Bob Schwartz

Category: Politics

No Photos of Donald Trump Standing with or Hugging Republican Women Governors, Senators and House Members (2016)

Women for Trump

This was originally posted a month before the 2016 presidential election. The point then was that Republican women officials would have trouble hugging or standing with Trump. When I look back now, I see the photo above and read the final line from the Trump campaign website, “these are very form fitting shirts”, and it resonates even more loudly ten years later. Practically screams and shouts.


This was supposed to be a post containing photos of Donald Trump hugging, or just standing with, Republican women Governors, Senators and House Members. The point is that these women will have to hug, or just stand with, Donald Trump if he becomes President, because he will be the leader of their party.

I can’t, however, because I was unable to find almost any such photos. Why do you think that is?

Note: The photo above is from the Trump campaign website. The page for these Women for Trump shirts includes this:

Please refer to Fitting Guide when ordering; these are very form fitting shirts.

19 things Donald Trump knows better than anyone else, according to Donald Trump (2016)

I don’t know whether rerunning this post from ten years ago, a month before the 2016 presidential election, is funny. I ran it then because the Trump phenomenon was newly astonishing and frightening, and maybe funny. We didn’t know exactly what the future would be, but we might have guessed. One thing we now know is that he is still better than anyone about anything, according to him. As for fun, it appears for the moment that the fun’s over. It will be back.


Normally, I would quote a little bit of an article, and provide a link to the whole thing.

19 things Donald Trump knows better than anyone else, according to Donald Trump by Aaron Blake at the Washington Post today is simply too amazing for that. So the link is above, but here it is in its entirety:


I understand the tax laws better than almost anyone, which is why I’m the one who can truly fix them,” Donald Trump claimed Monday in Colorado.

It is one of many issues on which Trump is one of the world’s foremost experts, according to Trump. In fact, you might say he’s the best at being a self-proclaimed expert.

Below is a list of the many things about which Trump says he knows more than just about anybody. Even for a guy who’s fond of hyperbole, it’s a lot to take in.

1) Renewables

“I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth.” — April 2016

2) Social media

“I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right?” — November 2015

3) Debt

“Nobody knows more about debt. I’m like the king. I love debt.” — May 2016

4) Taxes, again

“I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world. Nobody knows more about taxes.” — May 2016

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them. #failing@nytimes
7:22 AM – 2 Oct 2016
15,459 15,459 Retweets   41,208 41,208 likes

“Nobody knows more about taxes than I do — and income than I do.” — May 2016

5) Banking

“Nobody knows banking better than I do” — February 2016

6) Wall Street bankers

MATT LAUER: You’re a guy who said you know the Wall Street bankers better than anyone.

TRUMP: Better than anyone.

— April 2016 on NBC’s “Today” show

7) Money

“I understand money better than anybody. I understand it far better than Hillary, and I’m way up on the economy when it comes to questions on the economy.” — June 2016

8) The U.S. system of government

“I think nobody knows the system better than I do.” — August 2016

“I am a person that used to be establishment when I’d give them hundreds of thousands of dollars. But when I decided to run, I became very anti-establishment, because I understand the system than anybody else.” — July 2016

“Nobody knows the system better than I do.” — April 2016

9) Campaign contributions

“I used to be, George, the fair-haired boy — you know, when I was a contributor. I know more about contributions than anybody.” — November 2015

10) Politicians

“Nobody knows politicians better than Donald Trump.” — February 2016 rally

11) Sen. Cory Booker

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
If Cory Booker is the future of the Democratic Party, they have no future! I know more about Cory than he knows about himself.
10:14 PM – 25 Jul 2016
10,079 10,079 Retweets   34,725 34,725 likes

(We’re putting this on the list assuming that nobody ELSE knows more about Booker than Booker, which would make Trump the world’s foremost non-Cory Booker expert on Cory Booker.)

