I find it hard to believe you left out Jimmy Carter when talking about honesty and integrity. Carter was painfully honest. (Remember how he owned up to having "lust in my heart"? TMI, dude) ....Anyway, Jimmy Carter is an excellent illustration of why honesty and integrity are NOT the most important things in a president. I think it's mostly a disadvantage. What's more important is leadership and a vision for the future and the ability to envision "patriot dreams that see beyond the years."
Successful presidents with bad ethics: hmmm. Lyndon Johnson? Let's put Vietnam aside and look at the rest. Johnson's ethics were questionable in many ways--he was fully expecting JFK to drop him from the ticket in a second term because of some shenanigans he'd gotten into with Brown & Root; he was a gold-plated horndog; he mistreated his beagles; I seem to recall a stolen election (hence the name "Landslide Lyndon"); he finagled his way into the military just long enough to fly on one combat mission and get some kind of medal he was clearly non entitled to....and yet, when he came to the presidency and his advisors said not to waste his political capital on civil rights, he said, "What's a presidency for?" I find his ethics pretty shady, he was boneneaded and wrong on Vietnam....but otherwise I find him actually kind of heroic. A complex, complicated man.
Here's what ChatGPT says, and as we know, Chat GPT is always right. (Sarcasm.) However, it does fit with my memory of what was in the Robert Caro bio:
Yes, Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) did serve in the military. During World War II, he was commissioned as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1940. However, due to his role as a U.S. Congressman at the time, he did not see active combat duty. Instead, he served in the Navy as a lieutenant commander from 1941 to 1942, and later as a commander from 1942 to 1947. Johnson was involved in inspecting and reporting on conditions in the Pacific and the combat readiness of various units.
It's worth noting that LBJ's military service during World War II was often criticized because he was seen as using his political influence to avoid combat duty. This criticism intensified during his political career, particularly during the Vietnam War era.
Gene might be missing the essence of the rationalizations he suggests for the Trump supporters. His examples suggest people who are embarrassed by Trump’s crude aggression but know that they benefit under Republican policies. Or people who believe in the essence of Trumpism, which is that white men should be at the center of American life, but don’t want to be seen as endorsing bigotry. Or some of both. Either way, they resemble the conservative commentators in 2016 whose issue with the Access Hollywood tape was Trump’s choice of words for the female anatomy, and not the man’s bragging about committing sexual assault.
And they generally define “us” as white people without college educations, especially the men. Who isn’t part of their “us”? Snooty women and minorities with college educations. Service workers, who again include many women and minorities. LGBTQ people and feminists, who in existence or in ideology undermine the idea of male supremacy. Non-Christians, whose existence undermines the idea of Christian supremacy. Not merely a tribalist concept but a hierarchical one.
Re Gene Poll, I said honesty & integrity is 4th most important. The top 3, I'm not sure in which order, are critical thinking, vision for the future, and communication skills.
I agree about decisiveness, Gene. A person who makes up his mind early and then never changes it, even when new evidence comes in, is hardly a role model, either as president or as a military leader. It's a different thing than having a preference for action over doing nothing; if the action a leader chose turns out to be ill-advised, and he keeps an open mind, he can adjust to the changed circumstances, or try Plan B. It's always good to have a Plan B.
I vote, at my advanced Baby Boomer age , for whomever my very liberal children tell me to vote for. They have much more skin in the game than I do. I long ago realized that looking for integrity and honesty in a politician was like looking for a virgin in a cat house: inconsistent with the job description. To believe any slave holding president had integrity is carrying moral nuance to a breathtaking level. Any historians who find their way around that character disqualifier should not keep their day job. Jefferson enslaved his own children. Trump, on his worst day, has never been that level of shitheel.
Ron Chernow points out that Jefferson and Madison, whose slaveowning made them obscenely wealthy, presented themselves as defending the downtrodden men of the soil against the New York banking interests. A major similarity with Trump is that His Former Infernal Orangeness espouses the same phony populism.
While I definitely agree that the slaveowning presidents had zero claim to moral integrity, in my experience the people who advocate for stripping Washington and Jefferson from public honors are mostly Confederate apologists. They’re trying to make those things seem outrageous in order to defend keeping public honors for Lee and Jackson and Forrest. Trump has used that tactic.
“ Seem outrageous???” TJ “ owned” a woman he serially raped ( no other word for it) and impregnated then enslaved his children by her. His crowning achievement as President was “ purchasing” millions of square miles of homelands of millions of indiginous peoples from the foppish king of France. Neither of those bewigged jerks ever set foot on those lands but believed they could sell them, one to the other, like a used lawnmower on Ebay. Jefferson was arguably the most lettered man of his generation and had to know he was horrid in these affairs. Trump is an ignorant, narcistic grifter. But on the Mt. Rushmore of presidential asshats, he’s got a long way to go to join Jefferson. TJ was a bad dude and no amount of contextualizing can save his withering reputation.
To clarify, the Confederate apologists are trying to make *decommissioning* Washington and Jefferson seem outrageous. They have no interest in your excellent condemnations of Jefferson.
Trump is far worse than merely an ignorant, narcissistic grifter. Like DeSantis and Abbott, he’s a soulless monster who has no conscience and who views people as things. January 6 was proof that he wanted a bloody coup to stay in power, and just this week he has declared his intention to become a dictator. There’s a good case that he and his son-in-law deliberately dragged their feet on COVID when they saw that Black people and blue-staters were dying in greater numbers. Without getting into body counts, I would say that Trump and Jefferson are both equally monstrous.
The business of being elected is not being honest but rather... being elected. Trump made a huge success for himself by getting elected. He is never honest. Their business now I think can't be being elected. "To wrest power for the executive branch"...(read my lips, they can't get elected... what they can do is raise money for Trump's kitty prior to his taking a plea.) I'm a financial and regulatory guy, there are certain things here that people should have to be honest about, given that political jobs are positions of trust. Like "Will you honor the results of this election?" An answer of "I'll think about it" should immediately disqualify a candidate. A prosecutor says also that "once someone is known to lie, you don't need to believe anything they say as the truth." I would not listen to or broadcast anything a known liar says. To be listened to and believed is a privilege.
It is an unfortunate feature of representative democracy that the ability to win an election and the ability to effectively govern have so very little to do with one another. We like to pretend that the latter tends to win out over the former in the long run, but in a system of two-party politics it's actually terribly insignificant.
There's honesty and integrity, and then there's "honesty and integrity." Statecraft sometimes DEMANDS that one lie, in the interest of one's country; to protect state secrets, for instance, or to mislead an enemy of the state. But that's a whole 'nuther ball of wax than secretly breaking the laws that are designed to put limits on what a President is allowed to do, then lying to cover it up when any evidence of it leaks out, all just to protect and advance one's own selfish interests, the country be damned. On the third hand, there are the "promises" people make to get elected, which they are often unable to fulfill, even if made in good faith, because it is not true that "he alone" can fix it; a President needs to be a competent wheeler-dealer able to twist arms in Congress to get things done in a you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours transactional exchange even when they truly believe in the virtue of the policy they are trying to get enacted into law. It's one hell of a juggling act even in the best of circumstances.
Speaking of Spanish surrealist director Luis Buñuel. For those who missed the notice (or simply don't care), casting is now complete for Stephen Sondheim's long-gestating last musical, "Here We Are," which will debut in September Off-Broadway (The Shed, Hudson Yards). What's significant here, in particular, is that it's about fud. At least about the act of eating fud. It's based on two films by Buñuel, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel” In “The Exterminating Angel,” a group of guests arrive for a dinner party and cannot leave, while “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is about guests who constantly arrive for dinner but are never able to eat. I, too, have been to dinners where I had to stick around (the result of the withering gaze from a significant other) and could not eat (out of choice).
I rated Honesty as my number 4 trait, but that's only because I couldn't admit to myself that it was really more like fifth or lower. Part of it is that when you say "I value honesty" it implies an absolute commitment to unvarnished factual truth. That's something I strive to achieve for myself (okay, maybe a LITTLE varnish), but I can do that because nothing very major is at stake and I make people well aware that I am a massive blabbermouth. People do not entrust me with secrets unless they want them to get out. That behavior is stupid for someone whose job requires intimate knowledge of things that cannot be revealed for perfectly understandable strategic reasons. So I really mean more that I value a lack of dishonesty. I want a president who doesn't lie just because he can; he lies or misleads precisely because it is necessary to achieve a critical goal on behalf of the people.
It is, IMHO, hard to find a pure version of "honesty and integrity." [See the Honest Abe story]. It is important in a way that underlies all the other things a leader needs, so that the leader will actually follow through with those promises, goals, etc. To say that Clinton was dishonest because he had affairs is correct, but that did not affect his leadership actions. Nixon was not dumb, had a vision, certainly had ability in critical thinking - but all that was used in dishonest ways. We are humans, and we use honesty as needed, so look for the people who use it where it's most important.
And ANDREW JACKSON was a great president??? Um, wow, we have to talk. :)
Polls of historians over the years have consistently ranked Jackson, on the average, as roughly the 10th best president. Thats near-near great. Yes, I know he was a racist and arguably a genocidal maniac. But he was vitally important to the development of our country as our country: The first non-aristocrat president; he cemented the fact that anyone could achieve it, not just the elite. He consolidated the power of the presidency. He was the first president (I believe) to pay off the national debt. He strengthened our influence abroad. He was a giant figure in world politics, and a Character. Not great, maybe, considering his weaknesses, but important.
His disdain for any people of color was my main issue, but he also tried to do whatever he wanted, the law be damned. A recounting of one of his duels: Dickinson fired his pistol, slightly wounding Jackson. Jackson's weapon misfired -- which according to dueling rules counted as a shot. Technically, the duel should have ended there. But Jackson coldly pulled his hammer back again and fired, this time killing Dickinson. In the eyes of many, Jackson's behavior amounted to little more than murder.
Even Nixon did some things that benefited the country, but I wouldn't want him back.
To be clear, we are actually wired to prefer "stories" to facts. Whether the "stories" were originally concocted to persuade or simply an attempt to put often confusing or conflicting facts in a more digestible form ("sense-making"), being told stories lights up the sensory center of our brains (as opposed to the data processing part, with facts). History, popular history in particular, is thus very much storytelling. If elements of these stories change over time, we can easily and willingly replace one version with another, assuming an internal consistency of some kind is maintained. Through this drive to make sense of things, myths often become history.
With Trump's hardcore acolytes, it's something akin to confirmation bias. They're not quite sure why they're pissed off --- maybe a feeling of somehow being left behind or left out, but not entirely certain. His usual word salad has enough buzzwords and phrases that sound about right when it comes to validating these feelings. The "Tommy Flanagan" (Jon Lovitz), "Yeah, that's the ticket !" The unfortunate point is that when you start building a house of cards worldview from those Trump (and his ilk) deals, you can't afford a distraction --- like facts and the truth --- or your house will crumple.
The CIA story makes me think of Valerie Plame's story. She was the CIA's head of human intelligence in Iraq pre-Gulf War 2, and she wrote in her book of party contacts including science people insisting that there were no WMD, that it was a ruse by Saddam to scare off Iranian attack. And when Joseph Wilson and others tried to proliferate this, Cheney had someone give up her identity, likely her career, and the lives of the people who trusted her. And Cheney lives on.
And is consistent with my take the President Bush was not lying but totally deceived by Saddam. But the real question is: do we want a President who can be fooled so easily?"
"Fooled" is not exactly correct - his own intel services confirmed that the WMD info was not good, but Bush and Co. pressed to get intel that supported their goals.
In those years when they wanted to use ELINT, they would find some agent who reported on that topic and claim it came from that agent. It was against the rules then to cite NSA.
Bush and so many in Washington were convinced by electronic NSA information and were fooled by deception from other who knew what they did:
"But I was wondering, during all of your conversations was there any mention of a deception program where Saddam tried to convince people he has some stash of weapons? I thought that to be possible and asked George Packer about it. His reply was:
"Q. 2. The Democrats seem intent on pushing into the history of how we went to war and some want to prove "He lied and people died." Will the history support that or some more complicated plot where Hussein actually fooled our intelligence services with a clever deception program? Should the Democrats be careful? - gmasters
A. This is the other half of the WMD fiasco: much of the world, including congressional Democrats, European intelligence services, and United Nations agencies, believed that Saddam had some WMDs -- at least, chemical weapons stockpiles and a biological program. This was far less than the administration was claiming before the war; there's a world of difference between chemical stockpiles and a nuclear program capable of producing a bomb within a year or two. But it was grounds for some worry. According to the report of Charles Duelfer and the Iraq Survey Group, Saddam himself created the illusion that he had some capabilities in order to keep his old enemy Iran at bay; in the madhouse logic of his last years, he was lying to his generals and being lied to by his scientists. He played cat and mouse with the inspectors when they return in late 2002. In this and other ways, Saddam brought about his own downfall. As for the Democrats, some of them also have themselves to blame because they failed to look closely at the caveats buried in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. At the same time, they had less access to intelligence than the President and his top officials. "
Some of my relatives, still in Texas, voted for Trump and likely will do it again and they say "You just do not like his style. He is too crude for you." And I did like Lyndon Johnson, and he was crude. I could have never worked for him. Just not or a minute. But his policies were what I wanted a President to have. And Trump and I differ on nearly every item on the policy list. Bloc our borders? While we need the workers? How stupid can one get.
About Bethesda, I lived there after my CIA years and my neighbors were likely in the "Company." We lived on South Brook and it was very walkable with our pups and close to NIH. I worked at the Uniformed Services University and I was putting together a multimedia medical record of casualties in Vietnam. I learned much more about wounds than I ever wanted to know. We had 20,000 photographs of wounds and autopsies to catalog and process to computer files. But I went full circle from being in the First Infantry Division in 1966 to CIA in 1975 and looking back at the wounded in 1988. Few have that perspective.
I find it hard to believe you left out Jimmy Carter when talking about honesty and integrity. Carter was painfully honest. (Remember how he owned up to having "lust in my heart"? TMI, dude) ....Anyway, Jimmy Carter is an excellent illustration of why honesty and integrity are NOT the most important things in a president. I think it's mostly a disadvantage. What's more important is leadership and a vision for the future and the ability to envision "patriot dreams that see beyond the years."
Absolutely correct. And revealing. But the comparison was the opposite: successful presidents with BAD ethics and such.
Successful presidents with bad ethics: hmmm. Lyndon Johnson? Let's put Vietnam aside and look at the rest. Johnson's ethics were questionable in many ways--he was fully expecting JFK to drop him from the ticket in a second term because of some shenanigans he'd gotten into with Brown & Root; he was a gold-plated horndog; he mistreated his beagles; I seem to recall a stolen election (hence the name "Landslide Lyndon"); he finagled his way into the military just long enough to fly on one combat mission and get some kind of medal he was clearly non entitled to....and yet, when he came to the presidency and his advisors said not to waste his political capital on civil rights, he said, "What's a presidency for?" I find his ethics pretty shady, he was boneneaded and wrong on Vietnam....but otherwise I find him actually kind of heroic. A complex, complicated man.
I think Lyndon was a civilian (elected person) when he was on that flight. But I may have been wrong. I need to check the records again.
Here's what ChatGPT says, and as we know, Chat GPT is always right. (Sarcasm.) However, it does fit with my memory of what was in the Robert Caro bio:
Yes, Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) did serve in the military. During World War II, he was commissioned as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1940. However, due to his role as a U.S. Congressman at the time, he did not see active combat duty. Instead, he served in the Navy as a lieutenant commander from 1941 to 1942, and later as a commander from 1942 to 1947. Johnson was involved in inspecting and reporting on conditions in the Pacific and the combat readiness of various units.
It's worth noting that LBJ's military service during World War II was often criticized because he was seen as using his political influence to avoid combat duty. This criticism intensified during his political career, particularly during the Vietnam War era.
Gene might be missing the essence of the rationalizations he suggests for the Trump supporters. His examples suggest people who are embarrassed by Trump’s crude aggression but know that they benefit under Republican policies. Or people who believe in the essence of Trumpism, which is that white men should be at the center of American life, but don’t want to be seen as endorsing bigotry. Or some of both. Either way, they resemble the conservative commentators in 2016 whose issue with the Access Hollywood tape was Trump’s choice of words for the female anatomy, and not the man’s bragging about committing sexual assault.
And to many Trump followers, the vulgarity and ignorance are actually the attractions. He’s a guy “just like us”.
And they generally define “us” as white people without college educations, especially the men. Who isn’t part of their “us”? Snooty women and minorities with college educations. Service workers, who again include many women and minorities. LGBTQ people and feminists, who in existence or in ideology undermine the idea of male supremacy. Non-Christians, whose existence undermines the idea of Christian supremacy. Not merely a tribalist concept but a hierarchical one.
Jeez, I'm glad I'm old.
Re Gene Poll, I said honesty & integrity is 4th most important. The top 3, I'm not sure in which order, are critical thinking, vision for the future, and communication skills.
Close to me. Vision for future, critical thinking, compassion, communication. My last is decisiveness, I think.
I agree about decisiveness, Gene. A person who makes up his mind early and then never changes it, even when new evidence comes in, is hardly a role model, either as president or as a military leader. It's a different thing than having a preference for action over doing nothing; if the action a leader chose turns out to be ill-advised, and he keeps an open mind, he can adjust to the changed circumstances, or try Plan B. It's always good to have a Plan B.
Vision is good, but one has to sell it.
I vote, at my advanced Baby Boomer age , for whomever my very liberal children tell me to vote for. They have much more skin in the game than I do. I long ago realized that looking for integrity and honesty in a politician was like looking for a virgin in a cat house: inconsistent with the job description. To believe any slave holding president had integrity is carrying moral nuance to a breathtaking level. Any historians who find their way around that character disqualifier should not keep their day job. Jefferson enslaved his own children. Trump, on his worst day, has never been that level of shitheel.
Ron Chernow points out that Jefferson and Madison, whose slaveowning made them obscenely wealthy, presented themselves as defending the downtrodden men of the soil against the New York banking interests. A major similarity with Trump is that His Former Infernal Orangeness espouses the same phony populism.
While I definitely agree that the slaveowning presidents had zero claim to moral integrity, in my experience the people who advocate for stripping Washington and Jefferson from public honors are mostly Confederate apologists. They’re trying to make those things seem outrageous in order to defend keeping public honors for Lee and Jackson and Forrest. Trump has used that tactic.
“ Seem outrageous???” TJ “ owned” a woman he serially raped ( no other word for it) and impregnated then enslaved his children by her. His crowning achievement as President was “ purchasing” millions of square miles of homelands of millions of indiginous peoples from the foppish king of France. Neither of those bewigged jerks ever set foot on those lands but believed they could sell them, one to the other, like a used lawnmower on Ebay. Jefferson was arguably the most lettered man of his generation and had to know he was horrid in these affairs. Trump is an ignorant, narcistic grifter. But on the Mt. Rushmore of presidential asshats, he’s got a long way to go to join Jefferson. TJ was a bad dude and no amount of contextualizing can save his withering reputation.
To clarify, the Confederate apologists are trying to make *decommissioning* Washington and Jefferson seem outrageous. They have no interest in your excellent condemnations of Jefferson.
Trump is far worse than merely an ignorant, narcissistic grifter. Like DeSantis and Abbott, he’s a soulless monster who has no conscience and who views people as things. January 6 was proof that he wanted a bloody coup to stay in power, and just this week he has declared his intention to become a dictator. There’s a good case that he and his son-in-law deliberately dragged their feet on COVID when they saw that Black people and blue-staters were dying in greater numbers. Without getting into body counts, I would say that Trump and Jefferson are both equally monstrous.
Do I think Trump would be a slave holder were it still allowed? Yep, I do.
Piffle. We are all part of our age. Trump i a crook, plain and simple. Jefferson was emersed in his age and shook much of it off. Just not all.
The point here was honesty and integrity as qualities of a president. These strike me as qualities which are absolutes, not situational
I do want to find some common ground here, but I can not give up the good that Jefferson did to please a changed view of what was the way to go.
The business of being elected is not being honest but rather... being elected. Trump made a huge success for himself by getting elected. He is never honest. Their business now I think can't be being elected. "To wrest power for the executive branch"...(read my lips, they can't get elected... what they can do is raise money for Trump's kitty prior to his taking a plea.) I'm a financial and regulatory guy, there are certain things here that people should have to be honest about, given that political jobs are positions of trust. Like "Will you honor the results of this election?" An answer of "I'll think about it" should immediately disqualify a candidate. A prosecutor says also that "once someone is known to lie, you don't need to believe anything they say as the truth." I would not listen to or broadcast anything a known liar says. To be listened to and believed is a privilege.
It is an unfortunate feature of representative democracy that the ability to win an election and the ability to effectively govern have so very little to do with one another. We like to pretend that the latter tends to win out over the former in the long run, but in a system of two-party politics it's actually terribly insignificant.
There's honesty and integrity, and then there's "honesty and integrity." Statecraft sometimes DEMANDS that one lie, in the interest of one's country; to protect state secrets, for instance, or to mislead an enemy of the state. But that's a whole 'nuther ball of wax than secretly breaking the laws that are designed to put limits on what a President is allowed to do, then lying to cover it up when any evidence of it leaks out, all just to protect and advance one's own selfish interests, the country be damned. On the third hand, there are the "promises" people make to get elected, which they are often unable to fulfill, even if made in good faith, because it is not true that "he alone" can fix it; a President needs to be a competent wheeler-dealer able to twist arms in Congress to get things done in a you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours transactional exchange even when they truly believe in the virtue of the policy they are trying to get enacted into law. It's one hell of a juggling act even in the best of circumstances.
There’s just enough information in that partial Tropic Magazine piece for me to know whose side I’m on. But I had to wait until the last sentence.
Speaking of Spanish surrealist director Luis Buñuel. For those who missed the notice (or simply don't care), casting is now complete for Stephen Sondheim's long-gestating last musical, "Here We Are," which will debut in September Off-Broadway (The Shed, Hudson Yards). What's significant here, in particular, is that it's about fud. At least about the act of eating fud. It's based on two films by Buñuel, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel” In “The Exterminating Angel,” a group of guests arrive for a dinner party and cannot leave, while “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is about guests who constantly arrive for dinner but are never able to eat. I, too, have been to dinners where I had to stick around (the result of the withering gaze from a significant other) and could not eat (out of choice).
Gene: You say that you will vote for Brett Astman, next time but what if he runs against Brett Legman? Or Premier Tito?
I rated Honesty as my number 4 trait, but that's only because I couldn't admit to myself that it was really more like fifth or lower. Part of it is that when you say "I value honesty" it implies an absolute commitment to unvarnished factual truth. That's something I strive to achieve for myself (okay, maybe a LITTLE varnish), but I can do that because nothing very major is at stake and I make people well aware that I am a massive blabbermouth. People do not entrust me with secrets unless they want them to get out. That behavior is stupid for someone whose job requires intimate knowledge of things that cannot be revealed for perfectly understandable strategic reasons. So I really mean more that I value a lack of dishonesty. I want a president who doesn't lie just because he can; he lies or misleads precisely because it is necessary to achieve a critical goal on behalf of the people.
It is, IMHO, hard to find a pure version of "honesty and integrity." [See the Honest Abe story]. It is important in a way that underlies all the other things a leader needs, so that the leader will actually follow through with those promises, goals, etc. To say that Clinton was dishonest because he had affairs is correct, but that did not affect his leadership actions. Nixon was not dumb, had a vision, certainly had ability in critical thinking - but all that was used in dishonest ways. We are humans, and we use honesty as needed, so look for the people who use it where it's most important.
And ANDREW JACKSON was a great president??? Um, wow, we have to talk. :)
Polls of historians over the years have consistently ranked Jackson, on the average, as roughly the 10th best president. Thats near-near great. Yes, I know he was a racist and arguably a genocidal maniac. But he was vitally important to the development of our country as our country: The first non-aristocrat president; he cemented the fact that anyone could achieve it, not just the elite. He consolidated the power of the presidency. He was the first president (I believe) to pay off the national debt. He strengthened our influence abroad. He was a giant figure in world politics, and a Character. Not great, maybe, considering his weaknesses, but important.
His disdain for any people of color was my main issue, but he also tried to do whatever he wanted, the law be damned. A recounting of one of his duels: Dickinson fired his pistol, slightly wounding Jackson. Jackson's weapon misfired -- which according to dueling rules counted as a shot. Technically, the duel should have ended there. But Jackson coldly pulled his hammer back again and fired, this time killing Dickinson. In the eyes of many, Jackson's behavior amounted to little more than murder.
Even Nixon did some things that benefited the country, but I wouldn't want him back.
To be clear, we are actually wired to prefer "stories" to facts. Whether the "stories" were originally concocted to persuade or simply an attempt to put often confusing or conflicting facts in a more digestible form ("sense-making"), being told stories lights up the sensory center of our brains (as opposed to the data processing part, with facts). History, popular history in particular, is thus very much storytelling. If elements of these stories change over time, we can easily and willingly replace one version with another, assuming an internal consistency of some kind is maintained. Through this drive to make sense of things, myths often become history.
As my father used to say, nothing ruins a good story like an eye witness.
With Trump's hardcore acolytes, it's something akin to confirmation bias. They're not quite sure why they're pissed off --- maybe a feeling of somehow being left behind or left out, but not entirely certain. His usual word salad has enough buzzwords and phrases that sound about right when it comes to validating these feelings. The "Tommy Flanagan" (Jon Lovitz), "Yeah, that's the ticket !" The unfortunate point is that when you start building a house of cards worldview from those Trump (and his ilk) deals, you can't afford a distraction --- like facts and the truth --- or your house will crumple.
The CIA story makes me think of Valerie Plame's story. She was the CIA's head of human intelligence in Iraq pre-Gulf War 2, and she wrote in her book of party contacts including science people insisting that there were no WMD, that it was a ruse by Saddam to scare off Iranian attack. And when Joseph Wilson and others tried to proliferate this, Cheney had someone give up her identity, likely her career, and the lives of the people who trusted her. And Cheney lives on.
And is consistent with my take the President Bush was not lying but totally deceived by Saddam. But the real question is: do we want a President who can be fooled so easily?"
"Fooled" is not exactly correct - his own intel services confirmed that the WMD info was not good, but Bush and Co. pressed to get intel that supported their goals.
In those years when they wanted to use ELINT, they would find some agent who reported on that topic and claim it came from that agent. It was against the rules then to cite NSA.
Bush and so many in Washington were convinced by electronic NSA information and were fooled by deception from other who knew what they did:
"But I was wondering, during all of your conversations was there any mention of a deception program where Saddam tried to convince people he has some stash of weapons? I thought that to be possible and asked George Packer about it. His reply was:
"Q. 2. The Democrats seem intent on pushing into the history of how we went to war and some want to prove "He lied and people died." Will the history support that or some more complicated plot where Hussein actually fooled our intelligence services with a clever deception program? Should the Democrats be careful? - gmasters
A. This is the other half of the WMD fiasco: much of the world, including congressional Democrats, European intelligence services, and United Nations agencies, believed that Saddam had some WMDs -- at least, chemical weapons stockpiles and a biological program. This was far less than the administration was claiming before the war; there's a world of difference between chemical stockpiles and a nuclear program capable of producing a bomb within a year or two. But it was grounds for some worry. According to the report of Charles Duelfer and the Iraq Survey Group, Saddam himself created the illusion that he had some capabilities in order to keep his old enemy Iran at bay; in the madhouse logic of his last years, he was lying to his generals and being lied to by his scientists. He played cat and mouse with the inspectors when they return in late 2002. In this and other ways, Saddam brought about his own downfall. As for the Democrats, some of them also have themselves to blame because they failed to look closely at the caveats buried in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. At the same time, they had less access to intelligence than the President and his top officials. "
Some of my relatives, still in Texas, voted for Trump and likely will do it again and they say "You just do not like his style. He is too crude for you." And I did like Lyndon Johnson, and he was crude. I could have never worked for him. Just not or a minute. But his policies were what I wanted a President to have. And Trump and I differ on nearly every item on the policy list. Bloc our borders? While we need the workers? How stupid can one get.
About Bethesda, I lived there after my CIA years and my neighbors were likely in the "Company." We lived on South Brook and it was very walkable with our pups and close to NIH. I worked at the Uniformed Services University and I was putting together a multimedia medical record of casualties in Vietnam. I learned much more about wounds than I ever wanted to know. We had 20,000 photographs of wounds and autopsies to catalog and process to computer files. But I went full circle from being in the First Infantry Division in 1966 to CIA in 1975 and looking back at the wounded in 1988. Few have that perspective.
I need to read the rest of the John Dorschner piece! I am trying to find it online and failing....
Alas, that is why I had to cut and paste it. it is not out there.