My Two Cents (and Worth Every Penny)

The Awokening of Acting

Allen Rosenshine — Thu, 23 May 2024 21:30:21 +0000

Without getting into the pros and cons of “woke” in what passes for the new socio-economic (not to mention political) norms in today’s society, we are witnessing at least one related controversy so absurd that it defies reasonable, much less rational, discussion.

I refer to the idiotic notion that it is somehow not just prejudicial but in fact discriminatory for actors to play a role without personally having had existential experiences attributed to the characters they represent. In other words, actors should not be awarded roles simply for the ability to realistically pretend to be someone they are not (which I believe pretty much defines the craft of acting). No, a more crucial and ostensibly egalitarian criterion must be the similarity of an actor’s life to that of the role being acted. This theory of thespianism is today active in British theater where a (gasp!) woman, who worse yet is not physically deformed, dares to play Richard III.

In America, we have the recent crazed criticisms of Bradley Cooper’s brilliant film portrayal of Leonard Bernstein. This particular madness is highlighted by the embarrassing (to me, as a Jew) paranoid accusation that the enlarged prosthetic nose Cooper wore (which quite accurately resembled Bernstein’s), was nothing less than – here it comes – antisemitic! As if that ridiculous contention wasn’t enough, the proponents of this imbecilic nonsense further insisted that – wait for it — only a Jewish actor could embody the sensitivities necessary to play the role. And to add a logical extension to this demented demand, I assume he would also have to share Bernstein’s sexual preferences.

Can you imagine the casting call coming from one of these crackpots? To wit: Only religiously-circumcised, homosexual, Bernstein look-alikes need apply.

I recall a wonderful (perhaps apocryphal) story from the filming of “Marathon Man” during which Dustin Hoffman arrived one day looking like a down-and-out, beat-up bum. His co-star was Laurence Olivier (who in retrospect, despite his reputation as a world-renowned actor, must have been undeservedly awarded his role as a sadistic Nazi fugitive to the detriment of all those competing actors who were actually sadistic Nazi fugitives). Olivier asked Hoffman if he was ill. Hoffman answered that in preparation for the scene in which Olivier’s character physically tortures him, he had not eaten, slept or shaved for two days so that he could better play the part. Olivier replied, “My dear boy, it would be so much easier if you just acted.”

In this era of mindless authoritarianism, disintegrating democracy, identity culture intolerance, social and economic injustice, rampant self-serving intellectual dishonesty and a world teetering on the brink of self-destruction, can we not at least enjoy plays or movies without having to contend with a movement led by morons?

To Be or Not to Be

Allen Rosenshine — Sat, 17 Jun 2023 11:56:13 +0000

That is the question for American democracy, which dangerously fails to cope with existential threats to its viability due to a continuing refusal to effectively address a host of underlying questions. Just to name a few:

How can our political system survive when it could not, and likely cannot, generate a single presidential candidate other than Joe Biden able to defeat a total scumbag like Donald Trump?
How can our nation produce an electorate that includes more than 74 million voters who would have re-elected the most ignorant, immoral, feloniously corrupt, deranged, egomaniac to ever serve as president?
How can our Supreme Court maintain the rule of law, upon which our democracy depends, when its “learned” members have clearly become nearly as partisan as our Congress of so many braying asses?
How can our Constitution remain the governing foundation of our democracy when so many politicians swear an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” it but in fact brazenly attack it, while succeeding generations of judges and justices interpret I;ts precepts in diametrically opposed, if not often ludicrous, decisions?
How can our Congress maintain the framework of democracy’s most fundamental promise – liberty and justice for all – when its Senate is led by an amoral, power-hungry cynic and its House of Representatives by a craven toady beholden to the most extreme ideologues of a political party lacking even a vestige of moral or ethical decency?
How can we depend on our free press as a necessary bulwark of democracy when its freedom is corrupted by its ownership of mass media whose primary objectives are increasing viewership, advertising revenue and their resulting corporate profit?
How, with all of these unanswered threats to our democracy, can we contemplate yet another presidential election whose declared candidates are largely a collection of ridiculously unqualified wannabes whose leading contenders are an aging, cognitively-questionable president with an unfortunately likely successor whose prior grossly inept presidential campaign imploded even before its first primary contest – two Democrats opposed by two GOP candidates, one of whom has arguably proven himself beyond a reasonable doubt as criminally unfit for any office, and the other a dedicated, and thus even more dangerous, demagogic throwback to tyranny reminiscent of Puritanical obsession?

How can we, indeed?

Common Law v. Common Sense

Allen Rosenshine — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 19:25:52 +0000

Legal pundits parsing the sworn testimony of witnesses in the investigation of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Congress have offered a variety of legal opinions on the possibility of Donald Trump being indicted. The commentary runs a gamut of outcomes. At one end are strong beliefs that any proposed indictment, much less conviction of Donald Trump would fail to meet the requirements of the law, and at the other end, equally firm assertions of Trump’s legal culpability. I believe this ambiguity results, not from the usual political bias, but rather from the usual tortuous, varying and contradictory interpretations of the letter of the law.

Not being a lawyer and incapable of understanding most of the legalese of common law, I prefer a common sense approach, which isn’t always evident, much less relevant, in legal discussions.

No one can rationally dispute that a mob violently invaded Congress to prevent the constitutionally mandated sanctioning of Joe Biden’s election to replace Trump as president of the United States. No one can reasonably doubt that this criminal insurrection resulted above all else from Trump’s continuous and public campaign under the banner of “stop the steal” that he had won the election and that acts of massive electoral fraud had reversed the result. No one can deny that even as he watched the mob’s violent and lethal attack escalate hour after hour into a destructive and life-threatening rampage, Trump did nothing to mitigate the carnage in the halls of Congress.

