"Yeah, but....."

There was a relevant editorial in last Sunday's Detroit News.  Nolan Finley correctly noted how every conversation, every dialogue today seems to be met with "Yeah, but......"  How can there be serious discussion when, if a point is made, the other side counters with "Yeah, but.....?"

For instance, try to be critical of, say, Maxine Waters' idiotic diatribes and one is likely to be met with, "Yeah, but Trump is a fascist" or "racist" or whatever.  If one questions the opposition to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, it will be countered with "Yeah, but the Republicans blocked Merrick Garland."  And, as Finley noted, this goes two ways.  If Trump is criticized for not being hard-line with the Russians, the Trumpsters will respond with something about Obama sending billions of dollars to Iran.  It's a good op-ed. 

Related, perhaps, is another conversation-ender I've encountered in recent years.  It's, "But that's different."  If I point out that some folks live rather extravagantly, while they themselves criticize others for being "greedy," I'll be met with "But that's different."  I question the local school district's defense of paying its administrators good money; the defense is top dollar is required to attract and retain good administrators, which I think is oxymoronic--good administrators??????  C'mon!  OK, if I accept that (and I don't), but if I do, why isn't the same logic applied to teacher salaries?  The local teachers are, if not the lowest in the county, very close to it and have been for five decades.  "But that's different."  Each of us can come up with countless examples of "But that's different."  Of course it is.

"Historical illiteracy."  I've heard or read that term several times recently and it concerns me.  It doesn't take much effort to read or hear someone liken Trump and his policies to "Fascists" and/or "Nazis."  Similarly, "concentration camps," "the Holocaust," including specifics such as "Krystallnacht," and the like are tossed out in comparison with the Trump administration actions.  So cavalierly such comparisons are employed!  It makes me wonder what is being taught in history courses, at whatever levels, to have supposedly educated people (e.g., reporters and columnists) make such analogies.  Realize that I write all this knowing most people think that history isn't important. 

There are several problems with this, this "historical illiteracy."  First, it trivializes the Holocaust.  Are people going to go through their lives thinking that what the Trump administration is doing now was what Hitler and the Nazis did in the Holocaust!?!?!?  For example, can anyone explicitly show anything the Trump administration has done that compares with Krystallnacht?  Of course, if one doesn't know what Krystallnacht was......  Second, it leads to hysteria.  To compare anything to the Holocaust would do that.  And ignorant people are easily led, falling victim to the false analogies.  Yet, it whips them into furies.

How can we have any meaningful conversations/discussions when such false comparisons are so routinely made?  And, with so many folks historically illiterate.....

There he goes with that history stuff again.  Everyone but him knows history isn't important.

Not exactly the same is something I've been thinking about for a few weeks, with the primary elections soon upon us.  I recall the 2016 Presidential election.  I voted for neither major party candidate.  And from the looks of things, that will also be the case in 2020.  I refuse to "hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils."  Nope, I won't do it.  Far too many people do that and the result is we continually get "evils," lousy candidates from which to choose.  Why bother working to get solid candidates for President when voters will invariably choose the one who is the "lesser of two evils?"  Of course, that makes mud-slinging ever more important.  Each party must dirty the other party's candidate more, to make him/her the greater of two evils.

I know.  I know.  People have many times told me, "You elected Trump."  or  "You wasted your vote." or some other such nonsense.  No, I didn't do either.  What I did was refuse to accept the junk that was thrown my way.  If more people did that, perhaps we wouldn't be bombarded with junk.  In fact, I think that by voting for junk (Clinton or Trump), people wasted their votes.  There!  My vote, to me, is much more valuable than junk.

I'm reading a book now that is challenging my values.  It is Nine Presidents Who Screwed Up America.  It's interesting reading and does, indeed, cause me to think and rethink.  I'm about half way through it and agree with much of the author's contentions.  I don't agree with some of his claims, though.  But the good thing is I have to think to come back to my own conclusions.  I understand the author's concern with the growing power of the President, authority that was never intended by the Founders and isn't supported by the Constitution.  I guess that makes much of what Presidents do and have done for 100 years or more unconstitutional.

But here's something really cool--and lambaste me if you will.  When he is critical of one President and his policies and then criticizes another in the same light, I think, "But that's different."  Ha ha ha.  The reality is, though, there are differences.  Some Presidents acted with some disregard toward the Constitution in far, far different circumstances than others.  I don't think the actions can rightly compare.  For instance, were the times of, say, Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt as dire as those faced by Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War?  The Civil War was life-threatening for the US, the others not quite so.  The author apparently doesn't accept that premise.  It's as if he is writing from the premise of "cetera paribus," that is, "everything being equal," when everything wasn't equal.  (I knew economics courses in college would eventually come in handy!)

I suppose the several factual errors I have found in the book are trivial, but they make me question other things I read that I didn't know.  For instance, the vote of Congress to declare war on Japan on December 8, 1941 was not "unanimous."  Again, perhaps that's trivial and I am being my picayunish self.  But it does lead me to doubts.

The last four chapters are of four Presidents "who tried to save America."  I've not yet come to them, but note that one of them has to do with Calvin Coolidge.  I'm glad to see him in with that group and look forward to reading that chapter.  I believe Coolidge has been given a bum deal in rankings and in the textbooks and teachers history courses.

I'm too tired to proofread.  Please forgive any errors......