PAPER TIGER REDUX

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

President Biden’s foreign policy mantra is to avoid escalating current conflicts. To use his favorite word: don’t. Don’t do anything that will upset America’s enemies, don’t properly defend American troops abroad, don’t do everything possible to protect American interests, and certainly don’t upset the not-so-mainstream media, upon whom his re-election, in large measure, depends. But history sadly shows us that such weakness causes the very escalation such policies seek to avoid. Trying not to risk expanding conflicts generally leads to expanding those conflicts. One word admonitions scare no one and accomplish nothing, except to make the United States look ridiculous. The US is confronted with multiple wars and serious threats, yet the White House seems oblivious to the lessons of history.

English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously engaged in a policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler prior to WWII in an attempt to avoid a major conflict. Hitler had taken the Rhineland, Austria, and part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Chamberlain met with Hitler to appease him in order to avoid war and both signed the Munich Agreement in 1938. Hitler agreed to no more territorial acquisitions and Chamberlain stated, “I believe it is peace in our time.” But in 1939 Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland, starting WWII.

By the 1850’s the US Congress had made several agreements between northern states and southern states about the extension of slavery as the country grew westward including the Missouri Compromise (1820) and the Compromise of 1850. The war with Mexico, ending in 1845, reignited the slavery issue as Texas would be entering the union as a slave state. Northern abolitionists opposed the extension of slavery and southern slaveholders insisted on it. The Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 made the situation much worse by ruling that Congress did not have the authority to prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories. President James Buchanan, a northern Democrat with southern sympathies took office in 1857 but failed to resolve the slavery issue, taking a passive stance and leaving the issue to the radicals on both sides of the issue. He did not run for re-election in 1860, eleven southern states seceded and the Civil War started in April of 1861. More Americans lost their lives in this conflict than in all other wars combined. Buchanan didn’t think those states had the right to secede, but he did nothing to stop them, nor to resolve the conflict. He left office in April 1861 with the country in shambles.

There are other historical examples. The price of weak leadership is extraordinary, but the Biden White House is trying to make sure that whatever we do, we do nothing to expand any of the currently expanding conflicts. We don’t want to further upset anyone. We issue warnings and have demonstrations of force but do little. Evidently the policy is we can get mad at them, but we don’t want them to get mad at us.

The Biden administration is preoccupied with how our enemies feel, so the president makes sure the US doesn’t overreact, even when American interests and American friends are under assault. Terrorist organizations have attacked American bases in the middle east over 100 times, Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainians in a war of conquest, the Chinese Communist Party is working overtime to wreck the US economy and on October 7 Hamas put on a freak show that would have embarrassed the Gestapo. There are college students demonstrating in support of this ridiculous terrorist organization. How crazy do you have to get before these students see how bad this is? Biden does not want to upset these college demonstrators and the Palestinian supporters either, so he simultaneously supports a middle east ceasefire to call attention to the plight of the Palestinians but then states again he is “rock solid” behind Israel. Then no one gets mad at him or the US. But as it turn out everyone is mad at America.

Weakness solves nothing, and as Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) stated “more sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem.” Biden cannot ignore the consequences of appeasement and inaction. This toxic dissonance results in bold moves by American enemies abroad, and nationwide demonstrations at home. Biden has the same title as Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but he is not in the same league.

POLITICAL POLEMICS PARTY

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

Only a schizophrenic could make sense of Tuesday’s House of Representatives hearing on Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report. The Judiciary Committee is loaded with Members of Congress who are also attorneys, and the hearing immediately devolved into a contest of can-you-top-this in argumentation and fact parsing.

Republicans and Democrats crafted statements designed to proffer a point view, irrespective pf anything Mr. Hur wrote in his report, or stated verbally. For example, a number of Democrats insisted that the Hurt report exonerated President Biden of any wrongdoing, irrespective of the number of times Mr. Hur categorically stated he did not exonerate the President. Similarly the Republicans only found evidence of guilt in the report. Wasn’t this the same document?

How can intelligent people come away with such dichotomously different interpretations of the same report? They can’t, unless of course its Congress and it’s an election year. Thus the problem. No matter what the issue, each side argues what they must to leverage advantage, facts notwithstanding. The more naïve portions of the public are bewildered, the more savvy listeners hear the same old song and dance. Left in the dust are honesty, honor, and a sense of justice. A poor showing after more than 200 years of democracy and trillions spent on a large, modern government. Yet this nonsense goes on and on.

Third party candidates such as RFK Jr. try to coalesce the middle in an attempt to cobble together a coalition of the reasonable, side stepping the noise in the DC swamp. To what end we will find out in November, but in the meantime it’s a fight to the finish over every scrap of information, every hearing, every special election, every bill and every issue.

We would need a legion of Diogenes-like warriors to wrangle the truth out of the political class in a desperate attempt to make sense of anything that is coming out of Washington.

THE DEMOCRATS RHETORICAL LOOPS

Ken Grossberger, PhD

In order to make excuses for their failed policies, the Democrats, and their Not-So-Mainstream- Media allies, have, either in coordination or due to some neurotic impulse to repeat their word or phrase for the day, routinely blurted out responses in reaction to criticism of their positions. Once that word or phrase is spoken by a leader, by the White House, or by some other lefty forum, the talking heads all start saying the same thing.

Remember the increases in energy costs due to Biden’s policy decisions? It was called the “Putin Price Hike.” And Biden’s deflection from the Democrats’ failures in Congress blaming the GOP? He said, “this is not your father’s Republican party.” And Biden’s flip on soaring inflation? He whispered, “Bidenomics is working.” And the multiple catchphrases repeated by his Homeland Security Secretary and others, “the immigration system is broken” and “the border is secure”, and not to forget “the border is closed.”

This constant repetition, with the presumptive force of rhetoric, perhaps satisfies the base, but further antagonizes the political right, and frankly puzzles the political center. Each of these lines is severely challenged by facts and believability. To whom are they speaking? They can only win their base once; the right and the center just aren’t buying into these. This not-so-subtle attempt at deflection is mawkishly transparent at best and ludicrous at worst.

Repeating nonsense doesn’t make it less nonsensical. Perhaps it satisfies having said it, perhaps it reassures when it is repeated, but it surely insults when measured against reality. The White House and the Democrats get stuck in these rhetorical loops because quite often they have no other answers.