Letter 120: High tea in low times; national conscience and national will

"....remember that driver I shot through the mouth -- his teeth came out the back of his head? I think about him now and again. He didn't do anything to deserve to get shot."

--Clint Eastwood, 1992 (as William Munny in 'Unforgiven')

"In those five minutes of brave anguish for the country he loved forty-four years ago, Senator Kennedy addressed the growing endemic sickness engulfing the larger society: that of mindless violence.  His words surely resonate with the sadness of our own time."

-- Letter 62: a culture of violence and the second amendment, 2012 

http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2012/08/letter-62-culture-of-violence-and.html 

I lay there in the bed. It was wet and I figured I had peed myself after another round of drinking; there was that usual wisp of puke circling in the air. Then I heard the two voices conversing in the hallway. I looked over and saw that the bedroom door was open but the talkers were hidden by it. I could hear the two voices of my friends and then a third. 

The man’s voice -- the one I did not recognize -- said something hard to understand. I could recognize Nelly’s Carolina drawl and Bertie's plain-spoken New York tone. That’s right, I remembered, I am on Eightieth and Madison, at Bert and Nellie Saint John’s. They had invited me to crash at their place for the week-end after I got to JFK since their grown children were out of town.

“A long time since I’ve seen that,” the third voice trailed away.

“So it really is….” Bert’s voice remained unmistakable though his accent was indistinguishable from a million other preppies roaming the surreal island I once called home. Then I heard a slight sob. Nellie had long known I was a sloppy drunk.

“Bertie, this is so sad. He is all alone…”

The third voice rang out, “Ma’am it is not as certain as that. Keep him filled up with liquids – it’s the dehydration….” Again the third voice trailed off.

As my eyelids lowered inexorably in a euphoria of what felt like morphine, Bert said, “Thank you for coming over here again on such short notice, Doctor Lincoln….”

Nellie chipped in by saying, “And on a Sunday, too.”

“Two floors by elevator is hardly an imposition. Look, just keep him under wraps, he may be prone to…”

***

Waking up slowly, I then sat bolt up-right. Though I could not look out the window, I could see that it was still daytime. I heard nothing. I picked up my watch from the night-table: quarter-of-four and still Sunday. Damn, I could remember nothing after Friday’s dinner. What a bender; must have been the jet-lag, too. Naked and drenched in sweat, surely from the delirium tremens, I quietly put on some clothes since I was running late.

When I heard Bert and Nellie carrying on in the kitchen, talking about my recent trip to shutter failed business number-three in Shenzhen, I slipped quietly out the door. I did not want to impose any more upon my hosts and I was embarrassed by my debauched drinking. And I was already running behind schedule to see the three men who had oddly invited me to high tea at the Stanhope Hotel on Eighty-fourth and Fifth at four.

Tea at the Stanhope at four? Hmmm. I was curious and figured they were fellow rakes out for some fun or to talk off a hang-over on another boring Sunday. I walked down all eighteen flights of stairs to avoid detection by the doorman, surely on alert, and slipped through the service entrance, still sweat-soaked; already discoloring my pressed and wilting khakis, not to mention my cotton button-down shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, clammimg against my skin.

Just in case, I told the deliveries attendant at the side-door where I was headed, should the Saint Johns in apartment 911 be looking for me. Why I hadn’t noticed the thunder before I hit the street is beyond me. It was too late to sneak back for my wind-breaker. So I got drenched in a down-pour on the way. On the up-side, at least the dripping sweat from the D.T.s would not be so obvious.

The Stanhope stood out in the opulence of the Upper East Side as a quaint old hotel that felt like one of those London row-houses turned into a city inn.  I strode into the Stanhope the way I walked into any place soaked and under-dressed: as if I belonged there. Ignoring the other people’s cocked brows and various visages of disdain, I strode into the tea-room, lined with those affected stenciled fox-hunting scenes on some pseudo-Victorian wall-paper, bright with blue and yellow flowers.

Off in the corner, a rather dark corner away from the front windows, three men waved at me. They were dressed weirdly. But a lot of people dressed strangely in Manhattan and no one else seemed to notice. Sweaty and smelly like me? Yes, everyone noticed that. But funky, faggy clothing? No one cared. Being odd was this city's peculiar conformity. As I walked over toward the table, I asked the Maître d´ to bring me some tea and, since I had that post-boozy cotton-mouth, ice water along with an extra serving of petits-fours and finger sandwiches.

Seems I had not eaten, either. I arrived at the table and introduced myself to find out if I were the fellow these three guys were looking for. Honestly, I normally would have felt uneasy meeting three obviously gay men, but it was about four in the afternoon in a public place like the Stanhope. Nobody would notice.

The men stood up. A little shrimp stuck out his hand and said, “Four o’clock. Thank you for being prompt, Sir. In any case, I am Jim and these are my friends, George and Tommy.” George was average height, perhaps a half-inch taller than I and quite corpulent. Tommy was quite tall and as thin as Jim. Whereas Jim was inquisitive, Tommy seemed aloof, contemplative. George was an outgoing mixture of the two. We all sat down as my tea and eats arrived. 

I asked curiously, “You all from the City?”

The three looked uncertain. Apparently, they weren't sure whether I was referring to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Charleston or Baltimore. They were puzzled. And so was I. Finally, the phlegmatic George spoke up, “If you mean New York, Sir, then the answer is ‘oh heavens, no.’ We are just three farmers from Virginia. We have been bound to the ground recently and we had been hearing so much about New York. What a dazzling place!”

“I don’t think so,” Tommy quipped. “I actually see it as rather dreary, especially in the rain.” They all had a slight Southern accent, though it sounded more than faintly English to my untrained ear. 

Jimmy, the shrimp, laughed and said, “Oh, Tommy, for such an educated man, you really can be a post in the mud. Look at all these things these people have. Can’t say life is nasty, brutish and short around here…”

Tommy crossed his arms and fired back at Jim, “Indeed you’re correct, Sir James, life here looks to be nasty, brutish and long – what with it all being about money, money, money…and people working themselves to death, never reading, always gossiping, always attached to some contraption. Thank you, but no.”

