Guest Post: "Why I fight wokeness"

"A Spectre is haunting America--the spectre of Wokeness."

The GOP has a target. America is at risk. Not from communism. Not from Russia. Not from taxes. Not from regulations.

Their message: The danger is wokeness.

Republicans have a new, centralizing target to unite the anti-elitist populists and the remaining establishment "RINOs:" Wokeness. Republicans agree it is bad. Back in the 1990s we heard of "political correctness." Many thought it fussy and overly polite, and it was a subject of jokes. "Chair," not "Chairman." "Administrative Assistant," not "Secretary," and especially not, "my girl." Most people went along.

It is different now. Republicans are in counter-revolution mode. Their message is that open-mindedness has gone too far. The transgender community is the easiest target, with a GOP message that woke liberals treat gender transition as normal personal choice, not freakish:They are destroying women's sports. They are pedophiles, out to groom and seduce our children! The populist message is that racial affirmative action means that Whites are now the ones unfairly treated, which reverses tradition and expectation. Moreover, women get promotions the man deserves. And Christians aren't respected. And Trump supporters are stigmatized because they don't want a COVID vaccination. It fits the overarching theme of resentment of liberals and financial elites. The GOP is Charlie Brown: "How come everybody's always picking on me."

We see signs of backlash from the left, too. Bill Maher voices it. I hear rumbles from Democrats that maybe Democratic leaders pushed Al Franken out of the Senate too quickly, too unfairly. They were too afraid of criticism. Maybe a little bit of due process would have been appropriate. I hear complaints too, from within academia. I hear voices from people generally in sync with changing cultural expectations. They complain that people on the forefront of an anti-racism, gender-fluid, diversity-equity-inclusion movement have gone crazy. They are extremists. They are moral scolds. They are ideologues. They ignore biology. They ignore reality. They are the American Taliban.

Michael Trigoboff reads this blog and comments on it. He worked in academia. He lives just outside Portland, Oregon. 

Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff

                                        Why I Fight Wokeness

I write code. I started my career in 1970, went to graduate school in computer science/artificial intelligence until 1978, worked for others until 1988, worked as an independent private software developer until 2001, and taught computer science at a community college until this past June. Now I work as an online tutor for people learning to write code.

I know what it takes to write code. I am very good at it. I am also quite good at teaching other people to write code; see the ratings on RateMyProfessors and Wyzant if you are curious.

The world of code has totally objective standards: your code has to work; it has to be small and fast. These things are measurable, and there is no debate about how to measure them. High-quality code is crystalline and elegant. Code of that quality can be like what’s said about how to tell if someone is a genius: their discoveries are “obvious,” but they are only obvious after the genius discovers them; no one else could figure them out until the genius came along.

My success in this field has been the result of working hard to achieve the ability to live up to these objective and difficult standards. No one can succeed in this field without doing that.

But then along comes wokeness (aka critical social justice ideology), telling us workers of the world of code that we are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and deplorable unless the people succeeding in our field completely match the demographics of this country and “look like America.”

The people saying this to us are typically liberal arts majors who couldn’t write a piece of code to save their lives and who have been taught to believe that there’s no such thing as objectivity. They come originally from the humanities, which they have totally conquered, and now they are gunning for the STEM fields.

Here’s a quote from a widely distributed publication promoting “equitable mathematics instruction:”

"This workbook provides teachers an opportunity to examine their actions, beliefs, and values around teaching mathematics. The framework for deconstructing racism in mathematics offers essential characteristics of antiracist math educators and critical approaches to dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by making visible the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture (Jones and Okun 2001; dismantlingRacism 2016) with respect to math. Building on the framework, teachers engage with critical praxis in order to shift their instructional beliefs and practices toward antiracist math education. By centering antiracism, we model how to be antiracist math educators with accountability."

Woke ideology is infiltrating computer science departments at leading universities across the country.

Wokeness tells us to forget equality and emphasize equity instead. They reject equal opportunity (equality) and propose the substitution of equal outcomes (equity) instead. Every student should succeed, they insist, regardless of innate ability, level of interest, or willingness to work hard.

The proponents of woke critical social justice ideology often use this picture to illustrate what they want:

All we have to do, they claim, is provide every student with what they need, and then every student will succeed. But what if some student needs a box containing 30 extra IQ points or determination to work hard or an intense interest in writing code? Where am I going to find a box like that? The college where I taught didn’t seem to have any of those boxes around.

Which gets us to the fundamental and toxic error at the basis of wokeness: an insistence on this proposition:

"Every talent and ability is distributed randomly and evenly among all the different subgroups of the population."

