Fiscal Responsibility | FJY.US

When They Come for Your Eyeglasses: Cultural Revolution in America

By Frank Yacenda | July 8, 2020 | Comments 6 comments

If you know anything about the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror in Cambodia in the 1970s, you understand the reference in the title of this posting. People who wore eyeglasses were deemed to be bourgeois and therefore needed to be killed. So did anyone who had an education. Or spoke another language. Or owned a car. Or lived in a city. Or existed at all. A word that has stayed with me for decades, reading the words of one survivor, speaking of what became of all his family members in the killing fields of Cambodia, was the Khmer word slap.

“Slap. Slap. Slap.”

“Dead. Dead. Dead.”

What happened in Cambodia, where estimates put the number of those murdered by the Khmer Rouge, or who died of starvation, disease, or exhaustion in the rural work camps to which they were exiled, at anywhere from 1 million to 3 million – no one really knows, though generally 2 million is the accepted number – is sadly not the exception to what happens when cultural revolutions reach their logical conclusion. No matter what their original motivations or justifications, they almost universally end in the wholesale slaughter of anyone not deemed sufficiently ideologically pure to those who wind up as the self-appointed leaders of the revolution.

Mobs of the French Revolution. Source unknown.

There were the tens of thousands who lost their heads to the Jacobins’ guillotines, or otherwise died, in the Reign of Terror – that one gets capitalized – of the French Revolution. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, which sound like pretty good things to aim for, turned into repression, imprisonment, and death for many, both those on the wrong side of the cultural and political divide and just ordinary innocents who got in the way of the murderous tide.

Dead in the streets during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Source unknown.

The Red Terror of the Bolshevik Revolution executed somewhere north of a quarter million people, but by the time the Russian Civil War had run its course the dead totaled at least 1.5 million, not counting the 3 million people who died of typhus just in the chaos of 1920 alone or the tens of millions who died in subsequent decades under the Soviets, into whom the Bolsheviks transformed.

And then there was Chairman Mao’s decade-long Cultural Revolution which wracked China from 1966 until 1976. Like all the other big social spasms there is no agreement on the number of dead and a million or two is considered a rounding error. But by China’s own official numbers, nearly 2 million people died and another 125 million people were persecuted or “struggled against” in brutal harassing, and often fatal, “struggle sessions” in which their cultural impurities were challenged by the Red Guards and their peers, colleagues, students, tenants, and even their own children. If all those who died as a result of the revolutionary insanity promulgated by Mao over the decades are included, estimates run as high as 80 million.

Cultural Revolution “Struggle Session,” 1966. From Flickr. Used under Fair Use.

While America’s incipient cultural revolution hasn’t yet taken a death toll approaching history’s worst, the numbers already are beginning to mount. When I first began writing this piece, just five weeks into the domestic unrest, more than 25 people – many black, whose lives ostensibly matter enough to have stirred the uprising – had been killed and an untold number injured in the demonstrations and associated violence sweeping the nation since the death of George Floyd on May 26. Through a holiday weekend and a couple of other days, and the toll continues to mount of the civilians killed in the “peaceful” protesting. On the receiving end of much of the violence, hundreds of police – nearly 300, some critically, in New York City alone during the early days of the unrest – and other law enforcement officers have been injured and at least one, in Oakland, Calif., killed.

Revolution American Style: Looters helping themselves to the politically correct garb at the Nike on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, in view of Rockefeller Center. Looters had already cleaned out Macy’s flagship store at Herald Square and numerous other stores and boutiques and businesses, big and small, throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Queens — four of the city’s five boroughs. Only Staten Island was spared.

And then there are the rising murder rates following calls, and actual actions, to defund or abolish the police: In New York, shootings are up 44% and murders up 23%, over last year. In Chicago, already an urban killing field, shootings are up 45% and murders up 34%. In the 24 hours from May 31 to June 1, the city experienced its most violent day in 60 years, with 18 murders. Philadelphia has seen a 57% increase in shootings and 24% increase in murders. In Milwaukee, homicides are up 95%. And in Los Angeles, in the first week of June alone, murders were up 250% from the previous week. Other serious crimes, such as assault, burglary, and arson, also are on the rise across the nation.

As the violence continues to mount it’s impossible to stay current with the numbers, but the ones cited give an indication of where things are headed. In the past weekend alone, gunfire claimed the lives of at least six children around the country: An 8-year-old girl, sitting in her mom’s car, in Atlanta. An 11-year-old boy, grandson of the founder of the DC chapter of the Guardian Angels, in Washington, D.C. A 7-year-old girl playing outside her grandma’s house and a 14-year-old boy in a crowd watching fireworks, both in separate incidents in Chicago. A 6-year-old boy in San Francisco. An 8-year-old boy in Hoover, Ala. All were just doing ordinary things when criminals running amok killed them.

Think it can’t happen here? Think again.

If you’re paying any attention at all, and haven’t been taken in by the apologist blather of the liberal media, you’ve been watching the wanton destruction of whole swaths of numerous American cities. You’ve seen the looting, arson, and defacement of both public and private property. You’ve seen the takeover and occupation of key parts of cities like Seattle, Washington, and New York. You’ve seen innocent people being beaten, dragged from vehicles, threatened with death, and killed. And you’ve seen the mindless toppling and destruction of numerous statues and monuments, all at the hands of the mob.

Chinese Red Guards raise their fists in ideological purity in 1966. Universal History Archive, UIG via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

Looking at the range of historic figures attacked by mobs all across the land, one must assume that the mob leaders and their sycophantic followers are true morons who know nothing about history, nor about the underpinnings of the country, nor even about the abolitionist movement and the emancipation of slaves. Nor does their ignorance seem to matter to them. Suddenly every historic figure ranging from George Washington to Christopher Columbus, from Teddy Roosevelt to Thomas Jefferson, from Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator himself, has been targeted for erasure from the national record, without sanction of any democratic process.

Demonstrators in New York City. Pexels. Used with permission.

This is a hallmark of cultural revolution, wherever it occurs, wiping out history and declaring a new Year Zero, the starting point of the revolution. It is disturbing to watch the inflamed furor of the crowds in the streets of America and their drive to destroy all remnants of history, in essence declaring a new Year Zero, and then to compare it with the inflamed furor of the crowds of Mao’s Cultural Revolution or the boy-soldiers of the Cambodian terror, or that of any of the many social spasms that have torn apart other countries and societies. This should give pause to anyone with even the vaguest appreciation for history or fear of the dark places where cultural revolutions lead.

Young girl in 1967 China holds up a copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Ulstein Bild via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

Young boy in 2020 Washington records it all on his cell phone. Photo by Gayatri Malhotra. Used under Fair Use.

Following the Cultural Revolution’s mandate to “destroy the Four Olds,” man smashes an old statue in 1967. Ullstein Bild via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

U.S. Park Police survey the damage and secure the scene after protestors unsuccessfully attempted to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson. the seventh president of the country, near the White House. Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

The Origins of the Chaos

There is no mistaking the strongly leftist, anti-American nature of the rhetoric and actions of the mob. Or how it has used the same tactics of other cultural revolutions — intimidation, public shaming, and violence – to force compliance with its demands or the expungement and cancellation of anyone who resists coming into line.

Comparisons have been drawn between what is happening now and the revolutionary wave that swept the country a half-century ago. As riots, mob violence, bombings, and assassinations – as well as peaceful demonstrations – swept the country then, the same intolerance in evidence today was in evidence then.

The denizens of the People’s Republic of CHAZ/CHOP/Whatever mill about in front of the abandoned East Precinct of the Seattle Police. Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

I won’t pretend that there weren’t leftist and anti-American professors in my undergraduate time during the cultural upheaval that ran through America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it seems in the intervening decades their presence has become pervasive on campuses across the country, exerting a powerful influence on generations of students. In a country where freedom of expression is enshrined in the first amendment to its Constitution, we’ve arrived at a stage on many of our college campuses where any divergence from political correctness and the accepted party line is repressed, blocked, decried, and only the orthodoxy of the left is tolerated.

