President Trump Throughout History

 

President Trump announces a new government

 

“Well, I told you I’d do it and I did it. Our country finally has a Constitution and I can honestly say, it’s a lot better than the last one we had and I’m guessing you know who to thank. You’re welcome.

“A lot of good men came together with many good ideas—and a few bad ones, but that’s okay because the good news is I was there to keep an eye on them. I know how to make a deal. I know how to get results.

“Speaking of results, I’ve looked at the final product and I have to say—and this isn’t boasting because as I’ve said before, it’s not boasting if it’s true. I don’t know what you’d call it—maybe toasting—truesting without the rue because I never rue anything—and some other stuff thrown in there...oa...I dunno what that’s all about.

“Anyway, what I’m saying is this final product—and I’m going to call it a Constitution...I don’t know what others will call it, but I think Constitution is appropriate. I have to say it came out pretty much the way I thought it would when I got into these talks. And I really mean it when I say these were all good men and I don’t want to hog the attention.

“I’ll only say, I did steer them in the right direction because that’s what great leaders do and great leaders get great results. I think anyone reading this document will agree, it is a really great document and I’m just happy to have played a role—some will say a big role—I’ll just say a role and leave it to others to say how big a role I played, but if they say a big role they won’t be wrong.”

The Robfogel Paper Warehouse

     I was back in Rochester following a most successful freshman year at Lowell Tech—in fact, it would prove to be my only successful year at Lowell Tech, but who’s counting? The point is, I needed a job.

How I arrived at the Robfogel Paper Warehouse escapes me, like so many other details from that now ancient, but still revered by me time known as the sixties. It must have been networking to some extent because I didn’t even know there was a Robfogel Paper Warehouse.

Shipments of all sorts of paper products arrived at the warehouse to be repackaged and redistributed to local businesses by the small cadre of Robfogel truck drivers. A railroad track ran right up to their back door and every three or four days, a boxcar filled with paper products was dropped off at the warehouse.

I was hired along with a guy I knew only as Red, who was going into the marines at the end of the summer. Our job was to load the trucks each morning and then unload the boxcar, stack its contents onto pallets and stack the pallets in the warehouse.

With a great deal of anticipation, we’d break the seal and push the large door aside to discover what products we’d be unloading. If our boss knew, he wasn’t letting on. Every job began the same way—find a box at the top, in the middle, pry it out and then work our way to both ends. The two of us went home each day looking like we’d spent the day in a sweat shop, which wasn’t that far from the truth.  

All through high school, I had worked as a janitor at Annunciation, both the school and the church. I always enjoyed the physical nature of the work—pushing and pulling those heavy old-fashioned mops across 10-foot swaths of hallways and classrooms. What I discovered working at Robfogel was that I really didn’t know what physical work was.  I also discovered just how big a boxcar is—about 6,000 square feet, and how much paper stacked bottom to top, end to end, one can hold. I also learned just how all encompassing the term paper products could be.

What’s in a Name?

It’s possible to make money playing cards. Some people even get rich doing it. But for the vast majority of people, playing cards means killing time.

If you’re playing cards, you’re not cutting the grass, fixing that leak in the sink, or painting that room.

You’re not doing something that will create lasting value or lead to accomplishments like writing the great American novel or simply figuring out where the garden should go to produce the most beans.

Still card games can be fun.

Winning almost any card game you play depends on getting what we call the “Trump card.” What can we say about the “Trump card” except that it is the epitome of short term success? As achievements go, getting a Trump card is among the shallowest accomplishments—entailing little more than dumb luck. It is the American-Dream-lite—all you ever wanted for the shortest time possible.

By short term, I’m not even talking about the often sought after and seldom realized fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen minutes is an eternity compared to the length of satisfaction gained from acquiring a Trump card, which might last only a few moments before another Trump card comes along…and another…and another.

Trump cards are like coins in a penny roll—worth little more than a dime a dozen and practically useless. They’re like jokes in a vaudeville act—“I got a million of them.”

Try remembering the last Trump card you had or anticipating what the next one will be. You’ll know it when you see it and will forget it as soon as it’s out of sight.

 

Ah, but for that fleeting moment, that brief snippet of a second when you slap that game clincher down on the table and then look up to see the faces of your opponents, that Trump card becomes not only a winner but a measure of its holder’s self-worth. It calls out to that small world of people sitting around that table, “This is huge, look at me, read 'em and weep.” In short, the player holding the Trump card is declaring for all to hear, but let’s be honest, mostly for his own ego, the awesomeness of being him.”

Trump cards can come in any shape or size. Well, that’s not true. But any card can be a Trump card. A Joker can be a Trump card. A wild card can be a Trump card. A Joker posing as a wild card can be a Trump card. For Trump cards, the general rule is there is no rule. Anything goes.

The Trump card is no more than a simple solution to a minor challenge. Nevertheless, in that most idle moment of participating in that most self-indulgent activity, this challenge—whether it be drawing an ace or picking up a lowly deuce—is the only thing that matters. In that moment, the Trump card is as good as gold. 

Yes, it’s as good as gold but gold isn’t everything as most wise men will tell you. Smart people don’t gold plate their golf clubs because they know that all the gold in the world don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing. Neither do smart people gamble away their homes or risk their futures anticipating a Trump card.

There are more decks of cards than guns in America and while every card in each of those decks can be a Trump card, most of the time, most of those cards are losers.

Whether in a deck of fifty-two or a hand of seventeen, a Trump card is nothing more than a means to an end—a fleeting moment of excitement and short lived entertainment—nothing more than a good way to kill time until something better comes along.

So back to the point, what’s in a name?

If the name’s Trump, it’s rump.

Time for Action

     I've written about campaign finance before and this piece pertains somewhat to the subject. Our elections suffer greatly because how much money a candidate can raise supersedes what new ideas he can come up with. Our election process is in this state because nothing has been done  to address this problem. Both parties are at fault.  In the fifty years since Rep. Wright called for campaign finance reform in his Harpers Magazine article in 1967, politicians have devoted all their efforts in regard to campaign finance reform to getting an edge rather than solving the problem.
     
     But it is also about learning a bigger lesson: Fix problems when they are still fixable.
 

Time for Action

 

     Former U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright recently died. He was expelled from the House for shady money dealings, coincidently at the hand of Newt Gingrich, who would himself be tied to shady money dealings. Prior to his expulsion, I never paid much attention to Wright, even though he had served in the House for over thirty years.

I have to admit when Wright’s problems first surfaced, I concluded for myself that he was nothing more than another crook who had used the system for his own personal gain.  But then I read an article written by him for Harper’s Magazine in 1967 and was impressed by this quote.

“No facet of American life cries our more loudly for reform than the dingy gray area of political campaign financing, which casts a lengthening shadow across all else we do in our elective political institutions…The price of campaigning has risen so high that it actually imperils the integrity of our political institutions.  Big contributors more and more hold the keys to the gates of public service.  This is choking off the wellsprings of fresh, new thought and severely limiting the field of choice available to the public…One curious by-product of big money in politics is the slick, shallow public-relations approach with its nauseating emphasis on ‘image’ at the expense of substance.”

After reading that quote, I decided I might have been wrong. Maybe he was not so much a bad man who had used the system, as he was a weak man who had let the system destroy him.

Keep in mind this quote is from 1967.

Kennedy and Nixon spent a total of $20-million in their 1960 campaign, one that was so close, probably every nickel spent was necessary.

The 2012 presidential election cost about $2.5-billion.

The 2016 presidential spend-off is predicted to exceed five billion dollars with one billion coming from just two guys. It is helpful to remember that actual expenditures in this country for almost anything, almost always go beyond predictions.

At this rate, a trillion-dollar election cannot be too far down the road. That’s a lot of 30-second ads, balloons, and yard signs—all for a job offering $400,000 and all the abuse you can stand.

It should be clear to everyone that all three branches of government have failed in their effort to reform campaign spending. Reform has never been the goal; only getting an edge. I don’t even know if it’s possible to stop this train wreck we call the election process.

Maybe we shouldn’t even try. Perhaps we should write it off as the cost of doing business. That would be the business approach to throwing that much money down the toilet.

Possibly there is a lesson to be learned from Speaker Wright’s experience.  Maybe we can find another area where this “slick, shallow public-relations approach with its nauseating emphasis on ‘image’ at the expense of substance” is actually causing the nation more harm than good.

Whatever the cost of addressing global warming—and I’m not a scientist, so I am going to defer to the scientist on this one—wouldn’t it be better, and cheaper, to act now rather than later. As with campaign finance reform, the cost of doing nothing far exceeds the price of doing something in a timely manner.

 

For that matter, wouldn’t it be better to approach every problem facing our nation this way: immigration reform, rebuilding our infra-structure, addressing student debt, and yes, improving Obamacare instead of continually trying to dismantle it. Our politicians talks about American exceptionalism, but everything they do speaks to mediocrity.    

It's time for them to embrace that ‘can-do’ spirit they are always talking about—the one our forefathers had, which they seem to lack? With all the problems facing our nation and the world, wouldn’t this be a good time to do something—something besides giving the people that are buying our elections a tax break?

If they did this, and I know it is a big if, but if they did, maybe, just maybe politicians wouldn’t have to spend a billion dollars telling us what a good job they do.

 

Kathmandu

As some of you may know, I recently spent two weeks in Kathmandu with my daughter, Jessica. It was an amazing trip, and as one might expect, an enlightening one. I learned a great deal—both by reading up on Nepal in preparation for the trip and by my own observations once I arrived there.

Kathmandu is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, 50,000 inhabitants per square mile. That is a fact I read.

...if Legos were earth tone

What I learned from observation is that those people live in a city that is constructed much the way a child would build a Lego village. Area wise, Kathmandu is not that big. Rooms are continually being added to current living space by simply building out and up from existing structures.

I also observed some of the most crowded streets imaginable. I’ve walked the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Saigon, and San Jose. They were crowded but for the most part the vehicles stayed in the streets and the people stayed on the sidewalks. This was not the case in Kathmandu. There were only streets—narrow streets at that—and everyone used those— pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, Pedi-cabs, animals. The shops came right out to the streets, oftentimes with their wares stacked alongside the curbs, which were not really curbs but rather ditches for the rain to run off.

The honking of horns and ringing of bells never ceased, not for a moment. Vehicles turned corners blindly with only a horn to alert anyone in their way. They would pull up within inches of those in front of them—whether approaching or coming from behind—and use their horn to announce their presence. Motorcycles literally pulled into shops to make way for larger vehicles.

What I noticed, with all this congestion and continual noise around me, was that no one ever seemed to lose their temper. I never saw anyone flip someone the finger. I never heard anyone curse. I heard no threats. I didn’t even see dirty looks. People just got out of the way or waited for the other to get out of the way.

It was the same with merchants—who like merchants round the globe, did everything in their power to make a sale. They would follow you on the street, initiate conversations that never seemed to end, promised the moon, good luck or everlasting salvation if I bought their product. But when a sale was obviously not going to happen, they simply walked away. No parting remarks, no bad feelings.

The people of Kathmandu are very friendly and helpful—almost to a fault.  

This driver definitely did not know
where he was going.

Jessica and I rode in Pedi-cab once when the streets became so difficult to navigate, the driver got out and pull his vehicle along, with us in it. The first time this happened we were so caught off guard that we stayed in our seats, probably thinking the driver was simply getting the cab out of traffic. The second time it happened, we got out, paid the driver and walked alongside him.

There were times where the drivers seemed to be driving around in circles—it is not farfetched to think even they could get lost in a city so crowded—but they never gave up. A lot of businesses say they aim to please and customer satisfaction is their only goal. These drivers didn’t have to say it. They’d drive through hell to get you where you wanted to go.

School children walking arm-in-arm filled the streets at all hours of the day and were always smiling.

I met some very nice people in Kathmandu. I came away with a strange notion that maybe there is something mystical about growing up in the shadow of the Himalayas. The people I met weren’t full of themselves. They seemed down to earth, satisfied, and at peace living in what I viewed as a hectic and demanding world.

All these observation led me to the conclusion the people of Nepal are very special people indeed.

No one deserves a tragedy such as the one that struck Nepal last week. And yet, sometimes that is the only reaction we can come up with. Of course they need monetary aid, medical assistance, food, and water. Rebuilding will take years, decades perhaps. They will get all that, and I know for a fact they will appreciate it.

Still, I can’t help thinking. These people did not deserve this.

 

 

Many of these thousand year old temples have been destroyed.

Let's Talk About Speech

A version of this piece appeared in The Virginian-Pilot, on Sunday, April 5. under the title, "The Price of Free Speech." The only substantial difference between both pieces is this version illustrates what three billion dollars worth of 30-second political ads look like.

There’s speech, and there’s free speech, and then there’s really expensive speech—speech only money can buy.

In its 2002 Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court essentially upheld the idea that corporations are people—people entitled to free speech. They got around the obvious problem of corporations lacking vocal cords by falling back on the age old premise that money talks.

The only question then became how far would corporations/people run with this idea? Current estimates seem to indicate pretty far.

The Koch brothers, who are in and of themselves two people and happen to own numerous corporations, making them a whole bunch of people, have elected to allow their corporation’s money to speak for them. They plan to speak—no shout—almost a billion dollars into the 2016 election cycle, much of it in the form of miss-quoted and taken out of context sound bites.

For those of you who might have difficulty comprehending a billions dollars’ worth of 30-second ads, picture a pile of horse dung stretching from the earth to the moon and back again. Now picture that stack pouring out of your wide-screen HD TV into your family room.

The money the Koch brothers intend to spend is equivalent to a five dollar donation by every registered voter in the country. We have all experienced situations where a single shouting individual in confined quarters is able to drown out everyone else. It’s frustrating, unfair and generally unproductive. But two brothers drowning out 200 million voters is ridiculous—only because we have made it so.

 

On face value, it is easy to see why the courts have compared corporations to people and their money to speech. It's called representation. And it is easy to understand how corporations have abused their right to free speech at everyone else's expense. It's called, "Whataya gonna do about it?"

What is harder to understand is why we let them get away with this travesty.

I’m currently reading two books. The historical biography, With Malice Toward None, The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates, depicts one of our most revered presidents being mercilessly ridiculed and portrayed as an imbecile by the opposition party when he was in office.

The other, That’s Not What They Meant by Michael Austin is a political rebuttal to what Austin sees as the misrepresentation of the Founding Fathers by the political right wing.

But what struck me most in both books was the role speech has played in our history—back when it was just speech.

In the 1780s, there was a heated debate regarding states’ rights versus a strong central government. The opposing sides spoke directly to their opponent’s arguments by publishing and circulating their own positions in pamphlets and newspapers for everyone to read.

Approximately three score and give or take a few years later, as Lincoln would say, the nation was still deeply divided over this question of states’ rights. While campaigning at a political rally in Chicago, Stephen Douglas, a powerful political voice in a country, was taunted relentlessly but rather than give in or drop out he decided to take his message to the people. He crisscrossed the state speaking anywhere and everywhere to get his message out.

His opponent, Abraham Lincoln, decided to follow him and address the same people with his own message. Neither man spoke only to friendly audiences or forced anyone to listen to them. But the people came and they did listen. Their face-offs became known as the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

A 30-second ad is nothing more than a tidbit of banality crammed alongside several other tasty but otherwise nasty ads, all randomly tossed between mindless sitcoms like a juicy portabella mushroom-bacon-cheeseburger sandwiched between two deep-fried chicken breasts. It differs from an actual exchange of ideas because with discourse, you actually have to say something.

True, a speech can also contain a lot of jibber-jabber but that’s because jibber-jabber is also an inalienable right. Still the simple act of writing something down on paper or saying something that can be transcribed on paper forces people on both sides of the issue, as well as those reading the arguments to be a little more reflective.

The question is not, why do we let the Koch brothers spend millions and soon billions on effective yet expensive, senseless TV ads? The question is why do we make these ads worth their money?

Maybe money is the same as speech. If so, our country is suffering through a period of speech inflation right now. Speech has gotten way too expensive, to the point where 30 seconds is all anyone can afford—and only billionaires can afford that.

But if money is speech and speech is money, so also, time is money. There's no reason why the voter's time can't be money better spent. Voters make a serious mistake if they put any stock into any 30-second ad promoting any politician or policy, without first investing a little of his own time to learn the facts that might lead to a better understanding of the issues. Voters are also the only ones who can turn the investment in that ad into a serious mistake by the big spender who thought it was a good thing to put his money where his mouth should have been.

 

Meaningless car ads might be the best way to get us into a showroom but they shouldn’t be what gets us into a voting booth nor be the basis for what we do in a voting booth.

Electing leaders and choosing policy is too important. It should take more effort and cost less money, because free speech ain’t worth nothing unless it’s free.   

 

 

 

Eastward Ho!

This story was written in 1977, shortly after Kath and I arrived in Kill Devil Hills, NC. Since then we have both made numerous more trips, together and separately, by plane and by car. But this particular journey was the biggest one of all—the one that changed everything.

This trip took place in February 1977. Married just two months and unable to find work in Long Beach we had packed all our belonging—a sofa, a table, a desk and a lot of other stuff, and headed east.

 

   In 1804, President Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to explore and create a trail to the West Coast through the newly purchased Louisiana Territory.  In 1806, some 28 months after they had left civilization behind, they completed their journey.

   Settlers traveling in wagon trains later used the trail they created.  They made the same journey—under favorable conditions—in a matter of just months.  Later, the railroads would cut the time even more.  But even as the length of time was shortened, one factor remained the same.  The country still had to be crossed.  It had to be seen, felt, endured, and finally conquered.

   Such is not always the case today.  Such was not the case in 1972 when I took my last cross-country jet flight.  Under the auspices of the United States Army, I was flying at half fare.  Everything in the military is either half-rate, half-mast, or double time, but that is another story.  The point is that with the Army paying and American Airlines flying, I was afforded the opportunity to cross the country in nearly five hours.  Lewis and Clark spent more time feeding their horses—the first day.

   That is how it is today.  Businessmen joke about leaving a Holiday Inn in New York and flying to Los Angeles where they stay in another Holiday Inn.  They don’t miss a meal and they don’t lose any sleep.  And never once do they see a road sign, stoplight, or detour.  It’s like going to the opening day baseball game and then six months later reading in the paper the final standings and missing all that happened in between.

   It was for this reason that my wife and I looked upon our upcoming journey with particular excitement.  We were moving from Long Beach, California to Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.  Possibly no one else in the history of mankind had done such a thing.  But more important than the destination or the fact that it was a cross-country trip, was that we were doing it cross-country.

   Like a Depression era documentary being shown in reverse, we were loading our treasures into a trailer and crossing the country to what we hoped would be a better future.