Ancient Wisdom

I might have mentioned that I've been studying Spanish for the past year, trying once and for all correct my lifelong shame of not being able to speak a language other than English fluently. Some may argue that I can't even do that but that's beside the point. 

One of my methods for learning the language is getting my hands on anything I can read that is at my reading level, around mid to upper intermediate. (Speaking is another story). Last week I googled "short stories in Spanish" and came across a site that contained classic short stories of the ages, the lion's share of which were a selection of Aesop's Fables. One of these ancient tales whose payoff is moral of the story, struck me as being relevant in our day.

The story was the "Goose that Laid the Golden Egg", except in the Spanish version, the ill fated bird was a gallina, a hen. In case you don't know the story, one day a farmer walks into his hen house (I'm telling the Spanish version of the story), and discovers that one of his hens has laid an egg of gold. Thinking this to be an anomaly, much to his surprise, the next day he returned to find another golden egg,  the third day, the same and on and on for a few more days. "Hmmm..." the farmer thinks, "I could go on and on collecting eggs every day and eventually I'll become rich, or I could just kill the hen now, retrieve all the gold inside of her, and be fabulously rich now!"

So that's what he did. And he found nothing inside the hen other than your basic run of the mill chicken guts.

That's the story in its entirety, you probably don't need the moral spelled out for you.

Naturally the story reminded me of Donald Trump.

You probably don't need to have that spelled out for you either. The fact is, Donald Trump is not all that hard to figure out. His kind has been portrayed in children's stories to great literature, theater, opera, film, you name it from time immemorial. After all what would be melodrama be without diabolical, self serving, one dimensional, greedy bastards?

I'm not talking about classic villains like the Grinch or Scrooge, both of whom turn out to be somewhat complex characters who get redeemed in the end. Donald Trump is not the least bit complicated. It's funny how people accuse him of dishonesty and yes it's true he does lie a lot, but nobody, not even his supporters take his lies seriously. They are so numerous, so obvious and blatant that it seems as if even he is in on the joke.

For example, last week in one of his press "briefings" he contemplated the effectiveness of ingesting toxic bleach and disinfectant to kill the COVID-19 virus. Naturally he was pilloried by all but his most devout sycophants, and even some of them raised their eyebrows. The next day when questioned about it, he said he was being "sarcastic." He then refused to take responsibility for the several people who had to be hospitalized for following his suggestion, not thinking he was being sarcastic at all.

Actually Donald Trump is not the least bit dishonest, at least about is himself and the fact that he is an unrepentant schmuck.

With him there is no subtlety, it doesn't take much time observing him to know he's up to no good. He's more of a cartoon villain like Snidely Whiplash from the Dudley Dooright series, the guy who's always tying the fair maiden to the railroad tracks. There is no remorse from or redemption for him. Nor is there for Old Man Potter from the film It's a Wonderful Life. His character is not quite believable because he does not have one shred of decency in him, well at least not as portrayed in the movie.

Then there's Baron Scarpia, the chief of Police in Rome in search of the escaped political prisoner Angeloti in Puccini's opera Tosca. In the first act, Angeloti seeks refuge and the help of his friend and sympathiser Mario Cavaradosi. When the two meet and Angeloti brings up Scapia's name, Cavaradossi responds:

Scarpia? Bigotto satiro che affinacolle devote pratiche la foialibertina e strumentoal lascivo talentofa il confessore e il boia!La vita mi costasse, vi salverò!  

Scarpia? That licentious bigot who exploits the use of religion as refinements for his libertine lust, and makes both the confessor and the hangman the servant of his wantonness! I'll save you, even should it cost my life! 

Now THAT'S melodrama. And not a bad description of Trump either.

There is nothing Shakespearian about Trump.

Consider the following, which US president said these words:

One of the most cherished goals of our democracy is to assure every American an equal opportunity to lead a full and productive life. 

In the last quarter century, we have made remarkable progress toward that goal, opening the doors to millions of our fellow countrymen who were seeking equal opportunities in education, jobs and voting. 

