2021 Underway

Here I am, refreshed with our pleasant summer, starting again another year. I hope I am entertaining, and that you all enjoyed your Christmas period.

In New Zealand, the New Year period tends to be when so many people are away on holiday, the reason being that if you are going away, you get more value for the leave you have to take from your job by adding in the statutory holidays. Accordingly, the news media tends to run on very reduced staff numbers, after all journalists have to have holidays too, not a lot happens locally, and often if something happens offshore it does not matter if it is ignored because it will usually be forgotten when life starts again later.

This year, not so. Two things have happened.  We have to let New Zealanders come home, where they go into managed isolation quarantine. While there is no community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 currently, the managed isolation places are getting almost 20 cases a day, including cases of the new virulent UK strain and the South African strain. These viruses certainly move fast, and it shows that people overseas are not really taking it seriously. So far, it is contained here, but I have this horrible feeling a breakout is almost inevitable. I hope that wherever you, my readers, are, you manage to keep virus-free.

However, the bigger news here was the remarkable scenes at the US Capitol. It seemed to me almost unbelievable that this was happening. Apparently there were many entries on Facebook and other social media sites effectively organizing this and one might have thought that someone like the NSA might have picked up these signs of trouble and arranged for better law enforcement.

In my opinion, this was not, as some seem to assert, a coup, an insurrection, or anything of the sort. It was a bunch of louts behaving really badly and the proper response is to properly enforce the law and prosecute said louts. Of course, the President’s twittering did not exactly help the situation. It is hard to see his strategy there, or even if he had one. Presumably he wanted to keep his political presence alive during the Biden years, to ensure that Biden had the sort of trouble he had, and since the Congress is lost to him, he had to find an alternative. What he chose, in my opinion, resulted in his shooting himself in the foot.

If we think a little more about strategy, what can the Republican Party do right now to get the best from this situation? The Democrats seem determined to make the most of this, and seemingly are determined to impeach Trump for a second time, and hope that enough Republicans will vote in favour in the Senate. Whether they will is debatable, because to do so would give the Democrats huge publicity. That still leaves what to do? As a writer, I have to formulate plots so I wrote the following last Sunday. As can be seen, the Republicans thought differently.

So, my suggested strategy starting last Monday: approach Trump and suggest he resign, thus giving Pence a few days as President. The advantages are:

(a)  For Trump, Pence will pardon him for whatever falls out from his Presidency. This starves the Democrats of political oxygen, Trump gets personal freedom and is able to stand in the primaries again in 2024 if he so wished. That should be enough to persuade Trump to comply. The alternative is the Republicans promise to convict him in the Senate, he will leave in disgrace and he will not run again. He hopefully would comply, but someone with congenital holes in feet may not. 

(b)  For Pence, be President, albeit for no more than a week, and maybe only a couple of days. He goes into history books as the shortest term President, but equally, perhaps the most productive per unit time.

(c)  For the party and for Pence: by getting Trump to resign and pardon him, it starves the Democrats of “political oxygen”. The statement made during the pardon is it is done because it is the only way to start healing the nation. Who can argue with that really? Many won’t like it, but so what? The alternative is continued bitter political fighting at the expense of the nation.

(d) For the Party and the Nation: Pence orders the military to assist with distribution and vaccination. There are apparently difficulties getting people vaccinated because there are not enough people able to do it and the vaccines are not always where they are needed. The military must have available logistics and health workers. This also starves Biden of his first “easy win”.

(e)  To harpoon the Democrats, pardon Assange from extradition. The liberal or progressive parts of the Democrats cannot object and makes the Republicans look good on freedom of speech, which is what they claim they want.Easy, isn’t it? Isn’t it??? My guess, at the time of writing, none of this will happen. More missed opportunities. And (added before posting) about the only thing I got right, I think, was that guess. What will happen now is anybody’s guess, and as you can see, anybody guesses better than me

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Election hangover

Recently, I finished reading the last of “Dictator”, the third of Robert Harris’ trilogy nominally about the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, but just as much about the collapse of the decaying Res Publica. The aim of Roman politicians was to gain power, or imperium. Few actually wanted to achieve anything, other than to put one over their “enemies” (any other Roman who was not helping them gain their power) or to gain the right to govern a province and get rich from the tithes they would impose. There were exceptions. Cato, and to a lesser extent, Cicero, wanted to maintain the “principles of the republic”, even if these were somewhat ill-defined and were bendable for convenience, while Gaius Julius Caesar genuinely wanted reforms, and was prepared to stamp down on the corrupt practices that he, too, had once engaged in.

In some ways, not a lot changes, although everything now is a lot milder. The vitriol slung between Trump and Clinton would be nothing for the times of the Res Publica. Trump said he would have Clinton investigated; Clodius was quite happy to organize a gang to beat a senator senseless. Even Pompey seemed to be almost afraid much of the time, but of course he obeyed the rules and disbanded his legions before returning to Rome. Caesar was not afraid, but then Caesar did not disband his legions, and he got assassinated.

I am always amused at the straw-clutching assertions made by the losing side. Thus we hear that Clinton won the popular vote. She did but that is irrelevant. About half the eligible population did not vote, and there are at least two possible reasons why not. One is, lack of interest. Another is that for many there is the feeling that if you are in a state that has no chance of changing, and you are in the minority, there is no chance your vote will matter, so why bother?.

Another thing that amuses me is the hand-wringing that went on after Trump won. Horrors! The sky was falling! If they were that concerned, why were they not out campaigning for Clinton? My personal view is that there were so many wild statements flung around during campaigning that we could conclude that such statements are necessary to win the election. If so, there could be a serious withdrawal from most of such statements by the winner.

So, is the sky falling? Is Trump going to be a total disaster, as some of the more noisy ones seem to assert? He won by making the most outrageous statements, but arguably that was what he had to do to win with the current voters. If that is true, then guess were the fault lies. But equally, if he is a man prepared to do whatever is required to achieve a goal, then he may very well retract from many of these positions when the goal is to be an effective president. I suppose we have to wait and see how much power Trump will actually have, but the American constitution is specifically designed to limit the power of any president. The president has to do deals with Congress, and even if Congress is majority Republican in both houses, during the election campaign it was clear that not all Republicans are going to back Trump no matter what. Further, Trump seems to be showing signs of dropping his most outrageous assertions.

I think it is far too early to guess what the Trump presidency will be like. My guess is the fight against global warming has not been done favours, although the US has signed the Paris agreement, and I doubt that will be revoked. Trump’s tax plan is similar to what Paul Ryan wants, so that may well get through. International trade may well suffer, and the US could hurt a country like New Zealand. However, whatever happens, the sky will not fall.

That raises the question, what would it take to bring America to its knees? Strictly speaking, it should be impossible, but there is one way: the bulk of the population cooperates in bringing it down. After all, that was why Rome fell. The average Roman decided that the Roman governance was worse than whatever the uncivilized masses could do, at least once the initial rape and pillage was over. So could anything like that happen now, in America? Of course not. However, if you want to have nightmares over something like that, on Dec 2 my ebook ‘Bot War is available, and if nothing else, it might show you how impossible it is. In this story, the general problem is not the terrorists and their robotic war machines, but rather the general population have no faith in their government. Is that lack of faith justified?