IT'S MORE AMERICAN THAN WORLDLY!

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, it's World Series time! The question is, what is the World Series really and truly about? The American and National League champions that qualify to play in it have worked long and hard to participate. The winner is the champion  and gets good money and a valuable ring. What's both unfortunate and misleading about it is that the World Series isn't really about the world at all. What the World Series is about is the American ego and pride of reigning victoriously over a significant domain.

Throughout the history of baseball, the professional leagues, be they the American Association, the National League, or even the early Player's League, played for championships. That's as American as Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr and Billy Martin!

Back in October of 1903, Henry Killilea, owner of the club called both the Boston Americans and the Pilgrims, and Barney Dreyfus, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, agreed to play a best of nine game series for                                             the championship of the United States. They did exactly that and, as the late great Tiger's announcer Ernie Harwell would put it, the Bostons won five games to three. The great Boston pitcher Cy Young (whose full name was Denton True Young) didn't win a game until his third start. The first man to hit a home run was Jimmy Sebring, a left-handed hitter for the Pirates. The first batter to hit a homer over the fence was lefty Patsy Dougherty of the "Bostons." As for the Pirates great shortstop Honus Wagner, like the Cardinals’ Stan Musial and the Red Sox’ Ted Williams in the 1946 Series, Wagner was disappointing due to injury, batting only 6 for 22. Once the championship series was complete, someone, most believe it was the New York World Telegram, first called it “The World Series.”

Once the series was over and the American League franchise had won, the National League's John McGraw of the New York Giants boycotted any possible 1904 series on the grounds that the new American League (which was formed largely by raiding players from the National League) wasn't equal to the National League and ought to be ignored. Thus, by 1905 the idea of a World Series was so powerful that not even the influential and pugnacious McGraw could afford to walk away from it.

As for the Rangers and the Diamondbacks, two teams that lost over 100 games just the year before last, they've worked hard and well enough to be champions. Bruce Bochy of the Texas Rangers and Torey Lovullo  of the Arizona Diamondbacks have creditably earned the championship of the United States and Canada, because they've had no opportunity to take on the whole world!

I'm convinced that it's the World Series because Americans see ourselves as the most outstanding people and society on earth.  To both our benefit and our misfortune, we're wired to believe that anything we value and love is precisely what the whole world ought to value and love for its own sake.

Our politics, our religion, and mostly our gold is ours to behold and value. Many Americans insist that when God created the whole world, He was at his very best when He created Americans’ brains, minds, and souls.

So, there you have it! The Championship Series between the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks is the World Series because we're more worldly than the whole world!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

A CALM YET COURAGEOUS PRESIDENT

By Edwin Cooney

Presidential responses to world crises have been varied depending on domestic and international circumstances. 

FDR labeled Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 "a date which will live in infamy!”  Later in his address to Congress that December 8th, FDR declared: “But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory…but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us!"

President Truman's response to the invasion of South Korea by the North that Sunday, June 25th, 1950 was urgent but not particularly angry or outraged. President Truman insisted that the United States should use the military forces of the newly created United Nations to counteract and that it would go a long way to secure the prospects for future world peace.

President Eisenhower told us during his Inaugural Address on Tuesday, January 20th, 1953 that "we must be ready to dare all for our country.”

President Kennedy's response to missiles in Cuba was determined for their removal but absent of indignation.

President Reagan simply let the world know how evil were the Soviets.

President Biden asserted last Thursday, in addition to his support of Israel and his characterization of Hamas' aggression as "pure evil," that in its outraged response, Israel must do everything it can to save the lives, homes, and property of the Palestinian residents of Gaza.

No one who listened to President Biden's address can assert that there was either timidity or intimidation in what he had to say to his fellow citizens or to the world community.

I can't remember a presidential address that painted a gloomier assessment of so many international crises. According to the president, if Vladimir Putin succeeds in defeating the Ukraine, he and others in his government will target Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania for recapture into Russia's domain as Provinces. At the same time, he reminded you and me that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are getting support for their aggression from North Korea.

 

Avoiding both appeasement and saber-rattling, President Biden painted a grim picture of the future. He didn't measure the nuclear weapons at his disposal with any other leader's nuclear capacity. He set standards of conduct to the belligerence America must support and oppose.

