Frank's Musings

The recent movie, “Civil War,” seems to portray the effects of the disintegration of rules-based civic order. It does not and probably could not analyze the political causes behind that development. Moreover, instead of a breakup of the American political federation it apparently predicts the ungluing of the country’s common cultural webbing.

In other words, the film shows the social effects of triumphant libertarianism, not the philosophy and action plan of its leaders. Moreover, it postulates that the benefits of a diverse and interdependent society are not clear to everyone. Could it be that the film’s box-office popularity and the chaos and violence it portrays will awaken the public to the danger of giving vent to childish solipsism and impatience with the obligations of responsible citizenship?

Libertarians define freedom as the absence of obligations. Liberal democrats celebrate the freedom to choose their obligations.

The reason patients’ time is usually abused at doctors’ offices is that payments from Medicare are inadequate. Doctors over-schedule appointments and patients end up compensating them by sacrificing their free time waiting to be seen.

The wonder of Trump’s appeal to his followers and associates, like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, is their willingness to indulge his narcissistic urges.  The same careless appeasement was found by the judge who sentenced the parents of the convicted shooter, Ethan Crumbley, of Michigan school children in 2021. 

Perhaps it’s more accurate to label Trump’s advisors as rapacious seekers of political advantage owing to their recognition that his petulance strikes a chord with many U.S. voters.   These voters share his refusal to accept that living in a democratic society requires most citizens to acquiesce to the authority and rule by the common welfare.  Bannon and his ilk are certainly not tempted to give Trump credit for creating the MAGA movement.  But since Trump stumbled onto the crest of that wave of middle-class resentment, Trump’s advisors have been anxious to take advantage of the ensuing government chaos that could favor their personal goals.

It is a simple analogy to liken the movement’s adoption of Trump to the advantage that a gun supplier took of the Crumbleys’ parenting failure; on the other hand, the consequence of that unintentionally tragic commercial transaction, the murder of four innocent youngsters, was more immediately and personally devastating then even the re-election to the presidency of an incompetent would-be dictator.  Nevertheless, both circumstances bear witness to a major weakness in the American psyche.  The serendipity of America’s geographic wealth and of its freedom from ancient human traditions has allowed Americans to ignore some of the norms that have contributed to the flourishing of humanity in the rest of the world.

People in most of the world never cease to be amazed by what Americans think they can get away with and to search for any sign that, in the end, their more conventional style of life produces desirable results without the typical American risks of near disaster.   Americans take those risks.   Many of them believe that you only live once and that even though history repeats itself, that’s someone else’s problem.  In answer is the lesson from the CSNY song, “Teach Your Children Well.”

The Constitution stipulates that the federation is based on certain common beliefs (truths) held by the people.  Implicated in that stipulation is the common acceptance by the people of the definition of individual personhood when it comes to the civil rights the Constitution guarantees to citizens.  The right to life of those individuals is their most fundamental one, and certainly cannot be subject to currents of political thought that may vary by section of the federation.  Moreover, so basic a right should not be subject to changing codes of morality over time.  Ironically, this is an instance in which the concept of originalism does indeed defeat the concept of a living constitution.  No matter how much the latest medical technology allows us to stretch backwards an organism’s civic existence, there is only the threshold of viability for it to cross before it merits being treated as an independent subject of the rules of our society.  (Even though that threshold is commonly widened by several years after birth when it comes to criminal liability.)

A mother is graced with a biological power that not only allows her to give birth, but also to nurture or interrupt, for any reason, the growth of an organism in her pregnant body at least until its rights are reasonably guaranteed by society’s rules, i.e., the Constitution.  No provision or amendment of the Constitution deprives mothers of that power.

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It’s uncanny the parallels in Adam Gopnik’s review of Tomas W. Ryback’s book, “Takeover,” in the March  25, 2023, New Yorker, between the threat of autocracy in the U.S. if Donald Trump is elected as President again and the rise to power of Hitler.  From the media mogul, Hugenberg, and Rupert Murdoch, to the close confidantes wishing to take advantage of his appeal to disaffected petite bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, rural residents and domestic workers, like Hindenburg, von Papen, and General von Schleicher, and Hitler’s transparent solipsism when it came to his vaunted policies, Hitler never disguised his motivations, and they were ignored by both an overwhelmingly segment of the voting public as well as by a nonplussed liberal and educated sector of society.

