Supposed Quote from Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
is supposed to have once said “A Well-Informed Electorate Is a Prerequisite for
Democracy,” or something like that. Whether or not he ever did say or
write that, it still is a good synopsis of our third President’s way of
thinking. This is why
newspapers, and other media whose right to say what they want to say is
protected by the First Amendment, are so important in democracies where the
people have a voice in choosing their government. They have to be
"well-informed." That’s why truth
and accuracy in reporting is vital and the current concern with “fake news” is
so very important.
We have grown to expect truth and accuracy from
newspapers, even though they may differ wider in their opinions of what they
are reporting. Sadly,
however, this trust should not automatically be extended to other media,
particularly “non-print” electronic sources of news which know little of
journalistic ethics. Breibart
News, whose former CEO is now a senior advisor to the President-elect, is a
fine example of exactly what a source of news should NOT be. It has a point of view which
permeantes all that it reports; it is not objective: Thomas Jefferson
would not like it.
It is alarming to hear the President-elect condemning the
press for doing their job and reporting facts, and objecting to criticism and satire. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson and even Abraham Lincoln had to put up with
much worse and obviously had thicker skins than does Donald Trump.
Jack Lippman
Promises, Promises, Promises
Unedited, these are the exact words spoken by the President-elect. It behooves all Americans, especially those who voted for him, to follow his actions closely to see how many of these “promises” he attempts to keep and how successful, given a Republican House and Senate, he is at doing that. Check out the promises by clicking right here.
JL
White Working Class Males
The Presidential election turned on the votes of the “white working class males” in areas where job opportunities have shrunk over the past few decades. Even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than *two million votes, their votes in three states where such conditions prevailed, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, were enough to push Trump over the electoral vote threshold. These voters didn’t vote for Trump for ideological reasons. They voted the way they always have voted, based on their desire for full employment, decent benefits and job security. In their eyes, the Democrats (and the unions) which they have historically supported because they provided them with these things, had failed them.
*(disregard the President-elect’s unproven and silly charge that many of those votes were illegal and that he really won more votes than did Clinton.)
Well, advances in technology and to a lesser extent, cheaper labor
outside of the country, have changed all of that, and left these working class
males, primarily white, disappointed with the Democrats and they blamed them
for that. Trump promised to get for them
the same things the Democrats always had gotten for them. Also, an anti-immigrant stance, which Trump
flaunted, always appeals to workers who fear competition for their jobs.
Can he bring jobs back from low cost labor countries and create jobs in
the face of our onrushing job-eliminating technology? If he cannot, he will quickly lose their
support. If tariffs are imposed on
foreign goods, some job creation here may result, but tariffs ultimately are
passed on to consumers as higher prices, and this will leave the working class
unhappy. Trump has a tough row to hoe,
and his rust-belt support will evaporate if he does not come through with
solutions to their very specific problems.
Trump’s recent “deal” to keep some Carrier air conditioner jobs in
Indiana was at the price of costly State incentives which ultimately will have to
be paid for by the taxpayer, so that was no more than “showboating” since
Republicans, especially in places like Indiana, don’t like higher taxes, and giving
financial incentives to companies like Carrier to remain here calls for
precisely that. We cannot do that for every plant we want to keep in this
country without a humungous tax burden falling on someone.
Trump has a tough row to hoe, and when farmers do that out in their fields in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Indiana, they usually get their hands dirty. I don’t think President-elect Trump has ever gotten his hands dirty, before. Now he will have an opportunity.
Trump has a tough row to hoe, and when farmers do that out in their fields in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Indiana, they usually get their hands dirty. I don’t think President-elect Trump has ever gotten his hands dirty, before. Now he will have an opportunity.
But let’s visit for a bit in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania,
a fine
example of what happened to swing all of these traditionally Democratic voters
into the Trump camp. Newsweek Magazine
just published a really wonderful article on how that happened. Read
it now by clicking here.
See what those "white, working class males" and some other good people living there really look like, and what their concerns really are.
See what those "white, working class males" and some other good people living there really look like, and what their concerns really are.
Every Democratic politician and “strategist” should
read it too. They must do something to
appeal to these voters. They cannot just
sit and wait for Donald Trump to self-destruct. If they do, that might be a long wait.
JL
A Book To Read
I just finished reading Jay Winik’s 2015 best-seller, “1944” in which he
follows Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to win the Second World War along
with the Germans’ efforts to exterminate the entire remaining Jewish population
of Europe. That year was a crucial one
in that it saw the Allies’ invasion of Europe on D-day, leading to Germany’s
surrender in 1945, and that it also saw Germany move Hungary’s hitherto safe
Jewish population to Auschwitz to feed the 24 hour a day death factory
operating there.
From a historian’s standpoint, it is all there, from the late 1943
Teheran summit involving Churchill, Stalin and FDR to Hitler’s suicide and
Germany’s surrender in 1945, and the ever-expanding German death factories
which fueled the Holocaust during that period.
The book provides insight into the question of why, with knowledge of
the German program to exterminate Europe’s Jews, nothing was really done by the
United States and Great Britain to stop it, short of repeating that “winning
the war” would be the best way of stopping it.
Roosevelt was far sicker in 1944 than was commonly known. His attention span and ability to deal with
problems was deteriorating on a daily basis.
Asked by many both in and out of government, men like Rabbi Steven Wise
and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, to do something to stop the daily
murder of thousands of Jews by the Germans, he left the problem to those
serving under him, conserving his strength to deal with prosecuting the war.
And those serving under him included Breckinridge Long, who headed the
State Department’s Immigrant Visa Section.
Long was clearly an anti-Semite.
The State Department was home to many well-heeled, well-connected white
Anglo Saxon Protestants. Few had Jewish friends and some even believed that the
United States was basically a Protestant country, only allowing Catholics and
Jews here under sufferance. Long did everything he could administratively to
delay and obstruct the admission of Jews fleeing Europe to the United
States. Despite repeated urging from
Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR’s involvement in managing the war and his deteriorating
health prevented him from providing more than lip service to solving the
problem of admitting refugees to this country.
In retrospect, Breckinridge Long should have been on trial in Nuremberg
along with the Nazi war criminals with whom he was philosophically allied,
although he did not realize it at the time.
He was personally responsible for millions of deaths. If there is a “hell,” he now resides there.
Auschwitz
John J. McCloy was an Assistant Secretary of War during the 1940’s. Among his accomplishments was the extended
internment of Americans of Japanese heritage long after it was no longer
needed. He also was the spokesman for
the attitude in the War Department that bombing Auschwitz and the rail links
leading to it, which carried thousands of Jews each day to its gas chambers and
crematoriums, was not possible, and that doing so would detract from America’s
overall effort to win the war. His
approach, like that of Breckinridge Long, was one of delay and obstruction,
even when the evidence of what the Germans were doing was irrefutable. (The same kind of stonewalling, this time by
the British War Office the book points out, was encountered by Winston
Churchill who was convinced that Auschwitz’ rail links should be bombed.)
Of course, the question of whether Long and McCloy were more than
latent anti-Semites is not answered in the book, but I wonder what would have
happened if all of those applying for refugee status, and all of those being fed
into the gas chambers and furnaces were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
The real tragedy is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s deteriorating
health and pre-occupation with the war kept him at arm’s length from these two decision
makers. I suspect that he knew,
especially after a 1944 meeting with King Ibn Saud, when he unsuccessfully broached
the question of getting some Jews out of Germany and sending them to Palestine,
that he just did not have the strength remaining to take on that problem first
hand at the same time as he was winding down the war. Roosevelt died in April of 1945, less than a
month before the Germans surrendered unconditionally.
JL
JL
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