50% of programmers aren’t women? Sexism! 13% of programmers aren’t black? Racism!

How do the woke know that this proposition is true? They don’t. They just want it to be true.

And if someone (Charles Murray or James Damore for instance) questions the truth of this proposition, they do everything they can to hound those people out of the public discourse and cancel them.

We would be better off to not even think about this proposition. It’s too divisive. But the woke are not willing to avoid this issue; they demand that we act as though we already know the answer to the question, even though we don’t. This isn’t science; this is dogma.

There are those of us who believe in intellectual integrity and the necessity of competence and excellence in the practice of the crafts we have devoted our working lives to. We refuse to kowtow to this woke dogma that threatens the very basis of our fields.

If someone writes code that doesn’t work, their race or gender identity is irrelevant. Computers do not know the demographic characteristics of their programmers. When they refuse to run incompetently written code, it’s not out of prejudice against the programmer. When the bridge falls down, sensible people do not blame the bridge for prejudice against its designer.

I don’t care what color or sex you are as long as your code works. I am willing to stand by that. I am willing to fight for it. Equal opportunity.

And that’s why I fight wokeness.

"The Embrace" Sculpture in Boston

Boston unveils a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King.

A grandson, Martin Luther King III, said he thought "the artist did a great job. I'm satisfied."

A cousin called it "an atrocity," "a joke," and a "masturbatory metal homage."

They are talking about a sculpture by the artist Hank Willis Thomas. It was unveiled on Boston Common last Friday in time for the Martin Luther King holiday. It is intended to be a tribute to Dr. King, who met his wife in Boston. The artist said he was inspired by a photograph of the two of them embracing. The massive bronze sculpture drew more criticism than praise. One sees arms and hands, but no heads. Depending on the angle, one gets a sense of embracing thighs, not arms. 

Of course, the correct, fair-minded thing for me to do is to resist commenting on a piece of art I haven't seen. That is especially true since I am influenced by comments of other people who also haven't seen it, and they are influenced by yet others who haven't seen it. It is ignorant opinion-mongering to the third power. 

Yet this is the nature of public art. Public art is both an object and a participatory performance by its audience. The comments, mine included, are part of the public art. Rudolf Giuliani made a fuss in 1999 criticizing "The Holy Virgin Mary," a painting that mixed paints and elephant dung. Outrage over a public museum's display of Robert Mapplethope's photographs of the New York S&M scene caused a ruckus about obscenity. The art object doesn't stand alone. It has context.

So I will play along, and share my slap-dash first-impression opinion of "The Embrace." The sculpture looks weird to me. The headless arms are confusing. I suppose I expected to feel awe of some kind. Instead, I feel "What??" The installation seems oddly inappropriate when considered as a tribute to Martin Luther King. He was all about justice, not sensuous love. 

The sculpture set off my political alarm bell. It cost $10 million. Someone will catch hell for wasting public money, I thought. It was paid for by a non-profit group, The Boston Foundation. Whew. A bullet dodged. 

I know I need to temper my knee-jerk reactions to new public art. I remember my very first thoughts when seeing the design of the Vietnam Memorial. The design won a competition. It was a black wall set into side of a berm, with names inscribed on it. That's it? I had spent a decade of my life in turmoil and protest over the war. I remember thinking it was minimalist to a fault. Then I visited the Memorial. Then I understood. I felt the power of it as a somber reminder of that era. It is the most visited memorial on the National Mall. Opinions change. We can grow into the art when it quits being new. Then sometimes we see what the artist saw.

Boston has courage in its public art. Boston City Hall is more than an office building. It is a sculpture. It makes a statement. I first saw it at age 17, a new college freshman making a five-stop subway adventure into Boston. I was awestruck. The building is massive from every angle. The walls are sheer. Every surface is hard and unadorned.  It erupts from a giant plane of bricks. The building bullies people. I did not know the architectural term "brutalism" then, but I immediately felt the brutality. I heard its message: Don't screw with us or we will smash you flat. 

Now, after sixty years, I realize I had misunderstood it. The building is optimistic, not brutal. It is an expression of can-do civic pride and strength over adversity. It is like the Helen Reddy song I love: "If I have to I can face anything. I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman."

"The Embrace" was built to last for generations. Opinions will evolve. I have already come to appreciate its sensuous curves. It is a counterpoint to the City Hall. It tells a more complete story of the city. Boston is tough and strong. It is loving, too. It contains multitudes. I will know more when I see it in person.

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Remembering Harry Truman.

Will Joe Biden be remembered as "another Harry Truman?"

