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Justice Comes for Kayla Mueller

It always seems the end for the worst of humanity comes with a pathetic irony. Those who would waste the lives of hundreds of thousands, promoting themselves as steely icons of irresistible strength and ruthless ideologic will, often find their end in the pathetic circumstance of cowardly trying avoid their fate rather than facing their justice – by hiding in a hole (Saddam), behind the bodies of their women (Bin Laden), or in the most recent iteration, the ISIS thug Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi- hiding behind his children. No matter – the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends inevitably toward justice.

President Trump announced today the successful conclusion of a years long effort to corner and eliminate the self proclaimed leader of the ISIS caliphate – a hellishly cartoonish but murderously serious attempt to create a medieval autocracy along the lines of a perverted interpretation of Islam. Baghdadi, literally too radicalized and impatient even for the thugs of Al Qaeda, broke out to form a competitive cell of terrorists recruited among the most vicious and sociopathic of islamic outcasts, determining the sophisticated mass murders and patient revolution of Bin Laden and his followers were insufficient to their rage and determination to see their caliphate in their lifetimes. Preying on the calamity of Syria and the post Saddam weakness of Iraq, Baghdadi for a brief time achieved stunning success across the wastes of Syria and western Iraq, at one time swallowing tens of thousands of square miles of territory, the massive city of Mosul, and threatening the very edge of Baghdad itself.

Derided as “junior varsity” by imperious and distracted President Obama, Baghdadi triumphantly proclaimed the existence of the caliphate from the holy mosque of Mosul, and set about to live out the cartoon hell he had envisioned for those in the grasp of the caliphate. The innumerable tragedies played themselves out through the leering clarity of the internet, as Baghdadi’s perverse vision of islamic rule was baldly projected for all to see, and fear. The throwing of gays off roofs, the raping and enslavement of thousands of yazidi women, the burning alive of ISIS captives, the wanton destruction of thousands of years old relics of great civilizations in Iraq and Palmyra, Syria, and the outright thievery, extortion, murder and thuggery extreme even for the most extreme of the world’s criminal element were the calling cards of Baghdadi’s caliphate.

Fueled by the money they stole and the oil fields they captured, briefly the caliphate seemed to exude a permanence that entranced thousands of deviants from across the globe hoping to live out their fantasy of being a lord and executioner to the helpless other thousands who ISIS had swept up. The king thug Baghdadi attempted to place himself in the role of ultimate Caliph, accruing wealth and a harem of enslaved young women he could rape and dominate.

That is of course where the tragic arc of the life of Kayla Mueller was drawn into the barbarous arc of the king thug Baghdadi. As I reviewed at length in Ramparts in 2016 – Ramparts People We Should Know – Kayla Mueller – Kayla was martyred in the unholy clutches of Baghdadi, but her story of incredible fortitude and human decency under the most awful and agonizing of personal distress, was in many ways the trigger to the inevitable end of the thug king. Her indomitable faith moved Kayla to withstand the most intolerable of human perversion , and the circumstances of her calling in life – “For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal” – transcended her 2015 death in the manner of sainthood.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice and the ultimate judgement of the Devine. President Trump, who had made the centerpiece of his administration the destruction and elimination of ISIS, was notified by the long arm of intelligence that Baghdadi had been identified hiding in the small village of Brisha, Syria, along the Turkish Syrian border. It was determined secretly last week to organize and inject a Special Forces Task Force with the solitary purpose of bringing the man responsible for the deaths of Ms. Mueller and so many thousands of others unto final justice. The mission was named “Kayla” – as no one had forgotten, and the justice to be served was to be her ultimate triumph over the thug king. The firm and final blow found its mark and delivered its sentence to the mass murderer and tyrannical dictator of innocents, in the coward’s way out using a suicide vest, miserably taking 3 of his innocent children with him, when his escape down a tunnel was blocked.

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has met the ignominious end so often associated with the worst of us, but like others of his ilk, not before he has ruined tens of thousands of lives. His name should disappear into the trash bin of history,

Hopefully, when the history of this particularly ugly chapter of humanity is behind us, the resonance of goodness that was imbued in the life of Kayla Mueller will outlive the sordid confinement she was forced to endure under the heel of the likes of Baghdadi. The region needs it. Humanity needs it.

Somewhere in Prescott, Arizona, Kayla’s parents have been notified by the President that the mission achieved justice for Kayla and that her personal human triumph over calamity was the ultimate inspiration to provide the final blow to the monster reign of the thug king Baghdadi. It won’t probably be enough to assuage all the pain, but hopefully it will bring closure. That would be, after all the evil that has befallen the world, a small injection of godliness we so desperately need.

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The Collusion Narrative and Trump – The Arc of Justice

Former Director of the FBI James Comey testifies before Congress in the Russian Collusion investigation – attrib photo politico.com

When President Obama assumed the Presidency of the United States in 2009, he ushered in changes that reflected his desire to, as he stated it, to totally transform the United States. The decorum of the Oval Office in the White House was converted to reflect this change, including a carpet bordered with deep quotations that would orient the philosophy of the new administration, devoted as it was to a social justice revolution. The new President was particularly fond of one of the carpet quotations he had selected that he attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr:

Obama Oval Office carpet – photo White House Museum

The arc of the moral Universe is long , but it bends toward Justice

Unfortunately like so many other things in the Obama Administration, the surface veneer did not reflect real life facts. It turns out that the author of the quote was not Dr. King, as Obama had convinced himself, but rather , an abolitionist Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, who proffered the remark in a collection of sermons in 1853.

Oh well, the point was that eventually justice wins out. An errant fact was not going to upset the narrative of the administration, which was, as the press insisted on telling us – scandal free – in its drive to transform us. Well maybe that wasn’t quite true either. It may well turn out that the Obama Administration, particularly through its national security and justice arms, determined to achieve the ultimate in scandalous behavior, the undermining of a political opponent, Trump, prevent his electoral victory, and when not successful in that, engage a sustained effort to weaken and destroy his Presidency. The famous e-mail by FBI agent Peter Stroch to his lover FBI lawyer Lisa Page referencing the presence of an “insurance policy” just in case Trump somehow achieved election, becomes more clear this past weekend as the Inspector General of the Justice Department, Michael Horowitz released his report on the interactions of FBI Director James Comey and then President elect Trump, and beyond, in the first few months of the nascent new Presidency. Contrary to Comey’s comment to Trump that he personally was not under investigation for any suspected collusion with Russian involvement in the election, The IG found Comey’s actions in obtaining, recording, and disseminating memos regarding his interactions with Trump squarely put Trump at the center of an ongoing investigation designed to entrap him, and lay the seeds for criminal inditement or impeachment. James Comey wasn’t attempting to serve the new president. He was attempting to get rid of him.

As Andy McCarthy, a former prosecutor who has intensely followed the process since the beginning , states, it is clear now that the fix was in, and Obama Administration officials were working to “short circuit ” the Trump Presidency. Unlike Obama’s errant misquote, this would be really, really bad if true, and as the wheels come off the Trump collusion narrative, it is looking more and more true. We may be looking at one of the worst scandals in the history of America democracy – the “insurance policy” designed to achieve a coup.

