Frank's Musings

The election of Mike Johnson as the new Speaker of the House will demonstrate that his views on the issue of the alleged steal of reelection victory from Donald Trump are meaningless for the fulfillment of his obligations within the constitutional framework of the American government.  Apparently, his role in the functions assigned to the Congress is so critical that none of them can be completed unless he is in place.  Although the actions that the Speaker performs are mainly procedural, they can be nuanced in ways that favor or oppose one or another policy.  Building ad hoc coalitions of individual representatives is probably the most important way the Speaker assures that legislation essential to the country gets passed through the parliamentary process.

Speaker Johnson’s loyal support of former President Trump’s claim that his defeat in the 2020 election was fraudulent won’t prevent his satisfaction of the responsibilities assigned to him by the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, the fact that he will be able to operate at all, despite his conformance with the self-indulgent stance of his party’s leader, only subverts the seriousness of that claim.  It matters not whether the candidate for reelection as President of the country acknowledges the result of the vote if that defeated candidate limits his protests and those of his supporters effectively to tantrums.  I would like to believe that the new Speaker voiced his support for Trump’s election-loss tantrum only because his constituents would not have elected him otherwise.

The sad corollary of that belief is that many of the voting citizens of the U.S. are susceptible to manipulation by a tantrum-throwing media celebrity.  Think of what that means about the upbringing of stubborn children--an increasingly combative and uncollaborative population.  Regarding the future of American democracy, it means vulnerability to tyranny by a skillful adapter of the formal features of democratic government to disguise the accomplishment of his personal ambitions.

In the end, it comes down to deciding what is the ultimate objective of life.  It is either the maximization of personal well-being or of the general welfare of everyone in the future. (Anything in between, like Nazi nationalism, is only a demon’s methodology for self-aggrandizement.)  This metaphysical question has been highlighted for the whole world by Trump’s presidency.  History will not soon forget how easily America fell prey to the antics of an entertainer who chose to make its government his playground.  Perhaps we have learned how to escape the disastrous results that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan wreaked upon the world during the last century.  If the end of the  MAGA regime happened only by luck, however, we may have a bumpy ride ahead.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

What is the fate that Trump most fears?  Could The Donald negotiate an omnibus plea deal that would trade his payment of a large fine for all the civil and criminal charges against him in exchange for his
dropping all his political ambitions?

Such a resolution of his dilemma might not satisfy his most extreme supporters; but it would, at least, relieve us of another possible four years of Presidential chaos. It’s hard to believe that Mr. Trump really holds anti-establishmentarian values so dearly that he would risk serving any time in the penitentiary by insisting on running for reelection.

Right-wing Jews in Israel have been provocatively settling on land in reservations to which desperate Palestinian families have been confined under rules invented with international consent to separate equally emotional claimants to the same disputed Middle Eastern lands.  As in Afghanistan, wealthy nations in the West are being tempted to throw up their hands and abandon the antagonists to resolve their dispute alone, except for the political strength of sympathizers with Israel’s existence and the economic leverage that has been attributed to the Palestinians because of their assumed solidarity with oil-rich fellow Arab states.

However, the political balance has begun to change. Climate change has suddenly become a more urgent concern because of the excessive global temperature increase in 2023. There have been some encouraging advances in the expanded use of non-CO2-producing sources of energy, like solar, wind, geothermal, thermonuclear, hydroelectric, and other technologies. This development has, for example, seemed to impress on major oil and gas producers, including both exporting nations and commercial companies, that their future wealth depends on devoting their stores of capital to alternate enterprises, as well as to shifting their energy-producing activities to carbon-neutral, if not absorptive, methods.  The technological and entrepreneurial prominence of Israel has led oil-rich Arab countries to give serious consideration to promoting the commercial alliance of their sovereign wealth with the innovative power of Israel by perforating political barriers to collaboration between citizens and institutions from the two sides.

An important consequence of these trends is the weakening of the perceived international political power of the Palestinians to influence the outcome of their dispute with the Jewish state over the disposition of the Holy Land. Moreover, a terrorist organization like Hamas is losing a major component of its strength, i.e., its image as the underdog fighting oppression by Israel.  It is not only losing its appearance of victimhood in Western eyes, but also its brotherly appeal to other Arab states. Commercial priorities are shoving sympathy and ethnic solidarity aside.

This recasts Israel’s military campaign against Hamas as a police action rather than a war.  Hezbollah’s choice not to join Hamas’s attack on Jewish residents of Israel is not so much a smart move as a display of their greater discipline. The Palestinians in Gaza, and throughout their incipient state, should collaborate with Israel to rid their lands of the scourge of Hamas terrorism. The only point of Hamas’s savage 10/7 attack was to prevent a reasonable resolution of the dilemma of competing claims on the Holy Land. Continued Hamas activity will only endanger the peaceful lives of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Anne Case and Angus Deaton find it hard to imagine that an educated elite can prosper indefinitely without a better future for everyone else,” in their guest essay in the 3 October 2023 NYTimes, "Without a College Degree, Life in America Is Staggeringly Shorter."  Are U.S. college students taught that their good fortune at graduating into the “elite” only comes at the expense of the rest of Americans?  Do they learn that later?

Case and Deaton point out that the same is less true in other economically advanced countries. Many of those countries have more equitable healthcare systems and cover other social costs through government programs rather than through private sector enterprise. The latter is one of the supposed benefits of guaranteeing personal freedom. It also results, though, in divergent living conditions (and longevities) between social classes.