WHAT FRIENDS I HAVE!

By Edwin Cooney

I can’t say that I’m bragging and I can’t say that I’m not! All I can assert is how lucky I am that I have the set of friends I do. They are a strange lot, but when it comes right down to it, I’m also a bit strange, too. So, I guess that’s why it all works out.

I share this with you this week for two reasons. The first is simply because it’s fun to boast a bit, but even more, I share this with you because of an item I read some weeks ago.

According to an article I read in the New York Times, Americans are becoming increasingly divided along socio/political lines. Just a few years ago, it didn’t really matter much to most people as to what political affiliation their friends and even family members belonged. According to this piece, both voters and politicians (to say nothing of what political commentators say or don’t say) are increasingly choosing their friends and even their potential spouses because they agree with their political views. It used to be that religious affiliation counted more in the creation of intimate relations than political affiliations. Now it’s the other way around. That, to me, is exceedingly disturbing.

Back in the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Senate GOP Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen could vigorously go after each other in the press several times a week and still drink scotch together at the White House after 5 p.m. As late as the 1980s, it was frequently reported that President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill worked exactly the same way.

Sadly, things are much different today. From what I read and hear, Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Donald Trump are as likely to socialize together after 5 p.m. as Ann Coulter and Hillary Clinton!

Additionally, some pretty powerful people are paying talk show hosts of all political stripes millions of dollars a year to keep you and me all riled up. After all, anger can be as energizing as devotion to a just or charitable cause — although angry people are inevitably limited in their capacity to draw a distinction between cause and effect of both domestic and international conditions. The real tragedy of today, as I see it, is that a once charitable people who created such important institutions as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps and, lately, AmeriCorps, have exchanged their optimism for cynicism. As I’ve often asserted in these pages, fear is the father of anger. Therefore, if we’re driven by our fears, our fate is as set for us as the fates of Nazi Germany, the Union of Social Soviet Republics, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and (I believe) North Korea were.

However, the genesis of today’s musing is quite opposite from either anger or criticism. Two of my closest friends from the time I lived in Northern California is a couple whose social and political views are nearly 180 degrees opposite to mine. I’m a Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama Democrat while they are conservative Republicans, lately followers of President Trump. Throughout the years between 1996 and 2013, we have debated many hot topics. During breakfast this morning, we exchanged sentiments on what is happening today. We’re still very opposite. They insist along with the president that climate warming is a hoax designed to profit liberal science and academic types while I insist that blaming climate warming on scientists is like blaming doctors for disease. Additionally, we debated the need for regulations and the cruder side of President Trump’s character. Nevertheless, most of our discussion had to do with what has taken place since I last saw them both in March 2013 when my wife and I were married on their deck overlooking San Francisco Bay.

There’s little doubt that our opposite assessments of the cause and effect of 21st Century America was a tad uncomfortable. However, we jointly reached the conclusion that there was little future in the criminalization of politics.

The heart of today’s political conflicts has to do with people’s sense of the morality and the immorality of issues. Conservatives insist that their stance on issues such as life versus freedom of choice, or prayer in the public schools, or the need to champion Christianity over Radical Islam are vital moral issues just as J. Edgar Hoover’s crusade was against “godless” Communism back in the 1950s. Liberals insist that civil rights, support for the poor and economic equity are all moral issues and seldom the twain shall meet.

For as far back as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed debating these issues even when I had my own reservations with an issue. Only very rarely am I put off personally by a person’s stance.

Once, however, about fifteen years ago, while sitting at a bar in Alameda, California, I did shut down a discussion a fellow imbiber wanted to have regarding the historic influence Jews supposedly have negatively had on America’s well-being. “I’m not going there with you, sir,” I insisted. There was no anger on my part, just a desire to avoid an unjustifiable justification.

Yes, indeed, there’s a part of me that enjoys constructive, even sharp, debate, perhaps especially with my readers. After all, as far as I’m concerned, friendship goes far deeper than our individual need for intellectual and even spiritual reinforcement!

My chat this morning with this couple was something of an oasis amidst the hot sands of political heat. It was downright refreshing to actually feel comfortable and loving toward these wonderful political luddites. 

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats was right when he observed:  "Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

OKAY, OFF WITH THE GLOVES!

By Edwin Cooney

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth regarding the state of the  American “body politic” is simple! We the people are willingly, with malice aforethought, choking the life out of the Republic we insist that we love every Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day and Thanksgiving Day and ask “Almighty God” to bless! There are several reasons for this.

(1) Driven by our fears and frustrations, our political ideologies — be they Conservatism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Socialism or doctrinaire political religiosity — are more precious to us than patriotism.

(2) Self-righteousness vastly outranks political tolerance and inclusion in the decision-making processes of government today.

(3.) Out of our self-righteous frustration we’ve become ideological thrill-killers not merely bent on defeating political opponents, but on criminalizing and thus destroying them.

America, we’ve got to find an alternative way to exercise our natural right to legitimately oppose the establishment or even the very existence of legitimate lawful and national authority, or our capacity to establish integral and legitimate authority will melt into endless chaos and anarchy. Thus the dreams of Leon Czolgosz (the assassin of President William McKinley) and Giuseppe Zangara (the near assassin of President Franklin D. Rosevelt) could finally come true!

Every four years since 1968 America has been sliding into a new age of Medievalism which will benefit only the most well off among us. Therein lies the oligarchy that only a precious few Americans realize is stalking free and innocent Twenty-first Century America.

Most of us read in school about the darkness oh the Middle Ages in Europe. This era historians have labelled Medieval Europe. This was an era of limited government run by and therefore subject to the whims and the wars of the nobility. (Note: modern day conservatives too often focus on the absoluteness of government, that medieval government wasn’t “big government,” but what they leave out in the telling is that “big government” was not government of, by and for the poor, but government of, by and for the rich.) Medieval government came long before Marx and Leninism. After all, both Socialism and Communism were a reaction to the worst aspects of industrialism. Industrialism was the pathway that the creative and the ambitious took to amassing riches beginning in 1763 in Europe and during the 1830s in the United States.

In order to avoid a possible slide back into Medievalism, there are several tough realities with which we must face, even at our own discomfort.

We’ve got to stop being afraid of the future by longing and praying for a return to the past! Yesterday’s ways, as prosperous and glorious as they truly were, are today clearly poisoning the planet, stifling our educational structure, and limiting our ability to care for the poor and the sick. Next, we’ve got to get over the idea that some sectors of our society are over-regulated. Perhaps they’re ineffectively regulated, but show me something that is free of regulation and I’ll show you a potential crime in the making. American sports and entertainment, publishing, banking, and merchandising (specifically the patenting process) have to be regulated to avoid property thefts and market monopolies which inevitably stultify both competition and the price of goods and services. What needs to be re-regulated is broadcasting. The destruction of the fairness doctrine over the public airwaves has resulted in the dominance of those airwaves by the willful wealthy. Next, we’ve got to vanquish the idea that civil liberties and law enforcement are invariably antagonistic. The extension of civil liberties and our insistence on law enforcement are vitally important to the well-being of us all. Finally, we’ve got to get over the idea that gun control is an attempt by the government to strip us of our “liberty.” State militias as they existed at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment to the Constitution are largely archaic. The truth is that you won’t keep Liberals out of your church, Conservatives out of your bedroom, and transvestites out of public bathrooms with your most “trusty guns!” (Sorry, Davy Crocket: Old Betsy ain’t nearly as powerful as one of President Trump’s drones!)

As I asserted at the outset, our most immediate national crisis is the criminalization or perceived criminalization of our political leadership. In the first place, not even President Trump has followed up on his campaign promise to lock up Hillary Clinton. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons!” was one of his first post election comments. So, the question is, what did “lock her up!” mean? Then, there are those Democrats who, like their Republican predecessors, will go to all ends to avoid recognizing the authority of the President of the United States. By so doing, they wind up weakening the office they seek to utilize one day on behalf of their own constituents.

By attempting to look the other way, Richard Nixon let his most powerful supporters break into Democratic headquarters because supposedly George McGovern wasn’t as patriotic as he, Henry Kissinger and the other Republicans were. In 1974, for many Democrats it was payback time for the Watergate break-in. In the hearts of many liberals, President Nixon’s impeachment was justice for his lifelong shabby treatment of his political opponents. From that time to the present, there has been an ongoing crusade, not about the practical versus the impractical, the wise versus the foolish, but about the righteous innocent versus the willfully guilty.

Ironically, there is only one among us that can begin to repair the damage. Only one person can begin to turn us around and thus lead us into a new era of political, social and spiritual equity. Whether or not this individual even realizes he can do exactly that isn’t clear.

Nevertheless, whether you and I like it or not, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is that — at least until Wednesday, January 20th, 2021 — President Donald John Trump is the primary possessor of the capacity to save us from ourselves!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHERE ARE WE HEADED, MR. PRESIDENT — TOWARDS GLORY OR DISASTER?

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, here’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I’ve never been the President of the United States with all its opportunities for glory and disaster. However, I’ve often gloried in the wake of presidential wisdom, courage, and success. A few examples would include President Nixon’s foresight in recognizing China, President Ford’s courage during the May 1975 Mayaguez incident, President Carter’s patience and wisdom during the Camp David peace process, President Reagan’s restraint in the face of the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 disaster in 1983 and, finally, President Obama’s success in capturing Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Although throughout most of its existence America has led the world, first by example and over the past century via deeds, she may be about to blunder her way into becoming the world’s most dangerous and angry antagonist, due to what Americans perceive themselves to have become — specifically, the victims of an unworthy world.

When General Douglas MacArthur in all his military splendor and dignity stepped aboard the USS Missouri to receive the surrender of Japan that September 2nd Sunday in 1945, America was not merely a victor in battle.  (Victors in battle have been a cheap commodity throughout human history!) America stood at the apex of world civilization. The world was at America’s feet, but she was too magnanimous to even notice.

Seventy years have passed since that solemn September Sunday. Since that afternoon, America has led a war-tortured world into the United Nations with its declaration of human rights. Then, there was the Marshall Plan which assisted Western Europe in recovering after World War II. (So magnanimous was the Marshall Plan that the Soviets were invited by the Truman administration to benefit from it, although they ultimately refused.) Next, America took on the burdens of confronting and containing Communism which cost both lives and money in Korea, Vietnam, and twice in the Persian Gulf. Lately, having assigned itself the responsibility of defeating “Radical Islam,” many Americans are just plain tired of spending their talents, treasury and their lives making an ungrateful world safe, let alone secure! The question is, are Americans justly or unjustly tired of international heroism? If so, can we afford to surrender to solemn, angry fatigue? Even more to the point, is America, despite its longing for safety, prosperity and peace, up to President Trump’s goal of making America “great again”?

When I was growing up in the 1950s and began to really comprehend domestic and international affairs, I was convinced that America was indeed “the greatest nation in the world.” Urged by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon that patriotism came second only to godliness in importance, even as I began to grasp the details of our history (which are less splendid and godly than I learned in grade or high school), I hung tenaciously to the belief that somehow our intentions were always good at heart. The question I came to ask however was, “…good at heart for whom?” I disagree with much modern political conservative doctrine concerning government. However, conservatives are right when they insist that government can too often, intentionally and unintentionally, stultify the legitimate liberties of its citizens! Thus, during the Vietnam Conflict, the government under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon became involved in  a conflict that had little to do with the safety and security of the American people. Of course, the military, which under the Constitution is subordinate to the civilian Commander-in Chief, functioned according to its nature by drafting and recruiting into its ranks young men, some 58,000 of whom gave their lives in Vietnam. Since the tragedy in Southeast Asia, Americans have become understandably cautious about becoming involved in foreign adventures even in the wake of such incidents as 9/11. What is dangerous, however, is America’s vulnerability to its historic international ethnic prejudices.

As far back as the 1840s and 50s, Americans have viewed with suspicion Roman Catholics, Jews, blacks, native Americans, southern and southeastern Europeans and Far Easterners. In the uncertainties of the 21st Century, we seem to be becoming increasingly angered by the economic and political success of former allies and friends.

To President Trump, international relations like the “free market” (which has never been “free”) ultimately functions like a business deal. His withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement in search of a “better deal” assumes America’s willingness and even right to abrogate any arrangement unless we both benefit and control any such arrangement or treaty. Even worse is what that expectancy portends.

Since last January 20th, President Trump has quarreled with Mexico, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Canada, and China — all of which fortunately remain potential friends. How long will it be before we abandon the Organization of American States or even the United Nations? Actions of this sort would be far from effective diplomacy and may lead the president into a position of being little more than a chronic complainer.

Scour history as you may, you’ll never discover that a glorious nation was an angry quarrelsome nation.

Even more, an angry nation can never be a magnanimous nation and magnanimity is the first requirement of greatness!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY