Zero-Sum Game

We all know the term, it is one of those which we have often heard in more recent times,, so much that it has become a cliche. But the concept still has import in certain situations.

A true “zero-sum game” would be if there were two players who are given the same amount of chips to start, and then they contest with them, perhaps by rolling dice, or playing poker, or even answering quiz questions. If you win a round, you get a certain amount of chips from your opponent. The game goes on until one person has all the chips. which means that the other person has lost. Every time you win chips, your opponent loses them, and vice versa. There is no situation where you can both win chips, or both lose them. One wins, the other loses. If you gain five chips, they lose five. Zero-sum.

Then this concept was expanded to include more complex situations which can be described as being similar enough to a true zero-sum game, for it to be instructive to perceive it that way. American politics and even governance are now very commonly described in those terms, particularly by Republicans. They have developed or devolved to a state where there is no middle ground, no “win-win,” there is only winning and losing. And any win by the other side is a loss for them, so they will do anything to prevent it. And if they win, their enemies lose, just like on a battlefield, which is how they perceive all of it.

The recent vote on the John Lewis Voting Right Bill would have been almost unimaginable forty years ago. Every single Republican vote in the House, all 212, was against the bill. There have been other recent votes where either every Republican voted the same, or at most two broke ranks. Otherwise, it is a regimented vote, where it is not various Congresspeople voting their views or their conscience, they are voting as if they were automatons.

Republicans have relentlessly moved in that direction, because of the nature of their party, which has as its only credo, “Winning and Holding Power.” They decided that they all had to vote the same way, to present a united front, for propaganda purposes. So we see most House and Senate votes being strict party-line votes; that is, completely predictable before the bill is even brought to the floor. The speeches are window dressing, a chance for TV time for the voters back home to see; and because the rules essentially require debate. But the positions, and the voting outcome, are already known, at least on the Republican side.

They are proud of that, as if they were the Confederate Army, vowing to never give an inch of ground. They are the Republicans of today, refusing to even accept that Joe Biden won the election. Well, a few of them did accept it, but it there were a motion which could have legally stopped Biden from taking office, they would have voted for it. They are planning on doing that in 2024, if they control the House.

We are literally looking at a prospect of a House Republican majority simply never accepting any Democratic Presidential victory. That is the essence of a zero-sum game, where you must either win all the chips, or you lose them all. Democrats don’t all see it that way, but Republicans all do. They think, and even say out loud, “We cannot ever concede anything, because then we will lose and they will win. And we can’t allow them to vote in sufficient numbers, or we will lose. This is war, and there are no compromises, we either destroy them, or they destroy us.”

That is a Manichean view of the universe: there is dark and light, and the two are engaged in unceasing battle. There is some question as to whether the Manicheans believed that “Light” would ultimately win, as the Zoroastrians did. But the conception is that there are two dichotomous forces, and there is no shading, no nuance. Good and Evil. Destroy or Be Destroyed.

That is what the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party, its leaders and followers, believes. They concede nothing, not even the outcome of elections. They do not give an inch. They vote as a rigid bloc. They see every issue or news event as either being good for them, or bad. Does anyone remember when one of GW Bush’s advisors said, “We just hit the trifecta,” when he heard the news of the attack on our country on 9/11? They don’t want you to remember, but I do. How can they turn it into a win for them, and a loss for their mortal enemies, the Democrats?, is how they see every event.

It used to be that we presented a fairly united front when it came to crises. Not now. Republicans could not wait for the Afghanistan withdrawal to start, when they were viciously attacking President Biden; pouring out faxes to their media arms, calling it a debacle, an impeachable offense. And then when the attack in Kabul occurred, you had them demanding the resignation of the Secretary of State Blinken, then of Biden. This kind of thing did not happen in Lebanon, or in the various mishaps which occurred in foreign lands to our troops or implements. It certainly did not occur on 9/11 or thereafter, regarding that event. But it does now, with utter predictability.

This is a major change in our country, although we can track its development over recent decades. I am not sure how we would have been able to fight World War II, if we were like this then. Of course, it is true that the isolationist Republicans wanted to stay out of that war, and to give no aid to embattled Britain, until we were bombed on December 7, 1941. If the parties were aligned the way they are now, the Republicans would have blamed FDR for it, tried to get him removed, and replaced by Charles Lindbergh. Come to think of it, that is essentially the story Philip Roth wanted to illuminate in his great novel, “The Plot Against America.”

So we see this, now on an almost hourly basis; so much so that we scarcely want to even follow the news stories, because we know that “the other side,” is so entrenched against us, that they will offer nothing to help, but will relentlessly try to turn every event into wins for them, as a quicker way to lead to the Armageddon which they believe in, and which they are certain will destroy all of their enemies.

How does one function in a democracy, when one of the only two viable political parties sees the world in that way? Aren’t we supposed to all be part of the same country? It is like we have two warring countries here, and I am certainly not the first one to say that. And their side does not want to seek any rapprochement, they want to destroy and conquer and subjugate, while they accuse us of that. They even change history at the drop of a hat; they are blaming Biden for the things which Trump and Pompeo did in Afghanistan, and figuring that there are so many people who don’t know better, that they can do alchemy, and turn anything in a win for them, in the deadly zero-sum game they are fighting.

So how do we respond? It is not easy to know how, because it is almost by its nature an inextricable morass at best, an endless battle at the worst. I don’t even think we can fruitfully deal with the other side any longer.. Again, maybe we can on a single bill or two, but they are never going to try to help us govern. They want calamities, they want economic failures, they probably want the pandemic to get worse, because that will help them win.