Red Guards, better dressed, more neatly kempt, and better behaved than the Seattle occupiers, march in Waxi in 1967. Bettmann/Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

The revered liberal U.S. senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, already in that earlier era of unrest saw the anti-American underpinnings of the movement.

“To a degree that no one could have anticipated even three or four years ago, the educated elite of the American middle class have come to detest their society, and their detestation is rapidly diffusing to youth in general,” Moynihan wrote in a series of memos to President Richard Nixon in 1969 and 1970. “The effects of this profound movement of opinion will be with us for generations.“

Seattle burns. The acronym “ACAB” can be seen at many scenes of violence around the country and (so clever) it stands for “All Cops Are Bastards.” I wonder what acronym would express the essence of arsonists? Photo by joshwho.net. Used under Fair Use.

Moynihan saw the growth of nihilism arising out of the educated and upper classes, imposing their ideological purity on the society, and once more we see it now in the allegedly educated and upper classes on the frontlines of ongoing attacks on the nation’s historical monuments and other cultural icons.

“Nihilist movements typically have led to political regimes of the most oppressive and reactionary qualities,” Moynihan wrote. “I know there is an authoritarian Left in this country, and I fear it.”

Phnom Penh burns in 1975. Residents flee the city as the Khmer Rouge move in to occupy it and terrorize, exile, and murder the population. Photo by Claude Juvenal, AFP via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

Moynihan made one other prescient observation: “It would be difficult to overestimate the degree to which young well-educated blacks detest white America.”

Given the roles played by Antifa and Black Lives Matter in agitating the current unrest, and given the far-left roots and agendas of both groups in pushing for social upheaval, we need not be surprised by the anti-American nature of much of what we’ve witnessed in this country since the death of George Floyd. Over recent decades we’ve grown accustomed to seeing Antifa and other anarchist and far-left groups disrupt international financial meetings, like the G-8, but we’ve been less used to seeing them at other times and places. Since May 26 they have become a commonplace on American streets as Antifa and Antifa-backed activists employ the brown-shirt techniques of fascism in their purported quest to oppose what they call fascism, which encompasses both democratically elected government and capitalism.

Ivan Alekseevich Vladimirov (1869–1947), Vandalism of the Revolutionaries, a scene in one of the rooms of the Winter Palace in December 1918 [sic; 1917], 1918. Gouache and watercolor over pencil. Ivan Alekseevich Vladimirov Paintings, Hoover Institution Archives. Used under Fair Use.

Taking a higher profile in the current unrest is Black Lives Matter, a loose amalgam of individuals and groups operating under a roughly common theme which claims to put black lives foremost. But it doesn’t take much scratching below the surface to see the violent and leftist tendencies within the movement when BLM actions have included calling for the killing of police (which we have to assume includes both white and black and also other lives), supports defunding the police since the group claims the police don’t keep us safe, and it has nothing to say on the topic of black-on-black violence, the biggest source of snuffing out black lives. One is free to see what BLM thinks right on its web site, though keep in mind that it speaks for just one element of the BLM movement. Meanwhile, funding pours into both Antifa and BLM from a panoply of Democratic, liberal, and radical donors, not the least of which is George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, and a raft of mainstream foundations and corporations.

“Where’s the police when you need them?”

Panty raid on 16th St. Man in pink bra and panties attacks D.C. Delegate Eleanore Holmes Norton and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in District’s BHAZ. Image from Twitter video. Used under Fair Use.

That’s an actual quote caught on camera – you can’t make this stuff up – of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s non-voting delegate to the House, probably thinking no one would hear it. Amid all the “defund the police” hoopla, that was what Holmes Norton muttered when a protester in the police-free “Black House Autonomous Zone” (BHAZ), a man dressed in a pink bra and panties, ran up to whack her and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell as they walked down 16^th Street Northwest in the nation’s capital. The pair’s private security detail quickly hauled the man off. After all, who needs police when you have your own security?

I have a broader question, though. Where is anyone protecting the rights of ordinary citizens as their homes, businesses, and very lives have been threatened and in many cases destroyed by violence and looting over the past six weeks? Given that the first duty of elected officials is to look after the safety and well-being of the citizens who put them in office, this is not a frivolous question. While some mayors and governors have done their duty in seeking to control the looting, arson, and vandalism, others, with apparent impunity, have been deliberately derelict in their duty.

Perhaps the most egregious example of dereliction is Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Washington State’s inept Gov. Jay Inslee. When ostensible protestors took over several blocks of the central part of her city, forcing police to abandon the East Precinct station and submitting residents and business owners to harassment and obstruction, Durkan — undoubtedly thinking she was being cute — lamely told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that CHAZ (short for Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, which later morphed into Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or CHOP) could turn into “a summer of love.” Meanwhile, after pretending he didn’t know anything about the occupation in his state’s largest city, Inslee showed his utter ignorance by calling the occupation “largely peaceful” and “fundamentally American.” It took the murder of two black teenage boys, the wounding of others, and a litany of assaults, rapes, robberies, and acts of destruction of property to finally prompt the so-called powers that be to clear the area.

Horace Lorenzo Anderson Sr., left, father of 19-year-old who was killed in Seattle’s CHOP zone, speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Andre Taylor, right, is a community activist and founder of Not This Time. Image by Fox News. Used under Fair Use.

Adding indecency to incompetence and malfeasance, neither Durkan, nor anyone else in her administration, bothered to inform the father of the first 19-year-old victim that his son had been killed, much less express remorse, and the man wasn’t even allowed to see his son’s body for days. This all came out in a poignant interview with the father on Sean Hannity’s nighttime TV show on Fox News, an interview well worth watching if you care to see the depths of depravity to which your elected officials can sink in the pursuit of political expediency.

Unlike in countries like Cambodia or China, the power of the purse can be a powerful inducement to action in this country, and one only hopes that the lawsuits filed by aggrieved citizens bankrupt the city of Seattle and the state of Washington, as well as other jurisdictions where officials failed to act to protect their citizens. And the examples are legion, from Minneapolis to New York, from Chicago to Los Angeles, from Portland to Washington, and many other places.

A statue of Christopher Columbus winds up destroyed and under water in Richmond. Image by Parker Michels-Boyce, AFP via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

On a national scale, one wonders what has become of the supposed scions of law and order in the House and Senate. Not unexpectedly, the Dems have wrapped themselves in the cloak of the cultural revolution, but with a few exceptions it’s been worse than silence coming from the Republican side of the aisle. Some Republicans have even bowed to the coercion of the mob, with such supposed conservative stalwarts as John Cornyn of Texas sponsoring a bill to make Juneteenth — a day few in the country had even heard of before this year — a national holiday, with two other alleged conservative senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and James Langford of Oklahoma, taking things one step further and adding an amendment to Cornyn’s bill that would have abolished Columbus Day. The latter two tried to obfuscate the reason for their amendment by expressing fiscal concerns, something that doesn’t otherwise seem to trouble Congress as it repeatedly runs up record deficits. Given backlash against their proposal, Johnson and Langford subsequently withdrew it, but not until their spineless complicity had been exposed. And yet another Republican senator, Mike Braun of Indiana, introduced a bill to limit the qualified immunity of police, something the mob has called for, although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on a number of occasions that qualified police immunity is a necessity. In response, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson suggested that perhaps Braun should give up his immunity as a member of Congress. So far he hasn’t done so.

The mob turns out to see heads roll in the French Revolution. Source unknown.

At times sounding like a lone voice calling for order, President Trump has decried the violence since it began, carrying that message over the weeks of the disorder and making it a focus of his Independence Day address at Mount Rushmore Friday night. Utilizing the power of executive orders Trump blocked the further destruction of federal statues and monuments and has at least slowed, if not stopped, the renaming of military installations around the country. But even he has been stymied in getting local officials to put a stop to the violence and lawlessness afflicting their cities and states. While threatening to implement the Insurrection Act of 1807 and send federal troops to establish order in beleaguered cities, he has held back from actually doing so, ostensibly because those local and state officials didn’t ask for the help. But that is little comfort to the victims of the violence and I, for one, would have preferred to see more action and less talking about it.

Cultural Revolution posters in Beijing, February 1967. Look similar to what has appeared on American streets in 2020? Jean Vincent, AFP via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

It’s fairly transparent how the forces aligned against Trump have used the violence and disorder to further marshal opposition to him. As one after another of their schemes to overturn the results of the 2016 election has failed, this — combined with their attempts to keep the economy shut down — might be their last best hope to block Trump’s reelection in November. If enough Americans, they think, buy into the theory that Trump either failed to stop or actually encouraged the violence, or buy into the baseless accusation that he is a racist, or are discouraged enough to just stay home, they might have a chance. Their candidate by default, Joe Biden, has largely remained in his Wilmington basement as the furor swirled above ground level. If you have any illusions what a vote for him might entail, just consider how the most radical elements of the Democratic Party now hold sway over the party, and do a little simple arithmetic to see what chits they hold for parlaying Biden into position as putative nominee. It’s unlikely Biden would be able to govern for long given the visible advanced stage of his mental decline, so the person he picks as his running mate — whom he already has said will be a black woman, in true identity-politics style — is likely to be the party’s real choice. How radical will she be? Given the radicalism of forces within the party who will hold the real power and pull the strings, it almost doesn’t matter.

As the new Know Nothings of 2020 toss Columbus into the harbor and seek to fundamentally transform the country (a phrase used by his former boss and recently picked up by Biden, never mind that it contradicts what he told his rich donors a year ago, that’s just standard operating procedure for him), the future of the country hangs in the balance. What the demonstrators and looters and their supporters can’t accomplish in the streets, the party’s true power brokers — I’ve called them the new plantation masters — hope to leverage into electoral victory in November. Voters might take a hint from the sadly overturned statue of Junipero Serra, below, and stop before they take the country over a cliff from which recovery might well be impossible.

Remember, when they come for your eyeglasses, it will be too late.

Statue of Spanish missionary Junipero Serra seems to beg for its life as it lies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Source unknown, freerepublic.com. Used under Fair Use.

Featured image: Skulls and bones of victims of the Khmer Rouge. Source: History.com. Used under Fair Use.

Back to the Plantation

By Frank Yacenda | June 20, 2020 | Comments 4 comments

One of the vestiges of the plantation system which depended on slavery for its existence was the racial divisiveness perpetrated by economic elites to maintain their power and control over both blacks and whites. In simplest terms, this translates to “divide and rule.”

“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings,” Georgia populist leader Tom Watson told a gathering of white and black laborers in 1892. ““You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.”

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who rose through the ranks of Texas racist politics to become the president who, after decades of helping block civil rights legislation in the House and the Senate, fostered passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once related essentially the same theory to Bill Moyers. In classic LBJ style, Johnson told Moyers, a Johnson staffer before he became White House Press Secretary and, later, a journalist, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Women March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Library of Congress.

This was a theory I first learned in the aftermath of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It made sense to me then, and it still makes sense to me, though the nature of those elites have changed during the intervening half century, as have their tools. And it wasn’t just white populists who laid out the theory, plain as day for anyone who cared to look.

The white liberal and the new plantation

“The white liberal is the worst enemy to America and the worse enemy to the black man.”

That’s not a quote from Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. It’s a quote from Malcolm X, the black liberation theology leader and firebrand, who said it about the same time LBJ was getting the civil rights theology and launching his War on Poverty, and not long before Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21, 1965.

“The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power,” he said. “The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro, 20 million black people. A political football, a political pawn, an economic football, and economic pawn. A social football, a social pawn.”

Malcolm X’s message – it’s worth reading the full quote, which is quite long – was that blacks need to solve their own problems and not depend on whites of either persuasion, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, since for either of them it’s just a game of power and control.

“The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros, and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, tricked, or deceived by the white liberal then Negros would get together and solve our own problems.”

Now, 55 years later, Malcolm X’s message still hasn’t gotten through to many African Americans, much less to both white and black people who continue to pursue and support policies that effectively keep blacks, and all people of the underclass, down on the new plantation. I’m reminded of his message watching the multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi and her hypocritical House Democrats kneeling in Kente cloths draped around their necks, and as trendy young white people proclaim on social media that they “stand against racism,” as if any right-thinking person doesn’t stand against racism, any less than someone might stand against kicking puppies or drowning babies. Or as politicians, lacking as much in balls as brains, call for disbanding the police, when it is black people who will be the main victims of the lawlessness, violence, and vigilantism that inevitably would ensue.

Look at what people do, not what they say

By way of disclosure, I’ve never considered myself a liberal, even during my radical phase (aspects of which persist). Like Malcolm X, I’ve never trusted self-proclaimed liberals who always have struck me as having ulterior motives or who operate under some sort of misplaced guilt or, at best, a Pollyannish view of the world. I tend to discount what people say in favor of what they do and, even more, the results they obtain through their actions and policies. This is highly relevant if you want to see the principle of “divide and rule” at work in contemporary liberal politics.

Consider this crucially important fact: While the U.S. has spent somewhere north of $22 trillion – that’s trillion, as in a thousand billion or a million million dollars, 22 times over (by some estimates, depending on how you count it, it’s closer to $27 trillion) – since LBJ declared the War on Poverty in his 1964 State of the Union address, the percentage of the population living in poverty has hardly changed at all in the past half century. Given that in the most recent normal year total U.S. GDP was just over $21 trillion, that’s a powerful lot of money to garner zero real reduction in the poverty rate. How can this be, you ask?

Look at the charts, below, to get a visual picture of the reality. What we see is that poverty was in major decline beginning in 1959, five years before Johnson’s declaration of his war on it. That decline continued for another five years, running through 1969. Beginning in 1970, a full 50 years ago, there has been essentially no long-term change in the poverty rate even as the country threw trillions of dollars of the national treasure at it.

As is visible, there have been blips up and down through both Democratic and Republican administrations and congresses, but the same overall reality persists across the span of a half century. As the third chart demonstrates, the African-American poverty rate has shown, marginally, the most improvement, especially when compared with the Hispanic and general poverty rates. But an interesting and undeniable reality emerges when you look at the first and third charts: The highest recent poverty levels in all three key categories – African-American, Hispanic, and the general population – peaked during the Obama administration, and all three reached historic lows during the Trump administration. How can this be, you might ask, given that Obama is painted as a friend of the poor and minorities and Trump is portrayed not only as their enemy, but as an out-and-out racist?

Like I said, get below the rhetoric and the reality emerges. Clearly taking the brakes off the economy and creating jobs that lower the unemployment rate and empower individuals and families, as Trump did in stark contrast to the effect his predecessor’s policies had on the economy, provides a road map for reducing poverty. Jobs are a key factor, if not the only one, in poverty reduction. There are other factors at work, too, and we’ll look at them toward the end of this piece.

Follow the money

“Follow the money” is a phrase that we learned from Deep Throat during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. It’s salient to our discussion here.

I had a sociology professor when I was an undergrad at Rutgers University sometime in the late 1960s. I don’t recall his name, but he was a black man, and I always looked forward to his classes. One thing about him was that he was straightforward and honest in his discussion of social issues and didn’t try to promote any ideology, something that seems to have become a hallmark of more recent sociological education (I can say this having since been a professor of sociology myself and seeing the ideological blather in the text books, and ostensibly believed by other professors, that is fed to students in the field).

In any case, my professor had previously worked with an anti-poverty agency on Long Island in New York. He told us how this agency had spun its wheels “studying” how to provide low-income housing to people, how much money passed through it, how it debated one approach and another approach, and in the end, not a single unit of housing was built. My professor said that, had the money the agency spent been given to the people it ostensibly had been set up to help, every one of those families could have gone out and bought their own house.

Sadly, my professor’s example is far from a unique case, given the trillions of dollars spent on “helping” poor people over the intervening five decades without any real effect (a similar calculation was made for FEMA’s spending after Hurricane Katrina when it was determined that the money the agency spent bureaucratically could have paid for a new house and two new cars for everyone who lost their home in the storm, and that, too, is far from unique).

If you still have any doubt that the vast bulk of the money spent fighting poverty doesn’t go to the people in poverty, the chart below should dispel that doubt. As per-person spending has climbed inexorably over the past six decades, it certainly hasn’t gotten to those in need of the funds. As per-person spending approaches $20,000, the poverty level this year for a family of four is set at $26,200. If the preponderance of the money went to that same theoretical family, they’d be receiving nearly $80,000, a long, long way from the poverty level. Needless to say, that’s not where most of the money goes.

When you look at the sheer volume of money involved, is it any wonder that those into whose hands, and pockets, it passes want to be sure to keep their constituents in poverty? In this context, what is said about one party in particular, the Democratic Party, that it depends on the existence of a permanent underclass for its very existence, begins to make sense and takes on credibility. Looking strictly at the numbers, the existence of poverty, maintaining as many people as possible dependent on the largesse of what passes for anti-poverty spending, bolsters its electoral power and, more, furthers the interests of its power brokers while favoring their influence and their wealth. They are the new plantation masters.

Down on the urban plantation

It’s a clever ploy, a revival of “divide and rule” for more than half a century, and the Democratic Party continues to rely on this strategy, keeping its black constituents down on the urban plantation, well into the 21^st Century. Consider for a moment these facts:

Democrats run 35 of the nation’s 50 largest cities (37 if you count the “Independent” mayors of San Antonio and Las Vegas, both of whom ran with Democratic support).
Democrats run 15 of the 16 cities ranked the worst-run cities in America in 2019 by WalletHub, including Washington, D.C., which came in 150^th out of 150 cities ranked. Other cities in the bottom 16 include Los Angeles (ranked 135^th) , Philadelphia (137^th), St. Louis (139^th), Chicago (140^th), Cleveland (141^st), Oakland (144^th), Detroit (145^th), New York (146^th), Chattanooga (147^th), and San Francisco (148^th). Gulfport, Miss., ranked 149^th, is the only one of the worst-run cities with a Republican mayor. The only big city to rank in the top 10 of best-run cities was Oklahoma City, also with a Republican mayor.
Detroit decay. Pixabay.
All of the top 10 most dangerous cities in the country, including Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Baltimore, Stockton, Cleveland, and Buffalo, have Democratic mayors. Of the top 25 most dangerous cities, most are controlled by Dems, and have poverty rates between 18 and 39 percent, compared with a 2019 national average of 12.3 percent. As gun violence runs rampant in these cities, most have strict gun control laws, giving meaning to the phrase, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.
All but two of the 10 cities rated “least healthy” on two different lists are run by Democrats.
All 10 cities with the highest numbers of homeless residents, led by Los Angeles with an estimated 58,000 homeless people, are Democratic-run sanctuary cities which provide refuge to illegal immigrants, disadvantaging lower-income legal residents of those cities and creating unsafe and unhealthy conditions for all residents.
The Democratic virtual one-party state of California, with one of the largest and most prosperous economies in the world, has the highest poverty rate of any state in the union, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure.
Six of the 10 least educated cities in America are in the same Democratic one-party state of California. In Democratic stronghold Baltimore, which ranks fourth in per-student educational spending in the nation, not a single student in 13 public high schools is proficient at math, and nine of 10 black boys in the city’s schools can’t read at grade level. Meanwhile, thousands of consultants, contractors, and administrators are paid salaries in excess of $100,000 a year by the city’s school system.
Many of the cities run by Democrats haven’t elected a Republican mayor in more than 100 years. That’s the case in Newark, N.J., ranked the fifth worst city in the nation to live in. Detroit, once the wealthiest city in America and the one LBJ planned to be the “Model City” of his Great Society, and which today is ranked the country’s worst city, hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1957, about the
Decay of Detroit, the “Model City.” Daniel Lincoln/Unsplash.
time its golden era began its swan song. Chicago, one of the country’s most segregated and violent cities, elected its last Republican mayor in 1927. St. Louis, one of the nation’s most dangerous and poverty-stricken cities, has been electing Democrats as mayor for 71 years. Philadelphia, for 68 years. Baltimore and Oakland for more than half a century. In Flint, Mich., Dems have been mayors for 88 years. In New Orleans, mayors have been Democrats since 1872 – 148 years, longer than most countries have been in existence. What do all these cities have in common, besides being Democratic fiefdoms? They’re all wracked by poverty, crime, corruption, and urban decay. If anyone cares to argue that the Democratic Party, the party that in its history supported slavery and Jim Crow, has changed over all those decades, if anything the change has been for the worse where these cities’ residents are concerned and as their condition has continued to deteriorate over the decades.

So where have all those trillions of anti-poverty dollars gone? That would be a good question to ask these mayors, city councils, state governments, their Congressional backers, and those running the various anti-poverty agencies and failed school systems, spread from coast to coast to coast. And maybe their bankers and investment brokers and real estate agents, too.

And don’t buy into the argument that other developed countries spend more on anti-poverty programs than the U.S. (for the most part, they don’t), or on healthcare (they don’t), or education (they don’t). Money, at least not its lack, isn’t the problem. Misguided programs, corrupt officials and politicians, and just plain bad policies are. Given the dismal results of those policies over such a long period of time, one has to assume that malice of intent more than just bad judgment lies at the heart of their failure. Divide and rule: Keep those poor folk down on the plantation and rake in the big bucks. Follow the money.

Martin Luther King Jr. march on Washington — Martin Luther King, Jr., leads the march on Washington, August 28, 1963. Library of Congress.

What things work and how the plantation masters work against them

There are some things that are known, at least empirically, to help people get out of poverty. The plantation masters know this, and they work against them methodically, often under cover of some sort of politico-babble. We’ll look, briefly, at them here.

Education

Getting a decent education and at least a high school diploma – and, better, a college degree — is one of the known routes out of poverty. Educational choice, through vouchers and charter schools, in many cases have been shown to offer low-income people a better education than often available in the normal public school system. Even Barack Obama said “The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.” So why do he and so many of the urban plantation masters oppose both vouchers and charter schools (while putting their own kids in private schools)?

Two-parent families

Two-parent families are another antidote to poverty. The overall child poverty rate is 17.5 percent. For children in homes headed by a single mother, it’s 50 percent. In 2015, 77.3 percent of non-immigrant black births were to unmarried mothers. For Hispanic immigrants, it was 48.9 percent. For whites, it was 30 percent. In 1965, the rate was 24 percent for black babies and 3.1 percent for white babies. There are many factors involved in this differential, the role of welfare rules that favor single mothers, households without a man or father, being just one of them. Whatever the reasons, the economic impact is significant.

Helping black men improve their situation

A better educational environment, improved employment opportunities, and staying out of trouble with the law help black men improve their situation, which overall has a positive impact on reducing poverty among African-Americans. Trump’s answers have been improving employment prospects, economic opportunity zones in under-privileged communities, and criminal justice reform. The answer of at least one Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, is to help African American, Latino, and Native American communities “start businesses selling legal marijuana.” Yup, keep those poor folks in the drug culture. After all, it’s been such a big help to their communities over many years.

Full-time employment

Finding and keeping full-time employment Is another of those elements that are basic to getting out of poverty. Rather than depending on public assistance, becoming self-sufficient is a critical step in upward mobility, and its efficacy is evidenced by the relation between a declining unemployment rate and declining poverty rate. But the new plantation masters would rather depress employment, shutter whole industries and send jobs to China, thus increasing dependency on them.

These are not the only things that impact on poverty, but they are some of the bigger ones. By now, 56 years on, it’s time to declare America’s longest war – the War on Poverty – a lost cause, and to begin to empower all people in poverty, and most especially African-Americans, as Malcolm X said, to solve their own problems, and to send the new plantation masters packing. All the signs are that they won’t go easily, and they’re already figuring out new ways of fleecing the populace and keeping folks down on the plantation. Divide and rule is as relevant today as it was in 1892, and as long as people buy into it, its impact will be as pernicious and long-lasting.

Featured image: Sugar Cane Plantation. North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy Stock. Used under Fair Use.

Fragging the Commander in Chief

By Frank Yacenda | April 18, 2020 | Comments 3 comments

If you’re old enough to remember the Vietnam War, or if you’ve done some research on it, you probably know the term ‶fragging.″ While the practice predates the Vietnam War, it became an all-too-common practice during that conflict, and the word ‶fragging″ came into the vernacular during the Vietnam War years.

The term comes from the fragmentary grenades that often were used by American soldiers to kill their own platoon and company commanders who were deemed (rightly or wrongly) to be incompetent or abusive, or who ordered their commands (often acting on orders from above) into situations considered especially dangerous. Estimates of successful and attempted fraggings during the war run from 800 to more than 1,000.

If you’ve been watching or listening to what much of the national media has had to say about Donald Trump during the ongoing coronavirus drama, things amplified by the rank-and-file never-Trumpers in the country and so-called ‶leaders″ of the Democractic Party, you might agree that it is not an exaggeration to call what is going on ‶fragging.″ The President could leave the Rose Garden and walk across the surface of the Potomac River, or declare a cure for cancer, and the media would still pillory him. And it’s not just the President who is being hit by the virtual fragmentary grenades being hurled (and who, to his credit, has generally shrugged them off), but the general U.S. populace and, of graver concern, our very democracy.

At the more mundane level, as a former journalist I am embarrassed by the moronic nature of some of the questions members of the media ask at the daily White House coronavirus news conferences. Many of these alleged reporters are simply uninformed and unprepared, while others are clearly out to pose ‶got’cha″ questions that neither illuminate nor add to public knowledge. These questions clearly are part of a larger campaign to discredit the President who, again to his credit, is quick to bat them back and call out their not-so-hidden agenda.

No accident

With the 2020 elections approaching, this campaign is no accident. It’s the last-ditch attempt by the Democratic Party and its supporters in the anti-Trump media (which, in all fairness, is most of the media) to block the reelection of Donald Trump. To them, this is less a health crisis then a political opportunity, as dodgy as it might be. In the aftermath of one failed attempt after another at undoing the results of the 2016 election, this is their last shot.

As I’ve recounted on this blog, they watched their Russia hoax and the Mueller investigation, the Ukraine non-event, and their crown jewel, the impeachment fiasco, blow up in their faces. Along the way there were the Kavanagh confirmation and border stonewalling sideshows. The closest they’ve come to stymieing the President’s program, if not actually unseating him, was tipping the House of Representatives blue in 2018. But without gaining the Senate, it wasn’t enough for them to accomplish their goals, which was to unseat a duly elected President – just one they didn’t like.

Now picture their dilemma. Faced with the unnerving prospect of nominating a Socialist as their party’s candidate to stand off against Trump – architect of the best economy in anyone’s memory – in November, the party nomenklatura huddled, called in every chit in sight and some that hadn’t yet materialized, threatened, cajoled, and bought off every other candidate in the race, threw their compliant media machinery into high gear, and voila!, engineered the primary victories of the only logical choice they had left: A doddering soon-to-be-78-year-old (17 days after election day, to be precise) former vice president who thinks kids still listen to record players and who has a hard time remembering what state he’s in or what day of the week it is. Or, for that matter, even what office he’s running for.

Jill Biden jumps to defend husband Joe Biden from animal rights activist at Biden campaign rally in Los Angeles, March 3

In pushing Joe Biden to the forefront of the race, the party poobahs were counting on the power of reminiscence for a guy who, despite his paucity of any real accomplishments and being tinged with corruption throughout his career, was enough of a milquetoast that he could provide contrast with the brash Trump. What they probably weren’t counting on was how quickly Biden’s mental acuity was fading and how the man was virtually evaporating right before our eyes. Or that their chosen ‶pro woman″ candidate would be accused of rape.

Meanwhile, as the coronavirus drama accelerated, putting Trump front and center before the nation on a daily basis, Biden has retreated to his basement in Wilmington, issuing intermittent, sputtering, semi-coherent blasts, generating doubts (including by this writer) that he will make it to the convention, much less the election.

Even the usual useful idiots in the media have shown, through their facial expressions, their doubts about Biden as he babbles his way through on-air interviews. Don’t believe me. Listen yourself to the clip on that page. Be sure not to miss the part that begins at minute 1:00. It’s hard to decide whether it’s more amusing or frightening. If nothing else, it might make you feel sorry for this guy and question why his handlers are pushing him (often under the protective shield of his wife, Jill Biden) to make these appearances. Listening to these rambles, can you picture him leading a Scout outing, much less a national response to the coronavirus? The phrase that comes to my mind is, ‶We’re all going to die.″

Setting the record straight

It would be an impossible task to address every lie and every distortion put out daily by the media, but let’s look at just some of the biggies.

Myth: Trump didn’t listen to his medical advisers early on which allowed the virus to spread.

Truth: Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has led the country’s medical response to every viral epidemic since the early 1980s, said on multiple occasions in January and February that no one needed to be concerned about this virus. On at least two occasions, on Jan. 21 and Jan. 26, he told media interviewers that the risk to the U.S. was low.

On Jan. 21 Fauci told Newsmax interviewer Greg Kelly, “Obviously, you need to take it seriously, and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing. But, this not a major threat for the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.” Then on Jan. 26 he told radio show host John Catsimatidis, ‶It’s a very, very low risk to the United States,″ adding, ‶It isn’t something the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about. Because we have ways of preparing and screening of people coming in [from China].″ Further, CDC Director Robert Redfield has said he agreed with Fauci’s statements at the time.

Fauci continued to make similar statements all the way until late February, including saying on Feb. 29 that Americans didn’t have to make any lifestyle changes due to the virus. Meanwhile, Trump announced the travel ban from China on Jan. 31 and it went into effect on Feb. 2, credited with avoiding many cases and attendant deaths being brought into the country from China. The kudos the media gave him for that? They called the travel ban ‶racist″ and ‶xenophobic.″ and Biden, without specifically referring to the travel ban, also called the President ‶xenophobic.″ On March 11 Trump announced a ban on travel from Europe, and on March 20 the EU, Canada, and other countries finally got around to announcing their own travel bans. By then Italy and Spain were on countrywide lockdowns as deaths already were piling up in those countries.

Myth: Trump was in denial about the danger the virus posed.

Truth: On Feb. 24, Nancy Pelosi, one of the President’s biggest critics, was urging people to attend Chinese New Year festivities in San Francisco’s China Town. “It’s exciting to be here, especially at this time to be able to be unified with our community,” Pelosi gushed at the time. “We want to be vigilant about what is out there in other places. We want to be careful about how we deal with it, but we do want to say to people ‘Come to Chinatown. Here we are, careful, safe, and come join us.’” On the other coast, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, another Trump critic, and New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot were urging city residents to go about their normal lives. Now who, exactly, was more in denial?

Myth: Trump has gutted the CDC and NIH and eliminated the pandemic task force that was attached to the National Security Council.

Truth: There is so much to be said about all his and the truth is so convoluted I’m not even going to try to detail it, except to say that funding for both CDC and NIH actually increased in recent years, mostly because Congress increased their funding against Administration requests to cut unnecessary positions. There has been no gutting. Read the details here.

Myth: Trump has muzzled Fauci and the other medical people on the coronavirus task force.

Truth: You’d have to be totally gullible and listening only to the media distortions rather than watching the actual daily White House news conferences (which the major networks and some cable networks have stopped carrying, either in full or in part) to believe this one. As in any major crisis-control environment, there is an attempt to coordinate public statements, which is just good management, but Fauci has made it clear that he has never been muzzled. In response to New York Times claims that he had been, Fauci responded, ‶I’ve never been muzzled and I’ve been doing this since Reagan.That was a real misrepresentation of what happened.”

Myth: The Democrats in Congress want to help working people and small business and it’s the Republicans who don’t care about them.

Nancy “Let Them Eat Ice Cream” Pelosi fat and happy while America suffers. What passes for “leadership” in today’s Democratic Party.

Truth: With Democrats claiming, under media cover, that it was Republican desire to turn the multi-trillion dollar stimulus package into a corporate slush fund, the main reason why Congress couldn’t quickly agree to get aid to millions of laid off American workers and closing small businesses was very different. It was because House Speaker and Democratic leader Nancy ‶Let Them Eat Ice Cream″ Pelosi drew up a competing 1,119-page bill stuffed with a Democrat wish-list that had nothing to do with the coronavirus or assistance to people, businesses, or hospitals. On the list were provisions to mandate ‶diversity″ on the boards of companies receiving stumulus funds, same-day voter registration and early voting requirements, collective bargaining for federal employees, carbon-offset requirements for airlines receiving assistance, a bail out of the U.S. Postal Service, paying off student debt, resurrecting the Obamaphone program and, of course, funding for the Kennedy Center in Washington. As House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (the same Jim Clyburn who was single-handedly responsible for putting Joe Biden back on the political map) put it in a conference call with his Dem colleagues, ‶This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” Never mind that people across the country were unable to pay their rent or feed their families. This was politics at its abysmal worse (which is really saying something).

Now that the funds earmarked for small business have already been depleted, Pelosi is again holed up in her San Francisco mansion gloating about her chocolates and $13 a pint ice cream stashed in her $24,000 refrigerator, holding up adding more funds to the program while Americans suffer through the biggest financial crisis to strike the country in 90 years. If there was ever more proof of her true priorities, this is it.

The misinformation spills over to hatred

Have no doubt: This campaign of misinformation by the media and the Dems is spilling over to generate further division and outright hatred among what is already a polarized country. You don’t have to look far to see it. To illustrate this consequence, intended or not, here is a random sampling of just a few of the hateful postings I’ve seen online in the past few days (never mind the factual lapses, these quotes weren’t selected for their credibility):

‶Trump is a mass murderer, period, and any person even considering voting for him should lose their voting rights forever.″

‶Trump’s response to the pandemic has been an unmitigated disaster, his press briefings are all about him telling lies about how great he is. His approval ratings have dropped. He will only help states get vital supplies if they suck up to him, while they compete against each other for protective clothing, ventilators, etc. He knew from the 20th of January about the risks, yet he did nothing until near the end of March in terms of social distancing. Even his own party wish he would STFU.″

‶The only political turds in this country are WR0NGIST G0P/C0NS. And only WR0NGIST G0P/C0N turds refuse to see it. You know almost nothing about politics, bro.″

‶the choice is between evil and the Devil Incarnate. the choice is between a lousy crook who has NO vision whatsoever and a racist criminal who is set on destroying our entire way of government, our entire way of economy and our entire planetary environment. I will vote for Biden because not voting or voting for a 3rd party candidate is to give a vote to the Rump in the White House…″

Nice stuff, huh?

Finally, on a personal note, I myself, your not-so-humble correspondent, have been the target of some of this hate in the past two weeks, in what might be the unlikeliest (but isn’t) of places. We have this neighborhood online thing, part of the nationwide NextDoor network, ostensibly to promote neighborliness among, well, neighbors. Along with the usual lost-dog postings and pictures of Bambi in peoples’ yards, some in the neighborhood have had the temerity to post things about the coronavirus, understandingly being a subject for conversation, and within a short time the Trump haters have jumped on and do their best to take over the threads and shut down everyone else. Not to exclusively defend the other side, since both sides put up their fair share of misinformation, but in a couple of cases, when I couldn’t stand the verbal fisticuffs any more, I’ve posted something intended to stop the politicization of what should, I think, be considered a national crisis and suggesting that people consider pulling together instead of apart

Some positive comments were posted in response to my postings, and then the anti-Trump haters jumped back on to spew their venom. They just can’t let anyone who disagrees with them or even has another view of things have the last word. In one case the whole thread shortly thereafter disappeared. But in another case one of my efforts was rewarded by having my post, intended to be conciliatory, deleted and my account disabled. Questioning NextDoor why this occurred garnered the fairly predictable blather about ‶neighborliness,″ blah, blah, blah (and, while it wasn’t applicable to my posting, there was boilerplate blather about not referring to the virus as a ‶Chinese virus″ even though we all know where it originated).

While I was being lectured about ‶neighborliness,″ what about its lack in those who got me blocked? I have little doubt but that the haters are probably still there. I haven’t bothered to go back even though my NextDoor-imposed exile has lapsed. I lived perfectly well before discovering NextDoor and I imagine I can live perfectly well without it going forward. And I don’t need more hatred and venom in my life.

I can survive without NextDoor, but can the country and our democracy survive this continual wave of hatred and misinformation? That remains to be seen.

Photo credits: Featured image: Peter Linford/Pixabay, used with permission; Jill defends Joe, Bloomberg/Bloomberg/Getty Images, used under Fair Use; Nancy tells the people to eat ice cream, CBS, used under Fair Use

The State of the Union: Why I’m Not Optimistic

By Frank Yacenda | February 10, 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

“And after a while you’ll hear a deep voice saying, ‘Neighbor, how stands the Union?’ Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed . . . “ — Stephen Vincent Benét in The Devil and Daniel Webster

This isn’t going to be a blow-by-blow account of President Trump’s State of the Union address last week. If you didn’t see the speech, you should, so go find it somewhere and watch and listen to it. Allow plenty of time — it went on for more than an hour and 20 minutes, one of the longest ever.

To offer my own view of it, having weathered many SOTUs from a number of presidents, I thought it one of the most positive and flawless, both in terms of substance and delivery. I’m not alone in that. The CBS poll conducted after the address found 76% of viewers had a positive view of it and the CNN poll found 59% saw the speech as “very positive” and another 17% rated it somewhat positive. Only about 23% of CNN’s viewers, which normally one would judge to be mostly opposed to the President, had a negative view of the address. Still, there is a distinctly partisan subtext to these poll results. The CBS poll found that while 97% of Republican viewers and 80% of independents had a positive view of the speech, only 30% of Democratic viewers saw it as positive. Still, in the days after the SOTU, Trump’s approval rose to 50% in the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, and overall his ratings stand as the highest of any President at this point in his presidency since Ronald Reagan.

All that said, if Daniel Webster confronted me at this moment and asked the question Benét attributes to him, I’m afraid that I’d fail his test. After listening to Trump and observing the reaction by the Democrats in attendance to most of what he had to say and looking toward the future, I’m not very optimistic about the actual state of the Union, and whither it is headed. This isn’t a new development for me, but, if anything, the SOTU address just deepened my less-than-optimistic view of things.

Without getting lost in the weeds of what numbers were completely correct and which ones were fudged a bit – there is evidence the President did fudge some of his figures, though my recollection is that this isn’t the first president to do so, and in terms of painting the big picture they more or less accurately did – there was plenty of positive news reported in the speech. And much of that news would, one would think, please all Americans, regardless of party leaning or affiliation. This fit with the predictions made in advance of the address, that the President would attempt to bridge partisan gaps and reach out to the nation.

Of course, judging by the reaction on the Dem side of the aisle, the partisan gap not only wasn’t bridged, few were willing to even give him credit for any of the progress the nation has made in the past two years. Last year I wrote about Democratic reaction during the SOTU in my piece Haters Are Gonna Hate. The title of that piece sums up pretty well the attitude on that side of the aisle, an assessment that hasn’t been moderated by words and actions by the Dems in the intervening year. And it wasn’t much better during this year’s SOTU.

Of course, in the November mid-terms the Dems picked up enough seats in the House to gain control of that chamber. And many of the newly elected Dems are women. They made their presence known by all wearing white to the SOTU. Joining them was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — who, if you weren’t marooned on an ice flow in the Bering Sea last month, you know caused a postponement in the SOTU during the government shutdown — sitting to the rear of the President.

I confess that when Pelosi came into the chamber, my reaction was, “She’s wearing white after Labor Day?” Something one is not supposed to do. But then as all the other Democratic women filtered in also dressed in white, I realized this was done to make a statement. Apparently it was meant to honor the suffragist women who worked to secure the right of women to vote in the early part of the last century, who also wore white, but at the same time it created a very strong visual effect as television cameras scanned the audience. It could have been a positive effect, but I think much of that potential was squandered as the speech went on.

Early in his address Trump discussed how the economy had improved since he was elected, underscored by historically low unemployment rates for African-Americans, Hispanics, the handicapped, and women. More Americans are employed today than ever before in our history, he said, and even manufacturing jobs – written off by the previous administration – were coming back in significant numbers. One would think any American, even Democrats, could applaud all this. But no, the Dems sat on their hands, all the more visible amid that sea of white. This would appear mystifying, unless you recognize that this is a party that depends on a permanent underclass for its very existence. The numbers contradict Democratic claims that President Trump doesn’t care about blacks, Hispanics, women, or just about anyone else, just as they represent huge positive improvements over the numbers of the previous Obama administration. But the Dems wouldn’t give Trump credit for any of that.

Trump, following the lead of preceding presidents, had a cohort of honored guests present in the gallery, and he and his staff did a masterful job of selecting them: Veterans who had helped bring about the Allied victory in World War II; a Holocaust survivor who, as a child, was en route to extermination at Dachau when American troops liberated the death train he and his family were on; the father of a sailor killed in the terrorist attack on the USS Cole; a police officer seriously wounded during a gunman’s attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue in October; a 10-year-old girl who raised funds for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and then won her own battle against a brain tumor; three generations of a family who lost parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents to a criminal illegal alien; an ICE agent who investigated and charged cases of sex trafficking and abuse among illegal aliens crossing the southern border. Even Buzz Aldrin, second man to set foot on the moon (and with whom I had opportunity to pal around with briefly back when I covered the space program), was in attendance.

It would have been pretty scandalous if the Democrats didn’t stand to applaud these guests. But there were times those in that sea of white appeared to not know how to react. They’d look at each other trying to see what others were doing. Should they stand? Should they sit? Should they applaud, or maintain silence? There sure weren’t many signs of individual initiative. And at times Speaker Pelosi gave hand signals to them, mostly indicating that they should cool their more negative responses.

At one point, later in the speech, Trump said, “No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58 percent of the newly created jobs last year.” Now this was about the strong economy and how it has benefited women, but the women-in-white took it as a queue to congratulate themselves. They jumped up and started cheering and high-fiving one another, as if the President was talking about them. Clearly taken by surprise, Trump, smiling, ad-libbed, “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

As Trump went on, noting that all Americans could be proud that we have more women in the work force than ever before, the Dem women continued to congratulate themselves as if they had anything to do with it. Trump again paused, and then added, “Don’t sit yet, you’re going to like this.” He then went on to his biggest applause line of the night: “And exactly one century after Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before.” That line even brought Speaker Pelosi to her feet, and the chamber, beginning with the women-in-white, burst into a chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” It was the second one of the night, the first one breaking out earlier on the GOP side, and the President clearly wasn’t expecting it. He looked around, and then said, “That’s great. Congratulations.”

But the show of enthusiasm was brief. Just as things calmed down, Trump went on to decry the late-term abortion bills recently passed in New York and considered in Virginia, and described how these would permit what amounts to infanticide. And not one of the women-in-white was willing to show any emotion about this. What struck me was how anyone, especially a woman, would not be troubled by killing babies, as Trump put it. But the only thing the women-in-white seemed troubled by was that it was even mentioned.

As the cameras panned around the room, the looks on some Democratic faces showed nothing other than cynicism. Throughout the speech, whenever the camera focused on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, slumped down in his seat and smirking smugly, the only word that came to mind was “smarmy.” I had a similar response when the cameras panned to California Senator Kamala Harris, or Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono. One exception was West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who seemed about the only Democrat willing to applaud for many of the positive things the President reported. It seemed to me that Manchin is in the wrong party, which probably also has occurred to the majority of West Virginia voters who re-elected him.

Which brings me to the crux of my concern for the state of the actual Union. In general, I can’t get too worked up over any particular politician. In theory, that’s what elections are for, and voters can vote out, or not vote in, bad apples. But it is exactly that, or they, the voters, that gets me worked up and very, very worried. Who are these voters that put people like Schumer, Harris, Hirono, and Pelosi into office? What would besiege someone to vote for the likes of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or a Maxine Waters or a Richard Blumenthal?

What the Democratic Party and many of its so-called rising stars have learned is that the promise of free stuff wins votes. Free healthcare for all. Free education for all. Free income for all. Free, free, free. As a marketing professional, I know that the word “free” is one of the most powerful motivating words. It sells products. It generates responses. And it wins votes. The only problem is, when it comes to things government does, nothing is free. Sooner or later it all has to be paid for by someone, that someone being those who pay taxes. Which, on some level or other, is most of us. But then, there comes the call, by pols like Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to soak the rich (or, as Warren would do it, confiscate their wealth, the Constitution be damned). Not that even such schemes would be able to fund all the “free” stuff being promised. Not even close.

The lack of economic sense boggles the mind. And there is nothing more boggling than the “Green New Deal” resolution rolled out by the Dems a couple days after the SOTU. This piece of vote-bait was notably touted by Ocasio-Cortez, who has the economic sense of an otter (with no insult intended to otters, which are one of my favorite animals, and even otters have the sense not to get involved with things about which they don’t have a clue). This thing is so ludicrous that the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel, who tweeted that she laughed so hard she nearly cried, said that “if a bunch of GOPers plotted to forge a fake Democratic bill showing how bonkers the party is, they could not have done a better job.”

That’s all well and good, and those among us who can see reality through the fog of fantasy, if not fraud, are likely to reject these political hucksters. But let’s not forget for even an instant that the majority of voters, as slim as that majority was, would have put Hillary Clinton in office in 2016, and it was only the Constitutional dictates of the Electoral College that prevented that. As we look around the country, we see how the tide is slowly turning. States that used to be solidly red are turning purple, even blue. And many of those Democrats elected are on the far left of the party, with enticements of free stuff flying. Despite the President’s promise in the SOTU that America would never become a socialist country, that’s a promise many on the Dem side are willing to challenge. Even in my own state, Florida, key gubernatorial and senatorial races very narrowly went to Republicans, despite a strong economy. The self-avowedly socialist Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum, now facing state ethics charges, was defeated by just 32,463 votes out of more than 8.2 million cast, a mere .4% of the vote. And very small numbers of primary voters were able to get Ocasio-Cortez elected in New York, voting out a well established, but less radical, Democratic incumbent.

