James M. Redwine

Iran

Lessons From Literature

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The Iliad and The Odyssey

Peg and I are going to see the movie The Odyssey tomorrow at the Circle Cinema in Tulsa. My thoughts about The Iliad and The Odyssey started with my memories from my high school English class. My sixteen-year-old life experience did not do Homer’s great classics justice. I enjoyed The Iliad more than The Odyssey, probably because I could more closely identify with the heroics of Achilles than with the convoluted motivations of Odysseus. Achilles was sometimes envious and petulant, but mainly he was an immortal warrior to whom the morality of the Trojan War was but a footnote. Whereas Odysseus (Ulysses in the later Roman telling) was not motivated by the betrayals of the Trojan Paris and the Greek Helen but by personal desires for glory, sex, adventure and revenge. As a 16-year-old I did not grasp Odysseus’ inner demons but related completely to Achilles’ being all in for glory.

As I now ruminate on my devouring of both The Iliad and The Odyssey so many years ago, I appreciate even more Homer’s almost 3,000-year-old brilliance. Homer tried to help us deal with the good and evil of our human nature. That is the mission of all great literature whether Homer or Shakespeare or Mark Twain. The great irony and tragedy of human history is that whether 3,000 years ago or today, we often fail to understand and apply the wisdom of those whose writings lead us toward the harder right choices and away from the easier wrong ones.

What did the citizens of Troy do to the citizens of the Greek Isle of Ithaca? Paris and Helen fell in love but did that call for the fall of Troy? Or as we might ask today, what did Iran’s citizens do to America’s citizens? Fifty-two hostages taken in 1979 and released unharmed in 1981 was a crime from forty-four years ago. It was not an act of war and had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. It was in response to the United States repeated interference with the inner workings of Iran’s government.

The lesson America could have learned from a reading of The Iliad or The Odyssey from three millennia ago was that it is both immoral and self-destructive to start a war without just cause. It is reported that Americans are reading religious sayings on public school house walls instead of learning from history. It appears that we, as the ancient Greeks, have much to learn about morality and motivation. Maybe opening some books instead of our cellphones would help.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Living Law of a Democratic Society

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Jim’s desk at JPeg Osage Ranch. Photo by Peg Redwine

President Trump promises to annihilate a nation of 92 million people if his unconditional terms of capitulation are not met by the autocratic leaders of Iran. Pope Leo XIV calls for world-wide peace. President Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have twice ordered surprise bombings of Iran during peace negotiations to end a war started and maintained by Israel and the United States. President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu criticize the Pope for not joining with them in their demands. The Pope continues to call for peace.

President Trump is weaponizing his self-appointed and individually controlled Department of Justice to punish and eliminate from government many persons involved in his election loss of 2020. The president has established a 1.6-billion-dollar fund of taxpayer money to pay some of the insurrectionists who tried to violently overturn the 2020 election. Trump claims the 2020 election was an illegal takeover of our federal government.

President Trump has proudly killed the leaders of Iran’s government using about 100-billion-dollars of America’s funds and virtually uncontested military force. The president sees no inconsistency in his belief that America’s government was illegally prevented from power while he and Netanyahu removed Iran’s government by force. What is the paradox between calling out an alleged overthrow of a democratic election while “bombing Iran back to the Stone Age” to remove its leaders?

All societies have legal systems. Autocratic societies have legal systems in name only as the rulers have the power to disregard or misapply the written laws. If they do not like established laws, say that only Congress has the power to involve America in war, then the dictatorial ruler can simply ignore all restrictions. However, in a democracy, a country is not to be run by vacillating fiats of one or a few people, but according to due process established by the majority. That is the absolute bedrock of the “Living Law of a Democratic Society”.

Jerome Hall (1901-1992) was an internationally renowned professor of jurisprudence at Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana from 1939-1970. I was fortunate to attend his last Indiana class in jurisprudence, The Study of Legal Philosophy, in the summer of 1970 before he retired and moved his teaching to the University of California, Hastings College of Law until 1986. I found Professor Hall’s class to be my greatest challenge and greatest learning experience.

In his marvelous book, Living Law of Democratic Society, published in 1949, Professor Hall examines how societies form legal systems and, especially in democratic societies, how they live by them. A society such as the United States maintains a legal system in constant flux, but is guided by its lodestone of keeping its democracy by not allowing the constantly shifting legal framework to slide into autocracy. In America, our guiding principles are firmly established within our Constitution which may bend or sway but never break.

Americans know what is right: offensive wars are wrong morally and must always be guarded against if our republic is to survive and not fall into the abyss of Nazi Germany or Zionist Israel or the destruction of countless once democratic societies which lost their freedoms. It is not insignificant that Professor Hall lived through the evil of Japan, Italy and Germany in WWII and thereafter in 1949 wrote his scholarly treatise of democratic legal systems that had lost their way. Today, in my opinion, he would strongly caution America not to allow Zionist Israel to mislead us into evil as so many countries allowed Nazi Germany to do.

What should we do? What can we do? Professor Hall might guide us toward the original democratic society and point out as did Plato:

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”

Plato meant that the general Greek population allowed people of lower morality who sought office not to serve but to slowly accumulate absolute power. In the 1930’s and 40’s the Japanese citizenry was not generally evil, but through lethargy and desire for ease it allowed Emperor Hirohito and General Tojo and their cadre of power brokers to slowly move Japan towards autocracy without limits. The Italian populace was not prone to squelch rights in general, but it lazily watched as Benito Mussolini seized more and more power until Italy was lost within Germany’s military scheme. The Germans had had over a thousand years of a great culture that included many Jewish, Romanian and other minorities, but the average German allowed Hitler and his ilk to blame immigrants and Jews for Germany’s loss in WWI which led to the loss of all of Germany.

In 1948 Jewish people immigrated to what was then Palestine and began to almost imperceptibly force out Arabs, Christians and Palestinians until now the autocratic Zionist government has committed the same holocaust on Palestinians, Syrians, West Bankers, Yemenis and Lebanese as the Nazis did the Jews in Germany. In each case it has been a minority of power-hungry politicians such as President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu who have demonized minorities such as immigrants or Muslims and have sought to supplant the democratically arrived at law with their own despotic rule.

This was all done as the well-meaning but uninvolved general populace did nothing but cheer on the coming Nakba so that land and resources could be stolen. We Americans are a happy nation and prefer ease to strife. I know from many within my own family and friends religion is often at the root of the worship of Donald Trump and support for his policies. That is why it is enheartening that Pope Leo has taken a firm and public stand for peace. I am not Catholic, but if I were I would be proud to pay attention as the sirens entice us onto the rocks.

In the United States today, our Living Law has ebbed into being ruled not by our democratic system, but by power-mad autocrats and their sycophants who are convinced they know what they want and what the rest of us should receive. We are not too late to pull down the temple walls and return to the righteous path of our Constitution. However, time waits for no one.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

President Trump’s Avatar

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President Trump had to find a way out of the descent into Hades he had recklessly threatened for Iran. Not even his most fervent acolytes could justify his destruction of an entire civilization because some of its leaders refused to prostate their country to President Trump’s demands. One of the President’s most irrational statements was to announce to the world a 48-hour time limit. This removed all wiggle room and meant either the United States had to retreat from its unconditional conditions or Iran had to.

The President’s dilemma remains he has exterminated not just Iran’s hierarchy but, over several years, he has eliminated many of his own advisors he could have relied upon for trusted advice. However, someone is left standing who managed to convince Trump to connive what is for now an off-ramp from his unhinged behavior. Who is the Trump Whisperer who helped him to extract defeat from devastation; the Court Jester who was able to get the emperor to listen to reason; The Greek Chorus that foreshadowed Trump’s own hubris fueled self-immolation on the world stage?

We do not know, as yet. However, there is a Daniel Ellsberg somewhere in the Trump Administration who will someday divulge the facts behind President Trump’s total defeat by his own ego. History provides many examples of people who have had the courage to put principle over their own survival.

