To be successful, politicians have to start with a base, a group of like-minded individuals that will be there for you through thick and thin. And then you have to grow that base – or at the very least – present a plausible alternative to your opponent. Donald Trump, the wealthy real estate developer had, and still has, a very unlikely base: poor to lower-middle-class whites and others who feel unrepresented in politics. And that includes over 9 million voters who had checked the box next to Barack Obama’s name just four years earlier.

It seems so improbable. A more astute observer than I totally understands. When he last hosted Saturday Night Live, Dave Chappelle described the situation thusly:

A lot of you don’t understand why Trump was so popular. But I get it, ’cause I hear it every day. He’s very loved.

And the reason he’s loved is because people in Ohio have never seen somebody like him. He’s what I call an honest liar. I’m not joking right now. He’s an honest liar.

That first debate — That first debate, I’d never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen a white male billionaire screaming at the top of his lungs. “This whole system is rigged!” he said. And across the stage was a white woman, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama sitting over there looking at him like, “No, it’s not.”

I said, “Now, wait a minute, bro. It’s what he said.”

And the moderator said, “Well, Mr. Trump, if, in fact, the system is rigged, as you suggest, what would be your evidence?” Remember what he said, bro? He said, “I know the system is rigged… because I use it.”

I said, “G-d damn!”

No one had ever heard someone say something that true. And then Hillary Clinton tried to punch him in the taxes. She said, “This man doesn’t pay his taxes.” He shot right back, “That makes me smart.”

And then he said, “If you want me to pay my taxes, then change the tax code, but I know you won’t because your friends and your donors enjoy the same tax breaks that I do.”

And with that, my friends, a star was born. No one had ever seen anything like that. No one had ever seen somebody come from inside of that house outside and tell all the commoners, “We’re doing everything that you think we are doing inside of that house.”

Then he just went right back in the house and started playing the game again.

That’s how Donald Trump created his base. Yeah, he’s a liar. But he’s our liar and not your liar. It seems to be a peculiar way to launch your way to the Oval Office, but it worked. Joe Biden, too, has lied his way to the Oval Office. But in a different way. He is what Chappelle would call the “dishonest liar.”

So we are back to where we were in numerous other election cycles as the party out of power. There will be a crowded field again. But Trump comes in with a base. Ron DeSantis, who is undeclared, is building a base by governing. Beyond those two, who else has a constituency? What’s their base?

Larry Hogan? His selling point is “bipartisan pragmatist.” You can probably sell out the local Olive Garden with that one. Mike Pompeo? Is there a big call for CIA Directors to run? And this morning, CBS News reported that John Bolton is “exploring” his 2024 options. Who is his natural constituency? Who else brings a base big enough to seriously contend?

The term “asymmetrical warfare” is used to describe a situation where the military capabilities and options of the two sides are wildly different.  While the underpowered side would normally be squashed, it could also be super creative and exploit the “Achilles Heel” of the more powerful side.

In Star Wars, the Rebel Alliance took down The Empire. I always dismissed that plot because the Rebel Alliance was just so pathetic.  But then again, we were hit with the 9/11 attacks.

Guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers) has a second career. He studied missile defense on his own, published some original ideas, and has since become a consultant to the US military.  And one of the things he specializes in is creative out-of-the-box thinking applied to asymmetrical warfare.  Musicians are adept at improvisation and creativity, so there is a connection here.

This talk of his is wonderful (starts at 08:00):

Traditional war is difficult and messy. You have to pick some major cities to attack, transport an army over, set up bombing runs, there are complicated logistics involving personel, equipment, provisions, medical, expenses, and so forth. And assembling all that surely won’t go unnoticed. And the battle might not be successful. And lives will be lost. And even if it is successful, the other side will likely retaliate. Then things can get really bad.

So if you really wanted to successfully attack a nation, it would make sense to consider something more subtle.  Asymmetrical warfare strategies are starting to make a lot of sense.

