Today is the 73rd birthday of the founding of the United Nations.  There will be a program this evening which I plan to attend: UN Day Program Oct 24 2018.  Till October 29 there is a free on-line viewing available of a wonderful historical film, The World Is My Country003.

Meanwhile, “nationalism” rears its ugly head, officially.  Much more about that for those interested here and here.

Directly related Post here.

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Lies have become so routine and so outrageous in the American political discourse, that I wonder how many of us realize the potential consequences to ourselves and our very society, if we are not very careful in assessing who or what to believe.

We can learn from history.  It’s another question if we have learned anything at all….

Back in the old days of 2003 when we were beginning to bomb the hell out of Iraq, a quotation came to my computer screen that was so unbelievable that I took the considerable time necessary to actually search out and read the entirety of the book in which the quote supposedly first appeared, in 1947.  I finally found the book in the dusty stacks of the University of Minnesota Library.  Here is the quote.

from Nuremberg Diary by Gustave Gilbert, 1947

The person quoted is Reichmarshall Hermann Goering, as recounted by Allied Psychiatrist Gustave Gilbert.  This is found on page 278 of Nuremberg Diary, Farrar Straus and Co c1947.  A pdf of this same page is Hermann Goering 1946001

I especially call attention to the last paragraph.

It took a long time for the Germans to recover from the lies far too many of them believed.

We Americans are no better, and our future is no brighter than the disaster Germany woke up to in 1945.

Ultimately, Hermann Goering committed suicide, before a death sentence could be carried out.

Be very, very wary of slick salespeople, selling lies.

Is our country, the United States, on a “Descent into Darkness”?  We voters and citizens have a lot to say about that in a few days.

POSTNOTE: It was the U.S. and others, through the Marshall Plan, which had a great deal to do with the recovery of Germany and the establishment of permanent alliances to establish the peace after World War II.  Who would want to come to our aid, if our time of disaster comes?

COMMENTS:

from Judy B: Excellent column, Dick. Things are so scary now!

from Florence: Trump’s call to Nationalism and calling himself a Nationalist rang really loud and clear today! And over 40% of Americans support him!  I am afraid …

from Judy M: Dick, please know how much your wise and attentive articles are.  You are right on!

from SAK:

Many thanks Mr Bernard although the message is very alarming indeed.

As you say it’s getting more & more difficult to disentangle truth from lies & propaganda.

In a book from 1998, Serendipities – Language and Lunacy, Umberto Eco writes:

“The truly genuine problem thus does not consist of proving something false but in proving that the authentic object is authentic”.

People are so confused that they are becoming cynical & skeptical to such an extent that it will be hard to convince them of anything!

They will laugh & remind you of Chicken Little & “the Sky is Falling, the Sky is Falling.

Avoiding plastic is all the rage – save the planet one straw at a time. Meanwhile yachts with very few on board are burning tonnes of oil every minute. Something from a London restaurant’s menu:

If you would like a straw please ask your waiter, they are biodegradable J.

But seriously, while people are fiddling about transgender toilets, the right pronoun or who will pay for that wall global warming is threatening the whole planet.

The Financial Times (no leftist rag this one).

The Financial Times writes here: Martin Wolf: Inaction over climate change is shameful  23 Oct 2018.  

“. . . if this limit is ignored: life will survive, but not life as we know it”.

“The natural tendencies are either to do nothing, while insisting there is no problem, or to agree there is a problem, while merely pretending to act. It is not clear which form of obfuscation is worse”.

“This is a scale of challenge human beings have historically only met in times of war, and then only against one another. The chances of co-operative action seem near zero in today’s nationalistic world”.

Darrin Nightingale:

‘Inaction over climate change is more than shameful, it’s suicidal. But shaming those who can do something about global warming will not work. They have no shame. Because they cannot see the wrong in what they do. I agree with Mr Wolf that “we need to shift the world on to a different investment and growth path right now”. I agree rich countries who caused the problem need to pay. The redistribution of wealth to “countries that matter for the solution” needs to happen. But I don’t think it will.

The wealthiest individuals, in the wealthiest economies, are like the character Sydney Stanton, the hobbled billionaire in 1950’s sci-fi film “When Worlds Collide”. He thinks his wealth buys him a seat on the ark. It does not. It only buys the opportunity to build it.’  Video here.

‘Think about this for a moment. The 1000 richest people in the United Kingdom increased their wealth by 184 per cent in the ten years that have accompanied austerity. They accrued £468 billion on top of the £256 billion they already had, while the rest of the population experienced the worst decline in living standards in a generation. They no doubt accumulated this wealth by working hard, making shrewd investments, and leading successful businesses. They also managed to convince successive neoliberal governments to decrease their tax liability. £468 billion could do a lot of good. Why isn’t it? Because trying to shame the Stanton’s of the world into changing their ways is like eating glass. The only person with a lacerated tongue is you. “You did it to yourself.” Shaming them will not work. They still think they can buy a seat on the ark, and a way out of the apocalypse.’

from Mark: An interesting quote. History has often revealed that what started out as reform or initially packaged as positive change or “needed” government assistance has descended into murderous evil.

Walking from Auschwitz towards Birkenau Death Camp May 4, 2000. Photo by Dick Bernard

You might have heard there is an election coming up.

If you want to review how stark is the American polarization, take a moment to take a look at the October 4, 2018 Pew Research poll, which you can view here.

Monday, a local leader sent around a quote by Harry Truman on the people’s responsibility for the government they get.  I try to validate quotes, and couldn’t find the exact one passed along to me, but I found one very similar, also from Truman, when he was campaigning for Adlai Stevenson for President, October 17, 1952  (Dwight Eisenhower won).  Truman said this: “It is the greatest business in the world, this business of Government.  And the Government is in the hands of the people who vote.  And when they don’t vote, and when they don’t inform themselves, when they don’t exercise their right to vote intelligently and they get bad government, then they have nobody in the world to blame but themselves.”  (p. 295 Public Papers of the Presidents, column two, here.  Also, featured at the Harry Truman Library website are talks he gave in Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana in 1952.  They are fascinating in themselves.  You can read them Here.)

When Truman made the above remarks he was at the end of an over 30 year career in Government, preceded by being a military officer in WWI.  Love him or hate him, it was on his desk that “the buck stops here” was found, and it was he who popularized the saying.

“Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.”

There are many issues in the upcoming election.  For me, a domant one is this: the Republican Party as it currently functions is no longer Eisenhower’s Republican party, rather it is the Trump Party, local, state, national.  Even our local Republican Congresspeople and state representatives and candidates and advertising campaign expenditures for these offices cannot declare independence from Trump.  He is the present day Republican party.

Effectively we are being submerged in a far more sinister and extensive “swamp” than the one that supposedly existed.

People like myself are irrelevant in the desired New Order.

Take climate change, for just a single example.

I first heard the Denial phrase (above) from Al Gore, in person, in St. Paul, in the summer of 2005, 13 years ago.  Gore was introducing the still in production film, An Inconvenient Truth; he attributed the quote to the music group Dire Straits.  I wrote about the issue then: Inconvenient Truth001.  The phrase actually has a longer and most interesting history, including earlier use by Vice-President Gore himself, who used it in reference to climate change in March, 1991, as quoted in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

Mr. Gore was talking about climate change in 1991; we know the history since then, culminating with Mr. Trump pulling the United States out of the global climate accords of 2015; and promoting the denial agenda in favor of fossil fuels and carbon.  History and science erased.

Tuesday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune top page one headline said this:

Denial of reality doesn’t solve problems.  They just get worse.

We’re in a time of denial.

A political realty for Trumps base and the rest of us is simple:  The “base” seems to be about one in four of America’s potential voters.  Trump performance seems to be approved, at least somewhat, by about 40% of the population.  Trump has never been a majority philosophy.  They won, anyway.

Still, those who did not and do not support Trump are labeled as”losers”, and losers are the subject of Trumps contempt.  We are in Trumps Civil War within our own country.

But there-in lies a problem for Trumps loyal base and supporters as well.  Trump has room for only a single winner: himself.  His middle class base will learn this over time if the current political balance of power continues.  I give the process ten years: disabling or dismantling the “social safety nets” like social security and assorted medical assistance initiatives, not to mention things like continued attacks public education.  The tax legislation of 2017 is the primary vehicle for this dismantling, and it is already in place, with its permanent, and temporary, “tax cuts”..

By the time this is noticed, it will be too late.  We will rue the day it passed.

Ultimately, of course, people like Trump meet the same fate as all of us: they die.

But their legacy often lives on, and people wonder why things are so bad, that were once so good.

That is the reality ahead, without a mid-course correction.

Somebody has to do the hard work:  it is we, the voters.

POSTNOTES:

Recent related posts: October 4, 5, 7

Overnight: “Dreary Times”, Just Above Sunset.

My personal bottom line: Brett Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will be one of the most disastrous appointments ever made to the U.S. Supreme Court.  This has nothing to do with his intellect, nor even with most of the decisions he may render, but what the appointment process is doing and has already done to tear this nation apart.  This win-or-lose game is a losing game for this country as a whole.

This specific appointment is a crucial part of the longterm objective of the radical right wing in this country, to seek effective control of public policy making and interpretation.  Personally, I trace this back over about 40 years.

Nov. 6, 2018, is another crucial date – election day (see postnote).

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Later this morning begins the end game in the U.S. Senate regarding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.  I have no idea what the real end of the end game will be.  A Supreme Court appointment is, after all, for as long as an appointed Justice wants it to be.  It is a lifetime appointment, until the Justice resigns, dies, or does something incredibly outrageous.

Becoming a Supreme Court Justice, or a Judge at any level, is a very big deal for our society.  You don’t know this till personally affected.

I follow this kind of thing pretty carefully.  Not obsessively, but carefully.  I’m just one citizen among many.

This is the third time I’ve written about Kavanaugh (links towards the end of this post).

This week I hand-delivered brief, personal letters to my two U.S. Senators, my Congresswoman, and to the Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, as well as to two Catholic Priests who I highly respect.  (The public officials Sens. Klobuchar and Smith, Cong. McCollum; the cleric, Archbishop Bernard Hebda.)

The Congress letters were delivered Monday.  The letter to the Archbishop was delivered yesterday, after I learned that the National Council of Churches came out publicly against the Kavanaugh nomination (the U.S Catholic Church hierarchy is not part of the National Council of Churches).  The Catholic Bishops and Cardinals (there are 472 of them) as of this moment are officially silent.

The essential enclosure to all three letters was a one-page letter I wrote to then-Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sep. 7, 1998, related to the Clinton impeachment then raging.  You can read it here: Clinton Lieberman 1998001.  I will let it be my official position on the matter currently at issue.

I didn’t ask for nor do I expect a reply from any of the lawmakers or Archbishop.  But I wanted to hand it, in person, to someone at their physical offices.

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But this is not the end of the story.

I had no idea, twenty years ago, that my simple letter, open as it is to interpretation, would be highly relevant today.

For me, the theme, then and now, is hypocrisy by the those who think they are high and mighty (para three and five).  It is also about shameless abuse of power.

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For those interested, my first three blogs on this issue were Sep. 19, 26 and 28.  If you wish, access to them is here, here and here.

An excellent summary of the current state of the Kavanaugh matter can be read here.

POSTNOTE:  It is customary for people generally, and politicians specifically, to rail against “politics as usual”.  This includes incumbents and candidates.

“Politics” is every single one of us, regardless of our activity or lack of same.  Ultimately, we get exactly what we deserve.

One year ago I watched the entirety of the Ken Burns series on the disastrous Vietnam War (I and my two brothers are military veterans from that era).  Who was responsible for that disastrous war will be argued forever, of course.  58,000 young Americans died in that war, and millions of others in southeast Asia.

I was most struck in that series by a repetitive theme – every President from Harry Truman through Richard Nixon – was blamed for our getting mired in that war.  Every single President, in one way or another, either directly or via advisors, succumbed to a simple fact: to be seen as against engagement in Vietnam, however stupid it was seen to be, was a political (election) risk to be avoided at all costs.  To be against war, was to risk losing an election.  It made no difference, whether Republican or Democrat.

We, the people, got exactly what we deserved.  We were all casualties.

We are replaying the old script this day, October 5, 2018.

I am posting this before the Senate Judiciary Committee casts their vote.

My parents were good about keeping things, and I’ve followed the tradition.  So it was easy to find my First Grade Report Card for St. Elizabeth’s School in 1946-47.  Here is part of Sr. Mary’s report:

I did pretty well that year.  A’s, except for Bs in Penmanship and Art.  The following 71 years haven’t changed much, at least in penmanship and art….

“Deportment“, of course, is conduct.  It’s probably a Catholic word, as its root is Latin.  It seems a good place to start this piece, since Brett Kavanaugh possibly had a Catholic education, similar to mine.

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I watched only parts of the Senate Judiciary Committee gathering yesterday.  It wasn’t a hearing, that is for certain.  It will be, and should be, discussed for many years to follow.

My brief comments flow from my own education and experience.  The last 27 years of my work career I represented school teachers. I was one of about 40 of us with a similar job in my state, so we had ample opportunities to learn about issues we were dealing with, and help advise each other.  We all worked constantly with, around and against lawyers and we got to know the Law and Contracts very well.  Since our work was with people, we saw clients every day.  During a part of my career, in the 1980s, came increased attention to allegations of sex abuse against teachers.  We were usually the ‘first call’ from someone accused.

I have been very open about my own feelings about the topic which is at the core of Kavanaugh/Blesey Ford.  My own “script” has a rather long history:   In my own career representing members of a profession with several million members, the number of abuse incidents were rare, but always front page news, with a presumption of guilt of the perpetrator by most everyone.

Most of those charged were guilty, but not all.  Rarely did even an obviously innocent person make a legal challenge.  The damage had been done.  Each charge left the entire profession of teaching with a black eye.

So, in watching this affair unfold I have been most struck by the obvious fear of evidence by the promoters of Kavanaugh’s candidacy.

But beyond that, I was not prepared for the horrid deportment of Kavanaugh in the Senate Judiciary meeting room yesterday.  His was not the protestation of an innocent man.  Nor were his handlers approaching this matter with pure intention.

This was a “show trial” for a certain constituency.

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September 26 a reader of my Justice post sent me a note whose topic line was: “What did Jesus mean when He said, “He who is without sin can cast the first stone”?”  (Her entire comment is at the end of that post.)

I sent a brief response to her, including a letter I had written to then Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sep. 7, 1998.  The topic, then, was the Bill Clinton matter.  And I especially noted my letter to the editor at the time.  You can read it here: Clinton Lieberman 1998001

Yesterdays post  was several hours before Senate Judiciary convened.  Today I refer everyone to the Otto Sotnak letter which was also included in the 1998 letter, as follows: “Thirty-seven years as a Lutheran minister taught me much about the dark side of human nature.  For example, I learned that everyone has secrets they would rather not disclose.  Moreover, in counseling I learned that whenever a client’s defenses and denials increased it signaled that we were getting dangerously close to the truth.”

Personal opinion: I think the truth has been outed.

Shortly we will see how this plays out for Brett Kavanaugh.

POSTNOTE:  Donald Trump is not much of a moral arbiter in this case.  He has abundant baggage of his own.  My belief is that the only reason he has not yet been sued is that he’s wealthy, with a habit of countersuing; or buying off potential litigants….

POSTNOTE 2: Have I been an “A” student my whole life?  Plenty of people get this post, and doubtless they’ll straighten me out if I get very uppity.  I’m not looking for any lifetime appointment to in effect control other people’s lives, either.

POSTNOTE 3: I highly recommend Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9.  For those who instinctively dislike Michael Moore or perceive his politics a certain way, this is an equal opportunity criticism of all of us, whatever our ideology or activity.  It will hold your attention.

COMMENTS Sat Sep 29: – The overnight Just Above Sunset, Making Rage Moot, is an excellent summary of Friday events.  You can read it here.

Postcard from the Busch farm, July 10, 1911

We went to Fahrenheit 11/9 this afternoon at our neighborhood theater in Woodbury.

Absolutely, see it.  Likely Fahrenheit 11/9 is playing at a theater near you, and I think it is already available on-line.

It nicks everyone, not the least, the 100,000,000 people who chose not to vote at all in 2016.

President Obama doesn’t escape unscathed….

A few personal thoughts “below the fold”:

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I’ve been a fan of Michael Moore since Roger and Me (1989).  The year before Bowling for Columbine was released in 2002 we saw a 20 minute preview segment of that film, introduced by Michael Moore himself.  That winter evening, he was an hour late.  Still, there was so much interest that they filled the large church a second time.

I think I’ve seen all of the Michael Moore films.  Fahrenheit 11/9 is the best of the lot.  I didn’t know how my wife would react.  She had the same response as I.  The film grabbed us and held on.  You could hear a pin drop in the theater.

There is a villain in the film and it is every one of us.  There is also a hero in the film: potentially it is also every one of us.  We are the government we respect…or revile.

I was looking for “over the top” moments – I was most nervous about what I’d heard about the comparison with Nazi Germany.  What comparison there was in the film – and there were and are direct comparisons – were highly appropriate.  We are, after all, theoretically a democracy, and the people ultimately bear responsibility for the people we elect, and the decisions our elected leaders make.

We are, I feel, too much a nation of “me” folks, demanding what we want – our personal priorities.  We deserve our fate.  Our future, long term, is not bright if we stay the present course.

We must be a nation of US, as in collective “we”.

Since our leaders are elected by ourselves.  Who votes for them, or for their opponent, or who doesn’t vote at all for any reason, makes a huge difference.  If we end up with tyranny, we are the ones who so decide that course.

Far too much, Trump has become the face and voice and attitude of America to everyone, everywhere.

Fahrenheit 11/9 gives a great deal to think about.  The film was not entertainment, it was education.

See Fahrenheit 11/9.  Do yourself a favor.

And ask yourself, what does this say to me about my own role in this country of ours?