Letter 130: Fiddling with Fidel; Kidding with a Communist

“What this country really needs is a good five-cent cigar…”

-- Vice President T.R. Marshall, 1915

“A revolution is not a trail of roses.… A revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past.”

-- Fidel Castro, 1961.

No Castor Oil Treatment for Castro. For those of us who either have no connections to fame or have simply burned too many bridges, this perspective will sound familiar in its innocence and insignificance. Before we start with an anecdote, it is important to point out that Castro was a strong-man and his régime often brutal. Nevertheless, it was nothing like the most brutal days of communist states of the U.S.S.R., Cambodia and China.

Second, Fidel Castro emerged from the educated upper-middle class, an upbringing that left its imprimatur on the victorious revolutionary. Thus, the communist firebrand transcended the same circles as many Cubans in Miami, who have been whining since 1959 for the revolutionaries doing to them what they had been doing to many of the poor, especially those trapped ‘en el campo’ for centuries.

Third, though Cuba never really took flight as a workers’ paradise, the strongman elevated literacy to nearly 100% -- up by two-thirds – within five years; expanded university education and provided a universal healthcare worth noting. Those accomplishments tell a lot about a man under tremendous pressure by surrounding power(s) trying to subvert the experiment  he was leading (https://academicexchange.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/15-facts-on-cuba-and-its-education-system/).

The embargo by the United States prevented any chance of reconciliation between the Cubans in the U.S., and elsewhere, along with what capital they might have had, and the mother-country, much like we have seen develop, slowly, between Formosa and Red China. Had the embargo been lifted, when it was evident that Castro was not going anywhere (e.g., after the Bay of Pigs) – ahhh, what might have been.

Summer 1971. My only 'blood-brother' in life, Robbie Rosenbaum, and I decided to make a phoney-call of international proportions. With Robbie listening in, I got the Ma-Bell operator and requested a long-distance call to Cuba, “Please make a collect-call to Havana…” This at the height of the passenger jets being hijacked to Cuba.

“Oh, Havana?”

“Yes, I want to speak with my uncle…”

“Your uncle?”

“Yes, my Uncle Fidel!” My voice cracked under the strain of stress and wanting to crack up laughing.

“Oh, please wait a minute while...” The line went dead, ominously. Of course, Rob and I, the faint-hearted and bland pranksters we were, quickly bailed. Soon, the phone rang. I got on the listen-only extension this time – a microphone on the phone channeled through stereo head-speakers – while Rob took the call with his deeper voice.

“Hello?” Robbie used his most stentorian tone.

“Sir, are you aware that someone from this line just tried to call Fidel Castro?”

“Oh,” Rob said, deepening his voice even more. “That must be my spoiled son…” I was biting on my index finger to contain myself from laughing – still have the teeth marks to prove it!

“I would assume so, Mister Rosenbaum?”

“That’s me,” answered Rosey authoritatively. “That boy is trouble, a regular juvenile delinquent…” My will-power against showing emotion was ebbing fast when disaster struck. (Robbie was always the tougher of the two of us.)

“Hello?” Oh my God. Stanley Rosenbaum, a truly patrician elder with roots back to the earliest Jewish settlement in New Amsterdam, had an equally commanding voice, though a notch above Robbie’s affected tone.

“That’s alright, Stanley.” Rosey was winging it, now. “Ma’am, that’s my other son…”

“Stanley? Son??” Mr Rosenbaum was later deemed my ‘Uncle Stanley’, after Rosey departed at far too young an age my first December away at school. “Robbie? What is this? Why is your voice so deep?” The operator was confused.

“Oh, my sons – they can be such trouble…Now, Stanley, get off the phone, please.” The operator was wising up to Rosey, now.

“Sir, may I speak with you?” Both Robbie and Uncle Stan said yes. Uncle Stanley was not quite angry, but he was stern.

“Rob, get off the phone so I may speak with this lady.”

“Ah, operator, Stanley likes to imitate me…” Uncle Stanley was not quite furious but he was annoyed.

“Robert, get off the phone.”

“No, dad, you get off the phone.” I thought I could hear the operator giggling discreetly. In any case we were done for. Rob nodded at me and hung up. Then I disconnected the ‘bug’ from the phone, took off Rosey’s headphones and sat in a chair to look calm and innocent for the inevitable.

We waited hours (five-to-ten minutes, puberty standard time) until Mr Rosenbaum finally appeared at Robbie’s door.

“Neddy, I have spoken with your mother.” Thank God; he had not spoken with dad. I would have been in so much trouble that I might have had to hijack a flight to Havana for self-preservation. “She asked me to handle this with you, too.” Was this discipline or a mission of mercy?

Rob tried to smooth things over in the manner only a big-boy could do. (Rosey was year older at fifteen.) “Well, sorry dad.”

“Rob, I have told your mother that I would speak with you about this.” Uncle Stanley looked down briefly, shaking his head. Whew! My dad and his Mom were out of the picture! No rack and pillory for us. Uncle Stanley continued patiently, “Now, Rob and Neddy, this was not just a practical joke.” He composed himself, I assumed, to contain his violated sense of blue-blooded patriotism and consequent rage.

“You were about to be switched over to the F-B-I.” Robbie and I look exchanged worried glances, evincing the age-old ‘sacred scheiße’ look. Again, Mr Rosenbaum composed himself. He had never been this flummoxed; ordinarily so calm a gentleman.

“I’m so sorry, Mr Rosenbaum!” Okay, so I was a teen-age mutant cringing quisling.

Finally, Uncle Stanley could contain himself no longer as his giggle quickly cascaded into a laugh.

May 1975. After defending the greatness of the U.S. to some nasally effete French teacher who wanted to crush ‘Yanquisme’ (American imperial fascism or some such hackneyed whimpicism), I decided to prove my point that the U.S. had done far more good than bad in Viêt Nam compared to the sickly French colonialists. I researched the French Indo-Chinese War for a presentation in class.

Much to my surprise, we had not done better; in fact, we had done worse, much worse and should have known better. The U.S. had made all the same mistakes as France with ten times the TNT tonnage and two-to-three times the casualties on all sides. For the first time, after a troubling ambivalence since 1969, I turned against the war. At least those motley French had sacrificed more troops than we to hold the stupid colony in the first place. 

For what? 

My God, the war had not been noble, not a trace of nobility to it, at all. Ho Chi Minh had fashioned his declaration of independence after our own. He had pleaded with President Wilson for a homeland; President Truman had over-ridden President Roosevelt’s implicit anti-colonialism. President Truman’s shift from F.D.R.’s perspective seeing all sides to one of pure self-interest had virtually guaranteed the Cuban embargo thirteen years later.

In a state of near agitation over a wrenching bout of cognitive dissonance, one evening I joined a housemaster and a couple of other students as we talked about the recent fall of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane. The housemaster encouraged me to speak up since I was obviously troubled. So I wondered aloud if communism might be the better way to go, at least at first, for a newly freed colonial country to get her people fed, read and healthy.

May 1976. My best friend in boarding school and I were chatting one night with some under-classmen when we got into a debate about the Cold War. One of the tykes – now a Wall Street millionaire – had a father highly placed in the Cold War apparatus of Containment. He relished the fact that Cuba’s experiment in communism had manifestly failed. People were poorer than ever. The U.S. had won!

My best friend – a very good man even then – took issue with that assertion pointing out that the embargo had impoverished Cuba over the previous seventeen years. The under-wingie countered that the U.S. faced a global threat and that the embargo had to stop communist expansionism. Besides, the U.S. had succeeded. The argument sounded tired, tinny and trite.

Silently, I wondered if that victory hadn’t been hollowed out by mass misery at our hand. Ever since, I have come progressively to view that sanctions – the polite name now used for embargoes – are not only ineffective but also somehow rotten. The dictators targeted already have the money and the supplies; they are unaffected. Yet the common man suffers mightily. 

For what?

Letter 129: Reflections of a Renegade Jew

“First, the disciples were in a unique position to know whether the Resurrection happened, and they went to their deaths proclaiming it was true. Nobody knowingly and willingly dies for a lie…there’s no good reason why skeptics like [Saints] Paul and James would have been converted and would have died [painfully] for their faith.”

-- Lee Strobel, 1998.

“In the first place, philosophy did not develop in an unbiased way from an open and unprejudiced origin. It had its task cut out for it from the start. It had a mission to perform, and it was sworn in advance to that mission. It had to extract the essential moral kernel out of the threatened traditional beliefs of the past.”

-- John Dewey, 1920.