First off, you’d want to do as much of it as silently as possible.  Having the preparation go undetected would certainly be a huge advantage. Catch ’em off guard. But if the actual attack could be undetected, then they won’t know what is going on.  And retaliation would be difficult because they won’t know who did it.

Sort of like a thief stealing one item each day from a victim’s home, it would take them a while to even notice that they’d been robbed.

So the goal might be to attack the nation in such a way that they wouldn’t notice, but it would leave the nation roughly as crippled as if they had lost a war.

One way would be bribe government officials to make really bad decisions.

Here’s how that might work:

1. Take a problem and hype it as being existentially important.  Examples might include global warming, pollution, poverty, inequality, health care costs, a bad economy, a variation of the flu, bad K-12 education, expensive college costs, the cost of homes, racism, whatever.
2. Write legislation to fund a massive project to address this problem. It’s important that it costs a lot, as draining the treasury is a goal.
3. Bribe people to pass this legislation. Cash, laundered cash, crazy speaking fees, high-paying no-show consulting jobs for family members, non-profit deals, book advance, real estate transactions, “hookers & blow”, whatever.
4. In practice, the project’s implementation doesn’t really address the problem.  It actually makes it worse.  And has additional negative side effects.  Because the real goal is to make the situation worse.
5. Repeat.

Similarly:

• You can raise crime to an intolerable level by funding local district attorneys to not arrest criminals.
• You can take control over the voting machine business, and select the outcome of elections.
• You can create massive public unrest with campaigns to actively divide people by race, by ethnicity, by sex, by wealth, by political position, by anything.
• You can get a lot of help on this from the target nation itself. One political party might be much more amenable to this sort of thing than another, and would be happy to assist.
• And academics will pitch in. Recall the infamous Cloward-Piven Strategy.

So yeah, I believe it’s entirely possible to destroy a nation from within with a form of asymmetric warfare where you just bribe specific government positions to make terrible decisions.

Even in children with stable backgrounds, the question of “who am I?” is important. In all cases, it is quite common for people to self-limit: instead of only asking, “what can I be?” they also seek to eliminate options by saying, “I am not like those people.” People who live like this tend to limit their social circles. They get tattoos to literally imprint their identities on themselves. They try very hard to belong to something. Lacking an identity is deeply frightening.

The challenges that every person has in terms of understanding identity are magnified for adopted children. The question of identity can easily haunt and emotionally scar a child who knows they were given up, and then adopted. Even if your bio-Mom felt she had no choice, and even if your adopto-Mom turns out to be the greatest mother in the world … any child who comes out of those circumstances quite rightly has open questions and issues.

This is one way to look at the early life of Moses. It would be counter-textual to make Moses into some kind of Baby Jesus, perfect through his entire life. Instead, the text tells us that Moses was abandoned by his mother:

When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.

Moses was then adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh. Though he then returned to his bio-mom to be nursed. Once weaned, he was sent back to live in the royal house, probably before the age of sustained memory (arguably, given up by his mother twice). He was given the name “Moses” by his adopting mother, and he (and everyone else, including G-d) used that name. We learn nothing more of his bio-parents: it seems possible and even likely that Moses had no memories of his father or his bio-mother. There is also no mention of an adoptive father or male role model until many years later, after the Exodus (when Jethro/Yisro features). Moses is raised by the classic single mother, with the added twist that he knew he was adopted after his bio-mom, with regrets, abandoned him by leaving him in a little boat floating in the waters of the Nile.

No wonder Moses was troubled. No wonder, indeed, that when he was older, he went out to see the people he had been born into. He was trying not only to learn about the Hebrews from which he came: Moses was trying to learn about himself. And it was also no wonder that Moses, even with the best intentions in the world, and even though it may well have been justified, killed a man. Men who are not raised by fathers are more prone to violence.

Moses then left Egypt, afraid of the consequences of his actions. He fled to a foreign country, Midian, and married a woman from there: She was from an entirely different people, culture, and religion. Moses is betwixt and between three different and wholly incompatible identities. In his own words, Moses is “a stranger in a strange land.”

Seeing Moses in this light, many things come together to make sense. Moses’ question to G-d at the burning bush is, after all, “Who am I?” He genuinely wants to know, because he is not sure. Which helps explain why G-d has to spend quite a lot of effort trying to convince Moses to step up to the challenge.

We are not judging Moses here – we are trying to understand him! Imagine what an incredible challenge it must be for anyone to go from “zero to hero.” This redemptive or growth journey is indeed at the core of many great stories throughout history, both factual and fictional. It is inspiring to consider how people overcome their upbringing, the challenges they face when they confront not only external obstacles, but also the internal ones. The baggage that comes from childhood, from the knowledge that you were abandoned at birth. Moses’ story is probably the single greatest of all these journeys.  But despite G-d’s best efforts, Moses’ transformation to confident leader did not happen at the burning bush.

Although Moses eventually is persuaded to go and talk to Pharaoh and the Jewish people, that mission fails. The people don’t pay him any attention.  As a result, Moses’ self-image suffers:

But Moses appealed to G-d saying, “The Israelites would not listen to me; how then should Pharaoh heed me, me—who has a speech impediment!” [And again, later on] Moses appealed to G-d saying, “See, I have a speech impediment, how then should Pharaoh heed me!”

There is a crazy thing about this “speech impediment”: nobody else in the text ever has trouble understanding Moses. Nobody else even mentions this “impediment.” This speech impediment was Moses’ excuse for not doing what G-d commanded, to retain some shred of who he had been before the burning bush had upended his life. It seems to be a way for Moses to retain something of himself, self-limiting in order to cling to the identity he had created.  Perhaps Moses was afraid he would lose himself if he lost the impediment. Not so different in principle from people who identify with their tattoos and clothing styles and other tribal affiliations.

Why do I think the impediment is in Moses’ mind? Because it seemingly vanishes not long after! Despite not having any corrective surgery or physical therapy, Moses goes from being unable to talk to Pharaoh, to confronting him and speaking to him directly! And from that point on, Moses talks directly, without relying on his brother to be his mouthpiece. The “impediment” is never mentioned again.

How does he lose the impediment? What changes?

If we accept the story as the text tells us, Moses was abandoned on the banks of the Nile. The word in the Torah for “bank” is safah. It is the same word used in the Torah for “lips.” And it is the same word that Moses uses to describe his impediment: a blockage of the safah, his lips. So Moses claims to have a blockage that is linguistically connected to the banks of the Nile where Moses had been left in a basket by his mother. There is a scar.

Indeed, the speech impediment may not have been linguistic at all!  Moses may be saying that he has a problem interfacing with other people (which was clearly demonstrated when Moses interacted with Hebrew slaves and Egyptians before Moses fled Egypt). If he has a problem working with other people, it explains why he doubts his ability to convince either the people or Pharaoh of the merits of his argument. But the specific word used is connected back to his abandonment and adoption, suggesting that everything connects back to the place where it happened: the banks of the Nile. Moses sees his limitations as stemming from his past.

Moses’ impediment connects to that event, and that location. He is abandoned there, and he is saved there. Moses neither wants to relive the experience of being abandoned, nor show ingratitude to the woman who saved him there. He mentally creates an impediment where safah, interfacing, is concerned.

The word for “impediment” is orloh, which also means “foreskin,” something we remove in part because it gets in the way of a complete relationship.  (The word also refers to a blockage of the spiritual heart, as well as fruit from a new tree that is blocked from us; developing the relationship must wait for the blockage to be removed.)

What if the speech impediment that only Moses was aware of, was instead a psychological blockage stemming from his past? The way in which the blockage is removed suggests this is reasonable. G-d tells Moses:

Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is coming out to the water, and station yourself before him at the bank (safah) of the Nile, taking with you the rod that turned into a snake.

Moses goes back to the place where he had been abandoned. And there, in that place, he finds himself in precisely the place where he had first been lost. He goes back to his roots, and gets a do-over. He deals with his trauma by confronting it and putting it behind him.

The mention of the rod that transformed into a snake is no coincidence, either: the first snake led to transformative knowledge. That snake led Adam and Eve toward awareness of good and evil, of the self-awareness that they were naked: the snake helped them see who they really were.

If so, then the presence of the snake did for Moses precisely what it did for Eve: the snake delivers transformative knowledge that changes the affected person forever more. The “old” Moses is gone, just like the pre-fruit Eve is gone.

Moses combines the elements of the banks, the savah, with the snake. And he seems to entirely shed the speech impediment! He grows – Moses now knows who he is! He can do the job G-d has called him to do, without an intermediary, without any more blockages.

[an @iwe, @eliyahumasinter, @kidcoder, @blessedblacksmith and @susanquinn work!]

P.S. Note that the banks, the safah, are also where Pharaoh dreams of the invading cows (representing the Hebrews. To interpret those dreams, Pharaoh needs someone who can “cross over” – Joseph the ivri. ) The safah are also the place of Moses’ re-birth, and subsequently where the bodies of the dead Egyptians are found after the sea returns.  There is deep symbolism for both Jews and Egyptians in the safah, in the physical and spiritual borders of their respective lands and societies. For Jews, safah more often refers to lips – where words and ideas issue from a person. The Egyptians, a material and natural people, are locked into their own physical borders.

P.P.S. Moses is not in a hurry to remove orloh, impediments, in general. He declines to circumcise his own son, and he does not command the people to circumcise while in the wilderness. Perhaps, at some level, he feels that the impediments that restrict full relationships have some value. After all, people tend to define themselves as much as what they cannot do as they define themselves by what they can. In Moses’ case, the impediment, the orloh, for his lips, his safah, was a chapter in his psychological and spiritual growth. Perhaps he does not want to force others to undergo the radical change that he himself initially resisted before G-d compelled him.

becalmed, adjective

1. (of a sailing ship) unable to move due to lack of wind
2. rendered motionless for lack of wind

If the wind stops blowing, your ship stops moving. So do windmills. England, formerly a seagoing nation, once understood this.

Via Powerline, I see this excellent article in The Telegraph. The wind stopped blowing, so the windmills sit becalmed. Hence, the government will pay those who turn off their appliances. The term becalmed is terribly old-fashioned, so they came up with a new one: Demand Flexibility Service.

The boffins calculated how much windmill capacity was needed to run the country, and then built it. This freed them up to close fossil fuel and nuclear plants. But…

Britain already has enough installed wind and solar capacity – 38 gigawatts of it – to theoretically meet 100 per cent of average electricity demand. On a good day, such as we had a fortnight ago, solar and wind generate more than 50 per cent of our energy needs. But this morning at 10 am it was down to 19 per cent, and at times in December it fell to less than two per cent. If you are going to try to build a grid based on wind and solar, and try to manage demand by paying people to switch their appliances off, you are going to have to chuck such enormous quantities of money at people that they are prepared to spend days on end shivering in the dark.

I think I’ve got this right; when the wind doesn’t blow, they can burn tax money instead.

Bill O’Reilly’s Message of the Day includes the following:

58 percent of Democrats would very much like Joe Biden to be president through 2028…

[T]hey approve of the open southern border, a record amount of narcotics being smuggled through that border, food prices up ten percent on Biden’s watch, the embarrassing exit from Afghanistan, a man who has “no regrets” that he stashed classified documents in his garage, and on and on…

[M]illions of Americans … approve of chaos and failure.  They embrace the political abyss, the art of presidential apathy.

In typical O’Reilly fashion, he has picked a simple example to stand in for a larger principle. “Open southern border” is a stand-in for no longer valuing national sovereignty. “Record narcotics” is a stand-in for the vulnerability of American residents (much less citizens) to crime and deprivation. “Food prices” is a stand-in for broad-spectrum inflation with its roots in domestic energy strangulation and other “green” policies. “Embarrassing exit from Afghanistan” is a stand-in for the broader negligence with our military and national security policies — somewhat idiosyncratically picking what we will fight for and what we will not, how we indoctrinate our military members, and even the capabilities of those we rely upon for our national defense. “Stash[ing] classified documents in his garage” is a stand-in for an attitude toward governance that is imperial and entitled and entirely dismissive of constitutional control.

If most Democrats want this, how can we coexist?

Only someone with self-respect is capable of respecting someone else. Likewise, only someone who understands and accepts that they are a flawed person can tolerate the flaws of others. And only someone who has felt selfless love from someone else is capable of extending such love to others. It’s easy to understand why parents have always tried to keep their kids in sports and other competitive environments (self-respect), church (accepting of our flaws), and extended family (love). The destruction of our traditional society has isolated kids from all those things, with predictably catastrophic results.

But the modern left’s bizarre combination of nihilism, narcissism, narrow-mindedness, apathy, and anger has led to profound changes in interpersonal relationships over the past decade or so. Why does someone so nihilistic, who thinks that nothing really matters – why does that person care so much about which lightbulbs I use? Why do narcissists, who care only about themselves, care about my opinions about homosexual wedding cakes? Why does a narrow-minded middle-aged adolescent care about my opinions about COVID vaccines or recycled plastic? How does anyone as apathetic as a narcissistic nihilist get so angry about anything I do?

I can understand that some people, having grown up without the nurturing of family, church, and other stabilizing influences, have moved from anxiety to pessimism to nihilism. Those brought up with no faith in anything tend to have no faith in anything. Regrettable for the individual and possibly catastrophic for society at large, but understandable. But why are such people tyrants? If they think that nothing really matters, why do they care so much about my opinions and my choices?

Due to the heroic efforts of my parents and others, I understand self-respect and respect for others, I understand my flaws and the flaws of others, and I understand love. So I’m a reasonably stable, self-sufficient adult.

And I don’t care what narcissistic nihilists do.

Why do they care what I do?

Nihilists think that nothing really matters. I disagree – I think that a lot of things matter a great deal. So why am I less interested in the behavior of others than the nihilists?

How does nihilism lead to tyranny?

Gerard Vanderleun has entered hospice.

Before Ricochet, there was American Digest for me. I haven’t kept up with him, but Gerard’s recounting of his experience of 9/11 is some of the most powerful writing I’ve ever read. He’s such a talent. . . and a blessing.

Godspeed, Gerard. Our loss is heaven’s gain.

So now Mike Pence has come forward and confessed to having classified documents in his home and has turned them over to the DoJ.  The political class is a veritable clown car full of incompetents.  As a reminder, presidents have the power to declassify but vice presidents do not. This is an important distinction between Trump’s (probably) faux jeopardy and the jeopardy of others.

Regular people go to no-kidding jail for what Biden and Pence have done.

Trump has, yet again, proven to be an exploding cigar in the faces of the Wile E. Coyotes of the Department of Justice.  In their Ahab-like obsession to harpoon the great orange whale, they have repeatedly made themselves ridiculous.

For several years in the early 2000s, I held a top-secret security clearance. I went through the security equivalent of a proctology exam, culminating with the FBI interviewing my neighbors and acquaintances.

One of the things you are thoroughly indoctrinated with, when your clearance is granted, is the understanding that classified documents are legally radioactive. Don’t look at them unless you absolutely have to. Don’t leave them in unprotected or unauthorized locations. And if you do, you and everyone in your entire social network will be thrown in jail. (Ok, that last part about your social network I sort of made up.)

The now repeated and cavalier mishandling of classified documents by politicians just goes to show what complete knuckleheads they are, at least in Pence’s case.  The repeated instances we know of with Biden suggest something rather more sinister.

To borrow from Admiral Forrestal’s famous observation, Biden’s consistent mistreatment of documents suggests something sinister in addition to his long-standing and thoroughgoing stupidity.