James M. Redwine

China

TikTok

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Congress and President Biden have decided to save America from the disclosure of state secrets by the Kardashian wannabees of our society. Peg and I do not do TikTok but occasionally some marginally functioning teenager will create a TikTok post that is so lacking in taste and talent that the main stream media airs it as a parody. Those are the only TikToks I have seen; that’s plenty.

Physically unattractive people gyrating to two-beat music while wearing too small bikinis is not my choice of leisure listening and viewing. Fortunately, the shameless exhibitionists who are totally lacking in true self-images almost never say anything. So, at least, we only are assaulted by their physical repugnance.

Why we are paying our leaders to spend countless hours on the foibles of misguided or unguided youths while Congress is profligately spending 100 billion dollars per year arming every country from Ukraine to Israel is a mystery to me. Perhaps they should concentrate on such issues as war and the environment or even why our banks are failing and why inflation is wreaking havoc on our 401(k)s. Regardless, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, is going before Congress’ House Energy and Commerce Committee this month to explain the First Amendment to people who should already know it.

When our Constitution was adopted the very First Amendment provided:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The great English legal philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), helped lead the Enlightenment. The American legal philosopher, James Madison (1751-1836), owed so much to Locke in Madison’s drafting of our Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. Both Locke and Madison strongly believed Freedom of Speech was essential to preserving all other freedoms.

It is ironic that our leaders of today cite fear of Russia and China as they call for restrictions on free speech. We have long rightfully complained that China and Russia severely restrict their citizens’ right to freely express themselves. Now we want to make federal law based on that same fear of American citizens that the Chinese and Russians enforce as to such patriots as Alexei Navalny. At least, Navalny actually has something to say that Putin should fear, that is the truth. TikTokers pretty much simply wish to share their irrelevant and boorish behaviors.

My guess is our leaders are as clueless about the workings of TikTok as I am and that they are simply knee-jerking to baseless fears of the very people who put them in office. What about such public policy as the 1966 Freedom of Information Act that was enacted to guarantee the people could monitor their government? Then there is the 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act that allows taxpayers to track government spending. Have our current leaders decided too much information in the hands of Americans is dangerous, at least if that information can be accessed by foreign governments, as they can easily do with a simple request for data?

Of course, Congress and the President say they fear China and Russia and other countries will mine the internet data and use it against us. But every credit card transaction, every online post such as filing a tax return, every cell phone use is already “mineable.”  Any hostile foreign country can already legally obtain more information than they would ever need via our own legal system. I ask you, Gentle Reader, is there anything on TikTok that could be used to start a lawnmower much less build a nuclear weapon?

I would like for our leaders to revisit Joseph Goebbels who was evil but prescient when he said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” In other words, our government is making its own reality and using that as the basis to restrict our rights under the First Amendment.

Another author that should be considered is Franz Kafka whose hero, Joseph K in The Trial, pointed out that the enacted laws made it impossible for anyone to rely on what the law truly is. This is much like George Orwell’s “Newspeak” in 1984 where the only true purpose of governmental language was to control the populace.

In other words, instead of taking Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as our free speech guides, perhaps we should look to our Constitution and our history and rationally analyze TikTok and its mainly pathetic users. I point out that just last year (2022) the European Union, which we look upon favorably, passed the Data Act (Digital Accountability and Transparency Act) that was designed to standardize international contracting and commerce by standardizing digital and internet language. Should we not also want to clarify by expanding instead of restricting internet usage even if the usage may be frivolous?

I call upon Congress and the President to not put the means as Kafka might say, “to exercise discretionary moral judgment” by the lone U.S. Secretary of Commerce to determine “freedom of speech” when it comes to foreign technologies and companies. That is how the proposed anti-TikTok law is structured. Instead, let’s have faith in ourselves and also recognize the banality and futility of trying to draft laws that defy human nature and common sense and by the way, are most likely unconstitutional and unenforceable.

Amazon, The New Tower of Babel

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In Genesis, Chapter 11 God observed the tower that King Nimrod and his Babylonian people had built to reach heaven and the gods and said, “Behold the people is one and they have one language … now nothing will be constrained from them.”

