The Pre-2020 Election Zeitgeist

The Lion or The Lamb?

A Stark Choice for President

This appeared during the last week of October 2020 in various publications and websites.

President Donald J. Trump is annoying, abrasive, irritating and somewhat of a jerk, in other words he’s a typical brash, loud and pushy New Yorker of the kind that was prevalent through much of the 20^th Century, the kind of person who gave New York a bad name. The kind who made most Americans hate New York the way they do Frenchmen in Paris.

New York City was once rife with hungry “take no prisoners” shtarkers (big shots). They were endemic to the garment center, to finance (many are the wolves on Wall Street), to media, entertainment, fine dining, advertising, fashion, sports and real estate. New York didn’t become the biggest and richest city in the nation and one of the most important in the world because of milquetoast middle managers and bureaucrats. Skyscrapers soared in tandem with edifice complexes and outsized egos. You could see the hustle, bustle and jockeying 24/7 in real time. “The city that never sleeps” as Sinatra put it. And Donald Trump is the embodiment of that ethos, of that culture, of that milieu, it suffuses every cell of his DNA.

He has been grating as President these past three and a half years. He’s probably been grating his whole adult life. That’s the nature of entrepreneurs and most particularly of billionaires. They didn’t get to the top of the heap by playing patty-cake or being Mother Theresa. Business in New York and especially real estate development is a gritty, no holds barred hourly slugfest that doesn’t pity the weak, the meek or the failed. There are no trophies for coming in fifth place. It’s Darwinian to the extreme where only the strongest thrive and rise to ethereal heights. You either get stuff done or you’re road kill and it can happen in a New York minute.

Trump doesn’t know from niceties when he has a job to do or a deadline to meet. It’s all nonstop bare fisted brawl where often you get battered as badly as the guy you’re pummeling. Most Americans born after 1985 have no recollection of these guys but when I was a kid, teenager and young adult they were ubiquitous and if you went to work for some of them you needed to get tough fast and have a thick skin. Work was a four-letter word; you were expected to give 110 percent and fools were not suffered gladly if at all.

For all his gruff manner and bull in the china shop ethos, Trump has gotten a lot of stuff done:

The Economy

On the economic front Trump ignited the biggest boom in decades by lowering personal income taxes for most Americans, slashing corporate taxes and cutting reams of government red tape that impeded business from creating jobs, leading to the lowest unemployment rate since 1969, or, in other words, in most Americans’ lifetimes. More Blacks and Hispanics and women were employed than ever. The percentage of Americans in the workforce was at a big high and believe it or not, the wealth and income gap between rich and poor shrank significantly as those in the lower income brackets saw real wages and the value of their investments rise by several multiples while those at the top experienced little to no growth from 2016-2019. Manufacturing of real things returned to U.S. shores as factories reopened and capital investment grew. Under Trump, America has become energy independent for the first time in 50 years. The stock market hit all-time highs which has a direct impact on nearly all Americans through their pension funds, 401k’s or IRA’s. Residential real estate values had exponential growth. And he was the first President to stand-up to China’s unfair trade relationship with the US which included their wanton theft of American intellectual property. He also renegotiated NAFTA and signed a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico that protects American jobs.

Covid

Regarding the Covid Pandemic, despite some initial fumbling the Trump Administration solved the mask shortage, solved the PPE shortage, solved the ventilator shortage, opened military field hospitals in critically hit cities and states in record time. He also got “Operation Warp Speed” going which has fast-tracked both a vaccine for Covid and needed therapeutic treatments. By barring travel from China on January 31^st (much to the consternation of his critics) and then closing off Europe a few weeks later he probably saved hundreds of thousands if not nearly two million American lives. Original projections were for 2.2 million dead. The roughly 200,000 fatalities are a huge tragedy but without the steps taken by the Administration through May, the numbers would have certainly been far worse. Europe’s fatalities are comparable to those of the US and does anyone really believe only 3,300 people died from Covid in China? The CARES Act pumped $3 Trillion into the economy to keep America afloat. Because of the lockdown some 22 million jobs were lost almost overnight but nearly 12 million have come back in the past two months. Job growth will plateau until there is a vaccine or the disease withers away. The leisure, travel, entertainment, event and dining industries all have taken a horrible blow from lost jobs and these won’t return for a while. But the existential question is “who is best qualified to return us to prosperity and a booming economy?”

The Courts

On the judicial front, Trump has appointed nearly 200 Originalist/Constitutionalist federal judges along with two Supreme Court justices with a third likely on the way. Originalist judges interpret the constitution as the original framers of the constitution intended and do not create new laws and legislate from the bench, thereby upholding the legal traditions that bind our country and government together.

