Second Debate: Trump's advantage, trimming the field, history mangled

Three observations about Wednesday's marathon GOP debate:

Trump wins again on his ‘Home Field’

In true celebrity style Donald Trump lives by pictures. His split persona is made to order for the split screen.

Someone playing it straight, like Jeb Bush, is inevitably undercut by Trump with his simultaneously shown grimaces, flailing arms, frowns, fake sincerity and winking dismissals.

And so while we are vaguely listening to one (Bush), we are entranced by the other (Trump).

What message gets through? The indelible ones, Trump’s visual reactions. Who today can remember anything that Bush said last Wednesday? Something about Casinos in Florida….

Looks deceive, and Trump is nothing if not a deceiver. He maintains that what he says isn’t what he means. So which are we supposed to believe? He wants us to believe both although they are diametrical opposites. So we end up believing what we want to.

Trump is relying on a whole demographic steeped in media of the rapid, thoughtless, often rude, responses. They are the same group that listens to and admires the smarmy attacks of Rush Limbaugh.

Even Bernie Sanders, with his hashtag comments throughout the so-called Republican debate has bought into it, until, with a half hour of the “debate” remaining, he gave up and went to bed.  He realized that he had joined a fool’s game.

I often yearn to resurrect the late media guru Marshall McLuhan to get his take on Trump and the current level of political discourse. McLuhan pried apart the Nixon-Kennedy debates by describing Nixon as a “hot” politician trying to use a “cool” medium, television. Kennedy had mastered TV cool.

Now the terms “hot” and “cool” have taken on entirely new layers of meaning, but at the time, McLuhan hit the mark.

Trump is beyond hot and cool and has been successful because the dominant medium today is neither hot nor cool. It is fragmented, insincere, spontaneous, and unfair.

Those are characteristics that exactly define Trump.

Trump’s opponents are simply no match for him on the playing field he has mastered so well.

Time for GOP candidates to self-cull their herd

If those in the Republican presidential field are worried about the skyrocketing candidacy of Donald Trump, why don’t all but two or three of the 15 simply get out of the race and quit dicing up Republican voters into candidacies with minuscule support?

One thing about Trump, he’s a polarizing figure. You are either vehemently for him or repulsed by him. The repulsed need one or two candidates they can rally around.

This isn’t to say that the anti-Trump candidates are in complete agreement on the issues as was evident in Wednesday’s “debate.” But it does mean that they have common ground in realizing that Donald Trump would be a disaster for their party, to say nothing of the nation.

A grateful party and nation would salute those candidates with the wisdom to withdrawn in order to save Republicans and the Republic.

The problem is that the candidates are in the race to affirm their egos, rise to their level of their incompetence, and seize power for their own special interests…or all three.

If they could see beyond those motives, they would realize that any remaining, dominant candidate other than Trump would certainly share the spoils of victory, should he or she attain it.

One way or the other they will benefit.

Rest assured that Trump will not share the spoils of victory with his competition. Even if he did, who would want to work for the likes of him?

When History is the victim so are we

It is said that history is what we make it. But there is more truth in the statement that history is what we make OF it.

The Republican candidates at Wednesday’s debate mangled history. Is the Iran of today the product of the Iranian Revolution? Did that revolution emerge out of thin air, with no involvement by our own CIA with the Shah’s regime and the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government? Apparently.

Did George W. Bush protect this nation by toppling Saddam Hussein in order to retaliate for 9/11, an event in which Hussein and Iraq had no role? Could our dependence on and ownership of oil in Iraq have had something to do with our “salvation”?

Did the rise of Al Qaeda happen for no reason? Were training camps in Afghanistan there simply by chance? Or could the US support of anti-Soviet “Freedom Fighters” in Afghanistan, including the leadership of Al Qaeda, have had something to do with the history that followed?

Does anyone remember Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about this nation’s “Military-industrial Complex” as candidates on Wednesday called for more and more defense spending. Would someone please remind this nation that America spends nearly as much on defense as all other nations combined?

Oh, and while we are at it, it’s time to officially and repeatedly “out” Israel as possessing nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear policy might be seen differently if we added that fact to the mind-bogglingly complex situation in the Middle East.

History will show that ALL the great religions of the world have at one time or another produced brutal terrorists. If ours is a Judeo-Christian nation, as candidate Mike Huckabee maintains (pointedly excluding Islam), what are we doing torturing people? What are we doing killing defenseless citizens in drone attacks? Why are we allowing “law enforcement” in this country to terrorize citizens based on their skin color and their religious beliefs?

I recommend to Huckabee and any other self-proclaimed Christian the book “Constantine’s Sword,” written by a Catholic journalist James Carroll. War and atrocities (including those of war) seem hard-wired into all religions — the teachings of their sages not-withstanding.

Finally, we are developing a history with Global Warming (it started with the Industrial Age) and we can see where we are headed. Addressing the Climate Change issue will not be a job killer as Marco Rubio maintained. If anything, it will create entirely new industries. In fact, under the do nothing scenario, plenty of jobs will be created, but they won’t be the ones that we want. The jobs will require massive government spending as a huge work force builds the dikes needed to hold back rising waters in order to save coastal cities. Whole new communities for climate refugee will need to be built. And on and on it goes.

The old line about those ignoring history being destined to relive it needs amending. Those who distort or “cherry pick” history’s lessons are delusional and destined to fail.

'War is the Enemy'

In 1942, just after the U.S. entered World War II, and the propaganda machines rallied Americans to the cause of the “Good War,” A..J. Muste, a devout and articulate pacifist, wrote a pamphlet addressed to his fellow Quakers.

In it, he proclaimed the on-going need to speak out against war during war time. His pamphlet carefully and rationally lays out why.

I came across Muste’s essay on line after watching a recent PBS Newhour segment featuring First Lt. Paul Rieckhoof, who heads Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Rieckhoof told the TV audience that more US military personnel engaged in the Iraq an Afghanistan conflicts are now dying by suicide than are dying in the fighting.

Last year, 468 suicides occurred throughout the armed forces. Of those, 301 were in the regular Army, Reserves, and National Guard, up more than 20 percent from the year before.

As Rieckhoof pointed out, the problem of war-related suicide is even bigger than these figures indicate. “We're not even tracking the 2.3 million veterans who have come home and have cycled out of the military since 9/11."

The PBS story grew out of the President’s announcing a policy change regarding presidential letters of condolence. The President has decided to add the families of military personnel who died by their own hands to all families receiving the letters.

Mounting suicides, the civilian deaths and the damage caused by the post-traumatic stress of war all reveal how, even after the fighting stops and the enemy retreats or is vanquished, the shock, pain and grief never end for those who have experienced war.

The words that immediately came to me were “War is the enemy.”

Certainly, I thought, this phrase couldn’t be original. I searched for it on line and up popped Muste’s nearly 70-year-old essay.

Its title...“War is the Enemy.”

The link to it is HERE.

"Information wars" in Washington DC

Our political culture has a “combat mentality.” It doesn’t exactly fit with our naive civics-class indoctrination from the 8th grade.

How bad are things in the world of politics?

Sometimes the “war” seeps out around the edges, as it did on Tuesday in a seemingly innocuous article about young Washington, D.C. aides hired to digest the news and present it to their bosses.

While news readers in technocratic departments seem to approach their jobs relatively dispassionately, Bobby Maldonado, 26, brings a different mentality to his job working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He's up at 4 a.m. to get a jump on events so that he can strategically analyze, arrange and present them to his big-business bosses at the Chamber.

You get a flavor for his, and the Chamber’s, perspective when you read how young Maldonado describes his job.

“The information wars are won before work....Our executives walk into meetings and they’re doing battles, whether it’s on health care or cap and trade, and information is power, and my job is to make sure they’re armed with the most powerful information.”

“Wars,” “battles,” “armed.”

Reading the story, you don’t get the feeling that Maldonado is some Glock-toting kook. But he's just another soldier — and aide to battlefield generals. His words fit the political culture of victors and vanquished. These folks are out for blood.

And the media amplify it. Of all the headlines that the Times could have put on a tepid story, the one they chose came from Maldonado’s quote. “Where News is Power, A Fight to be Well-armed.”

Beyond one-dimensional politics

Politics in this country consists of well-fingered beads strung along a thin, frayed thread.

It is a short thread indeed. It stretches mere inches from liberal-centrist to conservative. We aren’t even sure what those terms mean beyond slogans. Most slogans in this political season come from the Right. “Big” government, "tax cuts," and “nanny state” dominate a campaign notable for its lack of serious, civil and thoughtful debate.

There’s plenty of reason for voters to be frustrated and angry. I’m one of them, but my frustration and anger are over this campaign season's lack of substance and solutions.

I’m also frustrated that the extreme political Right has managed to capture the support of my fellow frustrated and angry Americans by using bogus bromides that will only make matters worse. How do you lower the deficit by cutting taxes and fighting costly wars?

And I’m frustrated with the liberal centrists for their failure to stand for anything beyond tinkering with "fiscal mechanisms" and throwing gobs of our money at banks and insurance companies.

Our narrow, one-dimensional way of viewing politics doesn’t allow us to even frame the problems, let alone find solutions.

Where, for instance, does global warming and destruction of the planet fit along the spectrum? The oil interests would like to tar climate change as a “liberal” issue, and so, with large infusions of oil money, it has become politicized — to the peril of us all.

What about inequity in everything from schools to health care to income. Why isn’t the Tea Party taking on inequity? Instead of attacking reforms, it should be calling for more of them. Could the answer be that the Tea Party is paid for by the self-serving rich with their private schools, their platinum health care plans, their gated third homes, and their grotesque compensation packages?

The Tea Party folks need to ask who the real beneficiaries will be if the Tea Party wins in November?

(Full disclosure: I'm hardly rich but I've benefited from a private school education. I've used that education and my experience to teach at community colleges and state universities.)

With a former community organizer in the White House you might expect some discussion about community. This country was once seen as a nation of vibrant barn-raising communities. But what does it mean to be a community in today's Wal-Mart world? If communities really exist, how can they solve their own problems?

What about corporate control of communication? Is the control of media by corporations destructive of our society and its values? Have media brainwashed us into our narrow, dumbed-down thinking — political and otherwise? And I'm not just talking about FOX News.

The answers are clearly yes. but what can be done about it?

We need to get down to non-partisan basics.

Let's ask what would it take to make people in this country truly free. Free of poverty, free of ignorance, free from prejudice, free of war, free of debt, free of homelessness? What would it take to make this truly a land of equal opportunity?

Does government have a role in achieving these ends? If so, what should it be? And at what cost — to freedom and to our pocket books?

In this frenzied election season of frustration and anger, I haven’t heard a single political voice that is fresh and independent, that addresses my own frustration and anger. I haven't heard a single voice that poses basic questions offers innovative answers to the colossal problems we face.

The war that isn’t

In the July 31st issue of the New York Times on the Op-Ed page, is a column headlined, “Obama’s Race War.”

Its lead sentence reads: “Americans are engaged in a war over a word: racism.” A prominent “pull quote” is “The fight is really about the president.”

The words have been chosen to put you in a bellicose frame of mind. The writer is (did you notice?) talking about WAR.

The column goes on to track the president’s support, or lack of it, among racial groups. Blacks give the Obama presidency a 91 percent favorability rating, Whites put it at 37 percent, and Hispanics come in at 49 percent.

As troubling as the figures are, they are NOT war statistics. They are not body counts. They do not detail the costs of war.

Why must the media rely on the image of war to describe simple differences?

To get our attention?

Will the truth not suffice?

Used repeatedly, such hyperbole doesn’t work but it does deaden. The war metaphor has become a cliché. It gets rolled out every campaign season. In Oregon, we use it to describe a sports rivalry, “The Civil War.”

Each time a writer trivializes war by using the word "war" metaphorically to describe relatively harmless activity, "war's" true meaning is cheapened. Such metaphors portray war as something far less horrific than it is. By degrees, war — real war — becomes correspondingly more palatable to readers.

We should rebel at the misuse and trivializing of the word. War is war. As those who have suffered from war say it is "hell.”

That's the veterans' and the victims' metaphor — "hell." It is a very long way from poll results, nasty political campaigns, football rivalries, product competition and mere games.

The costs of war on tax day — and every day

You can measure the costs of war in several ways.

On this tax day, HERE's a sobering one. Be sure to check out the cost by state, county and household.

For every day, HERE's another cost that is even greater than the first.

And then there's THIS ONE for some historical perspective. Note to Oregonians: The "Civil War" referred to here is NOT a state football rivalry, which comes with its own costs.

Beyond "War is NOT the Answer"

The phrase on the bumper sticker “War is NOT the answer” has always left me perplexed — bumper sticker-wise.

First, it assumes that we know what the question is. War it NOT the answer to what? Injustice, rape, pillage, invasion, dictatorship, cruelty?” If war is NEVER the answer, it should say so. (More on that in a moment.)

Second, and worse, the phrase, by focusing on the wrong answer, doesn’t get us closer to the right one. I want to know what to do, not what NOT to do.

Third, war is not only NOT the answer, it shouldn’t even be on the list of answers, ever. It should be a concept that is not conceivable to human beings.

The bumpersticker, in a backhanded way, helps make war conceivable.

Recently I’ve been reading “Going Solo,” Roald Dahl’s memoir of his time in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He’s a fighter pilot in a small, doomed squadron stationed in Greece. Everyone in the squadron knows that the German Luftwaffe has the RAF contingent, the only British planes in the Greek theater, outnumbered many times over.

And help is not on the way. In fact the pilots are ordered to remain in order to provide air cover for the retreating British troops.

The RAF aviators are, in essence, dead pilots flying. Indeed, of the 15 in the original squadron, only two survive. All the pilots can do is bemoan the hopeless absurdity of their plight and prepare to meet their doom.

But the absurdity began long before their arrival in Greece. Once they (and the Germans for that matter) accepted war as the answer, once they agreed to participate in its inhumanity, they lost any right to argue about or resist the hopelessness of their situation.

You can’t argue about the methods of war once you are at war. War is as amoral as it is immoral.

The bumper sticker “War is NOT the answer” was produced by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker-affiliated organization in Washington, D.C.

I think FCNL can do better.

My bumper sticker reads: “Make war … unthinkable.”

Veterans Day addenda

On this Veterans Day, I turned to the small cardboard carton stuffed with my Dad’s neatly arranged letters home during World War II. My mother had saved them all. They got passed on to me after she died.

I don’t know exactly what I was looking for in those yellowing letters from 1944 and 1945. If it was Veterans Day inspiration or patriotic pride, I didn’t find them.

Dad’s been dead more than 20 years now. He lived into his late seventies, but dementia and palsy haunted him for the last 10 years of his life. He rarely and reluctantly spoke of the war. In his mid-30s, he was a flight surgeon on B-29s. (Dad, Capt. — and later Maj. — William F. Seifert, MD, is the tallest of the three men in the front row of the photo taken somewhere in the Pacific theater of war.) He was first assigned to India, flying “The Hump,” or the Himalayans, on bomb runs into China. Then he was in China itself and finally on the small coral island of Tinian, where the B-29’s assembled for the decisive air raids on Japan.

The “Super Fortresses” there included the two that ended the war by obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs.

Dad’s letters to Mom were censored so he was left to write about boozing, gambling, dysentery, his buddies, his eagerness to come home, his longing for Mom and me (I was a toddler), the oppressive heat, the foibles of his medical colleagues and the pettiness and bureaucratic demands of the military.

It’s a side of war we don’t hear much about. The parts that Dad had to censor largely make it into the history books and are celebrated on Veterans Day.

Dad’s letters are Veterans Day addenda, remembrances that war, in addition to being hell, bravery and sacrifice, is also, diarrhea, drug abuse, drudgery and bureaucratic in-fighting.