George raised his fleshy hand and waved off the growing debate, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! We have to depart shortly. We can’t squander what little time we have and never ask this fellow,” as George looked at me, “what we came all the way up here to ask him.”

These flits wore funny clothes -- something like Tux shirts from a déclassé junior prom and long coats like an undertaker -- and talked funny. Nonetheless, I felt honoured that these three obviously educated men would seek me out from among everyone else in New York. I felt discovered, finally.

George then looked at me and asked, “You are aware of what happened in that part of New Spain south of Georgia a week ago last night?”

An odd way of putting it and so I asked for confirmation. “You mean that mass shooting in Orlando, F-L-A?” This question apparently came across to these men as strange and unwelcome; yes, their interest in the LGBT massacre merely betrayed their gay ways. Their eyes glazed over slightly. So I continued, carefully avoiding the mine-field of political correctness, “The place where forty-nine people were shot to death?” 

Jim sat up, “Yeah that place. For dancing or something.”

‘Whatever,’ I thought to myself. Consequently, I played along because I did not want them to think I was homophobic, “Yeah. That was a shame, wasn’t it? ISIS and going after gay people.”

“ISIS?” George seemed confused.

That question surprised me but I answered it anyway. “Yes, ISIS. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”

Tommy put his hand on George’s forearm to get his attention, “I think he means the Barbary Pirates.” Another oddity out of the three musketeers, Or stooges? That jury was still out.

Pouring himself a tea, the diminutive Jim, rolled his eyes and said, “Not those people again…” He then looked up at me and asked mater-of-factly, “Tell me, how did you respond to that massacre?”

I pointed at myself and asked, “Me?”

“Of course, you.” Tommy kept his posture as straight as the other two. Strange that these men rarely sat back in their chairs.

I shrugged my shoulders and answered somewhat warily, “Well, I supposed I prayed.”

“And?” All three seemed to exclaim this question simultaneously, as if on cue.

I looked quickly at each of Jim, George and Tommy. “And, what?”

George was the most outgoing of the three and seemed a bit more open with his feelings; being fat and in New York on a sticky week-end forced him to remain overly engaged lest he nod off, or so I supposed. He leaned toward me and asked bluntly, “We want to know what you did after you prayed.”

I slouched back in my seat to distance myself. This inquisition bothered me. Additionally, I could feel a headache coming on quickly, the damnable opioid apparently slipping away. Nervously, I giggled and said, with a faint and slightly enquiring smile, “Prayed some more?” The three men looked at each other. Their eyes seemed a little cold, their expressions slightly hardened. Never one to handle silence well, I spoke up, “Look, gentlemen, I believe in the value of prayer.”

George looked at me and said, “Obviously, I do, too, young man, as I am an elder of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia. Yet even I know that praying in the face of evil is like singing a pub-song on the gallows.”

Aside from the queer phrasing, I felt deeply defensive and under attack. To push back, I resorted to some timely ‘smartitude’ and snapped back at George, “Well, what else am I supposed to do, grow a pony-tail like somebody gone hippie way too long?” George stiffened at my defensive counter-punch at his locks in need of cutting.

“You tell us.” Tommy was cold, analytical in his tone. I did not much like him or his long sandy blond hair streaked with the grey of age. We locked our eye contact into a contest of wills. My head hurt a little more.

I stated plainly, “Hey, at least I have written against violent Islam—“

Tommy cut me off as he leaned slightly toward me, “Just another superstition…”

I now found the strength to argue, whether or not I looked like a homophobe, “No, it’s more than a superstition, Sir. It’s a totalitarian ideology preying on innocent people, especially other Muslims.”

George tried to calm things down by intervening gently, “I think he means Mohammedans, gentlemen.”

Jim now spoke up, also training his eyes on mine, “Call them what you like but why did that terrible man have a gun that can shoot five balls per second? I mean, when I go turkey shooting on the farm, I am lucky if I can get five balls out in a minute.”

Strange gay dude, I thought; fixated on male privates. He likes old-fashioned hunting. Maybe he enjoyed the challenge to his skills required in re-loading and shooting each round like the days of the Civil War or something. Turning away from my usual cheekiness, I obliged my hosts; after all, they had invited me. “Look, gentlemen, I have written against eliminationist jihadism persuasively – if the rush of comments following my articles is any indicator – in the American Review magazine, calling for action for some time now.”

“Oh yes, that Tory intellectual magazine we saw at the kiosk. Interesting you use the same term that fellow did about hatred toward the Jews…”

I fired back at the pretentious language, since George had just busted me for not citing Goldhagen, “Yes, George, at the corner newsstand.” The headache up-ticked another notch.

Tommy stepped in for George, “Of course, those Barbary Pirates are rascals but they are not why we wanted to speak with you. We want to ask you why such a terrible man had that kind of super-rifle, as Jim, here, points out.”

I slouched back and crossed my arms and said irritably, making it clear to these butterflies that my patience had its reasonable limits, “I guess you have never heard of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, huh?”

The three men looked at each other, flabbergasted at first and then quite annoyed with my attitude. Jim said, “Of course we have heard of the Second Amendment. We surely know it better than you.”

Likewise, I did not take kindly to being patronized by three aging quasi-cross-dressers. “Then you know how important it is for citizens to bear arms…you know, to prevent tyranny. A population disarmed is a population…“

Tommy and George looked at each other. Tommy signaled for George to go ahead by quipping, “You answer this, George. After all, I copied you.”

George looked over and smiled at his friend, perhaps partner. He leaned forward slightly to take up the challenge. I was looking forward to this part of the tea. Like so many others before them, these liberal and liberally powdered snobs would never get past the literal reading, or strict construction, of the words. He said, “That right has its limits. For one, it is intended to apply to state militias…”

That delightful tingle of intellectual sadism ‘sconced’ on my head, though my sentiments were anything but Franciscan; it was that sensation of bliss I usually felt just before I smashed petty naïveté into a thousand shards of cheap, forgettable crystal. “Sorry, my friend, that state militia is now the National Guard and works basically as an adjunct to the national military services.”

Tommy looked at me, waving me off, “Okay, your point conceded. Yet you really don’t think that, if tyrants in Washington – I’ll explain all that to you later, George – sent the army to a state to take it over...You really believe that the citizens in the National Guard would not fight back for their home state and the security of their neighbors? Au contraire, Monsieur, I think they would."

Tommy paused, rubbing his chin briskly as he was chewing the cud on some abstruse point, and then straightened his posture with a start, "Besides, Sir, you also forget -- conveniently, I should think -- that George, here, wrote that Amendment at a time when crazy George, not this one," as Tommy wagged his thumb at his friend and winked, "was licking his fingers to come after us since the republic was floundering. Ah, but forget about all of that, shall we? No one is poised to invade America these days.”

The latter part of the argument was new, therefore suspect, to me. So I finessed that red herring of sovereignty, preferring to focus on insurrection instead. I argued back, “If the Guardsmen did that, they would plainly be in rebellion . . . duh.”

Tommy slapped the table lightly in triumph, “Exactly. Rebellion. That Second Amendment is a right to revolution, not permission for just anyone to go running around with some super-weapon three hundred times more deadly than a normal gun.”

I asked, “Normal gun?”

Jim lost his patience, “A musket, genius. After all, we wouldn’t have common smiths ambling around with cannons, would we?”

The dated language eluded me completely. Why bring up muskets? Accordingly, I ignored that anachronism by retorting, “Look, the Second Amendment says nothing about revolution; it may imply it in a loose construction. Nevertheless, Sir, it spells out an absolute right to bear arms. That means any arms, like an AR-15, that are not military-grade weapons or, as you might say charmingly, militia-grade.” The headache was intense now and beginning to throb, making my sarcasm all the more biting.

George laughed aloud and looked at his confrères, clapping gaily, “Boy-oh, boy-oh, James and Thomas, did you hear that one?" He nods toward me as continues, "He thinks we meant everybody merits one of these horrid weapons. Our Amendment merely confirmed the very right of the peoples of the separate states to take up arms separately from a tyrannical far-off national government. Where did we fail to make this distinction?”

Tommy and Jim chuckled and looked directly at me. I bristled at their arrogance quickly deflating my clever riposte. George was not deterred as he looked at me and asked, “So you are saying, laddie, that there are no conditions to the right for just anybody to bear arms?”

“Absolutely.” I stuck my chin forward, almost defiantly.

Jim said, “Then, this fantastic moving image – the inter-net I think you name it – should be able to show scoundrels forcing their pleasures on little girls and boys, not to be stopped because of the First Amendment, right?”

This pettiness annoyed me, trying to trip me up on protected speech. “Absolutely not. That’s not what the founding fathers had in mind as their legislative intent—“

The three men guffawed almost rudely with that attitude of, ‘He is talking to us about the founding fathers, hah!’ Usually I harbour no ill-will toward homosexuals but I really am fed-up with the way so many get in my face with their self-righteous contempt of me for being normal, as if I were some bigot for not thinking the way they do and openly endorsing their every whim.

Tommy then turned serious as he spoke to me, “Well, if you can’t limit the Second Amendment to prevent these super killing machines, then you can not limit the First to prevent Jemmy’s grisly images.”

I was not about to be intimidated, “Sorry, Sir, the First Amendment protects specifically defined ‘protected speech’ only. Any average history student knows that.” I wheeled my eyes full circle in mock distaste to foreclose any response. That maneuver also quickly fell to dust.

George leaned forward and said, staring out with a twinge of mockery, “Well, friend, legislative intent applies to the Second Amendment as well. States need militias and they have them, though the loss of their independence from a standing army and navy disturbs those of us who know better. The intent is primarily for the citizenry to protect itself from tyranny or anarchy. It is most assurèdly not to confer an absolute license for anybody to get a super-gun whether his humours are balanced or not, whether he is evil or not. Guns, like liberty, were not made for everybody...”

Those quaintly queer words again. Then Tommy chimed in before I could get a word in edge-wise, “Besides, you have entirely over-looked one simple fact.”

My now massive head-ache was going migraine on me, making me pugnacious, “So, what is that, herr professor?”

Tommy remained calm and he answered matter-of-factly, “That, Sir, the world belongs in usufruct to the living.”

My eyes were hot now, my vision beginning to blur, with the migraine and my civility had petered out, “What the fuck does that mean?”

Jim, the mad midget, put his elbows on the table – a first for any of the gay-baits – glaring at me, seething with resentment and quite ready to deck me, “How dare you use language like that about my friend and fellow President! Have you no respect even for the office?”

“What are you talking about?” My coherency was declining as quickly as the field of my vision was bleaching out the men from the outside in.

George answered, “It means that the world is yours, now, young man. It was ours yesterday, remains yours today and will be your children's tomorrow…”

Tommy clarified his point further, “Let me put it this way: we wrote that Amendment in a day of muskets in the wilderness and not in a time of super-weapons in crowded city streets. Yes, the Amendment represents a natural right in the sense that it remains unchanging and absolute over time. In that sense, the right itself is remote, eternal, unalienable as it defines nature and man. That natural right, absolute as it is, however, manifests from one generation to the next as natural law duly filtered through the variable circumstances of the times.”

So he had gone Platonist and pedantic on me when I had a migraine squeezing me back out of reality.
The three men remained silent, waiting for my response. Then, I finally pieced it all together: the frilly shirts, the long coats, the hippie hair, the arcane language, the antique references, the quaint anachronisms in speech and thought. “You mean you are—“

“Yes, allow me to present myself formally. I am Thomas Jefferson, your third President.”

“And I am James Madison, your fourth President. But I still think I deserve to be on that great big rock out there in the western wilderness.”
“Jemmy, quiet down will ye?” The third man laughed, “And I am George Mason and I did not live long enough to be a President, not that I had much time for James’s handiwork…”

Of course, now I felt ashamed and overwhelmed as each of the three men took on a nimbus, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, that critter and Darth Vader at the end of ‘Jedi’ or something.  As the bleaching circle engulfed them in my vision, I expressed my humiliation sincerely. “My God, gentlemen, I regret my coarse language and uncouth behavior…” My head ached even harder, yet I heard them chuckling as I drew my hands into fists and placed them a couple of inches apart on the edge of the table.

“We’ve heard worse, laddie. Lend it no heed.” I could not tell who had said those conciliatory words; likely, it was George. All three of the old men laughed that kind of laugh of humility and wisdom finding contentment in the smallest lapses of everyday conventions. I leaned forward and lowered my head to table, the pain was now too much and I could no longer countenance conformity. My fists tucked into my eye sockets, snugly so I could rest a minute and restore my courage.

***

I was perspiring, still leaning on my fists in the eye sockets, for how long I can not tell you. The old trick seemed to have worked again as the pain was easing. I could hear the four voices but they were different, more familiar sounding. I could only make out fragments.

A new voice was saying, “About thirty minutes, doctor, just sitting there talking by himself about guns. It spooked some of the customers. Thankfully, he was in the corner and didn't wreck my business for the day.”

Then a man’s voice, slightly familiar seemed to be repeating, “And you say, cocking his head periodically in three distinct angles?”

I could hear what sounded like a woman gasping, perhaps in tears, speaking with a mellifluous accent, “It’s been so hard for him recently…”

A familiar voice, “So, Doctor Lincoln, is he going…”

The slightly familiar voice, “Look, Bert, sometimes you have to take away some freedom for someone to be free to live…”

I sat up and looked across the booth. It was empty, as was the circular table, except for my tea setting, an empty water pitcher plus glass and the tea-food server, minus three petits-fours and two finger sandwiches. The others did not notice me at first as Dr Lincoln assured Nellie, Bert and the Maître d´, “Don’t worry, he was well past the carrying stage when I left you a couple of hours ago…”

Nellie noticed me first and put her hand to her mouth.  The others looked over at me. The Maître d´ stepped back to tend to the tea and announced, “No reason to worry, folks. Just a wicked hang-over!” He laughed gaily and so did the other patrons. That old feeling of being ridiculed for my drinking antics upset me; I opted for the better part of valor.

The doctor and my high-school class-mate walked over to me. Bertie put his hand on my shoulder, loyal as ever. Dr Lincoln put his hand on my forehead and smiled, saying, “Ah, very good! The fever seems to have broken…”

I was confused, “I was just sitting here with three men…”

“And I have a friend named Harvey, a wascally wabbit,” chuckled Bertie.

“No, seriously, Lambert…Never had the DTs this bad before; you know, I felt like I fell into the sun…”

“Damn you, you haven’t had a drink all week-end, you boring son of a bitch.” Obviously relieved in finding me, Bertie was back to his old self.

I shook my head in disbelief and said, “But the four of us were sitting right here, talking about the Orlando shooting and--“

Dr Lincoln intervened gently, “Don’t worry, with your level of dehydration and the temperature you were running, people often get hallucinatory, almost momentarily psychotic, just when the fever peaks and breaks.”

“And it wasn’t just too much Tanqueray?”

Nellie said sweetly, “You poor thing, you somehow got cholera…”

I shrank back in guilt and fear. “Oh my God that means---“

Bert laughed and said, “Calm down we had our shots from the doc on Friday night when you collapsed and you were past the transmission stage by this morning. Glad we stayed home on Friday, even if it was Nellie’s cooking.”

Nellie slapped her husband on the shoulder. “Lambert, you can be such a damn Yankee at times.” The couple, two of my oldest friends in New York, laughed.

Dr Lincoln finished up where Bert left off, “Yes, don’t worry, no one is in danger but I want to take you over to Lenox Hill [Hospital] for some observations over the next day or two and, of course, to get you re-hydrated and find out where you've been the last week…”

Bertie added flippantly, “Don’t worry, better food than Saint Johnny’s -- guaranteed.”

There was nothing else to say, "I sure hope so, Lambert. So, I got sick. Meaning I shouldn't be punished?"

Nellie was curious, “If you don’t mind me asking, just what were you discussing with your, you know, 'friends'.”

I felt silly in admitting to the grandiose fabrication, “Well, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Mason talked me into relaxing the Second Amendment in favor of gun control.”

“You?” Nellie laughed sweetly.

“Yeah, me, dahhhlinn'. I don’t get it any more than you do, frankly. You know how I am about the Second Amendment, especially after Iraq.”

Bertie whacked me on the back of the head lightly, “Well, I do get it, dumb ass. Madison put together the Constitution. Mason was the spirit behind the American Bill of Rights and Jefferson authored Declaration of Independence. T.J.'s long shadow from Paris got Mason's rights into the Constitution. You sure know how to pick your hallucinations, bud.”

Nelly went on, "So is the President so radical anymore?"

"Oh, Hell no, Nell. In fact, he is seems to run with better company than me."

Nellie laughed again in her sunny southern way, “Maybe you should be mental more often. It enlightens you!” Bertie and I smiled.

Dr Lincoln chuckled, too, and said, “Okay, gang, the Constitution -- even President Obama -- will be around in a few days. Let's get you over to Lenox Hill, shall we?”

Letter 116-B: getting historical comparisons right on Trump & Hitler

This is an answer to a thread that spiralled out of control, following a video about Mr Donald Trump's intemperate remarks toward protestors at his rallies. Though Mr Trump reminds me more of Il Duce than the Führer, I know the Nazi history better. This essay is not intended to castigate the German people for being more prone to racialism or violent prejudice than others.

In fact, greater Germany (Germany, Austria and Northern Switzerland) arguably had the greatest civilization on earth -- in the overall package of the arts, sciences, philosophy, education and literature -- in 1900. One would be hard pressed to foretell the subsequent fifty years.

Addendum 8/6/16: my take-away has remained that, under the right circumstances and stoking timely pre-judgements, what happened in Germany from 1933-45 could happen anywhere. The cult of personality blended with the politics of blame and / or revenge can be a very ugly business.

----------

After this thread exploded, l thought long and hard about Mr Trump. His rhetoric and plain-spoken manner are seductive; I do agree with some of his points and sentiments on the state of the U.S. economy. And then I wondered what it must have been like as a middle-class, educated German (as I am now, as an American) in the 1930s who would have been frustrated with hyper-inflation followed by economic depression, both of which emphasized the national humiliation of being hood-winked by the 'Tin Jesus' at Versailles.

At first, I would have dismissed Hitler as a whacked out corporal tin-horn but, hey, the guy at least was raising points we needed to address. As the Nazis gained power in 1933, I might have thought: okay, the guy is a nut about the Jews but, hey, we need to re-build and he will be gone soon enough and that policy can't possibly stick. When the Nuremberg rally and laws came into reality in 1935, I might well have acquiesced by rationalizing: this won't last forever and maybe he knows something about Jews that I don't. 

With the Anschluẞ, I might have been alarmed but might well have swallowed my doubts by thinking: okay the guy is aggressive. But at least our Germanic kin in Vienna can prosper like we are now, thanks to his political genius breaking the stranglehold of Rome. When Kristallnacht occurred, I might have capitulated by thinking: the guy has done great things and is an odd duck but it is his mob-frenzied supporters who are the crazy ones. 

And as Hitler proceeded with his program -- evidently outlined in Mein Kampf (which I would have avoided reading because of an aversion to the personal manner of an author similar to the one of The Art of the Deal) -- l would have remained quiet because the Nazis had the guns and I had loved ones to protect. Damn shame about the Jews, to be sure. But, you know, where there is smoke, there is fire. 

Maybe powerful Jews had really sought to undermine the fatherland during the Great War. With the invasion of Poland and the depredations of the Einsatzgruppen, I would have swept everything aside and delighted in the power of the monster, keeping in mind all those lovely news-reels of him playing with children or petting his dog. I would have felt vindicated as a German when he took down the rascals of Paris who had screwed us in 1918 and smashed the godless U.S.S.R. and its mass-murdering Stalin. 

So, at what point did I become a Nazi sympathizer, if not a card-carrying member? 

In 1932, when I thought Hitler was whacked but I did nothing to argue against his rise by hanging onto some of the things he said with which I agreed (e.g., re-industrialization)? 1935? 1938? 1939? 1940? 1941? When the good guys finally won, doubtlessly I would have said, "Oh no, I was NEVER a Nazi. I thought the guy was cracked but what choice did I have for he and his thugs had the guns and I had my loved ones under my care? Besides, I thought the poor Jews were merely being located elsewhere for their own protection. That made sense after Kristallnacht because we all thought the Jews were in danger."

The difficulty is that people compare Mr Trump with the Hitler of 1941 and not with the Hitler of 1930-1932 where Mr Trump is now by analogy (if indeed it is a valid one at all); that comparison with the Hitler of 1941 is absurd but not so with the Hitler of 1931. The point is: where does the politics of revenge lead? What will the President Trump of 2020 or 2024 be like? Frankly, I do not want to find out -- way too risky for me. 

This thinking is not unique to me, admittedly a 'mugged liberal'. Governor John Kasich has been warning us for months of just such a possible progression toward depredation. He has far more the 'good faith' of a life-long conservative than do I; additionally, and to my knowledge only, he is not known for being dirty. I am proud that Presidents Bush as well as Governors Pataki, Bush and Kasich are not endorsing Mr Trump. Governor Kasich has the most to gain by doing so; I hope he stands by his beliefs.

Letter 119: Violent Extremism by the Numbers

"If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace."

-- President Franklin Roosevelt

"'Such fanatic and desperate movements emerge usually in response to a profound crisis. Yet, their demise is usually rapid because of their tendency to be nihilistic,' [Professor Azzam] Tamimi said. They 'fail miserably when it comes to winning over the normal and decent', he added."

                               -- Dr Azzam Tamimi, quoted by al-Jazeera in 2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azzam_Tamimi 

INTRODUCTION. A recent discussion with friends about violent Islam raised the question of my being anti-Muslim. Such a reaction is neither unique nor surprising in that opposing violent Islamic extremism can be – and likely often is – deployed as a cover for a wider devaluation of, and ill-will toward, Muslims. We have seen people use this issue for personal or political gain.

Sincerely, I do not believe that I am ant-Muslim. My concern comes down to simple arithmetic in the number of suicidal sociopaths masquerading as Islamic faithful. There are three outcomes of hours of calculation and moments of intuition on the number of the violently nihilist fighters who demean a great faith by masquerading as being among the faithful:

• the scary top-down scenario of 4.4-17.5 million;
• the modest but still unwelcome bottom-up scenario of 77,000; and,
• my stubborn gut feeling of 10,000 (outside of ISIS, Taliban, Hizbullah and Boko Haram regular troops; these people are more akin to the 'accidental guerillas' of Kilcullen).

In the top-down example, I use the two highest numbers possible murdering jihadists to establish an upper bound.

BLUF (bottom-line up-front): ISIS et al. do not represent an existential threat by the numbers, at least to non-Muslims outside of the Muslim-dominated territories. The threat to Western and secular values is the real issue, however, and one on a level of that posed by the Nazis. Moderate Muslims need our support rather than blame.

DISCUSSION on a VERY ROUGH METHODOLOGY. The two calculated scenarios (i.e., bottom-up and top-down), I believe, represent end-points on what the magnitude of the threat really is. There is one significant point that explains a small part of the wide gap. The top-down analysis tends to point toward the number of actual killers over time whereas the bottom-up relies upon one year of statistics from the United States.

The bottom-up analysis deals with the United States and applies the implicit assumption that the number of murderers corresponds with the number of murders. We know that, with incidents like Newtown and Columbine, this assumption overstates the number of murderers in the U.S. population in any one year. This forced and erroneous assumption is intended to account for societies in conflict where murder rates are higher and for the fact that there are new murderers coming on-blood-line each year.

Nevertheless, to reconcile the difference between the lowest calculated number of jihadists wedded to killing in the top-down analysis (4.4 million) and the number generated in the bottom-up analysis shows how overblown my own anxiety has been. Specifically, if such assumptions were pin-point accurate ex ante, and remained constant, for the bottom-up one-year number to catch up to the lowest top-down would require one of two parameters (or a mix of both):

• a 21% growth rate for every year for the next generation of twenty years (or more than ten times the current growth rate of the Muslim population world-wide); or,
• almost two centuries with a annual growth-rate of 2.0% (i.e., the growth-rate of Muslims world-wide).

