FDR and his Admirals

 

Franklin Roosevelt was fond of using the quote above, not from false modesty but because his ego was secure enough that he could acknowledge his own blind spots. He actively sought out people who could illuminate them, despising "yes men" who would later write "kiss ass and tell" memoirs.

This stands in marked contrast to the Trump administration. Donald Trump's ego is similarly outsized but underneath lies deep insecurity. Could anyone imagine FDR, if such technology existed in the 1940s, having 3am social media meltdowns?

I won’t review Trump’s first term, from the corruption to his mishandling of the emerging COVID pandemic. His tampering with the military during his second term has led to disastrous results throughout the services. Under the “leadership” of Secretary of Defense/War “Whiskey” Pete Hegseth, Judge Advocates General have been dismissed. An active-duty service member tells me many enlisted find this alarming—JAGs interpret the law and advise on whether questionable orders may be illegal. Hegseth gutted upper ranks, whining they were "DEI," replacing competent officers with toadies or leaving posts vacant.

There is a direct line between that and the disaster unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz, particularly aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln: troops unfed, ships falling out of repair, care packages undelivered. More on that shortly. First, some history.

Roosevelt's Team

FDR assembled an unusually strong—and occasionally combustible—group of admirals during World War II. What made them remarkable wasn't uniformity of thought, but competence and shared purpose. That makes the quote above rather apt.

Ernest King became Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet after Pearl Harbor, then Chief of Naval Operations in March 1942. Brilliant, aggressive, and notoriously difficult—there was a wartime joke, attributed to his daughter, that he was "the most even-tempered person in the Navy: he is always in a rage."

Strategically, King ensured the Pacific didn't become a secondary theater. He accepted Roosevelt’s "Germany First" directive but constantly fought for resources to attack Japan simultaneously. Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands campaign owed much to his determination.

His relationship with Roosevelt was fascinating. FDR understood naval affairs unusually well for a president—he had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson—and consequently interacted with senior naval officers with considerable confidence. King was one of the relatively few people formidable enough to push back.

Then there was William D. Leahy, probably the admiral closest personally to Roosevelt.

Leahy had already been Chief of Naval Operations before the war and later became Roosevelt's Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief. Leahy's personality was almost the inverse of King's. He was restrained, politically sophisticated and trusted deeply by Roosevelt. As Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, he functioned like today's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sitting beside FDR at wartime conferences, mediating between the president and military chiefs. While King ran the Navy, Leahy helped Roosevelt manage the entire war effort.

The great operational commander in the Pacific was, of course, Chester W. Nimitz.

After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt selected Nimitz to command the Pacific Fleet on the recommendation of Navy Secretary Frank Knox. It was one of the most consequential personnel decisions of the war. Nimitz possessed what King lacked: exceptional skill at managing talented people with incompatible personalities.

Within six months, Nimitz presided over Midway. More importantly, he created an environment where commanders could recover from mistakes—crucial in a war where decisions were made with incomplete intelligence thousands of miles from Washington.

Two of Nimitz's most important subordinates illustrate this.

Admirals Halsey and Spruance.

The Commanders

William Halsey Jr. was the aggressive fighter. "Bull" Halsey became enormously popular with sailors and the public—the commander you wanted when audacity mattered. But his aggressiveness sometimes outran his judgment. His decisions during Leyte Gulf remain controversial, particularly chasing the Japanese carrier force north while leaving Leyte's approaches exposed.

His counterpart was Raymond A. Spruance.

Spruance was cerebral, quiet, and methodical. He commanded the carrier force at Midway despite not being an aviator, making extraordinarily disciplined decisions under pressure. Later he led the Fifth Fleet during major Central Pacific operations, including the Marianas.

One of the Navy's cleverest organizational arrangements was that Halsey's Third Fleet and Spruance's Fifth Fleet were essentially the same fleet.

When Halsey commanded, it was Third Fleet; when Spruance took over, it became Fifth Fleet. Their staffs rotated, allowing one team to plan while the other executed. The system exploited their different strengths: Halsey supplied aggression and morale; Spruance supplied analytical precision.

Richmond K. Turner, less famous than Nimitz or Halsey, was indispensable—one of America's foremost amphibious-warfare commanders, perfecting the extraordinarily complex business of moving tens of thousands of troops, landing craft, naval gunfire, and aircraft onto hostile islands on precise timetables.

Thomas C. Kinkaid's Seventh Fleet operated closely with Douglas MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, requiring considerable diplomatic skill given the tensions between MacArthur's headquarters and the Navy.

The Synthesis

The remarkable thing about Roosevelt's senior naval leadership, then, is how complementary it became:

• Roosevelt chose people and arbitrated strategy.
• Leahy coordinated military leadership around the president.
• King drove naval strategy and demanded resources.
• Nimitz managed the Pacific war and its commanders.
• Spruance provided calculated operational judgment.
• Halsey supplied aggressive offensive leadership.
• Turner mastered amphibious warfare.
• Kinkaid made naval power work inside MacArthur's command structure.

They weren't a harmonious family. King could be spectacularly abrasive; MacArthur and the Navy had serious strategic disagreements; senior commanders occasionally thought counterparts were making dreadful decisions.

But Roosevelt didn't need harmony. He needed competence.

Which brings us back to that FDR quote. He wasn't claiming to be the smartest man in the room. One of his genuine talents was arranging matters so that extremely smart—and very different—people were in the room with him.

Logistics Then and Now

Then there is the question of Naval logistics – the most important of which is feeding sailors. Wars are not fought on empty stomachs. That was true in 1942 and it’s true in 2026.  

Logistical failure is what is impacting ships in the Strait of Hormuz today.

What passes for a meal on the USS Abraham Lincoln

The situation on the USS Abraham Lincoln is the most visible example—a massive aircraft carrier with 5,000 crew. But this is theater-wide, not a carrier problem.

Iranian attacks damaged U.S. Gulf logistics nodes, most importantly Navy facilities in Bahrain. Bahrain had been the regional hub for food, spare parts, personnel, mail, and supplies. The Navy has shifted much support to Diego Garcia—roughly 2,200 miles from the Gulf of Oman.

This creates cascading problems. A warship doesn't simply "get supplies from America." Fuel, ammunition, food, parts, and consumables move through ports, warehouses, airfields, and replenishment ships. If nearby hubs are damaged, supply ships must travel farther to load and return. That means fewer replenishment cycles, longer delays, more fuel consumed moving supplies, and greater strain on finite logistics ships. Damage to other Gulf facilities compounds this.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains dangerous; commercial traffic has fallen sharply—hence high gas prices at home. Moving matériel through what should be one of the world's busiest maritime corridors grows harder.

So the problem can be summarized:

The U.S. still has enormously capable warships in the region, but Iran has attacked the infrastructure sustaining them. The farther the Navy must reach for supplies, the fewer it can deliver. The Lincoln's shortages are one symptom of a larger problem affecting destroyers, support ships, and other forces throughout the theater.

Of course, none of this would be an issue had not Trump decided to attack Iran, which has neither resolved the nuclear issue nor brought about more reasonable leadership in that country.  

WWII Logistics: The Ice Cream Barge

Combat power isn't merely ships and aircraft—it's the ability to keep feeding, fueling, arming, repairing, and crewing them indefinitely. Iran has attacked precisely that connective tissue.

Roosevelt's Navy understood logistics included morale. In the Pacific, sailors spent weeks in oppressive heat, thousands of miles from home, doing exhausting, dangerous work. Something as mundane as cold ice cream carried disproportionate psychological value.

The Navy installed ice-cream-making equipment aboard larger ships. In 1945 it commissioned a refrigerated concrete barge—popularly the "ice cream barge"—capable of producing substantial quantities for distribution to smaller ships and shore installations.

A correction to the mythology: accounts sometimes suggest an armada of dedicated ice-cream ships. The famous vessel was essentially a refrigerated storage/production barge, part of a much larger mobile logistics system. But yes, the United States devoted shipping capacity, machinery, refrigeration, and scarce ingredients to getting ice cream to Pacific sailors. This tidbit of information is one of many reasons why I’m infuriated by armchair warriors on social media complaining that today’s military is going "soft."

The Americans gradually created what amounted to a movable industrial civilization at sea. Fleet oilers brought fuel. Ammunition ships brought shells and bombs. Repair ships and floating dry docks performed substantial repairs without sending vessels back to Pearl Harbor or the mainland. Hospital ships provided medical care. Refrigerated ships brought fresh food. Tenders supported submarines and destroyers. Replacement aircraft, engines, crews, and spare parts flowed westward continuously.

By 1944–45, the Fast Carrier Task Force could remain at sea extraordinarily long periods because logistics vessels came to it, rather than forcing the combat fleet to return to port.

This was an enormous asymmetry between the United States and Japan. Japan built superb ships and aircraft, produced extraordinarily capable sailors and aviators. What it increasingly could not do was maintain the logistical machine required for sustained operations thousands of miles from home.

The United States could.

And it could do it on an almost absurd scale: Here are your bombs. Here are your 16-inch shells. Here's several million gallons of fuel. Here are replacement aircraft and engines. Here's mail from home.

Oh—and we brought ice cream.

That's not frivolous logistics. That's mastery of logistics.

The Right Person

But on a higher level, it goes back to FDR’s ability to put the right person in the right job.  It wasn’t limited to his beloved Navy. 

Consider the first White House conference that a little-known Colonel named George Marshall attended in November, 1938. 

Roosevelt was advocating an enormous aircraft-production program. The other senior officials were generally agreeable. Roosevelt eventually turned to the relatively junior Marshall and asked, “Don’t you think so, George?”

Marshall replied: “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t agree with you at all” and provided a cogent explanation as to why FDR’s idea was not practical.

The room went cold. Marshall later recalled that other participants essentially said goodbye afterward, assuming he had wrecked his Washington career. He hadn't.

A few months later, Roosevelt selected Marshall as Army Chief of Staff, passing over dozens of more senior officers. When Roosevelt told him, Marshall warned: "I have the habit of saying exactly what I think, and that can be unpleasing. Is that all right?"

Roosevelt said yes. Marshall pressed him—essentially saying, You say that now, but I really am going to tell you things you don't want to hear. Roosevelt replied, “I know.”

That's a revealing bit of both sides of leadership. Marshall understood his responsibility wasn't telling the commander in chief what he wanted to hear. Roosevelt understood that an adviser who occasionally irritated him was considerably more valuable than one who reliably agreed.

As for Roosevelt's aircraft production idea: FDR was correct, but premature. After Pearl Harbor, he revived it in his 1942 State of the Union address, calling for quotas so high most thought them unreachable. (After a rough start, the goals were exceeded.) Air power, which Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt had dismissed during World War I, was now crucial to victory—Roosevelt understood that aviation advances had radically changed the situation.

Not that FDR always picked right. His 1938 appointment of Joseph P. Kennedy as Ambassador to the United Kingdom stands as one of history's worst presidential appointments—until Donald Trump took office and appointed the likes of "Whiskey" Pete. 

Trump’s gauche vandalism of the Peoples’ House

Donald Trump’s decision to demolish the East Wing of the White House, along with his, ahem, questionable decorating choices within the Oval Office, have left Americans with working eyesight and good taste astonished and appalled.  Trump’s shrinking cadre of defenders have replied by bringing up the Truman reconstruction, secret tunnels, and even President Obama’s rather benign partial conversion of the tennis court (far removed from the actual buildings) into a basketball court.  Much of what they share is, at best, incomplete.  Some of it is flat-out misinformation.

Let’s review the history of the White House.  The President’s House, as it was then called, was constructed between 1792-1800. The builders were a combination of enslaved African-Americans (who quarried the stone used for the construction) and employed whites.  The structure was built to the finest standards for American private residences at the time.  But it was deliberately designed to be modest compared to the residences that heads of state occupied in nations like Britain and France. This modesty pertained not just to size, but to design. The décor was simply dignified rather than ostentatious – a reminder that the new nation was neither a monarchy nor particularly wealthy. 

By the time the building was inhabited, George Washington was already dead.  John Adams was the first President to inhabit the home, and only for the final year of his presidency. 

Even before the White House was constructed, several exterior structures were built, including outhouses for the construction crew and, eventually, the first family and others who spent time at the White House.  Under Thomas Jefferson, colonnades were built on the east and west ends of the mansion. 

British troops invaded the Capital in 1814 and burned the White House.  First Lady Dolly Madison, aware the troops were on the way, famously removed  many of the home’s possessions – including artwork and furniture.  Then she laid out a feast for the approaching troops giving the first family and staff time to escape.  The British enjoyed the feast, then set the mansion ablaze.  The building’s internal structure was essentially destroyed with only the four exterior walls left standing.  As with the original construction, cost was a factor when the house was rebuilt.  The original wooden beams and joints were visually inspected for fire damage and approved or rejected for reuse.  But the engineers of the time lacked both the knowledge and the technology to make an accurate determination as to which pieces were fit for reuse.  They were unaware that even without burning, the extreme heat caused by the fire could compromise the material’s integrity.

The British did it...

The first known photo of the White House from 1846

Over the next century, the building and grounds were renovated numerous times.  Several greenhouses were built at various locations.  In the mansion itself, holes were drilled into the wooden supports to create conduits for indoor plumbing, gas lines, and electric wiring.  These invasions caused further stress on the structure.  

The north portico of the White House during the Lincoln Administration.

Other structures were intended as permanent additions – and these were submitted for design review and were rightly paid for with public funds (the use of private funds would have raised accusations of robber barons trying to curry favor with the increasingly powerful Federal government). 

Theodore Roosevelt’s creation of the West Wing was the most significant addition to the complex up to that time – though it should be pointed out that this change didn’t affect the original building itself.  Neither did Roosevelt’s creation of the first part of the East Wing.

It was Calvin Coolidge’s project to add a third floor to the White House in 1927 which sealed the building’s fate.  For the next two decades, groans and cracking sounds could be heard from within the walls, leading the gullible to believe that the building was inhabited by ghosts.

The West Wing was destroyed by a fire in 1929 and hastily rebuilt.  In 1934, Franklin Roosevelt had the West Wing rebuilt to accommodate the growing administration.  He also collaborated with famed architect Eric Gugler, creating a new Oval Office which has been used by Presidents ever since.  Many of the details remained visible nine decades later: built-in bookcases; hidden doors as well as doors topped with robust pediments; the Presidential seal on the ceiling; the subtle, recessed lighting.  That is, until 2025, when Donald Trump began festooning the room with gaudy accoutrements.

FDR in the new Oval Office in 1934.

In 1942, Roosevelt – with Congressional approval – expanded the East Wing.  Part of this was to conceal wartime tunnels which connected the White House to a bunker underneath the treasury department.  It’s worth remembering that from the time the US entered World War II until the day FDR died, a gas mask was strapped to his wheelchair. 

As ambitious as their expansions were, both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt knew the main building was having troubles.  But they felt little could be done due to the constraints of the Great Depression and World War II. 

Shortly after taking office, Harry Truman noticed significant issues.  As recounted in Robert Klara’s superb “The Hidden White House,” whenever White House butler Alonzo Fields, who stood over six feet tall and was strongly built, walked in the Yellow Oval Room on the second floor, the floorboards would creak and the chandelier in the Blue Oval Room below would sway as its crystals made a tinkling sound.  The floor in another room was beginning to tilt. Truman’s bathtub was starting to sink into the floor.  When a leg of Margaret Truman’s piano crashed through the ceiling of the floor below, Truman knew action had to be taken.  A team of engineers was hired.  They looked behind the walls, under the floors, above the ceilings and delivered their verdict: the building was standing only from “force of habit” and was in danger of imminent collapse. The Truman family moved to Blair House across the street for the duration.

A broken beam under Margaret Truman's bedroom.

Reconstruction

Congress was notified about the situation, and although some Republicans tried to use the issue for partisan gain, most were supportive of Truman’s desire to save the building.  Congress proposed what was the least expensive solution: tear the building down and replace the whole thing.  Truman, who despite his plain-spoken and occasionally profane manner was well-read in history, would have none of that.  He insisted that, no matter the cost, the look of the original White House be preserved.  To do that, engineers found a way to shore up the four outer walls while removing everything within those walls.  Equipment for demolition, excavation, and reconstruction was disassembled, the parts brought in through doors and windows, then reconstructed once inside.  Furniture was removed and stored off-site, the original interior was dismantled with parts labeled and numbered, and what was left was demolished.  Two sub-basements were excavated (partly for support services, partly for security in case of nuclear attack), a new steel frame was built, and the rooms were rebuilt largely based on the original plans.  Through the entire three-year project, Coolidge’s third floor was held in place by steel supports.  The Truman Reconstruction was the first significant building restoration in the history of the United States.  It was far from perfect, mostly because Truman ran out of money before the project was complete.  A decade after Truman returned to the rebuilt White House in 1952, First Lady Jackie Kennedy remarked that much of the décor looked like something out of a Sheraton hotel.  It was she who brought timeless elegance to the building.

Other Presidents have made smaller changes to the White House – mostly a matter of décor.  Presidential families are free to decorate the residence (the top two floors of the building) as they see fit.  Under George W. Bush, Congress approved a major modernization of the White House, renovating electrical work and HVAC, and installing security measures – including a system to detect airborne biohazards – which was carried out during the Obama administration.  Obama also added a basketball hoop to the tennis court and painted the appropriate lines – which is recently causing consternation even though Obama paid for the changes himself and has been out of office for over eight years.  Gee, I wonder why people get worked up over such a minor change, not to mention the tan suit Obama once wore…

This past week, Donald Trump had the entire East Wing torn down to create a vast, vulgar, gilded ballroom.  The welcome center, colonnade, the famed movie theatre, and First Lady’s offices are all gone.  Neither Congress nor the National Park System were consulted – technically a violation of law since the White House complex is part of the park system and federal property.  Who is paying for this: corporations wanting to curry favor with the Trump administration.  Teddy Roosevelt’s nightmare has come to life. 

What about those doing the actual demolition and construction?  Have they been properly vetted by the FBI and/or Secret Service?  Who knows what could be hidden within the walls of the upcoming grandiose monstrosity.

I can’t think of any past president, of any party, who would approve of what has happened to the White House over the last few weeks.  But Republicans nationwide are largely looking the other way.  I’m old enough to remember than despite their deep political disagreements during the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill would regularly get together to have drinks, swap stories, and share a few laughs.  During one such conversation, the Republican President and the Democratic Speaker commiserated on the loss of historical architecture and its replacement with “ugly” modern buildings.  That conversation led to the Rehabilitation Tax Credit, which has made possible the renovation and reuse of many older buildings.

Unlike Reagan, Donald Trump has no respect for historical architecture.  He famously destroyed several friezes from the 1929 Bonwit Teller building to build Trump Tower after he said he would preserve them and donate them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He destroyed Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden for a tacky concrete patio. Now he’s destroyed the East Wing after he said he wouldn’t. This level of contempt for simple beauty is unique in our nation’s history. 

Every previous change to the White House was to enhance or add to the existing sight, respecting the original while increasing functionality to account for modernization and the growth of both our nation and the Presidency.  There was nothing “wrong” with the East Wing to justify its demolition. 

I believe Trump’s more vociferous supporters will stand by anything he does.  He could bomb the White House and they would come up with an excuse to rationalize his every action.  Then there are those who simply lack the respect for our nation’s history and the simple good taste to comprehend that Trump’s gaudy, gilded, bloated addition is the definition of tacky.

90 years of Social Security

Every once in a while, I like to peruse Redfin and other realty sites and look over house listings.  As they say, the three most important things in real estate are location, location, and location.  It continues to amaze me how a modest mid-century modern three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Palm Springs will sell for over a million dollars.  Despite the increase in local property values over the past five years, one still gets far more for one’s money in northeast Ohio. 

Lately I’ve been looking at homes in Shaker Heights.  There is a section in southeast Shaker with some very attractive two-family homes – although they appear to be single family homes to the casual observer.  Many of these homes have a larger upstairs unit on the second and third floors, and a smaller unit on the first floor.  Closer to the center of Shaker, there are numerous homes with the following layout: social spaces (living and/or family room, sunroom, dining room, and kitchen) on the first floor; bedrooms with two full bathrooms on the second floor; and small bedrooms with a small bathroom (often with a tub but no shower) on the top floor.  I find this layout interesting as the top floor would be ideal for flex space: workout room, office, or guest bedroom.  Nearly all of these houses were built prior to 1930.

What’s the story behind these houses?  Simply, the top floor was meant for servants – usually one cook and one housekeeper.  Before the Great Depression there was a surplus of people who worked as servants.  Most were single younger females or widows and, in the era before the minimum wage was established, they worked for a pittance with no benefits aside from room and board.  Often the servants’ quarters were accessible only through a separate staircase.

My maternal grandfather came of age in a family which had servants under this setup.  He died long before I was born, but I remember visiting his sister’s home in Columbus.  Even as a small child I was impressed with the place, especially the door from the kitchen to the dining room that opened both ways and, yes, they had a servant.

With the growth of the middle-class that accompanied the post-war economy, the live-in servant paradigm came to an end.  In particular, older people were not obligated to work until they died thanks to the Social Security Act, which was signed into law 90 years ago today.

Politicians of both parties, but especially Republicans, have been tampering with Social Security for the last few decades, to the programs detriment.  Early in his second term, President George W. Bush tried to move the Social Security Trust fund toward private investments, which was met with widespread disapproval and began to fracture his political coalition – a fracturing which accelerated after his administration’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina.  Others within the right-wing have tried to mislead people into believing that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

This need only be stated for those who don’t understand how Ponzi schemes work: Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme; it is an insurance program which has worked extraordinarily well for 90 years.  As with any insurance program, not every payer of premium receives a benefit, e.g., some die before they reach retirement age.

Today, Social Security is in profound danger of collapsing.  A few simple fixes would make the Social Security trust fund solvent into the 22^nd Century: First, raise the cap on taxable income.  Second, gradually, over time, raise the retirement age by six-month increments every five years commencing in ten years.

Democrats seem unwilling to fight for this multi-generational contract which has saved literally tens of millions of senior citizens from poverty ridden old age.  MAGA Republicans seem desirous of ending the program – even though it is revenue neutral. Part of this worsened by their clamping down of immigration, since migrant workers pay into Social Security but will not draw benefits unless they become citizens. As Harry Truman once said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."  Truman, an economic populist who tried to institute national health insurance, would be appalled not only by Republican actions, but by the lack of Democratic fire over the issue.  Even Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, who believed in Keynesian economics, would be shocked at the direction their party has taken.

The economic goal of today’s MAGA Republicans is not merely to destroy the social safety net which has helped prevent another Great Depression, they want to take us back to the age of the Robber Barrons and possibly instill a neo-feudalistic economic system.

Unless the average citizen fights back, that’s exactly what they are going to do.   

Independence Day and the prison of Provincialism

As I’ve stated in previous posts, Independence Day means more to me than the founding of the United States.  It represents the adoption of a philosophy which ought to be reexamined from time to time.  While many Americans will be grilling hot dogs and burgers, waving flags, and setting off amateur fireworks this weekend, how many have actually read the full text of Declaration of Independence?  I have, and it makes for good reading – especially today, when so many of our rights are under attack. 

Take for example, this complaint aimed at the British Monarch, George III:  

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.” 

Is what George III did all that different from what has been happening across the country since 2017, where polling sites are being shuttered in minority areas and mail-in ballot options are being restricted – thus suppressing voter turnout in those areas?

Or this concern:

“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”

In other words, George III was placing restrictions on immigration.  Sound familiar?

There are other concerns voiced in the Declaration which presage today’s concerns, from restricting trade to quartering armed troops in cities.  I’m tempted to opine that the dude would have loved Trump and his minions.  George III, a weak monarch who was doing as his ministers advised, did these things because he was led to believe that they would intimidate the disobedient colonists from acting out further.  George and his ministers miscalculated. 

While few Americans will have read the passages above – much less understood how they relate to today’s political struggles, many will spout the most ridiculous nonsense without a trace of irony.  And many who disagree with them will remain silent for fear of causing offense.  Part of this is because the notion of objective truth has been under attack, and I feel it is not exaggeration to state that truth is in danger of dying altogether – killed by bias, driven by social media.

Today, social media locks people into their own biases and prejudices.  This is by design, because those who have monetized social media have learned that engagement is driven by calculated outrage and confirmation bias.  What is confirmation bias?  An example: someone uses a search engine to research a topic – for example, conspiracy theories about vaccines, the moon landing, or 9/11 – and finds an article or a YouTube video which agrees with their viewpoint.  In other words, they locate something that confirms their bias.  They click on the link, which becomes part of their history – which the algorithm perpetuates by sending similar links their way.  In essence, without even knowing it, users close their own minds. 

As demonstrated in Yuval Noah Harari’s erudite book Nexus : A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, the tendency toward confirmation bias in social media, where disinformation is equated with truth, can have catastrophic results.  Both Facebook and YouTube played a significant role in worsening the Rohingya Genocide.  It’s not as if those who programmed these social media tools deliberately set out to kill human beings, but the algorithm programed into them prioritized engagement over human wellbeing.  For “engagement” means money.

Despite waxing and waning content moderation, the trend continues to this day – as demonstrated by the increasing toxicity of most prominent social media platforms. Confirmation bias is taken to its furthest degree in Donald Trump’s ironically named app, Truth Social – which, despite its all-American chest thumping, was financed by Chinese and Russian interests.

This phenomenon is not unique to the United States.  It has been observed in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Argentina as well – where manipulation of social media enabled unqualified political candidates who would not been elected dog catcher 20 years ago to obtain leadership positions. 

Confirmation bias dates back to long before social media.  It was most prevalent in what has been known as the ghetto.  Understand that when I use the term “ghetto,” I don’t mean in the modern American sense – which generally refers to a lower income African-American neighborhood – but in the classic sense, which refers to an insular, ethnically/religiously homogenous area.  For centuries, these places were necessary for simple survival.  That is no longer the case except in the most backward parts of the world.

For a brief period, I lived in a “gayborhood” in suburban Boston, Massachusetts.  As a young gay man establishing his identity, it had its advantages.  But eventually the conversations became repetitive and tiresome: which guy from the gym might be gay, who had the best body or attribute, and Madonna – lots of Madonna.  It all became a bit stultifying, like living in an echo chamber.  I had forgotten my annoyance with the paradigm until my husband Daniel and I spent some time in one such neighborhood a few years ago: Wilton Manors.  I found it depressing.  From what I’ve heard from others who lived in similarly homogenous places, my experience was far from unique.  Daniel and I now live in a very diverse suburb to the east of Cleveland now, and while I was happy to see three rainbow flags on my block this past month, I’m equally glad to live in a mixed community with people of all colors, creeds, orientations, and identities.  Variety is the spice of life.

Whether they are referred to as ghettos, shtetls, Ummahs, gayborhoods, or whatever, closed communities lead to closed minds. Social media has similarly placed users into “thought ghettos,” where Provincialism reigns.  Provincialism, sometimes also called “Parochialism,” is the enemy of freedom of thought – a liberty which is in danger.  It’s worth noting that in George Orwell’s 1984, people are prosecuted for “thought crimes.”  With many exploring their hidden desires and dispositions on apps and the frequent breaches of personal data, the notion of “thought police” is not as fanciful as it seemed in 1948.

I certainly understand having to navigate diverse viewpoints and complex conversations.  I am a registered Democrat who comes from what was once a solidly Republican family.  Both my parents and all of my grandparents were Republicans, and my great grandfather was a Republican member of the Michigan state legislature.  I am the only LGBTQ person in my immediate family.  My closest living gay biological relative is a second cousin who I haven’t seen in 35 years.  Recently I met up with my father’s sole remaining sibling, who is 89 years old.  During a wide ranging conversation, he related to me that he had been a Republican all his life but has never voted for Donald Trump.  He either voted Democrat those years or stayed at home.  While he still believes in the conservative philosophy as espoused by President Eisenhower, he laments the lack of bipartisanship.  I found my uncle’s perspective intriguing as it echoed something my father told me in March of 2016, just a few weeks before his death.  Additionally, my maternal grandmother began to align with the Democrats in her old age – she was appalled at the GOP’s cutting of social services and the hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich and other adulterous Republicans persecuting Bill Clinton over his sexual peccadillos.  While I have long supported the liberal economic philosophy as espoused by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman (who were so far to the left economically that their policies would be aligned with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez today), along with social policies that were not conceivable during the New Deal (like marriage equality), I also regret the lack of across the aisle communication.  But let’s not kid ourselves: It’s not Democrats who have steamrolled their agenda by firing senior ranked military personnel, firing Judge Advocates General, and crippling government agencies they don’t like.    

The America that used to exist, where leaders of diverse viewpoints talked to each other, made deals, even engaged in a little horse-trading, needs to reemerge.  Compromise may be a dirty word to some.  But it is what allowed us to beat fascism abroad, land a man on the moon (yes, that really happened), and win the Cold War.  The loss of the ability to compromise has led to the credible threat of fascism at home, crippled our scientific and space programs, and helped a resurgent, imperialist Russia gain a foothold in Eastern Europe.

In the end, it may be that the Revolutionary War was for naught – a 250-year experiment that ultimately failed. 

So, on this 4^th of July, let us declare our independence from the prisons of closed-mindedness and from provincialism in all its forms.

And read the Declaration of Independence.

On Russian Imperialism

United States Presidents from Harry Truman to the first George Bush built alliances and maintained a policy of American military preparedness as a bulwark against Soviet communist expansion.  The policy of containment, never seriously questioned by mainstream politicians in either party, was a 45-year-long hallmark of bipartisan cooperation even as the two major parties squabbled over everything from Civil Rights to levels of taxation.  As today, there were fringe politicians like Henry Wallace, who had been Franklin Roosevelt’s 2^nd Vice President.  Wallace, the Progressive Party nominee in 1948, opposed both the Marshall Plan and the Truman doctrine, instead advocating for appeasement of the Soviets in Eastern Europe.

 

American leaders on both sides of the aisle and even overseas like Winston Churchill framed the argument that Communism was a menace that needed to be stopped at all costs.  In May of 1945, the British had gone so far as to draft a plan for forcibly expelling the Soviets from Eastern Europe.

Except Communism was never at the heart of Soviet expansionism.  The threat posed by Russia precedes the Cold War, the creation of the Soviet Union, the 1917 Russian Revolution, and even the philosophy of Communism itself as espoused by Karl Marx.  It harkens back to the 16^th Century when Russia, declaring itself the Third Rome, began a policy of barbarous military expansion.  The empire expanded as far as Manchuria to the east, Germany to the west, and they even controlled Alaska before it was sold to the United States in 1867.  Ukraine and Poland suffered in particular, being invaded multiple times.

 

The only significant difference between the Soviet era and earlier was the Soviet’s official policy on religion – communists pushed the doctrine of Atheism.  But prior to the Soviet Union, and today, the Russian Government has both co-opted and been emboldened by the Russian Orthodox Church. 

 

Do not mistake the above delineation between Russian aggression and Communism as an endorsement of Communism on my part.  Communism is a failed economic policy – evidenced by the fact that few officially Communist nations actually practice it.  (Neither is pure, unregulated Capitalism a workable policy – but that’s a discussion for another time.)

 

It is standard among political scientists to regard Communism and Fascism as opposites.  They are not opposites.  The are two sides of the same tyrannical coin.  The opposite of Communism is Liberal Democracy.  The opposite of Fascism is also Liberal Democracy.  In other words, no matter the form Tyranny takes, its opposite is Freedom.  But there is a line between freedom and anarchy - and when that line is crossed, as it was in Germany in the 1920s and Russia in the 1990s, Tyranny steps in to restore "order."  Both Fascist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, and Communists like Stalin, routinely had political opponents and even ordinary critics detained and executed.  Putin, currently presiding over a nation which is more fascistic than communistic, has done the same – including poisoning overseas critics with radioactive material, crashing the plane of a General who dared oppose him, and throwing those seen as less than fully loyal from windows.  The only substantial difference between Putin and Hitler is that, like Stalin and Mussolini, he has been able to maintain his grip on power for a longer period of time.

 

One could engage in whataboutism by whining “What about the British Empire?”  But one should take heed that by the time Britain had acquired nuclear weapons technology, the Empire was crumbling.  It has since been transformed into a Commonwealth from which any member is free to disassociate itself at any time.  It can also be argued that there is an American Empire as well, which included the acquisition by force of much of the western United States and then the territories won during the 1898 Spanish-American war.  The difference is that, even during that conflict, Americans showed enough restraint that they declined the opportunity to take over the island of Cuba (which in retrospect can be argued was a mistake).  Further, when the Philippines wanted independence from the United States, it was granted to them – even after American service members died liberating the archipelago during World War II.  Finally, it has never been creditably proven that any American President, even Richard Nixon or Donald Trump, had political opponents and critics “offed.”  Trump's recent suggestions that he may annex Canada and Greenland have been met with derision both internationally and, with the exception of his most ardent idolators, domestically.

 

The real culprit during the Cold War was, and is today, Russian Imperialism.  It is Russia’s in general and Vladimir Putin’s in particular thirst for conquest and material resources that is driving his push into Ukraine.  In 1991, as the Soviet union dissolved, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal (then the world’s 3^rd largest) and to refrain from joining NATO in exchange for a pledge from Russia to never invade Ukraine.  As they have multiple times, Russia broke that treaty in 2014.  As much as I respect Barack Obama personally, his administration’s response to the 2014 invasion of the Crimea was appallingly weak.  Indeed, it was John McCain who first sounded the alarms about the danger Putin represented in 2000 when he was a Presidential candidate.  George W. Bush was seen smirking contemptuously during that discussion.  Later, President Bush claimed to have looked into Putin’s eyes and seen the soul of a fellow Christian, apparently forgetting that Hitler also called himself a Christian and claimed he was carrying out Christ’s mission by “cleansing” Germany of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and political opponents.  Following Bush, neither Obama nor Trump did anything substantial to stem Putin’s acquisition of personal power or Russian military aggression.  Only Joe Biden showed the fortitude to stand up to Putin when he invaded Ukraine.  For that he was rewarded by a Russian driven propaganda campaign that included the cooperation of those on the far left and right, including Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, and Donald Trump himself – one of the oddest amalgamations in American history.  

 

Henry Wallace’s philosophical equivalent today would be Jill Stein, except that Stein has never held a significant government position (in addition to being Vice President, Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Commerce under FDR).

 

By throwing Ukraine under the bus and sabotaging relations with American allies in Europe and North America, Donald Trump, who has been creditably accused of being recruited by the KGB in 1987, has committed the grossest act of appeasement in American history.  Whether or not Trump will face consequences in his lifetime, history will remember how his actions condemned millions of people to the enslavement of Tyranny.