Your Mother Wears Combat Boots

Times change.  But not always that much.  Back at P.S. 153 when one kid insulted another by accusing his mother of wearing combat boots, the victim was often too tongue-tied to muster an adequate defense. 

Enter Donald Trump—the new schoolyard bully.  He calls people stupid, weak, and fat with reckless abandon; hence many of his victims do not know how to respond.  They don’t want to sink to his level, but neither do they want to alienate his supporters.

Nonetheless The Donald deserves all the invective hurled his way.  He is worse than a clown: he is a clown who wants to be king.  That anyone would consider him a superior replacement for Barack Obama speaks exceedingly ill of the American electorate.

What are Trump’s qualifications for president?  His supporters claim that he tells the truth.   Assuming for a moment that this is the case (which I do not), is this sufficient?  Hitler told the truth when he said he would kill the Jews.  ISIS leaders did the same when they declared they would behead American captives.

In short, the nature of the truth matters.  If a husband honestly tells his wife that she is ugly, this is not apt to improve their relationship.  He needs to express something more helpful.  In other words, the truth is not enough.

The Donald is also praised for not being PC.  Guess what?  The KKK wasn’t PC.  Nor are the Iranian mullahs.  Merely violating the standards imposed by liberal hooligans does not convert a person into a statesman.

Or perhaps we should elect Trump because he is a marvelous negotiator.  His business triumphs suggest that he would obtain better deals from Mexico, China and Iran.  In fact, he is now negotiating with the Republican Party.  He is trying to get preferred treatment by threatening to run as an independent.

In this, Trump is on to something.  Negotiators get superior terms when they are prepared to walk away from a bargain.  So why don’t Republicans turn the tables and threaten to walk away from him?  Is he really that indispensible?

Well then, what about Trump’s excellent judgment.  After all he did have the foresight to pull his money out of Atlantic City before the gambling bubble burst.  Yet where was his common sense with Megyn Kelly?  Insulting a well-loved media figure on national television is not the best way to win hearts and minds.

Lastly, Donald praises himself for introducing important topics, such as immigration, into the nominating process.  No doubt he has.  But he has also done this in a manner that precludes serious debate.  Merely calling others names does little to advance a thoughtful solution to a knotty problem.

When I was a small boy, my parents taught me the virtues of tact.  They explained that offending people to their face was neither nice, nor productive.  Indeed, gratuitous vilification was hurtful and off-putting.  How did Trump escape learning this lesson?

Do we genuinely want his brand of rudeness on the world stage?  Will enemies like Putin take kindly to be called idiots?  Will friends like Netanyahu appreciate being dismissed as spineless fools?

And what about congress?  Will members of either party be inclined to cooperate with a president who treats them with contempt?  Obama has had a difficult time cultivating bipartisan collaboration.  Can Trump do better?

We are in the process of electing a new president—not a new class clown.  Eight years of mismanagement of domestic and foreign policy will not be corrected by selecting someone who is less mature than our current chief executive.

Voters may be angry.  They have every right to be.  But throwing a collective tantrum is unlikely to improve our situation.  Trump has had his moment on the stage.  We have all been duly entertained.  So let’s get down to business.  The issue of who will lead us is too significant to leave to a shoot-from-the-lip jester.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Alternative is War?

Governor Mike Huckabee has been roundly condemned for his harsh description of Barack Obama’s Iran agreement.  Having called the president naïve for ushering Israeli’s to the door of the gas chamber, his critics proclaimed the holocaust metaphor inappropriate.

It is not.  Huckabee did not say that there has been a holocaust; only that one is impending.   He is absolutely correct.  Nonetheless, he is in good company.  Much worse was said about Winston Churchill when he warned of potential Nazi aggression.  He too was branded a warmonger.

What then will happen should Iran drop an atomic bomb on Israel?  Will the governor’s detractors say they are sorry?  Will they admit they were wrong?  More likely they will keep silent and pretend they agreed with him all along.

Many commentators have noted the parallel between Obama’s capitulation to the mullahs and Neville Chamberlain’s surrender at Munich.  This is an apt comparison.  At least as telling, however, was the response to Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland.

After the Great War, in order to forestall rearmament, Germany was forbidden to militarize its industrial heartland.  Nevertheless, Hitler decided to do exactly this.  Although his general’s warned against the maneuver, he proceeded anyway.

This was 1936.  At the time, France was far better armed than Germany.  Its troops could easily have brushed the Wehrmacht aside.  Yet nothing was done because under the inept leadership of premier Albert Sarraut, the French wanted nothing done.  Too much blood had recently been shed to sanction another conflict.

The rest, as they say, is history.  What then about Iran?  Are we willing to use military means to stymy its nuclear aspirations?  Of course, Obama and his minions have repeatedly said nothing is off the table.  Their actions, however, have demonstrated otherwise; ergo the Iranians can be surer of this than Hitler was of French intensions.

Still, let us pause to ask about the consequences of an American military intervention.  First, we must understand Iranian capacities.  The mullahs have a large army, but a tiny navy.  Could they use these to retaliate?  Could they launch an armada against the U.S.?   Or might they attack our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?

In fact, adopting these options is out of the question.  Iran cannot get to us.  We are too far away and our troops in the area are capable of easy withdrawal.  On the other hand, in a few years Iran could have the bomb, as well as the intercontinental missiles to deliver it.  Thus, if we wait, we could be in real danger.

Second, we do not have to engage in a ground invasion in order to take out Iran’s nuclear program.  We have the means to cripple it from a distance.  But, it will be argued, bunker busters are not up to the task.  Iran’s Installations are too hardened to penetrate.

Perhaps.  So we bomb them again…and again…and again.  That is, until they get the idea that we mean business. 

The evidence?  Once it was argued that New York City could never eradicate the graffiti from its subway cars.  The taggers would merely return after their handiwork was removed.

Then Rudi Giuliani disproved this thesis.  He did this by cleaning the subway cars and keeping them clean.  Eventually it became clear to the vandals that they could not succeed and they desisted.

The same applies to Iran.  Once it becomes apparent they have violated their treaty obligations, we retain the option of deterring their aggressive policies.  We do not have to wait for them to become so well armed they cannot be stopped.

Naturally Barack Obama will do nothing of the sort.  His intransigence and lack of common sense no know bounds.  We must therefore hope that it is not too late to do something once a new president takes office.  Huckabee got it right.  Let us pray that whoever our next leader, he/she will have the courage, and good sense, to take effective action.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of sociology

Kennesaw State University

Our Betrayer-in-Chief

My wife and I are newly returned from a bus tour of Spain.  Among our companions were a husband and wife of Coptic Christian origin.  Recent Egyptian immigrants to Australia, they were vehement critics of Barack Obama.

These fellow tourists were livid at how casually our president abandoned their co-religionists.  In their view, in order to promote the Arab Spring, he allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to murder and harass the Copts.  Instead of standing up for justice, he betrayed America’s friends.

Another of our travelling buddies was an Iranian immigrant to the U.S.  He too was outraged that Obama did not support the “good” Persians.  Rather than provide encouragement for the many Iranians who love America, he toadied up the mullahs who hate us.

Meanwhile, as a Jew, I am sensitive to how frequently Barack disregards Israeli interests.  Although he claims to be a friend of Israel—with friends like this who needs enemies?  Clearly, the Iranian deal exposes the Jewish state to obliteration in a nuclear holocaust.

Others betrayed by Obama include the Ukrainians, the Cubans, the Syrians, the Eastern Europeans, and the Iraqis.  Relying on promises from our chief executive is plainly a fool’s errand.  His assurances are obviously as substantive as a sneeze in the wind.

Worse yet is the treatment that our betrayer-in-chief has meted out to his own people.  He undermined their health care, despite assertions he would improve it; damaged race relations, rather than brought people together; and undercut the constitution ostensibly to advance social justice.

Now he has further shredded our founding document by abdicating our sovereignty to the United Nations.  Instead of allowing congress to provide advice and consent for an international treaty, he mangled the English language by insisting that a treaty in not a “treaty.”  No doubt its import also depends on the meaning of the word “is.”

Obama wanted to be a transformative president in the sense of making a major difference.  In this, he has succeeded.  None of his predecessors managed to so profoundly betray our national heritage.

Why then does he retain supporters?  The answer is that these folks seem to fall into several categories:

·      African-Americas remain loyal because they identify with him.  They fear that if they become turncoats, they will be the next victims.

·      America-haters continue to admire him because they too believe our nation is so corrupt it deserves to be taken down a peg.  If our interests are hurt, we warrant what we get.

·      Naïve idealists stay the course on the assumption that if we are nice to evil people, they will miraculously mutate into allies.  It is merely a matter of giving them a chance.

·      Then there are the political hacks.  They will remain dedicated to their party leader irrespective of what he does.  For them, their careers are more important than the fate of the nation.

·      Lastly there are those disengaged souls who do not realize they have been betrayed.  When they deign to tune in, they are so captivated by the political theater that they applaud any good show.

We have evidently not been sufficiently harmed so as to be as irate as my tour companions.  While we are less wealthy or secure than we might otherwise be, we are not yet as impoverished as the Greeks or as repressed as the Russians.  We are thus too comfortable to be infuriated by presidential disloyalty.

Nonetheless, our turn may be coming.  That Iranian bomb—the one they were never supposed to get—might one day fall on us and/or our friends.  Or far away religious repression could, in our case, be converted into anti-religious repression.  What was formerly inconceivable has certainly become less so.

People who are not vigilant in protecting their freedoms lose them.  Likewise people who do not notice when they have been betrayed get swindled out of house and home.  Will that be our fate?  Will our future parallel that of expatriate Copts and Iranians?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University