REMEMBERING GEORGE H.W. BUSH IN THE TRUMP ERA

By Ronald T. Fox

I have fond memories of George H.W. Bush. This may sound surprising coming from a die-hard progressive who has had few good things to say about Republicans. I say “fond” not because I approved of the decisions he made and policies he advanced in his long career in public service, many of which were anathema to progressives, but because of features of his character and personality, features that I’ve grown to appreciate more in the era of Donald Trump. Our Cretan in the White House has set the character bar so low that all our former presidents look good in comparison. My fondness for 41 has grown in direct proportion to the rise of Trump.

Nearly everyone is singing praise of Bush 41 as a man of honor, integrity, decency and humanity. Canonization of a deceased major public figure is a familiar theme in America. This can be nauseating, especially when you know better, but in the case of George Bush his virtues that are being voiced ring true, endorsed even by many of his rivals and critics. From a personal encounter I had with Bush two decades ago, I can attest to his personality virtues now being extolled.

NOVEMBER 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE “TRIGGY”

I know I’ve said I would refrain from nominating President Trump for any future IGGY awards. He is a certified ignominious person, worthy of a lifetime, not just a monthly, award. With the midterm election focusing so much attention on the Trumpster, the mass media seems to have lost interest in reporting on the usual array of absurdities from others. Trump lies and absurdities on anything from tariffs, to wildfires, to international events, to alleged election fraud, and, of course, on Russia, have dominated November news cycles.  Such a record, horrific to most of us, is fuel for Trump; it plays right into his hands. He thrives on adversaries, loves the fight, and welcomes news that’s about him. In devouring everything Trump, the media has been complicit in boosting his popularity among his base, if not beyond. I’ve tried to avoid this Trump trap but have not been very successful.

I’ve decided to devote the November IGGY exclusively to Trump absurdities. This will mark the last time I will include any of his false, deceitful, racist, xenophobic, insulting pronouncements for IGGY recognition—at least I will strive to make it the last time. I wish journalists with wide followings would do the same. Why continue to make him the story? (I’d love to see CNN and other media outlets boycott the White House in protest of Jim Acosta’s banning.) Nothing would piss off Trump more than losing his megaphone.

November was a big month for Trumpian lies, misrepresentations, insults, recriminations and hair-brainers. But, really, it was no different from other months. I’m including six below, but I could have listed several more, like his comment on climate change that he trusts his non-believing gut more than the brains of scientists, his declaration of a political victory in using force against asylum seekers on the Mexican border, his assertion that he wouldn’t take a pardon for the lying, deceitful Paul Manafort “off the table,” and his insistence that the Saudi crown prince cannot, with certainty, be blamed for the death of the journalist Jamai Khashoggi, despite the contrary conclusion from his own intelligence community. With this acknowledgment, I offer the following November Trumpian ignominious absurdities. For this month, I'm calling it the TRIGGY.

1. President Donald Trump.  The outright lies continue. I’ll pass over all the false statements he made about the midterm election, and claims that he did not know Mathew Whitaker before appointing him as Attorney general, and focus here on his latest whopper on China. At a news conference, the president answered a question about healing national divides by saying that he had forced China to back down from a plan to strengthen its manufacturing industry.

After declaring that because of his tariffs China had suspended its so called “China-25” plan to bestow greater privileges on its own companies over foreign competitors in the Chinese market, and would now not “supersede the U.S. economy in two years as he falsely claimed Beijing boasted, he went on to say:

“But I have to say this: Billions of dollars will soon be pouring into our Treasury from taxes that China is paying for us.”

Of course, this is a blatant falsehood. When the U.S. places tariffs on Chinese imports, China doesn’t pay them. American importers do, and this usually means passing along the extra costs to American consumers. Things will worsen when/if the spiraling trade war leads to even higher tariffs. The only thing that appears to be "pouring" is the exodus of American jobs.  So long GM.

OCTOBER 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Big Pharma Nostrum Laboratories’ Nirmal Mulye. Pharmaceutical companies use the weakest and frequently the laziest, excuses for jacking up the prices of their life-saving drugs. In the end, no matter what they say, it is about money. Their job, as they see it, is to make money. If they keep 100 people alive or 1,000 or 1,000,000,000, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that number on the bottom line on their accounting sheet. If their goal is to make $1,000,000, and they need to sell a pill for $1,000,000 apiece for the only 10 babies who need it in order to achieve that goal, then that is what they will do.

Most people, faced with that statement, would say that is immoral; that is, except Nirmal Mulye.  In an interview published in the Financial Times, he had this to say about everyone making Martin Shkreli out to be a bad guy for raising the cost of one of his own company’s drugs through the roof.

“I agree with Martin Shkreli that when he raised the price of his drug he was within his rights because he had to reward his shareholders [...] If he’s the only one selling it then he can make as much money as he can,” said Mr. Mulye. “This is a capitalist economy and if you can’t make money you can’t stay in business.”

What is Mulye defending? Well, his “Missouri-based” company, Nostrum Laboratories, just jacked up the price of their drug nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392. According to the World Health Organization, nitrofurantoin is what they classify as an “essential drug” for treating bladder and urinary tract infections. Mulye wasn’t done giving a lesson in sociopathy as he continued to defend Shkreli as being within his rights:

“We have to make money when we can. The price of iPhones goes up, the price of cars goes up, hotel rooms are very expensive.”

According to Mulye, Nostrum was working the market against Casper Pharma, which makes another version of the same drug and had recently raised its price to $2,800. So, you see, Mulye is still offering it up for less! Morality! The guy is a saint!

Sadly, this is what it’s come to in America. Corporations prioritize profits and shareholders over consumers, workers, any sense of a public good, or basic human needs. It hasn’t always been this way.  I’m old enough to remember a different time.

THOUGHTS ON HURRICANE MICHAEL

By Ronald T. Fox

Angry Hurricane Michael, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the continental U.S., unleashed a wrath of destruction across the Florida Panhandle, peeling off roofs, leveling houses, uprooting trees, boats and cars, pushing a terrifying surge of sea water that submerged entire neighborhoods, and taking lives. After being downgraded to a tropical storm, it moved on to the Carolinas and beyond to add more destruction to states already ravaged by Hurricane Florence.

A few months earlier, California and other Western states experienced a series of horrific, record-setting wildfires that destroyed forests, homes, businesses, and human lives. Like hurricanes, such devastating wildfires are occurring with increased intensity and frequency.  They've become the new normal.

What do these natural disasters have in common? As the overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us, their growing intensity stems from the warming of our planet caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. In a warming world, hurricanes become stronger and more destructive and droughts become more lasting and severe, providing a storehouse of fuel for wildfires.

SEPTEMBER 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

NOTE: I’m posting this from Salzburg, Austria on the back end of a three-week vacation in Eastern Europe. Though I only had two weeks to search for September IGGY-worthy statements and actions before leaving the U.S., as you can see below I had little trouble finding a solid representative list.

1. Education Secretary Betty DeVos. DeVos floated a couple of plans this month that so stood out in their absurdity, even amongst her many foolish proposals, that she definitely deserves an IGGY nomination.

First, she is considering using a federal grant program to let schools buy guns and pay for firearms training for faculty and staff members. If DeVos had only a modicum of knowledge about education children, she’d know that study after study has equated more guns on campuses with more injuries and death, not to mention numerous research endeavors that stress how harmful a culture of fear is for the learning process.

Sadly, DeVos is not alone in her thinking; lawmakers in 14 states have proposed laws that would use taxpayer dollars to arm educators. I’d like to say unbelievable, but nothing is unbelievable anymore in the Trump age.

Were DeVos not such a tunnel-visioned, right-wing extremist, and was even modestly interested in real solutions to school shootings, she’d realize that violence prevention experts have recommended numerous more promising, and less contentious solutions than her hair-brained plan. These include prioritizing a general level of well-being and comfort students and teachers experience on campus, providing more mental health services, and implementing proven threat-assessment programs.

Her second ignominious idea centers on her plan to replace the Obama administration’s guidelines on campus sexual assault policy with a policy that seeks to protect rapists, abusers, and harassers on college campuses. Among other things, DeVos’s regulations would allow perpetrators to cross-examine survivors during mediation and have access to survivors’ evidence obtained during the investigation. They would also narrow the definition of sexual harassment.

It’s clear that DeVos’s new policy will have a devastating impact on survivors. Just a few months after DeVos rescinded the Obama-era guidance, some colleges simply stopped responding to reports of sexual violence at all.

Now, with new barriers to reporting, survivors could feel even more unsafe to come forward than before—and schools may not provide them with support and care if they do. With these new rules, DeVos is actively endangering and harming survivors while propping up their perpetrators. This ignominious policy must be stopped immediately.

AUGUST 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY AWARD: THE IGGY

1. President Trump’s Lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. As the most public member of Donald Trump’s legal team, Giuliani’s assigned role is apparently to make what seem to be “slips”—incidents in which he reveals jaw-dropping information that appear to undermine Trump’s position concerning Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and Russian collusion— appear to be misstatements. But in each case, the shocking things that Giuliani lets drop quickly become the standard position for Trump. Giuliani is Trump’s ice breaker.

