Notes from the Future Underground

I never wanted this to be a political Substack. Half of the gazillion Substacks now in existence seem to be political. Substack managers suggest authors write about anything else, but no more politics!

It’s hard to resist, though, especially if you’ve lived as long as I have. I recently listened to the usually erudite and well-informed Conservative podcast, Goodfellas, which features historian Niall Ferguson and General H. R. McMaster, among others, and they were discussing “Mar-a Gaza,” a wordplay on Donald Trump’s Mar-a Lago estate in Florida and, I thought at first, intended as a sarcasm directed at his insane, dangerous and illegal plan to evict most Gazans and turn the small territory into some kind of Riviera, yet the round-table speakers did not adequately follow-up. I was waiting for them to reference President Dwight Eisenhower’s actions in the Suez Crisis of 1957 in which he used his power and prestige (and their dependency) to essentially force Israel, the UK and France from Egyptian territory. The podcasters never did bring this up, nor have I seen this highly relevant precedent referenced in any other mass media reporting on Trump’s astonishing plan (though I can’t follow everything). Then it hit me – Ferguson, McMaster and the others simply are not old enough to have any strong memory of the events of 1957, and Dwight Eisenhower, while not necessarily brilliant in politics or in war, nonetheless does not get the respect he deserves. Read up on him a bit, then compare him to any president who succeeded him. He’ll come out at or near the top.

Now, to our present emergency in Washington. The recent presidential election looks to be a disaster in the way that many observers feared, though not always for the reasons they gave. For example, not everything the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is doing is wrongheaded, but it has been given Cabinet-level powers without any formal nomination process or “advice and consent” of the Senate, as required by Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution. Some observers have reasonably asked why Donald Trump has not simply proposed DOGE as a new Cabinet office, then nominated Elon Musk to head it, then waited for the Senate to approve. He has the majority of seats in the Senate. He would have received what he wanted, though it might have taken a few weeks, maybe a few months. But he didn’t follow that path. Why?

It's all about power, vesting powers in himself and then showing it. Somehow, DOGE can now override legally established government departments (bureaucracies, if you will, even “the swamp” or “the deep state,” it doesn’t matter) just because the King says so. Trump is doing the unthinkable because he is Trump. I might generously say he thinks he’s running a business that he personally owns (i.e., not publicly traded, which would be governed by certain laws) and that, consequently, he thinks he can do whatever he wants. But the United States is not a business that he owns. It’s a country with laws and elected leaders (good, bad and indifferent) and somehow he thinks he rules all of it – like his benchmarks, Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un and other, lesser dictators. Those are “strong leaders” in the way he’s identified them in the past (not sure about Kim Jong Un as he’s said the silliest things about that dangerous dictator in the past). If he’d referenced Otto von Bismarck I’d be somewhat less concerned, but I’m not sure he’s heard of that leader. Didn’t kill enough people, I suppose.

We have to be equally concerned by the dismissal of criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. I don’t know if Adams was guilty of taking campaign contributions from foreign sources in exchange for whatever he may have promised. But there presumably was “probable cause,” a fairly strict legal concept, to pursue a case against him (a guy I personally like), and Adams was well-placed to put on a vigorous defense. No need to drop charges. But it’s clear a deal of sorts was made – Adams supports a tougher stance on securing the Southern border, and the Trump people return the favor.

Worse – far worse – is the new trend of issuing pardons right and left for overtly political purposes. Presidents have the right to do it, and it would require a Constitutional amendment to take that right away, which admittedly would not be easy to pull off. Presidential pardons have often been done, but Joe Biden really escalated things by pardoning his son first, including for any future prosecutions, and pardoning several government officials from future prosecution as well. What a dangerous, foul precedent that was. All these latter people (apart from Hunter Biden) should have refused the pardon – let Trump prosecute them for doing their job (sometimes very badly, it doesn’t matter), but the rule of law, not presidential pardons, must obtain. What cowards, though! Would Navalny have accepted such a pardon? He did nothiung wrong and he would demand a public trial. Think about it – one brave Russian, several cowardly Americans who really had nothing to fear from the courts, and who could easily have afforded to put on a vigorous defense, which would have included a chance to show the public whether they were guilty of something or not.

Trump, of course, made matters worse by pardoning the January 6, 2021 Capitol rioters. Some likely were just foolish people caught up in the moment, but the evidence was overwhelming that the white power and neo-fascist actors had nothing less in mind than overturning the government, and Donald Trump was counting on them, and his former Vice-president, to help him get away with it. Former vice-president Mike Pence showed some integrity by refusing to go along with this little coup attempt. Can we hope that J.D. Vance, or Attorney General Pam Bondi, or this Hesgeth television dude would ever stand up to Trump? What happens if he tells the military brass to start arresting people? After all, Eisenhower sent armed troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to integrate the schools there. Of course, he was intent on enforcing a court order and upholding the Constitution, not violating them!

What does it mean, though, to pardon people for all future crimes? It is a license to break any law, commit any crime, and you know you won’t be prosecuted! Both Biden and Trump did this to us.

I read news about how Trump “ordered” this and that, as if that’s always a legitimate action. This or that government department must be closed down because Trump “ordered” it. People must be fired because Trump “ordered” it, not because a real study has been done to improve efficiency. He wants to privatize Social Security – only Wall Street investors want that because it will flood the markets with even more dollars chasing investments, inflating prices, but the big guys will all get out before the next crash, then they will pick up even more stocks at depressed prices. All recent presidents have gone too far with Executive Orders, completely abusing their original intent and past practice. But Trump has gone the furthest in a very short time (perhaps not counting Obama’s action to legalize immigrants who were brought here illegally as children, something he admitted he could not do in his first term, and not counting Biden’s stupendous student loan forgiveness expansion).

I no longer can tell myself that that perhaps Trump is just blowing off steam when he makes outrageous statements, or trying to scare people into action, to get them out of their comfort zones, which would have some value. I’ve read that he now bars the Associated Press because they refuse to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” which he unilaterally demanded. What he really wants is to call it is the Trump Sea. But banning the Associated Press, historically the largest collaboration of local and national news agencies in the country, is a direct assault on the Constitutional guarantee of a free press. Isn’t that what Putin or Xi or Kim Jong Um would do? Yes, “strong leaders.”