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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Sunday, August 9, 2020

Tiz the Law and the President, Plato and a word from HCR


Horseracing and Trump

It’s time for our overweight, mentally challenged President to give up golf as his recreational pastime.  That sport is better suited to younger men and women.  A great alternative for Trump might be horseracing, and a lesson is ready for him in the well-muscled body of three-year old racehorse Tiz the Law, winner of the Belmont Stakes, the Travers Stakes and likely winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, both to be run later this year. 

Because of the restrictions placed on all of us by the Covid19 pandemic, I have been watching more television than I formerly  did, and I have spent some time watching live racing (no spectators) from Belmont Park and Saratoga.  It’s a fascinating sport and Trump might benefit from it.  Certainly it can provide him with many rich friends, more than golf does, because horseracing is a money-based sport.

Tiz the Law winning the Travers at Saratoga

But getting back to Tiz the Law, that name has meaning in today’s America, particularly when you recognize the “Law” to which it refers.  Tiz the Law’s sire (his father) is a horse named Constitution.  That’s what the “Law” is in this country, our Constitution, and that is a lesson this racehorse can teach President Trump.

Successful racehorses just don’t happen.  There is a royalty of horseracing going back many generations and the often-stated purpose of horseracing, “improving the breed,” has real meaning.   Tiz the Law’s great, great, great, grandfather (okay, grand sire) was the famous Seattle Slew and Tiz the Law’s mother, brood mare Tizfiz, is also a great, great, great, granddaughter of that same Seattle Slew.  Tizfiz also, in her racing career won several important stakes races, something not often seen in fillies, later to become broodmares.  The names of other racing greats, particularly a sire named Mr. Prospector, figure significantly in both Constitution’s and Tizfiz’s pedigree.  If you go back far enough, you’ll find Native Dancer blood in Tiz the Law!  And deeper research brings you to his more distant cousins, including the families of Bold Ruler and Secretariat.  This aspect of horseracing, aside from pari-mutual wagering and winning purses, is what is important to true devotees of the sport.

The point of all of this, which Donald Trump is incapable of understanding, is that just as it takes generations to develop a Tiz the Law for the racetrack, years of history and intellectual breeding (not bloodline except for the Adamses, the Bushes and the Roosevelts) go into preparing one for the Presidency.  Trump lacks this background which, in his own particular field, the racetrack, Tiz the Law possesses.

(In a future posting, I will give you my non-guaranteed ideas on how one can bet successfully on horseracing.  Many opportunities to do so are available online.  And it’s fun too, even if you just make “mind bets” during an afternoon of horseracing on your TV screen.)

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HCR and Trump

Check out Heather Cox Richardson’s latest posting (8//8/20) by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.   Learn how the President continues to screw around with your country as if it were his own business.  (Most of his 'businesses' have failed ... so he enjoys messing with your money.)

If the link fails you, just copy and paste this on your browser line:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKJVzbLTBXrqCglTJJdTdBjFWcsjhmmFwBJnlsMDXHTntwJWbcwBSkFRFLvKfhqwFbwg

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Plato and Trump

Trump-like Evil Predicted by Plato
Twenty-four centuries ago, Greek philosopher Plato in his "Republic" feared that democracy could put power into the hands of demagogues.   Just google those three words in red together and the internet will bring you a slew of academic articles showing that there is nothing new under the sun, including Donald Trump.  Most are a bit too "heavy" to include on the blog but check them out anyway!  Here's a sample of what you might find:  

"In the Republic, we learn that the demagogue gains power by democratic means, claiming to be a champion of the people and making wild promises (‘Freedom!’).  Anyone who opposes him is labelled ‘an enemy of the people’ and exiled, imprisoned or killed.  Such tactics naturally provoke genuine opposition and the demagogue grows increasingly suspicious of those around him, retreating into his palace-fortress and in the grip of his obsessions."

British Philosophy Professor Angie Hobbs

JL

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