JackTReason

The political right has been using the word “Socialism” as a pejorative against the left for more than one hundred years. And to be sure, much of what has been promoted by the progressives in the US, from the Teddy Roosevelt “Square Deal” Republicans to the Franklin Roosevelt “New Deal” Democrats, aligned with much of the platform of the various incarnations of the Socialist Party over that time. Socialism was what they called every progressive policy advanced in the 20th century. Whether it was worker compensation, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, social security, or any number of other measures that were taking to alleviate suffering of the people.

And while it is easy enough to see that a government of the people ought to be able to make government work for the benefit of all of the people, and while setting in place some solid footings from which the people can strive for a better life seems to be a policy that only the most cruel and selfish would find issue with; the political right is using that word differently. After all, conservatives also rely on all of those benefits placed there by the elected government over the years. And all one has to do is review the political platforms of Republicans during the middle 20th century, which included Eisenhower’s term, as well as that of Nixon, and you’d see positions that could only be called leftest today. Whether beefing up Social Security or creating universal healthcare, Republicans of old were more like moderate Democrats today.

And of course politics change over time, and the political parties have switched places on some issues, and independently changed as well. I’ve written before of the timeline of the big flip of the parties in the US and how we ended up with Republicans embracing white supremacy and supporting the interests of the corporate and billionaire class, while the Democratic Party became aligned with labor, women, racial minorities, and the “others” so routinely maligned by the right.

And when we hear conservatives cry “Socialism!” at every turn of Democratic lawmaking, we are mostly aware that most of the common people who are saying it have little real understanding of the political philosophy of socialism; or communism, Marxism, or capitalism either, but are instead parroting the words issued by their media mouthpieces, who in turn, are saying so on the orders of the billionaires and corporations. (Of course, not all billionaires or corporations, but enough of them, and especially enough of a handful of committed actors.)

But since Roosevelt championed progressivism in the wee years of the 20th century and used government to curb corporate power, break up monopolies, and bust trusts; and then the social progress made by that second Roosevelt to pull us from the Great Depression, billionaires never stopped being a thing. It is true that more wealth was held by the middle and working classes after World War II, and the tax on top earnings was very high, regardless of which party was in power, the rich were still plenty rich. There was no communist equality of wealth created, and the rich did not suffer a lick.

Why then have they spent such earnest efforts into breaking the democracy and egalitarian trend of centrist politics over the last forty years?

It would certainly seem that some of them, or perhaps many, would like to see a less democratic Republic in this country. Many have openly advocated for authoritarian government, and even the practical elimination of effective liberal politics.

During the early days of the Franklin Roosevelt administration, a Marine Corps Major General named Smedly Butler went to Congress and in front of a microphone to the people and told of being contacted by an agent of the billionaire class with a plot to stage a military coup to replace the liberal Roosevelt with a fascist government. You see, Butler had been the go to guy when the monied interests wanted the US government to use its military muscle to overthrow democratic governments in Central America and install puppets sympathetic to their interests. They thought he was still their man. Butler had enough of it.

And do not miss the international nature of big business even in those days. Adolph Hitler had gained the support of that same class in Germany by attacking democracy as a path to political and economic security. (I will bring this up again later.)

They were the same people, in spirit if not in practice, and the same spirit lives today.

But what is it about democracy that so terrifies them? In 1933, we might understand their fears better. The Soviet Union was gaining power, and the control of industry and wealth had fallen under the control of the Communist Party. It should be noted here that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics weren’t actually socialist; nor were they communist or even Marxist, though they carried elements of each of those philosophies with them. That was Stalinism. It was nothing more than another form of authoritarian government. But the view from the west seemed to show that the results of Communism would lead to an eradication of capitalist power.

But by the turn of the 21st century, those labels were no longer valid. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and the Communist Party that held complete power in China was simply a different version of authoritarianism, but with the benefit of capitalism for those willing to submit to the party.

All across Europe the governments had built substantial economic safety nets that supported their entire populations. Universal healthcare became ubiquitous. A high standard of living for the people, substantive protections of people rights, and minimal intrusions on liberty are the norm. And none of those countries were close to the ideals of communism, nor were they an existential threat to capitalism or capitalists. And the rich were richer than ever before. Even the various modest proposals from the left wouldn’t change their lives at all.

So why did billionaire and corporations support a populist and aspiring authoritarian like Trump? Why are they seemingly willing to fund a coup against democracy? What do they see that is so frightening that they would dismantle the American Republic and replace it with an unknown?

The answer is found in racism.

To be specific, the Great Replacement Theory.

Earlier I mentioned Hitler gaining support from Germany’s wealthy industrialists and bankers. He did this with an attack on democracy and in support of fascism. He was creating National Socialism (another misuse of the word socialism) to stop the horror that democracy would bring.

What was this horror? Equality.

What Hitler proposed, and what is believed by scads of people in both political and economic centers of power, is that democracy at its core is egalitarian, and with the spread of democracy a day would come when white people would no longer hold sway over the planet. It would eventually happen that the votes of blacks in Africa would have equal value to those of whites in North America and Europe. It was this fear of loss of racial power to what they believed to be inferior races that motivated the economic leaders to adopt fascism. That, and the perceived threats from communism, which too promised greater equality.

We are all aware of Hitler’s fascination with racial superiority, and the ideal of the Arian race. Too many of us think that such a belief largely died with him in a bunker in 1945. Too many think that the democratic ideals of international unity are on a permanent upward trajectory. Too many think that deep-seated racism and racial segregation linger only in some few southern states, those of the rebellion of the 19th century. And outside of those states, is limited to the poor working whites scattered across the more rural areas of the country.

But to think this is naive.

Racism. Deep, committed racism is widespread in America, and crosses all economic lines. There is no such thing as curing racism with higher education. It has been, and continues to be true, that a decent person traveling off to college and encountering widespread racial diversity for the first time may well abandon the racial teachings of their parents and neighbors, and have a much more inclusive view of race.

But this is not universal, or even close. One can find in colleges and universities today, as was present in days past and long past, groups that advocate for racial superiority and segregation. Groups that foster these racial sentiments among other whites who enroll at those schools. Groups that form clandestine fraternities, based entirely on white power and continued hierarchy in America.

I saw a segment of a news program, where being interviewed was a former white supremacist. He made it clear that the racial superiority crowd was well represented in every economic class.