These numbers are precise and precisely wrong. In any case, they represent a wide range. My own intuition leans toward the lower figure of the bottom-up analysis, actually well below it.

The TOP-DOWN TERROR ANALYSIS. There are approximately 1.75 billion Muslims in the world. Based on assumptions held in my family when I was growing up, the vast majority of any group (98%) is decent. If that 98% figure were accurate, some 2% would be suspect or evil. So, let's assume half of these people (1%) are willing to kill or aid in killing other people, that figure is 17,500,000 people. Say only a quarter of these goons are the killers; that leaves 4,375,000 trigger-men.

Now, if these bastards killed 12-13 people each (about the ratio in Paris), we would be looking at death tolls approaching those of World War II (55 million). 'Experts' believe that 30% of the world's Muslims are sympathetic with the ISIS régime. That is a figure I contest. I analyzed statistics from the Pew Foundation, the source cited by those making the 30% assertion. Those data suggest that only 15% of the Muslims surveyed around the world thought that suicide bombers defending Islam were occasionally or frequently justified in their actions.

Sympathy recorded in a passive poll is a long way off from an activated predisposition toward killing people. Yet if 5% of these 'sympathizers' (0.75% of all Muslims) were willing to murder people in the preferred method of ISIS, we are now talking about more than 13 million people; they would need take out four or five each to approach WWII death rates.

The Bottom-Up Crime Scenario. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2014, there were 1,165,383 violent crimes recorded in the United States of which 1.2% were murders. That translates to 0.004% of the population being murderers in a given year. As stated earlier, that number is over-stated since many murders involve more than one victim and the statistic itself ignores future killers.

Applying this percentage to the global Muslim population of 1.75 billion people, the number of murderers would approach 80,000.  Implicit in this scenario is an assumption that every murderer were an violent jihadist on either sides of the Sunni-Shi´ite divide looking to kill innocents as apostates or as infidels.

Obviously, that is yet another heroic assumption. Such gangsters would have to take out 714 people for each one killed – or four to five times the number of the terrorist master-stroke realized on the day of ignominy (11 September 2001) – to approach the number of deaths in World War II.

CLOSING THOUGHTS. While any of these numbers of dedicated killers are frightening and hopefully overstated, the magnitude of the threat is obvious. My gut says that such jihadists number less than twenty-five thousand, perhaps as low as 10,000; this figure is in addition to trained participants in irregular warfare of 50,000. Nonetheless, such a number can inflict considerable harm and wreak havoc. The threat of violent wrongdoers is not existential; the number of deaths to date are more dramatic than they are significant. 

Nevertheless, this irreligious and totalitarian ideology strikes right at the very core of Western values and is bent on attacking the West for reasons that many have divined but few, if any, really know. What to do? Fortunately, the great majority of Muslims are moderates who reject this literal / fundamentalist and violent world-view. Their perceived silence does not imply complicity but fear.

These innocent Muslims don't have the guns. ISIS has threatened to kill them as apostates if they speak up and the overwhelming majority of terror victims are Muslims within Muslim dominated territories. The key here will be empowerment of these many decent and moderate Muslims so that, together, common humanity can eradicate this pseudo-religious ideological nihilism from all of our lives.

APPENDIX l: EFFECTS of MASS-MURDER to DATE. Estimates run as high as 140,000 people being murdered by terrorists since 2000; my personal estimate is that there have been at least 60,000 across the Islamic belt stretching from Morocco to Pakistan; up to Turkey and down to Nigeria and Somalia. Of the events I can remember in the West (including Australia, Bermuda, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Israel), I can only recall roughly 4,500 innocents murdered outside of this belt.

The point behind these numbers is to emphasize that while the numbers are high, they are lower than what I would have guessed. These smaller numbers are sobering in face of the vastly higher numbers killed by military forces, including those of Syria, Iran, Russia, ISIS, Iraq and the United States. Though I deem several of her policies unjust, I exclude Israël because, notwithstanding a lot of publicity, the number of civilians killed by the Israeli Defense Force has been quite low.

A decade ago, two friends of mine and I combed through every statistic we could find on birth-rates, death rates, displacement rates and emigration rates in Iraq, since the last census had been compiled in the early-to-mid 1990s. We found a gap in the Iraqi population of where it was at the time (i.e., 2008) and where it could reasonably have been expected to be that ranged from 800,000 to 1,200,000.

That does not mean U.S. troops killed that many people. American soldiers were responsible for 7-12% of these deaths. The rest came from sectarian conflict, sectarian terrorism and an accelerated death-rate owing to the lack of essential services for several years after the invasion.

APPENDIX II: an ANALOGY with NAZISM. The distinction between the ISIS ‘troops’ and the mad-bombers is roughly analogous to that of the SS / Einsatzgruppen, who represented 8% of the Army with a far smaller core dedicated to the genocide of Jews and mass-murder of Gypsies.

What the West faces is not a religious war from Islam but a totalitarian ideology with a fanatically murderous core membership reminiscent of the Nazis. The SS had up to 100,000 foreign fighters (from Europe) in its ranks as time went on. As social constraints loosen, many people otherwise law-abiding through fear, rather than obedience, are now free to give reign to their darkest impulses.

As angry young Germans found themselves rewarded, especially in the seven years following Kristallnacht, for service to state by burning synagogues and by committing progressively harsher depredations, so too are young and angry Sunnis enticed by the same incentives to act out against Shi´ites and Christians. All of this with a cult of personality of a new Caliphate.

Letter 116-A: Why the 'Hill Pill' gives me the slick willies.

Postscript. While I have disagreed with most of the policies of President Obama, I believe that he has served us well or, at least, to the best of his considerable talent. His inability to compromise lay not with him but with a cluster of Republicans bent on undermining his Administration. President Obama did not compromise often enough because he was not in a position to do so. Like the tango, it takes two to compromise. Besides, he has faced an almost overt racism. Many of my fellow Republicans disagree with me on this point, often vehemently. 

Their argument is that nothing has been said overtly against the President that is racist. I agree. Yet, my criterion is simple, perhaps simplistic. When a Representative like Louie Ghomert says some of the things he does – and he is far, far from alone in doing this – to former Attorney General Holder or about President Obama, I ask myself, “Would (s)he likely say such things, with these words and in this tone, to an unpopular white man with similar views (e.g., President Carter)?”

Hillary’s ticking slime-balm.  BLUF (Bottom-Line, Up-Front). The last human being I want to see anywhere near the White House is President Bill Clinton.

During the campaign, should Secretary / Senator Clinton get the nod, President Clinton will undoubtedly be cited as a President who knew how to compromise and his Administration will be held up as a golden era. Undoubtedly, there is merit to this view. Nevertheless, most of his ‘compromises’ were nothing of the sort; they were concessions of his principles, calculated – in the manner of Senator Cruz – primarily for personal political benefit.

President Clinton signed the D.O.M.A. bill, a brutally repressive law toward gays. Of course, I am not proud of the Republican sponsorship of that bill and my uninformed acquiescence to it. The Supreme Court wisely swept that law into the great dust-bin of history. Had President Clinton had a moral rudder inside his soul, he would have vetoed the measure and made the Republicans explain themselves.

A Republican Congress, with some momentum triggered by Mr Perot in 1992, forced President Clinton to balance the budget. For those who believe the good old days will return with the election of Secretary / Senator Clinton, please remember Juanita Broddrick and several other women; Messrs Chung and Huang; a possible even likely betrayal, through permissiveness or outright complicity, of missile technology to China; cash carrying Buddhist monks; Group Lippo; as well as, other transgressions.

In an aside, and to set the record straight on Monica Lewinsky, whom I judged as severely as anyone else -- considering her a trashy slut -- this Ted-Talk clears up just how brutal the treatment of her was.  Beyond shaming, she was simply savaged (https://lnkd.in/dwzXtE2). For my part, I do not recall articulating my nasty and hasty judgement to others; at least, I hope I did not. After all, by then I detested President Clinton. Like him or hate him, the President had taken advantage of his power over a an intern.  

While Ms Lewinsky's timely words from 2015 sweep aside the regrettable misjudgement that I and others had made, and the violent verbal abuse too many had puked out, the $19 trillion question still remains: ¿Do we want this kind of man running around the White House, yanking on the levers of power formally, as the Senator / Secretary suggests he will, or otherwise? Count me out.

Additionally, a friend of mine in the military intel trade throughout the 1990s, serving as a uniformed officer in the United States Navy during those years, confirmed in 2008 the transfer of technology secrets to China in the mid-1990s by the Clinton Administration, an action he and his colleagues viewed as a betrayal. He explained that, apparently, President Clinton’s rationale was to forestall another arms-race, this time between the U.S. and China. 

If that is true, the rationale makes sense. A question, however, remains unanswered. Why was the President not transparent about this intention?

Obviously, President Clinton knew that the American people and Congress would not permit it. So, at least to me, it now appears the President Clinton took an extraordinary action in a manner that the politically paranoid (e.g., me) might view as treasonable. Now, these various actions provide the elements of why I came to believe that President Clinton’s impeachment was not “all about the sex” with "that woman...Miss Lewinsky".

Lying about fellatio was the only piece of the puzzle that Kenneth Starr, working on five separately appointed 'special-prosecutor' investigations at once, could prove. It was obvious to me in early 1996, as I stated ad-nauseam at that time to my liberal (soon ex-)girl-friend and repeatedly to very patient friends, that President Clinton would be impeached and removed from office in his second term. At the time, I was still a faithful Democrat. Think Al Capone and tax evasion. 

As one more aside, Kenneth Starr was, and is, a fine public servant. Unfortunately, like so many others (e.g., Christopher Hitchens), the more familiar Mr Starr became with President Clinton, the more he detested him. That intense dislike of President Clinton over-rode his otherwise good judgement to induce him to post, on-line, the content of discussions with Ms Lewinsky and bits of previous telephone conversations, recorded without her knowledge. The intention was to hold the President accountable in a 'no-spin zone' of cyberspace; the consequence was the near destruction of Ms Lewinsky.

IMPLICATIONS for Senator / Secretary Clinton. Of themselves, these actions do not necessarily impugn Secretary / Senator Clinton’s candidacy or character. Frankly, I suspect that, venal as she comes across, the Senator / Secretary has significantly more integrity than does her husband. She was an effective Senator in New York, though some of her stances were troubling; that, however, is par for the course for any particular candidate with any particular voter. Her record as Secretary of State is mixed but not really the stuff of demonology.

An informal assurance (to me) of the assertion of Mrs Clinton's higher level of integrity is based on how Chelsea Clinton has turned out. This young woman has emerged into a decent person, despite what must have been a tortuously tortured time growing up. Many complain about her making a boat-load of money. Yeah, I surely envy that, too. But the last time I checked, being wealthy does not make a person wicked; a deeply flawed character does.

PARTING THOUGHT: hopefully super-delegates will do the right thing: over-ride dubious candidates -- if the e-mails turn out truly to be damning of Secretary / Senator Clinton -- in favor of others fit for the office of the presidency.

Letter 116: Time to Toast these Crumpets

Introduction. This letter obviously has a political bent since it discusses the current primary contests in both major political parties for the presidential nominations of 2016. This essay will be vague since I do not want to get into specific issues. Frankly, I am too old and too burned out on ranting to bother. What concerns me are the non-political dimensions of the campaign, namely those attendant with 'character'.

To get my politics out of the way, my dream race has long been one where Senator Bernie Sanders squares off against Governor John Kasich. Both men, in my view, are blessed with wisdom. Our country faces big questions about our future. Their politics are very different but their devotion to what America should stand for remain beyond question.

What really counts. That said, I really believe that political theory and philosophy – not ideology – are the most important factors, and key indicators of character, of any candidate. Greatness also lies in a willingness to entertain the opposing view. Only then can opposing sides look for that overlap between two intersecting circles of a Venn diagram that permit compromise without corrosion of either side's stated principles.