How else can one explain the absolute war they are waging against vaccinations and masks? They are not the same thing, either; they say that they are afraid of the vaccine, but how can one be afraid of a mask? Thinking about that, can help emphasize how they are dissembling and obscuring. They don’t want anything which will perhaps be a win for what they see is our side, Biden getting credit. They don’t want to submit, as they see it,; to give in, and admit that scientists know more than they do. They would rather get sick than do what they are advised and warned to do.

If I had read about some much earlier period in history where this kind of thing occurred in a civilization, I would be astounded. Oh, there were very superstitious or uneducated people who would not listen, but not the leaders, not en masse. This is something that has perhaps never been seen, at least in the modern era.

Back to what we can do, or at least try. I was glad to see that the new Governor Kathy Hochul of New York has seemed to support more partisan gerrymandering to help Democrats gain Congressional seats. We have to play this as a zero-sum game, at least the pragmatic political part of it. Every seat which we decline to gerrymander in our favor, is one that the Republicans likely get. If they gerrymander 30 seats in their favor, and we leave ours to bipartisan commissions, we lose. There are no participation or good sportsmanship trophies. This should have been figured out long ago, but somehow we did not want to admit it, or perhaps somehow didn’t even see it, because we were too occupied with solving problems. As commendable as that is. we have seemed far too unconcerned with actually gaining the power to be able to solve the problems; so much power that the Republican cannot use their deep bag of tricks and cons and wrenches to stop it.

Remember, at this point, it is a classic example of a zero-sum game. If we lose, they win. If they win, we lose Those are not the same thing, but the result is the same. We must do as much political calculating as they do. We have to beat them at their own game to invoke another cliche. We do not want to be as immoral and amoral as they are. But like any competition, it is ultimately won or lost on the court or the field or the gambling halls. Good values can only get you so far.

We have to win by the rules that the current Supreme Court has now set. Of course they were handpicked by the other side, but there they are. Either expand the Court, which is almost impossible right now, or realize that last year they said that they will not overturn any gerrymandering by any state. Rather than lament this, we must gerrymander, too. And we must sue in all the state courts, because their rulings could be determinative, if they find discriminatory intent or outcome, unless and until the Supreme Court overrules them.

There are things we can do, or at least try. But we must see this as a war to the political death. Those are the terms the Republicans have set, implicitly and explicitly. That is not the battlefield we seek, but it is the one we are faced with. You cannot always pick your battlefield. We cannot hope to get along,, they will not let us, they want to destroy us, at least politically. For them to lose, we have to win. There is no more time to waste in seeing this as anything different than a zero-sum game, where there is no other choice but to win, no matter how angry or threatening the other side gets, and how much their media enablers cheer them on. The best sports teams have players who actually like playing on the opponents’ field, they say that it motivates them.

Shock of the New

A family evacuated from Afghanistan arrives at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. (AP/Jose Luis Magana) pic.twitter.com/yxhpKklyLE

— The Recount (@therecount) August 27, 2021

I can not imagine what they have been through. Think about what it must have been like getting to the airport, facing a crush of other desperate people, sitting on the floor of an overcrowded cargo plane, leaving everything you know behind to arrive at a strange place, in your strange clothes, or without shoes.

See the little ones having made a transition while in transit, arriving on American soil in jeans and T-shirts. What must have happened between Kabul and Washington. And they were the lucky ones. They escaped before the suicide bombers blew up the crowds where they recently stood.

There is a woman to the left flashing a peace sign while the man in the photo flashes his peace sign as he strides forward, the newest tempest tossed to arrive on our shores. We have forgotten in the past four years that that’s what this country is here for: to take in others and give them a new place to call home and for them to give us part of themselves in return in all their red and gold.

It’s heart warming. At least for now. Their struggles aren’t over. I once met a Syrian refugee in a Home Depot who singled me out to tell me about the anguish of leaving home, the difficulties his wife, a dentist, was having getting credentials to practice, his hours of work in his sponsor’s restaurant, his distress at the destruction of his home town of Palmyra. I thought he was going to have a breakdown in the carpet department. I often wonder about what happened to that man and his family as he struggled to adapt to his new country while he couldn’t and shouldn’t have let go of his old country.

So I wonder and worry about this family as they bring with them all the memories and traditions of their old country and learn to fit into the new. It’s easier for the younger ones. They’ve already been clothed by their new culture. But this just the beginning.

I hope they find peace here.

Our mayor says that Pittsburgh has been chosen as a place of resettlement for Afghan refugees. It was chosen for the resources, opportunities and reasonable cost of living. They probably couldn’t have chosen better. This is the city of bridges. It was built by the diversity of many cultures. It’s the home of Mr. Rogers. We welcome them to the Neighborhood.

The Jewish Family and Community Services organization of Pittsburgh, AJAPO Pittsburgh among others are aiding their transition.

Government in general

I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV but I love YouTube and podcasts. There are so many fascinating people with first degree experience on those platforms. But I have noticed an annoying pattern lately when I’m watching videos of lawyers talking about important cases they’re following.

They keep coming back to bashing on government. Government is bad. It interferes too much. Any legislation is poorly constructed. All politicians are corrupt. ALL. OF. THEM. It’s almost a prerequisite for running for office. The parties probably send out a questionnaire when vetting their prospective candidates and the first item on that form is a series of questions to determine how susceptible the candidate is to being compromised. They are all baaaaaad.

It has been a constant theme in law videos. I’m not even sure what the party affiliations are for these people. They seem so rational otherwise. Most of them can spot inconsistencies in court documents with a fluency that is really impressive. But the minute “government” is directly or indirectly tied to any case no matter the degree of involvement, there is a hair trigger explosive rant about how evil government is.

I just can’t.

