Archive: Opinions

As I dictate this week's column -- 'this just in', as they used to say in the old media days -- the Supreme Court case I have written about previously involving 'faithless electors' has been decided.

In a unanimous eight to nothing decision, for Sotomayor has recused, the Justices held that laws in 32 of the 50 States that bind electors to cast votes for the popular vote winner in presidential elections are valid and enforceable.

Elaine Kagan, writing for the court stated: "The States may do so." She cited potential "bribery and chaos" if electors were permitted to go 'rogue'. State Electors went rogue in 2016, but their votes were disallowed in Colorado and Washington. Since 1789, only 165 electoral votes were cited as 'faithless'. 71 of these were in 1872 and 1912 when their candidates died between the election and the first day of Congress, which is when the votes are counted. The percentage of faithless electors since the inception of the Electoral College is about 1%.

Kagan also wrote: "that direction accords with the Constitution as well as with the trust of a nation that here, We The People rule."

I don't know about their interpretation of the Constitution, but if preventing chaos is the intention and the result, then 2020 will have to find other so readily available means of potential chaos.

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A friend who regularly reads my column and often makes judicious and welcome comments, asked me to expand and explain my comments in last week's 'Thoughts' about World War III and World War IV. Her thoughts and comments are always welcome even if our points of view don't necessarily coincide, but such is the spice of friendship.

So allow me to go forward on what might seem so much fantasy, or if you wish, whacked thinking about situations in the world, past and present, in my own words, and sometimes convoluted thinking.

I first place what is commonly called World War II as my first exhibit. Historians mainly agree that much of its cause lies in the so-called Treaty of Versailles as unmeetable demands upon Germany and unreachable reparations when placed by the so-called victors of what is called World War I. The connections are pretty obvious,and for the most part, accepted, though nothing is simple in the affairs of humans, societies, and countries, especially post-war.

The seeds of World War I, by the way, were sewn around 1870 with the Franco-Prussian War, which France lost miserably, and Prussia dominated European capital politics with the payoff drifting into the 20th Century and numerous alliances rife with distrust, sword-rattling, and eventual chaos.

There are no clear lines between centuries, by the way. Some historians feel that the so-called 20th century actually began with the 'modern' warfare of the above cited Franco-Prussian War. And I will soon make the case that the 20th century 'ended' in 1991, but save that for a moment.

The so called Second World War in Europe was ended in 1945 when Germany's successor to Hitler surrendered unconditionally on May 8th. The Pacific Front came to an end with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, and the signing of unconditional surrender on the USS Missouri by the Emperor's representatives on September 2nd, 1945.

By the way, as a sidelight to those two dates I would like to posit the following: a war is not 'over' until the last person affected by it has passed that may seem radical and off-base. But think of the few remaining survivors of Hiroshima, the few many survivors of the Blitz of London, or surviving the bombing of Berlin, or our remaining veterans. The National Geographic cover of June, 2020 featured the last of the Tuskegee Airman. He's 110 years old. World War II is not being fought now, but it's not over for him or anyone else still alive as victim or participant. Think of the ramifications.

All right. Back to September 2nd, 1945. I would like you to consider that date was, in essence, the beginning of World War III. The contest between the two ideologies that fought Germany on two fronts: don't call it capitalism but call it democracy -- small d. Don't call it Marxism or Communism, but call it instead Totalrianism. This places the ideologies and the governments that practice these principles in more stark and realistic terms. Both sides claim they are the will of the people, both claim 'democratic' principles, and both have been locked in a death struggle since the line was drawn down the center of Europe. The line that Winston Churchill described as the Iron Curtain. So be it. And who remembers that phrase?

If you are a follower of news, headlines, in depth stories, and reporting over the years, the real story behind so much of our political, social and financial worlds has had to struggle between 'freedom' and slavery', (both terms, which can be argued about ad infinitum and legitimately so by apologists for both ideologies) at its core.

To make my case. It is generally agreed that approximately 20 million people, armed and civilian, as well as Holocaust victims died in the struggle we called World War II. And if you look at the so-called 'Cold War', how many people, armed civilian and innocent bystanders, died between 1945 and 1991 in the grand struggle, we call the cold war? So-called Wars of liberation in Africa and Asia, right wing, dictators and left wing dictators in Latin America and the outright battles in Southern and Southeast Asia , where the US and Soviet Union financed and armed two proxy opponents in what might've been termed 'lets you and him fight'.

In Southeast Asia alone between 1954 and 1975 most estimates claim over 2 million people died, and that seems low. The battles in the Middle East, where we finance Israel, and the Soviets financed and armed the Arab side. How many American service people, foreign civilians, and Soviet uniformed and ununiformed personnel died unknown in the so called Cold War between 1945 and 1991. You'd better count, in those numbers, extremist elements in Europe, such as the Red Brigadeand the Bader Meinhof group in the 1970s, and the number of people who died trying to cross the Berlin Wall and thousands of unknowns who disappeared in the Soviet Gulag for political reasons.

And we're not even looking at Red China, who is financing their own wars of liberation and who were the driving force in the first UN conflict known as the Korean War, which only has an armistice in which thousands have died since 1953 in the so called 'demilitarized zone'.

What I'm trying to point out is that World War III as an apocryphal name, which was adopted by the media and never questioned: the Cold War, which basically meant that the Armageddon of nuclear war has been avoided by the fear of mutually assured destruction. I might point out that that last phrase was known in the 1970s by the acronym MAD. But the battle of the ideologies, just turn to proxy battles in the Third World financed by America and the former Soviet Union, and by every covert method that technology could dream up.

And that was the story of the latter part of the 20th century. Come 1989, the end of the Berlin Wall capital. Come 1991 and the Soviet capital dies of its own atrophy and moral decay. And as Francis Fukayama opined, "the end of history". George HW Bush called for a new world order, when in reality it was the end of the cold war. World War III ended, if you wish, with a whimper in 1991, and there was no sailor kissing a strange woman on a New York City street. No dancing in the streets of the world. Just a few futurists and pundits asking "what now?"

A new world order is being devised now with terrorism and its practitioners calling the shots.

Shadowy figures financed by unknown personages while Russia dreams of a return to her troubled Czarist past with Putin in charge until 2036. America is now tottering with self-inflicted wounds, distrusting its own motives and ballot box, while China makes its move in the South China Sea, it's Belt and Road Initiative, and could honestly tell power brokers in Asia and Africa that they Beijing could not care less about internal political motives of their clients.

And ancient foes in the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent face eachother with nuclear tipped missiles, owing no allegiance to any so-called super power.

World War IV began with concrete falling in Berlin and Gorbachev declaring an end to the USSR. It began when America couldn't define our place in the world where we prematurely called ourselves the only superpower left standing in 1991.

The end of history, indeed, Professor Fukayama. There's a new chapter in our history books, if indeed, we get to write it. Remember the victors get to write history. Take care of each other. Thanks for listening.