Foreign Policy

The Trump Administration has achieved historic breakthroughs in peace between Israel and other Arab nations for which he’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He also made good on his promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel’s capital. He also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights from which Syria used to bombard and terrorize Israeli civilians. He wiped out the ISIS “Caliphate,” and has put enormous pressure on the radical Iranian Ayatollahs to stem their nuclear and global terrorist ambitions. He has forced our NATO allies to pay their fair share of defense spending and he’s been disentangling us from never-ending intractable foreign wars, bringing our troops home. He managed to build or strengthen hundreds of miles of border walls and barriers and most significantly, convinced Mexico to post their own troops on the US-Mexican border to stop waves of illegal immigrants from flooding into our country. In a way, Mexico is paying for a human wall.

Veterans and Military Affairs

Trump managed to finally straighten out the disgracefully poor Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals and permit the VA to fire incompetent employees along with allowing veterans to access private healthcare so they don’t have to wait weeks or months for treatment. The military has been fully refunded and is being rebuilt to Reagan-era levels. Our soldiers have received successive pay raises. There are hundreds more accomplishments but space inhibits the ability to list them all.

Joe Biden

Joe Biden is a wonderfully avuncular and pleasant grandfatherly figure who would be soothing to the psyche for the year or two he’d probably last in office. Are you ready for President Kamala Harris? Biden is a lot easier on the ears than Trump but are we voting for “favorite grandpa,” a Homecoming King or student council president or for someone who will get the job done? Biden has promised to raise income taxes, business taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes and even create wealth taxes. He has adopted the Bernie Sanders “Green New Deal” which seeks to eliminate fossil fuels in 10 to 15 years and your cars along with it. He’s signed-on to the notion of effectively eliminating private health insurance and private health care for the 180 million Americans who now have it. He’s for defunding the military and he’d roll back Trump policies in the Middle East and China.

In a Biden Administration you’ll have a lot of members from the far left wing of the Democratic Party – people who have been pro-indefinite draconian lockdowns and who have been permitting and abetting the last six months of rioting in Democrat-run cities along with supporting the “defund the police” and other soft on crime policies that have been in vogue in certain trendy circles as of late. They are also for racial preferences, quotas and set-asides as opposed to equality of opportunity, equality before the law and advancement based on merit.

This is an existential choice between two dramatically different visions for our country. We have the lion on one hand and the lamb on the other. For a stronger and more prosperous America we need the lion, even though he roars.

The Streaming Zeitgeist

Late Summer Streaming Movies

Need to Kill Some Time? These Films Won’t Waste It

Appeared originally in August 2020

It’s the end of summer and in many parts of the country it’s as hot as blazes outside. Because of an abundance of caution (or an overabundance, depending on your perspective) there still isn’t a whole lot to do at night. You can get something to eat outdoors or have a barbeque or maybe take in a swim, but after a couple of hours we invariably have to head home. And home is where the big screen is.

There have been some advances in entertainment offerings on TV, most notably the return of professional sports but forgive me for saying this – sports without a “live studio audience” just lacks the intensity it used to, it feels like I’m watching a high school practice with just the coaches and a couple of parents. Not a lot of drama. The canned background “white noise” during the games can actually be annoying.

That leaves streaming movies and series to soak up the time. Here are some film recommendations to get you through the next few weeks:

Uncut Gems

★★★★

Adam Sandler and Julia Fox in “Uncut Gems”

Adam Sandler inhabits the body and soul of a heavily messed-up New York Jewish diamond merchant and compulsive sports gambler named Howard Ratner. There’s no part of his life that isn’t a rolling train wreck. He owes a fortune to his brother-in-law who happens to also be a loan shark. His marriage is cratering while he carries on an affair with one of his employees. He smuggles a giant gemstone from an Ethiopian mine into the US which he hopes will be the big ticket (once sold) that will solve all of his financial problems. He’s essentially playing roulette and putting all his chips on one number.

The pace is frantic, antic and manic all at the same time. Sandler is so believable and impressive in this role that he carries the film single-handedly, Sandler won Best Actor at the National Board of Review and the film won Best Screenplay and rated one of the Ten Best of 2019 from the National Board, also Best Director from the New York Film Critics Circle, all in January 2020. It didn’t rate with the Golden Globes or Academy Awards though. Be prepared for a whirlwind ride, you won’t want to pause this film because there is no natural stopping point from beginning to end. “Uncut Gems” also features Julia Fox, Indina Menzel, Eric Bagosian, Judd Hirsch and even basketball great Kevin Garnett playing himself. 

Other great seedy gambling flicks include Casino (★★★★★, 1995) starring Robert DiNiro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone and the late Don Rickles, directed by the incomparable Martin Scorsese, this is one of the 10 must-see films of the last 40 years. The Hustler (★★★★★, 1961) stars Paul Newman as a pool shark and George C. Scott as his sometime sponsor, manager and enabler along with Jackie Gleason in an outstanding performance as Minnesota Fats.

Downfall

★★★★

Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler

Dark, macabre and disturbing is the only way to describe this dramatization of the last two months of Berlin before it fell to the Russians in World War II. The action mainly takes place in the stiflingly claustrophobic Führerbunker, beneath the Reichs Chancellery. The movie is in German with English subtitles and its very total German-ness gives it serious verisimilitude. Shot on location in Berlin, Munich and St. Petersburg the cinematographers manage to realistically recreate a world gone mad and a city reduced to rubble.