While pragmatism speaks for itself through its results, thinking guided by principle remains paramount because any President going into office will have to decide questions beyond his or her expectations or world-view. That leader, trapped inside the Oval Office, will need that moral rudder to guide the country’s way through the storm (‘tormenta’ in Spanish) or tempest, depending upon the magnitude of the stakes.

The Democratic Race. This race basically boils down to a classic rivalry of polite pragmatism versus passionate progressivism. Senator Sanders reminds me more of the Democrats of the last two generations who dreamed big, fought hard, and often lost bigger; these were men and women willing to risk everything for what they viewed as an America that could be great, truly great, from the inside out. 

Yes, many had charisma but, like Senator Sanders, their primary appeal lay in "radical" possibilities deeply considered. Frequently, their ideas surfaced later as mainstream policy debate, thus securing an often forgotten but enduring legacy. And, usually, it was the pragmatists, persuaded over time, who realized these ideas. 

Senator / Secretary Hillary Clinton has some tough questions to answer about her character. Polls indicate that most voters find her to be less than trust-worthy, by varying degrees. To me, at least, the Secretary / Senator has a reasonably high level of integrity in view of the competing pressures and temptations that politicians face and the personal faults with which each human being must contend every day. 

For me, the rub is the prospect of President Clinton being back in the White House.

Unlike her husband, the Senator / Secretary appears to have a moral rudder.

The lingering question with the Senator / Secretary is whether any of her shortcomings rises to the level of a tragic flaw. Senator Sanders as a President might very well fail during his tenure but succeed in the longer term as legacies migrate from passion to polemics to policy over time.

With Senator / Secretary Clinton, the country may trend back toward a venality in politics (as the turning gears of calculation click inside her head audibly and incessantly). Nevertheless, the Secretary / Senator should prove to be adequate and, without the shadow of the ex-president, possibly great. 

The Republican Race.  As I wrote four years ago, I was hoping that the G.O.P. would go through then the ideological convulsion that we are seeing now. In 2012, Governor Romney was a decent man but proved to be a weak candidate; Representative Ron Paul was my preference. The racist elements and demagoguery of the Tea Party were already visible. The worst part of this element is that it sullies the better parts of conservative thinking.

Unfortunately, these emerging elements of discord failed to precipitate the catharsis necessary to bring the Republican Party back to its roots as the ‘Party of Lincoln’. President Lincoln and other greats like, among many, Presidents Roosevelt, Ford, Reagan and Bush; Senators Vandenburg, Goldwater and Dole; as well as, Representatives Kasich and Paul shared two traits in common. 

• First, each assigned a paramount value to integrity.  
• Second, they held a deep and abiding faith in the capacity of Americans, ordinary Americans, to make their lives meaningful, their children’s lives better, and their country exceptional. 

American legitimacy rests on the divine inspiration of democracy and not on a divine right to rule conferred by an accident of birth. These men – and women like Secretary Rice and Senator Hutchinson – had variations of these basic values, to be sure, yet their convictions were sincere and broadly pointed toward a conservative philosophy. 

That philosophy had traditionally consolidated previous gains by the progressives to make them fiscally sustainable; this push-&-pull of historical currents came to be the American liberal tradition of Louis D. Hartz. Sometimes, if the policy had been ineffective or repudiated by a decisive majority of the citizenry, the conservatives would reform or reverse it when pragmatists failed to do so. Nevertheless, each of the Republican leaders mentioned above knew, again in various degrees, how to work with the other side to forge compromises that benefitted their belovèd America. 

The Exhaustion of Contemporary Conservatism. Often Mr Trump is compared to Hitler. In my mind, if we resort to colorful historical metaphors, ‘the Donald’ reminds me more of Mussolini – not very bright but very self-important and definitely authoritarian. Hopefully, Mr Trump’s followers will not be administering the castor oil treatment to errant delegates in Cleveland! Mr Trump represents the worst type of opportunism: the politics of vengeance. The politics of vengeance entails identifying a responsible party as a scape-goat. 

Yet, our elected leaders, people we voted into office time and time again, created the conditions we face today. Truthfully, those conditions that we all dislike – the uncertainty, a hollow economy, and frightening scenarios for the banking sector – are nothing like those that the Weimar Republic faced. How we have arrived to this state of fear and disappointment is a mystery to me. Yet Mr Trump blames others and vows to make us “great” again.

Mr Trump’s bluster begs the question of who did these terrible things to us.  We hear about Mexicans and Muslims today. Who comes next? Jews? Gays? Blacks? Mormons? And those groups are only for internal consumption. What about countries like Japan or China? This man has mastered political theater, even threatening to unleash his version of black-shirts (Mussolini’s brown-shirts) in Cleveland.

Mr Trump is not another Mussolini but acts like a Yankee version of Huey Long

Senator Cruz is not another Hitler but could be another President Nixon.

Senator Cruz strikes me as even worse; at least, Mr Trump is obvious. That opinion of mine may change to induce me to vote for the Texas Senator; I frankly doubt it. Like Mr Trump, Senator Ted Cruz impresses me as an opportunist. What scares me about the Senator is that he conflates his opportunism with a personal ideology through a tactical brilliance. As such, he could destroy the Republican Party. The Republic herself might suffer, too. Cults of personality can be a very nasty business.

To me – and this feeling is intuitive and, therefore, irrational – Senator Cruz is more of a Hitler type: very smart, very opportunistic, as well as amoral toward people in his way or those who exist outside his conception of what 'good' citizens should be. While the Hitler analogy may strike people as extreme, I view the Senator as at least a possible President Nixon. His campaign has had its fair share of dirty tricks already. The tragedy for the Republicans in 2016 remains the presence of several better candidates, all bullied out of the field except for a brave Governor Kasich. 

While I support Governor Kasich whole-heartedly, he has been unable to do well in the South or West; his base is simply, and sadly, too narrow. The G.O.P. field had four or five active candidates aligned with the best traditions of American conservatism. They all faltered, leaving Senator Rubio and Governor Kasich as long-shots at a contested convention. The Party of Lincoln can do better than a tin-horn or a hypocrite.