A SET OF INTERESTING IRONIES

By Edwin Cooney

One of last week's major headlines (aside from those having to do with President-elect Trump's incoming cabinet selections, the change of government in Syria, or the murder of an insurance company executive) has to do with a rather significant American phenomenon. That phenomenon is the contentious selection of 26-year-old outfielder Juan Soto by the Mets, effectively stealing his services from the mighty New York Yankees.

The free agent acquisition of Soto by the Mets was obviously a good decision as the young left-handed slugger is a splendid baseball commodity. However, there are several truths about this transaction that diminishes its significance.

First, it guarantees the Mets absolutely nothing since the "World Champion” Los Angeles Dodgers, the Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies will have something to say or do about the Mets' success in the National League next season.

Second, American League teams such as the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros, Toronto Blue Jays, and other league franchises will have much to say about the fate of the Yankees next year.

However, in New York sports culture which is so dependent on comparison and competition, the Mets undoubtedly won a public relations coup over the mighty Yankees on Sunday night, December 7th, 2024.

There's nothing new about this, especially in New York. Back in 1915, under manager John McGraw, the Giants were the kings of New York. Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston, two ambitious entrepreneur friends of Mr. McGraw, scraped up $460,000 to purchase the lowly Yankees as McGraw suggested. Thus, Frank Farrell and Bill Devery, who had purchased the team in 1903 for a mere $18,000, made a handsome profit. Within eight years, the Yankees were not only outdrawing the mighty Giants, they defeated them in the 1923 World Series in their brand new Yankees Stadium which was just across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds. Jacob Ruppert, the son of a brewery magnate who was born in 1867, rose in New York society to be elected to Congress from the "Silk Stocking District” of New York. Owner Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston, a native of Texas, made his money in the reconstruction of Cuba following the Spanish American War. Once the two were in charge of the Yankees, they disagreed about everything except spending to increase the value of the Club. Huston disliked manager Miller Huggins whom Ruppert backed over the whims of Babe Ruth. The two split up in 1923 when Ruppert paid Huston a million and a half dollars to gain sole control of the Yankees.

Competition between the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, and, eventually, the Mets was inevitable. In 1965, the Mets under Casey Stengel signed Yogi Berra who had just been fired by the Yankees after losing the 1964 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. (Not that it did them much good: the Mets ultimately fired Yogi 10 years later even after he'd taken them to the 7th game of the 1973 World Series against Charley Finley's Oakland A’s.)

The key factor here, as in the past, was the willingness of exceedingly wealthy owners such as the Steinbrenners and, now, "Uncle" Steve Cohen to please Mets' fans.

Another intriguing question is: will an Uncle Steve Cohen "World Championship equal that of the 1969 “Miracle Mets” championship glorified by such names as Donald Grant, Joan Payson, Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges and, of course, Yogi Berra who was their first base coach at the time?

Ultimately, there remains the question, what value does any major league team have to any sports fan? Sports entrepreneurs and even sports writers insist these days that fan support matters above all, but does it really? Are the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and other teams really yours or mine?

A few years ago I insisted that I wasn't going to allow George Steinbrenner to ruin "My Yankees.”

Hence the question: who was I kidding?

Ah, but sports is merely entertainment! Therein lies still another question! What's the ultimate value of entertainment?

You tell me, please?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

AMERICA, A PEOPLE OF PURPOSE

By Edwin Cooney

Perhaps our innocence was blown away by the assassination of President Kennedy that Friday, November 22nd, 1963, but our purposefulness as a people was more than enhanced. The vital person of the  presidency was shown to be mortal, but the office was an institution authorized and owned by a free people and was not to be denied to them. Hence, we would seek to solve the crime by our own means and in our own individual ways.

Beyond law enforcement, there were suspicions to be investigated. There were political theories to be exercised. Was the rifleman a communist, a racist, a gangster, or even a drug-induced fanatic?

Was the cause too many guns, too few Secret Service personnel, a lackadaisical Dallas police force, or perhaps the existing political divide within the state of Texas?

Who most immediately benefited from the deed? Was the government a party to the assassination? How about the Mafia? Did government and organized crime have a joint stake in JFK's death?  How could "we the people" prevent this deed from ever occurring again? After all, we were a purposeful people.

We demanded to be safe, secure and, above all, a satisfied people.

As to who we are, it depends on what anyone who seeks to serve us wants. Politicians call us "taxpayers.” Professionals call us “clients” or “customers.”