Hitler’s greatest general, Erwin Rommel, gave his own life to try to stop a maniac from ending civilization. Marcus Junius Brutus conspired to assassinate Julius Caesar to prevent Caesar from claiming the emperorship and destroying the Roman republican form of government. Both Rommel and Brutus committed suicide, but both tried to save their countries from narcissistic tyrants. Daniel Ellsberg released the top-secret Pentagon Papers to divulge to the world the false basis for America’s involvement in the Viet Nam War. He was charged with espionage and endured great contumely for his courage.

Someone in President Trump’s truly inner circle had the ability to speak truth to Trump about Trump’s seismic moral, political and diplomatic tirade that placed America in the position that Hitler’s Nazis and Netanyahu’s Zionists are known for, genocide. We are, for now, most known for President Trump’s threats to eliminate an entire civilization. If the President decides to eliminate the Cassandra who brought America back from the edge, doom may yet occur.

Here’s a big thank you to that Cassandra, whoever she or he is, and a caution that truth can be a dangerous thing, especially if whispered to megalomaniacs.

You can also find us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Epic Fury Revisited

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“Peg, Peg, are you awake?”

“I am now that you have poked your elbow through my ribs. What are you laughing about?”

“I just solved President Trump’s kerfuffle in the Middle East. It came to me in a dream; I knew you’d want to hear it. It has everything. No blood, no money and no more angst. Do you want to get up and have a hot chocolate or just lie here and be amazed?”

“What I want is to go back to sleep, but apparently that’s not an option. So, go ahead; let’s hear what, if anything, is going on in your head.”

“Oh, good. The country needs my help. Listen up, I think this borders on brilliant; it’s kinda like something Trump, Hegseth, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio might have thought of on their own, if they’d thought of it.”

The Dream Solution

President Trump summoned Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to the oval office after he saw a FOX NEWS report of a portion of Hegseth’s prayer at the Pentagon directed to the war against Iran:

“Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.
….
[L]et justice be executed swiftly and without remorse.”

“Now, Pete, that is a real prayer. Where in the world did you come up with that?”

“Mr. President, I took that straight from the Bible. I am sure you are familiar with Psalm 144 that holds: ‘Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.’”

“Oh, sure, I used to be referred to suggested passages, but then I found Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount to be rather D.E.I. in its approach so, I quit wasting time on such by-gone thinking. The world now looks to me to solve these things. After all, I am the peacemaker.”

“Anyway, Pete, I just wanted to commend your attitude of all out victory and run an idea by you as to how we might land on our feet in this Iran thing. What do you think about a little diversionary tactic such as finding a country we can get to surrender without any more blood or tax dollars wasted? We need an enemy we can truly subdue in a couple of days, you know, one we can blame for criticizing our righteous invasion of Iran. I have one in mind based on what this guy from Chicago just said on March 26th about the war. No, no, it wasn’t that slob J.B. Pritzker who wants to run against me in 2028. He is in Illinois, but I mean that other Chicago preacher who used to be called Robert Francis Prevost but now dresses like a mullah or an Arab Sheik. Just this past Palm Sunday he said our ‘… hands are full of blood and that God does not listen to our prayers because we are waging war and using religion to justify violence.’”

“I think the fellow does not like my policies and is challenging my authority. Doesn’t he realize I represent 350 million people? Of course, he touts his leadership of 1.4 billion Catholics, 5 ½ of which are on the U.S. Supreme Court, but most of those people do not even own one golf course. And he lives in the smallest country on earth with the smallest army. Do you know there are only 135 members of the Swiss Guards and their last military engagement was at the sea battle of Lepanto in 1571? Further, they dress funny with their red, yellow and blue pantaloons and their only weapons are long sticks. How long could they last against our troops or even one Abrams tank?”

Photo by Peg Redwine

“Most importantly, I bet if I decided to take over the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV would just turn the other cheek. Then we could raise really huge campaign contributions by converting the Sistine Chapel into a really high-end rental suite like the Lincoln bedroom. We could also sell off that depressing Pieta thing and replace it with a statue of me.”

“What do you think, Pete? It would be easier than Venezuela and a whole lot less trouble than Iran. Also, the Pope doesn’t have any way to restrict access to the Mediterranean Sea or even to the Trevi Fountain. Okay, that’s enough planning, let’s go for it this afternoon! This should really divert attention from Iran and Epstein. Let the games begin.” 