My suspicion is that these lawyers are moderate/centrist/center right and they kinda sorta weren’t terribly opposed to Trump, probably for tax and 401k related reasons. You know, like they might be the kind of people who are compromisable when self-interest is at stake. Come to think of it, don’t lawyers make up a hefty percentage of members of Congress? So, maybe they know of what they speak and the anti-government tirades are just a formality of projection.

Anyway, I thought I’d mention it because it’s getting to be as annoying AF. Also, there are a pretty good number of their commenters who are repeating the idea that Biden is senile. Do I suspect a psyops campaign moving from Facebook to YouTube? Maybe. Anything is possible these days.

As to Biden’s alleged senility, I call bulls#%^. I can remember just about the time he took office and he was asked at a press conference about the various vaccines for Covid. He replied without notes and showed a very good understanding of the differences between mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vaccines. Granted, anyone with a pretty good head on their shoulders can learn the difference if they are given a couple of hours of instruction on how the immune system and vaccines work. You don’t need to know all about each cytokine or complement or even a whole lot of cell biology. You just need to have someone explain the system. It’s not all that complicated. No, really, it’s not. You don’t need to be an immunologist to understand it.

BUT you do need to be smart enough to be able to differentiate mRNA vaccines from Adenovirus vaccines. It takes a bit more work. Biden understands these differences. Someone learned him real good. The thing is, I never saw similar levels of understanding with Trump who for some reason thought that all we needed was a new flu shot to combat Covid.

My point is that Biden’s understanding of Covid and vaccines is well above average. He learned this information well enough to be able to make sensible decisions about vaccines. If you are suffering from senility, my guess is that would be pretty hard to pull off. It would be very difficult to talk extemporaneously about mRNA vaccines and storage and transportation logistics and differences between vaccine technologies. It’s not rocket science but you do need to pay attention and understand how the system works. You can’t really do that if you’re senile.

So, you might argue that he’s just got it memorized like Chatty Cathy doll. Pull the string and he spits out a selection of useful phrases that he’s been programmed to memorize. Except that also doesn’t make sense in terms of senility because memory is one of the first things to go.

No, I think we’ve got to credit Biden for actually being teachable and being able to construct abstract ideas and thought experiments from his knowledge. He’s also been pretty consistent about Afghanistan, as tragic as the end of the war there has been. In this case, we see pundits applying the “we didn’t say it was your fault, we said we’re going to blame you” strategy. Nevertheless, Biden is not showing any evidence of senility in this area either.

We need to keep an eye on this meme. It’s been out there since the previous resident of the Oval Office campaigned for a second term. Biden is no spring chicken. His body does show signs of aging. But he’s in remarkably good shape physically and mentally for a guy his age. That doesn’t mean he’s always going to do what we want or do it perfectly. But that’s not really the point of the senility meme, is it?

Hubris, Ignorance, Political Games, and Grandstanding

I would like to write something profound about Afghanistan, and our twenty years there, now ending. I am sure that books will be written about the entire history of our Middle East forays into nation-building, finding terrorists, revenging a tyrant’s efforts to kill a President’s father. Very obviously, there are no easy answers, or obvious rights and wrongs. But I think we can reasonably conclude some things even now; or at least I will provide a few of mine.

1. It has been a mostly futile idea to think that America could “fix” totalitarian Middle Eastern countries. We should have learned that from Southeast Asia. Some of what we have tried to do is commendable;, much of it is arrogant and doomed to failure. These countries in general do not want us there; and assuming that we are not going to blow them up, our military cannot effectively change the nature of the populace. Maybe we did effect some better leadership in Iraq, but at the cost of greatly destabilizing the entire region.

2. We have listened to our military too much. On the one hand, we admire and thank the very brave men and women of our military, who go to various parts of the globe to do what they can to defend and support America’s causes. But have we not learned that military leaders have mostly been wrong, often disastrously? They were wrong about the landing on the Bay of Pigs, and they caused an actual debacle. They were wrong about the great danger of a nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and many of them actually supported one.

They were wrong about Vietnam, and actually lied about how we were doing ,and whether we could “win.” This led to our country being torn apart; 58,000 American deaths; and a refusal to admit “defeat,” so we stayed even more years, and finally left in ignominious fashion. They were wrong about the second war in Iraq. They were wrong about Afghanistan, where we spent 20 years. The first few years were valid, as we sought Bin Laden, and tried to remove the terrorists who were harboring him. But we stayed and stayed, ten years after Bin Laden was killed. The military leaders kept advising that we were doing well, we just needed to stay the course. And of course nothing improved, and we finally are leaving. So with all sincere respect, I am not impressed by the military people who come on TV shows, and complain about us leaving the country, and how it is being done. For whatever inherent reasons, they are wrong about most of it.

3. Call them “Hawks,” call them “NeoCons,” there is a class of so-called analysts and pundits who have been pushing for these involvements, and even more. We all know the names. And they haven’t changed; they think they are always right; and whatever happens is used by them to support their basic premise, which is that America should use its military might all over the world, to try to turn tyrannies into democracies, and also of course, to secure favorable oil deals. So when we hear some of them bitterly complain about President Biden’s handling of the withdrawal, we should always remember that these people always think they are right; still believe in their global agenda, and so will never admit that they were wrong; will inevitably try to deflect the blame onto Democratic leaders, as virtually all of them are Republican military hawks.

4. Republicans are far more interested in political gains, than in accomplishing anything worthwhile. Whatever happens under a Democratic president, they bitterly inveigh against. Every calamity is the Democrats’ fault, nothing is theirs. When the Marine barracks in Beirut were blown up with about 250 casualties under Reagan, it was because of the evildoers, and we must get revenge. When four people were killed in Benghazi, it was Hillary’s fault and they made “Benghazi” and five years of House hearings, a campaign and fundraising slogan. They never worry about their inconsistencies, hypocrisies and lies, it is all in the service of their lust for absolute power It would be helpful if they actually had any consistent positions to argue, but they don’t. They just hope things go wrong under Democratic presidents.