Now it is time that we move forward again in still another critical area: health care.
Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. It is thus just as important that economic, racial and social barriers not stand in the way of good health care as it is to eliminate those barriers to a good education and a good job.

The same president accomplished the following:

• Signed the first S.A.L.T. talks with the former Soviet Union, dramatically reducing the number of nuclear weapons
• Dramatically increased salaries for federal employees
• Implemented integration of public schools
• Instituted “Wage and Price Controls” in an effort to slow down the rate of inflation (about as anti-Free Market a policy as there is)
• Created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
• Created the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
• Passed the Clean Air and Water Act 
• Expanded funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities
• Appointed three Supreme Court Justices, all of whom voted in favor of Roe v. Wade, which was decided during his term.

That president was Richard Nixon.

Now there was a complex man. According to writer Nolan Dalla who describes Nixon as "perhaps the last great liberal president since FDR":

...behind his utter disregard for the U.S. Constitution...and the crimes which eventually became known as the Watergate scandal, (Nixon) was a highly-accomplished man of tremendous intellect and great potential.

Nixon and his fall were truly Shakespeareian.

Here's a Slate post about another severely flawed president, Bill Clinton.

The author, Jacob Weisberg contends that Clinton's character can't exactly be found in the pages of Shakespeare:

He has Falstaff’s appetites for food and fornication (without his humor or ironic wisdom). He has Prince Hal’s political ambition and disloyalty to his old friends (without his heroism or rhetorical eloquence). But Shakespeare isn’t right for Bill Clinton, who even in collapse lacks the grandeur of the Bard’s tragic heroes and the absurdity of his comic ones.

According to Weisberg, Clinton meets his match in the work of Phillip Roth:

Alexander Portnoy, after he outgrows his autoerotic obsession, works for the liberal John Lindsay administration in New York City and does his best to demonstrate his concern for the poor and the oppressed. Meanwhile, however, he is shacked up with a girlfriend he calls the Monkey, who fulfills his sexual fantasies but leaves him living in fear of tabloid scandal. Like Clinton, Portnoy is highly intelligent, mother-obsessed, and pretty much out of control. Another similarity: Portnoy flees to Israel when faced with crisis. Drawbacks: Portnoy is more of a neurotic and less of a liar.

Nixon and Clinton were flawed men who left mixed legacies, but even in their failures, they were still figures of great substance, men worthy of lofty, if not altogether flattering literary comparisons.

Trump on the other hand will leave no mixed legacy, that much I know. Storytellers going all the way back to Aesop's time and probably before have warned us about people like him.

His enduring legacy is that he will forever be remembered as the president who killed the chicken who laid the golden egg, nothing more, nothing less.

Anatomy of a Fake News Story

Last week I got into a long-winded social media dispute with my good friend, the Trump supporter, something we do on a regular basis. Unlike our typical disputes which center around the merits of the current administration. this was over a truly pointless and irrelevant issue. It started when my friend posted this meme:

My friend took the point a step further claiming this as proof of the depths of Democratic chicanery, the tale of  a corrupt Democrat, Jimmy Carter, pardoning another corrupt Democrat, and a felon to boot, Bill Clinton

As I am wont to do, with or without any factual basis to back it up, I challenged my friend. The truth is, while I knew that Bill Clinton went to great lengths to not serve in the military during the Vietnam War, I did not know whether or not he was actually convicted of a felony for illegally dodging the draft. One would think I might have remembered it coming up during his first election in 1992, but I was going through the breakup of my marriage at the time so I had other things on my plate.