“This work…seeks to explain certain obscure figures which occur in the Prophets [and their messages transcribed in the Tanakh, or the Jewish Bible]…Even well informed persons are bewildered if they understand these passages in their literal signification, but they are entirely relieved of their perplexity when we…merely suggest that the terms [of the Prophets and of the narrative of the Tanakh] are figurative. For this reason I have called this book Guide for the Perplexed.”

-- Moses Maimonides, 1190.

NOTE; Thanksgiving Day 2016. 

You are in luck! Here is the blessed text for free: 

http://www.teachittome.com/seforim2/seforim/the_guide_for_the_perplexed.pdf. 

I myself had to have the paper copy so I could leave my teeth-marks in it and study it as I study any bucket-list non-fiction book…ANALytically.

BLUF (Bottom-line, up front): The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel provides a convincing argument in favor of the authenticity and accuracy of the New Testament. In a few sentences, Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides refutes that notion devastatingly.

Introduction. The dilemma? In one book, one has to choose Christianity or overtly turn away from it; lazy agnosticism is no longer an option. Using less refined argumentation than C.S. Lewis, Strobel strengthens his argument through its accessibility. The other book explains why Christianity simply does not work and why it was condemned as a heresy of Judaism from the beginning. 

Certain books can change the world. Certain statements in certain books can change one’s life. The underlying religious texts are full of nuggets for people in all times:

1. "Praise be to G-d, Lord of the Universe, the compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgment! You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help."
2. "Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."
3. "Blessèd are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."
4. "Now my natural qualities are besieged by weakness and apprehension and my thinking bewildered regarding righteousness."
5. "Solomon answered G-d, 'You have shown great loving-kindness to my father David and now You have made me king in his place. Now, AdonaiELOHIM...give me wisdom and knowledge that I may go out and come in before this people. For who can govern this great people of Yours?'"

Specific books, and passages within them, however, suit a particular individual’s temperament and direction through life. For me, two of those books have been Reconstruction in Philosophy by John Dewey and Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides. This essay focusses on the irreconcilable super-ordination of Judaism over Christianity executed so elegantly by Maimonides that I have nowhere else to go but home.

Collision of the Wraiths of Faith. For many years, I have come to believe that Saint Paul – half Jew and a Roman citizen – was the first international marketing M.B.A. He saw the vacuity of Roman decadence, the twilight of the Graeco-Roman pantheon in favor of the orientalist man-god in the flesh of the Emperor. While he saw that black hole of the Roman soul, Saint Paul was also a pragmatist.

Saint Paul knew, from his physician friend, Saint Luke, that adult men would never consent to circumcision with mortality rates likely to run 25% or more. So believers – fellow Romans starved for meaning and inward renewal – need only believe in the man-god of J.C.; merely circumcise their hearts; and, simply write the law unto their hearts rather than have all those rules upend their lives.

My blithe conception of Christianity being Judaism-over-easy no longer holds. Barely mentioning Jesus or Catholicism, Maimonides consigns Christianity to being a Jewish heresy. Christians take the words of the New Testament – and the parts of Tanakh (the Jewish Bible, or the Old Testament) used to justify the Gospels – at their face value.

Maimonides discusses at length why the scriptures were never intended to be taken literally. They were analogies and metaphors useful in guiding believers toward (inward) virtue being its own reward. Virtue being its own reward sounds a lot like Grace. Except that the Jewish conception of Grace is a more active notion than a simple and largely passive ‘conversion’; it requires living a certain way to elevate mind and body together toward an accessibility to G-d's guidance.

The relief from perplexity, as prescribed by Maimonides, is aligning metaphysics with behavior, a commitment which entails something other than understanding the why-behind-the-why intellectually. One must apprehend it through attempting, and often falling short of, an obedience to the commandments and to the concrete message behind the mystery of the prophecies. People grow toward Grace, not simply let it in via conversion. 

In The Case for Christ, ex-crime investigative reporter, Lee Strobel, nobly argues a case for the ‘fact’ that Jesus Christ not only existed, but that his biography is accurately narrated and substantially corroborated in the Gospels. He adduces convincing evidence. While not proven completely -- as no historical chronicle ever is -- if Strobel were writing about another, less-laden topic, his pain-staking argument would persuade me as being highly probable in its veracity.

That would suffice for me to accept Jesus Christ as a historical figure; to hand my life over to his guidance; and, to get on with my life of Grace. Except that Moses Maimonides under-cuts the legitimacy of Strobel’s argument by clearly, simply and incontrovertibly pointing out the source of Christianity being a heresy: the literal interpretation of the prophecies and other scriptures.