So the gods destroyed the tower, convoluted the one language into many and stopped human progress toward godly status. The Tower of Babel was the ultimate example of the axiom, “Pride goeth before a fall.” Now I do not understand why God would not want people to reach for the heavens, but He certainly devised the perfect way to stop us. Of course, in Exodus Chapters 20 and 34, He warns us He is a jealous being and in Isaiah Chapter 55 He tells us not to try to figure Him out as His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Just a few frustrating moments of trying to understand what the jangling television commercials are saying or an attempt to make sense out of the song lyrics mumbled and slurred into multi-million dollar sound systems designed to make sounds intelligible, will remove any doubt that our contemporary cacophony of colliding incoherent babel surpasses all understanding. Human progress has been hoisted on the effete petard of the universal response to all attempts to communicate, “Huh?”

It is as if the gods have become overly concerned about humanity’s movement back to a universal language, Amazonia perhaps, and have come down to earth to stop us from “all just getting along” by shopping over the Internet. After all, if we can communicate from sea to shining sea via a few simple electronic clicks, there is much less likelihood of a major miscommunication and ergo a misunderstanding that might escalate to conflict. Heck, we might even learn to work together on all sorts of projects, world famine, global warming, the World Cup, who knows what heights we could reach?

Well, if Jeff Bezos is the new King Nimrod and if Jeff really does simply work full-time giving his billions made from Amazon away to charity, I can foresee the Old Testament gods getting concerned. And one way to staunch human progress is to release upon the world Satans of the communications world, you know, movies, cable tv, commercials and what passes for contemporary music.

The goal of the gods might be to attack human progress by having leaders of competing countries such as China and the US of A rely upon translations of news broadcasts in which snippets of the highly paid but incomprehensible speakers instead of enunciating important concepts, peaceful coexistence for example, mumble a leader’s language so that the words come out as threats of nuclear war.

Now I realize this whole column may be based on a false premise of my being personally challenged. Maybe you, Gentle Reader, have no difficulty making sense out of what is muttered during TV, radio, movies, plays, concerts, sporting events, and even sermons. If my failings are simply my personal problem, good, and amen. However, if the whole world is being prevented from understanding what the heck is truly being said and meant, I suggest this new Tower of Babel may soon come tumbling down.

On the other hand, there is a cure to this polemic pandemic, could everyone please slow down and speak up?

Shanghaied

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On February 04, 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin, on an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping, attended the China Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. Twenty days later Russia invaded Ukraine. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, in response to an invitation, visited Taiwan over China’s objections on August 2, 2022 and China immediately responded with massive military maneuvers around Taiwan.

Russia has now been at war with Ukraine for over six months. Ukraine has been supplied with many billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware by America before and during the war. Taiwan has recently received a pledge of over one billion dollars’ worth of military aid from the U.S. The U.S. has long supported Taiwan’s independence from China which claims Taiwan as part of China.

Russia and China share some common borders on the eastern and western edges of both countries and share one main nemesis, America. On September 15 and 16, 2022 Xi and Putin will meet face to face at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in the city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The United States is not invited.

It is possible Russia and China just want to confer on the relative merits of their national ballet companies and the ten billion cubic meters of national gas Putin promised to Xi in their February meeting. Or perhaps Putin and Xi want to compare notes on how each can continue in power beyond the traditional terms of prior Chinese and Russian presidents.

On the other hand, I suggest the two leaders may be getting together to discuss their largest common problem, us. Not much information was released from their conference in Beijing in February and almost no advanced agenda has been published for their Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit. My suspicion is the name “Shanghai” was not chosen idly. It may be that China is reminding the United States of the practice of tricking or forcing sailors to serve on merchant ships sailing to Shanghai in the 1800’s as was often done by American, British and French merchants. Perhaps it is meant as an otherwise inscrutable warning to America to butt out of Ukraine and Taiwan.