It isn't too soon to consider Joe Biden's place in history. 

In today's Guest Post Jack Mullen shares a reflection on Joe Biden, Abraham Lincoln, and that less-remembered president, Harry Truman. We assume that Lincoln had always been revered, a towering figure in American consciousness. Mullen writes that this is incorrect. It took a generation for Americans to appreciate Lincoln as a great president, not just one so controversial that half the country broke away at the prospect of him taking office. Greatness never came to Truman. Truman settled into our consciousness as a modest, low-profile president. He is remembered as a continuation of the path set by FDR. He is remembered as a successor, not an initiator.

Underestimated

Truman didn't cash in on having been president. He refused lucrative board positions, saying his former office belonged to the people, not to him personally. It seems quaint now--and honorable. His seven years in office don't make a big statement. President Eisenhower came later and left a freeway system as a permanent monument. JFK's Cuban Missile Crisis came later, too. Truman was in-between.

Jack Mullen grew up in Medford. He thinned pears alongside me in the Naumes orchards in the mid-1960s before going off to the University of Oregon and the Peace Corps. He now follows politics from his home in Washington, D.C. Mullen notes that Biden's record of legislative accomplishments, achieved without the robust majorities that are normally necessary, deserve much more recognition. 

Guest Post by Jack Mullen                              

These days, no one is being pushed deeper into the dustbin of history than Joseph R. Biden.

Biden’s legislative accomplishments during the first two years of presidency compare favorably with Franklin Roosevelt’s first term. Granted, as with Roosevelt, Biden followed a weak predecessor. Presidents Trump and Hoover both eschewed the legislative recipe to address the country’s current ills. Even with the complications and impediments of Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema, Biden sailed through the legislative gauntlet much like a Franklin Roosevelt and a Lyndon Johnson.

Roosevelt was a young, brash fresh face that easily connected with the electorate. Other young Presidents, Kennedy and Obama also found a strong connection with the electorate. Neither Kennedy’s nor Obama’s legislative records compare to Biden’s. Why is Biden not given his due? Is it his age? Or is it, as with Lincoln and Truman, that sometimes history takes a long time to shine notice and appreciate presidential accomplishments?

The revered Abe Lincoln of Carl Sandberg and Jon Meacham did not exist in the latter part of the 19th Century. Lincoln was still hated in the South, but his two trusted secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, endeavored to give Americans a true appreciation of Lincoln. Nicolay and Hay spent two full years in the 1880s writing a ten-volume book on Lincoln from personal memory and painstaking research. Once Robert Lincoln's 1897 50-year moratorium on the release his father's papers expired in 1947, the Abraham Lincoln Association in Springfield, Illinois sprang into action. The eight-volume "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln," along with the work of Nicolay and Hay, provided fodder for thousands of books written about the nation's 16th President. With Presidents' Day just around the corner, another Lincoln book, Abraham Lincoln His Speeches and Writings, is available for sale as a one-volume paperback. 

Harry Truman is under-appreciated. The Truman charm, if any, is being the first president connecting with people as a likable rascal. “The Buck Stops Here” presidency benefited from an unusually strong cast of advisors. George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and a young Clark Clifford laid the groundwork for America’s post-war leadership that, for all its blemishes and setbacks, is in place 75 years later.

As Truman’s popularity waned, he did not seek reelection in 1952. After he left office McCarthyism grew and stained the country here at home. Overseas, American hubris led to the overthrow of elected governments--yes, democratically elected governments--in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954. These took place during Eisenhower's presidency and the height of the McCarthy era. The blowback from those two operations sting to this day. One’s mind can only speculate the effect a Truman reelection in 1952 might have had on the nation, much as one can speculate how different Lincoln's approach on Reconstruction would have been from Andrew Johnson’s.

Politifact

Does Joe Biden embody the old adage that with age comes wisdom? Is wisdom even sought in today’s political environment? This era values stage presence, charisma, and entertainment value--not Biden's strong points.

In two short years Joe Biden tapped into the wisdom of three Presidents: Lincoln on saving democracy; FDR on rebuilding America; and Truman in laying the groundwork for America’s role in the modern world. Of course, one can criticize Lincoln, FDR, and Truman. Joe Biden is an easy target with his age, his son Hunter, and now the classified documents fiasco. Maybe Joe Biden will be tossed unceremoniously into the dustbin of history. He is boring compared to Trump. He might later be understood as a brief intermediate figure between two blockbuster-high-drama presidents. Or, maybe, more is in store for the Joe Biden story. As of the moment, he is still in the game, and I, for one, appreciate him.