Being literalists, the early Christians aligned the facts, as recorded, of Christ’s life with the prophecies of Isaiah et al. in proclaiming an eventual Messiah. That reversal of Christian logic by Maimonides does not mean that I think Christians are somehow fraudulent in their often extraordinary loving-kindness. What it does mean is that Christianity, for all her splendor and wisdom, is not a simple emulation of G-d begotten as man but of G-d as spoken through the Prophets. 

No, my old notion of Christianity being Judaism-over-easy – reflecting a life-long habit of splitting the difference to appease everyone and, therefore, to please no one – is not a separate package of belief and doctrine. It is Judaism, pure and heretically simple. Many other confounding questions (some new and some old) fall into place after a life-time of cognitive dissonance thanks to this brilliant and modest man from so long ago:

• why there is a close resemblance of the structures of Catholicism and Judaism (i.e., tabernacles for the body of wisdom, the Torah, and the body of Christ as well as five layers of hierarchy between man and G-d, per the counsel of Jethro, history's first ever management consultant);
• why so many Christian sects exist, many being cults of (often dangerous) personalities;
• why Islam and Judaism resemble one another far more than either resembles Christianity;
• why so many Christians – Orthodox and Western – have been so profoundly Anti-Semitic for so long;
• how a repeated mix of Christianity and politics keeps yielding distinctly un-Christlike behavior and rhetoric in our own day through conflation of literalism with political ideology or voting preference;
• why everyone is truly created as a finite image of an infinite G-d;
• how fighting over shelf-space has instigated repeated pogroms, even genocide, against the believers of a vulnerable religion, often with the tacit complicity of host-nation Christian churches;
• why the Trinity, according to Maimonides (ironically, without mentioning it), really makes no sense, except in a context of error in which figurative language is interpreted literally;
• how to revere and emulate Jesus since he is more than a rabbi and less than a prophet; as well as,
• why Maimonides’s exerts a pervasively persuasive influence on many great Christian theologians and philosophers, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to William of Ockham to Blaise Pascal to Bishop George Berkeley to Søren Kierkegaard to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and even to (the Jewish) Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The medieval rabbi came to my attention during my time interning with the U.S. Senate a long time ago. Two years before, a fellow W.&L. Zeeb and a W.&L. professor, neither of whom ever avoided dinging me, instructed me to pursue the-why-behind-the-why through their example of curiosity, notwithstanding grades. 

Thank G-d, because high marks were not exactly in my repertoire back then! Among many books beyond my limited intellectual reach that I read was A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher, in 1982. Having recently been enchanted, permanently, by his earlier masterpiece, Small Is Beautiful, I was disappointed by Schumacher's stab at metaphysics due to its difficulty. 

Like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, read the previous year, I sorely lacked the patience to slow down enough really to read that book. In his 'Guide', Schumacher kept referring to Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides. What I managed to extract from Schumacher and his invisible mentor has shaped my basic beliefs to this day. 

Consequently and inevitably, Maimonides's work became a bucket-list book, not to be read for another thirty-four years (i.e., true to my slack form, if more sacral substance). But what a rich, if deferred, lode of gold this eight-hundred, twenty-five year old book has proven to be! Reading it is like eating fresh Sushi: only then do I realize how famished I have been for real nourishment.

Conclusion: why the above-cited quotes above mean so much.  Early in their respective books, Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish theologian and metaphysics philosopher, as well as Dewey, the great twentieth century pragmatic philosopher, made simple and transparent declarations that instantly changed the way I looked at things then; their imprint will remain indelible until the day I depart.

John Dewey’s plain-spoken argument, which I read thirty-five years ago, shattered my nascent romance with metaphysics by explaining that Aristotle and Plato fancifully supported the status quo of their time. Metaphysics was not venal nor was it other-worldly. Like it or not, one had to play his hand as dealt. Only doing that with arretê (instrumental excellence) would increase virtue, provided one did not shed his humility along with his ignorance. 

Likewise, Moses Maimonides’s equally plain-spoken clarification argued that Jewish scripture – with the exception of the commandments dictated to Moses by God – was designed less to build knowledge than to excite the imagination, or the will (i.e., soul) toward virtue. That fact of the Tanakh basically relegated Christianity to a Judaic heresy since the early fathers had degraded the figurative scripture into the literal or, philosophically put, the metaphysical into the ephemeral. 