We don’t have to look too hard to see that in America. Our former President spent years attacking his predecessor with calls to prove he was a real American. Which was an absurd challenge at face, one without merit. Trump was also the man who called for the death penalty for a group of black men that were convicted of the murder of a white woman, only to be later exonerated. The real shocker to decent people was Trump’s refusal to recant his call for their execution after this revelation. And he was the same man who, with his father in the real estate business, illegally blocked African Americans from renting apartments in his buildings. He said they brought down the real estate value. And he is the same man who as President, said there were “many fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist protest against the removal of Confederate statues, that resulted on the killing of a counter protester.

A hundred years ago President Woodrow Wilson was an avowed racist and segregationist. Even FDR didn’t do much to improve racial integration. We make steps, but have not completed the walk.

The Great Replacement Theory holds that increased birth rates of minorities will cause the white people to be replaced as to the power and status that they hold.

The part about the numbers is true. Estimates say that by the middle of this century the United States will be a majority minority country. White people will still be the largest number, but they will be less than half of the total, with the combination of other races coming into majority.

And white supremacists fear this. They fear that should they fail to stop this demographic shift, they will be replaced and reduced to second class status. A position they have no problem seeing other races hold.

And the real surprise of this is to find that feelings of racial superiority are pervasive in America. People with no apparent aversion to other races catch themselves with a twinge at the thought of losing majority status. People I know who admired Muhammad Ali as a fighter and would treasure a handshake or autograph from him, find themselves instinctively rooting for the white guy in a boxing match between two unknown fighters.

People who interact with various races on a regular basis, and who even have black supervisors, will still find, while taking a deep dive into their own soul, the belief that their genetics has made them better than others.

Prior to the Civil War, a small landowner in the South could view himself on equal status with the rich plantation owner by dint of their shared condition of owning slaves. Even if he owned just one slave they were superior, and ending slavery took that away.

There is no reasonable basis for the belief in racial hierarchy. None. It is a social construction to perpetuate positions of power. But you won’t convince racists of this any time soon. And in truth, if we measure people by character, the folks who seek to apply skin tone as a mark of superiority only drive down their own status. The bare idea of assigning yourself a top rank because of your skin color is in itself a mark of an inferior intellect.

We shouldn’t ignore race in America. The reality is that racial equity and justice have not been achieved. Racism is a national sickness. And you cannot cure a sickness until you treat it, and you cannot treat that sickness if you pretend it isn’t real.

To come around again to the front of this piece I say, the entrenched racist power is afraid of democracy for exactly the same reasons it has always feared it. It puts them on equal footing and erases the illusion of the superiority that they hold.

And fascism, to use that word for the current American brand of authoritarianism, is not going to make America great. It is only going to make rich, white people great. The poor and working white are closer in situation to the poor and working classes of the other races than they are to the rich people of their own color.

But like the poor southern farmer who likens himself to his plantation ruling neighbor based on their mutual participation in “That Peculiar Institution,” many in today’s white population are guiled into thinking they share some upper status with the billionaires.

And just like in days of old, it is a lie, a trick by the moneyed elite to keep the lower classes down. The rich have been telling the working class that the obstacles to their happiness are other working class people. And until that changes, and people abandon racism, this will be the model of our future.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi showed her strategic brilliance again in the multistage chess move on staffing her Select Committee on the January 6 Insurrection.

After appointing Liz Chaney straight away because of how badly her own party had treated her; which sent the message that she was ready for honest political rivals to participate on this committee, she then gave House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy the opportunity to do the right thing and appoint sincere Republicans to help get the answers Americans want. He didn’t, of course, and tried to sabotage the committee with a couple of human hand grenades in Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. But Pelosi held a reverse card and vetoed those two choices. McCarthy then pulled all of his appointments in a move he probably saw as clever. It wasn’t.

Now she appoints Adam Kinzinger, An Illnois Republican and military veteran who is seen by all but the cultists as a stand up guy whose loyalty is to the country. This raises the esteem of the committee in the eyes of independents and moderate Republicans.

If you don’t think that Pelosi had this figured from the start, realize that she could have appointed Kinzinger straight away, a job he would have certainly accepted. But doing so at that time would have done little more then label him as an anti-Trump RINO, and left the committee looking more partisan. It is this timing, apparently thought out well ahead, that shows her brilliance. Build a committee without Republican input and it looks partisan; let the Republicans make a blatantly partisan move, and the respond with a measured selection that solidifies the sincerity and gravitas of the committee.

Somewhere in this piece I should remind all of who in the public Pelosi needs to impress with these choice. Everyone on the left is already on board. They’re all just glad that this committee is formed and will investigate. And those in the cult of Trump are unreachable by any means. That leaves independents and moderate Republicans. Years of polls show that people in the country don’t split down the middle in party identification. With a small fluctuation from time to time the country is typically about 30% Republican, 30% Democratic, and 40% independent. That slides up and down for both parties, but the shift isn’t from one to the other, but back and forth between one party and independent. Currently the trend has shown more D and less R, with the R being only 24% in the Gallup poll covering the first half of June, 2021, which was the latest at this writing. In that poll Democrats placed at 30%, and independents at 44%. This isn’t a record, but on the high side for independents over time. But the survey always shows independents being the largest group. And while these people skew left and right and all over the place at times, the reason they identify as independent is that they would rather pick the person over the party. This doesn’t mean they are always politically savvy, or even well informed. But it does mean that they see themselves as open to information, and decidedly not loyal to a party.

These are the people the Pelosi needs to appeal to. Not only will they decide the next election, one where democracy itself may hinge on Democrats retaining majorities in both houses, but they will influence their Representatives and Senators in how they vote on legislation. Thus it is crucial for this select committee to be view by independents as earnest and non-partisan. The right has tried to dismiss the need for an investigation at all, and spent a lot of effort in trying to paint the actions of January 6 as benign; an effort that came across insulting to the intelligence of the public, and a clear attempt to gaslight the people. Others suggested that since there were some police and FBI investigations going on, there was no need for Congress to take part. This was a better counter-argument, because most Americans are not civically literate enough to understand the greater powers Congress has to subpoena evidence and compel testimony versus what police agencies can do, and the amount of time it would take for them to do so. Nor are they astute to the kinds of recommendations such a committee could make to prevent future such attacks that law enforcement would be reticent to do, as those policies would be the purview of Congress. But still, support remains for Congress investigating this attack on the Capitol in a manner similar to our 9/11 Commission. And people in the middle seem to have a growing suspicion of those who are trying so hard to stop it.