While urging Congress's support for Israel and Ukraine, his search wasn't as much political as strategic. He scolded neither Republicans nor Democrats, conservatives nor liberals on the positions they are taking on public issues.

Even-handed as it was, discerning Americans saw and heard President Biden appeal to what angels there were to America's attitudes throughout the "cold war."

Lacking both pretense and presumption, the president's address to the nation last Thursday night was neither Rooseveltian nor Reaganistic in its tone or promise.

It lacked both absolute anger or timidity.

Most of all it was both calm and, above all, presidential!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

WHAT DOES OUR LOVE FOR AMERICA REQUIRE OF US?

By Edwin Cooney

For as far back as I can remember, most Americans have expressed their love for our country from time to time. Me, too!

My love for America had its origin in my childhood expectation that there existed from somewhere beyond my comprehension a link between America and all that's equitable, fair, and good. I suppose it is a learned but confirmed love. I've been protected  and nurtured by its components. They include the Constitution, people’s sense of equity, and an obligation to the ideal of democracy. Many Americans who have lacked the advantages and protections I've often taken for granted express love for American ideals yet to be fulfilled.

Then there are those who insist that once they've voted for the right candidate or ideology and it prevails, they will love America due to its "restored greatness.”

Each of us comprehends and expresses love differently. I've come to realize that I love a family member, a friend or even my country when their existence is of equal or greater importance or significance than my own well-being.

I remember one night during my teens when I was reading a map of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I wondered if the inhabitants of those Communist countries were as miserable as I had been assured they were! I couldn't imagine otherwise, but I sensed there was something missing that I somehow needed to grasp.

In recent years, a former sweetheart of mine who served in the Peace Corps in Tito's Yugoslavia related an anecdote to me. A friend of hers told her how delightful and lovely the trips to the Dalmatian Coast were that the government made available annually. Today, Communism is over and so, too, are the annual delights to the Dalmatian Coast. So, what of our love?

Biblically, we learn that there are three types of love: Aros or romantic love, filial love or brotherly love, and agape or love for God. Each of these loves have their own rules and requirements. Hence, human love can hardly be unconditional love as God's love is for us.

In this time of righteous anger and suspicion, we must face and acknowledge the standards or conditions people require to love America. Some insist on loving Donald Trump's version of America. Others prefer to love Joe Biden's America. (Note: Somehow the idea of “conservative” and “liberal” America has gone by the boards!)

Finally, perhaps our greatest responsibility to whatever and whomever we love is our distinction between what we may approve as we express our love and what we must insist ought to be corrected by the recipients of our love!

Our capacity for love is so significantly powerful and consequential that it must be steadied by standards that both challenge and uphold all of the beloved!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

OUR REAL NATIONAL BUGABOO!

By Edwin Cooney

Say what you want or must about the archaic and undemocratic Electoral College, its failings are hardly at the center of the crisis we're facing this fall of 2023.

Many are convinced that abandonment of that 18th century document would go a long way toward strengthening democracy and allow you and me to be brothers and sisters once again! However, our national bugaboo is deeper, much deeper than the faults of the Electoral College!

For two and a half centuries, we've bragged to the world that our system of checks, balances, and tolerances, the gifts of the Constitution to our body politic, has made us a special people. What we've failed to acknowledge, especially to ourselves, however, are the methods all three branches of the government have devised to limit or control some of the benefits of a Democratic society.

Last Tuesday, October 3rd, a minority of Republican Representatives were able to unseat the Speaker of the House due to a rule or condition that barely passed last January justifying the election of Kevin McCarthy of California as Speaker. One of the options granted to each branch of Congress under Article I of the Constitution is the right to formulate rules governing the ways legislation might be adopted or rejected by the Congress of the United States. Generally, these rules have been designed to regulate or control rather than to advance options of a free people.

In the House, various sub-committees have been established to receive controversial proposals where they might die unnoticed by the public. Amendments may be added to the most popular bills to make them less effective than they might otherwise be. A bill might not be either passed or defeated but merely sent back to the House Rules Committee where it dies a natural death.

In the Senate, the most controversial rule is undoubtedly the filibuster designed to keep, usually, civil rights legislation from passage. Both parties over the years have attempted to manipulate the public's perception of the legitimacy of this powerful senatorial weapon.