As you might guess, a few things tipped me off that the message of this meme might be bogus:

• You can always tell where a meme is going by the image its creator choses to use. Here we have a particularly snarky image of Clinton, displaying a "face smackable smirk" as one commentor remarked, an image that portrays the Clinton described by one of his more colorful nicknames, "Slick Willy.". 
• The creator chose to capitalize the words "Draft", Dodging", and "Felon", but not the words "bill" and "clinton." This either means the creator has a serious issue with the rules of English grammar, he is tipping off a bias, or perhaps a little of both.
• Whenever a meme begins with the phrase, "Why do so few people know this fact", you can rest assured that nine times out of ten, it's because it really isn't a fact. 
• Finally there is the use of the phrase, "look it up." People more often than not create memes to preach to the choir. Everyone knows it's considered bad form for the choir to question the word of the preacher. So no, the intended audience is not very likely to look it up, it's the heathens who question ideas and look things up. Being a heathen of the first magnitude, I looked it up and no, I couldn't find a 60 Minutes piece about Clinton the felon. But I did find several scurrilous anti-Clinton videos including one where during an actual 60 Minutes interview, a studio light fell off its stand and hit Hillary Clinton in the head. The creator of the video went on to praise the light for sacrificing its life in an attmpt to rid us of the evil Hillary.

So why this interest in a president who's been out of office for 18 years? As a Trump supporter, my friend  is deeply offended that his man is often criticized for having himself dodged the draft. From a post I wrote during the 2016 campaign, I said that I don't have a problem with (then candidate) Trump's lack of military service  as he did what tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of men did during that era, that is, everything in his power to avoid serving in a highly contentious war. As I said, I probably would have done the same had I been a little older.

What irks me about Trump is the way he potrays himself as a patriot, both figuratvely and literally wrapping himself around the American Flag, as if that symbolic gesture, and that gesture alone actually meant anything. Beyond that, he has gone out of his way to disrespect veterans whom he doesn't like, most notably questioning the heroism of John McCain, a navy pilot who endured years of captivity in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" POW prison.

The late, great columnist Mike Royko, himself a veteran of the Korean War, had a term for bellicose, hawkish politicians who like Donald Trump, avoided the draft. He called them "war wimps."

My first line of questioning my friend's reasoning was that what he posted was only a meme. As anyone with the slightest bit of social-media acumen will attest, memes are as dependable a souce of information as grafitti inside a bathroom stall. In response God bless him, my friend  linked to a blog post. Now I happen to know a little about blog posts which you might have gathered as you are reading a blog post right now. While I try my hardest to write accurately and honestly, the truth is I have no publisher, no editor or fact checker to keep me honest. For what it's worth, all you have is my word that to the best of my knowledge, whatever I write in this space is accurate. If however I chose to be deceitful, no one could stop me. True you could point out my errors in the comments section but I have a dirty little secret, bloggers can delete comments at their discretion.

Despite that, blog posts are at the very least, one step above the credibility ladder from memes. The particular one he posted, lists a chronology of events involving Bill Clinton's actions regarding the draft, along with the Jimmy Carter pardon.. The post concludes with this:

Bill Clinton is the first pardoned federal felon ever to serve as President.

With that I did a little research. So is it true that Jimmy Carter pardoned the felonious Bill Clinton in 1977?

The answer is no.

Like most fake news stories, this one has some basis in fact. Bill Clinton did indeed dodge the draft, first through college deferments, then with a little help of a connection which got him into the ROTC at the University of Arkansas. which further enabled him to aviod the draft. He then dropped out of the UofA, choosing to complete his studies at Oxford and then at Yale. In doing so he skipped out of his committment to the ROTC. While in England, he wrote the draft board to request a re-classification. They gladly returned his message, giving him a 1-A classification, in other words, a prime candidate, eligible for serice. Luckily for Clinton, President Nixon signed into law a new policy that allowed students to finish their school year before reporting for service. This granted Slick Willy yet another college deferment. By the time the year ended, Nixon instituted a draft lottery which corresponded to days of the year. One's chances of being called depended upon the order in which your birthday was drawn, low numbers being most likely, high numbers the least. It turned out that Clinton's number, like Donald Trump's was in the 300's,, meaning his chances of being drafted by that time, were very low.

