Punching the Ultimate Tar Baby

When I was growing up, we read the “Uncle Remus” stories by Joel Chandler Harris, based on African-American folk tales. You can't find those stories any more today, as they're viewed as being racially insensitive at best or downright racist at worst. But however we view them, there's one story that resonates deeply today: the tale of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.

In this story, Br'er Fox makes a doll out of a lump of tar and dresses it in baby clothes in an attempt to catch wily Br'er Rabbit. When Br'er Rabbit finds the tar baby, he greets it pleasantly, but is offended when it refuses to answer him. Br'er Rabbit slaps the tar baby and, of course, becomes stuck. The more he punches and kicks at the tar baby, the more thoroughly he gets stuck. Br'er Rabbit eventually convinces Br'er Fox to toss him into a nearby briar patch, from which he is able to free himself from the tar baby and escape.

We keep punching the tar baby in the Middle East, but no briar patch is in sight to provide an escape, however painful.

When I was getting my Masters degree in International Relations many years ago, my focus was on the politics of the Middle East, and Iran in particular. In those studies, I learned a great deal about the history of Iran and our tortured relationship with it.

Make no mistake: a nuclear weapon in the hands of a single-minded, theocratic regime is a terrible threat to the peace of the entire world. But did you know that that single-minded, theocratic regime is the end result of actions that we - the United States - took in 1953?

In that year, our Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI-6 worked together to overthrow the elected Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. This was done because Mr Mossadegh was threatening to nationalize foreign oil companies in Iran in a dispute with the British over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's payment of royalties to the Iranian government. The coup ousted Mr Mossadegh and installed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was much more friendly toward Western business interests.

Over the following years, the Shah's government grew increasingly corrupt and oppressive, leading to a growing Islamic opposition whose figurehead was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, exiled in Paris but still a potent political and religious force in Iran.

By early 1979, the corruption and brutality of the Shah's government led to a popular uprising which dethroned the Shah and returned Khomeini from exile to head a new, initially popular Islamic government. Most US and British citizens were evacuated from the country* during the chaotic early months of the new regime, and in November of that year a mob of Iranian "students" stormed and occupied the United States Embassy in Teheran, taking 66 American diplomats and civilian personnel hostage, of whom 52 were held for 444 days - being released on January 20, 1981, in a calculated insult to outgoing President Jimmy Carter.

The theocratic Islamic Regime soon became as repressive and brutal as the government it had replaced, implementing strict religious guidelines on dress and behavior, especially for women, and remained in power largely through the force of its Morality Police and the military Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC, in turn, became a major force in the Middle East, supporting terrorist attacks and Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the region. 

Then, at some point, the Iranian regime looked around, considered the fates of weak nations at the hands of strong ones, and decided that it needed a nuclear weapon to ensure its survival in a dangerous neighborhood.

And here we are.

Allowing an extremist religious government to possess weapons of mass destruction is unthinkable … but is directly attacking Iran - punching the ultimate tar baby - the best way to prevent it from happening?

I don't pretend to be any sort of expert on Iran, religious extremism, nuclear weapons, the Middle East in general, or international politics, but I do like to think I'm a bit better informed on all those topics than most Americans ... and certainly than most in Der Furor's administration. Here's my take, for what it's worth:

It was stupid for Der Furor to scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or "Iran Nuclear Deal") negotiated by the Obama administration. While not perfect (and what international agreement is?), it was by all accounts working to keep Iranian nuclear ambitions in check. Der Furor's hatred of President Obama and overblown belief in his own skill as a deal-maker undermined a functioning agreement without anything to replace it and with no incentives to the Iranians to negotiate further.

It was equally stupid to allow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to maneuver a notoriously ill-informed and insecure president into directly supporting his war against Iran. A professional, well-functioning US government staffed with experts in international relations and supported by an independent, nonpartisan intelligence community would have offered wiser counsel than one staffed with sycophants whose primary skill is telling the president what he wants to hear.

So, where do we go from here?

I have no idea.

We have lost the last shreds of our ability to act as a neutral arbiter with Iran, and have allowed Israel to maneuver us into being its reluctant ally, to our clear detriment. We have a president besotted with the trappings of military power but ignorant of the realities and complexities of military planning and international diplomacy, a man increasingly mistrusted and sidelined by other world leaders. We have a deeply partisan government that refuses to hold that president to account and insist on the checks and balances the Founders wisely wrote into the Constitution. We have ... well, you get the idea.

Congress and the courts must once again exert their roles in government and bring rational government back to the nation and its international responsibilities, but I'm not holding my breath, and neither should you. Too many of us wanted a king, and now we have one, for better or worse.

The nation did reasonably well for almost 250 years, and we've managed to largely undo it in a mere five months. At this rate, it'll be a long, long time to the midterms and to the 2028 elections. I hope we make it.

Have a good day. More thoughts - happier ones, if possible - coming.

Bilbo

* As a young Air Force Captain, I actually played a part in that evacuation, but that's a story for another time.

Reconstruction 2

If you learned American history back when it was still being taught in schools, you probably learned about the era called Reconstruction - the period after the Civil War lasting roughly from 1865 to 1877. It was the period in which the former southern states of the Confederacy were reintegrated into the Union and millions of formerly enslaved people were integrated into the United States as citizens. 

Reconstruction was a period of great social and political turbulence as white southerners chafed at losing the war and their privileged position in society. Because the federal government under President Andrew Johnson dealt leniently with the former Confederate states, requiring only that they abolish slavery, repudiate secession, and pay off Confederate debts, the southern state governments generally had a free hand in managing their affairs. This led to the rise of the Black Codes to maintain white supremacy, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the dawn of the Jim Crow era. From there it led to the beginning of the Gilded Age in which wealthy oligarchs lived in splendor while their workers were little more than slaves earning meager wages.

Many of our regional political views, particularly in the south and west, arose and were cemented during Reconstruction - you can read a compelling discussion of how this took place and what the present-day ramifications are in Heather Cox Richardson's masterful book "How the South Won the Civil War." 

In some ways, today's America is much like the nation at the end of the Civil War. The economy is in turmoil, red and blue states fume angrily at each other, a president and his deeply conservative advisors are relentlessly dismantling the government and instituting tax and social policies that advantage wealthy white citizens, and the drumbeat call for the supremacy of states' rights echoes that of the antebellum era. This leads to two obvious questions: 

(1) Will we need a Second Reconstruction once the self-destructive era of Der Furor is over?; and, 

(2) Can it succeed?

As to the first question, my answer is a resounding and obvious yes. 

Although our economic and social systems had issues that needed to be addressed, the wholesale destruction of great swaths of the federal government has done nothing to address them and has, in fact, wrecked large parts of the federal apparatus that can not be quickly repaired. Here are just a few examples ...

The penetration and compromise of federal computer systems by individuals working for Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" has utterly compromised critical systems and databases, with no documentation of or accountability for the changes that have been made. 

The scattershot, ever-shifting tariff campaign has left the once-powerful economy lurching along, with businesses unable to plan for the long term, unwilling to make major investments, and wary of hiring staff that may need to be fired later. 

The relentless Republican focus on tax cuts which benefit the most wealthy Americans and tariffs, which are actually a tax on consumers, ignoring the warnings of virtually every competent economist*, will leave the nation in a vast economic hole ... but not until after the 2025 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election, enabling the Republicans to avoid the anger of the voting public. 

The systematic wrecking of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by unqualified believers in discredited medical theories has led to a resurgence of deadly diseases long thought to be eradicated or, at least, under control.

Air travel has become more dangerous as a result of the firing not only of air traffic control personnel, but of other critical personnel who maintain the radar and communications networks upon which safe travel depends. 

The weaponization of the Justice Department - long a fever dream of the conservative right - has become reality as Der Furor brings the entire weight of the government against his real and perceived enemies.

The gutting of the National Weather Service and turmoil in the Federal Emergency Management Agency will severely limit storm tracking and warning that have been critical to the saving of lives in hurricanes and tornados, and cripple the integrated response to natural and man-made disasters. 

Can a new Reconstruction succeed? I'd like to think so, but I'm not sure, for several reasons. 

The willy-nilly firing of tens of thousands of trained and experienced federal civil servants not only left agencies understaffed and unable to carry out their duties, but got rid of the experienced personnel who would have trained their replacements. Many agencies will be, quite literally, starting from scratch.

The complete reversal of decades of foreign policy positions has destroyed our credibility on the world stage, and has left other nations uncertain whether they can count on the United States as a reliable ally. 

Trust in the rule of law is gone. Under the present administration, the blatant graft and corruption,  the open use of the justice system to publish opponents of Der Furor, and the wildly revisionist reinterpretation of what had been considered settled law has destroyed the confidence we once had in the old adage that "justice is blind." The United States was once known as a nation of laws, not men. No longer.

In spite of the obvious damage Der Furor and his actions have caused to the nation, he remains popular with nearly half of the population. But what happens when he is no longer on the scene? There is no obvious figure on the right who can command the loyalty of the MAGA crowd and assume the leadership of a movement motivated by a combination of economic anger, political dissatisfaction, religious fervor, nativism, and long-suppressed racial prejudices. The lack of a leader, even one as flawed as Der Furor, will hinder any reconstruction attempts. 

The right-wing information silo represented by Fox News, Newsmaxx, OANN, and the online scrum of far-right podcasters and commentators will continue to rile up a conservative base already convinced that it has been denied its proper role as the true heart of America. They will continue to reject reality in the face of all evidence to the contrary, steadfastly denying it as "fake news" and continuing to rely on "alternative facts" they believe support their beliefs.

The manner in which the government was dismantled and wrecked was the result of a long and detailed planning effort, documented in the infamous Project 2025. The incoming administration moved with lightning speed to swamp the legislature and the judiciary with a blizzard of royal decrees executive orders which, although lacking the full force of law, served to upend the legislative and legal systems and avoid serious review and challenge. Although all or most of these royal decrees executive orders can be rescinded by the next administration, the actions already taken will take years, if not decades, to unravel through the courts and an actually-functioning Legislative Branch, and their negative effects will hamper the business of government for generations. 

The original Reconstruction was headed by Andrew Johnson, a weak president sympathetic to the former Confederacy. The Second Reconstruction, if it can succeed at all, will require a president of uncommon strength of character, backed by a Congress that has regrown its spine, a Judiciary that puts rule of law above politics**, and an American public horrified at the destruction wrought by a man unfit to hold any office of responsibility, much less the presidency of a once-great nation.

Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* The term "competent economist" does not apply to any member of the current administration serving in any role governing the economy.

** I don’t know about you, but I find it appalling that news coverage of legal issues finds it necessary to indicate what president appointed a particular judge or justice. 

History Repeats Itself

One of the most depressing things about being interested in history lies in recognizing when it repeats itself.

It happened yesterday, when Der Furor and "Vice-President" Vance ambushed and berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on live television during an Oval Office meeting. The cheap schoolyard bullying of an ally fighting for his nation's life was appalling, cast our nation in the worst possible light, and mirrored the actions of a different autocratic bully that took place over a hundred years ago.

As the world spiraled toward World War II in the late 1930's, Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler treated two European leaders to the same savage bullying used by Der Furor on President Zelenskyy. 

The first was Hitler’s ambush and relentless bullying of Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schussnig in February of 1938, as he sought to absorb Austria into the German Reich. You can read about it here, and there's also a dramatic report of it in William Shirer's classic history The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Chancellor Schussnig was not the only European leader to suffer Hitler's bullying abuse. A year later, in March of 1939, Czech President Emil Hacha was bullied into a nervous breakdown by the Nazi leader ... an event also dramatically recounted in Shirer's history.

It's the lowest hanging of fruit to compare the Orange Airhorn to Adolf Hitler, one of the most terrible dictators in history, but in the embarrassing and despicable bullying of the President of Ukraine, history has clearly repeated itself.