12) Trade

“Nobody knows more about trade than me.” — March 2016

13) Jobs

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
I hope all workers demand that their @Teamsters reps endorse Donald J. Trump. Nobody knows jobs like I do! Don’t let them sell you out!
5:03 PM – 8 Jan 2016
2,170 2,170 Retweets   5,972 5,972 likes

14) Infrastructure

“Nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump.” — July 2016

15) The military

“There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am.” — June 2015 Fox News interview

16) ISIS

“I know more about ISIS [the Islamic State militant group] than the generals do. Believe me.” — November 2015

17) Defense — and offense

“So a general gets on, sent obviously by Obama, and he said, ‘Mr. Trump doesn’t understand. He knows nothing about defense.’ I know more about offense and defense than they will ever understand, believe me. Believe me. Than they will ever understand. Than they will ever understand.” — July 2016

18) The ‘horror of nuclear’

“There is nobody who understands the horror of nuclear more than me.” — June 2016

19) The visa system

“Because nobody knows the system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me.” — March 2016

Aaron Blake
The Washington Post
October 4, 2016


The Moral and Legal Responsibilities of Bringing a Wild and Dangerous Animal Into Your (White) House (2016)

No one can force you to adopt a wild and dangerous animal as your pet. To bring it into your house. To make it your own. If you do go ahead, against all advice, know the responsibilities.

Some animals are so inherently dangerous that they are not even allowed to be adopted at all. In other cases, if the animal harms or looks like it might harm neighbors, or gets loose and does more widespread damage, you will be blamed. Here is a very rough statement of part of the general law on the subject:


The owner or keeper of a domestic animal has a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent injuries that are foreseeable because the animal belongs to a class of animals that is naturally inclined to cause such injuries, regardless of whether the animal had previously caused an injury or was roaming at large and, accordingly, the owner may be held liable for negligence if he or she fails to take such reasonable steps and an injury results.


Some will say, oh, but it’s so cute and exotic and interesting. It’s the talk of the town. It may seem relatively normal, even lovable, at times. It may even be featured on the local news.

But eventually, neighbors will say: stay away from that house. And will tell others to stay away from your house. And if it does the kind of serious damage you know it is capable of, how will you live with yourself?

© 2016 Bob Schwartz

Ebola Stress Test (2014)

Kaci Hickox

Quietly, where no one can hear, some leaders and citizens are probably worried that if this was a real Ebola outbreak in the U.S., and not the thankfully tiny and so far isolated problem it is, we would fall apart. Utterly fail the test. (2014)

The post below was published on October 27, 2014. It comes to mind today for a couple of reasons. There is a current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And various recent public health developments, including a sea change in how the federal government looks at disease and vaccines, has prompted scientists to shout that we are not ready for the next pandemic, just as we weren’t ready for the last one. Remember that?


Stress tests. We see them in medicine, in banking, in construction.

How well will the patient’s heart perform when he is on a treadmill? How sound are a bank’s finances in the worst case scenario? How will building materials stand up under maximum pressure?

Public crises are stress tests. So far, Ebola is the latest demonstration of the tendency for our civic infrastructure to crack—or show signs of it—under pressure.

Quietly, where no one can hear, some leaders and citizens are probably worried that if this was a real Ebola outbreak in the U.S., and not the thankfully tiny and so far isolated problem it is, we would fall apart. Utterly fail the test.

The latest episode concerns this weekend’s rapid response by multiple states to Craig Spencer, a doctor returning from West Africa and becoming sick with Ebola in New York City last week. In addition to New York and New Jersey, other states are now or may be requiring returning health care workers to be quarantined.

There is a problem: none of these states appear to have thought through any of it—most especially the practical aspects of whisking someone coming home from a heroic medical mission into isolation that is supposed to be comfortable, suitable, sensible, and sensitive under the circumstances. It now seems the scenario is act first, plan later.

Nurse Kaci Hickox is the first one caught in this trap. She is not sick and is showing no symptoms. Arriving at Newark Airport Friday night, she was taken to a tent behind a hospital, with a portable toilet, no shower, no television, and little cellphone reception. She castigated all involved, particularly Governor Chris Christie, who said she had symptoms and was sick, when she hadn’t and wasn’t. She plans a federal lawsuit challenging the quarantine.