Meanwhile, the media, which should be a mainstay of an informed electorate but isn’t, maintains a steady anti-Trump drumbeat, with 92% of the coverage of his presidency being negative, according to an extensive study by the Media Research Institute. And they almost completely ignore – like the Dems at the SOTU – his major accomplishment, the soaring economy. After all, if you want to make people feel like victims, and you want to make them believe that you have the solutions, no matter that those solutions make no sense on the reality plane, and you have the media on your side, you have a pretty good chance of winning over voters. Just as in ancient Rome, bread and circuses play well with the populace.

That’s the formula I see the Dems applying. And, neighbor, put it all together, and that’s why I’m not very optimistic for the state of the Union.

What Does a Trillion Dollars Look Like?

By Frank Yacenda | September 17, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Back in the mid-1990s I was posted as Economic and Commercial Officer to the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, Albania. This was the time of the massive pyramid schemes into which most of the small country’s population sunk their funds and, with the schemes’ inevitable collapse, when Albania was brought to anarchy. I sounded the warning of what was going on and what would happen shortly after my arrival in Tirana in mid-1995, and my prediction of when the collapse would commence, in October a year later, was accurate almost to the week. To give proper credit, it was economy watchers in other organizations that brought my attention to the building crisis, though the U.S. Embassy and the State Department were blithely ignorant of what was going on until I started reporting on the schemes, gaining me an instant and very interested audience back in Washington.

In the midst of the schemes’ collapse some of the scheme heads and promoters bandied about references to large sums of money that they had taken in, such as $500 million, or even a billion dollars. This in a country of some 3 million people and a per capita income under $1,000. No one seemed to have any concept of what such amounts really meant or how big a billion dollars was, and many were willing to take the claims at face value. So I took it upon myself to write a piece about what a billion dollars – 1,000 million dollars – look like. You can see that piece here.

Now fast forward to 2018, and we here in the U.S. live in a country where not billions, but trillions of dollars, are bandied about like they’re nothing. Consider that the current federal government debt is $21.48 trillion, with an additional $1.2 trillion in state debt and $1.92 trillion in local government debt bringing total public debt to $24.6 trillion. Consumer debt – credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and personal loans – is approaching $4 trillion, and when mortgage debt is added in, private debt in the U.S. stands at $13.21 trillion. U.S. combined public and private debt, therefore, is nearly $38 trillion. Compare those numbers with the country’s Gross Domestic Product – the total sum of domestic economic activity – of about $20 trillion, or the entire world’s total GDP, known as Gross World Product, or GWP, which in 2014 was $78.28 trillion. That means the U.S. debt ratio is approaching (and sometimes surpasses) double U.S. GDP, and is nearly half of total world economic output. Meanwhile, the federal government budget for the fiscal year that begins October 1 is $4.407 trillion, with a projected deficit of $985 billion, which will be added to the debt.

All that is scary enough on its face, but it still doesn’t tell us what a trillion dollars looks like. So let’s dive into that question and try to put a face on that number.

First, the basics. Just as a billion dollars is 1,000 million dollars, a trillion dollars is 1,000 billion dollars, or 1 million million dollars. That’s a 1 with 12 zeroes after it. Like this: 1,000,000,000,000. So if you’re fortunate enough to be a millionaire, with $1 million in assets, you would just need to multiply your fortune 1,000 times to become a billionaire, or to multiply it 1 million times to become a trillionaire. There aren’t any trillionaires in the world – the world’s richest person is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth some $112 billion – but Apple became, at least for awhile, the first contemporary company to surpass $1 trillion in value, based on its stock price, on August 2.

Let’s use some of the same examples I previously used to illustrate a billion dollars, but now to give you some idea of what a trillion dollars look like.

Let’s say you go the bank and take out a trillion one-dollar bills. Just for fun, you decide to stretch them out end-to-end. You’d find this to be a tough task since they will stretch some 95,000,000 miles (150,000,000 kms), or 3,800 times around the Earth at the Equator. Actually, since the distance from the Earth to the sun is 93,000,000 miles, you could spread them out across deep space between here and the sun, and a couple million miles on the way back.

If you decide you don’t have time for a trip to the sun and part-way back, you ask the bank to give you your trillion dollars in $100 bills, the largest current denomination bill issued by the U.S. Treasury. Laying these notes end-to-end, you’d only have to lay down a trail of 950,000 miles (1,500,000 kms), or a mere 38 times around the Earth at the Equator. If, on the other hand, you’re the space-going type, you’d be able lay them out to the moon and back – twice.

Now you go to the bank and just ask the teller to stack your trillion dollars outside. You’ll take them in $100 notes since you don’t have much room in the trunk of your car. You better be prepared, though, for a surprise. Your trillion dollars will stack 631 miles (1,015 kms) high, two and a half times the orbital altitude of the International Space Station. Now if you were to stack the federal budget deficit in $100 bills, you’d have a stack that reaches 13,554 miles (21,813 kms) high. Consider that the Earth’s diameter at the Equator is just 7,900 miles (12,714 kms), and you’ll have some idea of the scale of this. You see now why you had best not ask for your trillion dollars in singles, which would stack 63,100 miles (101,500 kms) high, almost eight times the polar diameter of the Earth. Now multiply that by 21.48 – the number of trillions in the federal budget deficit – and . . . well, you get the idea.

Okay, I get it. These dimensions are hard to picture. You’re more the saving type, so let’s see how long it will take you to save a trillion dollars. Notionally, you earn the average (median) U.S. national individual income of around $32,000. Since your spouse fully supports you, and you’re good at not paying any taxes, you’re able to stash away all $32,000. Hopefully patience is one of your stronger characteristics, since it will take you a mere 31 million years – 31,250,000 years, to be exact – to save $1 trillion. Of course, that could pose a problem. Humans in their current form have been on the planet only about 200,000 years. Humanoid ancestors were around about 6 million years ago. So you’re falling short by more than a factor of five of all human and proto-human life on Earth.

Now let’s say you’re doing a whole lot better than that and you can save $50,000, not in a year, but in a day. That means you can sock away $18,250,000 a year. In that case, it would only take you 54,794 years to save $1 trillion. If you were to save long enough to pay off all the public and private debt in the U.S., at $50,000/day it would take you 2,071,761 years, more or less, to get the pink slip on the debt. Kind of puts that 30-year mortgage into perspective, doesn’t it?

Forget saving. That’s not your style. You’re more the spending type, as is your spouse. You’re among the lucky one percenters, together earning $400,000 a year. You decide to spend it all (taxes be damned), and are aiming to spend a cool $1 trillion. Well, that would only take you a quarter million years – that’s 250,000 years.

Let’s say you’re the lucky type, instead. The very lucky type. Starting the year Christ was born, you buy a lottery ticket that miraculously wins and nets you $500 million every single year. You put away that $500 million prize, and the next $500 million prize, and the 1,998 $500 million prizes after that, and you finally reach $1 trillion in winnings – 18 years ago. Two thousand years after your winning streak began, your trillion dollars will go to your distant heirs.

Looking at things from a different perspective, the current U.S. federal budget deficit equates to more than $65,950 in debt for every one of the 325.7 million men, women, and children living in the U.S. Adding in all the other debt, and the burden becomes more than $116,000 per every single capita. Again, keep in mind that the average adult annual income is just about $32,000, and average U.S. household income is about $59,000.

So now you have some idea what a trillion dollars looks like. And if that isn’t enough to freak you out, or at minimum give you cause for pause, I don’t know what would.

If you have some other illustrations, please post them here in your comments.

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