The play House Minority Leader McCarthy made early was to put the kibosh on a bipartisan Congressional Commission, by lobbying Senate Republicans to filibuster it. They did, and that Commission died. That Commission would have been equal in all parts between the parties, and included both the House and Senate, but with Trump being against it McCarthy and other Republicans fell in line. Their forecast was that any committee set up by Democrats alone would look as partisan as their own Benghazi Commission that spent four years smearing Hillary Clinton, only to decide in the end she did nothing wrong.

But here they have failed, because of the masterful strategy of Speaker Pelosi. It is now more likely that independents will pay attention to this investigation with a favorable eye towards its findings. And McCarthy’s attempts to turn it into a circus are raising more eyebrows. I suspect that independents and moderate Republicans are more inclined to think certain Republican elected officials have something to hide regarding the actions of January 6.

What to expect now from the right is continued attempts to delegitimize the committee through innuendo and accusations of anti-Trump sentiment. But they now have a taller hill to climb. It is quite possible that the more they complain and holler, the more distrust they bring on themselves. To paraphrase a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, me thinks though doth protest too much. And the minority leader now is saying that House Republicans will form their own committee to investigate various elements of political violence that transpired around the country the previous year. But because of the actions already taken, this looks the the distraction it is intended to be. It will have some effect, but after this exchange over the select committee I judge that it will not get the kind of attention McCarthy wants.

Congratulations Madam Speaker, you have established credibility in this commission that few thought possible. I look forward to seeing the findings.

Let’s keep this simple. Forget about Trump wanting to be a kingmaker, or drive the future of the Republican Party. His first priority is staying out of prison.
That’s it. Everything he does has that as a motivator.

With criminal investigations going on in several states and at the federal level, and the statements made by former confidants and employees, it seems a good bet that  we could see charges against him in the near future.

And he really only has one tool left. The threat of his base becoming violent (again) and the civil unrest that would follow. This is why he is keeping his base stoked and continuing the false claim about the 2020 election.

For those who don’t understand why some of those on the right keep defending him, understand that they know what he will do, but think appeasement will work. They can see as easily as anyone else that Republican Party unity is impossible with Trump in the picture. Yet they won’t give him up.

Yes, there are plenty of them who are willing to throw in with abandoning lawful elections and adopting authoritarianism. But many others will just pretend that the lies are true out of fear of some socialist boogeyman, and accept fascism as necessary.

Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen correctly predicted many of the actions Trump has taken, including that Trump would never peacefully concede power. He has since predicted that Trump will flee the country before facing justice in court.

I say we need to include him launching a civil war to try and stop justice as a possibility. Will he do it? Yes. He is a psychopath that lives by the motto of when you are hit, hit back harder. There is no good reason to think he would put anything ahead of his own safety.

I once called for making a deal to stop that potential conflict. But I no longer think that is sensible. Nothing Trump has ever done should lead anyone to think he will keep a deal. And we have seen him get away with crimes and become encouraged to do more. Hello Senator Susan Collins, did he learn his lesson yet?

We have a long road ahead of us, and we are no longer in a country where the masses accept the outcome of elections when they lose. We now have a substantial minority who feel they are entitled to win, and that anything other than winning is fraud. Those who disagree with them are now the enemy, and no longer their fellow countrymen.

Too many of those will become an insurgency, and when Donald Trump is charge and arrested, they will become violent. Maybe not that day, but as certain as the sunrise they will.

But what we face is a loss of the Republic, and a future of dictatorship. Not just of Trump, but of those would be tyrants who wait in the wings to take the reins.

Appeasement cannot and will not work.

We must slay the dragon, and conquer his cult of followers.

In 2008 The Freedom From Religion Foundation sued the US Federal Government over National Prayer day, arguing that the ability of the government to assign a day to prayer amounted to an endorsement of religion, and that it could cause harm to those who do not believe in deities by stigmatizing them.
They lost on appeal as not having standing, the court ruling that no requirements were in place to pray. Any individual could not participate.

The impulse for atheists is to object to such promotions on national scale, as such actions subordinate the people to whatever deity they imagine is real. The power of a democracy, in this case the American Republic, is the willingness of the people to come together and solve our problems with solutions built on reason and practical value. Prayer on the other hand, may give people the illusion that god (whatever that is) will take care of it. By surrendering our responsibility as citizens to the hand of providence we are in reality shirking our duty and simply accepting whatever occurs; whether that happens by chance or by the control of those who would abuse our trust for their own gain.

The atheist sees that in a democracy, the people are responsible for making things right and that to submit ourselves to the divine is futile. After all, the same god that spared the house from the tornado also brought that tornado. To pray for god to protect one from a pandemic seems to ignore why we accept a god who brought that pandemic in the first place.

Epicurus once asked:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. 

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. 

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? 

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” 

This question has never been satisfactorily answered. The default for those who believe is to advise that god works in mysterious ways. This empty platitude illustrates the weakness of the belief. It is surrendering to imagination when reason fails to provide answer.

On the National Day Of Prayer, people across the country will bow their heads and, while invoking the power of their preferred supernatural being(s), wash away some of their fears of what might happen, and relinquish some of their responsibility to affect that future.
And what they pray for will vary. Some will pray for personal guidance, some will pray for those who lead, some will pray for divine intervention, and some will pray for support of some endeavor they intend to undertake (whether that be for good or ill.)

But today I will join them.

Of course I do not believe any gods exist, and so I do not pray to, but rather for.

I will pray for peace. I will pray for my fellows of this land, that they may come to see their duty to each other. That they may accept the hard choice to engage with each other to make this a better world. I will pray not that others give up their gods, but that they see that their gods would want them to help heal the world. I will pray that people will use their own minds to see others as their fellows and not as their enemies. To find the common ground we share, and to see how much better it will be for them if everyone shares in the bounty that we (whether or not a god is behind it) have brought forth.

But as I pray I know that the only one my prayer will effect is me. But perhaps I too need to practice what I ask others to do. Perhaps in this prayer I gain some strength for my efforts at helping others.

The Stoics understood that we can only control our own actions. We cannot control what others do, but only how we respond.

It may be that my view of prayer is different from that of others. Perhaps it should be called meditating, or positive affirmations, or even just hope. But if my desire is for this country to come together and share in the efforts at solving the problems we face – that the world faces, then it falls on me to do my part in the coming together with others.

Today others are praying. So today, I too will pray.

Okay folks, it’s time to clear up an issue of party identity.

The Republican and Democratic Parties have flipped over the years.
They did so in two stages, economic first, racial ideology second.

The Republican Party was formed before the Civil War as an abolitionist party. And the Democratic Party was the party of Andrew Jackson, and became the party of the Confederate South.
Today, the Democrats are removing Jackson from the $20 Bill and replacing him with a former slave; and the Republicans are defending that former slaveowner.

Jump to the 20th century.
President Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican. He was the trust buster and anti-monopoly champion of the working man. He wanted to give them a Square Deal. When he decided not to run for a third term, he endorsed Taft, who won. But Taft wasn’t progressive enough, so Roosevelt formed a third party, called the Progressive Party (see a theme here?) It it often called the Bull Moose Party, after Teddy himself and an interesting story that digresses from the point of this post.
When he left the Republican Party he took most of the progressives with him. After that, the GOP was big-business conservative. But still home to many blacks and descendants of abolitionists.

The Democratic Party adopted many of the progressive platforms and picked up many of those who allied with Roosevelt. But they still had the white southern vote.
By this time Jim Crow laws had effectively nullified the southern black vote, and the Democratic Party was where you found the KKK and other white supremacist groups.

The Republicans held the Presidency from after Democrat (and racist and segregationist) Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921, until the stock market crash and onset of the Great Depression ushered in Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats. The Democratic Party won wide support throughout a country that wanted support for the working man and the poor. But southern whites were still working men, even if they were also racists. (Some, I’m sure were not.) So the white South remained loyal to the Democratic Party, while the north jumped aboard also.

This started to crack when Harry Truman began advancing a civil rights agenda. In 1948 Democratic Governor of South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, ran as President as candidate for the States Rights Democratic Party. They opposed civil rights.

Over the next couple of decades Democrats in the South, often called Dixiecrats, turned away from the party as it become more progressive on civil rights issues. During this time we had Republican Barry Goldwater win part of the core of the Deep South running against civil rights in 1964, and Alabama Governor and Democrat George Wallace form the American Independent Party to win much of the South in 1968, again, opposing civil rights.

By then the Democratic Party was fully advancing racial equality. The Republicans under Nixon campaigned for the southern votes by appealing to racial fears and prejudices.

This is where those parties are now. With The Republican Party supporting big business, Wall Street, and increasingly authoritarian government; They endorse Christian nationalism, and Euro-centric racial superiority. Though there are certainly large numbers who do not. They appeal to the idea that they are in favor of personal liberty.

And the Democratic Party is supporting racial, sexual, and gender equality, along with government focused social support programs such as health care. Though they have in recent decades also supported Wall Street, Banks, and Big Business, the trend is toward increased taxation and regulation of those entities, and more help and aid for working and poor peoples.

The Democratic Party is now progressive and multiracial, and the Republican Party is now conservative, and white. Though, of course, there are representatives of all people in both parties.

The ideological shift might best be expressed through two southern Senators. Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond, both Southern Democrats. Both early opponents of integration and civil rights.
Byrd saw the error of his ways, and by the 1970s had publicly repudiated his previous stance on race, and remained in the Democratic Party;
Whereas Thurmond continued to oppose civil rights and integration, and left to join the Republican Party.
Thurmond is well known for the longest filibuster in Senate history when he stood and spoke for more than 24 hours in opposition to the Civil Rights Act.

During his press conference the other day, President Biden spoke candidly about his substantive conversations with Xi Jinping. He told us that Xi is a proponent of authoritarianism, and that he feels democracy is failing. And he said that Xi is among many other world leaders such as Putin in Russia, who favor authoritarianism. They feel that democracy is not suitable for today’s world.

Biden made it clear that he is going to show that democracy is better, and that we can out perform those countries because of our democratic foundation.
And he made note that the world is facing this challenge between these two ideologies.

We faced something like this before. While the world was struggling through the Great Depression, countries around the world were turning to dictators and generalissimos to lead them. Those autocrats lead their people into war and destruction.
We were lucky, because President Roosevelt believed he could achieve a recovery through democratic means, though to be honest, those trying times tempted him to consider autocratic authority.

In the end it was our democracy that prevailed, and we thrived because of it. We became the great country we are in that moment, and the world today, with democracy the gold standard where the people are the most content, and where people have the most opportunity.
But do not take this message as a celebration, but instead as a warning. We too face a challenge today between those same dark forces that challenged us eighty years ago. Just as we had the American Bund, a National Socialist Party here in America in the 1930s, we face the ugly face of fascism in our midst today.
And just as then we have mouthpieces that speak the same rhetoric of division, and we have the same attacks on our press. And just like then we have had in our midst our own Il Duce, our own Franco; a would be dictator insisting that he alone could solve our problems.

Our democratic ideals rose to the occasion last year and put that would-be dictator out of power, but we did not put to rest that ideology.

There are still many Americans, who, lured by promises of a return to some imagined greatness of days gone by, are still longing for that champion.
And don’t let those last words suggest that we weren’t great, or that we are not still great, we are, without a doubt. But we can see by honest examination of our history, that the greatness we had before was denied to many of our countrymen. Those that with us held the jobs, and stood on the picket lines; those who bore arms against our enemies and voted in elections. Those who played on the parks and sat in the churches were not given the same rights and opportunities as those of us whose ancestry were of European descent – those of us whose ancestors may have held title of property on the ancestors of those others. Those others too were Americans. And today we can continue our greatness, and even grow to be better. We can again be the model of greatness for the world, but this time we have to include all.

But still there are those who are mislead to think that our division is about culture, as if we don’t have room in this great nation for many cultures. And there are many who fail to see that the party they have held traditional allegiance is no longer the party that supports them. They have been seduced by promises of some mythical greatness their parents knew. They have been frightened by imagined threats against their traditions and their culture. In truth all that is happening is an acknowledgement and acceptance of the traditions and cultures of those others, those who earned that place alongside the rest of us in trenches and foxholes, factories and churches.

Make no mistake. I will not mince words. That party of old is not the party of Lincoln, or Eisenhower, or even of Reagan. That party is the party of Trump. And the goal of Trump is the same as the goal of Putin and Xi and all the other autocrats who have replaced the Mussolinis and the Francos and the Hitlers of our day. Those that oppose democracy and favor authoritarianism have lured many to their side. And they have blinded others to their true nature; those who do not see what they are, and only hear their grandiose proclamations.

Today we have two main ideologies: That which favors democracy and that which favors authoritarianism.That is the whole deal right now.

Those who cling desperately to the Republican Party are supporting turning our country into an autocracy, like Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. I beg of you to step away. You may think it is going to get you some longed for happy day, but that is a smokescreen, a lie to trap you, like the good people of Germany were trapped by the false promises of the Nazis.