The first deep dive by the IG towards malfeasance focuses upon a Director of the once sacrosanct Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey. Comey, a politico director with an extreme level of self satisfied behavior, first worked his magic to bury a devastating security breach that involved Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the destruction of thousands of secure government emails that were likely exposed through her malfeasance to hostile foreign powers. Having determined on his own to function as prosecutor and jury (likely with guidance from his superiors), he pre-emptively determined to find her untoward actions to be below the threshold requiring prosecution. Now comes the IG’s ire for Comey’s deliberate effort to somehow link a Presidential candidate to a Russian spy network that had managed to inject through a former British spy, a dossier of scurrilous stories, paid for by Trump’s opponent Clinton in their effort to obtain “opposition research”, then pan it off as fact with the rest of the Obama national security apparatus through three grand juries of the FISA court, allowing phone taps and other counter intelligence actions against of Trump, and drive an investigation that would lead to a special prosecutor who spent more than two years hampering and pressuring the new President attempting to get him to crack. Turns out the ‘scandal free’ administration may have attempted the ultimate scandal, a coup. Comey was actively participating as the tip of the spear.

The sad fact is that the President’s pugnacious nature and looseness with the language of facts played directing into the hands of coup leaders and their full blown accomplices, the elite media. For two years, the media pounded Trump like a piñata, buying in to the fallacious narrative, and brutally driving it every day in their own obscene effort to get rid of Trump.

https://youtu.be/xwW9RZCEydw

Only a bull dog like Trump could have survived the onslaught. The larger question is whether our constitutional democracy can survive the onslaught to our bedrock principles of a free, unencumbered, disinterested press and civil service that believes in democratic institutions and rule of law. The last several decades, and particularly the last several years show the narrative wants to demolish our precious, hard won constitutional protections against such onslaughts.

Well, maybe as Dr. King said, or more correctly as Dr. King paraphrased what Minister Parker said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Hopefully as more light falls on the subject of this treacherous episode in our nation’s story, the bend for all the willing culprits, will be towards real justice. We will see what our decaying institutions do with all the sunshine, as the culprits begin to scatter.

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The Special Relationship

Boris Johnson ascends to No. 10 Downing St . attrib. news.sky.com

The ever forward arc of ‘progress’ assumed by globalist elites was shaken cataclysmically by the unexpected earthquake win of outsider Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States in November, 2016. But the real tremblers began earlier that year across the pond in Britain on June 23, 2016 when the British population stunned all experts by coming out in droves to defend sovereignty with a vote to leave the European Union. As has happened on multiple occasions, the influence of the Mother country on the United States, and vice versa was evidenced in full flower. The casual assumption by elites in both countries that, the concept of ‘citizen’ had evolved irreversibly beyond the national boundaries and unique formative events that had formed the world’s two oldest continuing representative democracies, was abruptly derailed.

Never say die, never give in, when you are sure that you are right, though, is a foundational tenet of the liberal elite. The attacks, delays, and obfuscations began almost immediately in both countries. In the U.S., a cadre of deep state elites put into motion a crippling and potentially death dealing plan to dismantle the Trump Administration at birth, with the Russian Collusion hysteria and orchestrated ‘investigation’. The two year non-stop attack from both internal government coordinators and the media obsessed with removing the blot of Trumpism from their determined narrative as to the acceptable direction of the country, paralyzed most initiatives and required Trump to swing from the heels in pugilist fashion, at times his own worst enemy. In Britain a faux march towards Brexit with the Article 50 vote in the House of Commons covered a leadership elite impassioned to stall and obstruct any development of an agreement with the European Union that would actually significantly change Britain’s relationship. The goal was, with each passing month, a “do over” that would ignore the clear will of the British populous with the first plebiscite, and manipulate a second vote to overturn the first, locking Great Britain permanently in the grip of the continental overlords of the European Union. When you are defending the ever forward arc of progress, you can’t let democratic minions who think they want to control their own future stand in your way.

The fascinating lesson, however, learned over and over is the stubborn strength of the mechanisms of democracy set up hundreds of years ago in both countries, resistant to the manipulations of false and misleading narratives. The edifice of the Trump Collusion narrative has crumbled into dissolution against facts and overreach, exposing the righteous attack as closer to the ‘witch-hunt’ defined by the President. The final blow may have come when the Chief Investigator Mueller, held up as indomitable and impartial, revealed finally in Congressional hearings designed to devastate Trump, that he barely comprehended what had been the details or the legal foundations of his own investigation. In Britain, the multiple delays of the multiple deadlines for leaving came up against the full fury of the British electorate when they voted overwhelmingly for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in European Parliament elections, crushing the establishment parties, in a victory by a party that had not even existed six weeks prior to the vote.

The most recent indication that the tumult between the global elites and the contrarian people they rule was not going away, was the internal election of Boris Johnson displacing Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party and ascension to the Prime Ministership of the House of Commons. A leaver from the start, Johnson has been painted as a clownish, lightweight figure by the establishment, much along the lines of his American counterpart, Donald Trump. Johnson started his premiership with his own version of “draining the swamp”, removing all semblance of Theresa May’s bumbling EU appeasement cabinet and replacing them with hardline leavers. He set a standard for leaving on October 31st, with or without an agreement with the EU, and pledged firmly no more moving of the line in the sand.

The strange result is, once again, a historical coalescence of the special influences and relationships between Great Britain and the United States that defies the demands of others to abrogate the relationship once and for all. One thinks back to the last time such a convocation led to immense progress, the quirky relationship of a bookish middle class chemist and an American actor, who found themselves uncommonly bound on common ideology and purpose.

President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher attrib. national review.com

The possibilities of a restoration of a special relationship between Johnson and Trump along the lines of Thatcher and Reagan can seem a stretch when the labile personalities and elastic ideological convictions of the current duo seem impossible to pin down. Their ‘can do’ spirit’ and the basis of what they believe regarding the earned greatness of achievement of their respective countries however shine brightly against any perceived lack of intellectualized ideological underpinning. The two men are part of a crusade to reverse the tide of decay that permeates western civilized culture, and have the strange current convergence of an aligned electorate in both countries that want the great experiment of individual freedom, to go on, just a bit longer.

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The Eagle Has Landed…

Audacity is a peculiarly American trait. On May 5th, 1961, the United States of America succeeded in launching a Redstone rocket propelling Freedom 7, a Mercury space capsule inhabited by first astronaut, Alan Shepard a distance of 101 nautical miles into space in a 15 minute sub-orbital flight, and successfully recovering both the capsule and the astronaut in the Atlantic Ocean. An American first, but not nearly a world first. The Soviet Union three weeks before had launched Yuri Gagarin not only into space, but into successful orbit, indicating a generational lead in launch capacity, lift power, and sophistication. One might think the perspective would have brought humility to American expectations in the face of the Soviet prowess. Instead, a mere 20 days after the Freedom 7 flight, President John F Kennedy before a joint session of Congress declared:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, ormolu important in the long range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

Audacity personified.