One could question the ethics of Clinton's actions, especially his skipping out of his ROTC committments. The blog my friend posted claims that by doing so, Clinton was declared AWOL, subject to arrest, and ineligible for the lottery. Other sources I found claim that no, Clinton's actions, while perhaps questionable, did not violate the law. What is not debatable is that Bill Clinton was never charged with a crime for skipping out of his committments.

As for the pardon, in January, 1977, Jimmy Carter gave a blanket pardon to all those "who were convicted of violating the Military Selective Service Act by draft-evasion acts or omissions committed between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973."

The bottom line is this: since Bill Clinton was never charged with a crime relating to his failure to show up for duty, by the very definition of the term, he cannot be a felon. By the same token, Carter's blanket pardon did not apply to Bill Clinton because Clinton was never charged with or needless to say, convicted of violating the Selective Service Act.

I got this information from the fact checking website Snopes.com, as well as from other sources. My findings were immediately rejected by my friend and other Trump supporter friends of his who insist that Snopes is a part of the biased left wing main stream media and thus, cannot be trusted.

Since there is no arguing with them about that bit of false information, I told them to use a little critical judgement and common sense. The website makes two curious bullet points before it mentions the Carter pardon:

• Bill Clinton runs for Congress (1974), while a fugitive from justice under Public Law 90-40.
• Bill Clinton runs for Arkansas Attorney General (1976), while a fugitive from justice.

The word "fugitive" comes from the Latin verb "fugit", literally meaning "to flee". Apparently the author of the blog and the people who buy into his premise never watched the TV show or the movie The Fugitive. The eponymous character of both, Richard Kimball, did a lot of things, but I don't ever recall him running for public office, at least not under his own name. Presumably, if you are fleeing from justice. chances are good that there are people involved with carrying out justice, who are looking for you. And one of the easiest ways to find someone, is if they are running for public office. William Jefferson Clinton, had he indeed been a fugitive from justice, would have been pretty stupid to expose himself that way. He wasn't called Slick Willy for nothing. And the people supposedly looking for this fugitive from justice must have been pretty dense to not have noticed their man was a candidate for Congress. Even worse, in 1976 Clinton won the election for Attorney General, making him effectively their boss. Pretty hard to not notice that. Maybe they thought, "nah that can't be him, nobody would be stupid enough to run for public office, especially for the top legal official in the state, when he's a fugitive from justice."

Anyway according to the blog, Clinton was no longer a fugitive from justice after Jimmy Carter allegedly pardoned him. Which begs the question, was Carter's blanket pardon of all those who violated selective service laws during Vietnam, merely a ruse by "an obviosly corrupt Democrat president to exonerate another obviously corrupt future Democrat president" as my friend insists? Well let's just say that's a bit of a stretch, I haven't found any evidence that Carter even knew the newly elected Attorney General of Arkansas when he allegedy, but didn't really pardon him in 1977.

Lest you think that I'm knocking the intelligence of Trump supporters, let me point out that it works both ways. Trump detractors are just as eager to promote ideas or post articles they like, without checking their validity. A couple weeks ago, Trump was excoriated by his detractors who accused him of calling illegal immigrants "animals."  Listening to his remarks, Trump was clearly referring to members of the notorious MS-13 gang, not to all undocumented immigrants. More recently a photograph has been widely distributed showing a crying young boy inside a cage. Captions claim the child is one of the thousands of children separated from their parents during the new "zero tolerance" sweep of people coming across our southern border. The photograph in fact was not of one of the separated children, but of a staged event in Dallas,  at a protest against the separations.

And finally there is the meme that has been widely circulated since the beginning of the 2016 election featuring a photograph of a young and handsome Donald Trump, taken back in the days when he was a liberal Democrat.. The meme includes the quote: "If I ever ran for president, I'd run as a Republican because Republican voters are so stupid, they'd believe anything you told them" There is certainly no tastier morsel that can be used to justify the resistance of the current president than that remark. The only problem is that he never said it.

How do I know those stories are not real? I listened to the immigrants being animals quote in its proper context, and I checked out the stories of Trump's Republican quote, and the photograph of the child in the cage where else, in Snopes.com.

The truth is this, fake news is a mortal enemy to democracy, it serves no one, except people of ill will trying to use it to gain power.  Everytime we post something on social media, we are broadcasting an idea to virtually the entire world. We may not realize it, but that is a very powerful thing, the kind of power our ancestors could never have imagined. We must all do our utmost to avoid spreading baseless information, just because we happen to like or agree with it, even, no especially if we are employing it to counter fake news on the other side.

So how does one know what is real and what is fake these days? Frankly it's not all that hard, it just takes some work. I find fact-checking sites like Snopes to be credible because as we just saw, they point out factual errors on both sides of the political fence. But it is still important to never trust the word of one single news source, no matter how un-biased is may seem, double check everything.

"Main stream media" news outlets, whatever they may be, wouldn't be in business very long if they kept reporting factual errors. Their credibility is judged upon their ability to report facts. All news sources get it wrong sometimes. If a news source rigorously corrects factual errors in printed or stated retractions, that doesn't mean it makes a lot of errors, it means they are committed to getting it right, and should be trusted.

Some news outlets are pointedly biased, I needen't mention them by name. These exist on both sides of the political divide. I think it is important no matter what side of the divide you find yourself on, to check out sources on the other side, and if possible, give them the benefit of the doubt. You might even learn something.

The most important thing when reading or watching the news, no matter what the source, is to use your brain and its inherent capability to make critical judgements and employ common sense.

Ask yourself questions like: "is what they are saying even plausible", or "does it make sense?" Another worthwhile question is "how much is the source willing to give a voice to both sides of an issue?" If commentators keep praising one side and berating the other, chances are pretty good that sorce is not credible. These "news" sources earn their keep by telling their counsumers what they want to hear, rather than reporting the facts.

Independent news sources such as blogs (yes like this one), don't have to answer to anyone to stay afloat. That doesn't mean they are not credible sources of information, it just means you have to work a little harder to verify them.

Memes, while they may contain truthful information,  should be automatically suspect.

My point is this, in an ideal world, we should consider ourselves Americans first, then Democrats or Republicans a distant second. It seems like we've done exactly the opposite for too long. Sadly, the current administration and those who promote it, seem to thrive on such division. But truth be told, both sides are guilty of broadening the divide.  I have no doubt that there are people on both sides of the current political morass who are of good will and truly want what is best for the country.

One of my friend's friends, also a Trump supporter, put it very well. He said that as long as people relentlessly criticize the president, out of anger his supporers will only strengthen their resolve. Which can only mean that their resolve is fueled by emotion, rather than intelligence. For my part I can say that my own anger and resolve are fueled by what I see as the complete lack of regard for facts and reason coming from the other side. And on and on it goes, where it will stop, no one knows. There is a place for emotion in politics, but a very small place. Mea culpa, that is something I need to keep reminding myself.

People ask me why I continue these endless sparring matches when it is clear that neither of us will budge the other's opinion. Thinking about it I have two answers. First, I have no problem with people who have different political opinions from me and I enjoy spirited, well thought out debates, but the core of my being is rattled whenever I encounter an argument that is entirely illogical and catagorically denies substantialted facts. Deep down I feel that the battle for facts and reason is well worth fighting. But more importantly,  I think it is very important to keep an open, and (hopefully) respectful dialog between both sides.  It is important to tap into things we agree upon, rather then just the things that tear us apart. So many relationships have been severed over this divide that I see a spark of hope whenever we can remain friends while keeping our opinions out in the open. If at the end of the day (I hate that cliche but it seems appropriate at this moment), we can find things to agree upon despite our differences, then we all come out ahead by understanding that we're not enemies at all, we just have different opinions.

I may hate their politics but I love the people.
I just have to keep telling that to myself over and over and over again.