Off and Running

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Here we are, eight months from the casting of ballots in the 2024 presidential election and eight interminable years since Donald Trump appeared on the American political scene. The first primary contests are underway this week but are essentially pointless since the nominees for both the Republican and Democratic parties are already preordained. 

This makes for an unusual situation in which voters will choose between two presidential candidates who have already held the nation’s highest office and have demonstrated their competence for the job or the lack thereof. 

Coincidentally, the annual ranking of every American president by historians has already been announced in which the top three are Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington. Near the top, Joe Biden appears in 14th place, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan. Not bad for a candidate his critics scorn for his age but whose record in office as a senator, veep and president is admirable. 

By contrast, Donald Trump came in dead last in 45th place as the worst and most polarizing president in history. His nearest bottom dwellers in the rankings are the bad company of the flawed presidents James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren G. Harding. 

Trump, however, easily outdoes them. He presided over a foreign policy that emboldened our enemies and alienated our allies. He was twice impeached and attempted an insurrection to steal back the election he lost in 2020.

Trump is uniquely unqualified for the presidency by his dishonesty, vulgarity, and criminality. He is a crime boss who is under indictment in multiple jurisdictions, faces gigantic fines, and possible incarceration, has been convicted of sexual assault and found guilty of paying hush money to a porn star. 

In a sane world such a flawed and shameless character would be unable to win a single vote, but Trump has pandered to fringe groups that appear to admire his blatant corruption, his contempt for democracy, and his desire to turn America into an autocracy. Among his acolytes appear to be racists, religious extremists, jingoists, militias, and those who, like Trump, are boiling over with grievances.

For such people, Trump’s promise to weaponize the department of justice to prosecute his foes and get even with anyone he identifies as an enemy is welcome. So is his violent rhetoric. extreme policy proposals, and embrace of authoritarian leaders that he wants to emulate like Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un. 

If elected Trump would pose a threat to NATO, and would be likely try to enact draconian anti-immigrant laws. His speeches are filled with apocalyptic warnings against today’s America which he describes as a dystopian hell where  “kids aren’t able to play in the park without being beat up, molested, or shot.” 

He bemoans rampant crime though he himself is under indictment for a long list of crimes. Of course he denies any guilt and claims the prosecutions are a plot to get him by the radical left, communists, and fascists. He also promises to ignore global warming and make it worse by drilling to produce more oil and gas, to put an end to electric cars, to eliminate all vaccine mandates, and also frequently echoes the arguments of white supremacists. 

This is the same sort of appeal to the disgruntled masses practiced by all demagogues. It is not a surprise that Trump was known to keep a copy of Adolph Hitler’s manifesto, Mein 

Kampf, on his bedside table. We have often seen the same sort of rabble rousing before in this country from such characters as Huey Long and Joe McCarthy. 

Indeed, as long ago as the Federalist Papers, in whose 85 essays Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison made the case for the adoption of the Constitution, the founding fathers repeatedly warned against the danger of anti-democratic personality cults, populist lies, and ceaseless attacks by critics that could undermine the creation of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Their warnings were heeded then. We shall see if they are again when votes are cast for president this November. 

Back In The USA

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I hope readers of Podunk Pundit will forgive the rather long hiatis. I am now back and jet-lagged and will begin scribbling opinions again. I wasn’t completely out of touch with the news on a journey that hopscotched through southeast asia and ended with several stops in Japan, but I had less access than usual to wifi. 

This made inescapably clear that it is now an indispensible part of our everyday lives. But what I missed in daily headlines was made up for by in person immersion in the remains of ancient civilizations and a reminder of more recent events of a less civilized nature. 

The high water mark was a chance to cross Cambodia for a visit with an excellent guide to Angkor Wat. The world heritage site is more remarkable than words or pictures can capture. It includes many structures and provides a glimpse of the civilization that created them. One unexpected structure from a different historical period celebrates the victory of a powerful ruler over his foes with a huge depiction of the winning battle on land and sea. It shows hundreds of warriors from either side in bas relief carving as if an Asian Iliad had come to life in stone.

In addition to an appreciation for the arts and history of the region, one can’t escape the endless rise and fall of dynasties, tyrants and patriarchs, golden ages and dark ages. To their credit, local guides in Thailand, Vietnam, and other stops shared their regional treasures but also detailed some of the evils brought about by cruel leaders, civil wars, and, in too many cases, the exploitation of indiginous people by colonial invaders. In addition to places of great beauty, we visited places of horror including torture chambers and the gaudy throne rooms where vicious dictators ruled.

Also eye-opening, especially in Japan, was the endless production of manufactured goods. Every time our ship reached a busy city the first thing we saw was its bustling industrial port’s factories, warehouses, and acres of shipping containers stacked high and awaiting their next voyage.