He’s not anti-Semitic—Kushner us his son-in-law!

He’s not racist—he has also suffered discrimination!

He doesn’t have money to burn—his wealth is tied up in real estate!

He’s not xenophobic—he only wants to keep undesirable foreigners out of the country!

Those who want to call Trump names are just trying to control him.  That’s why the MAGA Crowd identifies with him—they’re just as fed-up with taking orders from anyone.

Biden’s liberal-democratic policies lower the cost of living, increase national security, and improve our general well-being not just theoretically, but also in at least eight practical ways:

1.      Well-funded and controlled open borders bring in laborers with needed skills allowing businesses to expand.
2.          NATO and other honored alliances maintain world order and promote the exchanges of ideas and people that improve living conditions.
3.       International peace enables leisure, ancestral-heritage, and business travel.
4.       Free trade and capital transfers facilitate inexpensive imported manufactures.
5.       Unobstructed trading routes reduce transportation costs and inflation.
6.       Reciprocal world environmental accords ultimately benefit all global inhabitants.
7.       Similarly, making domestic technologies available worldwide ultimately benefits   us, too, by increasing IT sales income and reducing the price of imports.
8.       Fulfilling treaty commitments is a two-way street, e.g., we owe support of Ukraine's resistance to Russian aggression as fair compensation to Europe for their support when the U.S. suppressed the Taliban's sheltering of terrorists in Afghanistan.

Campaign slogans should also include concrete examples of the harm that MAGA policies and blunders caused during Trump’s prior administration, including:

1.      Withdrawal from Paris climate accord—global warming gets worse when any country, even alone and particularly when exceedingly more intensively, refuses to collaborate.
2.       Admiration of foreign authoritarian leaders only encouraged their aggressive behavior, viz. the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese obstruction of sea lanes.
3.      Appointment of conservative Supreme Court Justices led to the robbing of a woman’s right to choose.
4.       It also led to further loosening of gun ownership control at the increased risk that deadly weapons will be handled threateningly and recklessly.
5.        Trump’s legal debts are making him vulnerable to influence by deep-pocket special interests (cfAll-In with Chris Hayes on X: ".@chrislhayes: Part of Trump's appeal in 2016 was the lie that his personal wealth would allow him to self-fund his campaign and make him immune to outside influence. That's even less true today. Trump is strapped for cash, and his political positions are up for sale. https://t.co/N9ZXnvgNoD" / X (twitter.com)).
6.        According to David French in the NYT, “The murder rate skyrocketed on [Trump’s] watch. Between 2019 and 2020, America experienced the largest single year increase in the murder rate in more than a century, and that was under Donald Trump.”  The rate dropped to its lowest level in fifty years under Biden.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

• A recent NYT / Siena Poll reports the preferences of “likely voters” in the 2024 presidential election. Assuming that that category is self-selected, the poll obviously is biased in favor of those citizens who feel most highly motivated to plan ahead and devote the time and personal inconvenience needed to carry out that intent.

  The question is whether the statistical margin of error adequately accounts for a possible change in the strength of that motivation as the voting date approaches. This change can work in either direction.  History is replete with public opinion polls that proved to be contradicted by subsequent election results, e.g., Truman vs. Dewey in 1948 and Trump vs. Clinton in 2016.  Voters who thought then how they would vote and that they were or were not likely to vote when asked the question for the opinion poll apparently changed their minds.

  With the growing evidence that Donald Trump’s civil and criminal legal troubles are diminishing the enthusiasm of his supporters, it may be reasonable to distrust current public opinion reports as reliable predictions of the likely election results in November 2024.  Nevertheless, the Biden campaign mustn’t relax the forcefulness of its messaging on the superiority of the current president over his predecessor, particularly with respect to the improved benefits of his programs and performance for the public, not to mention the danger that Trump’s reelection will mean for the security of the U.S. and for the health of our democracy.