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The Daily Courier makes an offer we shouldn't refuse.

It is a friendly overture from the newspaper next door:

"Hello there, Medford. It’s great to meet you.

You, too, Central Point, Jacksonville, Eagle Point, Phoenix, Talent and Ashland.

Welcome to the Daily Courier.

With Friday’s death of the Medford Mail Tribune, we hope you’ll embrace us as a source of local and regional news."

This is my home town's iteration of the nationwide re-ordering of the media. At best it is the "creative destruction" of capitalism, as old systems are destroyed by more efficient ones. Right now it feels like pure and simple destruction. Less is less.

The strangeness of the the neighboring city's newspaper offering to service Medford is partly one of scale. My Jackson County has three times the population Josephine County. Josephine County has been rural, poor, and anti-government. It is the kind of place that the New York Times' Nick Kristof writes about--rural centers of White poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, and early death. That isn't everybody, of course, but there is a lot of it there. Their school districts qualify for free lunches for all students. Voters in rural Josephine County refuse to vote themselves a public fire department, so they have a patchwork subscription service, or no service at all. They vote down budgets for a sheriff department, so there is almost no law enforcement in the rural area. Illegal marijuana grow-sites hidden in forested areas have been common for decades. The voters there are bright red, voting almost two to one for Trump.

Meanwhile, Jackson County is the regional market center and medical center, the place with the regional airport, and until just now, the place with the multi-faceted media of television stations and a large newspaper. Jackson County has its share of rural poverty, but it also supports a large, prosperous middle class that political observers would lump in with "suburban" voters and "soccer moms." We were the "normal" America.

Now our country cousin is offering to rescue us. I am OK with that. We need their rescue.

Earlier posts here mentioned public notices--those colorless blocks of text announcing probates, foreclosures and proposed zone changes. I described them as a potential baseline revenue source for some future local newspaper. I was thinking about what was necessary for a newspaper to be viable. I wasn't thinking about about the legal needs of entities to post that notice. I am installing a vineyard on about 8 acres of my farm. I am doing something simple, moving two acres of water rights from one side of a drainage ditch to the other. I am required to post a notice in an official "newspaper of record" that serves the area of my farm. This isn't optional. 

Problem: There isn't a newspaper of record there or anywhere around it. 

Public notices are a big deal. The Daily Courier is a conservative newspaper, but it does report on the Josephine County Commissioners. The commissioners are unhappy with the scrutiny. They have a powerful weapon: Stop using the Courier as their newspaper of record. They are threatening to use a tiny micro-newspaper in a neighboring city. It is a powerful threat, eliminating a significant revenue source. Local Democrats in Josephine County--they do exist in small numbers--have sounded an alarm. I received this by email.

The Daily Courier's editor makes an offer. He wrote that they will cover Medford and Jackson County if we get readers and subscribers here. That sounds fair to me. I have subscribed.

Here is the full text of what the editor wrote:

The Daily Courier: http://thedailycourier.com

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What would Jesus do?

Dr. Martin Luther King: "I have been to the mountaintop. . . . And I've seen the promised land."

On this holiday I am reminded of the speech Dr. Martin Luther King gave the night before he was assassinated. He spoke to a crowd in Memphis. He concluded with words that are haunting in their prediction of early death. It is as if he knew he would be killed the next day. The speech has a "Last Supper" quality to its conclusion. A short life would serve the mission. He was content. A great sacrifice proves the value of what is sought. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. 

Dr. King said to the Memphis crowd:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

We edit and transform history into useful myth. We agree that Dr. King represented racial equality, racial justice, non-violence. He was a Christian who used the tool of turn-the-other-cheek meekness to prod Americans into doing the right thing and grant Black Americans legal equality. We are OK with that.

But by 1968, his message was much broader. He was in Memphis in support of a strike for better pay for Memphis sanitation workers. Their job was dangerous; two men had recently been crushed and killed. The job paid just over minimum wage for long-term permanent employees: $1.60/hour for most workers, $1.90 for men who drove the trucks. (For comparison, I was earning $2.00/hour at the same time to vacuum floors in a part-time job at college.) The workers qualified for food stamps. Workers were expected to put in time "off the clock." There were both Black and White workers, but Black workers experienced worse working conditions than White workers. He was doing the gritty practical political work of coalition-building. He wanted Black churches to support the strike.

