.
That may be a worthy cause—but it’s not banking. The government persisted. Between 2004 and 2007, 40% of all housing loans were made by banks that were guaranteed by and under the direction of the CRA. This was called “fair lending”, and mortgage money poured into minority communities.
A worthy goal for a straight out welfare program, no doubt—but it wasn’t banking. Banks were under orders to comply with the “fair lending” programs of the government—and the subprime mortgage was made to order for that kind of compliance.
Some of the banks most heavily involved in “fair lending” were: Freddy Mac, Fannie Mae, Washington Mutual and Countrywide—all basically out of business as independent banking organizations today. But at least they avoided one of the worst consequences of not adhering to “fair lending” guidelines. Bankrupt they may be, but no one is calling them racist.
There are certainly many Americans who need help with decent housing. Requiring private banks to make loans that make no banking sense isn’t the best way. Ask the people who owned stock in some of the institutions that went down under the subprime collapse. Ask the tax payers who will be paying for that collapse for decades to come.
Let’s let charity be charity—and banking be banking. If you think for a moment, you realize they cannot be one and the same thing. (Should we require car companies to give them away to people who cannot afford to buy? How about grocery stores? Or clothing stores?) It can’t work.
But since this housing collapse is by no means limited to ghetto neighborhoods, could it be that there is a more fundamental problem here—one no one is talking about? Is it possible that housing prices had climbed to such a level that NO ONE could really afford one.
Some of the people living near me are hanging on by fingernails. Is it possible that they overbought and over borrowed just like those old redlined neighborhoods did? Have we got several billions in mortgages out there—in all sorts of neighborhoods, under all sorts of mortgage devices—that NO ONE could really afford to pay for no matter how extensively readjusted?
That’s a horrible thought that no one—liberal or conservative—has really addressed yet.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Do Presidents Really Matter?
It’s been eight years since we last looked forward to an imminent change in administration in Washington. Let’s see, Republicans were going to bring back honor and respect to the White House. Republicans would cure the recession rising out a of burst bubble on Wall Street.
Republicans would bring national security—after all, an American ship had been attacked and nearly sunk while at anchor near the mouth of the Persian Gulf just the previous year. American planes flew over Iraq day and night with the constant threat of escalation. A perfectly horrible regime had taken over Afghanistan, but it seemed to be no immediate threat to us.
There was incessant violence between Israel and the Palestinian political island on either side of it—Gaza and the West Bank. A collapse of Asiatic equities and finance had roiled the world financial markets.
Oh, yes, and eight years ago there was a whiff of political scandal. A state big enough to decide an election with a presidential candidate’s brother as governor had thrown out ballots on a scale not seen since the days of “Landslide Lyndon” in Texas (in 1948, a Supreme Court justice had ordered 20,000 paper ballots, clearly tampered with, to remain sealed—and Lyndon Johnson had squeaked into the Senate by 67 votes, as the boxes of suspect ballots lay in a Texas courtroom sealed by Federal Court order).
And, just as it had made a senator and future president in ’48, the Court of 2000 had made an immediate president. But that’s the fun of American politics—they are often more entertaining to watch than Newman and Redford in “The Sting”.
Those of us of a conservative Republican bent breathed more easily now that a respectable and decent fellow Christian Republican had taken office. Then came 911 and a clearly unthought-out military response. We were in reflex mode, writhing in pain as we watched two proud symbols of American economic ascendancy come crashing down.
Then came another economic bubble. (Oh but how the last few administrations had boasted of giving every American his own hugely overpriced and over leveraged home—whether that family could afford it or not.) And as we come to the end of this administration the whole unregulated house of cards that we had held up as a model to an envious the world came crashing down.
Decades of self-delusion (by no means exclusively Republican!!) and fantasy came crashing down upon us. Our mightiest corporations are left gasping for the last few molecules of oxygen in their air tanks. Only federal giveaways—from as laissez-faire a President we’ve had in the White House since the 1920s—seem able to delay the debacle.
But—but—but think back to the end of 2000, going into an inauguration month just ahead. Many of us were as optimistic then as many of us our now. We have a new President coming in. He will fix everything—make us safe without violating the Constitution, restore honor to the White House, for he’s a decent family man with an attractive wife and two fetching daughters.
See how he’s gathering around himself a team of experienced advisors from previous successful administrations? Surely these men will know how to reverse the damage done to the Federal Emergency Management Agency when it was folded into a bloated Homeland Security Agency! Just as Bush’s team of experienced advisors from previous administrations saved us during the past eight years.
No more Katrinas, no more collapsing banks or brokerages, no more endless war in the Middle East, no more bankrupt giants like General Motors, a return to total American dominance with unchallenged financial and military hegemony—which is what many of the miracles promised by Obama and his team will require. (Bush needed—and was cruelly denied—the same thing.)
But most importantly, most importantly of all, with such wise men in place watching over us, THIS TIME nothing unexpected like some commandeered jet liners flying into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center will ever happen.
What could possibly come out of nowhere, totally unexpectedly (expect, perhaps, for an ignored memo or two from a couple of low level bureaucrats who never caught anyone’s ear or eye) with a fine, church going gentleman like George Bu—oops, with a fine, church going gentleman like Barrack Obama on guard?