We are parents, teachers, the educated, the laborer, the patient. In fact, we are so many things to so many people with varying needs and demands. History has demonstrated that the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson marked the close of 20th Century liberalism going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during which our parents, teachers, and preachers were intellectually and spiritually educated. The political institutions, the colleges and universities, churches and synagogues, lawyers and doctors would struggle for the next thirty to fifty years to meet ever changing expectations.

On November 22nd, 1963, Donald Trump was a rebellious teenager. Joe Biden was attending the University of Syracuse. Barack Obama was two years old. “Shrub" Bush was in high school. Bill Clinton was a teenager who had visited President Kennedy that past August and shaken his hand.  George H. W. Bush was planning a 1964 run for the House. Ronald Reagan was a less than prominent actor. No one had even heard of Jimmy (who?) Carter down there in southwest Georgia. Gerald Ford was about to successfully run for GOP House Minority leader in 1965. Richard Nixon was practicing law in New York City and his presidential prospects were pretty gloomy. As for Lyndon B. Johnson, he was Vice President who a few believed was about to be dumped by the Kennedys.

What none of us could know in 1963 was how our values and understandings would clash during the coming traumatic decades of war, scandal and social upheaval. Sixty one years of politically stormy weather were to pass to get to election day of 2024.

With all of our “ohs" and woes, living in America has been and remains a pretty good deal. As for the immediate future, Democrats may have serious doubts. However, quick as a wink, the ins can become the outs!

Very soon, this willful and purposeful people will ask the powers that be  that inevitable question: "what have you done for me lately?"

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

AMERICANS INNOCENT: REALLY, TRULY?

By Edwin Cooney

Last week, I quoted CBS newsman Bob Schieffer as observing: "Americans awakened on the morning of Saturday, November 23rd, 1963 stripped of their innocence.”  Are any people truly innocent?

Does any nation, despite its advertised ideology, possess a conscience?
Can there be a national consciousness? Ought there to be?

What would that mean and how might it express itself?

If America indeed awakened on that historic Saturday in 1963 stripped of its “innocence," of what was it innocent? Of what was every other nation guilty in 1776 that newly independent America was not?
 
Although this country had just celebrated its 187th birthday, America was just a baby compared to France which was approaching its 1,263rd  or England (America's mother country) which would celebrate its 897th birthday that Christmas of 1963. Still, like its two European predecessors as a contiguous people, America had developed a set of expectations according to its history. After all, young America was the first Republican form of government free of royalty.

As a newly 18-year-old lad that fall, I had a sense of some of the both admirable and regrettable behaviors of my fellow citizens.

We had fought the South and the Union had prevailed in a Civil War that had set slaves free back in the 1860’s. We had defeated a virulent form of autocracy in World War I and Nazism and Japanese imperialism in World War II. We had established and internationalized the Red Cross. We had assisted Japan in the 1920’s after a devastating earthquake. We had established the new United Nations to prevent future wars and sent some of our sons to Korea to stop the advancement of Communism. We were about to halt Communism in Vietnam.

True, “Jim Crow” was still pretty strong in the South. Northern liberals (later called human secularists) had just relieved our public schools of official prayers. Secularism was growing faster than Christianity and Judaism. As for Islam, hadn't medieval kings, knights and popes settled the hash of that ancient society centuries ago via three crusades?

Summing it all up, we were a pretty decent and fair people with a pretty extraordinary president who was handsome and very personable. Certainly the FBI, CIA and the Secret Service were determined to protect him, weren't they?

About that time in my life, I had learned how to peruse maps. I would look at the capitals and nations under Communism and I would wonder what those sad peoples had done to deserve their police state existence! Did they feel enslaved as some members of Congress suggested during their annual call for the banishment of Communist totalitarianism?

If we weren't innocent, what were we? Good, bad, fair, selfish, grasping, money hungry, all of the above or perhaps none of the above? Did God really “bless America” (as Irving Berlin wrote for Kate Smith back in 1938) just because we were America and not Russia or Yugoslavia or India?

How could we be any closer to God than, say, Israel? After all, Moses came from Mount Sinai where he had received the Ten Commandments  prior to fleeing Egypt for Israel. George Washington came from Westmoreland County, Virginia where he had pruned a lot of cherry trees --except one, of course!

So, if we're not either innocent nor guilty, what are we? Even more, who are we? Do we even know each other as well as we ought?