I was reminded of the Great Lakes ports of my youth when ships from the iron range brought raw materials to the steel mills of Cleveland’s flats and Akron produced tires for the nation’s autos were made in Ford assembly and Chevy engine plants that our neighbors worked at. Eventually many of the factory jobs moved from the Rust Belt to non-union states and then to even less expensive factories abroad.

Then veterans of World War II reacted with outrage when American customers began to buy automobiles made in enemy countries instead of at home: first German Volkswagons followed by an avalanch of Japanese Toyotas, Datsuns, and Nissans. Even worse was their kids riding Honda and Suzuki motor bikes.

It was the beginning of the great internationalization of commerce that we now experience every day and that was on display in every port we visited. The chips of California’s silicon valley are now made in Taiwan. Teslas roll off the assemply line in Xi Jinping’s China. Whether this is progress or perilous remains to be seen, but seeing Asia’s present was just as eye-opening as the chance to experience immersion in it’s storied past. 

Outward Bound

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H. Ryder Haggard’s Ayesha, a powerful African queen with supernatural powers, appeared in his best selling novel of 1887 “She.” Ayesha was also known to those she ruled as She Who Must Be Obeyed. Almost a hundred years later Rumple of the Bailey, the British TV barrister, used the She Who Must Be Obeyed sobriquet for his wife Hilda. 

My version of she who must be obeyed has decided to spend the rest of her life playing bridge and booking trips to faraway places. Most recently she decided to spend a lot of loot and a month or more visiting Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan, with our daughter and me.

Reservations were made before I got a vote, but since she must be obeyed, unless I can conquer technology and post news from several thousand miles away, Podunk Pundit is likely to fall silent for the duration. In addition to missing writing to you, the timing of this trip means I’m probably going to miss the Super Bowl, the beginning of the Republican primary season, and several of the endless court appearances of America’s most indicted ex-president.

It is also possible that this voyage will cause me to miss good health and a few more years alive. You might regard this as geriatric hypochondria, but I did a little research and have concluded this junket might be a tad perilous. I went to the indispensable source of the CDC. It has travel advisories online for stops all around the world. In this case, I found the results remarkably alarming. 

The list of possible tropical diseases I will encounter, while cruising Southeast Asia include: Typhoid, Paratyphoid (whatever that is), Coronavirus, of course, in its latest incarnation, Tuberculosis, Leptospirosis, Schistomiasis, Liver flukes, Malaria, Zika, Chikungunya, Dengue Fever, Cholera, Yellow Fever, Plague (really! actual plague). Hantavirus, Avian Influenza, and Tick Borne Encephalitis. 

As you might deduce from that last entry, many of these maladies are transmitted not just by our fellow humans but by ticks and other bugs, especially mosquitos, mice, birds, dogs, cattle but also by water, food, and soil. So, though rabies and other old favorites have been stamped out in many places around the world, they are apparently still thriving in places on our itinerary. 

Who would want to miss a trip that offers so many exotic threats to their survival? I would. I understand that She Who Must Be Obeyed regards such a voyage as a chance to tick several stops off her bucket list, but from my  point of view, this trip could be the last stop on my kick bucket list. 

Of course, it is possible that, like Ayesha, she has discovered the secret of immortality. I, however, am human all too human. She assures me I’ll have a wonderful time — or else. I know I’ll enjoy seeing some of the sights and won’t contract all the diseases available, but also won’t be able to avoid the wear and tear. Though I passed my annual physical, I suffer from several apparently inescapable side effects of aging that make daily life less than a picnic — seasonal allergies that make four seasons a year miserable, and pains in every joint from neck to hands, to knees to toes. As a result, I am less than enthusiastic about enduring several weeks on foot through crowded cities, braving tropical climates, and enduring cramped seats for 12 hour, sleepless, trans-pacific flights. At my age a one hour flight and a thirty minute walk seem sufficient.

I called this little rant Outward Bound because the thought of undertaking this long voyage reminded be of the 1930 film “Outward Bound” adapted from a stage play in the early days of talking pictures. Its cast included Leslie Howard, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and several  other actors now long forgotten. The plot concerns a group of people who don’t know each other and have no memory of how they got aboard a ship that is sailing through foggy seas from who knows where to who knows what destination. 

It’s quite mysterious. Do they have amnesia? Have they been kidnapped? How did they get here? Where is the ship going? There is no one to ask since there seems to be no crew manning the ship. But on it goes until, at the end, they realize that they all have one thing in common. They’re dead and are sailing to oblivion.

I admit that comparing our trip to such a tale may be a trifle extreme. But in addition to subjecting my creaky self to a long flight there’s also the horror of the news lately. I don’t believe I’ll sleep well on such a flight, waiting to see if a door blows off somewhere over the 

Pacific. But I’ll probably will survive. Tech permitted I may try to update Podunk readers from afar. If not, I should be back by late February and posting a thought or two. If not and the rest is silence, check the obituaries.