5. Republicans have profited for over 70 years with their portrayal of themselves as “strong,” and Democrats as “weak.” Virtually every Democratic candidate, from Stevenson, to actual war hero McGovern, to high-ranking Annapolis graduate Carter, to Mondale, to Dukakis, to Clinton, to Gore, to Kerry, to Obama, were all portrayed as weak. Hillary, they portrayed as a “warmonger.” Whatever works for them is what they do. Even to Bob Dole talking about “Democrat wars,” which of course contradicts the rest of it, but they don’r worry about such things.

But it is a trope which the ever-compliant media accepts, and thus does much of the public. GW Bush was AWOL, and should have been court-martialed, but the media portrayed him as a strong Republican; whereas Gore, who actually went to Vietnam, was a boring person who could not make up his mind about what suit to wear. Kerry, another war hero, was portrayed as a “Frenchified” person who shot himself to get undeserved medals. Trump, who got some doctor to diagnose him with bone spurs, and said that “his Vietnam was trying to avoid venereal disease,” was also portrayed as strong, in the way that some see Mafia figures and puffed-up tyrants as strong.

6. Trump, who wanted to take credit for leaving Afghanistan, and who let 5,000 of the Taliban including potential terrorists, maybe those who planned the terrorist attack today, out of prison, now apparently is claiming that he was in favor of us staying there. Trump and Pompeo are the ones who set the deadline for May, which Biden got extended into the the end of August. But apparently Trump and his cult get a pass on facts. And it has been speculated that once Trump knew that Biden would take office, he tried to make it virtually impossible for Biden to get this withdrawal accomplished.

7. The media has expectedly been mostly awful. I could write at length about this, but we all see it. They seem to see themselves as a combination of Inspector Javert from “Les Miserables,” and an overbearing trial attorney. They pepper Biden and any of his officials with accusatory questions, and are not very interested in the answers. They immediately portrayed the withdrawal as a “debacle.” They did not do this when Ford withdrew troops from Vietnam. They have a narrative, and they are going to purvey it, every day. And of course it has the effect of damaging Biden’s approval ratings. Why they do this, is an important subject; but more important is that they do it every single time. They tried to portray every action that President Clinton took in international affairs, as a mistake, or incompetence. And when it mostly all worked out very well, then they pivoted back to personal matters, which they had started their coverage of him with.

8, And those two Congressmen who decided that they would fly to Kabul to give their own personal assessments of things? Utter arrogance, grandstanding, and contempt for the Administration. And I think that the continued media narrative gave them some cover for this stunt.

9. What would people have preferred Biden to do? Stay? Bomb the country? This was going to be very difficult, getting all our troops out, but we probably will. We would like to help all the Afghans who fear a Taliban regime, but that is sadly, impossible. When do you leave this kind of situation? Why were we there for twenty years? Because Biden is a Democratic president, he gets the political third degree that Republican presidents never get with regard to foreign policy. He is supposed to withdraw, but in perfect fashion; getting all the Afghan people who helped us in some way, or want to leave, out; and yet not bringing them into this country. Just make it all go away. It is an impossible task. The horrible terrorist attack at the airport today upsets all of us. It is not Biden’s doing. Terrorism is a major threat to democracy and safety. The domestic terror threat inside this country is likely more dangerous than the rest of it.

10, So many people are quick to contend that we should do this or that; go to war, send troops to a foreign land. But they never seem to worry about the long-term consequences, or they cavalierly or irresponsibly misjudge them, and then they scurry away to either avoid being blamed for any of them, or try to deflect the responsibility to someone else.

Fitness Forever: INDY

Ha! You thought it was over?? It’s NEVER over.

INDY = I’m Not Dead Yet

FDA Approval: don’t get your hopes up

The Pfizer BioNTech Covid vaccine was fully approved yesterday. It has some ridiculous name that sounds like a mash up of words that a marketing major thought sounded “human” and “approachable” while still conveying a sense of the science, which I guarantee they do not understand. There is such a cultural disconnect between the labs and the executive headquarters up the street that it’s difficult to wrap your head around it sometimes.

You know what else is hard to wrap your head around? I don’t think that approval is going to make much difference to the holdouts. If you didn’t get the shot after 200,000,000 doses were administered in the US, if you thought that everyone who got the shot got sick anyway from side effects in spite of the dozens of people you know personally who experienced little to no reactions from it, if you actually believe that your immune system wasn’t able to fight off polio, measles and chickenpox but for some bizarre irrational illogical reason based on magical thinking ythat defies nature and experience will somehow be able to triumph over Covid, then you ain’t never going to get the shot. Ever.

I blame the politicians who have made a cynical calculation that the number of African Americans who die from Covid will offset the number of their own deluded constituents who will be sacrificed to the cause. They are expecting that the pandemic of the unvaccinated will fizzle out long enough before the next election to keep the Trump rally attendees who look and sound like dimmer versions of the Far Side cartoon characters firmly on the side of irresponsibility disguised as “freedom” and “Liberty”.

That comes at the expense of anyone not old enough to get the vaccine, the babies who didn’t get antibodies from their mothers and others with compromised immune systems. That comes with the risk of cooking the next deadly variant in their bodies.

The rest of us are counting on private businesses to enforce public health standards. We expect to go back to work with masks on and shot cards uploaded. I hope that gets extended to airplanes, restaurants, gyms. I hope the unvaccinated are as inconvenienced and furious as the rest of us have been throughout this whole ordeal.

You aren’t allowed to lie, steal or kill. And you shouldn’t be allowed to spread germs and misinformation in the name of freedom.

Backlash is coming for the unvaccinated.

*********************

Jordan Klepper interviews Anti-vax, Anti-mandate protestors in NYC.

Jeez, Americans are so effing stupid about science it’s embarrassing. And political ideologies. The confusion of fascism with communism is {{cringeworthy}}. Please stop, people. It’s making our ears bleed and our eyes stick in the upward rolled position.

Song of the Landlocked

This is year 11 of vacation disasters. One of these years, I will have a vacation that is not washed out or masked enabled and will be adequately funded. Otherwise I shall go maaaaad!!

In the meantime, I dream about it.

Our Political and Moral Dilemma

Do Democrats need to “cheat” to win? I know; the quick answer is “No!” Followed by,”We do not want to cheat! If you have to cheat to win, it is not worth the victory.” But I think it is worth considering this philosophical question. Of course there are variables, such as, “How much cheating, and when?” So it is not a simple question, unless one takes the absolute position that anything which can be construed as cheating,, or even gaming the system, is simply unacceptable.

That is a comfortable position, in that one doesn’t have to analyze further, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the right one, unless one is willing to put one’s faith in a Heaven, where honor and integrity will be rewarded. Maybe “virtue is its own reward,” although that never sounded too convincing. Not that one might not want to be virtuous, but this sounds suspiciously like trying to convince people that even if they keep losing in whatever they are striving for, just knowing that they always did it the honorable way, should be enough, so we’ll take all the prizes, and you don’t worry about it, because you have your virtue.

My father was at one time a freelance advertising artist. Freelancing is always difficult, and the field he was in had many competitors. He was scrupulously honest, and never did the kind of price undercutting or personal deals which others did. I asked him about that once, and he said, “You have to be able to sleep at night.” I admired that, and both my parents were excellent role models in that way. But there are situations where other people cheat, take advantage, game the system. And then one has to consider whether one can realistically compete or even survive, at least in a pragmatic sense.

Many people at one time or another, try to rationalize cheating, by saying or thinking that, “Everybody does it.” Some say that about taxes. Some have cheated on exams, or used someone else’s old term paper, because they think that everyone else has the advantage, if they don’t do it. That of course can be just a way to defend one’s dishonest actions. Crooked people always rationalize like that. Republicans certainly do.

But we are not focusing on personal actions in this discussion, we are looking at trying to win elections, and govern the country. And we have two parties, and it is a zero-sum game, and if we lose, they win. And they get more awful by the day. Apparently in Texas, they not only are passing horrible laws suppressing voting, but even when Democrats in the legislature refused to show up for a quorum, they called a quorum when there was not. This is, in so many words, totalitarianism, dictatorship. They are showing what they are. They are gong to “win,” no matter how, even if they have to destroy, figuratively or literally, their opponents.

Let’s see: They now will never admit that they lose an election. They always win, and if the numbers say differently, they are wrong, they are fraudulent. Because they are always supposed to win, that is their religion, their cult. So they audit, but only with their cult doing the auditing. And they try to bribe or threaten officials to overturn the results. And if they can’t do that, they send people to riot and kill. And then they fix the entire election system in their state, so that not only cannot the other side vote in sufficient numbers, but they have the right to simply change the election results so that they always win. By another name, this is brutal and relentless fascism. The fact that this is America, does not change that. Duck, quack, etc.

They gerrymander every chance they get, they are doing it now. We Democrats do not. I read that some in New York are considering it,as they could turn five Republican Congressional seats. But I bet they don’t do it. California voluntarily gave up 8-10 seats by not gerrymandering, and creating a nonpartisan board to draw districts. Virtuous, but the Republicans reaped the electoral rewards; and the fact they always do it in states they control, makes it worse. It is like not trying to score when you have the ball.

Democrats do not use voting machines to cheat, but I am sure that Republican have been doing it for decades when they can. Democrats do not enlist foreign countries to help win elections. They do not audit results which are certified. They do not pass laws that make it much more difficult for Republicans to vote. They do not create state laws which put Democrats in control in Republican districts, as the Republicans are doing in Fulton County, Georgia. Democrats do not create rules where they have the power to nullify state election results.

In sum, Democrats want to win, but they want there to be fair elections, where all eligible voters have the right to vote, and are actually encouraged to vote. Republicans only want to win, by any method possible. These are the current terms of the battle to the death for the fate of this country. A daunting prospect, to understate it.

So do we cheat, too? Or at least do every single thing possible to legally keep Republicans from winning majorities in any small or large district? Do we gerrymander every chance we get? Do we use every possible tool a majority can wield, in a district or state where we have a majority? Do we use ruthless power politics, the way that John F. Kennedy’s “Irish Mafia” or Lyndon Johnson’s Texas cronies were said to do? I think that we have no choice. Current realities make it more necessary every day.

I like to use sports or gambling analogies, but they are not really sufficient. If you are being cheated in a poker game, your recourse is to stop playing there, find another game, or just abandon the pursuit. If you are in an occupation where it is cutthroat, and you do not want to play that way, you just have to leave that state, or maybe the entire vocation. It is hard to do, but there usually is that choice. What choice do Democrats have? Either find effective ways to gain and hold electoral power, or….all move to other places on the globe? Find new planets? There are no feasible choices, if we are not willing to do what it takes to win.

And we can’t ignore the fact that Republicans are probably willing to use force. Do we think that there are Democrats threatening to shoot people and plant bombs in Congress? Of course not. When we lose elections, we are upset and sad, and we try harder. We do not dismantle the entire democracy just so we can always win. What did some very amoral and psychologically disturbed people say during the Vietnam War? “We have to destroy the country in order to save it”? That is exactly how Republicans see things.

I will suggest that since we do not want to be violent, and we don’t want to put in a fix so that we turn the country into a tyranny, we have to relentlessly use legal power. And that includes economic power The Republicans have the billionaires, but we have the middle class and the consumers. What if we actually boycotted many companies, and stuck to it? What if we refused to buy any products from, or to travel to, any state which has created vote suppression laws?

It would require massive amounts of people doing it, to have a powerful effect. But what is the other choice? Just hope that the elections will somehow turn out okay? We have some power which we do not use. We are an electoral majority, but the Republicans have managed to exploit every flaw or seam in the system, in order to try to control this country as a minority. We have to find ways to use the economic power that we have.

If we don’t do that, the only other option is to “cheat” in the same way that Republicans do. And of course they, and their reliable mouthpieces in the media, see and describe it as “smart and ruthless politics.” So we need to do it, too. In the French Foreign Legion, the order was “March or Die.” That would seem to sum up our situation here, except that the marching must be figurative We have learned from history that actual marches are either ineffective, or take decades to accomplish things. We don’t have that much time. But we can do things if we mobilize our power, and if we somehow stop being obsessed with our own sense of superior virtuousness and purity. Because whatever rewards those bring to the people who value them above all else, there are millions of other people who desperately need the Democrats to win elections, and who feel that the basking in their own sense of virtue is a luxury that only a few can afford.

The Extraordinary Marjorie Bowen

I wonder if anyone here has heard of her. Maybe you knew of her under different noms de plume. She had several. She was an absolutely extraordinary novelist who wrote historical fiction, atmospheric horror stories, mysteries, and nonfiction. That she is not that well known now in general circles, is a major literary omission, which some day may well be rectified.

She was born Margaret Gabrielle Vere Campbell, in Hampshire, England, in 1885. In her autobiography, “The Debate Continues,” she wrote about a father who was kind to her, but who suffered from drinking problems, and left the family. Her mother had little money, but was pretentious, and had a circle of similar friends who would tell themselves that they had artistic talent; she herself may have written a very minor story or two. Her mother favored her sister, and Margaret was never appreciated, though they all sometimes got along for a while. She was told that she had no artistic ability, and should find some kind of gainful employment to support them.

Margaret was almost completely self-taught, very intelligent, and almost preternaturally sensitive. Her novels are filled with descriptions of flowers, their colors and scents; ornate and vivid renderings of royal surroundings; evocations of the sights and sounds of other periods in history. She said that it was as if she was actually there when she was writing those stories; and it feels that way when reading them. In her autobiography, she describes memories of scenery during various times in her childhood and later, and the kinds of trees and flowers she remembers, and the emotional effect of the surroundings.

She would go to the library and read, and she would write. She actually wrote her first novel at 16, “The Viper of Milan.” Initially, publishers would not approve it for publication, because they felt that this was not the proper subject for a 16-year-old girl. It was finally published in 1906, to much praise. I have not read it, though I have read about twenty of Bowen’s novels. A gloss says that “It takes us to the colourful and violent world of 14th Century Italy, where success seems to be doomed, and the pendulum of power can swing both ways.” Graham Greene, one of the greatest novelists ever, said that the novel illustrates that there are not absolute heroes or villains in life, only flawed human beings.

Greene wrote, “I chose Marjorie Bowen as a major influence, because ..I don’t think that the books one reads as an adult, influence one much as a writer. But books such as Marjorie Bowen’s, read at a young age, do influence one considerably.”

Marjorie Bowen was the pen name she most used, and that is where she gained much of the praise awarded to her. She also wrote under the pseudonyms Joseph Shearing, George R. Preedy, John Winch, Robert Paye, and Margaret Campbell. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, who put together a lavish collection of her horror stories, accompanied by her very admiring Foreward, said that we don’t even know how many books Bowen wrote, but they seem to title over 150.

She wrote to support her family; first her mother and sister; and then two husbands, neither of which was suitable; one was an Italian man who suffered from illness, and died young; and one was an older British man who seemed to be a lazy sponger. She had to keep writing to keep them afloat, and so she somewhat rushed though them, though it is not noticeable. Bowen, who was absolutely beautiful in an early photograph included in her books, by her own description had no self-confidence, and did not think she was attractive. She did have four children; and one of them, Hilary Long, wrote in a very fond preface to one of her collections, after she had died in 1952 from a severe concussion suffered in a fall at her home, that while she never thought she was attractive, he thought that she was very attractive, and that she was a very good mother, very concerned about the welfare and support of her children

She was a bit of a literary sensation after her first novel, and Mark Twain actually took her and a companion to lunch at a hotel, when he was in England. She wrote continuously, later using different pseudonyms, which certainly contributed to her being less famous than she should have been. For example, four of the novels she wrote under the name Joseph Shearing, were turned into movies. Of those, “Moss Rose,” “So Evil, My Love,” and particularly “Blanche Fury,” were excellent. Sally Benson, writing in the New Yorker, said, “Mr. Shearing is a painstaking researcher, a superb writer, a careful technician, and a master of horror. There is no one quite like him.” Other reviewers similarly praised Shearing’s historical mysteries, without having any idea that they were written by Bowen. There is a movie called “General Crack,” from the ’30’s, which was from a novel by George Preedy, who also was Bowen.

Hugh Walpole said that Bowen was “the best writer of historical fiction in a generation.” Her horror stories have been universally lauded. Robert Hadj described her as “one of the great supernatural writers of this century.” Salmonson said that her prose was “stylish and moody, dramatic to the highest degree,” and that “what in other hands, is merely tacky or gross, is from Marjorie Bowen, a superior art, chilling and seductive.” So if all this praise had been collated; if people had realized that one woman was writing all of these stories, she might have gotten closer to the immense appreciation she deserved, both then and now.