Grace is virtue; wisdom, its currency; and, rapture, its reward.

Letter-128: What the Clintonians should be doing

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

-- Martin Luther King, Jr, 1957

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”

-- The Gospel of Saint Matthew; 10:16

Update on November 14th: Mr Trump calls for less violence, less fear and more calm.  “I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, ‘Stop it.’ If it-- if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.” http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-tells-protestors-dont-afraid-calls-hate/story?id=43513069 

Update on November 17th: President Obama supports the right to protest and does not condemn the violence, though it is now seen to be dissipating.  “I have been the subject of protests during the course of my eight years and I suspect that there has not been a President in our history that, at some point, has not subject to these protests. So, I would not advise people who feel strongly or are concerned about some of the issues that have been raised during the course of the campaign...to be silent. What I would advise...is that elections matter, voting matters, organizing matters...Do not take for granted our systems and way of life....” https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4631544/protesting-right  

Introduction. Other letters home have focussed on the following topics ad nauseam.

1. The Republican Party de-railed in 2015 and 2016.
2. Why I was an early (from April or May 2015) and resolute Never-Trump Republican.
3. Why I had difficulty with the candidacy of Senator / Secretary Clinton.
4. Why I voted as a Must-Stop-Trump Republican in favor for Senator / Secretary Clinton.
5. Why I mourn the Secretary’s / Senator’s defeat; why I accept the victory of Mr Trump out of deference to the Electoral College; as well as, what the frightened and shocked supporters of the Secretary / Senator can properly do now.

These essays are long and tedious due to precise thinking and research, not to mention their typically wordy pedantry; there is no need to re-state their contents. 

End the Violent Protests NOW. While protesting the dis-connect between the popular vote and the likely Electoral College vote is well within people’s political rights, the violence in places like Portland is harmful to the interests of the people who fear a Trump-Pence Administration. Such violence, I believe, likely reflects the presence of street-punks using the cover of these protests to do what they want to do: break things, attack others and indulge in apolitically anti-social behaviors. 

President Obama and the Secretary / Senator have been remiss in not condemning the violence and calling for the latter’s supporters to be calm.  Mr Trump should be calling for a halt to the intimidation reportedly occurring around the country. Beyond the necessity of public decorum in the exercise of democracy, such violence – perhaps tacitly sanctioned by people in power of the demoralized Democratic Party – is self-defeating.

The viral video of the racist assault on an older white man, presumed and not proven to be a voter of Mr Trump, may be one anecdote. Yet, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then this ugly video is worth a million (1,000²). These visual anecdotes and news coverage of violence could make the fears about Mr Trump’s victory a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consider the following scenario.

1. Violence alienates the moderate majority of Americans as well as, obviously, Mr Trump’s supporters and law-&-order conservatives; thus sympathy is lost for the supporters of the Secretary / Senator.
2. Only 20-30% of Americans own guns, notwithstanding there being more guns than people across the country. 
3. Assume that half of those who own guns keep only one fire-arm to protect the homestead.
4. The remaining people who own guns possess, on average, six-to-eight guns; these people are part of the N.R.A. voting base of Mr Trump’s candidacy.
5. At least a few of these multiple gun owners already belong to militias or, many more, to gun clubs easily transformed into militias.
6. Mr Trump decides to ‘punch back’ as he has been shown to do and indirectly signals that people need to “make America safe” with “muscular” neighborhood policing in which such 'neighborhood watches' supplement the established law enforcement apparatus.
7. Extremists within the voting base of Mr Trump heed that call.
8. Street violence erupts and violent protestors are wiped out since they do not have the guns.
9. Mr Trump now consolidates his power either through direct usurpation of it or by using intimidation to lock in an illegitimate re-election, with the possible repeal of the twenty-second amendment; failing that, locking in an authoritarian oligarchy.

The likelihood of this scenario – one among a host of speculative thought experiments – remains admittedly low. Nevertheless, it is possible, if the utterances of Mr Trump during the campaign indicate his course forward as Mein Kampf apparently did for Hitler. Simply said, one can not yet infer that Mr Trump’s harsh rhetoric was anything but the impulsive diatribes of a self-serving pragmatist. Keep in mind, however, that this is how fascism starts.

My concerns of six months ago were presented as an analogy; no longer a luxury afforded by the here-&-now. People ought to face this uncertainty with caution and with contingent responses at the ready. In any case, these violent protests and the widespread alienation they are likely to engender will weaken the protestors’ position by enervating any inclination of the incoming team of the President-elect to listen to their concerns.