I've one or two ideas! I'll share them with you next time.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

AMERICA, STRIPPED OF ITS INNOCENCE

By Edwin Cooney

Today, November 25th, 2024, marks 61 years and 3 days since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Bob Schieffer, one of the few newsmen living today who'd covered the assassination story, observed on CBS the morning of November 22nd, 2013, the 50th anniversary of the assassination:

"Americans awakened on the morning of Saturday, November 23rd, 1963 stripped of their innocence.”

I've believed that observation since that weekend. It seemed to be true at the time. After all, it wasn't until the shooting of President Kennedy that civil rights divisions hit their full angry intensity. It was after JFK's demise that the Vietnam War divided America under the very man, Lyndon Johnson, whom JFK had selected to succeed him. Next came Dr. King's and the late president's brother Bobby who were swept away. After that, Richard Nixon swept himself away by internalizing antiwar criticism by his "liberal" enemies.

Today we live in a socio/political society that has turned political opposition into criminality.

Not that the world had been perfect up until then.  After all, America had enslaved Blacks and committed wholesale genocide against Native Americans. Even religious prejudice was a part of America's story, but many of our accomplishments did overshadow our sins.

Still, America had saved its Union from a bloody and divisive civil war. Twice, America had saved the old world from itself. We had populated a continent through "manifest destiny” during the 1840s. We had established great unions strong enough to counter the forces of very wealthy corporations. We had mastered science enough to rid ourselves of disease despite the observation of the president of a major college who insisted that if God wanted us to be free of smallpox he wouldn't have invented smallpox! Fortunately, George Washington didn't agree and inoculated his troops against the disease.

America was blessed when it established the Red Cross and eventually internationalized it. Although Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley had been assassinated, their reputation was within the powers and potentials of their presidential offices. Meanwhile, Americans could relate to Jack Kennedy’s personality on their living room television sets and in  glamorous newspapers and magazines of the day.

Presidents were, of course, mortal, and one was even physically crippled, although intellectually and spiritually powerful. In the fall of 1963, the Secret Service and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI were certainly  dedicated to keeping this vital young president safe from any harm ---were they not!

Then came those six seconds in Dallas shortly after 12:30 central standard time. Within minutes, who was responsible became as significant as the deed itself!

Yes, there were still good and wondrous things yet to happen here in America. However, they wouldn't come with the anticipated expectation that they once did.

Before Friday, November 22nd, 1963, we expected the best to happen to us. Since that historic date we've been merely privileged, lucky if you choose, when wondrous things do occur.

Next week, the topic will be: we, the innocent!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY    

GETTING A GRIP

 By Edwin Cooney

Hello All,

Last week I wrote that much of America is in pain and "that's a shame."

So, how are we Democrats getting a grip? I hope we're not spending a lot of time regretting President Biden and his administration nor the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris or Governor Tim Walz. Of course, some analysis is healthy and even relevant, but let's not scrutinize them to the point of pushing them out of the party as 1981 Democrats sought to do to Jimmy Carter. The main things to keep in mind are twofold:

First, now that Donald Trump and his ilk control the House, Senate, and the Supreme Court, they are solely responsible for what works and what doesn't work. Naturally, there are fissures in the GOP just as there are in the Democratic Party that may well modify the president's nominations and his legislative proposals.

Second, how the president and his minions do what they propose to do will have an effect on how popular they remain. Every administration has a social and political flavor.

Harry Truman was all about “a fair deal at home and abroad.” Ike's administration was about protecting us from Communism. JFK was about youth, glamour and, late in the president's term, civil rights and a nuclear test ban treaty. LBJ was about a bigger and better Rooseveltian new deal. Nixon was about establishing a new "Southern political strategy” and "peace with honor” in Vietnam. Ford sought to "whip inflation now” and protect Nixonian Republicanism. Carter was about everyone's human rights, even in the Middle East! Reagan was about conservatism ending the Cold War. George H. W. Bush was about enlightened conservatism (”read my lips, no new taxes”). Clinton was about neoliberalism. George W. Bush was about stopping terrorism after September 11th, 2001. Barack Obama was about creating healthcare for everyone. Trump's first term was about halting liberal carnage. Joe Biden was about building bridges to sensitive liberalism.

Over the two plus weeks since the election, President-elect Trump appears to be about stripping away needless government and installing procedures that best benefit the wealthy.

What concerns this observer is this department of “Government Efficiency.” Government isn't for the poor and disadvantaged. Government is for the “happy-go-lucky” among us. When government works for the Republicans, it is as American as J. Edgar Hoover once was. When government primarily helps the disadvantaged, it's socialistic, communistic and non-Christian.

The bottom line today is that President-elect Trump, by securing the popular vote, has earned the chance to do things his way rather than mine.

For the present, it's President Trump's bat and ball. If he doesn't get it right, Lucy will demand that Charlie Brown jump on his Democratic donkey and go snatch it away from him!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

MUCH OF AMERICA'S IN PAIN AND THAT'S A SHAME!

By Edwin Cooney

We proud Democrats are in a lot of pain! After all, last Wednesday morning, Donald Trump achieved popular election to the office of President of the United States. Of course, we didn't want Mr. Trump to win at all, but we might have felt a tad better if he'd won in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. All of us are now forced to live (notice I don't say surrender) to Mr. Trump's reality. Now is not the time to debate the differences between democracy and republicanism. The majority prevails in a democracy and, for the present, Donald Trump has prevailed.

Living with reality is distinct from surrendering to prevailing conditions. President-elect Trump also will face limitations and conflicts just as Lyndon Johnson ultimately had to face even in the wake of his 1964 “mandate" and just as Franklin D. Roosevelt did with his 1936 mandate. FDR stumbled when he sought to “pack" the Supreme Court. LBJ faltered when he sought to prevail militarily in Vietnam.

Already, there's a potential conflict between congressmen representing fossil fuel "drill drill drill" constituents versus clean energy companies expecting to manufacture and profit from the sale of those environmental and energy-saving electronic vehicles.

One of the lessons history teaches is that the more responsibility one seeks and accepts, the more accountability one will have!

As for your and my political and social preferences, for our own well-being we can't root for the failure of our national leadership without wishing failure on ourselves. The well-being of our constituents is as legitimate today as it has been. Their time and ours will come if we're conscientiously vigilant!

There was one very tiny phrase in Mr. Trump's victory statement  that gave me a little encouragement. Rather than asserting that he would make America "great again,” he stated that he had to make America better! All of us, individually and collectively ought to strive to be "better!"

Emotionally, I detest Donald Trump and almost everything he stands for and promotes. However, with his victory last Tuesday he has become an historic figure. Should he achieve as few as three of his stated objectives, his presidency will be as significant as those of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Truman, LBJ, and Reagan.

Mark Antonio Wright, who today edits The National Review, the magazine founded and once edited by William F. Buckley, Jr, recently asked a set of very intriguing questions about the outcome of last Tuesday's election.

Why, Mr. Wright wondered, didn't Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the rest of those Democratic “goons” cheat this time? Didn't they have control of the Justice Department, the FBI, and the rest of the “deep state’s" intelligence and law enforcement agencies? After all, didn't they successfully cheat President Trump out of his re-election straight from Joe Biden's Delaware basement back in 2020? It just doesn't make sense to Mr. Wright, whom we must assume is no friend of Biden and his liberal Democratic ilk!

Still, Mr. Wright wonders why, in the face of January 6th and Mr. Trump’s criminal convictions, the Democrats decided not to “cheat” and thus deny Donald Trump another term. How can that be?.

As for Vice President Harris, her heart may hurt a bit, but she'll land on her professional and political feet. She's already achieved the honor of her party's nomination. Count the number of people who have sought that highest of honors and compare that to the number of people who have even achieved that honor!

Soon, President Biden will greet Mr. Trump at the White House and offer a smooth transition — not because he should, but because he ought to!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

STRAIGHT FROM THE SHOULDER!

 By Edwin Cooney

Tomorrow, I will go to our town hall and cast my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. I fervently hope you will do the same!

I've been a Democrat since 1976 when I abandoned the Republican Party in favor of Jimmy Carter and I have only occasionally glanced backward to ponder my affection for favored old Republican heroes.

What appeals to me about the general trend of the Democratic Party is its insistence that John and Sally Q. Citizen ought to be continuously considered when determining the best path to be taken in every aspect of national policy, foreign or domestic. Harry Truman used to say that the rich legitimately pay for influence at the highest levels of government. That's all well and good, he went on to say. However, working men and women who lack the capacity to pay for influence need the president and an active Congress to do their bidding. Thus, we all start out with the ability to elect imperfect men and women who invariably disappoint an imperfect constituency.

Over the years, millions of Americans have been disappointed  by the leaders of both political parties, whether it be by the teenage whims of Bill Clinton or the willfulness of President George W. Bush determined to go to war in Iraq to avenge the sins of Saddam Hussein against his father, George H. W. Bush.

Thus, millions of Americans recently have sought a leader who would be determined enough to cut through conventional ways of evaluating events and circumstances. Such a man was to be Donald John Trump, a "mighty hard little crabapple" out of "The Big Apple."

Determined to "Make America Great Again" without defining what that really means, Mr. Trump leaves it up to the most unhappy constituency to make that determination. Since history demonstrates again and again that the new comes from altering the old, anger toward the old is the best pathway toward significant or even fundamental  change.
Many years ago, columnist and comedian Will Rogers, who used piles of ink making fun of politicians, once observed that our system of checks and balances was so perfect that no person could deliberately destroy it. Sadly, as we get ready to go to the polls tomorrow, we  aren't as certain as Mr. Rogers was even during the Great Depression. (Rogers joked that America was the first nation ever to go to the poorhouse in an automobile!)

About two weeks ago, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens suggested a closing argument that Vice President Kamala Harris could use to close her case against Mr. Trump. He asserts that if Mr. Trump wins, we will be a bitterly, vocally, emotionally, exhaustingly divided country. You know this because whatever you thought of his first term, you remember how that division became a part of your daily life. She could point out:  "Thanksgiving dinners you stopped going to -- because of Trump. Friends and neighbors you stopped speaking to -- because of Trump. Topics you wouldn't broach -- because of Trump. There was no getting away from it. Trump is a human jackhammer pounding outside your window at 6:30 a.m. The noise is incessant. It's in the ad hominem tweets, the nasty nicknames, the disparagement of anyone who disagrees with him as an idiot, a weakling, an enemy of the people. And let's be honest: the noise also came from the enraged reaction that Trump provoked, whether on cable TV or the streets of many of our cities. Trump brought out the worst in everyone, not just his most ardent fans but also -- yes -- his most acerbic critics. In the four years of his presidency, he turned us into a nation of haters. He'll do it again if you elect him next month."

Through my lifelong experience of people’s natural behavior, I’m convinced that the vast electorate is deeply and genuinely sick and tired of Mr. Trump's emotional vamping. However, history may be about to tell me that I'm badly mistaken.

After all, the history of our British cousins demonstrates that they too often were ruled by selfish kings, jealous kings and even murderous kings. A king was usually the strongest warrior imbued with majestic royalty. In 1199, King Richard the Lionheart was succeeded by his youngest brother John who wrecked England's economically and militarily so badly that Pope Innocent the Third temporally prohibited England from participating in all spiritual ceremonies and rights. This was devastating to a medieval society that so depended on the blessings of God for a sense of spiritual equity. The result in 1216 was the Magna Carta which denied the king the right of absolute rule. Later on, came the Wars of the Roses between the Yorks and the Lancaster during the 1400s.

Still later, King Henry the 8th clashed with Rome and the struggle between the Catholics and Protestants put Britain in an economic and political tailspin for decades to come.

Now we in America  could be on the verge of a twisted form or version of democracy. We may learn the lesson that a majority may well be wicked enough to choke itself to death via its own resentment of the conditions in which it is currently living!

However, as near as we may be to an economic and moral disaster, we're not there yet.

What you and I are still free to do in the privacy of the voting booth tomorrow, November, 5th, is to bring  this lunge toward oligarchy to a screeching halt.

Back in 1976, Christians nearly rejected a presidential candidate because he told Playboy that he sometimes had lust in his heart. Today some Christians (although I don't believe that it's most Christians) are about to support the presidential candidacy of a man who stands atop a political platform to openly discuss the significance of a dead golfer's manhood.

I still believe that there's a lot of good sense within the conscience of the American people. Certainly no one would insist that Vice President Kamala Harris represents all that's pure and good. However, any political movement that spreads suspicion and hatred among a free people demonstrates a lack  of regard toward the constituency it seeks to govern.

I'm convinced that tomorrow, November 5th, 2024, the fair-minded and the “lionhearted" people of the United States of America will say no to Donald Trump.

If fair-minded Americans say yes to Mr. Trump, then I suppose we all deserve him.

As for now, I present to you the dismissal words uttered by Oliver Cromwell when he decided that the Long Parliament of 1748-1760 had lasted too long. This dramatic and powerful rejection applies to Mr. Trump in 2024:

"You have sat too long here for any good you've been doing. Depart, I say,  and let us have done with you. In the name of God---Go!"

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY