There are two benefits of the polls showing increased dislike of Trump and his policies.
It is a benefit to news media, who always need something tantalizing to talk about.
It is a benefit to those who oppose Trump, inspiring and encouraging that opposition, with hope that Republicans who have to run in two years will see the signs.
But in practical terms, even as polls seem to indicate dissatisfaction, these polls mean little.
Tyranny is a power game, not a game of numbers, but of power strategically grabbed, held and exercised.
History says that authoritarians don’t need widespread support to succeed, or even majority support. Modern history’s most glaring example is Nazi Germany. In the last democratic election, before democracy was ended, the Nazi party won only 23% of the vote for the legislature. In one of the most fateful mistakes ever, “clever” leaders thought that by bringing Hitler into government, he could be controlled and his potential power diluted and diminished. That is not what happened.
Be inspired and encouraged by the polls. But know that even if two-thirds of America rejects the policies, many or most of those policies will still be pursued. This is a juggernaut on a mission, an opportunity to literally remake America. Polls will not stop that.
British Prime Minister: Mr. President, as you know, Europe is in dire shape. It may be a matter of days before Britain is defeated by Hitler. We need your help.
U.S. President: Sure. How much are you willing to pay?
PM: Mr. President?
President: We can’t just give you things without getting something back. So let’s make a deal. The treasures in Europe mostly aren’t available right now. But you still have your own British treasures. Your Crown Jewels are worth a few billion dollars. Let us have those now and we will give you all the defense you need. And when we win, I know that France and Italy also have treasures. We can negotiate for those. A lot of gold there. That Vatican has plenty.
PM: Mr. President?
President: Let me know how it’s going in the war. If you want to make a deal, you know where to find me.
Who are you and what are you doing here, the three coyotes asked.
They call me Moses, because as an infant I was set afloat and was picked out of the water by a princess, and then…it’s a long story. I wandered in a desert for a long time and I got used to it. So I’m trying out other deserts.
This is the Sonoran Desert, the three coyotes said. What are you carrying? It looks like a stick and a stone.
The stick is a magic staff. It can turn into a snake. The stone is a bunch of sayings. Do you want to hear them?
No we don’t, the three coyotes said. We don’t need a stick that turns into a snake. We’ve got plenty of snakes of our own.
Well, I guess I’ll be moving on, Moses said. I’m sure I’ll see you again.
“Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world – to do away with national barriers – to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.”
Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator (1940) as a satire on the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. The movie features Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomainia, and a nebbishy Jewish barber who looks exactly like Hynkel. The barber was a victim of shell-shock in World War I, and when he finally emerges from his long recuperation, he finds a horrific new world poisoned by Hynkel’s hate.
The barber is mistaken for Hynkel. In the final scene, as Hynkel, he addresses his troops and the world about the values that matter. Chaplin worked for months writing this final speech.
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone – if possible – Jew, Gentile – black man – white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness – not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men – cries out for universal brotherhood – for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world – millions of despairing men, women, and little children – victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…
Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes – men who despise you – enslave you – who regiment your lives – tell you what to do – what to think and what to feel! Who drill you – diet you – treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate – the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!
In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” – not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power – the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then – in the name of democracy – let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world – a decent world that will give men a chance to work – that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!
Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world – to do away with national barriers – to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
“Always try to be authentic and modest. At the same time, we should not be too judgmental or disapproving of the excessive displays of other people. It is impossible to know what may be inspiring them. The Buddha himself said that there were many hidden enlightened beings in this world and anyone we meet could be a spiritual master.” Mind Training by Ringu Tulku
For a one-volume comprehensive overview of the McCarthy era in America, see the Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications from the House Committee on Un-American Activities, published in 1957, revised in 1961. (Available as PDF) According to the Committee:
“This Guide is basically a compilation of organizations and publications which have been declared to be Communist-front or outright Communist enterprises in official statements by Federal legislative and executive authorities, and by various State and Territorial investigating committees.”
What this means is that any person, organization or publication reported by somebody as being controlled by communists, promoting communist ideas, or sympathetic to communists is included. The level of proof is that if the suspicion appeared in some federal or state hearing or even in a letter, they were “cited” as subversive.
In many cases, the indicator that a person, organization or publication was subversive was that it supported what can be called progressive causes, which might include labor unions, racial equality, or constitutional rights. Among those cited, in this Guide and in hearings, were progressive Jews. Some were blacklisted and lost their careers. Some were imprisoned and lost their lives.
Here are a few examples from the Guide:
AMERICAN JEWISH LABOR COUNCIL
Cited as Communist.
“With an eye to religious groups, the Communists have formed religious fronts such as the American Jewish Labor Council.”
JEWISH PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE
Cited as subversive and Communist.
JEWISH PEOPLES FRATERNAL ORDER
Cited as Communist and among the “national group societies of International Workers Order.”
SCHOOL OF JEWISH STUDIES (Los Angeles, Calif.)
It is established that in January 1950 respondent [the California Labor School, Inc.] set up a branch called the School of Jewish Studies in Los Angeles. As shown in brochures of this branch ‘History and Traditions of the Jewish People’ comprised half the curriculum outside of Yiddish and Hebrew language courses. in Los Angeles.”
CHELSEA JEWISH CHILDREN’S SCHOOL (MASS.)
“A place where Marxism is combined with instruction in the racial tongue.” (Presumably “racial tongue” means Yiddish.)
JEWISH BLACKBOOK COMMITTEE OF LOS ANGELES
Cited as a Communist front located at Room 1021, 458 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles.
America has been a haven for Jews. In some instances, such as turning away Jews from Nazi Europe or condemning Jews during the era of Red Scares, not all Jews were equally safe. Jews who now believe that the official show of support for Israel and Zionism makes them immune to repression are mistaken. The “right kind of Jews” may be safe, but support of human rights, economic rights, constitutional rights, may put some Jews on the “wrong side”. As we learned in America decades ago, as we learned throughout history, when the government cracks down on “wrong thinking” Jews have no more protection than any other people. Sometimes, far less.
Trump wants to take America back to 1913, to the moment before federal income tax, to a time when America raised revenue through tariffs.
Many reasons not to go back. Here is just one.
As we see daily, trade wars are based on competition and power. Trump believes he has the power and will exercise it so we will get at least our fair share—or more. But as we are also seeing, as in the Canadian election and elsewhere, nations also seek sovereignty and the power to chart their own path, apart from what another nation demands.
The desire for sovereignty and the competing demand to give up sovereignty is the definition of war. When tariffs reigned, when interconnectedness was low, when high-handed demands were high, right after 1913 we had a war. Two decades later we had another bigger war. With a global depression in between.
Global interdependence is not perfect and requires regular adjustment. With its imperfections, it has provided modern economic vitality. With its imperfections, it has reduced tensions and promoted comity. Without it, we are back to 1913, which may have gone well for a handful of the very rich and powerful, but not as well for the millions and millions whose lives were damaged by the wars beyond trade.
Maybe the very rich and powerful don’t care, thinking they will only get richer and more powerful no matter what happens. But the people, yes the people, do care whether the next twenty or thirty years are a time of global conflict that involves more than tariffs.
“Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” Estragon in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Theater of the absurd is a term coined by Martin Esslin in his 1961 book by that name. It describes a dramatic movement that started in Europe after World War II and moved across the theater world in the1950s and 1960s.
Playwrights associated with the movement include Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter. They wrote plays that looked very little like the three-act dramas audiences were accustomed to. The dialogue might not make sense, filled with non-sequiturs. The action might not follow a sensible pattern, if there was action at all.
In a word, absurd. Which might describe the world that hatched these plays, a world that followed a second world war following a first world war that was “the war to end all wars” but didn’t, a second world war that gave us human horror and a weapon that could be described as “the weapon to end all wars and everything else”. And in all spheres of politics, economics, technology, society and culture, things were changing at a pace unseen and unknown. Making sense of it seemed nearly impossible, so why bother trying? If all of it didn’t make sense, why should our plays, or our books, or our art? Or our government?
The most famous of these plays is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Two tramps engage in dialogues about nothing in particular, as they wait for the arrival of the mysterious Godot—who never arrives. In the end, the two of them stay exactly where they began on stage. One of them, Estragon, describes their situation perfectly: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!”
American governments have been many things, as have governments around the world throughout history. Smart and stupid, honest and corrupt, benign and evil, successful and failed. Sometimes things in government might seem silly or nonsensical, but a closer look reveals an understandable motive.
What makes this moment in American government different, even if we attribute much of it to some master plan or to one man’s disorderly psyche, is that things simply don’t entirely make much sense. If you wrote a play that included the more outrageous monologues of the American president, you could easily categorize them as theater of the absurd. Or government of the absurd.
Proposed art work: Cover the White House, home of the U.S. President, in gold paint. Rename it the Gold House.
Claude estimates the cost of this art work:
Paint Cost
According to the White House Historical Association, it takes 570 gallons of white paint to cover the exterior of just the residence portion of the White House (center), excluding the West and East Wings. Another source indicates it takes about 300 gallons of paint to cover the outside of the White House.
Typically, one gallon of paint covers between 250-400 square feet per coat. For metallic paint, coverage is approximately 320-400 square feet per gallon.
Since metallic paint often requires multiple coats for proper coverage: Two coats are recommended for opaque metallic colors for best results.
Premium metallic paint can cost significantly more than standard paint, with prices varying widely. High-quality metallic gold paint for exterior use might cost $75-150.
Total paint cost: $124,600
Labor Cost
Labor costs are approximately 82 cents per square foot. However, rates can range from $0.50 to $3 per square foot depending on complexity.
Labor cost per square foot: $2.50 Total labor cost: $498,750
Additional Costs
Scaffolding or lift equipment costs $500 to $1,500 per day. For a building like the White House, this would be a significant additional expense.
Surface preparation (cleaning, priming, etc.): $100,000 Equipment rental (scaffolding, lifts): $50,000 Primer and other materials: $75,000 Project management: $75,000
Time Estimate
On average, a commercial painter covers approximately 150-200 square feet per hour.
Total painting time for two coats for a team of 20 painters: 114 hours
Total project time, adding time for prep work, drying between coats, and final touches: 202 hours or 25 8-hour workdays.
Total Project Summary
To cover the White House exterior in gold paint:
Total gold paint needed: 1,246 gallons (two coats)
Total project cost: $923,350 (paint + labor + additional costs)
Time required: Approximately 1 month (accounting for weather delays and security protocols)
Bob Schwartz 