The despicable behavior of Der Furor and "Vice-President" Vance, and the shameless toadying of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose embarrassing version of what we all saw on live television would be laughable were it not so shabby, have driven yet another nail into the lid of the coffin containing what's left of our national honor and dignity.

Have a good day, and reflect that our nation has turned from reliable ally and defender of the weak to the international equivalent of a cheap, ugly bully. 

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Another Parallel

This past Monday in this space, I wrote of the parallels that I see between the unfolding Russian assault on independent Ukraine and the German invasion of neutral Belgium at the outset of the First World War. Yesterday my attention was drawn to another parallel that is equally interesting and more immediately frightening.

In a March 1st article titled "Distraught Dictator or Rational Actor?" David Ignatius looked at the question of Vladimir Putin's mental state - an issue that has been on a lot of minds lately. Mr Ignatius writes that "his [Putin's] mental attitude appears to be more a fixation on Ukraine than a broader instability" and that "U.S. officials believe that Ukraine for years has been Putin's most sensitive issue - one where his normal political calculus doesn't seem to apply."

This sounds right to me, and sets up a parallel with another worrying geopolitical fixation: that of The People's Republic of China with Taiwan.

If Putin "broods about Ukraine, rages about its tilt toward the West, and schemes to bring it back under Russian domination" (as Mr Ignatius writes), his attitude is little different from that of the Chinese leadership, which is absolutely inflexible on its insistence that Taiwan is part of Big China. Consider that the least indication that Taiwan is being viewed as a nation in its own right sends the Chinese government into paroxysms of fury and starts sabers rattling. In a speech last October, Chinese President Xi Jinping said,

"No one should underestimate the Chinese people's staunch determination, firm will, and strong ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity ... The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and will definitely be fulfilled."

Putin and Xi approach their parallel territorial fixations as absolutes, without any possibility of compromise or negotiation, making it difficult to develop political "off ramps" that could offer a face-saving way to step away from a brink that, in Putin's case, has already been decisively crossed. 

One has to wonder what lessons Xi Jinping is drawing from Russia's situation. The devastation of Russia's economy by the rest of the world (except, at the moment, for China) is a sobering reminder of the economic power the West can bring to bear, but that power would likely be harder to wield against China, which is much more integrated into the world's economy than is Russia.

American manufacturers for years have minimized costs and increased profits by allowing their products to be made in Chinese factories, to the extent that there are only limited options for obtaining many items from other sources. Will American consumers give up their Chinese-made products to punish an attack on Taiwan? Do they have a short- to medium-term alternative? I doubt it.

We are in uncharted geopolitical waters now, thanks to Vladimir Putin's brutal determination to destroy an independent Ukraine. Let us hope that the world's reaction gives pause to the parallel determination of the Chinese government to destroy an independent Taiwan.

Have a good day. See you tomorrow for the first edition of Great Moments in Editing and Signage for March ... we can all use a laugh.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Parallels: 1914 and 2022

As you all know, I am a dedicated, if amateur, student of history. One of the things that fascinates me is the realization of parallels between different eras. One such parallel is playing out now.

I’m reading (for the nth time) Barbara Tuchmann’s classic book “The Guns of August,” which documents the first month - August, 1914 - of the First World War. As you may recall, the war opened with a massive German assault on France that relied on a vast flanking movement through neutral Belgium to avoid French border fortifications. The German plan was incredibly detailed and relied on a precise timetable that assumed that the Belgians would step aside and allow the German army to pass safely through and quickly conquer France.

As history shows, it didn’t work out that way. The tiny Belgian army put up a stiff resistance that threw off the German timetable and gave the French and British time to deploy their forces to resist the coming assault. The war dragged on for another four years, fueled by the German miscalculation in its first days.

The same thing is happening today. Russian leader Vladimir Putin, hoping for a quick victory before the West could rally to the support of Ukraine, assumed that his huge army would simply sweep Ukrainian resistance aside, decapitating its government and seizing its territory in a fast, relatively bloodless blitzkrieg.

As with the Germans in Belgium in 1914, it’s not working out that way.

The Ukrainians, under the unexpectedly dynamic and heroic leadership of President Volodymir Zelinsky, are putting up a fierce resistance that has denied Mr Putin his quick victory and rallied world opinion to their defense. Russian forces supplied only for a fast campaign have in many cases stalled, with tanks and other vehicles running out of fuel and abandoned on roadsides, soldiers unfed, and ammunition in some cases running short. The war is, of course, far from over and the Russians still have enormous forces not yet committed to the battle, but the initial lessons are clear.

Military planning requires making assumptions, and those assumptions need to be practical and rational. The assumption that a proudly independent nation would simply roll over and submit to invasion and occupation was neither practical nor rational, and far too many Russians and Ukrainians are paying the price … just as so many others paid the ultimate price for the assumptions made by German leaders and planners in 1914.

Let’s hope that the unprovoked and ill-planned Russian invasion of Ukraine can be ended before too many more people needlessly die to satisfy one man’s delusions of grandeur. And let's also hope that the Republican party here at home can finally understand who the real enemy is.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Could We Do D-Day Today?

CNN anchor Jim Scuitto posed a very interesting question on Twitter last Sunday, the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the allied attack on Normandy during World War II ...

Question: would/could the US mount and lead a #DDay today? Defend faraway allies? Impose an expansive draft? Accept the shared national sacrifice in blood and treasure? Fight until unconditional victory? I’m asking without prejudgment - curious what you think.

I'd like to say "yes," but I think the real answer is, sadly, "no."

Considering that many Americans today are far more focused on their rights than their responsibilities, and that we have to actually bribe adults (with giveaways of beer, guns, lottery tickets, donuts, etc) to get a free vaccine for a deadly disease that has killed over 600,000 of their fellow citizens, I think it's a stretch to think that any significant portion of us would rally to risk their lives in support of anyone else ... much less a (gasp!) foreigner.

Americans supported (at least, at first) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because they represented a response to a clear and provable threat at home. They grew less inclined to support those wars when the threat of terrorism from Islamic militants receded and the emphasis of the military operations changed to supporting foreign governments and "nation building." 

And it's tough to imagine World War II-style "shared sacrifice" when so many Americans rage against simply wearing a cloth mask to prevent the spread of disease.

There's no doubt in my mind that our armed forces would give their all, but I doubt that the spoiled and self-indulgent Americans of today would support them, or flock to the banners. It's easy to imagine you're heroically protecting yourself and your neighbors by ostentatiously packing your AR-15 to the local Starbucks, but it's tough to actually put your life on the line in a combat zone in service of a goal larger than yourself.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

How Will Future Historians Know Us?

As long-time readers of this blog know, I enjoy writing (and receiving) letters. Indeed, a number of you who have responded to my periodic offer of a hand-written letter have now become more-or-less regular correspondents whose letters I treasure.

Personal letters and diaries are some of the most valuable sources available to historians trying to document the march of time and events. There was a time, not so long ago, when almost everyone left a written trail of some sort, whether as letters, diaries, or journals. This was especially true of many of those who were the movers and shakers of history ... you may recall that the late George H. W. Bush was a prolific letter-writer, as were many other presidents. Our Presidential Libraries contain boxes of letters and memos, many hand-written or bearing written notes and asides, and those documents allow historians to piece together the development of our nation's history.

Unfortunately, not too many people write letters ... or much else ... any more. Cursive writing is seldom taught in schools, and recent generations have grown up in an era of e-mail, text messaging punctuated with emojis, and tweets that reduce complex ideas to 140- or 280-character bursts of capital letters and punctuation. My mother wrote boxes of letters to me when I was in college and stationed overseas, and I wrote boxes of letters back ... all of which I found in her things when she passed away. Someday, my great-grandchildren will have all those letters as a way of knowing why Bilbo was the way he was.

I got to thinking about all this again today when I read this opinion piece in the New York Times - All Text and No Subtext - discussing Mr Trump's reliance on Twitter for even the most consequential of presidential communications ... like announcing the precipitous withdrawal of US forces from Syria.

Administrations past left voluminous documentation of the discussion and debate that led up to major events and programs, allowing their successors to go back, review the documentary record, and - one hopes - avoid making the same mistakes others had made. One wonders what will be contained in the Donald J. Trump presidential library ... if, indeed, he leaves enough worthwhile material behind to establish one.

Although I love to write letters, I don't do it as often as I used to. I got an incentive this year when my oldest granddaughter went off to college and her father (my oldest son) was deployed for six months to an undisclosed location ... I tried (with moderate success) to write to them regularly. Nevertheless, as a retired guy I have more time available but more things I want to do, and so I find myself spread thinly among my many interests. I recently invested in a box of note cards as a way of trying to keep myself writing while forcing me to keep it a bit shorter.

Nevertheless, I plan to keep writing ... here, as long letters to friends and family, perhaps even as an occasional journal. If you want me to write to you, e-mail me your snail mail address and I'll do it, as long as you promise to write back. E-mails, tweets, and text messages don't count, especially if they consist of more than 35% exclamation points and capital letters.

Let's leave a tangible memory of ourselves behind.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

P.S. - I wrote about this general topic back in 2009 ... you can read that post here.

B.

History Written in Poop

From the Department of Really Fascinating Stuff comes this article: Reconstructing Lost Worlds with Poop.

For those of you who won't bother to read the article, I'll just tell you that it recounts the efforts of scientists to understand the flora and fauna of the distant past based on the analysis of ... uh ... poop*. Yes, scientists are studying the composition of ancient droppings to determine what various animals ate and how their diets contributed to the spread (or extinction) of various plants and other animals. This is not a new effort: you can read other stories about the wonders to be found in the analysis of poop in this article from the Smithsonian Magazine, and this Scientific American article, which looks both at the biology and the physics of defecation.

I find this fascinating, and it also leads me to wonder how future scientists will reconstruct our world, given that we tend to process most of our poop away. Most of the poop we'll leave behind will be of a type useful only to social historians studying our political campaigns. Except for things like poop trains.

Don't thank me ... it's all part of my work to bring you the straight sh ... uh ... poop.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* The science is called "scatology," and the dinner-table quality word for the poop is "coprolites."

American History Expressed in Presidential Lives

Earlier this week we celebrated Presidents' Day, the holiday formed from the consolidation of the former holidays of Washington's Birthday (on February 22nd) and Lincoln's Birthday (on February 12th) into a single day* to honor those who have served as the nation's chief executive.

Each president has his (there haven't been any hers yet) own story, and the history of the United States has been shaped by the personalities and actions of those who have occupied the nation's highest office. But there's another interesting way to view the intersection of presidential lives and American history ...

This interesting article by Philip Bump appeared in the Presidents' Day issue of The Washington Post - All of American History Fits in the Life Span of Only Three Presidents. This diagram, which I adapted from the article, makes the point:

The United States was founded in 1789, when Martin van Buren (our eighth president) was seven years old. 

William Howard Taft (our 27th president) was born in 1859, when van Buren was 77 and the United States was 70.

George H. W. Bush (Bush 41) was born in 1924, when Taft was 65 and the United States was 135. Mr Bush, of course, is still alive.

Thus, the lifespans of these three presidents cover all of the history of the nation.

I find this fascinating, as it helps to humanize our history and put it in a context we don't often consider. With any luck, we will look back many years from now at the Trump era as an unfortunate one-term (or less) diversion from a line of generally well-meaning and responsible occupants of the White House.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when we look at our latest collection of Great Moments in Editing and Signage.

Bilbo

* Yes, this is an oversimplification. Read the History.com article to which I linked for the full story.

"Nobody Cares About This Except You"

There was a very interesting and thought-provoking article in last Thursday's Washington Post. The print title was "For President Right Now, No Profit in Learning from Past," while the online title was "Why Trump Expected Only Applause When He Told Comey, ‘You’re Fired.’"

The bottom line of the article is summed up in the print title: Donald Trump is a man who lives entirely in the present, which allows him to blithely shrug off things he said and did in the past as if they never happened ... because to him, they didn't, and therefore they don't matter. Only the present matters. Here's a key quote from the article:

"Confronted with his past statements that stand in direct conflict with his current positions, Trump has always reacted not with remorse or embarrassment. Rather, a look of almost innocent surprise sweeps over his face and he says, as he has to reporters who remind him that he once promised to release his tax returns but then decided that he never would, 'Nobody cares about this except you.'"

and,

"'I’m just not interested in the past,' Trump has said. 'I’m interested in the present.'"

Philosopher George Santayana famously said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." That's why we study history - to learn what has happened before, to see what worked and what didn't, and to identify and avoid making again the mistakes of those who came before us.

Of course, paying attention to the wrong historical precedent, or interpreting it in the wrong way, is not a good thing, either. Historians Richard Neustadt and Ernest May made this point in their excellent book Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers, which ought to be required reading for anyone in government. But that's no excuse for totally ignoring historical precedent. Were Donald Trump not so totally driven by the now, by what he sees on his favorite, fawning Faux News programs, he might have realized that his ham-handed firing of FBI director James Comey would draw immediate (and not completely inaccurate) parallels to Richard Nixon's firing of officials during the Watergate scandal.

Sadly, many millions of people - like Trump - don't care about the lies and the distortions and the nepotism and the ignorance ... people who are so blinded by a visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton and the liberal elite that they'll swallow anything Mr Trump says and then ask for a bigger second helping.

And yet, Mr Trump is wrong when he says that nobody cares about things. I care very much about getting to the bottom of possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. I care about Mr Trump's total lack of transparency about his family's business dealings and how they could affect his presidential decision-making. And I am not alone. Many other people really do care ... people who actually care about the Constitution and about flagrant abuse of authority by a narcissistic and delusional president.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Book Review

If you are interested in how your national government works, and in the effect individuals can have on history, here is a book you must read.

I just finished reading The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple, and it's excellent.

This book looks behind the scenes of the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, both Presidents Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama through the lens of the men (no women, yet) who have been their chiefs of staff. Mr Whipple carefully analyzes why the president needs a strong chief of staff, and what makes a person a good fit for that job.

Chiefs of staff bring focus and organization to a White House that is bombarded by crises and conflicting agendas 24 hours per day, 365 days a year. They keep the president's staff on target and on message, keep the paper flowing, and - most important - protect the president - from his enemies, his friends, and often from himself.

The men who have been in the job all agree that the most important part of the title is staff, not chief. The chiefs of staff who were least successful were those who emphasized their own importance, while those who were acknowledged the best (James Baker for Ronald Reagan and Leon Panetta for Bill Clinton, for instance) were those who worked tirelessly and quietly in the background to protect the president and manage his staff for maximum efficiency and output.

This is a book full of interesting anecdotes and analysis of what went on in the background of historical events. If you are interested in how your government functions at the highest levels (and you should be), this is a book you need to read. If you do, let me know what you thought.

And consider how badly Mr Trump needs a good chief of staff, and whether Reince Priebus is the right one.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Going for the Bigger Boom

Because I'm a history buff, every day I check out various websites that offer lists of what happened on that day. It's important to know where we've been so that we can contemplate where we're going ... as George Santayana once memorably said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Less well-known is another of Mr Santayana's comments about history -

"The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe."

We can see this every day in the loudly-held opinions of those who absolutely know that: (a) the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian nation; and (b) the Founders absolutely believed that the most important right of every citizen was to be armed to the teeth.

But I digress. Here's something that actually, provably happened in the past ...

On November 1st, 1952, the United States tested the first large hydrogen bomb - a weapon with a yield of ten megatons (the equivalent of ten million tons of TNT). Not to be outdone, on October 30th, 1961, the Soviet Union tested the so-called Tsar Bomb, a nuclear weapon with a yield of 50 megatons ... the most powerful weapon ever developed. By way of comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki - the last nuclear weapon actually used in war - had a yield of 21 kilotons (21,000 tons of TNT) ... a pretty enormous explosion in its own right.

Think about this for a moment.

Other than the atomic age comparison of manly appendages, what is the military purpose of a bomb with a yield of ten million ... or fifty million ... tons of TNT?  Consider this map, which diagrams a theoretical explosion of the Tsar Bomb over the city of Paris -

The yellow circle in the center represents the size of the initial fireball of the explosion, while the larger red circle represents the "zone of total destruction."

I suppose that this represents the ultimate end of the argument that you'e got to have an AR-15 with a 100-round drum magazine for self-defense ... because you never know when some miscreant in the airport will have a gun with a 50-round magazine. 

Have a good day. Think about all the better things on which we could be spending our money and our scientific talent. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Book Report: The Quartet, by Joseph J. Ellis

The Fourth of July holiday is over for another year, along with all of the usual editorials, speeches, OpEd articles, and other hooplah over the Declaration of Independence and our not-so-amicable divorce from Great Britain. If you're looking for timely thoughts on American history, look no further than this marvelous new book by historian Joseph J. Ellis - The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution.

The book tells the story of four American Founders - George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison - and the crafting of the Constitution ... a story you may think you know, but probably don't.

What we think of today as the American Revolution was not intended to create a new, unified country. It was designed to free 13 independent-minded colonies from rule by a distant and non-representative government in London. When the revolution was over and independence from Britain achieved, the individual colonies ("states") weren't interested in banding together and forming a new government to replace the one they'd just gotten rid of. Most of the residents of the 13 colonies, as Dr Ellis points out, never traveled more than a few miles from their homes, and thought of "representative government" - if they thought of it at all, which most people didn't - as being at no higher than the local or state level so as to understand and be responsive to their needs.

The original "Articles of Confederation" created a loose association of states under a virtually powerless central government, and people like Washington and Madison realized that without a central government with the authority to tax and to coordinate and unify the activities of the states (particularly in the areas of trade, foreign affairs, and defense), the states would end up a group of weak and squabbling entities, ripe for being swept up by some foreign power ... perhaps even Britain again.

Ellis tells the very interesting story of how those who favored a powerful central government overseeing a "united states" (the "Federalists") contended with those who believed that the federal government should be weak and non-threatening. He does a masterful job of explaining the complex political and economic arguments that led to the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that we revere today, even if few of us truly understand what the Founders actually created. Ellis writes,

"In the long run - and this was probably Madison's most creative insight - the multiple ambiguities embedded in the Constitution made it an inherently 'living' document. For it was designed not to offer clear answers to the sovereignty question (or, for that matter, to the scope of executive or judicial authority) but instead to provide a political arena in which arguments about those contested issues could continue in a deliberative fashion. The Constitution was intended less to resolve arguments than to make argument itself the solution. For judicial devotees of 'originalism' or 'original intent,' this should be a disarming insight, since it made the Constitution the foundation for an ever-shifting political dialogue that, like history itself, was an argument without end. Madison's 'original intention' was to make all 'original intentions' infinitely negotiable in the future."

And further,

"It (the Constitution) has endured not because it embodies timeless truths that the founders fathomed as tongues of fire danced over their heads, but because it manages to combine the two time-bound truths of its own time: namely, that any legitimate government must rest on a popular foundation, and that popular majorities cannot be trusted to act responsibly, a paradox that has aged remarkably well."

I strongly encourage you to read this fascinating look at our early history, particularly if you're one of those people who is absolutely certain you understand the meaning and intent of the Constitution, and exactly what the Founders meant. The book is not especially long (220 pages of text, plus three appendices with the full texts of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights), and is written in an easily-understandable, non-academic tone.

There are a lot worse ways to spend some of your free time than learning more about your history, particularly at this trying time in the ever-developing story of America.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Waterloo at 200

Today is June 18th, and for those of you who are historically-minded, it's the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, in which the resurgent French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by English and Prussian forces under the respective commands of the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal von Bluecher. Were it not for the outcome of this battle, I might be writing this blog in French.

I find military history to be fascinating, and the scope of my interest has been steadily moving backwards from my teenage interest in World War II, originally fueled by 1960's-vintage TV series like "Combat" and "The Gallant Men." The Second World War grew out of the First World War, which built on the earlier Balkans wars and the Franco-Prussian War, which led back to ... well ... the Napoleonic Wars.

I just finished reading a fascinating new book by Bernard Cornwell - Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles.

Cornwell is, of course, the author of the popular series of novels and short stories featuring the character of Richard Sharpe*, the British soldier who rose through the ranks and fought in every single battle of the Napoleonic wars, culminating in his participation at Waterloo as a lieutenant colonel.

Mr Cornwell has written a very detailed, but very readable and exciting history of the three battles of the Waterloo campaign - Ligny, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, bringing the noise, smell, and fury of the battle to life as perhaps no other current author can. He draws on previous historical research and writings, and on primary sources such as diaries and letters to present the battle from perspectives ranging from those of Napoleon, Bluecher, and the Duke of Wellington to those of private soldiers of the three competing armies (French, Prussian, and English). After reading this book, you'll be glad you weren't there.

The 200th anniversary of Waterloo also led to a recent flap between the Belgian and French governments when Belgium announced plans to issue a 2.5 Euro coin commemorating the battle.

This, as you might imagine, irritated the ever-prickly French, whose government huffed that the coin threatened to undermine European unity and "spur an 'unfavorable reaction in France.'" The French, of course, have never quite accepted that Napoleon didn't work out well for them in the long run.

And if you are not especially interested in European military history, you can still celebrate the legacy of Waterloo in this song by the Swedish quartet Abba ...

Get your ration of history - read this fine book by Bernard Cornwell.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow, when we'll reveal the Left Cheek Ass Clown for the month of June. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Sharpe was played by actor Sean Bean in the BBC series based on the Cornwell stories. Mr Bean also played the character of Eddard Stark in the HBO series "Game of Thrones," and of Boromir in "The Lord of the Rings."

There Oughta Be a Law, Part 2

If, Dear Readers, you are confused because you have been scrolling around looking for Part 1 of this post and not finding it, you just haven't scrolled far enough ... because it was posted on June 18th of 2012. Part 2 is only coming about now because I have recent personal experience with the topic.

If you don't feel like going back and reading the earlier post, here's the Readers' Digest version: a post by fellow blogger Angel had led me to something called Godwin's Law, which hypothesizes that, given enough time, any online discussion - regardless of topic or scope - will eventually include some comparison to Hitler and the Nazis. Here's the actual Law ...

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

This is common enough that there is a new addition to the list of logical fallacies titled Reductio ad Hitlerum, about which you can read here.

My latest brush with this logical fallacy came just yesterday, when I got into an online discussion with an old friend (old boss, actually, from my time in Berlin many years ago). He had posted a meme to his Facebook page which contrasted two quotes - one from Alan West and the other from Hillary Clinton:

I took issue with this as an overly simplistic reduction of a complex argument ... and a complex argument ensued. My point was that showing concern for the condition of the society as a whole is not the same as "feigning to know the societal good," or "dismiss(ing) ... unalienable individual rights." My friend kept trying to pin me down as a hysterically wild-eyed ivory tower liberal, with comments like, "So West's questions have no validity or relevance whatsoever?" and "So we must adopt Hillary's absolute, 'We must stop thinking of the individual...?'." The discussion spiraled around like water down a drain until a new person entered the discussion and posted this ...

... along with the comment, "... how about this comparison? Still think there (is) 'validity on both sides'?".

Yes, Dear Readers, it took exactly eight comments on my friend's original post to reach Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Now, at the risk of putting words in the lady's mouth, I think that what Ms Clinton should have said (and perhaps meant to say) was that it's not a good idea to focus exclusively on the needs of the individual at the expense of the larger society in which that individual lives. Completely unrestricted individual freedom is what used to be quaintly known as anarchy, and the need to regulate individual behavior in the interest of society is why we accept the limitations on our freedom that we call laws. There is, of course, a legitimate argument to be made about which laws are necessary, how intrusive or limiting they ought to be, and where the proper balance between rights and responsibilities lies, but that argument shouldn't rest on silly memes which rest on comparisons between individual gotcha quotes (usually without context). If we're going to resort to firing memes back and forth in lieu of principled discussion, here's mine ...