As for me, I think Pelosi or anyone else ought to have the right to visit Taiwan and, I think, Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be respected. Of course, I find it difficult to analyze the motivations of China, Russia or even my own country when it comes to engagement in foreign wars unless one is attacked. It seems to me our Constitution’s provision for military defense, not offense, makes sense. But then I am not in charge of our foreign policy. If I had been, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan might have unfolded differently and maybe Ukraine and Taiwan too. Those are matters our elected leaders are much more informed upon, I hope.

D-Day

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“Throughout the 200-year history of the United States the American nation has been at war.” That was how author William Koenig led into his 1980 book, Americans at War. Although ostensibly a study of American warfare from about 1775 at Lexington and Concord to 1975, the end of the Viet Nam War, Koenig actually starts with the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 and Native Americans meeting the ship. Had he waited until today to publish he could have included another fifty years of Americans at war, right up to Ukraine.

In general, we Americans view our involvement in foreign wars, that is, non-Native American warfare, as justified by the belligerence of others who have forced us reluctantly into “making the world safe for democracy.” The beginning of our provision of armaments, intelligence and training to Ukraine dates back to soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “breakup” of the Soviet Union. The current U.S. commitment of over 50 billion dollars is only a fraction of our huge military and economic support for Ukraine over many years. Russia has often taken note.

George Soros, the Hungarian born American billionaire, stated on May 24, 2022 that the Russia-Ukraine war may be the start of World War III and result in the end of human civilization. Such doomsday statements are not a new phenomenon. Ever since the days of The Flood people have warned that human behavior, usually by someone other than the Jeremiad of the moment, was going to lead to the end of the world. They mean the end of homo sapiens’ short 200,000-year reign on our 4.5-billion-year-old planet. Earth will survive, but without us.

I have no estimate how many predictions of mankind’s demise have been made from the time of our common really great-grandmother, Lucy, in Africa until 1945. Until America came up with and used the atom bomb, the philosophers who had previously cried wolf were doing just that. However, now with numerous countries possessing nuclear weapons and itching to use them, we may have finally made honest men out of Noah and all the other survivalists. I am not going to address climate change and pollution as doomsday machines as I only have about three pages of print available. I will stick with nuclear war in this column.

With nuclear powers, such as Russia, North Korea, China, America and Israel all claiming they fear for their survival, I am reminded of my onetime acquaintance who told me in 1973 that if Egypt were about to destroy Israel that Israel would be justified in destroying the whole world to avenge itself. Fortunately, he was not an Israeli and Egypt stood down. I do wonder if Putin might feel so threatened he would believe Russia would be justified in starting the nuclear daisy chain.

These thoughts of World War III came scrambling into my brain when I thought about June 06, 1944 and D-Day. Americans and many others thought the World War of 1914-1918 with its inane carnage, over no one knew what, was going to end world-wide war. Then the courage and sacrifice of 150,000 American soldiers on D-Day was touted as the beginning of the end of totalitarian regimes. Later we thought we had learned something from Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, George Soros, hardly a war monger, fears we may be at the beginning of WWIII raging in Ukraine.

As for me, I will place my confidence in that part of human nature that has pulled us back from self-immolation many times. History leads me to have faith we will not self-fulfill such a dire prophecy. Of course, if I am right everyone will be around to say so, and if I am wrong, what difference will it make?

President Wilson Was Right

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President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points set forth a vision of a WWI peace treaty based not on total victory for any one country but a permanent peace for all countries founded on generous terms of self-determination and economic recovery. Germany sued for peace thinking it would be treated fairly, but mainly France and Great Britain joined by several other countries demanded Draconian subjugation of Germany including ruinous reparations. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was a testament to vengeance, not peace. It also led directly to WWII.

If there is no war like a civil war for hatred and carnage, there is no dispute like a conflict between neighbors for animosity. Ukraine and Russia have had a common but transitioning border for many years. Millions of people in both countries can speak both Ukrainian and Russian. The two cultures are deeply intertwined even though there have been several border conflicts between the countries. Much as next door neighbors may fall out over property line disagreements countries with a common border may fall victim to the old axiom, “Good fences make good neighbors.” In like manner, when there is a breach in the “fence”, repairing good relations may require a generosity of spirit on both sides and perhaps on the part of third parties seeking to become involved.