We are great because we are diverse, and because we are democratic. It is the foundation that gives confidence and support to all people.
And like our ancestors did in eight decades ago, please abandon the Republican Party. It can reform around better ideals and come back. But when it lead in the early twentieth century, it was beholden to the wealthy and robber barons, and fought against the working people and their pleas for a better life. Today they are the same as back then, and the same oligarchs rub their greedy hands together and picture you as serfs under their lash. Tax breaks for the billionaire class, and bread crumbs for the working people. And all the while telling you that other working people were coming to steal your bred crumbs. Telling you that others were going to force your children to become gay, or cancel Christmas. All lies to make you afraid, and all the while promising a few more crumbs once the job creators got rich enough.

Like staunch conservative Bill Kristol said recently, in this moment we must all be Democrats. That is, until we save democracy, we must take power away from the Republican Party. And we must not let them have it back until they are again champions of democracy and the Republic that our founders built.

For many shoe enthusiasts, these shoes have special meaning. Whether it reminds them of their father or grandfather, or if it is the invincible feeling they get when they put them on, the long wing bluchers (LWB) are icons of American menswear.

Some definitions for those who haven’t yet learned these things. First, the shoes have brogue, which is a pattern of holes in the outer layer of leather. Brogue, which actually means shoe in Scotland, may have had some practical purpose in the early days of footwear, when the holes were cut through to facilitate draining. I am not convinced of this, but we’ll let it stand, apocryphal though it may be. Today it is ornamental. And in the ranking of shoes on a formality scale, more brogue actually makes the shoes more casual. Plain toe black shoes are more formal than shoes of other color or with added brogue.

Some shoes have brogue that forms a W on the toe, and is called a Wingtip. Typically those “wings” turn down and terminate where the uppers (the pretty part of the shoe that wraps across and around your foot) meet the sole. But on some, the wings continue around the upper and join together at the back seam. These are called long wings. A fairly obvious term once you see them.

A blucher is a type of shoe construction that has an open lacing system. That means that the eyelets of the shoe are on flaps that are above the vamp (the part of the shoe that stretches across the top of your foot) of the shoe. This is similar to a Derby style, but subtly different in that the eyelets are on small tabs that are attached to the leather, rather than punched into those flaps. For all practical purposes, derby shoes and blucher shoes are the same, but they both differ from the Oxford style, which has the portion of the upper that contains the eyelets under the vamp of the shoe. That difference makes oxfords more formal than the other two styles mentioned. (So many rules in fashion!)

Whew! That is the hardest thing to explain, and since I probably explained it poorly, I recommend to all those interested to go to gentlemansgazette.com and search for oxfords, derbys, and bluchers for an excellent video describing this.

As you can see from the picture above, this shoe has the wings that go around the back, and has the tabs at the lace closures.

Another feature of the LWB is the double oak soles.

The leather is tanned in oak bark to produce the finished leather. No, it is not made of wood.

As you can see, the leather sole is two layers cemented together. And then both are sewn onto the Goodyear welt (more on that later.) In this picture, note the slight difference in texture of the edge of the leather sole. It is particularly easy to see near the toe of the shoe. There are two thicknesses of leather.

These leather soles are oak tanned and doubled for durability. All soles will wear out giving enough walking and time. And leather wears out faster that some other materials, particularly if you walk on wet concrete. The doubling of the leather adds more than double the life of the sole.

And these shoes are built using the Goodyear welt construction method. The welt, a thick strip of tough leather, (which can be seen above the sole and against the upper) is sewn onto the upper (actually to some fabric called a gemming, which is glued to the upper), and the midsole, and then sewn to the outsole (which you walk on.) The result is a shoe that can have the sole replaced without punching new holes in the upper. To understand this better, consider that before this method came about, most shoes were made by sewing the uppers directly to the outer soles. When the soles wore through, you would have to replace them, and this would mean punching new holes in the uppers. This would obviously deteriorate the leather upper and they would be ruined after one resole.

The Goodyear welt method allows for numerous resoles, and as long as you care for the uppers (which is the expensive and labor intensive part of the shoe), you can plan on keeping those shoes for many years.

Okay, Goodyear welt.

This was developed by Charles Goodyear Junior. No, not the Goodyear who first (at least in America) vulcanized rubber, but rather his son. The process revolutionized shoemaking in the industrial age, and is considered by many to be the gold standard of shoe construction.

In addition to allowing for repeated resoles, this construction method makes the shoes superior at keeping water out of the inside of the shoe.

Above you can see some wear in the leather soles of these ancient shoes. (More on that later.)

The reality of Goodyear welted construction is that it takes more time, materials, and craftsmanship to do. When you find new shoes at retail stores these days, they are most often cemented construction. They really can’t be resoled, and you wouldn’t anyway as the leather (if leather at all) is poor quality. The idea of buying a pair of dress shoes for fifty bucks seems okay to some, but they will not survive much wear, and will need to be replaced often. In addition to piling up in the landfills, these shoes will end up costing much more than you think after many replacement pairs.

This style of shoe was first constructed by Florsheim Shoes in 1959. At the time Florsheim held the spot as America’s finest mass produced shoes. They were solidly built in America by skilled workers using the best materials available.

Less than fifteen years after the end of World War II, the American man happily slid his feet into this style of shoe. Strong and well crafted, solid and heavy, they were to your feet what America was to the world: A stable and reliable base to build a future around. These were a man’s shoe, worn with suits, sport coats, and casual wear alike. Some men might have several pair in different colors. Black, Brown, Burgundy, Walnut, to fit the rotation good shoes should get. (Don’t wear shoes more than two days in a row, and be sure to store them with cedar shoes trees to draw out the moisture your feet produce.) Shine up the brown ones to take the wife out to dinner, maybe the burgundy for Sunday services.

These shoes took on a nickname that remains to this day: Gunboats.

In researching for this post I found numerous misunderstandings of the meaning of this name. Some thought it was the weight or the solid construction that gave the name. Some thought it the double oak soles, which has lead many to incorrectly refer to numerous other styles as gunboats because of it.

The truth is, like so many other nautical references, much simpler than that. They get the name purely from resemblance.

Above is a picture of the USS Maine (yes, the one which blew up and sank in Havana harbor and touched off the Spanish American War.) One can see the row of portholes running most of the length of the ship.

Likewise the long wings of the Gunboat Shoes have a similar row of holes that run parallel to the sole. The name reflects the look.

Florsheim isn’t the company they were in those days. I’m not going to explore their history here, but briefly stated, they moved operations overseas, and cut the quality of materials they used. They are not alone, of course. The trend away from classic mens styles and long-lasting quality towards inexpensive disposable products doomed many traditional American brands. And they weren’t alone in building gunboats for American men to slide their feet into.

This particular pair was made in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin by Mason Shoes, probably before 1980. That makes these LWBs over forty years old and still going strong. I found these at Goodwill, and they needed some cleaning, conditioning, polishing, and shining to bring them back to the appearance you see here. I have every reason to believe they will last me as long as I am wearing shoes, and may see life as footwear for another generation after that. Talk about sustainable practice and environmental responsibility.

Mason no longer makes shoes, or even sells shoes that meet any standard of classic wear. But when they did, they used scotch-grain leather for these uppers, and O’Sullivan rubber heels for support.

O’Sullivan is another American success story worth noting.

In Lowell, Massachusetts in 1896 an Irish Immigrant named Humphrey O’Sullivan was running a printing press. To ease the leg strain from long hours on his feet on the stone floor, he nailed two pieces of rubber matting to his heels. A few years later he patented this idea into a rubber heel company. It expanded into other things, but before Humphrey sold his interest, he had turned himself into a multi-millionaire. These are the original heels on these shoes. Mason commonly used O’Sullivan heels, and they were seen as an upgrade for many brands. And yes, though stacked leather heels were and are still popular and a sign of quality footwear, these rubber heels really are comfortable to walk in.

The only other pair of Long Wing Bluchers I own is a pair of spectator golf shoes.

These were made in Spain for a Swedish based company named Fiddler. Yes, it has come to searching the globe to find a pair of Goodyear welted golf shoes at a reasonable price.
But if the idea is to channel golf legends like Harry Vardon and Walter Hagen, these two tone spectator shoes are a must.

The term spectator likely comes from this being a style commonly seen on the feet of men who were spectators at sporting events, such as the horse races. They were, in the early days of men’s fashion, considered quite casual, and suitable for sporting events.

But mens shoe styles are in flux these days. Despite the resurgence of interest in classic menswear, the overall trend has been toward more casual options. It is more common to see men in trainers than in oxfords, and that might be best as clothing has been similarly relaxed, even to the point of sloppiness. Recently I heard an ad for T-shirts that were “dressy” enough for date night. This is the reality of the world today. Though when these Mason’s were made, a man would be far more likely to have a coat and tie on, then to go without a collared shirt on a date.
Even the venerable standard of American shoes, Allen Edmonds, who still hand makes shoes of fine quality in Wisconsin, has dropped their LWB style MacNeil, except in Cordovan leather.
They must do what they must to keep in business, and that has been to follow the casual trend towards sneakers. The latest fad is dress shoe uppers with white, wedge outsoles. These appear as a cross between sneaker and dress shoe, which seems like a trend that will pass. If a sneakers are okay, than wear sneakers. If they aren’t, than wear a dress shoe. I am not a fan of this look, but accept that other like it. In practice, I doubt anyone will ever notice that I am not wearing a trendy fashion look.

But whether it is the golf shoes or the vintage Mason’s, the appeal of these shoes come with putting them on and walking around.
These are heavy, solid shoes that make you feel invincible. They are substantial, and pack authority. Anchored as you are to whatever ground you stand, you are the captain of your personal ship, and nothing can conquer you in a pair of gunboats.

As most of you know, I support the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. I believe the purpose behind this right being enumerated in the Constitution is intended to invest the People with the tangible means of enforcing the power that does belong to them. To us. We are the people, and we are also the government. Through representation as outlined in the Constitution, we are a Republic that has the people as the base of power. And it is the People owning and possessing the means to enforce that power that could, under some extreme circumstance, prevent some tyrant from usurping the People’s government.
But in placing that protection and right in the Constitution, the founders were not intending that people abuse that right and murder each other in random attacks. It is clear that the founders would expect us to take steps as needed to protect the people from each other. And I cannot imagine that they would have endorsed allowing all persons to have access to firearms.

The killings in the cities is often associated with other crime, such as gang warfare and criminal drug syndications. Those are serious issues and I believe they need to be first addressed by addressing inequity and opportunity in our nation. It is no small matter to notice that the kinds of violence seen in most of those locations is virtually non-existent in affluent and middle class neighborhoods. Fix that, and the related shootings will shrink.

But when it comes to these mass killings, we are in a different territory. Here it is persons who must be considered, by any reasonable standard, mentally unhinged. We all know this. This isn’t an 800 pound gorilla lurking around the corner, it is plain to see. Who but a deranged lunatic would do such a thing? All of us, regardless of view of the Second Amendment, or political party, or any other difference can see this.

There are some people who should not have dangerous weapons.

I am a gun owner. A responsible gun owner. They are safely stored, and properly kept away from anyone who should not have them. And I know many, many others just like me. And there are about a half-billion guns in this country owned by people just like me. These guns, including tens of millions of the semi-automatic rifles that look so very similar to the rifles carried by our military, are owned by responsible people just like me. These are not the guns that are killing people. Because these are not the people that would go out and do this. These are responsible gun owners who have reason to own them, even if the rest of us don’t know their reason or if we disagree with those reasons. The first thing to note is that they are not harming anyone.

But there are people who should not have guns like these, and yet they still get them.

This is the nut of the problem that needs to be addressed. It isn’t the type of gun that we as a reasonable and responsible people should be allowed to own. We have already demonstrated that you are not in danger from those people owning guns.

It is the people who should not have guns but who have them anyway that is the problem.

It is time to address this issue. And everyone, especially those who strongly advocate for private gun ownership to come to the table and bring solutions.

How do we keep those lunatics from getting guns? And what mechanism should we have for getting them away from those who become lunatics?
It seems to be that universal background checks, waiting periods, and red flag laws should be an obvious start. The potential benefits of these regulations would far surpass the potential negatives.
And perhaps requiring an advocate. Someone from your community who would vouch for you.

In any case, we cannot in any practical way remove the guns from the masses of people. That path leads inevitably to civil war, and rolls over impossible legal and political hurdles on the way.

But we must address the question of who has them. The People have the right to conduct themselves in the affairs of life without fear of rampaging lunatics.

It is no surprise that I am excited at the prospect of a grandchild coming into the world. The excitement I feel for myself is only exceeded by the joy I feel for those two who are your parents. Like other grandparents-to-be, my mind has raced to consider what help I can be, what changes should I make, and what my role should be.

I have commonly heard that grandparents spoil their children. That visits to and from them will provide a steady stream of coddling and attention that may sabotage some level of discipline the parents work hard to instill.
Spoiling you? I do not see this as my role to you.
And I don’t think that most grandparents see this as their chief duty, if a duty at all. Most see love and affection as their main gift, and a reliable surrogate for stressed and tired parents. A dependable body to help when needed.

And yes, watching you grow and learn and become are the reward I will receive for my presence. And I will delight in the opportunity to introduce you to the forest and watch your eyes in wondrous fascination of nature. The building of a campfire and the cacophony of wildlife at the stages of the day are experiences I hope to share.
And I will gladly teach you to throw a ball and swing a golf club and tennis racket, or at least be an adjunct in that education. And I hope to watch as you see and smell your first experiences at the ancient arenas of sport. For sport teaches more than bodily movement and strength. It teaches us to cooperate and embrace our fellows. How to compete with respect, how to honor others achievement, and the importance of loss.

And I will tell you of the things I love, of cloth and wood, of textiles and colors, of words and sentences, of kindness and virtue. We need to see what others treasure in order to determine what our treasures will be.

I have gained a fair amount of knowledge and perhaps a measured amount of wisdom in my years. This is something that only my longevity and curiosity could have gathered. This is unique to me. Experience is a great teacher to those who know they are students. And more time in life’s classrooms means more lessons to share. These are lessons that would be different from anyone else.

No, it will not be my duty to create rules and laws for you to follow. You have parents capable to that task, parents who have your interests in mind and resources available to consult if they need advice. Though it will fall on me to occasionally enforce those rules, it isn’t for me to make them.

I can teach you much, but it isn’t for me to tell you what to believe. I have a whole history of undoing beliefs foisted on me by well-intentioned people in my own past. I will share with on occasion over time beliefs that I may have, but only to show how they were built, and why my grip of them remains tenuous.
I think rather that teaching you how to think a much more worthwhile endeavor. It will not be for me to fill your mind with content, though I suppose some great measure of that will happen planned and unplanned; but rather to load you with tools for how to think for yourself. It is this as a practical matter, that seems the best use of whatever wisdom I have gained; to teach you how to reason, how to discern, how to think. But not what to think. Your own thinking mind is the best tool for gaining knowledge.

Thoughts should be born, not placed in your mind.

But in this I speak only of some practical training, some function as a life tutor. A duty that falls short of what must be my main purpose where you are concerned. And that is to be always on your side and in your corner. A reliable lap of love and safety.
I promise now that I will always be there for you with love. I will never reject you, nor withhold my tender affection. I will always be your champion and never cause you to doubt that commitment. You will have in me someone you can completely rely on through all the days of your life, or more practically, my life, to accept you and cheer you on. I am not here to make you into someone, but to accept the someone that you become.

I am Papa. And the first time I hear you say that word to me will be the most joyous moment of my life.

This is about the religious belief of an atheist friend. Well, former friend, I suppose. The termination of said friendship has prompted this missive.

If it seems like an oxymoron, please understand that religious belief does not necessarily require a god, but rather, only belief in something without good reason. It isn’t the belief itself that is a problem, but the refusal to relinquish belief when it cannot be supported by reason.

There are many examples I could use from the 40 years I’ve known this man, but I’ll pick one incident. It is from his efforts to get me to subscribe to the belief that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were false flag operations by the US Government.
Of course the entire 9/11 conspiracy movement is rubbish. It is entirely implausible at every level of examination, and belief in it requires acceptance of wild assertions and the willful avoidance and rejection of provable facts. But that doesn’t stop the true believers.
In the incident that follows I was reminded of something I couldn’t place, and it took me several years to identify the moment it was from. When the memory came it revealed to me the religious nature of conspiracy belief.

The former friend I refer to, let’s call him Alex, had described several things which, as far as he was concerned had proven 9/11 was a false flag operation. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it describes an attack on oneself or ally that is framed as if it came from a rival or enemy. The first of these that I ever encountered was in grammar school. I went to a K-8 school in Chicago, and during that last year a student running for class president defaced his own campaign posters to elicit sympathy and tarnish his opponent. It actually worked, and when discovered, caused a removal from office and expulsion from school.

In the case of 9/11, the theory proposes that the government attacked and murdered its own citizens and blamed it on Islamic terrorists. The goal was to encroach on the freedoms of American citizens, create a more powerful government, justify invasion of Afghanistan and eventually Iraq, or a combination of all three. None of these arguments are sound, but that would take a lot of space for debunking that has been thoroughly done elsewhere.
For this we focus on a single moment.

Alex insisted that I listen to some audio he had. He described it as amongst the most compelling support for this conspiracy that he knew of, and implied that it should at least open my mind to the truth as he believed it.
It was a recording of about ten minutes in length of a presentation made by a former FBI agent named Ted Gunderson. I had never heard of him before that moment (not a surprise, really) but was to understand that he was a strong proponent of the 9/11 truth conspiracy theory.
The first five minutes or so was Gunderson relating his background. Decades in the FBI as an agent, and then as supervisor of various district offices managing hundreds of agents. He made it clear that he was a proficient administrator of bureaucracy and an expert in criminal investigation with many years of experience.
The second half of this speech concerned two things. First he said that the World Trade Center twin towers collapse could not have been caused by the planes that hit them; and that he was in touch with current (unidentified) FBI personnel who fed him secret information that supported the conspiracy claim.

Alex was blind to what I saw as obvious. Gunderson had debunked himself. His own words made it clear that there was no good reason to take him seriously. It was clear to me that he was a zealot, incapable of critical examination of his belief. I’ll explain for those who miss the point.
His prelude was to establish himself as an authority. To someone untrained in critical thinking, such a background as his, decades of service in a prestigious and trusted institution, made whatever he said compelling. But what I heard was admission by omission of lack of any relevant expertise that could give authority to his statement about the collapse of the towers. He didn’t suggest any study in structural engineering or metallurgy. He didn’t add any evidence or statements from those with such expertise, nor offer any support at all, but instead relied entirely on assertion and insistence. His opinion had no more weight because he had been a criminal investigator, than had he been a commercial fisherman or had played three years of semi-pro baseball.
It would be like me suggesting that my twenty years of maritime experience gave authority to my pronouncements about how far a regulation football could be thrown. It has no bearing on the argument.
And Gunderson should have known that. As someone with as much experience as he had, and with having sought out experts for cases he investigated, he must have known he was out of his depth. And yet he was willing to make claims on a matter where he knew he had no expertise. At that moment he became unreliable as a source of information. He demonstrated that he was willing to pass off his unqualified opinion as expert analysis. It didn’t matter what he said after that. For any reasonable member of his audience he was done. Dismissed as a crank.
The second part of what he said, about secret information should also be dismissed accordingly. First, because of what I just covered, that whatever he claimed was unreliable at face value; and second because claims of secret knowledge are an unfalsifiable argument. There is no way to prove that he doesn’t have secret information. His assertion requires acceptance without evidence, thus making his argument an attempt to reverse the burden of proof. It is a claim without evidence spoken by a man without credibility.

(I did look up Ted Gunderson and was not surprised to find that he had become obsessed with belief in Satan worshipers sacrificing babies, as well as many other conspiracy claims. He had dived down various rabbit holes of conspiracy, and even a perfunctory search would render him as a true crank.)

But Alex looked at me after playing this audio. He was nodding his head, and widening his eyes as if to say, “Now do you believe?”
Of course I didn’t, but something seemed so familiar about his posture and his expectation of my response. It took me years to recognize where I had experienced it.

It was way back in 1977. I was a seventeen year old Seaman Apprentice stationed on a Tank Landing Ship based in Little Creek, Virginia. While on board that ship I had several different Christian sailors attempt to convert me to their churches. Assembly of God, Pentecostals, and Southern Baptists to name the three that I remember. Two shipmates belonging to the latter of these invited me to their church to hear a sermon.
I had been raised Roman Catholic, complete with gothic sculptures, statues of Mary and the saints, Jesus on the crucifix, and priests resplendent in finery befitting a chain of command that led to the Vicar of Christ himself. All elements of an organization crafted to instill trust and faith. So, the setting of the church my shipmates took me was unorthodox, literally.
The minister wore a powder-blue leisure suit and stood at a podium that bore a simple cross. This was clearly all about the minister and his presentation of revealed truth. I do not recall if I ever heard the minister’s name, nor do I remember his face, but if you imagine Jerry Falwell you’d have a pretty good picture. Heck, I don’t know that it wasn’t Jerry Falwell.

The minister spent a half-hour railing about men with long hair and women who wore pants, along with a lot of other blather about who was a true Christian and heaven and hell and whatnot.
After this was over my shipmates asked me if I had been saved. “From what?” I asked.
“From going to hell,” they answered. “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”
“Was that guy in the powder-blue leisure suit going?”
They nodded yes, he was.
“Then I’ll pass,” I said. “I’m not going to spend eternity hanging around that guy.”

These two young men were dyed in the wool Christian believers. They had heard all of this before, and believed it completely. And each time they heard this minister speak they became more certain of the belief they held. Each experience at such a meeting was a heart-filling reenforcement of the belief they came in with. With no skepticism behind them and without the application of any critical thinking, they were unable to understand how someone else wouldn’t be convinced by their preacher’s message. They couldn’t see that others might view this as the ravings and rantings of a bigot and a cult leader. Utterly unconvincing and void of any reasonable arguments of support.

Let’s go back to Alex and Ted Gunderson and how these are related.
I realized it was the same thing. Alex was a true believer and part of the choir that Ted Gunderson was preaching to. He might as well have been standing behind a pulpit and talking about how much Jesus loves us. Identical in all but the words and claims. Alex listened to Gunderson with the same lack of skepticism that those young men in Virginia had so many years ago absorbed the claims of their minister. Gunderson was a priest presenting truth revealed to him through secret communication. His anonymous sources were no different that God speaking to the minister. Ridiculous to anyone not in the cult, gospel to those who are.

I met Alex in 1980 when he joined the ship I was on. (A different ship, this one based in California.) He was at the time a new recruit, fresh from Navy “A” school in Orlando, Florida where he had been evangelized. At some point later he abandoned that belief. I’m not sure what did it for him, but in retrospect I can’t believe his journey away from deism was similar to mine. Mine was a growing appreciation for logic and reason, and the requirement that my beliefs be sufficiently justified through those tools. Over time I couldn’t rationalize the stories from the Bible and make them align with any kind of reality. And gradually the very concept of the supernatural became just so much fantasy forced into a hole where knowledge ended.
I wonder if Alex had simply heard some George Carlin sketch humorously shredding the traditional beliefs in God, and just abandoned the belief on the spot. Or if it was the accumulation of people scoffing at the silliness of so much of biblical belief.
But what became clear in time, in a very long time admittedly, was that Alex had never adopted reason as a means to work out truth, or skepticism as a tool to resist assertions from those we are trained to trust. What also became clear to me was his willingness to accept as true the claims that align with pre held belief.

There is no intellectual difference between true believers, regardless of the belief.

Alex held many other conspiracy beliefs, from the laughable and harmless belief that NASA faked the moon landings, or that jet planes are spraying chemicals over the cities; to darker ones that really caused me to question and ultimately end our friendship; such as the belief in a secret cabal of Jewish bankers who controlled the world behind the scenes, and that the holocaust didn’t happen as reported. And more recently, of allowing the current viral pandemic to cull the population of the unhealthy and unfit, in lieu of vaccination, which he considers to be one of the tools of world domination the aforementioned cabal use.

I suspect that Alex had, when he surrendered belief in God, retained his belief in the Devil. Not an actual devil or Satan or whatever, but perhaps a more nebulous evil that exists as an entity. Like some invisible miasma. A force that attracts bad actors and influences them to ill exploits. Perhaps he had adopted belief in “the force” and its dark side that were introduced in the Star Wars franchise. I know many who do subscribe to that.
It is much easier in a world full of science and reason to move the supernatural away from a single creator and a band of angels and to a vague and amorphous “force.” I read once that the decline in religious belief in America was matched by an increase in belief in extraterrestrial visitation. Our need to feel we are at the center of the universe. If there isn’t any Gods paying special attention to us, than perhaps it is the aliens.

As far as Alex went, I concluded that efforts to bring him around with reason were never going to work as he would never accept he was wrong about anything. I recognized that I had to face the antisemitism he supported, and the inhumane attitude towards other people. A clear-eyed look without the filters that four decades of friendship had applied. He would be quite comfortable disposing of unappealing members of the population. It was easy to imagine him as a Pilgrim to early America, smiling at the natives while carrying armloads of blankets. Smallpox would only destroy the weak.
And he wasn’t content to hold his beliefs separate from our interactions like others I know where we politely agree to disagree. In Alex I had seen already through countless encounters that he wouldn’t keep any of these ideas to himself. Truly, he was bent on convincing me of those beliefs.
And finally I realized, that whatever time I have left in my life, it wasn’t enough time for crazy.