These are not debatable issues of common law or common sense. They are undeniable truths. The law, however, may nevertheless not hold Trump personally responsible for the mob’s invasion of Congress, their lethal attacks against law officers, their threats to the lives of the vice president and the congressional leadership or their intent to stop the required recording of the results of the presidential election. Nor might the law characterize Trump’s three-hour refusal to “call off” the mob as a crime despite the uncontestable fact that they were acting criminally to fulfill Trump’s clearly stated objective of overturning the election results. The law essentially requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the attack was pre-meditated and encouraged, not spontaneous or unpredictable, that Trump personally participated in and/or had prior knowledge of its planned tactics and that he purposefully and intentionally provoked it and then supported continuing the criminal insurrection as it took place. In other words, the law requires Trump fingerprints on the “smoking guns.” Some legal experts believe such proof has been presented in the January 6 hearings. Others disagree or are at least doubtful that a legal line directly to Trump has been clearly drawn.

At the end of the day, it will remain for a Department of Justice investigation to determine whether or not the legal requirements have been met for Trump’s indictment. From a strictly legal perspective, given the vagaries of the law, the outcome is certainly unpredictable. And if the process takes too long, the conclusions of the DOJ investigation could conceivably be in the hands of a Republican-if-not-Trump-appointed Attorney General who will, as William Barr did to the Mueller Report, bastardize it to the point of inaction.

Common sense, however, provides obvious and simple answers beyond any reasonable doubt to two key questions: (1) who was directly responsible for instilling the mob’s motivation to literally stop the Congress from accepting the results of the election, and (2) who had the responsibility but refused to take any action to stop the mob’s criminal invasion of Congress? In both cases, it was publicly and undeniably Donald Trump. Starting months before the election, Trump claimed that if he lost, the election would be a fraud and on the day of the riot, for all to hear, exhorted the mob to march on the capitol and take action. For hours thereafter, Trump literally watched the mob ransack the capitol building, wreaking lethal havoc and threatening the life of the vice president, among others. By refusing to act, Trump allowed the mayhem to continue. His overt actions and his calculated inaction on January 6, 2021 shredded the Constitution he swore under oath to “preserve, protect and defend.” It is a conclusion demanded by common sense if not common law.

(I will not deal with the suggestion that Trump could be charged with some form of fraud against the American people stemming from his perpetration of “the big lie” about the election. This is quite difficult from a common law standpoint, starting with the premise that a lie does not constitute fraud even if constantly repeated in the face of contrary evidence. Politicians lie all the time but are not legally committing fraud. Suffice it to say that you must prove five different parameters to meet the legal definition of fraud, requiring among other things, determining that the accused lied knowingly in support of a crime. The complexity of plumbing the thoughts of a deranged narcissist and pathological liar like Trump could ironically create legal barriers to his prosecution. Even if he confessed, you couldn’t necessarily believe he believes what he’s confessing.)

At the end of the day, on January 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, was the cause and supporter of a egregious act of sedition against the government of the United States unparalleled since the Civil War. It will go down in history as far more subversive and dangerously un-American than anything charged against any so-called communist in the infamous days of Joe McCarthy, much less the Watergate scandal that unseated Richard Nixon from his presidency. Those were comparative amateur hours in which McCarthy and Nixon barely rose to the level of apprentices in malfeasance, while Trump’s unhinged, unsubstantiated and unceasing attack on our electoral process has effectively damaged the core of American democracy. Trump ultimately incited mob violence, aided and abetted subversion of the U.S. government and its Constitution, was derelict in his duty as commander-in-chief and violated his presidential oath of office. If he is not indicted for one or more of these treacherous offenses, then common law will have failed American democracy and made a mockery of our pledge of “justice for all.”

It’s just common sense.

So, What’s New?

Allen Rosenshine — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 14:43:09 +0000

America did indeed meet its most critical challenge of removing Donald Trump and his cohort from the White House, ending the most morally and ethically depraved presidency in likely the nation’s history. What apparently has not ended Is the gross ineptitude that too often pervades major administration decisions.

Yes, we now have a president and cabinet of people who have relevant resumés replete with experience and accomplishments in the areas of their leadership roles. And compared with their immediate predecessors, they are exemplars of decency, good intentions and good will toward men (and most notably, equally toward women and minorities). But considering the predictable disaster this administration has now wrought in Afghanistan, you have to wonder what they were smoking in the situation room when they (1) decided to abruptly remove all U.S. military forces in a matter of a few months, (2) proudly announced this clearly self-defeating time-table for all the world, not to mention the Taliban, to see, (3) acted on the most optimistic assessments (while ignoring ever-increasing contrary opinions) from our military and intelligence communities that one of the world’s most corrupt governments and unmotivated militaries would maintain at least some semblance of anti-insurgent stability in our absence, and (4) subsequently proceeded to publicly and repeatedly make statements totally contrary to what the most casual recollection of recent history and even a modicum of common sense would suggest.

No, no, and no we are told. No, this is no parallel to our chaotic departure from Vietnam (even as we are forced to immediately redeploy thousands of troops to protect our withdrawal). No, the comparatively few Taliban forces are no match for the hundreds of thousands of American-trained Afghan troops wielding the most advanced weaponry we could provide (in spite of the one area of agreement among all our intelligence sources that the Taliban would eventually prevail against weak-willed government forces). No, even after two decades of fighting, over 20,000 Americans killed and wounded and a trillion dollars spent, this is no war America has lost, having prevented terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS from taking hold (but in fact leaving the country in the hands of the terrorist Taliban).

And what finally is new for the Afghan people? According to President Biden, what happens to them is up to them. In what must be a disingenuous comment worthy of his predecessor, Biden declares the Afghans should decide their future for themselves — those millions who remain to face the music of Taliban Redux, yet another long-running American foreign policy horror show, choreographed by this president and his three immediate predecessors. (And just for the record, can you imagine the howls of rage from CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, et al, if this closing scene had been produced and directed by Donald Trump?)

The absurd irony is that President Biden, presiding over and directly responsible for the finale of this fiasco, was a witness to and participant in both our previous Vietnam and current Afghanistan debacles during four decades as a senator and a vice president. He seemingly appreciates the ultimate futility of American nation building but clearly failed to learn enough from the mismanagement of our military by every commander-in-chief for the last 58 years. (I am aware from personal experience that memory fades with age, but I am sure Biden cannot have forgotten that much futility.)

So “let’s be clear” as our politicians are wont to say, just before muttering their latest obfuscations. It was an arguably right decision to end America’s military actions in Afghanistan, even granting the virtually unanimous belief that a Taliban takeover of most if not all of the country was ultimately inevitable once we departed. And while apparently no one predicted the Afghan government and military both fleeing at first sight of the Taliban, it’s nonetheless appalling to witness the strategic incompetence and ensuing false narratives with which our withdrawal is being executed.

You can say it ain’t so, Joe. But please, let’s not go back down that road.

2020 Vision

Allen Rosenshine — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:52:42 +0000

Note: This blog was written before the events of January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters, incited for many weeks including that morning by the president, invaded the halls of Congress, and brought to a halt the joint session that had convened according to the U.S. Constitution to count and declare the vote of the Electoral College, naming Joe Biden and Kamela Harris the next president and vice president of the nation.

This past year, our eyes have seen no glory, much less any coming of the Lord. Instead, we have witnessed possibly the darkest days in the history of our nation since the Civil War.

In less time than the year just ended, more than 20,000,000 Americans were infected by a pandemic killing almost 350,000 of our people despite warnings of its onset. Even with the hope of vaccines putting an end to this disease, both of these horrifying numbers will continue to dramatically increase for months to come, a result of the criminal dereliction of duty if not the depraved indifference of the president of the United States and the galactic hypocrisy of his enablers. His staggering self-centeredness, utter lack of empathy and demented detachment from reality have engendered a national health catastrophe and concurrent financial disaster for tens of millions out of work, sinking into poverty, facing lives of hunger and homelessness.

We have endured a president refusing to acknowledge the dangers of this disease, refusing to provide anything even vaguely approaching leadership, refusing to organize and apply the resources of our government against the pandemic. Worse yet, he refused to personally practice or promote even the most basic health precautions. On the contrary, he continued to encourage ignoring the advice of our medical and scientific experts even as we saw increasing sickness and death every day. By denying the need for sensible, easily implemented changes in personal behavior, and cynically conflating them with an attack on individual liberty, he has made as many as 100 million people his mindless accomplices in spreading the devastation of this deadly disease.

And if that was not enough, with America newly responding to the terrifying injustice of racial discrimination past and present, he continues to defend those who treasonously tried to tear this nation apart in the name of slavery and those who march to the immorality of white supremacy.

At least we will have ended this presidency of arguably the most corrupt person ever to occupy the White House even as he insanely seeks to undo his defeat, regurgitating a torrent of lies and crackpot conspiracy fantasies, followed by a coterie of feckless Republican senators and representatives committing overt acts of sedition by attacking the very core of our democracy. We will have rid our nation and the world of an American president who watched television half the day and tweeted madness half the night. We will have finished four years of a morally bankrupt president, caring about no one other than himself, a president whose ignorance, incompetence and inhumanity finally led us into national disaster.

And while the rancorous divisions that define our body politic began well before this president, he exacerbated them to what may be a point of no return from utter dysfunction if a new administration fails to lead us back to some overarching sense of national cohesion and purpose, a prospect this president will no doubt continue to obstruct in every way he can long after his term of office ends.

Historians will possibly offer a less polemic view of what seems to me a country at the edge of an existential cliff. Perhaps in the context of distance and the perspective of a wider scope of time, this moment will appear less perilous and more like part of the ebb and flow of what can otherwise be defined as human progress, a process of improving life on earth when reviewed over centuries. However, looking at it with dispassion while living through the insanity of current events requires considerable mental gymnastics. It starts with turning a blind eye to today’s realities. It means looking away from chaos with an eye toward an idealism hopefully anchored by practical possibilities rather than wishful thinking.

It requires both the political left and the right to step back from their respective brinks of extremism. We need to turn away from the lecturing of the left, fostered by the arrogance of socialists who historically substitute simple-minded academic theory for actually listening to the problems and needs of the emotionally and economically disaffected. At the same time, we need to reject the abject greed of laissez-faire capitalists and knee-jerk patriots of the right, blathering about every socially responsible government regulation being an assault on their personal liberty. We need to re-anchor our culture somewhere in the middle ground between the philosophies of Karl Marx and Ayn Rand or the politics of Fidel Castro and Rand Paul.

First, we must ensure that we put this pandemic behind us by supporting and relying on our scientific and medical communities to guide our healthcare decisions. We must see they get everything they need to care for those who fall ill even as vaccines offer a way to end the pandemic. We must spare no effort or expense to distribute and apply the vaccines equitably to America and the world at large.

We must harness the talent and experience of our best economic and financial minds to promote the return of the lost businesses, lost jobs and lost income that support our lives and families. We don’t have to make the false choice between our health and our economy. We can recover both, but not if we argue faux ideologies with death and despair at our doorstep.

And while relief from the pandemic comes first, the time is nonetheless long overdue to finally come face-to-face with the reality of racism in America. As a matter of principle, it is a violation of the words of God and our Constitution. It is an assault on our future. It is a denial of what should be the heart and soul of our nation. In practice, racism saps our strength, drains our spirit and undermines our leadership role in the world upon which our safety and security depend. Even with the mightiest military in history, we cannot go it alone. We must once again join and lead the world to a place where people are treated with greater fairness, where people can live in safety, where people can enjoy our cherished promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But to do so, we must have our own house in order.

We cannot end racism just by protesting or even by passing more laws. Racism is a reprehensible state of mind that will not be changed by legislation alone. We cannot pass laws about how people should think and feel. Racism must ultimately be ended by moral leadership, by compassionate choices and by education based on truth, not myth. We can no longer wait to deal with racism that happens every day in acts of social and economic discrimination and at its worst, criminal acts of violence including murder. This can no longer be tolerated. We can no longer turn blind eyes, deaf ears and callous minds to the everyday victims of racism. The perpetrators must be prosecuted no matter who they are.

As a nation, we must preach and teach racial equality as a moral imperative and fight acts of racism as a matter of justice. Denying the systemic foundation of racism in America denies history. We were born a racist nation and I fear that disease will fester in us until we can look at a person of color and see first the person, not the color.

Certainly no end to racism can be achieved by any one president and unfortunately not by just getting rid of a racist president. Ending racism must be led by every president and every member of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our federal and state governments. It must be promoted by leaders of business, labor, religious and secular education, all of which will take time but must begin with renewed commitment. That in turn must start now with law enforcement reforms. While we must have and must support law enforcement by law-abiding officers, we must never again defend or pardon criminals with badges acting with hatred and toward people of color.

I wish I could believe that if America can get through this health crisis, get the economy growing again, and begin a real end to racial discrimination, everything will be fine. The truth is I think these crises are only the beginning for us getting things right.

Even before today’s economic meltdown of lost jobs and family income, we heard a president constantly bragging that things were booming. But not for too many millions of Americans. Too many couldn’t find jobs they had trained for. Too many couldn’t find work that would earn a living wage. Too many had to work more than one job just to make ends meet. Too many had to endure jobs that brought no satisfaction, no sense of dignity. And too many families struggled to bring up kids because both parents had to work just to get through the week. All that was bad enough. But today, tens of millions of jobs have been lost and a huge proportion of them will not come back. We may recoup our GNP, but we face an ongoing challenge in reconstituting our work force, providing the opportunity and ability for people to earn a living wage with jobs they actually want to do.

Even today, as our people endure unthinkable sickness and death, we have one of our two political parties committed to repealing affordable healthcare, trying to take health insurance away from millions who finally have it for the first time in their lives. We’ve just had a president who has been the greatest threat in history to our national health. And he has left us a cohort that will work tooth-and-nail to prevent our country from offering health care that will work for everyone.

And let us not forget the aid and comfort given by this president to climate change deniers while violent storms and raging fires destroy homes, towns and millions of acres of our lands … a president who denies the science that shows us the degradation of our environment … a president who instead promotes fuels that pollute our atmosphere, chemicals that poison our water, and anti-environment policies that benefit himself and his golfing buddies at the expense of the rest of us. America must again provide global leadership in creating sustainable energy that will save our children and future generations from the very real threats of climate change.

It may seem like a luxury in the face of today’s life-and-death struggles, but our leadership in all aspects of life must encourage a body politic that truly cares about the quality of life that our country stands for and that all of us have a right to enjoy … a citizenry that honestly lives and breathes the idea that we are all created equal and are all entitled to equal opportunity and equal justice under the law … a people governed by fairness, not favoritism. Fairness in law enforcement that is above all, color blind; fairness in a criminal justice system that doesn’t fill our prisons with draconian and discriminatory convictions; fairness in our tax laws, not fake reforms that favor only the wealthiest who should be contributing more to the country that made their lifestyles possible; fairness in education not just bought with money and influence but education that affords every American the learning that creates their opportunities for better lives; fairness in keeping the government out of our bedrooms; fairness in women earning equal pay for equal jobs and in making decisions that should be their own, guided by their own sense of morality; fairness in ensuring social security which has been earned and paid for by lifetimes of work; fairness in immigration that doesn’t discriminate against people of color, nationalities or religions, that doesn’t use walls, barbed wire and kids in cages as policy. Legal and sensible immigration has enhanced our well-being since we became a nation. In fact, it’s how we grew as a nation. I truly believe that immigration reform is not so complicated when fairness, common sense and good will lead the way.

It is still possible to nurture and re-build the belief in America’s future as a nation of laws, where no one is above the law; a nation that encourages and supports all its people; a nation whose governmental leadership lives up to its oath to preserve, protect and defend its Constitution. We have suffered a president who qualifies in none of the above — a president who flouted our laws and our values, who corrupted the power of his office to pardon not people unjustly convicted or sentenced but murderers, thieves, perjurers, and a cadre of con men, most all of whom either confessed or were found guilty through overwhelming evidence of their criminality; a president who slandered our independent judges and free press, who seethed with contempt at our founding fathers’ idea of accountability in which the White House, the Congress and the courts watch over each other. We have had a president who encouraged racial and religious discrimination; a president who undermined the quality of American life by inciting greater division in every aspect of our lives; a president who corrupted his office to empower and enrich himself; a president who insulted our allies and catered to dictators and murderers, and who practically destroyed our standing and influence around the world. Until this president, it was literally unimaginable that such things could be said about an American president. But that is where he and his cohort have brought us. We have followed Donald Trump to the nadir of our nation’s history. We may not have another chance to start the hard climb back.

But in just the act of rejecting him, I believe we have taken the essential first step toward addressing our problems — from meeting and defeating racism to rebuilding and growing an economy that can offer financial security to all; from curing the pandemic, to filling the potholes on our roads; from re-building our infrastructure and our industry, to giving our disadvantaged the help they need to fend for themselves; from making education a pathway to success for all, to managing sensible immigration; from ensuring security for our elderly, to expanding opportunities for our youth; from making healthcare a basic right for everyone to guaranteeing our communities’ safety and protecting our individual freedom. There is nothing that should stop us if we put our historic strengths to the task. With the determination of our will, with the ingenuity of our innovation, with the power of our productivity and with the re-commitment to “government of the people, by the people and for the people,” there is nothing that should prevent us from fulfilling our pledge of allegiance to “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

Hopefully, January 20, 2021 will be the beginning of seeing our nation and the world moving toward a far better place than our 2020 vision has shown us. But if I am wrong (and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time) and we fail to take meaningful steps back from our political precipice, then there won’t be much point in blogging (or ranting) about it further (assuming there is a point to it at all).

Note: Vance Jones, a CNN commentator, offered perceptive insight on the events of January 6, suggesting that the Trump mob’s actions against the Congress heralded either an end or a beginning – an act so egregious as to bring an historical end to the corruption of the Trump administration or a beginning of the final chapter in the history of the United States in which we sink into further division and chaos and from which we cannot recover. I believe it is the former. Trump has brought us to rock bottom in so horrific a manner that it will hopefully provoke enough among even his most cynical supporters to re-think and renounce their complicity. We shall soon enough see.

(My) Fear and Trembling

Allen Rosenshine — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 21:04:44 +0000

In one of the great ironies (or idiocies) of presidential politics, arguably the most lawless and disordered president in American history has seized on the central campaign theme of “law and order”. And equally ironic (or corrupt) is the hateful rhetoric with which Trump uses the black-lives-matter protests to build credibility for this inherently racist theme. His litany of lies literally stokes racism, encourages police confrontation with protesters, emboldens thugs and gun-toting vigilantes to create the violence which, with his lunatic logic, Trump warns will be the result of a Biden presidency.

Unfortunately, the call for law and order will likely resonate as “red meat” for his base, as “dog whistles” to those whose racism is more aggressive than passive, and as effective fear mongering aimed at centrist suburbanites. It thus provides a potentially successful strategy to obfuscate and overcome the long-established majority disapproval of Trump, even magnified during the past six months by his historic incompetence and blatant self-serving in managing the pandemic resulting in an unthinkable number of preventable deaths and an economy in shambles, and his depraved indifference to the obviously racist shootings by police of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and James Blake.

I do not believe that Trump’s desperate and ridiculous attempt to defame and actually nullify the election would have saved him from losing the presidency. I think it was born of his belief that he was indeed going to lose the vote. But the law-and-order strategy has given him new hope.

Trump now has what seems to me a realistic path to re-election, made all the more viable If Biden does not get out of his basement and spend every remaining day of the campaign in the swing states (and every minute of the debates) confronting Trump and promoting clear, decisive alternatives to every one of Trump’s massive failings.

My fear is that Biden is at risk of joining Kerry and Clinton in losing an election that was theirs to win. I tremble at the thought that if it happens this time, it will end very, very badly for America and the world.

A Gift to the Donald from the Democrats

Allen Rosenshine — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 02:48:33 +0000

I realize that predicting the electoral future involving Donald Trump is about as precarious an undertaking as possible, particularly for one who got it quite wrong the first time around. And surely, any exercise in writing a campaign speech you anticipate Trump might in essence actually deliver, is surely quixotic. In his narcissistic estimation, nothing anyone else could suggest would be as effective as what flows from his self-proclaimed genius, unscripted, unedited and unrelated to reality. And certainly, no prepared speech could adequately capture Trump’s impromptu instincts for stoking supporting emotions to a boil, exhorting everything from full-throated mob chants to overt acts of violence, replete with his usual self-aggrandizement, half-truths, wild distortions, outright lies, and variety of hate-mongering dog whistles.

But I can’t help thinking that is nonetheless what the Democrats are doing – essentially providing the material for, if not actually writing, Trump’s stump speech. They are parading an unwieldy roster of presidential candidates, many of them ridiculous in their literal aspiration while the more viable among them advocate policies and programs that can easily (and unfortunately with great effect) be misrepresented by Trump’s blatant demagoguery.

Trump has already signaled what I believe is the most likely theme of his re-election campaign when, at the end of his State of the Union speech, he essentially hung the banner of socialism on the Democrats. My fear is that leading spokespeople for the party are thus far playing into his hands in ways that his instinctive lizard brain will twist into depicting the Democrats as not just promoting socialism but in so doing, mounting a frontal attack on America itself. And the ill-advised pronouncements coming from the young, the restless and unfortunately overwrought Democrats, will only add fuel to Trump’s fascist rhetoric.

While the script below may only be a fictional approximation of how Trump would deliver this, nevertheless imagine him doing so – tossing toxic red meat to his minions, the key phrases replayed and replayed and replayed by Fox News, and CNN, and repackaged by the Russians. Then imagine the predictable and strategically self-defeating outrage from the Democrats, falling into the political trap of venting against Trump personally while re-generating everything he says that they should not want repeated. Finally, imagine the unimaginable — another four years of President Donald Trump, another gift to the Donald from the Democrats.

To wit:

TRUMP: You know why we’re going to win this election? Because we know what this election is really about. Now I know you’re going to vote for me, right? I know you’ve got my back no matter how much my enemies try to stop me with their fake news and phony investigations. But here’s what this election is really about and it’s a really big deal: it’s a choice between freedom and socialism. When you vote for Trump, you vote for freedom. When you vote for a Democrat, you vote for socialism. Just listen to them. They actually call themselves “democratic socialists.” Well, I’ve got news for them. We’re going to win and win big. Because we stand for freedom and honest-to-God Americans are never going to give away our freedom to the socialists.

See, that’s what happens when the socialists take over. They take away your freedom. You don’t decide how to run your life. They do. Well, it’s not going to happen. I can tell you that. As long as I’m president, America stands for freedom, not socialism. I will never, never turn this land we love over to the socialists — socialists who have taken over the Democrats; socialists who want to take over our lives. I will never, never let the socialists take away our freedom.

That’s what it’s all about, folks — freedom, not socialism. Socialists want to take over everyone’s medical care. That’s not freedom. Socialists want to choose which companies stay in business and which should get broken up. That’s not freedom. Socialists want to tell you how to heat your home, what car you can drive, whom you can sell your house to, what school your kids can go to. They even want to tell you what you can eat. That’s not freedom. And get this: socialists want to guarantee an income to people even if they don’t work for it. Are they kidding? What do we say to that? We say we stand for freedom, not socialism. What do we tell them we want? Freedom, not socialism. Socialists say the more money you earn, the less of it you should keep. That’s no joke. That’s socialism. What do we say to that? Freedom, not socialism.

Okay, so who are these socialists? They’re running against me for president. Like Crazy Uncle Bernie. He sounds like something right out of Marx and Lenin. If you’ve built a business or worked your way up the ladder, if you’ve been a success and made some money, he’s coming for it. Because that’s how he wants to make everything free. The government keeps raising taxes so they can run everything. It’ll have to be free because you won’t have anything left to pay for it. I’ll tell you this: when you believe in freedom, you don’t raise taxes. You do what I did. You give everyone a tax cut. So everyone can use more of their money the way they want to, instead of giving it to Washington to spend on someone else. Look what happened when I cut taxes. We have the greatest economy ever in America and the best in the world. Crazy Uncle Bernie will put us in the poor house.

Then there’s Pocahontas. Remember how she tried passing herself off as an American Indian? Okay, maybe she’s one-tenth-of-one-percent Indian. But on top of that, she’s a hundred percent un-American. She wants to break up American companies. She wants to regulate the whole American financial system. She wants to destroy American free enterprise. What I can’t figure out is why she’s always so angry. Why is she so mad at America? I’ve led our country to the greatest economy in the history of the world with the lowest unemployment ever and Pocahontas and Crazy Uncle Bernie want to tear our economy down.

And don’t forget AOC. You know what AOC stands for? Against Our Capitalism. Have you heard her? She hates our free markets so much, she actually said Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were capitalist tools who screwed the American middle class. Can you believe that? Have you heard about her crazy “Green New Deal”? I hear “green” and I think maybe it’s plan for how people can make more money. No way. It’s just the opposite. It’s a socialist plan for taking more of your money and spending it on their socialist programs. And the Democrats are falling all over themselves to sign on. It’s the same kind of deal the people in Venezuela got from their socialists — they had a great economy and now they live in total poverty. That’s socialism for you. Is that what we want? I don’t think so.

But I want to be fair. So I admit that maybe not all Democrats are socialists. Most of them are just liberals. But maybe I’m being too fair. Because you know what a liberal is? A liberal is someone who really loves socialism but won’t admit it. Just like the socialists, liberals think they know what’s good for you better than you do. Liberals want more laws and more regulations for everything. They want laws about what kind of light bulbs you can use. They even want to tell you how often you should take a shower or do your laundry and how hot your hot water should be. How crazy is that? Liberals are control freaks. And taking over everything, especially our economy, is what the liberals want. They say they’re not socialists but they really are, because that’s what the socialists want.. They hate our great economy. Because they can’t control it. But guess what? They’re not going to. I’m never going to let it happen. And you can take that to the bank.

But I’m still trying to be fair, so I’ll tell you I think it’s a good thing for America that the Democrats got two Muslim women elected to Congress. That’s diversity, right? And nobody knows more about diversity than me. But I’ll tell you, these two are a disgrace to the diversity the Democrats love so much. There’s Big-Mouth Rashida who yells “racism” at least once a day and “impeachment” twice a day. And she’s called me such a disgusting name that Nancy should wash her mouth out with soap. And what about Anti-Israel Ilhan who shills for Palestinian terrorists and insults American Jews? She says they bribe Congress to support Israel and they’re not loyal to our country. What’s that sound like to you? Sounds like anti-Semitism to me, I can tell you that.

And you know what’s left of the Democrats after you go through their card-carrying socialists, their tired old liberals and their nutty newbies? The only ones left are those weak, Washington has-beens like Bill and Hillary and Chuck and Nancy and Oh-for-Joe — you know, the guy who’s already gone oh-for-two running for president and who’s up there striking out again. Those are the Washington washouts who couldn’t beat me in 2016. The only thing these failing Democrats care about is attacking me. And now everyone knows for sure what I’ve been saying all along — that accusing me of all that collusion crap was a hoax and a witch hunt and nothing but a pathetic excuse for why I beat them.

Well, here’s the bottom line. They’re not fooling anyone. No matter how many ways they try to overthrow the 2016 election, the Democrats didn’t beat me then, they didn’t beat me with their phony collusion stories and they won’t beat me in 2020. Because you know what’s the worst thing about them? It’s not that they spend their time and your money attacking me. That’s disgraceful enough. The worst thing about the Democrats is that they want to tell you how to live. And what’s the word for that? Socialism. Damn right. That’s what socialism is — the government telling you what you have to do and what you can’t do. It’s the government, taking your money and running your life. Well I’ve got news for them. You can’t sell socialism to people who love freedom. And that’s what Americans have always stood for — freedom, not socialism. From the first Americans who fought to give us freedom, to the Americans who fought for freedom in two world wars, to the Americans who fought the communists in Asia, to every freedom-loving American today, Americans have always fought for our freedom. And now we’ll do it again. We will never let the socialists win.

Last time, I told you we have to make America great again. Do you know how we’re going to keep America great? America’s going to stay with President Trump for one big reason. It says it right here on our new cap — freedom, not socialism.

Okay, maybe I’m becoming paranoid and as delusional as Trump. Maybe my worries are only what happens when an old man spends too much time worrying.

Maybe. But under the heading of never letting your opponent define you, it wouldn’t hurt for the Democratic Party leadership (whoever that might be) to recognize that “socialism” is their gift to Trump that will just keep on giving unless they take steps to blunt this attack before they have to literally defend against it. Because if it reaches that point, I’m afraid it’s over.

But that’s another (and far more difficult) discussion.

The Pathology of President Pinocchio

Allen Rosenshine — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:45:52 +0000

We are by now all too familiar with the fact that President Donald Trump and his spokespeople consistently make statements that are inaccurate (to be polite) or in direct contravention of established fact (to be more realistic). Depending on one’s opinion of the President and his coterie, such statements are categorized as anything from outright lies to “alternate facts.” One thing is certain based on myriad videotapes of the president himself: Trump regularly contradicts his own pronouncements, including many astounding claims that he never made statements which have been clearly and unambiguously documented.

We seem to continually wonder how and why anyone can lie as often, as obviously and as brazenly as Trump. Doesn’t he know he is lying? Doesn’t he care that we know he’s lying? I suggest that when it comes to his own comments and actions, he simply doesn’t incorporate within his psyche the concept of lying the way most of us do (although he certainly doesn’t hesitate to attack those against him as “liars” and purveyors of “fake news”).

If you define a liar as someone who intentionally and with calculation distorts, denies and/or denigrates factual truth, Donald Trump certainly qualifies by any reasonable standards when it comes to his business operations and personal finances. But for Trump, in these matters where the objective is success measured by profitability and wealth, lying or any other issue relating to legality, much less morality, is basically irrelevant. For Trump, there are no lies — only winning tactics. You inflate the value of your assets to look wealthier than others and/or to secure loans on more favorable terms. You deflate those same values to avoid paying taxes. You default on loan agreements knowing that lenders will give you better terms rather than write off your failure to repay. You sue vendors who cannot afford to litigate rather than pay them what you owe. You promise more than you can deliver and deliver less than your customers pay for. For Trump, what we call “lying” is instead an expedient in executing in his business plans. Truth, to the CEO of the Trump Organization is, if anything, a self-defeating strategy for losing.

However, for the preponderance of Trump’s political lies, particularly those unscripted ad libs intended to increase the decibel level of adoration from his followers and his less raucous but also extemporaneous answers to questions from the media, I suggest a different dynamic. As with his business dealings, I believe that Trump has never had any concern with the actual distinction between truth and lies. But because he is a pathological narcissist, he responds with only one reflex when speaking off the cuff about himself — to say whatever he spontaneously thinks makes him look best at that moment, on whatever subject, at whatever time, and with no concern whatsoever about factual reality or indeed what he may have actually said about the same issue in the past. For Trump talking about Trump, there is never a concern or consideration of what is true or false. There is only the incessant, instinctive and irrepressible need to say anything and everything that enhances his egomaniacal self-image.

The best I can think to say about Trump is that in such instances, he practically cannot help himself. When asked if Vladimir Putin directed Russian interference to benefit his campaign for president, and whether his campaign in fact encouraged it, Trump denies it vociferously and dismisses as “fake news” the well-established facts proving that this is precisely what happened. He just cannot answer otherwise without upending his own belief that his victory was America’s unequivocal endorsement of him. (The fact that Hillary Clinton got three million more votes becomes for Trump the fairy tale of voter fraud.) His visceral hatred of Barack Obama and the lies he constantly tells about anything related to him from his birthplace to his bugging of Trump Towers, I suggest stem from nothing but the personal humiliation of Obama’s comedic ridicule of Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. As a result, I believe he can barely hear or see Obama’s name without experiencing some form of internal rage and desire for revenge, which manifests itself in his irrational and absurd attacks on Obama personally, and through the incompetent charlatans who populate his administration, the specific undoing of Obama’s initiatives. Further, he cannot resist making the blatantly absurd claim that “no one knows more than me” about subject after subject, from military strategy to global economics to dealing with foreign leaders. (The laughter about that last one sounds distinctly Russian, North Korean and Saudi Arabian.)

These are but a few examples of Trump’s manic behavior that will continue to fill shelves of books, not to mention transcripts of investigations and legal proceedings. And I believe that short of medication or psychoanalysis (for which he hasn’t enough years of life remaining despite all the lies about his physical condition), Trump is essentially powerless to change. The often-stated and ridiculous hope that he might one day become “presidential” would be laughable were it not so frighteningly implausible.

I think it’s fair to say that Trump’s persona may in large part result from how and by whom he was raised — as an heir to Fred Trump’s corrupt and criminal enterprise, imbuing the developing Donald with a total sense of entitlement and not a shred of humility or humanity. Trump’s is the ethic of a thug and a mobster, fostered by the mentality and milieu of his upbringing, later enhanced by Roy Cohn’s tutoring in legal and moral degeneracy. (Nevertheless, in spite of all this experiential mentoring and the hundreds of millions of dollars given him, his innate incompetence overcame his environmental influences, bringing him to multiple bankruptcies and the brink of many more.)

In any event, at the end of the day, we cannot excuse Trump’s pathology any more than we can condone the murderous malignancy of the other national leaders he seems to admire most. Trump personifies a complete contempt for the rule of law much less common decency — the ethos with which he has run his business, led his life and which now infects our nation. It is to the everlasting shame of most of us — the disaffected or dishonorable who support him, the cynical or craven who enable him, and those who know better but say and do little or nothing — that he continues to impose his willful malevolence and psychotic dysfunction. I fear that unless Trump is driven to resign or is impeached and convicted or is ultimately defeated for re-election, we are looking forward to an America that — as an ironic result of his presidency — may never be great again.

Apples, Oranges and Blowjobs

Allen Rosenshine — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 22:08:24 +0000

In the context of the allegations of sexual molestation against Judge Roy Moore, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand made the comment that President Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency as a result of his involvement with Monica Lewinsky. To put this issue in its most benign terms, it seems to me the senator does not understand the difference between apples and oranges.

As degrading and disgusting as was Clinton’s behavior with Lewinsky in the oval office, it had nothing to do with sexual abuse. Lewinsky has never suggested that her relationship with Clinton was anything other than consensual. Nor was Clinton’s impeachment an accusation of his teenage libido. His high crime or misdemeanor as the Constitution so quaintly puts it, was the perjury he committed when he denied having “sex with that woman.” Even if you believe that Congress did not administer justice by failing to throw him out of office for lying under oath, Clinton was nonetheless tried and not convicted according to law. And even if you believe, as I certainly do, that he had a history of foisting himself on women by exercising the power of his various offices, up to and including sexual harassment, this was nevertheless not what Gillibrand was referencing. She in effect compared Clinton’s behavior toward Lewinsky with Moore’s persuasively documented molestation of teenagers.

Perhaps Clinton should have resigned as a matter of conscience, an act of political seppuku for having brought disgrace to the presidency. But by that standard, Clinton’s act was far less egregious that those of his role model, President Kennedy, whose use of the White House bedrooms did not bring shame to his office only because it was not public knowledge.

Admittedly, two wrongs (or in these cases, even many more than two) don’t make a right. But the fact that the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and Moore are discussed in the same sentence is only a result of Moore’s enabler’s attempts to deflect the increasingly obvious fact that this self-styled paragon of Christianity is a sexual predator, pederast and lying scumbag. Moore’s similarity to Clinton is primarily having a president whose example he follows.

Senator Killibrand certainly cares deeply about preventing the sexual abuse of women. But linking Clinton to Moore is fatuous at best and if politically motivated (i.e., distancing herself from the Clintons), very bad judgment.

The Prosecutor and His Pooch

Allen Rosenshine — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 19:09:53 +0000

I am not much interested in conspiracy theories and/or pulp fiction speculations about what purportedly goes on behind the scenes of controversies. However, I cannot help but suggest that the “October surprise” — or more accurately the eleventh-hour gift from FBI Director James Comey to Donald Trump — is, more than anything else, the result of issues within the Bureau itself that have not been discussed in the popular media.

I think it quite probable that when Comey announced in July that the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of her own email system rather than the government’s to conduct State Department business produced no probable or reasonable cause to recommend that she be charged with any crime, it set off a wave of internal dissent within the Bureau, particularly among Comey’s key staff members. It seems safe to assume that highly ranked FBI management leans heavily toward support of the Republican Party and Donald Trump, and that politically, after the decision to clear Clinton of legal wrongdoing, Comey was seen by colleagues as a traitor, maybe even to his country but at least to the Bureau culture of macho if not misogynistic crusaders against whomever they define as America’s enemies. (J. Edgar Hoover must be spinning in his cross-dressed grave.) And being immediately hauled in front of Congress to be lashed by outraged Republican members certainly couldn’t have reduced Comey’s sense of being out on a cracking limb.

The irony is that Comey had no responsibility to make that July announcement at all. It is not within the purview of the FBI to make prosecutorial decisions. They are essentially a police force whose job is to gather evidence. Whether or not to charge someone with a crime is the mandate of the Department of Justice, not the FBI. Unfortunately for Comey, the head of DOJ, Attorney General Loretta Lynch got caught in a tete-a-tete with former President Bill Clinton just before the results of the investigation were to be announced, and to maintain the fiction that they did not discuss the case, she announced that she would essentially leave the decision of whether or not to prosecute to the FBI.

This is when Comey, in the lingo of the astronauts, “screwed the pooch.” He should have insisted that his job was to gather and present the evidence and Lynch’s job was to review it and make the decision whether to level any charges. The fact that she had compromised herself by meeting with Bill Clinton was her problem, not his. However, to be fair, the fact that she is Comey’s boss was indeed his problem, and she was no doubt leaving him no doubt that she expected him to bail her out. But after all his years of government experience, he should have known that by assuming the responsibility for the prosecutorial decision, he was setting himself up (or more accurately, she was setting him up) for a fall.

So off to his pooch he went, announcing an end to the investigation and clearing Clinton of any legal consequences. The result was a chorus of Republicans in Congress howling for his head, Trump braying that the FBI is part of a Washington conspiracy to rig the election, and Comey’s own staff in rebellion over their belief that he caved to the Clintons.

But now in October came what Comey saw as a chance for redemption in the form of emails on the computer of one of Clinton’s closest and most trusted advisors. (Ironically, the closer and more trusted they are, the more trouble they seem to cause her, e.g., not just Huma Abedin but also Cheryl Mills, not to mention Bill.) So for a second time, the FBI Director breeched protocol, this time by announcing an investigation that directly affects a nominee for president during the final days of the campaign. Comey has claimed that he was duty bound to do so since he had previously told Congress that the investigation of Clinton’s emails was finished and that he would advise of any new developments. This is hardly a credible explanation as to why it was necessary to break the FBI/DOJ established policy against announcements that can impact a political campaign during its final phase, which surely would have been an arguable reason not to make any announcement at this time. (As everyone in Washington knows, informing Congress of anything is tantamount to issuing a press release.) Worse yet, he is not prepared to offer any specific indication as to why he thinks the emails are relevant or that Clinton is personally involved since it will be many weeks before the emails will be assessed. All of which has given Trump license (not that he has ever needed it) to unleash a whole new litany of lies.

What Comey thought he would accomplish was to show those within the FBI who turned against him for not recommending that Clinton be prosecuted that he was ready to go after her again and in a way that would certainly impair her campaign. And that he was willing to defy his boss, Lynch, who warned him of the obvious implications of his actions.

Yet another irony is that if Comey had stood up to her in July, he would not now find himself pilloried yet again, this time by Clinton, her supporters and much of the legal community of prosecutors. (His pooch must be getting a little tired by now.)

Irony number whatever (I’m losing track) is that the real culprit in this mess is Bill Clinton. If he had not trotted across the tarmac to Lynch’s plane to obviously make the case for his wife that there should be no prosecution for her actions, the Attorney General would not have been able to duck the decision for which she was in fact responsible. And when she would predictably have declined to prosecute, she would have taken the political heat, while Comey could have shrugged it off to his FBI colleagues as just more politics as usual. Trump and the Republicans in Congress would still have screamed bloody murder but, as we know, his eventual unmasking as a sexual predator buried the story.

Speaking of which, the final irony is that the wife of another sexual deviant — Anthony Weiner — brought this down on both Comey’s and Clinton’s heads.

At the end of the day, it is a pity that Comey’s bi-partisan reputation for great dedication and integrity in his work is in shambles. He is apparently a decent person who is not corrupt but who has been corrupted. And if Clinton actually loses the election, he will go down in history as a pariah.

Unless, of course, the emails actually produce real evidence of Clinton having committed an indictable crime. In that case, a President Trump will happily appoint his promised special prosecutor to convict her. Or the second President Clinton will also be the second President Clinton to be impeached. Either way, America will be circling the drain of world opinion again while for Comey, all would be forgiven and Poochy will be able to get a good night’s sleep.