Promises get overturned by events (sometimes even by guile or what is left unsaid). Remember the three men who got elected in the Twentieth Century by the simple, clear promise to keep us safely out of war? Wilson (1916—at war by 1917), Roosevelt (1940—at war by 1941) and Johnson (1964—at war by 1965).
We didn’t know what was coming in 2000. We don’t know what’s coming in 2009. Perhaps that’s a blessing, if ignorance truly is bliss. But something unexpected will come. That is certain, that is sure. In a world full of pirates, terrorists, and competitors with economic clout like nothing we’ve seen in over a century, it may very well not be fun.
I wish I could be sure that having Barrack Obama in office is really going to make a whole, big lot of difference. I don’t honestly think that having Lincoln, Roosevelt or Washington in office next year would make a whole, big lot of difference.
Always remember what Napoleon asked when he was vetting a candidate for a job in his government. He let his underlings check into the man’s education, experience, previous successes and failures. Napoleon only had one question: “Is he lucky?”
We may need more help from Luck and Providence than we’re going to get from all the ability and experience in the world.
Happy New Year.
Republicans would bring national security—after all, an American ship had been attacked and nearly sunk while at anchor near the mouth of the Persian Gulf just the previous year. American planes flew over Iraq day and night with the constant threat of escalation. A perfectly horrible regime had taken over Afghanistan, but it seemed to be no immediate threat to us.
There was incessant violence between Israel and the Palestinian political island on either side of it—Gaza and the West Bank. A collapse of Asiatic equities and finance had roiled the world financial markets.
Oh, yes, and eight years ago there was a whiff of political scandal. A state big enough to decide an election with a presidential candidate’s brother as governor had thrown out ballots on a scale not seen since the days of “Landslide Lyndon” in Texas (in 1948, a Supreme Court justice had ordered 20,000 paper ballots, clearly tampered with, to remain sealed—and Lyndon Johnson had squeaked into the Senate by 67 votes, as the boxes of suspect ballots lay in a Texas courtroom sealed by Federal Court order).
And, just as it had made a senator and future president in ’48, the Court of 2000 had made an immediate president. But that’s the fun of American politics—they are often more entertaining to watch than Newman and Redford in “The Sting”.
Those of us of a conservative Republican bent breathed more easily now that a respectable and decent fellow Christian Republican had taken office. Then came 911 and a clearly unthought-out military response. We were in reflex mode, writhing in pain as we watched two proud symbols of American economic ascendancy come crashing down.
Then came another economic bubble. (Oh but how the last few administrations had boasted of giving every American his own hugely overpriced and over leveraged home—whether that family could afford it or not.) And as we come to the end of this administration the whole unregulated house of cards that we had held up as a model to an envious the world came crashing down.
Decades of self-delusion (by no means exclusively Republican!!) and fantasy came crashing down upon us. Our mightiest corporations are left gasping for the last few molecules of oxygen in their air tanks. Only federal giveaways—from as laissez-faire a President we’ve had in the White House since the 1920s—seem able to delay the debacle.
But—but—but think back to the end of 2000, going into an inauguration month just ahead. Many of us were as optimistic then as many of us our now. We have a new President coming in. He will fix everything—make us safe without violating the Constitution, restore honor to the White House, for he’s a decent family man with an attractive wife and two fetching daughters.
See how he’s gathering around himself a team of experienced advisors from previous successful administrations? Surely these men will know how to reverse the damage done to the Federal Emergency Management Agency when it was folded into a bloated Homeland Security Agency! Just as Bush’s team of experienced advisors from previous administrations saved us during the past eight years.
No more Katrinas, no more collapsing banks or brokerages, no more endless war in the Middle East, no more bankrupt giants like General Motors, a return to total American dominance with unchallenged financial and military hegemony—which is what many of the miracles promised by Obama and his team will require. (Bush needed—and was cruelly denied—the same thing.)
But most importantly, most importantly of all, with such wise men in place watching over us, THIS TIME nothing unexpected like some commandeered jet liners flying into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center will ever happen.
What could possibly come out of nowhere, totally unexpectedly (expect, perhaps, for an ignored memo or two from a couple of low level bureaucrats who never caught anyone’s ear or eye) with a fine, church going gentleman like George Bu—oops, with a fine, church going gentleman like Barrack Obama on guard?
Promises get overturned by events (sometimes even by guile or what is left unsaid). Remember the three men who got elected in the Twentieth Century by the simple, clear promise to keep us safely out of war? Wilson (1916—at war by 1917), Roosevelt (1940—at war by 1941) and Johnson (1964—at war by 1965).
We didn’t know what was coming in 2000. We don’t know what’s coming in 2009. Perhaps that’s a blessing, if ignorance truly is bliss. But something unexpected will come. That is certain, that is sure. In a world full of pirates, terrorists, and competitors with economic clout like nothing we’ve seen in over a century, it may very well not be fun.
I wish I could be sure that having Barrack Obama in office is really going to make a whole, big lot of difference. I don’t honestly think that having Lincoln, Roosevelt or Washington in office next year would make a whole, big lot of difference.
Always remember what Napoleon asked when he was vetting a candidate for a job in his government. He let his underlings check into the man’s education, experience, previous successes and failures. Napoleon only had one question: “Is he lucky?”
We may need more help from Luck and Providence than we’re going to get from all the ability and experience in the world.
Happy New Year.
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