“To sleep, perchance to dream.”
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1

Photo by Peg Redwine
Photo by Peg Redwine

“What a dream. What do you think? The solution was right there in my head and now I just need to get the President and the Pope to sit down for some real Trump-like deal making. I’m pretty sure the Pope will be amenable to a Trump negotiation calling for unconditional surrender. What’s the Pope going to do, run over the President with that funny little golf cart?”

“I can’t speak for the Pope, but if you don’t shut up and let me go back to sleep, you won’t need to worry about it.”

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Regime Regrets

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In 1953 Iran had a democratically elected president, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was deposed by the United States CIA and Britain’s MI6 because he wanted to change Iran’s position on how Iran’s oil revenues were being unfairly taken, mainly by Britain but also the U.S.A. The CIA and MI6 instigated riots and protests among the Iranian people, then without allowing the Iranian citizens to choose, installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as their absolute dictator whose repressive and corrupt regime led to a popular revolt in 1979. The citizens who took American hostages did so because they blamed America for deposing their president and imposing the Shah. Then, ironically, the foreign intelligence agencies fomented what became the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that ousted the Shah. That revolution continues today and pits Iran’s current repressive religious leaders against progressive reformists.

Iran’s current political situation is theocratic, not democratic and much of the population lives under repression of rights. Such are the fruits of the various regime changes we have arbitrarily forced on the Iranian people. They know we are to blame and are understandably upset with us, much as we would be if Iran attempted to change our regime by subterfuge and/or assassination. Israel just murdered the leaders of Iran’s government so the Iranians may wonder why they should not seek to respond. Now, President Trump wants another regime change in Iran but he wants to select the new regime leader while Israel wants to turn Iran into the same type of rubble it has wrought in Gaza.

Two hundred and fifty years ago we Colonials sought regime change from King George III’s control. After great strife and hardship our Founders adopted the U.S. Constitution that is the gold standard for regime change. It was and is the light that kept a rag-tag group of British subjects from disintegrating into a mob of warring factions and, while far from a perfect union, led to a country where religion is supposed to have no say in our government and our government is to have no say in religion. Both press and speech are to be unfettered while due process is required to take our lives and our property. When it comes to war, our military is to be only for OUR national defense, not ill-advised adventurism. And that self-defense is to be entered into ONLY with the advice, consent and authorization of our elected representatives in Congress.

We Americans have frequently lost touch with the wisdom that took regime change to freedom. Unfortunately, we have occasionally lost sight of our own experience and convinced ourselves we know how other countries should govern themselves. Such entanglements almost always have resulted in disaster for America and those we deign as inferior to our culture. We normally work our way into these briar patches with no way for either the other countries or ourselves to escape without losing our dignity, our treasure or even our lives. Such is our current stumble into starting a war against Iran because we, once again, have violated our Constitution to our detriment.

If our Constitution is carefully followed, our collective goodwill and good judgment will help us remember to remain humble and to choose right over wrong. To see what is right is what our founding document guides us to. It is then up to us to do what is right in the face of our natural human frailty of choosing to impose our will on others. We should remember we are neither Nazis, Zionists, Marxists, Communists, Fascists, monarchists nor a theocracy and we should not allow ourselves to be misled by any such flawed systems of government. We are a republic based on a constitution and when we fail to follow our Constitution, as in Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine or Iran, they suffer and so do we. Of course, when our country becomes untethered from its core principles, the first issue to be addressed is which principles have been cast aside and why.

Donald Trump based his campaign promises on two worthy goals: avoid offensive wars and improve America’s standard of living. Trump had looked at our foreign military entanglements in the devastating, pointless and baseless wars since WWII and campaigned on their immorality and multi-trillion-dollar cost; Trump was right about our failure to adhere to our core values then. But, as we humans often do, Trump succumbed to the same hubris as some of his predecessors. We Americans are not the saviors we see ourselves to be, but are mere humans who have lost our way because we drifted from our Constitution, core values and our true Volksgeist.

President Trump has fallen victim to what almost all of us has from time to time. When we are cursed with power, we cannot resist abusing it. That is the danger our Founders knew and guarded against 250 years ago. One of those worst dangers is unbridled military power fueled by blind belief in the rightness of a cause and/or the belief in the evilness of someone else.

Donald Trump is caught up in that trap many of us are in danger of falling heir to. He has the reins of immense power and cannot recognize that he is much like a child with an irresistible opportunity of exerting it over virtually defenseless victims. His is the psyche of a boy with a new BB gun and a helpless bird in his sights. It is the immorality of one who simply cannot resist the exhilaration of killing, especially of anyone who asserts their own views and independence.

That is the frailty of human nature our Founders recognized most of us are in danger of should we ever have the opportunity to force our will on others. That is the basis of our Constitution. Our President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the News Media and each American citizen need the constant reminder that the separation and equality of our three branches of government are the raison d’etre we are nearing our 250th birthday.

Follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavegamut”

The More Things Change

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Photo by Peg Redwine

President Trump gave his 2026 State of the Union address last night, 24 February 2026. He spoke for almost two hours on several topics. One of the most important was the survival of humanity as highlighted by his insistence that he would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. After the world saw the destruction the United States rained down on Japan in 1945, rational people realized we humans had finally “progressed” to the ability to make ourselves extinct. Or as former mathematics professor turned folksong singer Tom Lehrer (1928-2025) wrote about WWIII during his stint on the television show That Was the Week That Was:

♫ So long Mom I’m off to drop the bomb
So don’t wait up for me
But while you swelter
Down there in your shelter
You can see me on your TV
….
I’ll look for you when the war is over
An hour and a half from now. ♫

Since our Manhattan Project, 1942-1947, the world has raced rapidly towards Armageddon. The Russians spied on us for nuclear secrets with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed, while the Israelis stole our nuclear bomb using Jonathan Pollard who was released by the USA and now lives the good life in Israel. Pollard’s Israeli handler, Aviem Sella, who recruited Pollard to spy against us was granted a full pardon by outgoing President Donald Trump on January 20, 2021.

Israel and Russia both have the bomb and the ability to deliver it anywhere in America, Russia by its own devices and Israel by our knowing enablement. Our traditional allies, Great Britain and France, possess nuclear weapons as do our traditional enemies, China and North Korea. Whether India and Pakistan are considered friends is a matter of debate, but both possess nuclear weapons. Other countries may have nuclear weapons programs also but in various stages of development. There is no doubt several nuclear bomb capable countries are already beyond Iran’s paper tiger status as far as being able to strike back at America if we were to try to disarm them.

So, Mr. President, why are we readying another military attack on Iran who, according to you, if it ever had a military nuclear program, you and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu obliterated it in 2025? Why are you so eager to take us to war with Iran which has no nuclear bomb program when we are not attacking countries we know have bombs and the means to drop them on America? How about concentrating on the real national threats, such as the economy and our health care? Instead, we are acting like a cowardly schoolyard bully when it comes to weak, feckless, and according to you, nuclear harmless Iran.

We know China and Russia and perhaps soon North Korea might gladly stand up to us, but that Iran could not land a punch on our homeland even with non-nuclear missiles. Iran is the weakling a bully uses to glorify its power. Why don’t we just do what a true hero would do, and bring our troops home until and unless they are needed, as our Constitution provides, to defend our homeland?

We have allowed Russia to invade Ukraine, China to threaten Taiwan, North Korea to bully South Korea and we enable and support Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians because those countries are capable of striking back at us. Also, you apparently have failed to consider our own military personnel who will have to do the killing and dying.

Mr. President, our military is not a Christmas toy for a spoiled child to play with. Please reconsider your rush to abuse our citizens and those of other countries. You tout yourself as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. To be truly worthy of it, please make peace, by not ordering our country into another unnecessary war. As General Norman Schwarzkopf said, “It doesn’t take a hero” to order others into combat.

In your State of the Union speech, you spoke of Christianity and how, in your opinion, religion is integral to our Union. Jesus might refer you to his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:9), “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” Mr. President, real service, not lip service is true leadership.