My good friend, Judge D. Neil Harris of Mississippi, serves on the faculty of the National Judicial College. He teaches other judges about courthouse security. Judge Harris has found that the type of court cases that are most likely to result in outbreaks of courtroom violence are property line disputes. He advises judges to be particularly alert when disputes between neighbors must be resolved in court. There is something visceral about such personal matters that makes forgiveness more difficult. As the world found to its chagrin after Versailles and WWI, even when wise people know that “Blessed are the peacemakers”, stiff necks are often the approach when neighbors must negotiate.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has been negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin for two years and is eager to negotiate a cessation of the current hostilities if Putin agrees. The rest of the world should allow Ukraine and Russia autonomy for their efforts to achieve a permanent peace. Such countries as the United States, Poland, China or Belarus may confuse their own agendas with those of Ukraine and Russia and, just as at Versailles in 1919, peace may be only temporary when the neighbors make up under false pretenses or when pressured to do so by outside forces. Perhaps the rest of the world should bite its collective tongues as Ukraine and Russia, hopefully, apply Wilson’s Fourteen Point type wisdom that was so tragically ignored at the catastrophic ending of WWI.

Bowled Over

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Much as the Summer Solstice ushers in the ennui of torturously less daylight each day, as each of the forty-four college football bowl games is completed the dark pall of life without football forces us to put down our beer, get off the couch and go back to work. I accept that COVID is a significant issue but so is mental health. And one of America’s best palliatives for depression in the gray days of winter is watching other people risk their well-being on the football field.

The first college football game was played on November 06, 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton in New Jersey; one hundred people attended the game that Rutgers won 06-04. The first college bowl game was the Tournament of Roses’ East-West game (The Rose Bowl) played on January 01, 1902 between the University of Michigan Wolverines and the Stanford University Cardinal; there were eight thousand-five hundred spectators. Michigan won 49-0 and Stanford quit with eight minutes left to play. That first bowl game was initiated to increase interest in Pasadena, California as a tourist destination and to market the surrounding area and its products. All bowl games since that first one have had similar goals. The outcome of the games is not of paramount concern to most.

The attendance at such highly hyped events as the Tailgreeter Cure Bowl between Coastal Carolina University and Northern Illinois University on December 17, 2021 is indicative of the lack of fanaticism at most bowl games; 9,784, about the same number of fans who showed up for that first Rose Bowl. The bodies in the stadiums at bowl games are not the targets, eyeballs on TV advertising and promotion of each venue are.

As for the schools and players involved, they may have analogous goals. The colleges want to showcase their products and make some money and some players have hopes of enhancing their football futures either as players, coaches or announcers. In other words, the first bowl game was for exhibition purposes and, except for the payout by major sponsors to each school, that is still the overriding rational.

With that in mind I have a few suggestions on how we can incorporate the goals of all involved, or watching, with the ever-expanding number of college bowl games. As I mentioned earlier, we already have 44 bowls. It would require an addition of only 8 more to be able to have one bowl game every week of the year. Surely such eager potential sponsors as Bitcoin or China would pony-up for a chance to showcase their greatness. Maybe a bidding war could be encouraged between Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban or Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Israel and Iran could promise to dismantle their nuclear ambitions and sell their peaceful intentions via commercials. Surely Facebook and TikToc would want to play.

One might wonder how one extra, exhibition-type game could be woven into a school’s regular football schedule. From the quality of play of most bowl games and with countless players opting to sit out, it is apparent that just showing up for one more Saturday should not be a problem. When my friends and I played Friday night football it was not unusual for some of us to show up the following Saturday morning for an impromptu, unorganized sandlot game just because. A lot of bowl games have a similar feel.

This system would expand college football perpetually and solve the ego problem for such “sponsors” as Jimmy Kimmel who endowed the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl. America could probably easily come up with underwriters such as Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Heck, I humbly suggest the Jim Redwine Armadillo Bowl might draw a nod or two and Peg and I will kick in fifty bucks apiece if that would suffice. We could host it in a pasture at JPeg Osage Ranch if the resident varmints do not too strongly object and if fans do not mind sitting on the ground. TV rights could be negotiated.

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