The idea that America could in the space of eight years go from the concept of a single stage rocket sub-orbital flight to the as of yet barely perceived spectacular technical challenges of escaping Earth orbit, coordinating a flight to an extraterrestrial body, land on it, escape from it, return successfully to Earth, and do so with the enormously added complexity of doing so while sustaining fragile humans on board approached ridiculous. The President of course was little interested in the engineering; he was entirely focused on what he saw as an existential threat created by failing to beat the Soviet Union to the accomplishment.

The National Air and Space Administration, led by James E Webb, knew accomplishing reality was an entirely different matter to the idealistic vision. The number of necessary inventions and engineering feats that would have to follow in coordinated sequence without fail, most of which had yet to be conceived, much less tested, was beyond comprehension. A staged rocket capable of thrust propelling not a few thousand, but tens of thousands of pounds of machinery beyond orbit, escaping earth’s gravity, was barely on engineering concept boards. A craft transporting humans and accurately navigating across the expanse of space would have to be developed. The space craft would have to somehow secure a means of returning safely to earth, but not before delivering a secondary manned craft, not yet conceived, to the Moon’s surface, capable of independent flight, landing and takeoff, as well performing an in space linkup for the return home. It would require environments safe for humans in deep space, spacesuits capable of ludicrous airless environments. It would require sophisticated computation and associated miniaturization on a scale not in existence, through sciences yet to be invented. Every facet, every step, would likely occur as a first of its kind, with almost no mechanism for testing before use, and no room for failure on such a timetable and the totally unforgiving environment of space. And successful or not, it would require a ton of money.

Audacious to the extreme.

The story tells itself, in that on July 20th, 2019, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the successful culmination of this audacious vision. The anniversary of man’s first flight to another terrestrial body and safe return is the epic story of Apollo 11 and the heroic accomplishment of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, and hundreds of thousands of nameless contributors that made it possible. The story tells itself, but as we get farther away from the accomplishment, and fifty years later, trying to find a way to return to the Moon, the glory of every chapter becomes more and more brilliant and sparkling.

The eight year sprint from Shepard’s Mercury craft to the spectacular success of the Apollo 11 mission of July 16- 24, 1969 required incredible vision, engineering brains and construction competence rarely achieved in the history of man. Webb, the NASA administrator had to orchestrate an in calculable number of science firsts to even position for a possible attempt at the moon. Chief among this was to create a rocket of exceptional lifting power beyond all comprehension of the first rocket crafts. The Redstone rocket lifting the Mercury craft had the capacity for creating 78000 pounds force of thrust to lift the Mercury capsule into space. The spectacular three stage Saturn V rocket created for the Apollo mission, standing 363 feet high, would create over 7,8 million pounds force of thrust and capable of lifting greater than 150000 lbs of vehicle to the moon. Despite the enormous explosive force and the highly volatile fuel concoctions, Saturn V eventually performed 13 consecutive flawless launches and never lost a crew.

Saturn V

Initial Mercury orbits required calculations with slide rules; the Apollo crafts would develop the first integrated circuits or computer chips in history to drive the first navigation computers. So new was the technology that the calculations were often cross checked by Astronauts using slide rules and astrolabes to assess star positions. So revolutionary was the miniturization that it spawned the digital revolution that dominates the world today.

The suits worn by the astronauts required otherworldly technology. Over 20 layers were hand woven to provide the unique characteristics of flexibility sufficient to move in space or walk on the moon performing tasks, yet critically sealing the astronaut against the absolute vacuum and extreme temperatures of space, as well as the bombardment of radiation and microparticles. The manufacturing genius for such as living cocoon was left to the creative intellects who had designed the Living Bra – Playtex. Go figure.

The multiple crafts and critical maneuvers were tested in real time with no room or time for failure. Mercury developed the technical aspects of multi-orbit flight. Gemini, a larger two person craft flown from 1965 to 1967 developed the many maneuvers potentially required for a deep space mission. Critical firsts in Extra Vehicular (Space Walk ) Activity and learning how to safely perform the maneuvers for space craft rendezvous and docking were achieved, as well as extended stays in space, by astronauts who later would represent the bulk of the Apollo astronaut corps that would seek and explore the moon.

Apollo, the three astronaut craft, made its debut in devastating fashion that would have normally ended any other less politically driven program. On February 21 1967, Apollo 1, performing a prelaunch test, sustained a catastrophic fire with astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee trapped in the vehicle, brutally killing all three. The program returned to uncrewed flight while a full NASA and Congressional investigation determined the cause of the fire and identified safety enhancements to prevent any recurrence of the horrific event. By 1968, a manned Apollo 7 was launched into orbit to show the capability of the Apollo craft in space. December , 1968 brought Apollo 8 to the moon and back, A few months later Apollo 9 secured the docking process needed to secure the lunar vehicle in position for landing and return rendezvous . May 1969 brough the lunar module within 9 miles of a lunar landing as a dress rehearsal for the epic voyage of July 16, 1969, of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the Moon for the purpose of landing on another world.

All this spectacular spending ,creativity and achievement in eight years led to magnificent day of July 20th, 1969, when the fragile LEM craft was landed on the Sea of Tranquility with the deft flying of Armstrong and the rapid calculations of Aldrin. Half the world was watching breathlessly as an American astronaut gently glided down from the final stair, some 3.5 feet of the moon surface and placed his foot for the first time on an extraterrestrial body. Seen as a shady fragile shadow on the television screens simultaneously viewed around the world, the awed audience could little contemplate another revolutionary first achieved by sending the picture 250,000 miles across space to be viewed in real time at home.

Neil Armstrong first stepping on the Moon July 20th,1969
“That’s one small step for a Man, one giant leap for all Mankind”

The incredible achievements of eight short years, the equivalent of 250 billion dollars in investment, the work of hundreds of thousands of scientists, technicians and construction workers came together in a flawless eight day mission of undeniable American exceptionalism. So undeniable, that there has been no attempt by any country since the final mission of Apollo 17 in 1973 to come remotely close to replicate the achievement. Glory in all the documentaries that present the many angles of this incredible mission on its 50th anniversary, and absorb what this nation of free citizens accomplished. Maybe the you are there intensity is best captured by the National Geographics documentary :Missions to the Moon that provides the sites and voices of the time without narration. No matter, the ride will be thrilling whichever you choose. A once in a life time adventure is brought to life for us once more, and maybe, gives the seed of inspiration that encourages a new generation, to try to do it all over again.

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Freedom Digs In for the Long Haul

Millions march for freedom in Hong Kong -photo attrib. ABC News – Go.com

The quant notions of individual liberty and freedom of expression born out of the Enlightenment manage to resist extinction in the most unexpected of places. In a world where the mature democracies have grown tired of the responsibilities and maintenance the actualization of liberty requires, fresh examples of the yearning of a free people to control their own destinies and secure pursuit of happiness blossom like spring flowers in the tundra. Iran, under the oppressive theocracy that demands submission, sees a never ending stream of brave actions by common citizens who risk the thuggery of suppressors, imprisonment, and even death at the hands of government and its purchased enforcement arm. Venezuela, starved and humiliated by a gangster regime that has outsourced its further existence to the military autocrats of Cuba , yet somehow finds the strength to protest and persevere against the gang of socialist pretenders that hoard the levers of economic activity and basic survival. Now Hong Kong, a former colony of one imperial overlord, released only to be progressively subsumed by another, larger and more oppressive overlord, has decided to take the lessons learned from the first to stand up to the second. The desire for all to live a life of free will is currently finding its most fertile soil for nurturing in places that have had but a brief taste of its possibilities, once felt beyond the reach of this most “western” of ideals.

Hong Kong learned the hard way what freedom could mean. Existing for a 150 years as a colonial outpost to secure British imperial commercial ambitions of the vast mainland of China, could for the most part as expatriate Chinese only live indirectly in the glow of British concepts of juris prudence, democratic governance, educational opportunity, and international free market capitalism. Compared to the third and fourth world economies surrounding it though, Hong Kong populated almost entirely by Han Chinese, incorporated the enormous industriousness of their makeup and a world class harbor into the opportunity afforded by the British Empire to form one of its most successful and prosperous colonies. As a consequence of the legacy of this relationship, almost half of the 7.8 million people inhabiting the Kowloon Peninsula and surrounding islands maintain some form of British nationality and a quarter of a million are British citizens.

The concept of ‘colony’ even in the hands of a benign imperial administration is inherently artificial and pathologic, and ultimately as China finally found its bearings and national footing in the 1980s, the perpetuation of a colonial stain on the mainland was an overt insult and increasing anachronism of previous eras. The British had negotiated in 1898 a 99 year agreement from the Chinese to administer Hong Kong, and with the impending end of the agreement, China was in no mood and a contracted Great Britain in no position to perpetuate the arrangement. The British negotiated the return of sovereignty of Hong Kong to the Chinese government in 1997. No one asked the local residents their preference. What was to become of freedom minded Hong Kong under the thumb of a communist overlord? The British negotiated a salve that put forth the concept of “one nation two systems” that the Chinese government agreed to respect for 50 years. The value of such a buoyant economic engine and financial center oriented to the outside world appealed to the Communists of Beijing who had under Deng Xiaoping determined to inject a contorted capitalism into China to speed up its modernization while maintaining rigid control of society and dominance of its one party rule. The British were gone, and progressively the Chinese mainland looked to assert its dominance and progressive control of the profit drivers. The wild card no one took much heed of was, how much the local population had grown over the years to treasure its institutions of limited governance and personal freedoms. Genetically Chinese or not, the Hong Kong citizens had somehow absorbed the concepts of representative limited government and rule of law as not quant British relics but bedrock universal rights.

The inevitable has happened, as the Chinese authorities look to reel in Hong Kong into the subservient relationship the mainland Chinese have with their rulers, the people of Hong Kong refuse to play along. In the latest iteration, the communist appointed Chief Executive Carrie Lam has attempted to force through an extradition treaty that would give the mainland the ability to determine ‘unwelcome elements’ in the Hong Kong citizenry and extradite them to the mainland for communist inspired justice. The obvious consequences to the freedom loving citizens of Hong Kong made this attempt a bridge too far. Risking all in a world where increasingly governmental surveillance makes coordinated demonstration an extremely dangerous enterprise, democracy leaders in Hong Kong have managed massive protests that have paralyzed the government and raised the stakes extremely high to the authoritarians in Beijing. An even partial victory risks the freedom virus spreading onto the mainland Chinese cities and a potential return of Tiananmen Square instability; a crackdown a universal condemnation or worse. Freedom is a fundamental threat to any government forcing its citizens to live under less artificially, and the Chinese communists have held their position with ruthlessness when necessary.

The brave Hong Kong protesters soldier on, joining their compatriots in Iran, Venezuela, and other corners of the earth that have sought the liberty that mature democracies take for granted, and often are foolishly willing to give away. We live in interesting times, where the true bedrock values of freedom and liberty may need to be reinjected in our own psyche by the courageous and committed exemplars in places that have barely known such freedoms.

As Deng Xiaoping may have presciently, but inadvertently expressed – may a thousand flowers bloom…

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People We Should Know #34 – Bart Starr

Sunday morning one awoke to the terrible news that Bart Starr had died. Terrible, in that the sense of foreboding of the announcement has lain like a fog over the last several years as the once indomitable individual had been struck with health insult after health insult, leaving the inevitable seemingly possible with each passing day. First stroke, then another stroke , then heart attack, then seizures assaulted this once great athlete, leaving him a whisper of his former self and fragile to the the clock running out without a redemption story. And yet, as one who grew up with the legend of a champion unbowed by any challenge, Starr turned his competitive fire onto his health crisis like the final drive in the fourth quarter, and sought victory against the tremendous odds. At one point unable to speak or walk, Starr, through tortuous therapy, stem cell injections and indomitable will managed to rouse himself on a cold rainy night to attend Brett Farve’s Green Bay induction into the ring of immortality during his number retirement in November, 2015 creating one of the great emotional passing of the torch moments in sports history.

It was Brett Farve’s night, but the crowd responded to the presence of the frail Starr with a heightened roar that let all know the emotional core of ultimate greatness for all who were present resided in the unique personhood of one Bart Starr. Greatness in sports translates for most into greatness in life – the ability to maximize one’s available capacities thrown against severe challenge to not only compete, but surmount and ultimately conquer. Few conquered life and provided such an exemplary example for others to emulate as did Bryan Bartlett Starr, and in celebration of his life, resounds proudly as Rampart’s People We Should Know – #34.

“He’s got to have the respect of his teammates, his authority must be unquestioned, and his teammates must be willing to go through the gates of hell with him ”

Bart Starr on what defines a great Quarterback

There was nothing to suggest the rookie drafted by Green Bay in 1956 in the 17th round from the University of Alabama was such a quarterback. A quiet, to some overly polite, physically unimpressive young man was almost invisible to the other players on the Packers, who assumed he would be another one of those players who drifted in, and out, of the NFL without tracing any memory on those who played with him, or those who watched. He was the fourth of four quarterbacks available to the new coach in 1959, Vince Lombardi, hired to somehow shake the Packer franchise out of the losing doldrums that had seized the once great franchise and threatened its very survival. Coach Lombardi was earthshaking in his approach, unforgiving of casual effort, careless mistake, and to some brutal in his drive to seek perfection. For many veterans, Lombardi was a intolerant taskmaster. To Starr, he was like an epiphany. Frankly, Lombardi reminded Starr of his unbending, difficult to please military father, and Starr understood how to deal with stern discipline better than most. Interestingly, Lombardi saw in Starr what others did not see, a field general that would be capable of translating Lombardi’s vision onto the field of play, and be his perfect reflection. Soon, other players noted that Starr was tireless in his study, repetition, and discipline, and although Lombardi was harsh and unyielding to others, he rarely raised his voice to Starr.

The results of their combined contribution was almost immediate, and progressively spectacular. Within a season, the heretofore placid Packers were the irresistible force of the league, getting to the championship game in 1960, winning the NFL title in 1961, and crushing all before them in 1962. Among the many star players, the duet between the coach and his field reflection the quarterback was the premier example of excellence in all of sports. The team was anything but boring, with philanderers, gamblers, carousers, and warriors, but on Sundays the nation was captivated by a team that had made perfect execution its goal, and more often than not, carried it out to perfection. At the center of the maelstrom was the quiet leader who said yes, sir , no, sir to his coach, was not heard to swear, didn’t smoke, and went home to his wife and family. Starr went to church, always had time for anyone who wanted a moment or an autograph, and was a leader in charity and community. Starr was what the mythic example of the perfect leader so treasured by Americans but rarely seen in real life – humble, deferential, and at moments of stress and crisis, inspirational. Amazingly, what you thought you saw, was absolutely what you got.

Starr was not just a great leader of men; he could play. In a time when running the ball was king, and passing was an afterthought, Starr was a four time All Pro, the era’s most accurate passer, and a devastating play caller who befuddled defenses with unpredictable downfield gambles and led the league in yards gained per completion. The team responded to his call for total on field authority, and followed him through the gates of hell to 5 NFL championships in 7 years, including three in a row. He was the MVP and winning quarterback of the first two Super Bowls. He was absolute steel in stressful moments, playing a position that in the 1960s held none of the physical contact protections slathered on quarterbacks today. The image of Starr in the picture above, a single thin bar between his face and the surrounding violence was emblematic of the physical abuse the quarterback was expected to endure.

“Coach, the linemen can get their footing for the Wedge, but the backs are slipping. I’m right there, I can just shuffle my feet and lunge in.” Lombardi told Starr, “Run it, and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Sideline conversation during final timeout between Starr and Lombardi, December 31,1967 – the ‘Ice Bowl’ NFL championship game Green Bay vs Dallas

Nothing defines Bart Starr or the mythic status of the Green Bay Packers as does the final drive of the so called “Ice Bowl” of December 31, 1967, in the NFL championship game between the aging Packers and the upcoming Dallas Cowboys, in possibly the most appalling conditions for an extended sporting event defined by violent contact. The field temperature at game time was an all time frigid -13 degrees F, wind chills -50 degrees, and the conditions deteriorated from there. The playing of the game under such conditions was epic in its ludicrous expectation by the league for athletes to actually perform in such a dangerous and unyielding environment, much less the 56000 bundled eskimos masquerading as attending football fans. What was even more ludicrous was how well they performed. The so called warm weather team, the Cowboys, improbably outplayed the Packers after falling behind 14 to 0 early, a deficit that would have eliminated almost any other team, but with 4:30 to go in the 4th quarter, the Cowboys had dominated the second half, and the Packers were left on their 32 yard line, down 17 to 14. The Packers had been pummeled by the Cowboy defense in the second half, and recognized this was likely their last chance. The field was an ice rink, the players beyond weak with frostbite, and a field goal in such conditions to tie, an abomination to the kicker’s foot. The story of the final drive huddle was as epic as the situation – players said afterward Starr entered the huddle, looked in their eyes, and stated the time was now, and they were going to score.

And so the The Drive began, with Starr positioning short passes to receivers with treacherous footing, and catching the Cowboys off guard with miss direction runs. With less than a minute to play, Starr had brought them down within a yard of the goal line, and like the champions they had always been, they could smell the win. The treachery of the field, however, awful in other places, was beyond comprehension near the south end zone of Lambeau Field. On two consecutive running plays, the running backs slipped and fell, barely returning to the line of scrimmage. With 16 seconds left, Starr called his final timeout, came to the sideline , and had the above conversation with Lombardi. Lombardi admitted after the game, he was so cold, he was not sure what play Starr stated he would run, but they both knew the years of preparation had led them to seek victory and not play for a tie, magnified by the desperate field conditions.

With no timeouts, the Cowboys assumed a roll out pass, and Starr in the huddle called another running play. He told no one that it was his intention to live or die on his own, and took the ball over the guard in the most famous play in the most famous game in NFL history.

It was the triumph of a career of triumphs, made special by the recognition that people performing under such conditions elevates our understanding of what is human capacity to other-worldly levels.

Bart Starr went on to other triumphs, but nothing cemented the vision of his unique triumphant stature like his determination to take the solitary plunge across the line in the twilight of an arctic wasteland. He could do no wrong after that play, and further lived up to his impossible standards off the field as well as on.

No one who met him ever left him feeling untouched by his deep humility and humanity. He was the superhero who acted like the everyday man, and his later foibles as a coach unable to explain to younger players how to function at the olympian levels he had functioned at, left no mark on his greatness. I recall in grade school, my teacher asked of the class who they wanted to most be like when they grew up, and when the hands went up, Bart Starr gave Jesus Christ a predictable beat down. People wanted to be seen with him, charities could always count on him, and when the Packers found their way out of the wilderness after 20 years of losing following Starr’s playing days, he was the revered father figure to the Hall of Fame quarterbacks, Farve and Rodgers, who eventually returned the team to greatness (though not at Starr’s level of greatness).

His last years were harsh, but punctuated by one final Starr turn, the magnificent curtain call in front of 80,000 and Farve. He looked so happy, one more time back in his element, in the place he loved, with the people who loved him, unadulterated . He drove out to meet Farve in a covered golf cart, in miserable, cold and rainy conditions, crossing the south end zone, where 48 years before he had found footing, and carried his team on his back, into history.

Greatness is not just performance beyond expectation. For Bart Starr, it was a continuous state of being oriented toward a heightened expectation of self, in what he expected of himself , what he was willing draw from others, and what he expected to give to others. He is one of the few people in this world who lived up to his myth and made those around him better for having known him. In a world where celebrity often leaves no trace of contribution, this was one shooting star who left a brilliant effervescent path through the heavens. As he likely is now doing, with his characteristic perfect execution …

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500!

On July 4th, 2010, Ramparts of Civilization was born.    As defined in the vision for the site, I hoped to do my small part in framing how much amazing goodness and accomplishment had found residence in the ongoing story of western civilization, at a time when the recognition and appreciation for such threads in our lives appeared to be progressively wanting:

“For some time I have felt a progressive dread that the clarity, beauty, and magnificence of the 2600 year journey of Western Civilization has been neglected by our current nature to the tenuous point of irrelevance.  All the hard learned lessons of the concept of individual freedom, creative expression, intellectual objectivity, and appreciation of the human spirit have been sublimated to a bland equivalence and desire to achieve a “soft landing” as a relic of history.

            Not so fast. On this blog, like minded individuals will man the ramparts and defend the concept of the Western Ideal, founded on the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, communicated through the ingenuity of the Roman engineer, unleashed through the miraculous words of a Nazarene carpenter, protected by the courage and literacy of the medieval monk, forged in the genius of the Renaissance,  released in the power of the Enlightenment, made available for all to participate by the miracle of the American Revolution, propagated through the Industrial Revolution, and defended by the brave warrior citizens when at times darkness threatened to descend and smother. ”                        btf     July 4th, 2010

I thought I would give it a go for a year or so, and see if I could satisfy my need for telling a good story.

And yet, here we are, with this tome, 500 essays later, easily a half million written words, and I keep thinking there is a story or two, or a version or perspective, that remains worthy of setting down to type.  At times, working late at night or on a weekend in between my myriad of other responsibilities I thought I was crazy to go on. Sometimes the writing, always performed in tabla rosa style without significant edit, was found seriously wanting. Other times I was quite pleased with the instantaneously inspired diction.  Most of all, It was the small cadre of loyal readers that would let me know they were still there and enjoyed the effort that kept me going.

It has been estimated that the average blog lasts a hundred days.  Ramparts can justifiably be proud that it is continuing to blog along with a lifespan now approxiamently 33 times beyond average – and is thereby self designated – well above average.  Analytics suggest that in the almost nine years since inception, over 40,000 unique visitors from 176 countries have immersed themselves in over 85000 page views (and of course have additionally innumerable bots).  Its briefly very inspiring until you realize a site like Drudge achieves that kind of traffic in less than three minutes. Still, a few people out there, every day, link up to read about the many subjects Ramparts has found compelling, and that is gratifying enough.  Though the pace of articles have slowed over the years due to innumerable time constraints, it has proven to be a place people have returned, patiently looking to see if there was something new they could spend a few minutes reviewing.  And that loyalty has been enough for me.

A look back over the five hundred reveals some essays locked in their time, and some that stand up well.

At 100, Ramparts in 2011 took a moment to celebrate the anniversary of the amazing American naval victory at Midway June 4th, 1942. America, reeling from the cataclysmic defeat at Pearl Harbor six months before and the subsequent humiliation in the Philippines, fashioned in the space of six minutes the destruction of four Japanese carriers, and with them, any hope of the Japanese expansionary vision to dominate the Pacific.  Brilliant and risky strategic maneuvers by the Admiral  Nimitz, careful intelligence obtained through the breaking of the Japanese naval code by the team lead by Naval Commander Joseph Rochefort, who gave Nimitz correct actionable intelligence from only 10% of interpretable code, and a tactical error by taskforce Admiral Nagumo to determine to refuel his attack planes without fully identifying the strength of the enemy against him lead to the complete carrier vulnerability for the 37 dive bombers of the American carrier Enterprise to feast upon the carriers covered with deck armaments and fuel. Four Japanese carriers lost, and with them the end of Admiral Yamamoto’s dream of a ring of impenetrable island forts to hold off the Americans.

The final defeat for Japan in an ever diminishing ocean against an ever stronger opponent was preordained from that moment.  The myth that totalitarian regimes produced men of steel while democracies produced soft, self interested soldiers was forever put to rest at Midway…”

At 200, Ramparts in 2012 put in perspective what was one of the great political spasms of American politics, the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and effort the overturning of a revolution by the citizenry to wrest back power from the establishment Deep State.  The stunning 2010 election of Walker and an even more revolutionary legislature was a massive tea party blow back to  intrenched interests that saw the election of Barrack Obama in 2008  as the zenith  achievement of the permanent state.  The wave was national, but the epic epicenter of the fight was the state of Wisconsin, a blue state in perpetual debt from an onerous public employee stranglehold on budgets.   The Wisconsin  reversal of the permanent state through Act 10 legislation was considered intolerable by the public unions and their democratic allies, and the full weight of national money and pressure fell upon the Wisconsin capital. Tens of thousands of daily protestors, multiple legislative recall elections,  an epic Wisconsin Supreme Court election converted into a national referenda, the leaving of the state of the democratic legislative caucus to attempt to block the legislative act created a year and half of national political drama.  Yet the stolid Walker and intrepid legislative warriors held firm throughout.  By April of 2012, the left saw only one way out, the cutting off of the head of the snake through the attempted recall of Governor Walker himself, attempting the first political successful recall of a sitting governor in American history:

“The battle is positioning for a titanic climax which will have profound effect the national question.  Can a nation democratically face up to its fiscal responsibilities when the electoral process is progressively owned by those who will most benefit from maintenance of their levers of power and an ever expanding population of entitled who are rewarded for their vote?”

At 300, Ramparts in 2013 looked at an embryonic private enterprise effort that could turn out to be President Barrack Obama’s proudest achievement, the conversion of the space industry of the United States from a governmental industrial complex to a competitive private entrepreneurial enterprise.  The President, less interested in any identified potential from private industry then the obvious reordering of budget priorities from the bloated governmental space enterprise to other bloated state enterprises, managed to put his trust in free enterprise for at least one area of American private initiative.  In his desire to remove the resources of the national government from huge expenditures for which he would discern  no social value, Obama opened up contracts to entrepreneurs like Elon Musk of SpaceX , that had no obvious capacity  or experience to take on the challenge.  In a otherwise oppressive style toward private initiative in other sectors such as private energy fracking initiatives  charter schools , or health savings accounts, Obama allowed this one sliver of initiative to shine through.  And how by 2013 it shone, with multiple companies taking on the challenge, multiple rocket innovations including the once incredible concept of reusability, and a new American industrial innovative dominance in a  21st century science:

“The president deserves credit for stumbling upon a prime example of how trusting the arena of ideas and the process of private market competition can lead to dramatic improvements in human development and life quality.  If he is not careful, he might just make America and economic leader in the current century as great as the last.  Were he only to have such stumbles in other areas of our moribund economy.  Reflecting upon the overarching principles of  human behavior versus utopian ideal, we once again turn to Winston Churchill for some prescient word – ‘Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot.  Others look upon it as a cow they can milk.  Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.’

At 400, Ramparts in 2016 looked back at a founding father George Washington, on the occasion of his birthday.  A multiple Ramparts star, Washington was celebrated not for his military genius nor his eloquence, but the unique skill he showed with every challenge and every calamity to stand at the ramparts and rise above the chaos, securing the ultimate triumph:

“When it came time years later to select a chief executive that would form the initial government of the United States, the selection again turned to one man, the Virginian, George Washington.  He was selected not for any impassioned rhetorical brilliance or acknowledged philosophical depth, but again, because he was the single individual every competing interest group felt they could trust. He was selected for acknowledged ownership of the American Ideal through the worst of times, and his willingness as a man, to give up power when it was his to take.”

Now at 500, Ramparts looks to the past to continue to show us the future and help us reflect on the way forward.  In this world of ever more diminishing grasp of the core understandings that make life worthy and progress possible, there is still a role I think for this tiny little blog to provide its very tiny contribution to the conversation.  As my hero Winston Churchill would say, there’s reason to keep buggering on…

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Between Something and Something Else

Are the magnetic poles about to flip?

 

The enormous central molten core of the planet Earth knows not of our trivial machinations on the surface of this spaceship through time, but has served us without fail.  Pulled at by the huge forces of gravity, molten iron simultaneously pulled crushed and surged under impossible pressures,  sends out streams of convection currents created by extreme heat that convert the earth into a giant magnetic dynamo, both creating electromagnetic poles on the planet while simultaneously doing epic battle with killer solar wind radiation out in space.  Radiation that, as a consequence never reaches us, supporting life and vitality otherwise doomed without its protective effect.  All this has occurred undeterred, as it is written, for billions of years – except every once in awhile, say every half a millennia or so, the dynamo decides to metamorphosize unpredictably and have the magnetic poles travel, and at some point flip, such that, north becomes south and south, north, and the known world must adjust.  Humans have not been capable of recording the effects of the last time it happened – recorded human history has always noted a north and a south and reflected accordingly.  Since 1900, the magnetic north pole has been drifting north and eastward, and has particularly accelerated of late, such that has it has left north Canada far behind and now lies near the true geographic pole.  Are we headed toward a more perfect alignment of north and south, or a dramatic flip of directionality that would turn everything upside down?   There is great unease as to what might be the consequences of a crucial protection so long fixed, determining a whole unpredictable future.

As the magnetic pole goes, so goes our civilization.  There is great unease right know as we seem to be heading north and south simultaneously on so many fronts.  Civilization has experienced these inflection points before.  What does one make of the spasm of the French  way of life that convulsed in revolution in 1789, standing on the shoulders of the Enlightenment and the measured American Experiment that had produced the Declaration of Independence and People’s Constitution, overthrowing a thousand year way of life in an effort to declare the sovereign Rights of Man, yet by 1792 declaring a year Zero, with the obliteration of all societal strata that had come before, climaxing in  the crushing of religious hierarchy and beheading of the monarch.  By 1799, after years of self immolation and terror, the seeds were set for the return of power to the elite, succeeding only in exchanging the king for an emperor.  Edmund Burke, the British Parlimentarian, reflected from England that the French spasm seemed to him rudderless and ignorant of foundation, seeking the destruction of one set of institutions with no conceptionalization of another , resulting in chaos and calamity:

“In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures… [there was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy… [in religion] the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed..”

Are we at such a tipping point?  from the projection of historical scope it would seem ridiculous. The world by the year 2019 has never been more in continuity, more free in action and opportunity, more prosperous, more environmentally respectful, and free of disease.  Food and water has never been more plentiful and available; information more universal and accessible.  The massive effort by free people to avoid by fearfully violent struggle and sacrifice the twin tyrannies of Fascism and Communism has proven successful beyond all measure with two thirds of the world successfully liberated and the residual third trying to identify the magic elixir.

Like a great magnet tipping upon itself however, the seeming clarity is awash in an unstable field of doubt and indecision.

America, birthed on  British political genetics imbued upon the rule of law determined by free citizens, is in a bipolar frenzy.  It is simultaneously strident for the rights of unfettered actualization of any self formed view of gender expression, yet schemes  to corner and restrict free expressions of speech.  America seeks to restrict citizens to rigorous regulation of what they eat, how they get to work, how much of their productivity is theirs  and how much communal, and how they must sublimate their desire for stability in family and morality, while propagating the expansion of all rights of non-citizens to ignore borders, work rules, contribution to health and welfare, felons to vote, and criminals to demand the understanding of victims.  America is positioning to simultaneously  support a socialist firebrand for the position of president of the greatest country of free will and enterprise in the history of  the world four short years after electing the populist firebrand who pledged to stand athwart any tendency to undermine the country’s two hundred year legacy of self determination and equal opportunity.

Great Britain three years ago voted in epic fashion to throw off the bureaucratic shackles of a European overlord and restore self determination.  Three years hence, the elected elite has proved incapable of accepting the verdict and seeks through delay and obfuscation some comforting shackle that neither achieves freedom or union, but to live instead in a perpetual purgatory of passive acquiescence to the worst of all positions for a once great nation – insignificance.

The international intellectual community continues to shill armageddon scenarios in place of measured reasons on issues such as anthropomorphic global warming (the earth will end in twelve years unless we do something), micro aggression ( an adult can not possibly stand up to any environments where safe space is not guaranteed), and capitalism( man is not capable as Burke would say of flourishing, liberated from the rapacity of blinding passion, inner anarchy  and appetite).  The intellectual need is rather an adolescent drive to belong, to adhere, to function as a collective where views are settled by others and there is comfort in knowing someone else has thought it through for you.

The many more examples of the wobbling of our magnetic core are too numerous for a short tome, but they are ever more present and the world feels them whole.  We seem to have left one place, and are seeking another, but can not relate why we left or what we hope to find.  The many features of a stable, forward looking civilization was recognized by Burke as requiring a fealty and understanding of the past, and for that we are woefully deficient. How did we come to our morality, our sense of right and wrong,  our recognition of the right to life and of living with free will, while engaging with those around us who hoped for the same thing? We seem caught in the throughs of a fulcrum about to flip on itself, either to once again right itself, or enter a whole new and unstable physics.

Jefferson over 200 years ago defined the human civilized core to be a simple construct of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  Is it possible that we at some point will catch ourselves and restore the greater meaning to existence that makes it possible to recognize once again our existence at all?  At our core, the protective umbrella of this powerful and magnetic dynamo known as civilization wobbles uncontrollably and seeks an unknown country.  We best find our roots, and hope for the day when our compass is restored and true north is once again where we always knew it would be.

 

 

 

 

 

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Collusion Delusion

 

On November 9th, 2016. the citizens of United States of America awoke to the uncomfortable reality that a brazen, brash real estate mogul from New York managed one of the most unlikely and inconceivable victories in the history of American politics — and it wasn’t even that close.  To the amazement of most voters, Donald Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton by convincing a thin sliver of the upper Midwest to abandon their traditional voting pattern and take a chance on a complete novice  over the supposed ‘most prepared’ candidate in history.  The great majority of the public had a wary, wait and see attitude about the unknown quantity that was Donald Trump.  An elite cadre, including, it appears, the outgoing administration, had a much more targeted impression in mind.  From almost the first day after the election, whispers of “foreign influence” in the election began and the suggestion was the unreal outcome may have tainted.  The result was a rapidly progressive narrative that the win was dirty, and had been achieved by means beyond the ballot box.  The idea that a clownish Trump with no political experience could have convinced a nation on his own that the country’s direction of the last twenty-five years, and particularly the last eight, needed a shocking redirection, was too much for the elite establishment.  There had to be another, far more nefarious answer — collusion with the arch enemy Putin.

So began the public assault on the Trump Presidency from his first day in office.  The private assault began much earlier it turns out.  Mechanisms to assure that in the unlikely scenario of a Trump victory the Trump presidency would be cornered and starved for oxygen day one were put in place.  The assumption likely was that the excruciating pressure would cause the novice to explode and flame out by taking some extra-constitutional action that would allow for a legal overturning of the electoral outcome through an impeachment process.  The number of people that coordinated to position the embryonic Trump administration for demolition was impressive and may not yet be fully exposed. 

The key to the process would be Trump’s incendiary personality, because everyone intimate to the assault had to know the evidence that would be used was at most flimsy, and to a large part concocted and paid for by the very political campaign Trump had managed to defeat.  No matter, because such day to day pressure upon such a thin skinned individual would no doubt expose other vulnerabilities and make the original far fetched connections immaterial.  The early indications must have enhanced the confidence of the conspirators.  The appointment of a special prosecutor by Trump’s own Justice Department, the firing of the FBI Director, the enthusiastic assumption of the narrative by the mainstream media.  Perhaps the fatal conceit was the judgment of the character of the President himself, the thin skin proving to be downright reptilian, and the bombastic comebacks covering a relatively nuanced and careful avoidance of impulsive actions by the reputed King of Impulse.

Two years, millions of dollars, and to the chagrin and horror of the elites, the Scorpion King stands above the chaos.  Now, the questions may begin to swirl as to whether Trump has simply survived a legal investigation, or possibly was the victim of one of the more dark political operations in the history of the constitutional republic.  Did the previous administration determine to scuttle the next President?  Was the opposition campaign involved? Is a fantastical image of a Deep State immune to the decisions of the electorate and determined to function athwart the democracy a reality?

Watergate will always be held up as the most significant attack on the constitutional republic, but was in essence, the clumsy and illiberal efforts of a politician to wall himself off from being associated with his contributions to the dirty pool of American politics.  This political scandal, that may have been a direct attempt to take down an American President by his own executive branch, may end up much closer to shaking the foundations of American government, if all the scabs are fully exposed.  Will the national press that relished the opportunity to expose the first scandal determine, as the facts come out regarding who really were the colluding collaborators,  engage to reveal, or bury, the second?

Whatever you may think of Trump, and God knows I’ve thought it all, he may, unbelievably, prove to be on the right side of history.  His unparalleled ability to withstand and overcome those that sought to overturn a national electoral decision, may have made this most unlikely of constitutional patriots,  the indispensable person for our troubled times.

 

 

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The Last of the Great Tonal Masters

Rovaniemi-Finlandia.-Autore-Tarja-Ryhannen-Mitrovic.-Licensed-under-the-Creative-Commons-Attribution

At the turn of the twentieth century, hundreds of years of tonal expression and its link to cultural identity were about to be swept away by a musical revolution tied to global modernity.  Rejection of classical music structure seemed to mirror the rapid industrialization and seeming contracture of the tribal world into a globalized modernism with a new universal language, atonality.  Music, that for centuries had been predicated on tonal roots and associated chords resulting in music that was constrained in keys, suddenly was lifted from these constraints, and with it, the need to relate directly to the listener. The associated related rules of musical theory and counterpoint quickly surrendered to new freedoms and the shock to audiences was total.  First inklings of a new reality with Debussy and particularly Stravinsky left the listening audience confused and unsettled.  World War I  in all its horror finally separated music from its humanistic core and composers like Berg, Schoenberg, Messiaen, and Webern left tonality for good.  Music now had a harsh and raw core that no longer asked the listener to be moved or elevated, or an emotional participant.  Such “emotion” tempered music found its way out of “serious” music, and into music halls, broadway theaters, and the new invention of recorded sound.  Serious music was no longer about the width and breadth of human emotion.

One particular great composer found it hard to leave behind the bond between humanity and nature.  Jean Sibelius had musical heroes that were of a time past, and was forever connected to the epic nature and sweep of his Finnish homeland.  Born in 1865, he attained musical adulthood in a musical universe that was in the last vestiges and, at times over reach,  of composers such as Brahms and Wagner, and later, Bruckner, Mahler, and Tchaikovsky.

He grew up hoping to be a great concert violinist, and eventually became a passable one, but his real genius was soon to be recognized in composing for the reigning king of musical expression, the orchestra.  Sibelius was from the obscure corner of western civilization, the Duchy of Finland.  Caught for centuries between overpowering neighbors of Sweden, Germany, and Russia, the turn of the twentieth century began the stirrings of a unique Finnish identity.  Sibelius, who grew up loving the magnificent rural vistas of his homeland, was stirred  to compositional greatness with his tone poem, Finlandia, and with it renown far beyond his home country.

Finlandia achieved what great  patriotic pieces could achieve, a stirring of pride in people with little or no connection to Finland and its yearnings.  Sibelius did not sound quant and folk shaded, like his Norwegian contemporary, Grieg.  Sibelius revealed a Beethoven like virtuosity with orchestral timbre, particularly his recognition of the primordial pull brass has on the human psyche.  What does nature beyond its sounds, sound like?  What emotion is revealed in the juxtaposition of frozen air, grand lake vistas, and endless forests?  To be one with nature was not a lonely sensation, but rather a sacred one, and Sibelius could paint as well as any, the unspoken bond between an individual and the world they knew best.  This was not the gentle beauty of a pastoral scene, this was God’s Creation, and everyone who heard it was stirred.  Including the Russian Czar, who was not interested in any separation from the empire of his Finnish subjects, a psychological battle that became a bitterly physical one in World War II.  But Finlandia was but a morsel compared to the scope Sibelius achieved with his Second Symphony.  The tension, emotion, scope, and glory achieved by Beethoven, so elevated in the 9th Symphony, was for every composer to follow, confronting the risk of creating a pale imitation –  a mortifying notion.  The young Finnish composer went directly at the titanic structure of Beethoven with the 2nd Symphony, and triumphed.  No twentieth century symphony is held in greater esteem by audiences,  who are in turns meditative, distraught, fearful, heroic, and ultimately epically triumphant by Sibelius’ brilliant orchestration.  The Finale, whose coda reaches the epic sound of a celestial organ, can frankly bring tears associated with the sense that one has triumphed over death and has been shown a glimpse of salvation and eternity.

Sibelius would know many triumphs including his Violin Concerto, 5th Symphony, and Valse Triste, among many pieces in constant rotation today.  The prodigious works suddenly came to a sudden halt in 1926, and for reasons still unclear, Sibelius’s compositional muse fell silent.  The last thirty years of his life were essentially barren for further extensive works, though he continued to experience acclaim for his earlier creations.  Was it the move away from the world of music Sibelius loved, into a dystopian sound he had no fealty towards?  Was it the collapse of the world back into darkness with the second world war exploding further the myth of a shared humanity?  Sibelius himself left no direct explanation, but it was evident in his self destruction of his own unfinished works at the end of 1945, that he had no intention of being a shadow of himself, or an uncommitted contributor to the new world musical order.

Sibelius did leave us with a full palate of masterpieces that have stood the test of time, and tower over the more dystrophic musical contributors of the twentieth century.  As much as the academic world has attempted to wrest the concept of music away from the appreciation of the listener and be self indulgent in the mathematical paradigms of modern atonality for the joy of the performer only,  the works of Sibelius resonate with each and everyone of us.  We may not have seen nature with the acute eye that Sibelius saw it.  We may not understand all the nuances of tidal emotions and rhythms he sought to evoke.  But in our gut, we know of the Glory  Sibelius knew, and are glad for the chance to have it well up within us, and to have his creations, reveal our own.