“I also want to be treated with compassion and humanity, and I don’t feel I’ve been treated that way in the past three days. I think this is an extreme that is really unacceptable. I feel like my basic human rights have been violated.”

(Update: Governor Christie has relented, allowing her to return home to Maine, where, if you read between the lines, the message is that it will then be Maine’s problem to monitor her and where, if something goes wrong, it will be on their head.)

We seem to have forgotten how to solve problems, enthralled by our own voice either positing solutions, making points, or complaining. Or maybe it is that this is America, with a history of being bigger, stronger, smarter, and most of all, righter, in all circumstances. Even if that was ever true, politics—in the big sense of privileging positions over effective and thoughtful answers—has poisoned that well. Worthy questions and deliberate solutions are rejected out of hand because of the source, because they don’t fit some preconceived notion or program, or simply because they won’t help win or not lose elections.

Whether or not quarantine of heroic Ebola care givers returning from West Africa is a good idea, it is certainly a good idea to evaluate and plan exactly how you are going to practically handle it. Maybe, though, we shouldn’t be at all surprised. In recent years we did, after all, send hundreds of thousands of troops abroad, and when the promised rewards for their heroic service came due, we seemed unable to fulfill and, worse, were suddenly unenthusiastic about keeping the promise anyway.

If this is a war on Ebola, we better make sure we are committed to those who are sacrificing, part of which is actual planning and resourcing, not ignorant and reflexive pontificating and politicking. So far, this is looking too much like some of our other recent wars. Maybe we can use this as an opportunity to get better and be better at it.

© 2014 Bob Schwartz


Promise made, promise broken: Making this blog a TFZ (Trump-Free Zone) (2016)

Yeah.

Ten years ago, Trump was running for the Republican nomination for president. At the time, the media could not stop showing him and talking about him, his Republican opponents could not stop criticizing him, and I wrote about him far too frequently. Which is why, in March 2016, I promised to make this blog a Trump-Free Zone. Eventually.

In the time since, Trump has been elected president twice, those Republican opponents are now in his cabinet or are his most sycophantic supporters, and I am still writing about Trump, once in awhile and hopefully even less in the future. Just like when we were in the middle of the pandemic, I wrote frequently about Covid, because there are some disasters you should not turn your back on.

So it goes.


I intend and promise to make this blog a TFZ (Trump-Free Zone). Very soon. Maybe. For a while. I run away from my favorite news channels, sometimes for hours, while he is showcased. So I understand not to contribute to the overexposure.

But to torture the famous words of St. Augustine:

Lord make this blog a Trump-Free Zone. But not yet.

Thanks for your patience.

March 10, 2016


Netanyahu Scapegoats the Palestinians for Holocaust (2015)

The post below was originally published on October 21, 2015, more than ten years ago.

In 2026, it can be hard to remember all the dangerous and mendacious absurdities that have been inflicted on us, since they come at us so fast and furious every day. Yet some absurdities promoted not so long ago are worth remembering, particularly if they reflect on current leaders and current atrocities.

Netanyahu blamed the Holocaust on the Palestinians. Maybe he still does.

Trump is mentioned in the post, even though he was not yet president, and in fact was being vilified at the time by his Republican opponents as an immoral nut case. Some of those opponents became his most loyal supporters and even joined his cabinet.

Netanyahu and Trump are very much still with us, spouting lies and inflicting pain with impunity.

The more things change…


The Jews killed Jesus. The Palestinians started the Holocaust. So who’s the scapegoat now?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that in the early days leading up to World War II, Hitler visited the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and it was that Palestinian leader who came up with the idea of the Final Solution:

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said, ‘Burn them.’

Historians have already weighed in heavily on how historically bogus this is, given that, among other things, Hitler published Mein Kampf three years before that meeting. The assertion has been described as “jaw-dropping”, with even friendly politicians “agog” at this dark nonsense.

Just when you thought it was the Jews who have for centuries been scurrilously blamed for every terrible thing, Netanyahu goes and turns the tables and scapegoats somebody else. Not just any somebody else. The enemy within and on the borders, the one that you could happily live without.

It appears that the very unpopular Prime Minister is trying to take lessons from Donald Trump, with whom he shares the kinship of attending Wharton. The strategy: Demonize those unwanted immigrants and/or natives. Say anything, no matter how incendiary, explosive, ridiculous or unrelated to fact about the enemies within, and people will love it. And you.

Just one glitch. Trump doesn’t lead a nation at the center of global conflict; actually he doesn’t lead any nation at all. And if America has a history of scapegoating, which it does (take your pick among religious, cultural, political and ethnic groups), it doesn’t compare in long-term viciousness to what the Jews have endured.

Starting, of course, with the big one. In fact, if you look closely at Netanyahu’s indictment, it is not that the Palestinians actually ran the death camps. They just planted the idea, whispering in the ear of an emperor, who was happy to carry out the deed. This time a German emperor, instead of Roman one.

Who’s the scapegoat now?

Law Day: Critical times are tough tests for lawyers. Some pass, some fail.

May 1, as I’ve mentioned in other posts today, is Law Day.

I’ve written frequently about the role of lawyers in the first Trump administration and during the attempts to deny that Trump lost the 2020 election (which six years later are still ongoing). None of the lawyers involved in that administration have been sanctioned, but a few of those who lied and promoted baseless election denial have lost their licenses to practice. As noted below, lawyers are officers of the court and are held to very high standards of professional ethics and responsibility.

Any contemporary discussion of miscreant presidential lawyers always brings us back to Watergate. The post below was originally published in October 2017 during the first year of that first Trump administration. It is safe to say that the current Trump lawyers make the lawyers of that first administration, where there was a semblance of upholding the rule of law, look like legal angels. The Watergate lawyers were no angels, and as one of the linked posts chronicles, they paid the price, with jail and professional sanctions.


Lawyers are sworn officers of the courts of their respective states and federal jurisdictions. They take a solemn oath. They take that oath because as citizens we give them substantial power as officers of the court. As Spiderman (not a lawyer) reminds us, with great power comes great responsibility.

In normal times it is hard enough for lawyers to balance all the interests surrounding them—professional, personal, political. In abnormal and critical times—like these—lawyers may be pushed to pick a lane. The onerous professional demands, as embodied in the oath, may be in conflict with other interests, including ambition, success and ideology.

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned a few examples of times in which lawyers chose poorly. One is the case of attorneys involved in Watergate, almost two dozen of whom ended up being punished and sanctioned.  Another is Hans Frank, a brilliant attorney known as Hitler’s Lawyer.  There are many other infamous examples.

The number of lawyers involved in current events, as principals or as advocates, is growing exponentially. It will only expand as dark matters surrounding the president get deeper and more serious. Please keep this in mind as this drama unfolds.

Here is an example of an oath, one taken by attorneys in the State of Washington:


OATH OF ATTORNEY

I do solemnly declare:

I am fully subject to the laws of the State of Washington and the laws of the United States and will abide by the same.

I will support the constitution of the State of Washington and the constitution of the United States.

I will abide by the Rules of Professional Conduct approved by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington.

I will maintain the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers.

I will not counsel, or maintain any suit, or proceeding, which shall appear to me to be unjust, or any defense except as I believe to be honestly debatable under the law, unless it is in defense of a person charged with a public offense. I will employ for the purpose of maintaining the causes confided to me only those means consistent with truth and honor. I will never seek to mislead the judge or jury by any artifice or false statement.

I will maintain the confidence and preserve inviolate the secrets of my client, and will accept no compensation in connection with the business of my client unless this compensation is from or with the knowledge and approval of the client or with the approval of the court.

I will abstain from all offensive personalities, and advance no fact prejudicial to the honor or reputation of a party or witness unless required by the justice of the cause with which I am charged.

I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed, or delay unjustly the cause of any person.


 

Return to the Four Freedoms

Four Freedoms

In early 1941, while war was already raging in Europe, but almost a year before Pearl Harbor, FDR gave one of the most famous speeches of the era and of American history. It was the 1941 State of the Union address, now known as the Four Freedoms speech. To bolster American support for our inevitable involvement in the war, he enunciated the Four Freedoms we would be fighting for: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear:


In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.


Art turned out to play an important role in keeping these ideals front and center, especially as the prospect of American sacrifice became a reality. The most famous example may be a series of paintings by Norman Rockwell (above), who was then and maybe still the greatest American illustrator. The Library of Congress explains:


Taken from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 speech to Congress, the “Four Freedoms” –Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear–became a rallying point for the United States during WWII. Artist Norman Rockwell created four vignettes to illustrate the concepts. Rockwell intended to donate the paintings to the War Department, but after receiving no response, the painter offered them to the Saturday Evening Post, where they were first published on February 20, 1943. Popular reaction was overwhelming, and more than 25,000 readers requested full-color reproductions suitable for framing.


Some will say that these Four Freedoms are today controversial because we don’t seem to be able as a nation—as an American family—to agree on the strategies to maintain and attain those ideals. Those disagreements are undeniable, as are the related invective, disparagement, and even hatefulness that goes with them. But those disagreements can’t make us give up. On the contrary, they should send us back to the words of FDR, getting past the ideologies and labels, and really look within and at the family of Americans.

Do you really believe that these ideals are exclusive to you, and not shared by others of good will? Are your principles and affiliations so very important that you would sacrifice those ideals to be “right”? Or can we come to the table, dig deeper, and not leave until we have given up a little of our own self-importance and focused instead on getting a little closer to the country and world envisioned in the shared Four Freedoms? And maybe just a little closer to each other?

© 2026 Bob Schwartz

Fortune Magazine Pleads in 1969: Heed the Authentic Cry of Our Youth

Youth in Turmoil Cover

It is January 1969. Fortune, one of the world’s most conservative business magazines, publishes a special issue about Youth in Turmoil. It then adapts the issue into a book, with an image of a flame on the cover.

The message is not, as you might expect, about how these ungrateful long-haired drug-addled rebels are destroying the country. On the contrary, the message is that these young people are trying to tell us something important and we should listen—before it’s too late.

Here is the introduction:


American youth is trying to tell us something important. The brightest of our young men and women are telling us that as far as they are concerned the choices for our society are narrowing rapidly. We can, at worst, look ahead to a future, very near, in which they lose all heart for our national effort, thus robbing it of its nerve, vitality, and point—a state of affairs in which they range themselves against us either in violence or in withdrawal. Or we can heed the cry of these young adults. Though often marred by shrillness, arrogance, and negativism, that cry is authentic and valid in its central message. It tells us that in our rush to well-being we have left much undone at the same time we have made so much more do-able. It tells us that we should rechannel our enormous energies to deal with the lengthening list of environmental and social grievances. If we can enlist these young idealists and they can enlist us, the nation will evolve toward a life style that once again sets a new standard for the world. I hope that this book, adapted from the January, 1969, special issue of FORTUNE, will contribute to that mutual enlistment.

LOUIS BANKS,
MANAGING EDITOR, FORTUNE


Please read this word-for-word. It is extraordinary. This is a bible of the establishment, during one of our most anti-establishment times, acknowledging that many things are wrong—including environmental and social problems—and admitting that young people are trying to remind us of our responsibilities to make it right. If the establishment fails, Fortune says, “We can, at worst, look ahead to a future, very near, in which they lose all heart for our national effort, thus robbing it of its nerve, vitality, and point—a state of affairs in which they range themselves against us either in violence or in withdrawal.”

Consider how far we have come. Youth seems to be somewhat disaffected, maybe even having lost heart and been robbed of its nerve—but not exactly in turmoil. Much of the conservative establishment would now never dream of agreeing that we have justifiable environmental and social grievances, let alone that these should be aggressively addressed.

The Sixties are variously celebrated, trivialized, and even laughed at. Maybe it’s funny to see a Big Business publication like Fortune willing to open its eyes, look around, and decide that these kids just might have a point and we can do a whole lot better. Or maybe it’s a little sad that we don’t see more of that today.

The Financier (2012) by Theodore Dreiser. Creatures of the new Gilded Age.

You cannot look at it [Black Grouper fish] long without feeling that you are witnessing something spectral and unnatural, so brilliant is its power to deceive. From being black it can become instantly white; from being an earth-colored brown it can fade into a delightful water-colored green. Its markings change as the clouds of the sky. One marvels at the variety and subtlety of its power.
–The Financier by Theodore Dreiser

 
The Financier (2012) is a novel about a creature of the Gilded Age, the first book in Theodore Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire.

In it, Frank Cowperwood, a ruthless Philadelphia businessman, rises from a modest background to become a powerful financier in the mid-19th century. He manipulates city funds, builds a street railway empire, and ultimately faces financial ruin and imprisonment after a market crash that exposes his misuse of public money. Cowperwood is based on real-life robber baron Charles Yerkes.

Dreiser compares Cowperwood to the Black Grouper, a fish remarkable for its ability to blend in and adopt any appearance necessary to survive:


Concerning Mycteroperca Bonaci

There is a certain fish, the scientific name of which is Mycteroperca Bonaci, its common name Black Grouper, which is of considerable value as an afterthought in this connection, and which deserves to be better known. It is a healthy creature, growing quite regularly to a weight of two hundred and fifty pounds, and lives a comfortable, lengthy existence because of its very remarkable ability to adapt itself to conditions. That very subtle thing which we call the creative power, and which we endow with the spirit of the beatitudes, is supposed to build this mortal life in such fashion that only honesty and virtue shall prevail. Witness, then, the significant manner in which it has fashioned the black grouper. One might go far afield and gather less forceful indictments—the horrific spider spinning his trap for the unthinking fly; the lovely Drosera (Sundew) using its crimson calyx for a smothering-pit in which to seal and devour the victim of its beauty; the rainbow-colored jellyfish that spreads its prismed tentacles like streamers of great beauty, only to sting and torture all that falls within their radiant folds. Man himself is busy digging the pit and fashioning the snare, but he will not believe it. His feet are in the trap of circumstance; his eyes are on an illusion.

Mycteroperca moving in its dark world of green waters is as fine an illustration of the constructive genius of nature, which is not beatific, as any which the mind of man may discover. Its great superiority lies in an almost unbelievable power of simulation, which relates solely to the pigmentation of its skin. In electrical mechanics we pride ourselves on our ability to make over one brilliant scene into another in the twinkling of an eye, and flash before the gaze of an onlooker picture after picture, which appear and disappear as we look. The directive control of Mycteroperca over its appearance is much more significant. You cannot look at it long without feeling that you are witnessing something spectral and unnatural, so brilliant is its power to deceive. From being black it can become instantly white; from being an earth-colored brown it can fade into a delightful water-colored green. Its markings change as the clouds of the sky. One marvels at the variety and subtlety of its power.

Lying at the bottom of a bay, it can simulate the mud by which it is surrounded. Hidden in the folds of glorious leaves, it is of the same markings. Lurking in a flaw of light, it is like the light itself shining dimly in water. Its power to elude or strike unseen is of the greatest.

What would you say was the intention of the overruling, intelligent, constructive force which gives to Mycteroperca this ability? To fit it to be truthful? To permit it to present an unvarying appearance which all honest life-seeking fish may know? Or would you say that subtlety, chicanery, trickery, were here at work? An implement of illusion one might readily suspect it to be, a living lie, a creature whose business it is to appear what it is not, to simulate that with which it has nothing in common, to get its living by great subtlety, the power of its enemies to forefend against which is little. The indictment is fair.

Would you say, in the face of this, that a beatific, beneficent creative, overruling power never wills that which is either tricky or deceptive? Or would you say that this material seeming in which we dwell is itself an illusion? If not, whence then the Ten Commandments and the illusion of justice? Why were the Beatitudes dreamed of and how do they avail?