Make of this what you wish: In today's political climate, it might be personally dangerous to write specifically about certain topics, and all members of the staff (at present, just me) at Jackspotpourri are aware of that. No one wants the DOJ chasing after them, and lawyers are expensive. Sometimes leaving certain things 'unsaid' can be more effective than saying them. We must learn to 'read between the lines.'
* Abide!
JL
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Hegseth In and I.G.s Out – George’s Advice
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| Pete Hegseth (center), and the three Republican Senators with sufficient guts not to vote to approve him as Secretary of Defense, clockwise starting in top right corner: Senators McConnell, Collins, and Murkowski. The dude at top left is Hegseth's lawyer. He'll probably need him before long. |
If you’re not already getting and reading ‘Letters from an American’ every day, check out its posting dated January 25 where Boston College Professor Heather Cox Richardson covers the Senate’s approving Peter Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and the 47th president’s firing of several government agencies’ Inspector Generals, stifling possible whistleblowers. Just copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line or just CLICK HERE.
All but three of the weak-minded Republican Senators voted for Hegseth’s approval because they put their party over their country. Shameful! The three Republican Senators who joined with the Democrats and voted against his approval (Senators McConnell, Murkowski, and Collins) are to be complimented for their courage.
It took the presiding Vice-President’s vote to assure the appointment of the totally unqualified Hegseth, but this is what the country gets when it elects Republicans to high office. The lessons of the 1890s and 1920s are quickly forgotten.
It is also why George Washington included the following in his 1796 Farewell Address, warning the new nation about the danger of political parties:
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| Washington |
“ However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. “
Yup, that’s what the Republican Party of today is doing, engaged in ‘subverting the power of the people.’
JL
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Military Involvement in Deportation
President Trump should be very careful about suggesting the use of troops to assist in his plans to gather and deport those in this country illegally. Unless those they help to deport are loyal to a foreign adversary, such use would be beyond the mission of our ‘regular’ full-time armed forces (comprising about 1,350,000 members),
This is not equally true, however, of the military’s very sizable part-time Army and Air Force ‘National Guard’ components (comprising about 425,000 members) whose command is shared by the President with State governors, either of whom can activate them for use it in local emergencies such as fires, floods or civil disorders.
Keep your eyes and ears open for any hints as to where the Joint Chiefs of Staff stand on this matter. It would seem that they might not agree with actions involving using any of their resources to deport immigrants that might diminish our armed forces’ abilities to carry out their primary role of protecting the nation against potential foreign adversaries like China, Russia, or North Korea.
JL
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Achilles Heel Explained
In several postings, Jackspotpourri has referred to an ‘Achilles Heel,’ whereby a strong person, or a powerful nation, has succumbed because of having a particular fault, an ‘Achilles Heel.’ (The previous posting explained how this phenomenon came to be so named in Greek mythology.)
Is it time to explain in greater detail the nature of this ‘Achilles Heel’ in our representative democracy (or any democracy for that matter) whereby it contains the seeds of its own destruction.
There are too many people in most political entities for ‘true democracy’ to exist there. That is why we have ‘representative democracy,’ which exists through ‘representatives’ being elected to stand in for large groups of people, which is part of the definition of a republic. Those with an ax to grind who say we are a ‘republic’ and not a ‘democracy’ often fear ‘representative democracy’ which amounts to fearing accepting the will of the people voting in their own interests.
But getting back to describing our particular ‘Achilles Heel’:
I believe our 'Achilles Heel' it is the right to vote, possessed by all adult citizens, but without considering the possibility that some of them are vulnerable to the risks of being influenced by varying degrees of ignorance (correctable), gullibility (correctable), or stupidity (not correctable).
Voters who succumb to these risks can lead to a governmental authority which tries to guarantee its survival by diminishing or getting rid of the representative democracy to which it owes its very existence. (Go back and read George Washinton’s words earlier in this posting.)
History may be likened to a pendulum’s swinging back and forth over the centuries between lengthy periods when, unfortunately, its Achilles Heel as described above prevails, diminishing real representation by and for the people, and those periods when everything seems to be going well for them, and the right to vote is not besmirched by ignorance and gullibility.
JL
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A Weakening ‘Bromance’
President Trump and Elon Musk are travelling on separate tracks, which no longer, now that Trump is in office, may be parallel. Although Musk’s support may have been crucial in getting Trump elected, their differing perspectives on how the power they attained is to be used are now coming to the fore.
A recent article in The Hill described this. Copy and paste https://thehill.com/opinion/5107082-trump-musk-marriage-over/ on your browser line or CLICK HERE.
Adding the presence of China’s 'DeepSeek' into the competition for supremacy in the world of Artificial Intelligence complicates this even further.
JL
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International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Monday, January 27, was observed as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Germany’s Nazi concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz. It brings two poems to mind.
English poet John Donne is remembered for asking ‘For whom the bell tolls.’ The answer was contained in a poem by Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), a prominent antisemitic Lutheran pastor in Germany who in 1920s and early 1930s, sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radical right-wing political movements.
After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller spoke out against Hitler’s interference in the Protestant Church. As a result, he spent the last eight years of Nazi rule, from 1937 to 1945, in Nazi prisons and concentration camps.
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for this poetic statement made after World War Two, which I recall was carved on a monument in the Holocaust Garden of a temple on Long Island to which I belonged some years ago:
“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist,
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist,
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist,
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew,
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Meanwhile, Abide.
* (The word 'Abide' is more fully discussed in the Jackspotpourri postings dated January 15, and January 21, 2025. Also, Professor Richardson's 'Letters from an American' dated January 28 includes this quote from Jim Acosta, as he resigned from CNN: ''Don’t give into the lies. Don’t give into the fear. Hold onto the truth and to hope.' Another way of defining 'Abide.')
JL
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