Category: Politics

The Israel-Hamas conflict – Choosing Sides

The goal of Hamas’s bombing efforts was to kill as many Jews as possible: Jews in hospitals, Jews in schools, Jews in old age homes, Jews sleeping in their beds, Jews wherever they may be.

Richard William LawrenceLeave a comment

The current conflict between Hamas and Israel has been seized upon by some to be a pivotal moment to re-evaluate the United States’ posture towards our ally in the Middle East. I specifically use the word ‘ally’ because on many different levels, that is what Israel is. Before we kick our ally to the curb and abandon the only Democracy in the Middle East to Hamas, whose charter specifically calls for Israel’s destruction, it would do us all well to throw the jingoisms from both the Right and the Left in the trash and look at the situation as it presents itself to those committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment wherever they may be found today.

Much is being made of Israel’s bombing of Gaza, specifically the targets chosen by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). As of this writing a cease-fire has been brokered, but over 1,000 buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, including 17 hospitals and the offices of the Associate Press. Hamas has a long and documented history of using schools, hospitals and other “soft targets”, as they are called, to hide weapons and fighters so absent a significant ground invasion of Gaza by IDF forces, the only alternative available to Israel was to return like fire. This brings up an important point which is noticeably lacking in most of the current discussions: what triggered this current conflict? Look no further than the 4,000 or so rockets that Hamas fired into Israel indiscriminately. The goal of Hamas’s bombing efforts was to kill as many Jews as possible: Jews in hospitals, Jews in schools, Jews in old age homes, Jews sleeping in their beds, Jews wherever they may be. This fact seems to be overlooked by many, especially from many pundits on the Left, who instead actually approve of Hamas’s actions. It is interesting to read some of the Left’s screeds justifying the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians by Hamas. Internationally, over 70% of UN condemnations are directed at Israel while the systematic starvation of the Yemeni people by Saudi Arabia, the religious cleansing going on in Myanmar, China’s genocide of the Uighurs, and North Korea’s brutal treatment of its own people, to name but a few, are mostly ignored. I’d go so far to say, dear reader, that some of the above examples may have slipped your mind, all of which are far worse than anything done or alleged to have been done by the IDF. Yet, if one is to believe some of the op-eds, Israel has ignored Nietzsche’s warning about staring into the abyss and have become no different than Nazi’s.

As I said earlier, Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East and that fact alone should have every single thinking person supporting Israel against the current aggression by Hamas. This does not mean supporting the Netanyahu government’s egregious actions towards the Palestinian people but it does mean that the criticism currently being directed at Israel as a whole is misplaced. It is not the Israeli people, who are also burying their loved ones because of this horrific state of affairs, but the actions of their current government that should be the target of criticism.

The solution is to root out and destroy Hamas where ever its supporters rear their ugly head. If the IDF forces had enough intelligence to target locations where Hamas stored and launched weapons and where they gathered then a ground offensive by the IDF to root them out was and continues to be the proper response. The collateral damage, specifically the killing of Palestinian non-combatants, would be reduced significantly. This alone makes the argument for boots on the ground extremely persuasive. Those actions and policies of the Netanyahu government which cross the line of international law should be condemned by the United States quickly and forcefully. In much the same way that the rest of the world made a clear distinction between the Trump administration and the American people, the same distinction should be made between Israel’s current government and the Israeli people and the State of Israel. The current rhetoric comingles the two and smacks of anti-Semitism which is on the rise here in the US as a result of the conflict.

Finally, I’ll leave you, dear reader, with a question. If a hostile foreign power started lobbing a few hundred missiles a day into your hometown while chanting, “Death to the American pigs!”, and it turns out that some of your loved ones were killed when the Middle School was turned into a smoking crater, what do you think you would want your government to do? I doubt very much you would shrug your shoulders and justify their actions in the same way Hamas’s actions are being justified in some of the US press.

The Only Freedom That Matters

Critical thinking is the alphabet and grammar of science.

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

This is a submission for the upcoming issue of Secular World.

“I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody’s easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

‘Freedom’ is a word that is on everyone’s lips these days or so it seems. From the stomach-turning image of the Q-Anon Shaman yelling “Freedom!” into his microphone as seditious group of terrorists stormed the US Capitol to right-wing pundits on TV screaming about how being asked to perform basic hygienic rituals to stem the spread of a deadly pathogen is a full-frontal assault on our freedoms, it seems that everywhere we turn we are told that our freedoms are being taken from us. This, coupled with the ever-present admonition that things have never been worse and are on the verge of chaos, makes it seem that violent action is what is needed and, indeed, we have seen these calls translate into action. We have seen the scourge of fascism march openly in the streets of the United States, chanting “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” ending with a madman driving his car into pedestrians, ostensibly to “own the libs” and killing one of them while others, using metal pipes, beat a black man senseless in a parking garage. To any thinking person watching these events it would seem that a wave of madness has swept over society and, it could be persuasively argued, they would not be wrong in concluding this.

The freedom that is at stake, however, is not the freedom to believe that the Earth is flat or that vaccines cause autism, rather, it is the freedom to know both ourselves and the universe in which we find ourselves, rather it is the freedom that most do not realize they have yet swim in every day of their lives. It is the freedom to know ourselves and the world in which we live and that freedom comes directly from the inquiries of science. Science is under attack, ironically, by those whose lives are completely beholden to science in the very areas they attack. Take, for instance, the vaccine deniers: They pontificate about the dangers of vaccines while blissfully immune from the deadly diseases that have plagued mankind because they are fully vaccinated. A list of vaccines and the diseases which they prevent can be found here. I would extort the reader to pull up this list and be amazed at the amount of human suffering that has been eliminated by the science on that chart. To be free of those scourges hints at the freedom that is taken for granted. What is that freedom?

For the longest time, our species fought and struggled to stay alive. If you were lucky to survive childbirth and youth, you became a hunter or a gatherer depending on the gametes your DNA bestowed you with. At the mercy of disease, predators, weather, we spent our 30-40 years in pain, fear and suffering, helpless against the assault of the world around us. Fast-forward to the current day where we are flying drones on Mars, using mRNA technology to fight new diseases having already eradicated some and able to prevent many more, having all the libraries of the world and all their knowledge at our fingertips, the list goes on and on. What gave us this ability to first insulate ourselves and then to explore the world? Science did and by giving us all these technologies freed us from the life of a hunter gatherer and allowed us the freedom to choose. Freedom to choose how we spend our lives, how best to care for each other, who we are and how we got here, and the understanding that all we see was not made for us six thousand years ago by some vindictive and cruel god to who we are beholden in our every thought, word and deed. It is the freedom to live the life we choose, without the fears that had been constant companions to our species. This is what science gives us.

Today, we have a concerted effort to attack both science as a discipline and the people who practice it. There is a remedy for this and that is for our educational institutions to institute a K- 12 Critical Thinking curriculum in all public schools in the United States. This will have an immediate effect. High School seniors, even with just one year of Critical Thinking training, will have the essential skills to begin to parse what they hear and what they read. Imagine an electorate which asks “How do you know this to be true?” This is precisely the fruit that a Critical Thinking curriculum will give forth. As each successive class graduates, each will contain more sound thinkers more and more immunized to shoddy thinking and more and more comfortable with thinking in a scientific manner.

“Critical thinking is the alphabet and grammar of science.“

In a policy piece for Scientific American, Jim Daley wrote, “Since taking office on January 20, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have signaled a clear commitment to science and pledged sweeping initiatives to reestablish and elevate its role in the federal government.” The full article can be found here. All the proposals thus far by the Biden administration to get us back on track with science should evoke a sign of relief from any thinking person. More is needed, however, and the curriculum in our schools should also reflect this commitment to science by investing in both the methodologies (science classes) and the foundation of rationality and the scientific method, Critical Thinking.

The Trump Coup and Why It Will Not Happen

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

The cover story for the November 2020 issue of the Atlantic, The Election That Could Break America, has been making the rounds all day on social media along with dire predictions of how The Great Experiment, our United States, is doomed. My Twitter feed is completely covered with this and political pundits from all sides are weighing in on how this will be pulled off by Trump and the Republicans and there is nothing that can be done to stop this. They are wrong.

Trump is certainly up to his usual tricks by refusing to commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election unless, of course, he wins. There is no doubt that the Republican political machinery is in high-gear figuring out ways to try and steal the election with tactics ranging from outright voter suppression to back room machinations in the various battleground states. All their work will be for naught, unfortunately for them.

In his Atlantic article, Barton Gellman outlines the various ways Trump and the Republicans will try to steal the election. I won’t dispute a single thing in the article; his research is impeccable and the different scenarios he paints are extremely plausible. From having the Boogaloo Bois and other right-wing groups show up at the polls to intimidate voters to throwing out thousands if not millions of mail-in ballots, as well as all the other nefarious tricks that Trump and his supporters could possible use to subvert the will of the American people, Gellman’s article is like a Mike Tyson barrage, the end result being Trump getting another four years or the US Government grinding to a standstill with no exit strategy other than capitulating to Trump and his demands. Make no mistake about it, a second Trump term is the most dangerous prospect this country faces. The fact that Trump is actively trying to subvert the election now should be taken as a signal that Trump knows how precarious his position is. A large voter turnout would, as Trump himself has said, “be the end of the Republican party”.

So what is the source of my optimism that Trump’s efforts to steal this election will fail? Simply this: Back in August, Politico and the New York Times reported that Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson reached out to Trump regarding the Corona virus situation and the effects it was having on the economy. The conversation grew increasingly confrontational with Trump accusing Adelson of not contributing enough and Republicans are now very concerned that Trump has alienated Adelson and that Adelson’s cash has stopped flowing. Adelson, who is the CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, was concerned because the revenues from his casinos had taken a significant hit due to the Coronavirus and the subsequent closing of the casinos. Adelson’s bio can be found here. While Adelson’s support has centered around getting legislation passed to further the interests of Israel, this spirit of philanthropy went right out the window when he saw the coffers of his casino empire starting to diminish. Hence the call to Trump. Trump, unaware of the tens of millions of dollars that Adelson has given in support of Republicans became antagonistic and, in typical Trump fashion, blamed Adelson for not contributing more. Adelson reportedly hung up.

While this story received very little coverage in the press and the little it did receive was quickly forgotten, the importance of the exchange is not diminished in the least. Adelson is a multi-billionaire and the huge transfer of wealth that we have been constantly hearing about has resulted in many millionaires becoming billionaires and billionaires becoming multi-billionaires. Most of this income growth has come through Wall Street, primarily the stock market. The stock market has a very fragile psyche and nothing causes investors to turn tail and run more than political unrest. If Trump makes good on his threats to undermine the democratic process the resulting backlash will render this country ungovernable and the economic hit will be catastrophic. Trillions of dollars will vanish with little or no hope of recovering it. You can be sure that all this wealth and power is not going to let a conman and huckster like Trump destroy their fortunes and the lifestyles they live. They will turn on him like they turned on Bernie Madoff who is currently serving a 150-year sentence in Federal Prison for running a Ponzi scheme that bilked these very same super rich clients. There will be no coup, the election will proceed as all elections have and, hopefully, the Trump nightmare will be over along with the Republican party.

A country with no defense.

Richard William LawrenceLeave a comment

As the pandemic rages across America, social media is filled with memes and personal declarations about the ‘right’ to choose to wear a mask when out in public.  Earlier this week, President Trump ordered that hospital data regarding COVID19 will no longer be sent to the CDC.  Instead, it will be sent to the White House.  A little further digging showed that the data will actually go to two private companies both owned by friends of the President. There is a coordinated campaign by the White House to undermine the credibility of Dr. Anthony Fauci as his statements regarding COVID19 are “undermining the President’s message.” The White House views this pandemic as a PR battle, not as a battle against a pathogen that is killing Americans and threatening to overwhelm our healthcare system to the point where it may very well collapse completely from both the number of cases and the attrition of healthcare workers from the virus.

I could provide example after example of the dysfunction in our political leadership and in our citizens in failing to deal with this pandemic. What is clear is that the American response to COVID19 has been a failure by any objective standard one wishes to use. The end result is that we must resign ourselves to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the crippling of thousands who are lucky to survive a bout with the virus, and the damage to the economy that has yet to be fully grasped. We may very well feel the effects of this for generations.

The response by the foreign press and my friends who live outside of the United States is quite sobering.  The most common sentiment I see is pity and confusion.  How could the United States, the world leader in science, be crippled by this virus? How much needless suffering is being imposed on Americans?  Why does the United States refuse to follow the practices of all the other countries that have beaten this virus and now report zero cases at their hospitals for days and, in some cases, for weeks? There are attempts by many political pundits to understand why this has happened but there is one fact that they all agree on: The United States was wide open to both the introduction and spread of this virus.  It has neither the infrastructure nor the will to fight this virus. The infrastructure has been dismantled by the Trump administration and various media outlets have convinced a significant number of Americans that science is only one opinion among many. The eyes of our friends and allies are filled with tears as they watch us suffer through this.

There are other eyes watching the goings-on here that are not filled with tears. They are watching intently at our catastrophic failure to deal with a pathogen that has a five to ten percent mortality rate at best. They see the rest of the world walling us off; a US passport is essentially useless at this point.  These eyes are also in possession of military-grade pathogens that have been engineered to be incredibly effective at killing their hosts. We are talking about mortality rates of 50% or better. At this point, it is even questionable if we could identify the pathogen before it killed millions of Americans.   Were we to uncover intelligence that something like this was about to happen, our intelligence communities would not be believed by a significant number of Americans and politicians. Our once great laboratories have been shut down and defunded and hundreds of scientists who specialized in the field of pathogens have been given their walking papers. The scientific capability to identify and fight something like this is gone. Our pathetic response to COVID19 shows every bad actor in the world we are completely defenseless against a concerted biological attack against this country.

We live in a culture that has become detached from reality.  We have people here in America that believe the earth is flat and is only six thousand years old.  Some of these people hold positions of immense political power.  The Vice President comes to mind as does the Secretary of State. They have deluded themselves to the point where they have left this country completely defenseless. Let us hope that none of the existential threats that are out there decide to take advantage of this situation we find ourselves in.

 

 

COVID 19 and Science Denialism

Richard William Lawrence2 Comments

“Isn’t it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us – and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.”― Isaac Asimov, The Secret of the Universe

As of today, May 20th, 2020, COVID 19 has killed 324,962 worldwide.  Almost a third of those deaths, 93,533, have occurred in the United States.  We are currently conducting what I call the Grand Experiment here in the States.  In spite of the unanimous opinion of scientists and doctors, we are opening the United States back up, giving the virus back vectors that allowed it to spread and quickly threaten to overcome both the healthcare system here in the states as well as other healthcare systems around the world.  In the interest of higher stock prices, we are willing to risk both American lives and the sure destruction of the economy if the virus gets out of control.

Donald Trump has called this effort a “war”.  His critics claim he is simply using hyperbole so as to cement his legacy as a “war-time” President. In this instance, however, I agree with him.  Invaders can take all forms and come at us in many different ways. It doesn’t necessarily have to be rival gangs of mammals equipped with guns, aircraft, and explosives.  It could be an invasive species of insect that preys on insects beneficial to our agriculture or, as with the Zika virus, the insects can transmit a virus directly. In the case of the Coronavirus which causes COVID 19, we are the carriers as the virus spreads throughout our environment. So this is a war in every sense of the word; our opponent uses stealth so it is invisible.  Science, until it develops a vaccine or a treatment, such as Tamiflu for the influenza virus, has given us clear instructions on how to slow down the spread and, when followed to the letter as the South Koreans did, even stop it in its tracks.

Most countries have recognized the seriousness of this Pandemic and followed the science.  Three countries, the United States, Russia, and Brazil have not.  We are about to experience the full force of the virus while Brazil and Russia are at the very cusp. While the United States still leads the world in the number of new daily cases, 20,289, Brazil is second with 16,517, and Russia is third with 9,263.  Brazil is poised to start passing the United States in many of the categories, the most sobering being new deaths each day.  It is interesting that all three countries are led by a self-proclaimed Strong Man who is quite willing to ignore the scientists and other experts and instead follow his ‘instincts’.

While I could write volumes on Putin or Bolsonaro, living here in the United States I am way more concerned with the consequences here.  Each day the internet is filled with right-wing websites, blogs, and social media pages vilifying the science and the scientists who are tasked with fighting this war against COVID 19.  Their recommendations are viewed as liberal assaults on ‘freedoms’.  The issue of wearing a protective mask illustrates this anti-science/anti-expert sentiment like nothing else.  It is as if there were Londoners during the blitz who refused to turn their lights off to help stymie the German bombing runs in the name of ‘freedom’. No one could be that stupid, you say?  Hold to that claim and I can guarantee the right-wing in this country will make a fool out of you. Even if a vaccine is developed, it is estimated that 1 in 5 Americans would refuse it.  Why you ask?  Because the anti-vax community has convinced them that this is a surreptitious way of introducing a microchip into people in order to track their every move.  This they tweet, post, and IM from their cell phones that they willingly carry around with them everywhere they go.  Mad, isn’t it?

“I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”
― Christopher Hitchens

There is an exception to this anti-science rhetoric by the right-wing.  One of the more common canards you hear is that modern medicine is hiding the cure for cancer and that all one needs to do is a search on Google and YouTube for both the proof of this claim and, more importantly, for the myriad of cures that are out there. One of my favorites is German New Medicine which claims, among other things, that “mainstream medicine is regarded as a conspiracy promulgated by Jews.”  You can find out about it and others here.  There is a notable exception to this narrative about cancer and the medical community. It happens when they or a loved one gets diagnosed with the disease.  Gone are the posts about the nefarious medical mafia and their schemes.  Suddenly we are all extorted to pray for the doctors so God will guide their hands and to pray for the unfortunate victims.  They sit silently in front of the cancer surgeons, oncologists, and radiologists, mouths shut, hanging on every word. “We must pay close attention and do what we are told by the experts in order to beat this terrible disease.” But what about the coffee enemas?  “Shut up, you are not a doctor!”  Sorry, I was just repeating what you told me a few months ago.

You can cut the hypocrisy with the same knife the surgeon uses to remove the cancer.

Elizabeth Warren’s moment in history

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

The Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump is still underway as I write this.  It seems that the trial will reach its conclusion in a few days with no witnesses being called or newly, available evidence being admitted.  Of the three impeachment proceedings (Johnson, Clinton, and Trump) only Trump’s impeachment will fail to call any witnesses or allow any new evidence to be introduced.  History will judge all the actors including Elizabeth Warren, who’s question to Chief Justice Roberts might be the moment that history remembers above all else.  She asked, “At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?” You can hear Chief Justice Roberts read the question out loud here. The chagrin on his face is quite noticeable.

There are moments when History beckons a person onto its stage and this was one of those moments. Senator Warren rose to the occasion and delivered a performance in the form of a simple question that will echo down the halls of history. She took a stand for the Constitution and the gravity of these events, the Senate trial of Donald J Trump. History will remember this trial and will remember Senator Warren as a Senator who stood up against the partisanship which disgraced these proceedings. This was her moment to be Presidential and she seized the moment.  I have a newly found respect for her.

 

 

The Egregious Lies of Lindsey Graham

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

I watched an interview today of Lindsey Graham stating the Senate trial is not blocking any witnesses; his claim was that the House never called them so it is not incumbent on the Senate to call them and by doing so “legitimizing the House choosing not to call a witness”.  Further, if the Senate decided to call them it would deal the courts out of “a judicial review of impeachment”.  You can listen to Senator Graham for yourself here.  I have not heard a more pungent instantiation of Orwell’s NewSpeak than these few seconds of Lindsay Graham speaking to reporters.  He claims the House did not call witnesses?  They sure did and in the official manner of calling witnesses:  the subpoena.  A list of those subpoenaed, including Vice President Mike Pence, can be found here.

This ‘spit in the face of all Americans’ tactic by Senator Graham should prompt every American, regardless of political affiliation, to ask cui bono. Cui bono is a Latin phrase which rendered into English means, “who benefits?”.  Graham, along with every other Senator and member of Congress were acutely aware of every subpoena issued by the House during its Impeachment investigation.  To turn around a few weeks later and to lie that ‘no witnesses were called’ does not call for outrage, although it certainly deserves that, rather, it calls for intense scrutiny into the financial dealings of every Senator and member of Congress who propagate these lies.  This is not simply partisanship.  Impeachment is a solemn Constitutional duty of every elected official when the political milieu is such that the very existence of the Republic is threatened. The process of impeachment was put into the Constitution to safeguard the Republic, not the Republican party. The Founders worst fears, that a sitting President would use the office for personal gain or that a sitting President would be beholden to a foreign power is the milieu in which the Republic finds itself in today.

What could cause people such as Lindsay Graham to turn their backs on their oath of office and the oath the swore just a few days ago to be fair and impartial jurors?  What could cause people such as Senator McConnell to announce he would work with the White House and promise an acquittal?  Here is where I believe this is just another area where we all can see the Citizens United ruling rearing its ugly head.  It is easy to abandon one’s principles while untold millions of dollars are pouring into your pockets.  This is why every American should be out in the streets demanding an accounting of how much money each and every Senator and member of congress is getting and who is the entity giving it.  Our Republic is too valuable to be sold to the highest bidder by filth like Lindsay Graham and others.  It is high time we put a stop to this before we find ourselves unwilling participants living in an Orwellian nightmare.

 

Review |Beyond God – Why Religions are False, Outdated and Dangerous by Peter Klein

Richard William Lawrence2 Comments

Beyond God - Why Religions are False, Outdated and DangerousBeyond God – Why Religions are False, Outdated and Dangerous by Peter Klein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A great subtitle to this book would be, “An Antitheist Manifesto.” Peter Kline has written a book that is required reading for secular activists. Contained within its 266 pages is a point by point evisceration of religion and the harm it causes across the spectrum of human existence. Not just informative, this book is both inspirational and practical. Each chapter discusses how religion and its barbaric views poison just about every area of human life. Example after example is given along with the plethora of religious texts that support these backward and draconian views. This is also one of the best books to give to your religious family and friends when they ask about why you hold such stringent views towards religion.

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Trump’s Maginot Line

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

As we enter the longest shutdown of the U.S. government in our country’s history over the building of a wall spanning the US-Mexico border one wonders how shutting down the government and causing so much pain to almost a million Federal employees is going to force Mexico to pay for this wall as was promised on the campaign trail by Donald Trump.  To be sure, in classic Orwellian fashion, Trump, while admitting he said during his campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall in the same breath denies that he said during his campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall.

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But what is this wall Trump is so hellbent on building no matter how many Americans he hurts in the process?  The wall has gone through various iterations and as of this writing it has become a fence built with steel slats.  Its purpose is to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs, and human trafficking from Mexico which now, according to Trump, have reached emergency proportions although the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) DHS Border Security Metrics Report says otherwise.  Quoting the report, “Figure 2 depicts available data on estimated undetected unlawful entries for FY 2006 – FY 2016, the years for which data are available. As the figure indicates, estimated undetected unlawful entries fell from approximately 851,000 to nearly 62,000 during this period, a 93 percent decrease.”

figure 2

Trump is proposing building a modern day Maginot Line, a multi-billion dollar wall  rather than investing in the technologies and methodologies that, as anyone can see, works in reducing the amount of illegals successfully getting across the border.

The Maginot Line, named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, was a 943 mile long wall of fortifications built along the French-German border in the 1930s intended to deter German aggression against France.  As history shows, specifically images of German troops marching as conquerors past the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, it was considerably less effective than was originally thought. It has become a metaphor for expensive efforts that offer a false sense of security.

Trump, ignoring all factual evidence, is proposing to build a modern day version of the Maginot Line on our Southern border claiming it will work where all other attempts to use a wall on scales such as this have not worked. What has worked is an investment in the most modern technology and efficacious methodologies that employ them.  Opponents of the Maginot Line, most notably such as Paul Reynaud and Charles de Gaulle, argued for investments in other technologies such as armor and aircraft to repel the German forces and the war against Germany may have had a different outcome had their suggestions been heeded.  The historical legacy of the Maginot Line was that it was an extremely expensive way to provide the French people a false sense of security.  Trump’s wall, a modern day Maginot Line, will do exactly the same.

Review | The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior

Richard William Lawrence2 Comments

The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten AmericaThe View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“…and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

This book is a collection of essays written between 2012 and 2014 covering subjects including the collapse of the US economy, the loss of opportunities, the shrinking middle class, and the transformation of higher education into a debt trap by the super rich. While the book is focused mainly on ‘flyover country’ also called the mid-west or the ‘rust belt’ it will also ring true with those in such places as Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn, where gentrification has pushed out middle class families some of which had lived there for generations. The author successfully predicted the election of Donald Trump and each essay describes the angst that motivated disillusioned voters to cast their vote for him. To be sure, his populist rhetoric set fire to the simmering anger you could easily see at his rallies but populism is a plant that can only grow in a specific type of soil. These essays describe the soil in which his message took hold.

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