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Giuliani appeared to be caught out in another lie, and to drop another in his series of bombshells. Asked about Trump’s request to former FBI director James Comey that he “give a break” to former national security advisor Michael Flynn, Giuliani at first claimed there had never been such a conversation.

Jake Tapper: So you’re saying that President Trump and James Comey never discussed Michael Flynn?

Giuliani: That is what [Trump] will testify to if he is asked that question.

Then, reminded that he had already discussed the conversation he was claiming never happened, Giuliani attempted to deny that conversation.

Giuliani: I never … I never told ABC that. That’s crazy. I never said that.

Which is when CNN went to the tape. However, while forced to admit—after watching himself discuss it—that he had previously accepted the reality of the conversation between Trump and Comey, Giuliani this week shifted his claim to say that was only “talking about their version of it.”

But the Rudy-man wasn’t done with his absurdities. He made waves on NBC's "Meet the Press," responding to a New York Times report that the president's outside legal team was not aware of the extent to which White House counsel Don McGahn cooperated in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation during the 30 hours of interviews he sat for. Giuliani told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd that the president should not sit for an interview with Mueller because he could end up trapped in a lie and charged with perjury.

Giuliani: “When you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth,” Giuliani told Todd.

Todd: “Truth is truth,” Todd responded.

Giuliani: “No, no, it isn’t truth,” Giuliani said. "Truth isn't truth."

His words, taken in the vein of counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway's much-mocked "alternative facts" argument from last year, quickly caught fire online. A day later, Giuliani sought to clear the air.

"My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic 'he said, she said' puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t," Giuliani wrote on Twitter.

Giuliani often acts as a surrogate for the president, appearing on television in his capacity as Trump's lawyer to counter news reports about Mueller's probe. The president has long complained about the special counsel's investigation, branding it a "witch hunt" stacked with "angry Democrats," even though Mueller himself is a registered Republican.

SCRUTINIZING THE HIROSHIMA MYTH AND ITS LEGACY (A REPOSTING)

Hiroshima After the Bomb 

August 6th marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima. As has been the case on every anniversary of the bombing, the atomic bomb’s use will undoubtedly be commemorated by politicians, media sorts, and most Americans as being responsible for ending the war and thus negating the need for an invasion of Japan’s home islands that would have caused enormous losses on both sides. This belief has achieved numinous status in the United States; most Americans accept it as an article of faith. It has become, as historian Christian Appy put it, the most successful legitimizing narrative in American history. There’s only one thing wrong with the Hiroshima narrative: it's not factual. There is perhaps no greater myth in U.S. history than the belief that the atomic bomb was the "winning weapon" that ended World War II. It’s what I call the Hiroshima Myth.

Despite doubts about the necessity to use the bomb expressed by a number of top military and political leaders at the time (and later in their personal reflections), challenges to the traditional Hiroshima narrative by several historians, and declining overall American attraction to nuclear weapons, the Hiroshima Myth remains deeply embedded in the consciousness of the overwhelming majority of Americans. How did it get so embedded? Why didn’t the highly authoritative 1947 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which concluded that the Japanese would have surrendered "certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to November 1 1945--even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, the Russians had not entered the war, and no invasion had been planned or contemplated," establish a different narrative?

Were the bombings instrumental in ending the war? Did they avert an invasion of the Japanese homeland and thus save lives? There’s much at stake in the answers to these questions, for if the bomb wasn't necessary to end the war, then its use on Hiroshima and, especially Nagasaki, was wrong, militarily, politically and morally, especially when one considers that these two cities were not vital military targets.

At the risk of being called unpatriotic, un-American, or worse, because the issue still touches raw emotions (Americans don't take kindly to questioning the morality of our country's purposes), I will attempt to refute the Hiroshima Myth. Fortunately I am able to draw upon information that wasn’t available when early histories of the bombings were written. This information includes a declassified paper written by a Joint Chiefs of Staff advisory group in June 1945, the personal accounts of a number of top Japanese leaders, and various bits of documentary evidence uncovered by enterprising historians. These discoveries enable a more accurate picture of bomb’s role in ending the war.

In a previous two-part essay, posted in August of 2015, I argued that Truman’s atomic bomb-use decision was not primarily motivated by a desire to end the war quickly in order to save American lives that would have been lost in a land invasion and that the use of the bomb was not the main factor inducing Japan to surrender.  I also argued in a Part III that our enduring belief in the bomb as “the winning weapon” has had a profound impact on American culture and on how we approach national security.  These essays challenged the prevailing beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Americans.  In the hope of stimulating an ongoing dialogue on the Hiroshima Myth and its implications, I’ve decided to re-post these essays as a single post on this, the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I will re-post it every August 6.  Critical comments are encouraged.