Columnist.
President-elect Donald Trump is being faulted for supposedly appointing too many retired generals to Cabinet-level jobs and "militarizing" the government.
In his 2016 State of the Union address, President Obama summarized his achievements. That same night, the White House issued a press release touting Obama's accomplishments. Now that he will be leaving, how well did these initiatives listed in the press release actually work out?
The mix of politics and culture is far too complex to be predictable. Even the best-laid political plans can lead to unintended consequences, both good and bad — what we sometimes call irony, nemesis or karma. Take the election of 2008, which ushered Barack Obama and the Democrats into absolute control of the presidency, House and Senate, also generating popular goodwill over Obama's landmark candidacy.
Throughout history, revolutionaries of all stripes have warped the meaning of words to subvert reality. And now here we go again, with another effort — spearheaded by the media and universities — to use any linguistic means necessary to achieve political ends. "Sanctuary city" is a euphemism for the local and state nullification of federal law — a subversive tactic that dates back to the nullification crises during the Andrew Jackson administration and, later, in the years leading up to the Civil War.
The Democratic Party handed Donald Trump a rare opportunity to make radical changes to the electoral map that could last for years to come. First, the Democrats gave Trump a great gift by completing the ongoing radicalization of their party under President Obama. After 2008, it was no longer a party of the working and middle classes, but a lopsided political pyramid.
It wasn't just Hillary Clinton, pollsters and pundits who lost big this election.
There were a lot of losers in this election, well beyond Hillary Clinton and the smug, incompetent pollsters and know-it-all, groupthink pundits who embarrassed themselves. From hacked email troves we received a glimpse of the bankrupt values of Washington journalists, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists and wealthy donors. Despite their brand-name Ivy League degrees and 1 percenter resumes, dozens of the highly paid grandees who run our country and shape our news appear petty and spiteful — and clueless about the America that exists beyond their Beltway habitat.
When it comes to skullduggery, Hillary wins.
Another day, another Hillary Clinton bombshell disclosure. This time the scandal comes from disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop computer, bringing more suggestions of Clinton's sloppy attitude about U.S. intelligence law. Meanwhile, seemingly every day WikiLeaks produces more evidence of the Clinton Foundation leveraging the Clinton State Department for pay-for-play profiteering.
California State Route 99 is the north-south highway that cuts through the great Central Valley. And it has changed little since the mid-1960s. A half-century ago, when the state population was about 18 million — not nearly 40 million as it is today — the 99 used to be a high-speed, four-lane marvel. It was a crown jewel in California's cutting-edge freeway system. Not now.
A presidential campaign is figuratively called a "race." Two runners sprint toward the Election Day finish line for the prize of the presidency. But the 2016 presidential campaign has spawned lots of weird races. The first sprint is one between embarrassments and scandals. Will another WikiLeaks disclosure confirm that Hillary Clinton is a dishonest and conniving hypocrite? Or will yet another open-mic tape, disgruntled beauty queen or old Howard Stern interview remind us that Donald Trump's private life was — and perhaps still is — uncouth?
Pessimists often compare today's troubled America to a tottering late Rome or an insolvent and descending British Empire. But medieval Europe (roughly A.D. 500 to 1450) is the more apt comparison. The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if haphazard, human achievement — along with endemic insecurity, superstition and two, rather than three, classes. The great medieval universities — at Bologna, Paris and Oxford — continued to make strides in science. They were not unlike the medical and engineering schools at Harvard and Stanford. But they were not centers of free thinking.
The Greeks gave us tragedy — the idea that life is never fair. Terrible stuff for no reason tragically falls on good people. Life's choices are sometimes only between the bad and the far worse. In the plays of the ancient dramatists Aeschylus and Sophocles, heroism and nobility only arise out of tragedies. The tragic hero refuses to blame the gods for his terrible fate. Instead, a Prometheus, Ajax or Oedipus prefers to fight against the odds. He thereby establishes a code of honor, even as defeat looms. In contrast, modern Americans gave the world therapy. Life must always be fair. If not, something or someone must be blamed. All good people deserve only a good life — or else.
Donald Trump's supporters see a potential Hillary Clinton victory in November as the end of any conservative chance to restore small government, constitutional protections, fiscal sanity and personal liberty. Clinton's progressives swear that a Trump victory would spell the implosion of America as they know it, alleging Trump parallels with every dictator from Josef Stalin to Adolf Hitler. Part of the frenzy over 2016 as a make-or-break election is because a closely divided Senate's future may hinge on the coattails of the presidential winner. An aging Supreme Court may also translate into perhaps three to four court picks for the next president. Yet such considerations only partly explain the current election frenzy.
"War clouds are gathering."
This summer, President Obama was often golfing. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were promising to let the world be. The end of summer seemed sleepy, the world relatively calm. The summer of 1914 in Europe also seemed quiet. But on July 28, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip with help from his accomplices, fellow Serbian separatists. That isolated act sparked World War I. In the summer of 1939, most observers thought Adolf Hitler was finally through with his serial bullying. Appeasement supposedly had satiated his once enormous territorial appetites. But on Sept. 1, Nazi Germany unexpectedly invaded Poland and touched off World War II, which consumed some 60 million lives. Wars often seem to come out of nowhere, as unlikely events ignite long-simmering disputes into global conflagrations.
"Obama's only legacy seems to be that 'hope and change' begat 'make America great again.'"
On his recent Asian tour, President Obama characterized his fellow Americans (the most productive workers in the world) as "lazy." In fact, he went on to deride Americans for a list of supposed transgressions ranging from the Vietnam War to environmental desecration to the 19th century treatment of Native Americans. "If you're in the United States," the president said, "sometimes you can feel lazy and think we're so big we don't have to really know anything about other people." The attack on supposedly insular Americans was somewhat bizarre, given that Obama himself knows no foreign languages. He often seems confused about even basic world geography. (His birthplace of Hawaii is not "Asia," Austrians do not speak "Austrian," and the Falkland Islands are not the Maldives).
In most presidential elections, the two candidates spar over issues. The president campaigns for his party's nominee in hopes of continuing his legacy. Democrats champion liberalism, Republicans conservatism. In numerous press conferences, journalists try to force newsworthy and embarrassing admissions from the two candidates. Not this year. Barack Obama, who less than two years ago dipped to 40 percent in approval rating, is nowhere to be seen. He seems to know that the more he is absent and quiet, the more the public likes the idea rather than the reality of him as president — and his approval rating has risen to 51 percent.
In today's technically sophisticated and globally connected world, we assume life has been completely reinvented. In truth, it has not changed all that much. Facebook and Google may have recalibrated our lifestyles, but human nature, geography and culture are nearly timeless. Even as ideologies and governments come and go, the same old, same old problems and challenges remain. Compare what dominated the news in 1966, 50 years ago. Abroad, Israel was constantly fighting on the West Bank against Palestinian guerrilla groups and in the air over Syria. It is likely that in another 50 years the story will remain about the same.