And just for the record, anyone who compares any present-day American political figure to Adolf Hitler* is utterly ignorant of history.

Have a good day. Think beyond the meme. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* By the way, I'm posting this on April 20th, which - as it happens - is the birthday (in 1889) of Adolf Hitler.

The Age of America in Presidents' Lives and Other Thoughts on History

Those of you who are regular visitors to this space know that I am a history buff, endlessly fascinated by the study of all that happened in the past to shape the times in which we live. This, of course, made me sit up and take notice of this article that ran last month in the Washington Post: Amazing but True: America Is Only Four Presidents’ Lives Old.

Here’s how it works, in the first paragraph of the article:

“When President Obama was born (1961), President Herbert Hoover was still alive (1874-1964). When Hoover was born, President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) was still alive. When President Johnson was born, President John Adams (1735-1826) was still alive. And just like that, we've connected present day to the Founding Fathers.”

I don’t know about you, but I found that absolutely fascinating. Here's a chart from the article that shows how the lives of the Presidents overlap, from George Washington to Barack Obama (it's easier to read at the original location)* ...

I think most people don’t enjoy studying history because they think of it in terms of the need to remember lots of dry-as-dust names and dates that aren’t relevant to their daily lives. But I would argue that it is relevant, because everything that’s going on in the world today is a product of things that went on before … often hundreds of years ago. One could argue that the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 set the stage for World War I, which led to World War II, which gave us the Cold War that created the conditions for the Korean and Vietnamese Wars. World War II laid the groundwork for the never-appease-a-dictator-again mindset that led us, directly or indirectly, to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the bitter fights over the nuclear treaty being laboriously hammered out with Iran.

Of course, it’s very easy to take a simplistic view of history and draw the wrong lessons from situations that are not equivalent. This was the message of Richard Neustadt and Ernest May’s wonderful 1988 book Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. Even so, the old adage that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it remains as true today as it ever was.

Have a good day. Enjoy the study of history, even if it's only the history of your family. You'll probably find it fascinating.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* I was born in 1951, and have lived through 13 Presidents ... Herbert Hoover was still alive when I was born.

It's Not The Necronomicon, But It's Bad Enough

Those of you who are interested in horror fiction and familiar with the works of H. P. Lovecraft know about The Necronomicon, an ancient book of mind-numbing evil that appears in many of Lovecraft’s works, usually accompanied by adjectives like "abhorred," "shunned," and "detested." It was a book so evil that its name often went unspoken and those who owned copies frequently met gruesome ends; most copies known throughout history were said to  have been rounded up and destroyed except for a very few kept under close guard. Not many books have received this much negative attention, but at least one other one has ... Mein Kampf, the political manifesto written by Adolf Hitler in the 1920s. In its way, Mein Kampf is the Necronomicon of politics.

This is why there was a great stir in Germany recently when it was announced that, for the first time since the end of World War II, Mein Kampf* would be published and made available for sale in Germany next year. It has been banned from reprinting in Germany since 1945 because the government of the state of Bavaria, which owns the copyright, has blocked all attempts to reissue the book, which was once the virtual Bible of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich. But the copyright expires in December of this year, and a German historical society plans to issue a heavily-annotated edition of the book, much to the chagrin, if not outright anger, of many in Germany and around the world.

Contrary to what I had earlier understood, the book was never actually banned in postwar Germany; only its reprinting was, and those who wanted to read it were usually able to find a copy in a library or antiquarian bookstore, or to buy one in another country. However, because of its unique role as the formal documentation of Hitler's political and social philosophies, its distribution and reading were officially discouraged, particularly with the recent growth in neo-Nazi skinhead movements in various parts of Germany.

I have read parts** of Mein Kampf in both the original German and in English translation. I can tell you without fear of exaggeration that it's one of the worst books I've ever read***, both because of its ugly content and because of its turgid, often nearly unreadable style. Nevertheless, it remains popular with those who sympathize with the hatreds and political rants of the Nazi era, and is important for that reason alone if no other – a civilized, cultured nation led the world into a horrifying conflict and allowed itself to be virtually destroyed because it followed the deranged philosophy documented in its pages.

A discussion of the pros and cons of reissuing Mein Kampf is timely in view of the ongoing debate in this country about allowable limits on freedom of speech. As I’ve said before, I tend to believe that there should be as few limits as possible on freedom of speech because it’s easier to recognize and contest bad ideas when they are presented in open forum. Forbidding discussion of certain topics and positions simply drives the discussion underground and allows those who hold distasteful ideas to live in their own self-confirming ideological bubble, free of the need to defend their ideas against counterargument. Allowing free and open discussion of ideas doesn’t grant them credence, but it does force people to defend their positions.

Of course, we all know that in today’s supercharged social and political environment, quaint things like facts and logic seldom carry the day. In fact, for many people, they are irrelevant distractions from things they absolutely know to be true. Facts are facts only if they support a previously-held position, and logic is not a method of forcing rational and defensible thought, but a highfalutin’ way of posing gotcha-style questions.

Participatory democracy requires an educated population willing to engage in reasoned debate. This is why sound education, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press are so vital to our survival and prosperity. To the extent that we sacrifice education on the altar of budget cuts and political and religious agendas and treat freedom of speech and the press as less important than the right to bear arms, we undercut the very foundation of our nation. When a book like Mein Kampf is suppressed, it gains an allure that its content does not earn. When we posit that certain ideas cannot be discussed or certain words used because they might offend someone, we lose the ability to drag unpleasant issues into the open where they can be debated and debunked.

So …

Go ahead and read Mein Kampf, if you can get through it, and ask yourself how such a collection of poorly-written, half-baked ideas managed to lead the world to ruin. Sometimes, The Necronomicon can look pretty good in comparison.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* The title translates as "My Struggle." Hitler originally wanted to call it, “Four and  a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice,” but his publisher suggested the shorter, and presumably more salable, title.

** I couldn't get through the whole thing.

*** Others feel the same way. A review of the book on Amazon.com is typical, noting that “… Beyond the anger, hatred, bigotry, and self-aggrandizing, Mein Kampf is saddled with tortured prose, meandering narrative, and tangled metaphors.”

Lincoln's Birthday

Today, February 12th, is the birthday (in 1809) of one of our greatest presidents - Abraham Lincoln.

He led the country through the Civil War (and did a much better job of it than some other presidents have led other wars*), and engaged in the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates, which set a standard for political debate that will never be matched by any of the sorry pretenders infesting Washington today.

He was a self-educated man and a brilliant speaker ... his Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural are unmatched in American oratory. What American political figure today could give a speech including the words

"With malice toward none, with charity for all ..."

I don't see words like those coming out of the mouth of any current political gasbag - particularly on today's far right.

Abraham Lincoln was a flawed man, to be sure, as we all are. But he was a good man and the right leader at the right time. Those who today bandy his name and image to sell cars and mattresses at Presidents Day sales, or pretend to embody his image and philosophy while demonstrating the opposite with their behavior, have no idea of Lincoln's legacy.

Happy Birthday, Abe! I'm sorry you have to look down and see the mess our government has become.

Have a good day. Do a little reading on one of our greatest presidents and learn what we've lost.

Be here tomorrow for the nomination of this month's Right Cheek Ass Clown. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Yes, W, I'm talking to you.

The People We Choose to Honor

Back in February of this year, I wrote a post titled "Who Gets the Statue?" which reported on the proliferation of statues of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Russia and asked why it was considered okay to erect a statue to the dictator who murdered millions of his own people* ... but why it is not considered okay to erect a statue to Adolf Hitler, who also murdered millions of his own people. The short, if unsatisfying, answer is, of course, that Hitler lost the war and nobody erects statues to losers.

I thought about the who-gets-the-statue question again when I read this amazing article that reports on the erection in Sarajevo of a statue of Gavrilo Princip ... the man who murdered Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie and set in motion the events** that led to the First World War and its bitter outcomes that still bedevil our world today.

Evidently there are still people who believe that a politically-inspired murderer whose crime was indirectly responsible for two world wars and the deaths of tens of millions of people is a hero***. Bosnian Serb head of state Nebojsa Radmanovic attended the dedication of the statue, and said, "These fighters for freedom a hundred years ago have given us the direction to follow for the next hundred years."

If this is the attitude of such people, it looks as if the next hundred years are likely to be very unpleasant.

Who gets the statue, indeed?

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Let us also not forget Mao Zedong, who also murdered tens of millions of his own people, but is nevertheless revered in China, it being too dangerous for the Communist Party to admit that its hero was a murderous dictator.

** My friend Arizona Dave points out that this is a wonderful example of the Butterfly Effect.

*** For another rumination on the subject of heroes, go back and read my post from August 26^th, 2012, Another Word for Hero.

The 70th Anniversary of D-Day

Today is the 70th anniversary of the allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. On that day - June 6, 1944 - tens of thousands of American, British, Canadian, French, Polish, and other allied troops stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied Europe, catching the German forces utterly by surprise. The Normandy invasion has become known to history as "D-Day," although in military terms, d-day is simply the date on which any operation is scheduled to commence. The tremendous logistical effort and incredibly detailed planning, never matched before or since, have given the term its capital letters and ensured that it will live on in the history of great military efforts.

The success of the invasion was due not just to the detailed planning and heroic efforts of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who stormed the beaches or fell from the skies behind the German lines, but also to the masterfully cunning strategic deception effort known as "Fortitude" that kept the Germans off balance and convinced that the Normandy attack was a mere feint to protect the real invasion, which would come across the narrowest part of the English Channel in the Pas de Calais region of France. You can read the thrilling story of Operation Fortitude in Anthony Cave Brown's brilliant book Bodyguard of Lies.

The opening of a "second front" in Western Europe had long been promised to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, whose forces had been fighting a brutal war against Germany since Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. Stalin was paranoid and highly suspicious of the Western Allies, who he assumed were deliberately delaying the promised invasion in the hopes that the Soviets would destroy Nazi Germany on their own, and be so devastated by the conflict as to pose no threat to Europe themselves. Indeed, the Russians had already scored enormous, if pyrrhic, victories over the Germans at Stalingrad (in 1942-3) and Kursk (in 1943) - long before the Allied attack in the West.

The story of D-Day is both thrilling and sobering. It would probably be impossible today to carry off such a massive effort, when reconnaissance by satellites and drones would detect the preparations for the assault early on, and it would almost certainly be impossible - in the era of Facebook, Twitter, smartphones, and self-important ass clowns like Edward Snowdon - to carry off the sort of all-encompassing deception plan that provided security for the effort and ensured that the Germans were taken by surprise.

It was a once-only event in history - we will never see its like again. And as the men and women who fought and died on the beaches of Normandy and in the subsequent campaign march off to their final rest, our opportunities to hear their stories first-hand grow fewer every year.

If you are interested in learning more about D-Day, there are many great books and films out there that help paint the picture. I've already mentioned Anthony Cave Brown's Bodyguard of Lies. Cornelius Ryan's book The Longest Day was turned into the great 1962 film of the same name. The more recent film Saving Private Ryan offered what may be the most intense and realistic 20 minutes ever filmed as it opened with a terrifying recreation of ordinary soldiers storming heavily-defended Omaha beach. And for those of you who might be interested in a look at D-Day from the German point of view, I can recommend Paul Carrell's superb book Invasion: They're Coming! There are many other books and movies out there, many of which (like Pegasus Bridge, by Stephen Ambrose), tell smaller parts of the big story, but these are among the best overall histories I've found.

Take a few minutes to reflect on the courage and sacrifice of those who fought and died on the beaches of Normandy seventy years ago today. I often wonder if I could have risen to the challenge as so many did on that day.

Have a good day. See you tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo