Two thoughts on July 4 - don't hand the revolution back. It's now.

However things go on July 4 - whether Donald Trump gets what he wants or fails to hijack our joy - I hope you'll share two important thoughts on America's birthday.

I'll start with denying the Trumpist their #1 desire, asking folks to bring flowers to the Mall in DC. I'll finish with a new way to look at one of the great speeches -- greatest three paragraphs -- in the English language, and I will ask you to imagine they are being said to you right now. 

==Handing America's enemies a gift, with a ribbon and a bow ==

Get word out. They want protestors at Trump's hijacking of the DC July 4th celebration! They want disruptions. They want lefties burning flags and spitting at veterans and service members, who have been drifting OUT of the Republican Party because of... well... facts. And Putin and treason and trumpist craziness. America's enemies want and need the fringe to do really stupid things. It's the one way to prevent losing every intelligent 'deep state' person and members of every fact-using profession. 

Alas, there are passionate 'antifas' who will happily oblige.

Oh, there are plenty of times/places for antifa! But choose to follow leaders with some brains, will you? Like Bernie or LIz or Julian or Obama. Alas, in contrast take the brave but oh-my Colin Kaepernick. Full of the praise he got for a kneeling protest that could have achieved so  much more with some nuance. Now he's commanding that no proper thinking person in America would ever display or respect the nation's revolutionary war flag ... and thus he and his reflex followers have handed to the mad, treasonous right yet another symbol of patriotism they get to (undeservedly) call their own.

When the symbols should be ours! That revolution mattered.

Yeah, yeah, that huge but imperfect/incomplete revolution against the royal oligarchy had to be corrected by an imperfect/incomplete Jacksonian revolt by small farmers... who were themselves oppressor bastards, requiring another imperfect/incomplete fight in which half a million brave folks in blue fought and died to end slavery... incompletely and imperfectly. And our imperfect/incomplete revolution had setbacks in the 1870s and 1920s phases of this ongoing civil war, when the stark-outright-evil confederacy grabbed a whole lot of symbols and made everyone kneel before their Ku Klux 'lost cause.' But then came the Roosevelts, and wonderful imperfect/incomplete things got done. Then MLK and more great imperfect/incomplete progress....

And yes, we're still shitty assholes compared to the Star Trek future! A future that only we ever started to bring about. That only we ever envisioned through science fiction and that you demand for our children.

What we aren't is shitty assholes compared to every nation and tribe that ever existed before us, or those trying now to bring us down. Compared to them, we are fucking saints who gave humanity its best 80 years, ever.

I want that future of Star Trekkian justice, diversity, tolerance, flattened authority and all those good things. I want it probably more than you do, so don't you dare accuse me of being a tepid moderate.

I am a goddamn militant moderate! And I will not stand by while our own side's ninnies hand over every symbol and patriotic feeling to be exploited against us by Hannity and Fox and the confederates who conspire with Putin's KGB and mafiosi and Saudi prices and casino moguls and Wall Street cheaters to bring us down.

Get out there and love the flag, for all the imperfect/incompletion of the imperfect/incomplete promise it hasn't yet kept! Demand the nation move ahead! But you'll defeat the enemies of that great project better under that flag than you will if you simply hand it over to its destroyers, to use as they will.

If you are heading into DC to protest, take armsful, bushels of flowers. Hand one to every veteran or soldier you meet. You will do more good than a thousand screams and shouts.

And now, a fey moment that will give you chills and gird you for the fight.

==He's talking to you ==

Something to try. Take a minute. Read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - only envision he’s talking to you, right now.

About us, right now.

It’s shockingly pertinent. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

Amen. He’s talking to you, this very moment, about this very moment. And every word is true, right now. Every word, right now. We are struggling against real enemies of this great experiment, to ensure "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." ...

Moreover, if you can feel the power of the Great Emancipator pouring through you, read it aloud to that teetering RASR (Residually Adult-Sane Republican) you know. It's brief, potent - so recite it on the 4th.

And tell your RASR that yes, this is how we feel. And he needs to choose which side he is on, in this potentially lethal phase of our endless Civil War.

Make no mistake. Our enemies’ aim is the same as always -- as Putin made clear when he laughed and told his puppet that the great "liberal experiment" was obsolete. He doesn't mince words. His axis of Kremlin-KGB agents, oligarchs, Saudi princes, casino moguls, carbon barons, mafiosi, Wall Street cheaters, communist despots, Fox liars and inheritance brats...

...they plan nothing less than to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth. 

150 years after Lincoln at Gettysburg… Can we maintain our resolve? Our Union?

Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, is a historian and author of “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.” In her recent article - 150 Years after the Gettysburg Address, Is government by the people in trouble? - Dr. Faust offers an eloquent and quite moving exploration of the context in which Abraham Lincoln transformed his earlier "hopeful" rhetoric into the more hardened sense of passion that spoke to his contemporaries' aching hearts about "dedication" and "resolve" -- a determination that something more must come out of all their shared sacrifice than mere preservation of a national union.

Seared by fire and blood, the newly emerging version of the United States of America would have to be something finer. In the spirit of a "new birth of freedom," it must forever aspire to be better, then better still.

That sense of resolution is currently at stake, as we confront the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address -- widely considered to be the most impactful speech -- (certainly on a per-word basis) -- in the last several centuries. Greatly noted and long remembered, it has been compared by some (including myself) to the inspiring "funeral oration" of the great Athenian leader, Pericles. (As conveyed to us by Thucydides.)

Only with this vital difference.  Both men died before completing their tasks.  But, unlike those who followed Pericles, we appear to have been ready, after Lincoln, to forge ahead in victory and determination. His words, burning in our hearts, continued making a difference at crucial moments for six succeeding generations, so that the Great Experiment thrived and survived every intervening crisis.

Across the succeeding four score and seventy years, each of those generations found itself disturbed, provoked, challenged not only by foreign dangers, domestic ructions or tsunamis of both immigration and seismic technological change, but also by torments of conscience, as each generational wave gradually matured enough to recognize what its parents could not…

… such as the litany of crimes that had served as bloody mortar, sealing the nation's foundation in a gritty blend of both hope and sin.  Or the waste of human potential that (across more than 6000 years) had dogged and hampered every society that ever pre-judged vast numbers of distinct individuals, based on accidents of birth or gender, class or race.  Or how to deal with the alluring drug of empire, when Pax Americana faced the same temptations that turned earlier great powers into tyrants...

...a dilemma that we handled - if not perfectly - then less-horribly than any other nation that was ever so-tempted.  In part because of the moral ember that Abraham Lincoln sealed into our hearts, smoldering there to remind us that democracy and wealth and power and even freedom become meaningless, unless they accompany a fierce ambition. To aspire. To become better. Together.

That is my brief rumination upon this 150 year-old epochal masterpiece of sadness and solace, of courage and resolve, of dedication to our common project, our shared experiment, our unfinished work called America.

== Oh, but it is always in danger ==

Only there is more… there is always much, much more.  Such as how Lincoln's Gettysburg Address relates to this time. More than ever, it is pertinent to our present set of crises.

For, now we Americans are engaged in a new phase of civil war.  Not yet violent to any significant degree and we can pray to almighty providence that things will stay that way. But there is no question that forces are at work upon this continent, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived, can long endure.

Look at the political map of our bitter, partisan divide, and just try telling yourself that it's not the very same struggle. Not over slavery or freedom or states' rights, which -- for all their importance -- were surface matters of dispute, symptoms of a fissure that plunges deeper than even those great matters. So deep, because America and Americans seem divided by differing, incompatible dreams.

One side of our national character hungers for change and tomorrow. To treat the future - the range of possible futures -- as ambition-attracting terra incognita, across which our children will explore and stride, better than we are in every way, even if that means repudiating many of our now-unclear assumptions and errors! Preparing those much-better generations for a boundless future is our dedicated proposition. Our mission.

But there is an opposing passion -- the temptation to wallow in nostalgia, romanticism, sanctimony, authority and the comforting rigidity-of-caste that dominated nearly every other civilization, across 6000 years.  It was called feudalism and humanity's greatest heroes fought to liberate us from that beastly, limiting and dismally stupid way of life.

Those who would restore the feudal yoke have always been with us, gathering forces, conniving, aiming persuasive dogma-incantations at both extremes of the vile "left-right political axis." These would-be lords (whether aristocrats or commissars) are spurred by deeply human impulses, arising largely out of male cojones. Impulses that whisper - "You could be a lord, build harems, dominate. Your wealth and power were all self-earned! They arose from inherent superiority! Never imagine that mere luck might have played a role. Or the coordinated creativity of a great nation, or the brilliance of a whole people and civilization. You owe nothing back. The sheep owe you everything."

Boringly predictable, heard in every ancient palace, this rationalization propels ingrate-lords who call themselves "job-creators" while creating few jobs, except for the propagandists that they hire en masse to rail against Abraham Lincoln's high aspiration. Or against scientists, teachers, professors, civil servants, journalists, economists, skilled laborers, law professionals, diplomats, medical doctors -- every profession of ambitious, forward-looking knowledge and skill.

But one core thing is under attack, more than any other. That is the very idea of shared endeavor, of joint action, of common projects that are mediated-by and consensus-chosen through the process of politics that we call "government"… this very idea is denounced as anathema, as repulsive, as inherently evil.

How far has this mania gone? So far that even members of the United States military officer corps  are experiencing real fear for the republic that they love. To which they dedicated their full measure of devotion.

== The passing generation of heroes ==

As happened in 1861, a major fraction of our countrymen have been talked into suckling nostalgic future-rejection and caste-romanticism. Enraged, they'll fight for New Confederacy lords whose "plantations" now span Wall Street, cyberspace and ten million secret accounts in foreign private-banking havens.

How ironic, for this coincides with the passing of the Greatest Generation -- men and women who fought down the curse of Hitlerism, who overcame the First Great Depression, who embraced the plan of Marshall, Truman, Acheson and Eisenhower to contain communism peacefully until its fever broke… without nuclear annihilation. All so that their unique nation might live.

A generation that created the mighty American middle class, amid a burst of entrepreneurial productivity so fantastic that their children could afford to take on ancient evils that all others had taken for granted, like racism, sexism and environmental blindness.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled in those mighty causes shared one trait more common than any other.  The Greatest Generation adored Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- once compared lovingly and in all ways to Lincoln -- but who now one third of our fellow citizens have been talked into equating with Satan Incarnate.

How long until the same thing is done to Honest Abe?

This ongoing struggle is not (despite propaganda) about 'left-versus-right.'  Not when entrepreneurship, small business, federal fiscal responsibility and the middle class always do far better under democrats than under the Republican Party. We could fill page after page with clear evidence that the father of capitalism and the "First Liberal" -- Adam Smith -- would today be a democrat.

No.  When the rhetoric has devolved into a universal and blanket spite toward all government, in principle, and when the greatest sin  -- as perceived by one third of our fellow citizens -- is to even speak of compromise, negotiation, deliberation or an agile freedom from constraining dogma, then we have come full circle.

== For we, the living… ==

One hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln urged our predecessors to advance the unfinished work which the heroes of Gettysburg so nobly advanced, we should read his words again, letting them roll in our heads and off our tongues. And then we must rise to our feet, in similar, steely resolve that the epochal achievements of those who came before us shall not have been in vain.

Oh, this phase of the American Civil War will end as the others did, with victory for Union and moderation and freedom, plus continuation of our ambition to forge ahead.  Mostly as individuals and families and self-formed teams…

...but also with great projects that we choose by "governmental" processes that -- even when filthy-political -- still often launch us forward.  To conquer polio and build internets. To educate one and all. To create the world's finest universities. To span the continent with highways and dams and electricity… then to preserve much of the rest for future generations. To probe ahead, with the tools of science, for mistakes to catch and solve in the nick of time. To keep the world's longest and greatest peace. To step onto the surface of the Moon.  To aim for the stars.

But first, it will take resolve -- stopping those who would end the Experiment amid dogma and rage. We intend to welcome them back, with charity for all, when this latest fever breaks!  Abe Lincoln showed us how.

But till then, it must simply be stopped.  The oligarchy-financed attempted putsch. And the nostalgic-romantic lunacy that makes so many citizens of a great and free republic screech their hateful vow --

-- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.

Pondering Pax Americana and the government 'shut-down'

While Americans await the recoil of their government's impending shut-down, I recommend, for light reading/listening, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, especially the last sentence, which is a tonic for those who have been taught the koolaid mantra that "all government is vile, all the time." Ask yourselves what our parents in the Greatest Generation would have said to that noxious oversimplification.

And, mind you, I say this as the only science fiction author ever to deliver a keynote to a Libertarian Party National Convention... back when the "L-word" had not been hijacked, before healthy skepticism of bureaucratic over-reach mutated into bilious hatred of an entire system that has worked well for U.S. citizens, for generations. Listen to Jeff Daniels recite the Address for you. Then re-dedicate yourself to what Lincoln meant, spurning the cynics seeking to re-ignite that civil war.

== On American Exceptionalism… ==

Aw heck, that makes a perfect segue to Jeff Daniels again... now in the hit HBO show "Newsroom." The show can be dramatic, fascinating, smart, on-target... and occasionally too smug in its mainstream liberalism not to deserve a wince or two.  Or maybe an occasional "yeah, true enough, but you left out...." spray-shouted at the TV. (Oh, I am so much fun to be around!)

In this clip, Daniels responds to a student's question, "What makes America the greatest country in the world?" The first two panelists on the stage give pat (strawman) answers -- diversity, opportunity, freedom and freedom. Daniels ventures into somewhat indignant territory, but his answer is worth pondering. Indeed, I discussed this issue in "American Exceptionalism vs What has Made America Exceptional"...

And yet, at risk of offending both left and right in my contrarian way, I must demur. Daniels' response blatantly ignores many things.  Like why the United States has spent so much more money than any twenty other nations on defense. He deems it a mark of shame, but it has been a burden that largely saved the world.

Perspective time. The reason is because we were the world's Pax Power and that in itself is a type of "greatness."  Across history, most pax empires (e.g. Pax Romana or Pax Sinica) were oppressive, but generally there was a huge upside to living under or near one; cities were safe from rampaging hordes and people were free to build their lives in peace. The alternative of fractious warring states could have advantages too… there was never a more fecund time than splintered Classical Greece or Colonizing Europe, but the fragility and brittleness of those times were a terrible price and most "warring states" periods did not even have such fecundity.

Without question, Pax Americana was the best and least hated of all grand paxes. (Try reading what non-Roman peoples grumbled about Rome, even while benefiting from the peace. Or what Gandhi said about Pax Brittanica, even while admitting it was the least immoral empire seen up to that point.) In fact, all of them -- including PA -- committed crimes. Dig this well -- we are human beings and when we get some power our egos get carried away with it. You try being king, sometime.

If you want to hurl a list of bad PA actions, from police enforcement for United Fruit Co. to Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile, I will thump my chest and cry "nostra culpa!" for each one. You'll not get mealy-mouth excuses or shrugs from me. Indeed, clear-eyed criticism of such crimes -- or disastrous-hubristic meddlings, like Vietnam  -- is part of the duty of an aware American citizen. And dig this, boy are we trained to criticize with abandon!

Still, by comparison, and weighing the pile of good next to the bad -- and partly because of the habit of self-criticism -- Americans exercised more restraint and responsibility with that temptation than any other nation across all of time. In fact, I'd ask you to name a people who ever did better when tempted by power.  (You who are fuming right now, consider. Are you part of the national habit I am describing? Are you honest enough to name the tsunami of films and other propaganda that made you such an eager critic?)

Back to specifics, the U.S. defense umbrella has, since 1945, allowed most nations to spend far, far lower fractions of national income on warriors than at any time in history, allowing them to divert more to education and development.  Look up the stats and be amazed!  And Steven Pinker's proof that violence has plummeted under the era of Pax Americana. Further, do go ask folks in Poland and Korea, before you dismiss all this "pax" stuff.

== A word hated by the left and horribly misused by the right ==

Alas, no American gets any of this! In part because Americans avoid knowing anything at all about history. For their part, Republicans love the glory of imperium  - its pomp and preening-doofus "Yew-Hess-Hay!" pride… and thus they have plunged us into wasteful, horrendously-futile and self-defeating wars in search of it… while never admitting the grown-up obligations and accomplishments of Pax Americana -- especially the vital and unprecedented habit of self-criticism.

Liberals, in contrast, are so obsessed with seeming "grownup" that they never mention the fact that PA was flat-out necessary and mostly good for civilization, especially in comparison to the mess wrought by every preceding great power.  This despite the ultimate irony, that Democrats nearly always have managed America's pax responsibilities vastly better than Republicans ever did (except Ike.)

Vastly better.  Want it laid out clearly and decisively? How Democrats and Republicans Wage War.

No. Go watch Jeff Daniels's rant . He tells truth… but only half of it. The surly, grouchy half, which is just as limited a liberal dumbness as "Yew-Hess-Hay!" is insipid troglodytism on the right. In fact, the Pax period since 1945 is serious history that our descendants will study in books for 10,000 years. It has been far more positive than negative, but in part because of our reflex of despising empire, not glorying in it. This calls for perspective, not uni-directional reflexes.

And thus, the Daniels rant -- his narrative -- is, in fact, a poison.

== Another perspective ==

My friend the popular economics-investment pundit John Mauldin recently showed his added class by attending the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio and revealing himself to be an uber-fan. He also publishes economics insights from what might be called an "Eisenhower Republican" perspective -- rock-ribbed and skeptical of debt, but also well-distanced from the Murdochian Madness that has hijacked today's GOP. John's latest report appraises how a combination of rising oil and gas production in the US, Obama Administration policies and a rapid return of high-tech manufacturing to US shores is already having huge effects upon the American balance of trade, a deficit that has spanned a human lifetime.

A deficit that - by the way - I call deliberate, and one of the most important contributions of Pax Americana to world history. A deficit that propelled export driven growth across the world, uplifting generations first in war-torn Europe and Japan, then Taiwan, Korea, Singapore… and so on until US trade is now the chief force lifting China and India at the same time. 

John shows how the trade imbalance appears to be going away more rapidly than anyone expected: "With the US current account deficit continuing its fall, we need to be alert for the next crisis abroad. It is very difficult to predict exactly when, where, and how markets will panic, but taking US dollars out of the trading system is akin to losing a chair in a game of musical chairs. Someone is going to be left out. It could be Europe or Japan – but more likely it will be emerging-market countries loaded with a lot of external debt denominated in US dollars who struggle to keep a seat at the table."

Another outcome. When the US is no longer shipping tsunamis of dollars overseas, the countries of Asia will need another currency to trade with each other. China is already preparing to set up its renmimbi (yuan) as a new reserve currency to stand next to the dollar. This will be accelerated, so long as China does not collapse because America is buying fewer Chinese goods. It can get complicated. For example the impact any China slow-down is going to have on commodities like metals, on countries like Canada, on countries like Australia.

It probably is time for the development teat of U.S. trade deficits to start shutting down. It was fun, buying trillions of dollars worth of crap we never needed, so that manufacturing jobs would cycle through the planet leaving new middle classes rising in their wake -- perhaps far more fun than "foreign aid" is supposed to be... though also vastly more effective than any other form of wealth transfer or aid ever attempted. But America needs to attend to finishing the latest phase of its ongoing civil war and that's going to take a while, before we can go back to helping move the world forward.

== A final note on that civil war we're in ==

You want my own quirky, contrarian take on the insane lemming charge toward a shut-down of the U.S. government?  Well... all right. So long as you are ready for more contrary insights. Here are some peeks behind the curtain.

Key is the Hastert Rule, under which all Republican House members have vowed to always and absolutely obey the majority of the House GOP Caucus, no matter how slender (or crazy) that majority might be. This means that 51% of the 51% can utterly control the agenda and proceedings and output of the United States House of Representatives. This, plus gerrymandering, plus Fox News, compose all the explanation anyone needs for the current made-up "crisis."

Despite all the pundit-ravings about a "civil war within the GOP," The 21st Century Republican Party remains (for now at least) the most tightly disciplined political force we have seen in American political life since the "solid south" of the old Dixiecrats, seventy years ago. Pundits tell us that discipline and the Hastert Rule are maintained by fear of Tea Party insurrections in next spring's GOP primary.  Don't you believe the pundits.

In fact, nothing happens in the Tea Party without say-so from Fox News. Fox is co-owned by Rupert Murdoch and several Saudi princes who have made their agenda clear. The government of the United States of America, which has functioned -- overall -- far better than anything else the world ever saw , helping to lead a consortium of other free nations and peoples to transform civilization for the better... that government and even the concept of "government" must be undermined, discredited and ultimately destroyed. It is the core, consistent narrative and one that a third of U.S. citizens now swallow as eagerly as babes do mother's milk. And hence, amid this re-ignited civil war, it is only proper to evoke Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, one more time. Recite it to your neighbors enthralled by the Murdochians. Watch them wince.

So. Do not let the appearance of internal GOP strife fool you.  All -- (or nearly all, so long as the Hastert Rule applies) -- is choreographed.

Were these sane days, it would take just twenty House GOP members to break off and form a Grownup Conservative Caucus -- taking their chances with the inevitable Tea Party vengeance in their district primaries, next spring -- in order to negotiate with moderate democrats, as used to happen all the time, back in the 20th Century. They would do this for the sake of the nation, out of courage and love of country… and love for a version of conservatism that Barry Goldwater might recognize. (A deal to make entitlements more efficient, in exchange of elimination of some fat-cat tax breaks, has been on the table for two years. Those twenty are all it would take.)

Alas, Rupert Murdoch and his partners have made clear their agenda to destroy Goldwater Conservatism in America… and thereupon all meaningful discourse. God help us if the Democrats ever become likewise dominated by their loony fringe. (And you better believe they have one - as feeble as it currently is!) If that ever happens -- (and a vanishing Middle Class just might drive such radicalism) -- then our only escape will be Canada… or space.  And Pax Americana will be finished.

Which has been the aim of Rupert & Co., all along.