The President also possesses a tool separating him or eventually her from being legally linked to the reputation of a controversial bill. It's called the Pocket Veto. If a bill is passed and the Congress adjourns for a vacation, all the President needs to do is not sign the bill thereby pocket vetoing a bill. He or she may give any number of reasons for not signing a bill: the bill needs amending or it breaks the year's budget etc.

Should the Electoral College be abandoned, I won't miss it, but it will reduce the influence of people living in small states such as Wyoming, Rhode Island, or Delaware. After all, they're free Americans, too, and their representatives must possess maximum authority in their representation.

Students of history today tend to condemn the "Founding Fathers" for their accommodation of slaveholding states in their 1787 union. However, one of the realities faced by the then existing national confederation was the tendency of the states to ally themselves with powerful European nations for their defense and marketing benefits. Northern states tended to favor Great Britain while southern states tended to ally themselves with France. These tendencies needed to be altered for the new nation's very security. Had there been no national unity created by accommodating the demands of southern states, relations between separate states would have endangered young America's national security.

States allying themselves with European powers would most likely have inherited the hostility suffered by European nations in relation to each other. We may have become like Europeans vulnerable to foreign attack and invasion.

Although America would have probably avoided the Civil War, it could have been endangered in World Wars I and II. Particularly, during World War II, the South might, due to kindred attitudes toward racial minority groups, have allied itself with Adolf Hitler.

To the degree that the Electoral College was a crucial part of our national togetherness in the 1780s, it must be acknowledged for the freedom and independence it brought about.

The Electoral College may indeed be archaic but it has, in this observer's opinion, brought a considerable stabilizing contribution to America's body politic.

Our national unity rather than our abandonment of the archaic Electoral College will be more vital to our ongoing safety and security.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHICH MATTERS MORE, THE BEHAVIOR OF THE COP OR THE CROOK?

By Edwin Cooney

I recently read two books I feel compelled to share with you. Both authors  passionately hate crime. Norm Stamper examines the nature of crimes while Joe Kenda writes about the motives of criminals and the reasons why “trigger men,” especially, do what they do. 

Stamper was a cop for 33 years in San Diego, California and in Seattle, Washington where he was Chief of Police. He's written a book called "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing.” (For readers who use BARD to download books, the book number is dbc15779 and it reads for 13 hours 55 minutes and 13 seconds.)  Chief Stamper writes of his teenage attitude about cops and about serving as a policeman. Even more, he writes about how his outlook and attitude shifted as he advanced through the ranks. Believing that the community is best served by a police department absent of racial and gender stereotypes, Stamper writes of crime, punishment, and unhealthy vs healthy police procedures using himself as Exhibit A.

Stamper's covers topics such as capital punishment (the coward's way out), domestic violence (it ought to be punishable by life imprisonment) and racial attitudes within police departments across America.

"Killer Triggers" is by Joe Kenda, a homicide detective in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He passionately hates murderers and categorizes their motives as fear, rage, money, revenge, lust and occasionally madness. (For those who use BARD to read books, the number is db111259 and the reading time is 8 hours, 33 minutes and 29 seconds.) What's most interesting is that it's read by Kenda himself. You can be sure that I listened for hidden emphases that might indicate unintended feelings about his various topics. Detective Kenda doesn't offer his view on capital punishment, although it's hard for this observer to imagine that he opposes it.

Of course, crime exists everywhere and both law enforcement officers and citizen criminals must be protected from victimhood. What's especially fascinating is Kenda’s insistence that all communities, even gang-ridden ones, must be protected against criminals who reside in other gang-populated communities in and out of state. He doesn't go deeply into gang wars, but clearly they do exist and are antisocial.

Both books are loaded with anecdotes and stories that are gripping but ultimately too serious to be purely entertaining.

I haven't decided what, if anything, the revelations in these two books tell me or any reader about modern American society. Criminal elements have been a part of every society since the days that King Hammurabi found it necessary to write a law code for ancient Mesopotamia. Great Britain used its “criminal element” to settle both our territory of Georgia and, later, Australia and New Zealand.

I’m sure that both Stamper and Kenda take pride in their careers of service to the public.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY