John Bolton's The Room Where It Happened is due to be released tomorrow, but some Bad Hombres have put it up on Twitter this morning. Poor John isn't going to have his full payday if people download it for free. Is that any way to treat a guy who undermined the impeachment of the worst president in our 250 year(-ish) history? Do not search Twitter for this book title or you might inadvertently get a copy of it.
A few minutes before this I had done a quick run through my social media feeds, and had seen that several people had posted links to pdf files of John Bolton's book. Which was surprising, since the book had not yet been released. I usually frown on pirated anythings, but in this case, I felt that John Bolton had really earned the right to be pirated (as implied in the post ↑), so I clicked on the link. No dice...it'd been taken down. So I made my way down my Twitter feed, clicking on different links. Nope. Nope. Nope. Yep. What? Well. That was a surprise. Of course I wasn't expecting that to happen, and immediately deleted the download. 😉
But I know that some of my friends are less scrupulous than I am, and figuring that they had a limited amount of time to take advantage of this thing, I did my Facebook post.
About thirteen hours later, I got this message:
Hey Brother K. I hope you guys are doing well. I need a favor. You can say no if you don't have the time or desire. As you probably know I am VERY conservative. All my family is conservative. All my friends that I hang around in the nonfacebook world are conservative. So I never really get to talk to anybody with the opposing opinion. I saw your post about John Bolton's book. You said that that Trump was the worst president. I was wondering if you could tell me why. Many of my fb "friends" from Manual have not been what I would consider friendly when the topic of politics comes up on fb. If i asked them to explain why, they have pretty much just told me I was stupid. Well I'm not stupid and I have gotten my feelings hurt several times because instead of an answer, people get personal. I have been unfriended a couple of times for expressing my opinion, which I really don't do very often. Sometimes I just gotta say something.
So the favor I need is someone to be my sounding board. You have always been someone I considered thoughtful.
If you don't mind if I am confused about something from the "left" can I send you a message here? I don't want to post it on fb cause it just starts a big conversation that end up getting nasty and goes nowhere. I promise not to be a pest. I will be nice!! I just want to know how I can listen to something and hear it totally different than someone else. I try to listen to other channels beside FOX. I try to research some. So its up to you. You won't hurt my feelings. I have noticed that you don't normally get in the middle of all this stuff, but with that post I know you must have a strong opinion.
So I'm done. I hope you made it to the end of this.🤔🙂 Take care!
This was from a person I had once known fairly well...had seen pretty much every weekday for a minute or two, had chatted with, and after that had been Facebook Friends with for over a decade. We hadn't had any direct communications like this for some time, but she had occasionally commented on my Facebook posts or liked them, and I had occasionally commented back. So not close friends, for sure, but at the least we were good acquaintances who thought well of each other.
I was really impressed by what she had written, and I definitely wanted to respond back immediately. But I knew that it would take me some time to compose a thoughtful answer, so I just sent this quick note:
FBF, I really appreciate what you've said here and my love for you has only grown because if it. Thank you. I've often had the same impulse...wanting to talk to someone from "the other side," but finding it gets sticky or acrimonious very quickly. Right now my kids have the computers occupied, and I'm typing this with 1 finger on my small Kindle keyboard. I'm going to write back as soon as I get them squared away, but I wanted to send you a message right away just so you know that I'm anxious to talk to you. I have BIG respect for you.
A couple of hours later I had some breathing room and had done some thinking, so I sent this response:
Hey, FBF, I was just getting ready to send my response to your question, and I was re-reading your first message on this and had to stop. I wish that I could apologize for the FB friends who have been unkind to you because they disagreed with your political opinions. I think a lot of times people do that because they don't have anything to back up their opinions, so they cover their lack of knowledge by getting mad at anyone who disagrees with them. Since I can't apologize for them (as that's not my place), I can only
promise you that I will never be that way to you.
Okay, here's what I have.
Hi again, FBF. I saw an opening when Jacqueline got up to watch Jeopardy!, so I went for it. I usually don’t post political stuff on Facebook because there are plenty of other places for that kind of stuff, so it was actually more of a slip-up that I put that post up this morning. I was kind of excited that I’d found John Bolton’s book for free, because I wanted to read it but didn’t want to enrich him by buying it, and when I put in a request via the library I was 33rd in line, so that was going to take some time.
But if you’re up for an idea exchange, maybe it was a good slip up. I would like to hear what you like about Trump, for sure.
For me, it’s partially about the way he expresses himself…saying crude things about women, for instance, but there’s a lot more to it than that. So, for instance, his administration has rolled back 66 environmental protection rules to date (and has another 34 in progress). I’ve heard him talk about this subject, and he usually says something like “They’re rules that don’t make any sense and aren’t necessary.” There may be some truth to that, too…but I know that some of those roll backs mean that our air and water are now more polluted than previously allowed, more toxic substances are permitted, and there are fewer protections for animals. I’m sure that the goal here is to facilitate the growth of business and industry, but I’d argue that there are ways to do that without the damage. Alongside this, I also don’t think the Trump Administration (TA from now on!) has made an effort to move us forward on renewable energy possibilities. There are literally millions of jobs which could be created there…and this has been done in many European countries…but it seems like the TA has instead focused on things like “bringing back coal”…which doesn’t add very many jobs at all. (Only 2,000 jobs were created in the coal industry from 2017 to 2018.) I know that’s important to those coal miners…and by the way, I hate Hillary Clinton for saying, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs”…but I think those men and women would have been better served if they’d been trained to install solar panels. I don’t think there’s any way that coal is going to be the energy of the future. It’s expensive, inefficient, dangerous to work with, and harmful to the environment.
I’m also very concerned about the way that Trump has refused to allow oversight on so many of his activities. Refusing to honor House subpoenas (or to allow anyone in the TA to testify when they were called upon to do so), for instance. Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch of government. Blocking their investigations (which they are constitutionally required to perform) is exactly the thing which got Richard Nixon in trouble. The only difference is that Nixon didn’t have a Senate which was willing to protect him. I’m also concerned about the lack of oversight the TA has allowed in the Coronavirus stimulus money. A lot of small businesses haven’t gotten any money because large corporations have claimed money they didn’t deserve to get. I also have to wonder why the TA is so anxious to block oversight. It’s hard not to think that they’re hiding something when they fire the inspector generals and refuse to comply with legal requests for information.
There’s lots of other stuff…the treatment of children at the border, the asking foreign powers for help to win the election, the undermining of NATO, etc., but the biggest thing now is the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. That really starts several years ago, in that the TA cut out many of the programs (and over $1 billion of funding) to the agencies which were established so that we would be ready for a pandemic. Then in January of this year US intelligence people were giving briefings to the TA warning that there was a new virus in China which we had to prepare for…but the TA didn’t act. Two things really bring this home to me: first, the fact that South Korea, which has a population of almost 52 million, never had to shut their economy down like we did…and had a total of only 280 deaths from the virus. Admittedly that’s a population that is only about 1/7th of ours, but still…280 deaths and no shutdown? They did something that we didn’t do. The other thing is a graph I saw comparing the USA to Europe vis-a-vis the virus. The European Union has over a million more people that the USA, but there’s a huge difference in their numbers on the virus:
To me, the difference between these two graphs is the difference in leadership. In the EU, they acted decisively and drove the virus down. In the USA, we had a slight decrease for a time, but now we’re on the upswing again. I feel that if the TA had taken a strong stand on this right away that (1) we would have had far fewer deaths, (2) we would not have had to close the economy down for over three months, and (3) that the virus would now be under control.
I don’t want to overwhelm you with a message that looks like the first chapter of a long novel, so I’ll stop here for now, but hopefully what I’ve said makes sense. (Not in terms of agreement, just in terms of answering your question; I don’t want to mess with your beliefs!)
Lastly, I have to say that I am often dismayed by what liberals have to say and how they say it. They are often unfair, make mountains out of molehills, and refuse to listen. (So much for open-mindedness!) I have one friend who refuses to watch FOX News, for instance. I tell him that I think Neil Cavuto is one of the fairest minded people on tv news, and he just harrumphs at me. But we're still friends.
Thank you for your response. I appreciate it. I need to read this more carefully before I respond. It may take me some time. Maybe over the course of a few days even. Thanks again. Take care my friend!
You're welcome! Thank you for asking. Stay safe!
You too!!
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Also, as I was reading what FBF had said and thinking through my response, several things were highlighted in my consciousness. (Most of them were things I'd thought before, hence "highlighted.")
MSNBC and CNN are sometimes as full of shit as anything on Fox News. In fact, I've pretty much given up on watching MSNBC. Even my previously beloved Rachel Maddow rubs me the wrong way on a regular basis. I have seen anchors on both stations take a piece of information out of context, or even summarize a situation in an unfair way and twist it to put the worse possible interpretation on it. I don't say that in defense of Trump at all, by the way. I think he is awful, that he should be arrested and put in jail for the rest of this life, all of that. But (1) the news should be presenting the facts, not grinding an ax, and (2) Trump is plenty bad enough on his own; there is no need to polish his turds.
Many of my liberal friends are as closed-minded as the conservatives they rail against. If you're unwilling to hear the other side of an argument, that says more about your intellectual and spiritual dimensions than it does about anything else.
It's never okay to make someone else feel stupid. (Although admittedly it is occasionally necessary.)
Check this space for updates.
BTW, the graph I included in my message to FBF came from The Washington Post, in case you didn't see the tiny symbol at the top of the screen.
UPDATE:
Today...six days post the above...I got a response from FBF.
Hi Brother K! I haven't forgotten you. I want to address everything you said. I want to do some research to make sure I know my facts.
I agree that Trump is not careful with what he says. He can be crude and pompous. I wish he would be more careful. I do feel like that a lot of the things he says is just to get at the reporters. They rarely if ever say anything favorably about him. He has had to defend himself from before the beginning, if that makes sense. The recording on the bus was nasty. Fortunately it was spoken in private, or so he thought. I feel that part of what he says was correct. My opinion of Hollywood is much like his. If you are famous, you can get away with just about anything. That doesn't mean its right. A lot women do throw themselves at celebrity men. He did say that 15 years ago. I like to think that people change. He did apologize. I feel that his counterpart, Biden, is much more disgusting how he has acted toward young girls. You can see how uncomfortable he has make them feel if you have seen the numerous videos. So this is how I feel about that. I will get back to you about more later.
I saw that as a positive sign for several reasons. (1) FBF was giving acknowledgement to the fact that she was not 100% happy with Trump, and thus would not defend him on all counts. (2) She also was seeking information to respond to what I had written. To be honest, that is not what I was expecting. I thought this would be more of a gut-driven dialogue than a let me get my facts straight one.
Also, I actually agree with her on several counts. So that's what I decided to emphasize in my response, which went like this:
I agree with you on just about everything you've said here! I didn't like the bus comments, but we all say stupid things in private...especially men!...and It's not fair to judge anyone on that. And I have definitely seen media people take unfair shots at him.
Looking forward to hearing more from you!
Admittedly I am soft-shoeing it a little bit..but actually not much. In fact, really only with respect to her Joe Biden comments. I would yield this much on Biden: he has acted in ways that seem weird--way too touchy feely and even a little sniffy. But to equate that with Trump's monstrous behavior towards women is just ridiculous.
But saying that is an invitation to cut off the dialogue, so I left it on the plate. I'm really interested in seeing where our conversation goes, so while I'm not going to be dishonest, I'm also not going to just stop and pick a fight...especially not on what is a side issue.
More news as it happens.
As It Happens:
I got this from FBF:
Hi I'm back. Been distracted with all thats been going on.
Had to research IG. My understanding is that he got fired because the TA thought that leaks were coming from his office. Also that the whistleblower that started the whole empeachentwent through him. TA did not trust him.
I saw an interview after the impeachment. I beleive it was an attorney said that subpoenas from the house were not filled out on time or properly. Sometimes they did not even exist. Bolton said in an interview that he was never subpoenaed.
Comparing South Korea and the US. My undestanding is that they have mandatory software on their phones that track people constantly. The government knows if they've had covid or been around anyone with covid. Here, if you have had covid you call the government if you want and tell. You tell them where you've been if you can remember and who you've been around if you can remember. Then the government calls those people, and maybe those people will agree. If they agree they probably will have to quarantine themselves for 14 days. So they won't admit they were near the original person.
Also I read that South Korea was prepared for a pandemic because of MERS. They had suffered through that not very long ago. 2015?
TA offered to send experts to China in January. Stopped travel from China in January. Started buying PPE, and Ventilators from all over the world.
The governors were in charge of their states. If they needed help with supplies they were strongly encouraged to ask. Corona Virus committee wotked around the clock. I watched the press conferences every day. This was my opinion from what I saw and what heard.
I think the biggest problem with the US, and why we have had so many deaths is partially because of many governors not to protect nursing homes. Last I heard 40% of the deaths were patients in nursing homes.
Now our problem comes from our arrogance. People, particularly young people, are spoiled and are self centered. They refuse to wear mask and social distance, just because they do not want to be told what to do. This includes my granddaughter's family. They have been having parties at their house. All kinds of family members and friends. That means I cannot see GRANDSON! Breaks my heart. A and I are in that old age group! My mom is 95. My son, K, has had a kidney transplant. I can't be around GRANDSON, DAUGHTER's daughter, because I can't take the chance of her having carrying that germ to me and me giving it to mom or K. Her dad is just like the rest of these millions of people who don't consider how their actions are affecting anyone else. I don't see how we can go to ballgames. I don't see how school can start. Until it happens to them or a close family, they aren't gonna care. And that's what I think about this damn virus!!
And don't get me started on all this ''peaceful'' protesting. I wonder if our opinion is the same about this mess? God help this country.
Courious if you have seen the videos that I have seen of Joe Biden. Either he is suffering from dementia or someone is really good at editing. I guess you can figure that I watch a lot of FOX news. If you don't watch FOX, do you know this?
Ok. My hand is tired. Doing this on my phone. Sorry I rambled on.
Have a good night my friend. Stay safe.
Sorry I didn't proofread. I hope it makes sense.
I responded right away:
Hey, FBF. What you said did indeed make sense. I'll get back yo you on the bulk of it. As for the violence accompanying the protests, I am totally with you. Violence and property destruction are abhorrent to me, and I think people who engage in that kind of thing should be jailed.
I am so sorry that you can't see GRANDSON. That has got to hurt your heart. My oldest son M and his wife C (who live in ANOTHER STATE) are about to have their first baby (literally any minute now--she's in labour), and I hate it that I can't be there.
More to come!
Once again I wanted to get the immediate response, but give myself time to get to the specifics. And I intended to get on that pretty much right away...but then I just fucking ran out of steam. And almost two weeks passed. I mean, if you say it's blue and I see yellow, where can we go? It just began to feel pointless. But I am determined to give it a try, so I'm not going to wait any longer.
I'm thinking something along these lines:
Hi again, FBF. You brought up a lot of good points re: Trump and the TA last time. I'm going to number them for ease of reference.
(1) Reference the IG firing. Trump has indeed said it was because the IG "leaked" the whistleblower report. That doesn't make any sense, though. The IG is required by law to take a whistleblower report to congress. Saying he "leaked" it is like saying a citizen who had heard about a plot to blow up a building leaked a report of a bomb threat to the police. Also, while it's true that a president has the authority to fire anyone in his administration, it's also true that he isn't allowed to fire someone for conducting lawful investigations. That's one of the things that brought Nixon down: he tried to fire the people who were looking into the Watergate burglary. If there aren't people who have the legal responsibility to investigate the actions of our public officials, then that literally means that they can do whatever they want to do. I'm pretty sure that no one would think that that's a good idea.
(2) It's true that Bolton wasn't subpoenad to appear before the House. They did officially request that he appear, but decided not to subpoena him when they were told that he would fight that in court, which would have meant a very long delay in the action. I'd agree that they should have done this, though. As for the other subpoenas...the reason that they weren't answered isn't because they were incorrectly filled out or late, it's because Trump ordered everyone in his administration to defy every House subpoena and request for witnesses. This is actually an illegal order--and an impeachable obstruction of Congress, which has the legal authority to order witnesses--but since the Senate was in charge of adjudicating that, he got away with it.
(3) You're right about South Korea...they did take extreme measures vis-a-vis tracking people who had Covid-19. The kicker there is that they got control of the problem. We left it up to people to decide for themselves, and we're in really big trouble. I guess it just comes down to how we interpret freedom. Do I have the freedom to do something that is harmful to other people? If we posit this in a truly extreme fashion, I think we'd agree. For instance, do I have the freedom to to stick a rifle out of my front window and pop off rounds whenever I feel like it? (Not aiming at anybody, but if they happen to get in the way, that's their problem.) Clearly I don't, right? And yet, not allowing me to do such a thing clearly does limit my freedom. Our freedom seems to end when it inflicts harm on other people. So why should I have the freedom to spread a deadly virus through my community?
(4) And as for the TA response to the Covid threat...from what I know, there are three problems there. First, the TA was given an intelligence briefing in January which stated that this was going to be a big problem and that we had to act quickly. But the TA did nothing until March. Second, no attempt was made to stockpile PPE during this time period...which is why we had such grave shortages. (As a matter of fact, the TA actually sold PPE to other countries during this time. There's an article about this here--https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/us-sent-millions-of-face-masks-to-china-early-this-year-ignoring-pandemic-warning-signs/2020/04/18/aaccf54a-7ff5-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html--if you want to check it out.) Third, the TA has consistently downplayed the seriousness of the virus. Even today I heard Mike Pence talking about how we have the virus under control. If Trump and Pence were telling people, "This is very serious. You have to wear masks anytime you go out of your house," then a lot of things would change. And a lot of lives would be saved. (I just read a report on a FOX news page with the title, "33,000 American lives could be saved if 95% of people wear masks in public, model used by White House shows." And yet Trump has, until very recently, said things like wearing a mask is a choice, I don't wear a mask, and even made fun of Joe Biden for wearing one. He has a lot of influence on about 1/3 of the American population, and if he emphasized the importance of wearing masks, it would have a profound effect on our plight.
(5) Saying that the governors are in charge of the pandemic response just insures that this will be a political issue rather than a health issue. The only Republican governors who are issuing strict measures (including requiring masks) are those whose states are on the brink--or over the brink--of catastrophe. The largest medical complex in the world (in Texas) has run out of bed space. People are being left in hallways to die without treatment. I can't imagine anything worse.
(6) As for the Biden footage...well, some of that is faked. They slow down the footage so that he sounds drunk or aphasic. Some of it is due to the fact that he had a very bad stuttering problem as a young man, and even though he has overcome it, sometimes he still has an "internal stutter" which makes him trip over his words. Some of it is for sure real, too. He messes up, he loses his point, he says the wrong word. But don't we all? I know that as a teacher there were quite a few times when I accidentally said things or spoke without thinking. If you only focused on those moments, I would look pretty bad myself. Speaking of...there are lots of clips of Trump doing the same things--slurring, mispronouncing common words, saying totally absurd things. I think that if someone speaks publicly for any amount of time, there will be plenty of mistakes.
(7) I do watch FOX news every day. I love Neil Cavuto, and consider him to be the best news anchor on tv right now. There are a couple of other people that I like and trust as well. But there are others who clearly can't be trusted. And I'd say the same thing of CNN and MSNBC, which I also watch. I think that there are a few good anchors on both of them as well...Andrea Mitchell and Brian Williams on MSNBC, Kate Bolduan on CNN...but there are others who are just not for me.
A long response to your response, but I didn't want to leave any stones unturned.
I just spoke with M on the phone the other day. Are you all still in contact with each other? Sometimes it's hard to stay in contact with people once you don't have that day to day work contact. It almost makes me wish I could go back to teaching.
ALmost.
Brother K.
So...I'd ask "What do you think of that?"...but now that I've made my way through it, I think I'm just going to copy and send it. As is often the case, the more I write, the more I feel that I know what I want to say.
More news as it happens.
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