A course forward. Peaceful, assertive protests can and should continue. The leadership of this opposition should be careful not to let these protests dissipate into a visceral but ephemeral phenomenon. After all, Mr Trump did not win a mandate, at least by the numbers. He will need to reach across political divides to accomplish anything.

With the popular vote – though skewed toward too narrow a voting base – in their pockets, people concerned with the loss of Senator / Secretary Clinton need to be smart about informal and publicly aired negotiations with the President-elect. There is a movement building on-line to lobby Electors to change their Electoral College votes on December 19th from Mr Trump to Senator / Secretary Clinton. 

This effort is most unlikely to succeed. And it would be less justifiable than the current situation since the action would be tantamount to revising the traditional rules of the game simply and nakedly to attain an outcome currently not favoured under them. Such a perceived end-run would widen the emotionally-charged division in the streets and likely precipitate more violence as the truly deplorable among the “deplorables” would be all too happy to strike back. 

Mr Trump’s menacing comments about the prospective reaction of his followers to a rigged nomination or election should have given all Americans, at least those committed to the democratic rule-of-law, reason to pause. His comment of Second Amendment supporters taking matters into their own hands were the Senator / Secretary elected was, and remains, genuinely disgusting and frightening. Yet, these two articles do a creditable job of rebutting this proposition of inducing last-minute switches in Electoral College votes:

• http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/11/13588048/electoral-college-petition-clinton-trump; and,
• http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/11/the-electoral-college-and-the-popular-vote/.

In fact, in several key states, an Elector who does not vote for Mr Trump, as the winner of that state, will simply be removed and replaced by someone who will. Nevertheless, this idea of seeking to intervene into the Electoral College voting process contains the seed of valuable activism. In laying out the following suggestion, the underlying assumption here is that Mr Trump is a bully and very defensive one at that. 

At least in school-yards and on the streets, bullies and punks tend not to target those who appear ready to resist. Mr Trump has displayed a tendency to punch back from the safe distance of the speaker's podium or insulated by the social media. We have yet to see him overtly call for violence. So the way to push back is artfully. That means peaceably, with maximum decorum, and with an evident respect for the rule-of-law.

That push-back will get the President-elect’s attention and, hopefully, will not give him cause to punch back. This position is one of negotiation, a process Mr Trump understands very well as a businessman. The message will also appeal to Americans’ higher instincts. So, by using the Electoral College voting sessions on December 19th as ideal pressure points for negotiation:

• set up rallies at the State Capitols of as many of the thirty states that Mr Trump carried as possible with a particular focus on the key states with close popular votes.
• make sure to place articulate and presentable people in the audience of the electoral college voting session in each state that permits public access to the proceedings;
• have well-respected organizations like the N.A.A.C.P., A.C.L.U., the Southern Poverty Law Center and, if available, more centrist organizations transparently sponsor and finance these events;
• cooperate with law enforcement to assure civility and turn over to the police any violent protestors or others displaying aggressively anti-social behaviors (as precursors to violence);
• distribute professionally written and non-combative pamphlets making the case that Mr Trump is not fit for the Presidency and that people’s rights are at stake; as well as,
• publicly thank the Electors for being open to considering the views the anti-Trump people and endorse the eventual vote cast by the Electors, whatever it is.

Below are the eight targeted states on which this coordinated rally ought to focus. As a housekeeping point, a ‘faithless Elector’ is one who switches his or her vote away from the candidate to whom (s)he is pledged to vote; in this case to Mr Trump.

Target State	Electors	Faithless  Consequences
Arizona	11	None
Florida	29	Unspecified
Georgia	16	None
Iowa	6	None
Michigan	16	Removal; replaced
North Carolina	15	$500 fine; replaced
Pennsylvania	20	None
Wisconsin	10	$1,000
Total	123
42 of 123 (⅓) Electors must switch their votes from Mr Trump to Secretary / Senator Clinton

Conclusion. As stated above, no Electoral College votes will change (nor should they). This public and orderly assembly, however, will articulate the interests of the aggrieved without provoking further conflict. The significance of this losing battle is that it establishes a platform to pressure the new President’s policies. 

Why? 