I will say that many of her stories have recently been reprinted, albeit in rather bland but neat volumes, but at least they are preserved. When I first became aware of her brilliant writing, I searched for what was available. which was mostly original volumes from 1910-1940, with the expected faded covers and maybe slightly discolored pages. Sometimes they would have a little introduction in the book jacket, and that was always a pleasure to see, as if I were back in that time, a time which was of course hundreds of years after the periods in which her novels were often set.

Now, as to my personal impressions of Marjorie Bowen’s writing. I love great atmospheric horror fiction; not the violent kind, but the haunting and often psychological stories which great writers like Dickens, Poe, Bierce, James, and Dunsany were known for. I do not read much historical fiction, but I am always open to a really good novel of that type; and I loved the novels of Stevenson, Dumas, Kipling, and even Sabatini, who was by no means a great writer, but told exciting tales. I would say that Bowen can stand up to any of them in either genre. She did not write swashbuckling tales full of adventure on the high seas, or with swordfighting prowess. She wrote about people; their virtues and flaws and passions. She did so with lovely and perceptive prose, full of images of scenes from the re-imagined past.

She has amazing insight into character, particularly for someone who did not grow up with much companionship. She is kind but realistic in her portrayals, which in many, but not all, cases, she has taken from past historical figures. She understands the power of romantic passion, and its possible pitfalls. She gives virtually all her characters agency; she realizes the lesser social state of women, even in royal milieux, but she is remarkably even-handed in her psychological portraits, where there are flaws or mistakes or passions which lead to various results.

She is a Romantic, I think, she is not too cynical, but most of her stories seem to end poignantly, which of course is much due to the historical facts, which are full of people ending up in the Tower of London, or having someone they cared for, put there. I have read primarily her Marjorie Bowen novels, not the other ones, which may have a different aspect. One historical novel of hers, which was essentially happy, was a very rare one she set in America, about George Washington and Martha Custus, “The Soldier from Virginia.” When one has read one of her novels, it is indeed as if you are transported to a different place and time; as well as perhaps learning some interesting history.

The first introduction I had to Marjorie Bowen was actually in a collection of “Dark Fantasy” stories. The last story in the book was “The Sign-Painter and the Crystal Fishes.” I immediately knew it was something special; mysterious, romantic, and unforgettable I didn’t follow up with her work then, and I sometimes confused her with the fine British novelist Elizabeth Bowen. But then I learned more, and bought one or two of her historical fiction novels, and went on from there.

If you happen to like atmospheric horror, then I would highly recommend that you buy one of her collections of horror fiction. Elegant yet haunting and sometimes unsettling.”The Sign-Painter and the Crystal Fishes is one of her very best, along with “Half-Past Two,” “They Found My Grave,” “Julia Roseingrave. “For the novels, I really liked “Boundless Waters,” “The Queen’s Caprice,” “The King’s Favourite,” and “The Soldier From Virginia.”

I have read about twenty, as I said, and I have about thirty more here to read, as I have not read one in a while. Even if you do not want to read any of her works, I would at least hope that this gives you a greater appreciation of someone who I think was one of the greatest literary talents ever. I wish that I could have told her that in person, or by letter, but she had died before I ever knew about her. Very few writers are really special, and I think that she was one of them. Here is the very opening of one of her books which I have not read yet, but may start reading now. “Nell Gwyn,” Bowen is listed on the front page as “The author of the film story of Nell Gwyn.” That is another movie of hers that I never knew about!

“The scent of violets was poignant in Whitehall Gardens, and loose rain clouds were blown up the river to the sea; it was high tide, the flats were covered and ripples rocked across the Palace stairs; a moist, airy day in early April, with presage of a warm tempest gathering lightly over London and warm torrents of spring rain. Two of the Duchess of York’s gentlewomen hastened through the gentle spring gloom; their arms were interclasped, and their satin skirts, one blue one violet, dragged against the box hedges as they hurried; their foolish laughter that was yet pleasant with youth and gaiety broke their whispered talk…”

“Is it Good for the Democrats?”

Actually, that is a variation of the “Is it good for the Jews?,” which Jewish families who watched the nightly news were often wont to ask each other.They might not have phrased it in exactly that way, but that was the essence of it. Jewish people are well aware of thousands of years of persecution, prejudice, and killing at the hands of a variety of races, religions, and countries. And they know how easy it is to fan the flames of anti-semitism, and how there are people who look for any opportunity to do so . So it was a bit of folklore and a lot of truth behind the idea that Jewish people were always acutely aware and afraid of what the news might be, and how some people would immediately try to turn it against them.

My parents didn’t ever say that phrase, but I knew that if there were a mass murder story, they would worry that somehow, even against probabilities, the killer would be found to be Jewish, or even just have a name that many would think “sounded Jewish,” and then there would be all the anti-semitic reactions. It is something that Jewish people in America had to deal with. Philip Roth wrote about it in some of his novels, touching on the humorous aspect of it, and of course the fear behind it.

Well, as I was thinking about the Afghanistan problem, and all the attacks on President Biden, for the way in which the removal of American forces was carried out (and there were a few notable voices who expressed support for all of it, particularly in terms of how we got in there and stayed for twenty years), it struck me that for the last couple of decades, at least, I have tended to react to whatever the major news stories are, by thinking, “Is this good or bad for the Democrats?”

I have always been affiliated as a Democrat, and I am proud of that. I don’t love every single Democrat, and I sometimes find flaws in how they may handle this or that issue. But we do live in a binary political culture, like it or not; and the other side, the Republicans, or whatever we want to term their current frightening incarnation, is immensely worse. So I am compelled to look at any major political or geographical story in terms of, “Does it help the Democrats win the next election, or will it hurt us?”

At this point, we really can’t afford the latter. There is so much we need to do, and President Biden is in this very difficult situation of trying to fix so many of the things which the Republicans of the last 50 years or so have caused. And as he tries to work on one, three more pop up. National disasters, economic concerns, the pandemic, of course. And now Afghanistan. It so often seems like the fable of the Dutch boy and the dike, where if you tried to put your finger in one gap, others would leak.

And it is not a fair playing field. We know that the Republicans are so eager to jump on anything that any Democrat,, much less the President, does or says,that it is like absolutely predictable performance theater. The same people yelling and expostulating that the Democrats’ budget (they said that Clinton’s first budget would destroy the economy), or their immigration policy, or them trying to minimize the purchase and use of guns, or attempting to pass climate legislation which restricts the ability of businesses to pollute the air, land and water, in pursuit of profits, showed that they hate America, they want to take all your rights away, they cannot be allowed to have power.

We know that this is always coming, and it still is unpleasant to hear it, which is why I mostly try to avoid it, because I know what they are going to say. And in most cases, I know what the responses from our side should be; and usually there are good people who who will express them, or at least try to, if they are not drowned out by the other side.

We know how impossible it is to even try to argue with a Trump supporter. It is probably not worth even trying. Trump is the epitome of the Lie, the twisting of everything, big or small, into a narrative which make him always right, and anyone who opposes him, a traitor and a fool. He was on Fox News; and while I would never watch it or him, I read that he was attacking Biden for humiliating the country. This is the person who announced the pullout, who wanted adulation for it; who wrote a while ago, that, “They (the Democrats? Biden?) didn’t want to, tried to stop it, but it was too late.”

Trump is the one who made a deal with the Taliban that in exchange for getting three more months of the cease-fire, he would see to it that 5,000 of the Taliban were released from prison. He is the one who announced last year that he had a good discussion with the Taliban and that he could work with them. And he set the withdrawal of troops in motion, to where Biden would have had to break Trump’s deal, and renege on all of it, with no reason to believe that this would solve anything there. And we know with certainty that had he done anything close to that, all the same people who are yelling at him now: Ben Sasse, and Marco Rubio, and Mike Pompeo, and of course Trump, would attack him for breaking our word, for being a warmonger, and keeping American soldiers in peril. Republicans just need an event, any event, to take the other side of; they can easily pivot either way.

And then we have the media, particularly the Beltway media. Nicolle Wallace, who knows them very well, said succinctly after Biden’s speech on Monday, that 95% of the American people will agree with it, and 95% of the Washington press will criticize it.

What has the role of the national media become? In general, I think that they are basically people who are full of themselves; and too many are not really journalists, in terms of seeking out and reporting news. They are often individuals who would have liked to have been major political figures, but lacked the charisma or looks or oratorical ability to be able to win, so they went into journalism, with the goal of being superior to them, by finding fault with all of them. Except for the true believer right-wingers whose greatest goal is to be sycophants for the political leaders on their side; they combine with the first group to purvey a skewed narrative.

I would hardly say that Biden is blameless for what has happened, but I think that he is doing just about the best he could, given the circumstances, and what Trump did last year regarding Afghanistan. Certainly, we need to analyze what has gone wrong. But I think that what we are seeing is a press which is not nearly as interested in the facts here, as they are in their major aim, which is to show that they can be just as angry and scornful at the Democratic President, as they were toward the Republican one. They are almost all about themselves; their salaries, their name recognition; their being invited to the best Washington parties, and very little concerned about understanding complex international issues. There are a few who are, but there are so many who just love to be on TV, and affect an air of being smart and clever, though they come off like the cheapest form of movie critics.

It is essential for the media to show that they are not liberal, like they are effectively called by the Right. And mostly, they are not, and never were. It is much more fun to be above it all, skewering everyone. The worst of these, perhaps, are the fake “nonpartisan” sites which have sprung up in the last decade or so. Politico. Axios. Punchbowl. The Hill. They are uniformly owned and run by the Right, and have managed to fake out many people by tossing in a few “hot news” stories, or “who’s up, who’s down,” while making sure that their slant is always to the Right. That is their purpose, just another way for Republicans to control the narrative. With rare exception, every time one of these comes on TV, I turn them off. Their commentary and “insights” are worthless, that is, if one wants to learn the historical context of the major issues.

So what we have is,: An event, of whatever type. Then we have how the media portrays it. Then, how the public reacts to the media narrative, which is in many cases not the actual narrative, just the soundbites, the photos, and the gloss. And as we care about how any of it might affect the political battles which are raging for the soul of this nation, we are apt to ask, “Is this good for the Democrats?”

I think that we should have left Afghanistan. I don’t think that it was done ideally, but there probably was no ideal way to do it. We were there for twenty years. I also know that there are so many crucial battles ahead; and that anything which weakens President Biden, damages that. Of course, Republicans’ modus operandi is to attack everything a Democratic president does, as vociferously as they can. And they’ve got the echo chamber to amplify it.

So I’m listening to, or reading about, the news stories; and I am invariably worrying about how they will be spun; and whether the public will be smart enough to put them into perspective; and not let the Republicans use them as distraction and camouflage as they systematically try to remove voting rights, and take over Congress in the next election.

Stalin infamously said that it is not important who votes, it is only important who it is that counts the votes. It is usually less important as to what were the facts or antecedents of a major event, and much more crucial how the media chooses to cover it, and how the average potential voter reacts to it. Of course, there is not all that much I can do about any of those three things, except to try to write about some of it. I and my parents and all the other Jewish people couldn’t do much about any of that, either; but they dutifully watched the nightly news and were always at least a little anxious about what would be on it, and how the stories would be told.