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Summer Days of Pain and Politics |
The
Warren Adler E-Sheet 27
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Summer Days of Pain and
Politics
So here I
am in lovely Jackson Hole in the shadow of
the Grand Tetons nursing my lovely wife
during her struggle with the agonizing pain
of a herniated disc. The role of care giver,
requires, I have found, as much
companionship and dialogue as supervising
pill popping.
The result
is that we have been watching more
television than ever. And since were are both
political groupies we have been getting a
mental bellyache from comments of the
talking heads whose noxious babbling
punditry often can provide more agony than
the terrible pain of a herniated disc.
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Warren and Sonia Adler in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming |
We wonder,
too, if all that watching has created an IQ
deficit in both of us.
Of course,
to be harsh and satirical about such blabber
is easy, but it cannot mask the fact that
the issues afflicting America during this
summer of a nasty election contest are both
critical and, perhaps, nation threatening.
For those
of us agitated and uncomfortable with the
current level of political rhetoric and
manipulative imagery polluting the
television, film and print media, there is
some reassuring historical precedent. Such
political nastiness has been with us in one
way or another since the founding days of
the Republic.
A reading
tour of the early days of the great American
experiment in constitutional democracy will
provide some insight into what is currently
going on in our "bull in the china shop"
campaign.
Having just
read Ron Chernow's magnificent
Alexander
Hamilton as a follow-up to current
biographies of Benjamin Franklin and
John
Adams and as an avid worshipper and student
of George Washington, I can only say that,
in one way or another, it has always been
thus.
The framers
of the Constitution, although bitterly
divided on many points knew in their gut
that man's propensity for irrationality,
chicanery, greed and downright evil,
required a checks and balance system that
would at least temper such activity and give
pause to those whose baseness could not be
contained.
If one
reads the Federalist papers which argued the
points raised in the constitutional drafts,
one would understand how great was the
genius of those framers and how well they
understood the good and bad points of human
nature.
I know that
such historical references might seem boring
to many readers of this newsletter, but I am
both sad and sorry to say that most
Americans, including myself, have been badly
educated about our history. Although I have
been trying to correct this deficit in
myself for a number of years, I am appalled
that the requirements for citizenship do not
insist that applicants know the basics about
our Constitution and democracy. Indeed, our
educational leadership should be excoriated
for failing to teach the basics of our
origins as a nation.
Worse, our
educational system's biggest flaw is that we
do not prepare our young people for active
citizenship and what it means to participate
in a democratic society. The truth of the
matter is that however inept my own
education in elementary and high school I
well remember classes in "civics" which, at
the very least, taught me the rudiments of
citizenship, apparently an outmoded and old
fashioned concept.
Having
finally approved the Constitution after a
fiercely fought debate in the convention and
the States and a Bill of Rights that is the
glory of our democracy, the early
politicians could often be a bickering and
scandalous lot. The political cudgel of
choice was the newspaper essay or pamphlet,
usually written under a fictitious name that
excoriated, insulted and degraded in
profoundly personal terms the opposing
political figure. Franklin and Hamilton were
masters of this tactic.
As an aside
they were also masters of prose. Brilliantly
self-educated, neither had earned a college
degree. Washington, too, although tutored at
home, never went to college. One wonders if
the two Yale graduates bitterly opposing
each other today are in the same league with
the three aforementioned founding fathers.
Of course, we all know the answer to such
speculations.
The
newspaper essays and pamphlets in that
bygone era were gloves-off attacks on their
opponents, more artful and vicious than the
scripted sound bites of our current
candidates. All were attacked personally and
gave no quarter. What was more scandalous
than Thomas Jefferson being accused of
impregnating, numerous times, his teenage
female house slave. Race aside, today he
would be accused of being a pedophile.
Imagine our third President, our first
secretary of state, our much lauded founding
father, standing in monumental glory on the
banks of the Potomac, a likely pedophile.
Washington,
too, did not escape the wrath of the
poisoned pen, and, although he had a
fearsome temper, he had the personal
discipline to rise above the calumny. His
gift was infallible judgment.
As for
Hamilton, an admitted womanizer, he was
abused in full measure more than any
politician of his day. Nevertheless, as
Secretary of the Treasury, he was the
principal creator, among other institutions,
of the vibrant capitalist system that we
enjoy today.
Indicative
of the blood sport of early American
politics is the singular episode of a
sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shooting
the great Hamilton to death in a duel in New
Jersey. Modern politics, with all its
hyper-active chatter speak and accusatory
repetitive yak yak have, miraculously, not
yet reached the dreary depths of that single
incident.
I'm not
sure these little asides into our early
political battles will provide any comfort
to citizens besieged by 24/7 relentless
political haranguing. After awhile it does
get stupifyingly boring.
Alright
there are differences of opinion on both
sides of the political spectrum. There
always have been. These issues, through
ranting, venting and eventual compromise
will find some resolution, however
imperfect.
Still, I do
not wish to appear either cynical or
cavalier about the current state of affairs.
In my humble perspective, having seen the
aftermath of the World Trade Center
holocaust with my own eyes, I have
admittedly become more than slightly
paranoid over the possibility that our
fellow humans, obsessed by the irrational
certainty of their religious faith, could
use the power of our own developed weaponry
to fry us into oblivion.
To protect
ourselves and our institutions against such
terrible calumny is, in my opinion, the
number one issue confronting us today. Nor
do I believe that either political opponent
has the magic bullet that could provide us
with foolproof protection. This issue of
self-protection is beyond the double speak
of diplomacy or domestic political debate.
Cutting through the rhetoric, it is, in my
opinion, the only issue.
Bad, angry,
ruthless, irrational Islamic radicals are
out to kill us. Does anyone out there have a
rational clue as to why they want to do
this, except perhaps to make us believe as
they do, whatever that is? This is the
brutal fact of our contemporary life.
Whoever
wields the executive power and
responsibility to protect us will, give or
take a nuance here and there, have to act in
some modest variation of our present chief
executive. There will, of course, be some
difference in style and emphasis, but
whoever is charged with the task will have
to be pro-active, aggressive, courageous and
decisive and will not, under any
circumstances, despite all the second
guessing and contorted rhetoric to the
contrary, forgo using the military option.
Clues to
such actions will be found in our earlier
history. Those who eschew using military
power, might have forgotten that it was such
power that gave us our freedom from Great
Britain, that vanquished those who would
have split the country into two parts, that
kept Hitler's hated flag from flying over
our Capitol. Yes, war is an ugly aspect of
human nature, but then our founding fathers
knew that.
Sure there
are pressing domestic issues that must be
addressed. Most supporters of either
candidate cherry pick their issues based on
their personal views. Often they are not in
total agreement with the views of either
party or candidate.
But there
can be no escape from the principal issue,
the over-riding issue, the quintessential
issue….defending ourselves against an
aggressor that is single-minded, ruthless,
fanatical, relentless, irrational and
vicious, that is no respecter of age, race,
gender or nationality, that is completely
absorbed in finding ways to break through
our defenses and effect our extermination.
Whatever
our political leanings, it might be well to
be wary of the rhetoric of anger and hate
directed against one or another of the
candidates and remember that the real enemy
is them, the Islamic fundamentalist
monsters, not us
Oh well,
please forgive this digression. We've now
turned off the boob tube and are directing
our attention to the majesty of the Grand Tetons outside our window. They must be
looking down at us and laughing their peaks
off.
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