Because, by focussing on these eight states, these rallies will be big news. Additionally, this lobbying platform will galvanize a source of public accountability toward Mr Trump, his temperament, his election, his people, his followers and his past. Finally, its civility will less likely harden opponents' positions by setting examples of courage with decency. After all, the United States is exceptional for being a nation founded on an idea rooted in human dignity:

• http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2014/03/letter-96-is-american-exceptionalism.html; and,
• http://nedmcdletters.blogspot.com/2014/05/letter-98-just-what-is-human-dignity.html.

Letter 127: the manic panic of Election 2016

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

--President Roosevelt, 1933

"Holy sh*t!"

--Bluto, 1978

Introduction. This is not an analysis of what happened on Tuesday, the eighth of November. Truthfully, I have no idea why Mr Trump won the election any more than I have an idea of how he will act. Though not altogether surprised by the outcome, I am disappointed and, with breaking news reports, increasingly concerned less with Mr Trump than with his supporters.

After all, most demagogues are self-serving pragmatists and I believe Mr Trump will be the same. Nevertheless, one should prepare for the contingency of his usurping power at the expense of others or to lock in a permanency of power. That citizen preparedness gives Mr Trump the opportunity to try to “Make America Great Again” but reminds him that he exercises power on behalf of and granted by the people.

Is the Electoral College another Laureate Education or Trump University? One consequence of the results of which I remain certain is that the Electoral College will come under intense scrutiny. Though my preferred candidates won the popular vote in 2000 and 2016, each lost in the Electoral College. In 2000, the far better man, for whom I did not vote, went on to be a great President. While those incongruent outcomes were inconvenient to many at the time, the Electoral College deserves our support for two reasons.

• The Electoral College embodies the logic of our Federalist Republic.
• The Electoral College assures a wider base of governance.

The Federalist Logic. In this case, at least as I view it from past readings, the Electoral College represents the second key set of stake-holders (i.e., the individual states). The Constitution integrates two agreements: a unitary social contract across the citizenry to delegate enumerated powers to its elected government as well as a compact among the participating states.

The Federalist Protection. This discussion is a little longer. Although Mr Trump lost the popular vote, if one casually surveys the blue-versus-red map, Senator / Secretary Clinton carried only nineteen states, largely arrayed along the West Coast and the Boston-D.C. corridor. Arguably, this was the same base for President Obama in 2008 and 2012 with a few more states carried by the outgoing Chief Executive.

Aside from the racism I believe President Obama faced, one might conclude that much of the static that he received and the reason for the widespread repudiation of his policies lay in the fact that too narrow a demographic of the country agreed with them. In most years, a broader base would serve the wider interests in a more balanced manner. Obviously, 2016 was not one of those ‘other’ years.

My personal support for Electoral College reflects my upbringing, my neighbourhood growing up and the students with whom I went to high school. That is a ‘never forget’ attitude about the holocaust and, thanks to urbane high school teachers and very thoughtful parents, a concern that such a mass-murder might occur anywhere (as it has in Rwanda, Cambodia, Syria, Bosnia and elsewhere).

This other safeguard is one I wrote about in college when the anti-Mexican nativist rhetoric was frothing over for the first time. Back then (i.e., in the late 1970s) I argued that a demagogue theoretically could whip up an anti-immigrant frenzy, piling up super majorities in Texas, California, New York (due to a prejudice against Puerto Ricans), Arizona, New Mexico and Florida to carry the popular vote. 

That could happen with, according to the 1970 census, only one available to me at the time, if the demagogue carried 60% in those six states but, due to other proposals (infrastructure; re-industrializing) appealing to other voters less concerned about Mexicans, a respectable 47.5% in all the others. If only the popular voted sufficed, he would win with 51% of the popular vote and could then try to usurp the power to kill off the Mexicans. 

In the Electoral College, however, that demagogue would only get 139 Electoral College votes (about 25% of the number of Electors per state in 1976). So, to quote that great mid-century American philosopher, Dick Martin, 'You bet your sweet bippee' I want to keep the Electoral College! 

The galling irony of 2016 remains the fact that this protective mechanism has landed a demagogue into office who has made Mexico his private political piñata. A quick check of the above-detailed scenario with 2016 statistics would yield a popular vote majority – in line with that of the Secretary / Senator on Tuesday evening – with 55% of the seditious-six and 48% of the other forty-four states and D.C. voting for the demagogue.

One could argue that the slight up-tick in the ‘etc.’ states would reflect the diffusion of undocumented Latinos and, therefore, additional friction in states like Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey or Illinois. In the Electoral College, that demagogue would gain only 167 votes (as opposed to 368 for the opponent who lost the popular vote).

Graduating Class of 2016 of the Electoral College. Barring the unlikely scenario of at least forty-two electors ‘pledged’ to Mr Trump deciding to switch to the Secretary / Senator, the President-elect will be inaugurated in roughly two months on the twentieth of January 2017. This prospect is understandably engendering anxiety among minority segments who have received open protection from the Administration of President Obama.

While the future appears to be darkening, people are not powerless. The sense of doom descending upon so many people is warranted but disproportionate. I am reminded of two things a brilliant German diplomat said to a room full of Pashtun Elders in Afghanistan. That this urbane and soft-spoken man had the courage to walk into that room, without armed guards, instantly earned the respect of his armed audience.

1. “We do not need to like each other, trust each other or even respect each other. We merely have to work together.”
2. “Please give me your pencils.” The Elders, mystified, coughed up a dozen or more. “You say you can do nothing to stop the Taliban?” The audience nodded upon hearing the translation. “Well, I bet I can break all these pencils and the strongest among you can not.” The Pashtuns almost laughed, looking at the diplomat’s diminutive stature. “Come on, the strongest amongst you come up here and try to break these pencils.” A tall, burly fellow, who could lay waste to the short pudgy European proceeded to the front of the room and took the pencils; try as he might, he could not break the pencils. Finally the diplomat held out his hand and collected the pencils from the sweating Afghan. “Now, I will break these pencils that this gentleman could not.”

There was suppressed laughter and evident disbelief across the room. The diplomat took the pencils and proceeded to break one at a time. By the third pencil, the Elders were laughing and cheering. They were empowered. Since most Afghans are ‘less educated’ (i.e., illiterate), lasting eloquence comes through imagery.

The point was taken: one-off, scattered resistance would do little to stop Taliban infiltration. A concerted effort by standing together might not keep the militants out of the village, due to ancient customs, but it would keep the guests quiet. In the case of a Trump Administration, networks of potentially targeted groups can integrate peacefully to deter unfair treatment.

Conclusion. This election may be the opportunity American governance has been awaiting to split the voting electorate up into three general parties: liberal (i.e., traditional Democrats); conservative (i.e., traditional Republicans); and, Centrists (i.e., moderates of both parties). In many cases, the presidential election would end up with the members of the Electoral College negotiating who becomes President.

Since they would hold the balance of power, the Centrists would side with the Democrats, with a moderating influence of course, during periods of progressive growth or change. They would side with the Republicans, with that moderating influence, when the mood called for consolidating changes to make them sustainable or, in rarer cases, to scrap ill-advised innovations and start over.

This dream scenario is workable but is a long way’s off, if ever, from fruition. In the here-and-now, certain groups have reason to be worried. Personally, I believe that nothing terrible is going to happen thanks to our institutional constraints laid out under the Constitution, chiefly the weak Executive and the implicit right to revolution against tyranny. 

What is important here is not to react but to bring civil pressure pro-actively, visibly and contingently. Doing so peacefully is, I remain convinced, the most effective way to persuade Mr Trump against keeping some of his pestilent promises.

Example of the mechanics in action. Many people I know have felt that the extensions of political rights and protections to the LGBTQ community were too much, too soon. For my part, to protect our gay and transgender brethren, moderate Republicans, together with humanists and moderate people of faith, will need to seek out their more liberal counterparts. 

Together, this informal coalition can push back – through orderly protests, petitions, letter-writing campaigns to Congress and the White House – on the future President Trump not to eviscerate gains in civil rights. This group can also contest the policy assertions of the religious right, actively questioning through a national audience what would Jesus do were He standing in front of a gay married couple. 

Similar coalitions need to stand up to protect the rights of Muslims, Mexicans, women and blacks. These coalitions sound difficult to build but just look at the success of I.S.I.S. in building a bloody coalition of radical jihadists from all over the world through on-line recruitment. Such grass-roots civil resistance may seem impossible to build. One need look no further than the baby-boomers of two generations ago.  

Those ‘effete intellectual snobs’, as criticized then as millennials are today, brought down a régime waging a terrible war in Indo-China. These ‘progressive’ coalitions, though I view them more as American than as political, must take extra care not to admit violent elements (e.g., those calling for the murder of police officers) into their fold lest they lose credibility with moderates across the country and provoke Mr Trump to 'punch back'.