The Partisan Deaf in Helsinki

            “A dialog of the deaf” is an apt description of what masquerades as debates between President Trump’s opponents and his supporters. One side wants to drive the president out of office, while the other sees him as doing no wrong.  Neither side wants to give an inch. Why, for instance, can’t Democrats and their mainstream media echoes give Trump credit for the robust economy?  Why can’t his core supporters admit his trade policies are a disaster? Just recently, reactions to Trump’s summit with Putin provided us with more extreme examples of the partisan divide.

            I do not believe that Trump’s unfortunate remarks in Helsinki qualify as craven capitulation to an adversary or collusion with Putin, as some have charged. The president certainly did not merit the hysteria spewing out of the mainstream media, calling the president a dumpy stooge, the greatest threat to our democracy, and a traitor. Do the leftwing crazies actually see nothing wrong with an MSNBC commentator comparing Helsinki to Pearl Harbor and Kristallnacht?

            There was criticism from Republicans, as well, especially from John McCain. In fact, blowback from the right was so swift and severe, it stunned the president enough to force him to correct his “misstatement.” On the other hand, blind supporters like Sean Hannity praised the president, and, as usual, could find nothing to criticize in his management of foreign policy and his diplomatic relations with his enemies or his allies. To them, Helsinki—minus that little press conference blip—was a success in personal diplomacy.

            Let’s face it. The reason we are having yet another example of extreme reactions to Trump is Trump himself and his over-confidence in his ability as a negotiator to brow-beat his allies and butter up his enemies. It didn’t work very well at the G5 or NATO meetings, and it achieved little in Singapore and Helsinki.

            What’s next? An invitation to Putin to come to Washington for Round Two? What we don’t need is more impulsive diplomacy to supply the partisan deaf with more ammunition for their political wars.

                

A New Republican Mascot

            Now I know why the Republican emblem is an elephant. Or should I say a flying Dumbo. President Trump is jetting all over the world trumpeting his impassioned views on nuclear security, trade imbalances, and NATO obligations, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dutifully follows behind like a circus worker with a pail and shovel picking up Trump’s undiplomatic excretions.

            In his first year and a half in office, the President has had an extraordinary string of successes: tax reform, regulations cutback, judicial appointments, the environment, energy, and defense. I could go on. The point is that President Trump has accomplished more in a short time than anyone could have expected. But now his policies on trade are threatening to reverse all the progress he has made.

            When it comes to trade economics, President Trump is an ignoramus surrounded by dunces like Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross. The problem is that Trump sees any trade deficit as a sign that America is being taken advantage of. So first, he scuttles a healthy trade agreement (TPP) with Asian partners, then he antagonizes Canada and Mexico on NAFTA, and now he is embarking on a trade war not only with China, but with our European allies, believing that he can achieve better trade agreements simply because other countries need American markets more than we need theirs. He refuses to consider that this is a war in which everybody loses, starting with the American buying public.

            President Trump insists on fair trade as well as free trade. Fine. But there is a better way to achieve it than through rhetorical excesses and destructive tariffs. China’s unfair trade tactics and theft of intellectual property need to be addressed, to be sure, and European tariffs on American goods need to be reduced. But not by upping tariffs, and certainly not by invoking executive authority to do so on the absurd premise that the importation of German automobiles is a matter of national security.

            The president needs better advisers on economic policy. Or Mike Pompeo sooner or later is going to decide that he’s no longer willing to fill his pail with Dumbo’s droppings.

Rolled

            It seems that not a day goes by anymore that some critical issue doesn’t make headlines in Washington. It’s hard to keep track of what crisis dominated the news yesterday, never mind last week or last month. A case in point is North Korea.

            When President Trump returned from his meeting with Kim Jong Un, he pronounced the nuclear crisis over. Trump had used his unparalleled persuasive powers to get Kim to commit to North Korea’s complete denuclearization. It was a triumph of Trumpian diplomacy. No more needed to be said. It was a done deal and time to move on to the next challenge. Except it doesn’t appear to be working out that way.

            When a friend had asked me what I thought about the Singapore Summit, I replied that I thought Trump had gotten rolled. He had nothing but nice things to say about Kim, confident that the North Korean dictator would keep his word. His word was enough for Trump to show his faith in Kim by ordering, to the consternation of his military advisers, the postponement of joint military exercises with South Korea. No need to worry, said the President. “North Korea is no longer a threat.”

            Energized by his East Asian success, Trump ordered his foreign policy team to arrange a summit with Vladimir Putin. Putin is a reasonable man: he will fold his cards, just like Kim. Except that Kim is not folding his cards.

            On June 28^th, The Wall Street Journal reported that satellite images had revealed that North Korea had begun to upgrade a nuclear site, in direct contradiction to Kim’s assurances that he would proceed immediately to end his nuclear program. Should anyone be surprised?

            Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was dispatched to Pyongyang to set matters straight, but he returned with the bitter taste of reality about North Korean trustworthiness.

            Kim Jong Un is doing exactly what his father and grandfather had done before him: he is reneging on his promises and is not about to give up his nuclear weapons. Mr. President, admit it: you got rolled.

Democrats Should Worry

            If I were a Democrat, I’d be worried about what is happening to my party.  Last week saw two seismic events that will have long-term consequences for the party, one in the primaries and one in the Supreme Court.

            In the New York Democratic primaries, a 28-year old Latina socialist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley, the 10-term congressman from Queens, even after he outspent her 10 to 1.  If the 4^th most-powerful member of the Democratic House can be beaten by an unknown far-left candidate, what does this portend for the soul of the party?  If a Democratic blue wave sweeps the elections in November, will the Republicans, already in disarray, concede that they are powerless to prevent leftist radicals from leading the country on an unstoppable stampede over a Socialist cliff?

            On the other hand, conservatives can take heart that the Supreme Court at least is not caving in to the leftward shift.  Four important decisions went their way this month: one on a cake-maker’s religious freedom, one protecting the free speech rights of pro-life pregnancy centers, one on the constitutionality of Trump’s travel ban, and, most importantly, one restricting the power of organized labor.

            Nothing could have been more devastating to the power of public-employee unions than the Supreme Court’s decision that a union can no longer collect fees from workers who choose not to join the union.  This decision has pulled the plug on union power; we are sure to see more and more public employees opt out of union membership, depleting its resources even further.  As a long-time member of a Board of Education who witnessed firsthand the abuse of union power, I have little sympathy for the losers in this case.

           

           

Enough Already

            Haven’t we had enough of Hollywood entertainers like Robert de Niro, Michelle Wolf, and Peter Fonda firing F bombs and vile insults at President Trump and his family? Haven’t we had enough of television personalities like the self-absorbed ladies on “The View” attack conservatives for their positions on abortion and religious freedom? Can we stand any more hysteria from the Radical Left when it attributes any challenge to its infallible doctrine on diversity and equality to intractable racism?

            Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant because she works for President Trump. While having a private dinner in another restaurant not long after holding a press conference to explain President Trump’s immigration policy, HHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was surrounded by a mob who then followed her to continue their protest outside her home. So much for the Left’s respect for free speech and the right to privacy.

            ICE agents are charged with protecting Americans by hunting down and deporting dangerous illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes. New York Gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon called the agents—get this—TERRORISTS.

            Roused to new levels of moralistic indignation at the images (some of them faked) of caged children separated from their parents at the southern border, ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted a combined 176 minutes of air time to the subject from June 13 to June 18. Worse, CNN and MSNBC compared the detention centers of illegal immigrants to Nazi concentration camps 22 times during that same period.

            When it came time for Democrats in Congress to denounce such odious comparisons, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut orated, “The policy of forced separation reminds us of the cattle cars of Nazi Germans when children were separated from their parents.” What??? Such hyperbole is not just outrageous and despicable, it is an insult to the memory of Holocaust victims. It is obscene.

            Haven’t we all had enough?

Man of the Century

            Time Magazine chose Albert Einstein as its Person of the 20^th Century. The honor was well-deserved, but in my opinion it should have gone to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for writing what I consider to be to the most consequential book of the century, perhaps of any century.

            In his novel The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn exposed the political and human failure of the Soviet Union’s socialist ideology and was a major factor in the dismantling of communist dictatorships in Russia and its satellites in Eastern Europe. With 30 million copies published in 35 languages, no other book in modern history has championed the idea of freedom as much as this one.

            Interestingly enough, Solzhenitsyn became a fierce critic of the West as well. He despised our vulgar materialism and our pop culture, especially our addiction to moronic television and bankrupt music. Beyond that, he was a fierce critic of the press. In a commencement address he gave at Harvard in 1978, he attacked the media for its hypocrisy and deceit. “The press,” he said, “…not elected by anyone…has amassed more power than the legislative, executive, or judicial power. And in this “free” press itself, it is not true freedom of opinion that dominates, but the dictates of the political fashion of the moment, which lead to a surprising uniformity of opinion.” I wonder what he would have to say our mainstream media today.

            When it came to the subject of freedom, Solzhenitsyn was a great admirer of America as a bastion of liberty. But he railed against those who would abuse freedom by turning it into license. A freedom without morality and spirituality, he felt, is a corruption of the ideal upon which this nation was founded.

            Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 and died in 1998. We should honor him in this, the 100^th anniversary of his birth and the 20^th anniversary of his death, by heeding his words of wisdom, especially now that the socialist ideology he fought to destroy continues to be force-fed to young minds in our universities and echoed by leftist politicians and their sycophants in the media.  

Scary

            On May 22^nd Otto Szentesi and his wife Mimi sailed their 43-foot sloop into Yeopim Creek and tied up at berth 4 on C Dock in Albemarle Plantation Marina. They had heard about the Albemarle Loop and wanted to see what it was all about. They had no idea what they were in for.

            The Szentesis are veteran sailors. Before buying their own boat, they chartered ocean-going sailboats with friends and sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific, going as far as Tahiti on one venture. But when Otto retired as Senior Vice-President for Corning Cable Systems, he said to Mimi, “Let’s buy our own boat.” And that’s how they came into possession of the Hunter 426 christened “Best of Times.”

            Sailing out of Oriental, North Carolina, the new boat owners headed for Exuma Cays in the Bahamas, a snorkeling paradise that Mimi says is her favorite destination in the whole world because of all the sea life. In fact, the Szentesis now go there every January and stay until mid-May. Then they usually head north, sailing to another favorite place, Newport, Rhode Island. Otto says he gets quite a kick out of passing by the Statue of Liberty before heading up New York’s East River and into the Long Island Sound.

            When Otto tied up at the Albemarle Plantation Marina, it happened to be tournament week at the Plantation’s Sound Golf Links. Being a golfer himself, Otto might have stayed to watch 120 young professionals compete in the 2018 Biggs Classic. But something happened to take precedence.

            When I stopped by the Best of Times to say hello, Otto wasn’t there, I was told he had been taken to a local pharmacy by Steve Harris, Commodore of the Plantation’s Osprey Yacht Club. I left and returned an hour later. Otto was back and welcomed me aboard. That’s when I found out why he had gone to the pharmacy. I was greeted below by Mimi who held out her hand. But she couldn’t see me. She was blind.

            Mimi told me the story of her accident that morning. She had been preparing to do some laundry when the Tide Laundry Pod she was handling burst, splashing the strong lye liquid into her face and eyes. She rinsed her eyes out as best she could, but it wasn’t enough. Hence, the trip to the pharmacy for proper medication.

            When I saw Mimi later that evening at the Clubhouse restaurant, she still could only see shadows. She needed to see a doctor. Otto told me they would sail to Edenton the next morning to find an ophthalmologist, but he was unable to locate one. So, he called on Commodore Harris once more to take him to Elizabeth City where he did find one. Mimi was diagnosed with corneal abrasions and chemical burns, but the prognosis was encouraging: in time, with rest and proper medication, Mimi would regain her sight. And she would once again be able to swim among the sea life of Exuma Cays. For now, it was back to Oriental for that much-needed rest.

            On June 3^rd the Szentesis and Best of Times were back in berth 4 on C Dock, this time with friends who had flown in from Oregon to do the Albemarle Loop with them.  At their invitation I went back for another visit.  This time Mimi greeted me not with a handshake but with a hug—she was so glad to SEE me.