Most of the story is seen through the eyes of Hitler’s secretary, the young and pretty Traudl Junge (her book “Until The Final Hour” is one of the bases of the screenplay). Junge embodies the banality of evil (the real Junge, as an old woman, apologizes in the film) as we see Germans enraptured, even at the end, by the diabolical madman who caused the deaths of probably 30 to 50 million people. Hitler is played chillingly by Bruno Ganz and Junge by Alexandra Maria Lara.

The contrast between the roles of Hitler’s young secretary and that of Winston Churchill, Elizabeth Layton (played by Lily James in 2017’s Darkest Hour, ★★★★★) is about as black and white as you can get. Both movies are set in bunkers in desperate times but we see that in Nazi Germany no one questioned the madness and no one opposed it and no one revolted against it, there being a complete absence of conscience beneath Berlin. The whole gang of Nazis are on hand, Goebbels, Speer, Himmler and Eva Braun played with magisterial nihilism by Juliane Köhler. The film was nominated for an Oscar in 2015 for Best Foreign Film. Granz won the London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor

Another great claustrophobic film in German about the German experience in World War II is the original Das Boot (“The Boat” ★★★★★, 1981), Wolfgang Petersen’s riveting drama about the crew of a U-Boat patrolling in the North Atlantic towards the end of the war. Petersen was nominated for Best Director in 1983’s Academy Awards.

John Wick 3

★★★★

Keanu Reeves as John Wick

The perennially and preternaturally young Keanu Reeves returns for the third installment in his “John Wick” action thriller series. In case you’ve missed this one and the prior two iterations (“John Wick,” ★★★★, 2014 and “John Wick, Chapter 2,” ★★★★, 2017) this is the story of a man who only wants to be left alone. Wick wants to retire from being the world’s foremost hitman but despite his protestations gets continually dragged back into the fray – principally to defend himself, his dog and his car from the depredations of nefarious bad guys populating an international syndicate of death for hire, a modern-day Murder Incorporated if you will, but one with much more sophistication, panache, designer clothes and its own code of honor. That Reeves is the good guy (even though he was an assassin himself) amidst all the psychotic evil is what gives the films something of a moral backbone.

If you’ve not seen Wick and Wick 2 it’s not a tragedy but to truly appreciate the thrust of Wick 3, you might want to catch Wick 2 beforehand because Wick 3 picks up minutes after the end of Wick 2. In a nutshell, there is a $14 million contract out on Reeves because in his quest for vengeance in Wick 2 he violated one of the cardinal rules of the death syndicate. This sets-up a worldwide competition among the very crème de la crème of murderers and assassins to collect this hefty bounty. The thing about John Wick is that he may get battered, he may get bruised, but he can’t be killed, probably because the franchise to far too lucrative.

In his quest for survival, Wick engages in some of the best choreographed cinematic martial arts violence ever filmed. He makes Bruce Lee seem like an amateur. It’s impossible to keep track of the body count but somehow the violence is integral, not gratuitous. Joining the cast of Wick 3 are Halle Berry, who proves she is still red hot at 54 and Laurence Fishburne who always lends gravitas to the improbable. Fishbourne is reunited with Reeves here. They worked together on The Matrix trilogy (★★★★★, 1999, 2003) and you won’t be disappointed by this reunion. Rounding out the cast are the luminescent Angelica Huston as a Russian Mafia matriarch and Ian McShane as the ever-so-dapper head of the New York branch the “High Table,” which runs international iniquity. Great sets, locations and cinematography as befits a big-budget action thriller. No awards here other than the raves demonstrated by the $326 million garnered at the box office.

Peppermint

★★★1/2

Jennifer Garner in “Peppermint”

If after John Wick you’ve not had enough of vengeance and martial arts, you may want to take a female turn on the genre. Jennifer Garner (who also played the Marvel superhero Electra ★★★★, 2005) is now 48 and clearly drinks from the same fountain of youth as Halle Berry. In “Peppermint,” Garner plays Riley North who awakens from a coma after witnessing the horrific murder of her husband and young daughter in a Los Angles gangland drive-by shooting. The justice system is owned by the Cartel so the killers go free. Garner goes underground for a few years and transforms herself from a housewife into a ruthless crusader for revenge, cutting a swath of blood through legions of miscreants along with the men who murdered her family. Wrongful corruption in the police and courts is rectified at Garner’s hands. This is a modern-day Death Wish (★★★★, 1974) from the female perspective. Garner is much better looking than the late Charles Bronson and possesses martial arts skills that Bronson could only dream of, but the theme is the same, murder avenged, apathetic or corrupt cops circumvented and justice done.

Garner carries this movie entirely. If you’re looking for standout performances from costars, you won’t find it here, but worth the quick 102 minutes. Premiered in 2018.

The California and Oregon Craziness

Howard Barbanel shares observations from the Wall Street Journal editorial page from August 31, 2020 about the new far-left curriculum being planned for public schools and the ongoing violence in Portland being blamed on President Trump.