King's portfolio had grown to include economic justice. He led a "Poor People's Campaign." That brought new opposition to him and his mission. It is one thing to argue that Blacks should not be bitten by police dogs and beaten with clubs, but agitating for higher wages smacked of "communism" or "socialism." The year 1968 was the height of the Cold War. Dr. King said that the rich have unequal power and capitalism exploited that inequality.  Unequal racial power and unequal economic power were two sides of the same coin. 

King also became a peace advocate. He opposed the Vietnam War. He said our war there was a colonial war of exploitation and part of the greater system of inequality and violence by the strong against the weak. He spoke to the United Nations and said there was a "moral imperative" of both racial equality and "world brotherhood." It wasn't enough to stop fighting. We needed to have love and compassion for our enemies.

By 1968 King was articulating a broad critique of modern society. It was conspicuous for being both Christian and revolutionary. We were supposed to do the hard things, and do them in real life, not just as platitudes. We were supposed to love our neighbor, love the poor, care for the sick and hungry, and even love our enemies.  "Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness," he said in that last Memphis speech. Like in the parable of the Good Samaritan on the road to Jericho, we see the man on the side of the road. Do the hard thing. Care for him.

Americans want to forget the mission of Dr. King's final years because much of it is inconvenient. Racial equality is hard enough, and after 55 years we still aren't there. Day to day economic, social, and political equality are too hard. Dr. King's message defies human nature. The rich man does not want to give it all to the poor to follow Christ or anyone else. The rich man says he earned it; that money is his.  America has a capitalist economy and we operate a world empire that protects our safety, wealth, and way of life. We may pray to change that, but when we open our eyes we don't really want change. Otherwise we would do it.  We can put Jesus in a mental category box of "religious." It is spiritual, not practical. But Dr. King was here and now, back in 1968. His message became too religious, too fundamental, too much like a day-to-day practical Jesus. We can't handle that, so we edit it out.

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Easy Sunday: Local news reports election fraud.

There is still local news in Sioux City, South Dakota.

Voters there learned that the wife of their County Supervisor, Jeremy Taylor, a Republican, voted over 50 times for him in each of two elections.

It is Easy Sunday, so I will make quick points.

1. There is a Sioux City newspaper, with a story. The Sioux City metropolitan area is 250,000 people, just a bit larger than Jackson County, Oregon. Voters there learned something important for them to know. 

Sioux City Journal

2. There were also stories in the Des Moines newspapers and one in Iowa Starting Line, a public benefit company covering Iowa and seven battleground states. Iowa Starting Line illustrated their story with two photographs of Kim Phuong Taylor wearing a Trump gear. They treated it as a story about Republican election fraud.

3. Democratic readers of this blog may feel a moment's joy that it was a Republican activist doing the fraud. Democrats should temper their emotions. Her scheme was to approach people with limited English in the Vietnamese community, gather their absentee ballots, mark ballots for them, and submit them. It is exactly the kind of thing Trump, Kari Lake, and other election-fraud claimants claim Democrats do. By committing the crime, Kim Phuong Taylor demonstrated that the crime can be committed. 

4. Republican election denialists point to corruption they presume in big cities, not rural areas. No one claims to target Black or new-immigrant voters, only whatever voters just happen to be in the urban centers of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. Wink. Their presumption of Democratic fraud is justification for Republican fraud. Remember, the slogan was not "Steal the Election for Trump to End Democracy." It was "Stop the Steal." They were just stealing it back.

5. Democrats should exercise caution in opposing voter ID laws. The GOP de-legitimized elections but also normalized election fraud to balance presumed election fraud. The people most flagrantly defiant and partisan--the ones still flying banners that say "Let's Go, Brandon," "Fxxx Joe Biden" and "Trump Won"--are presumably Republican. They appear to have the emotional intensity to justify taking the criminal risks involved. Net-net, I think strong voter ID laws probably help Democrats. In any case, they may make elections more credible, and that is good for democracy. So is vigorous prosecution for fraud. 

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Whipsaw

Tale of two Bidens:

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.  

Things are looking up for Joe Biden. Things are falling apart for him.

The good news: Gasoline prices are down. Worker participation is up. Unemployment is low. Rents are declining. Inflation is abating. Trump faces indictments on multiple counts, and there is the slam-dunk case of Trump having taken government documents and stored them insecurely.  He has admitted it!

The bad news: Biden, too, had old documents at home, apparently out of carelessness, not intention. But still. Worse, Hunter Biden had access to those documents, which pulls him back into the Joe Biden story. Worse yet, Mr. Fair-Minded-Bend-Over-Backwards AG Merrick Garland picks a former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, a member of the Federalist Society, to be the special prosecutor to investigate Biden's documents.  

The past six months had looked good for Joe Biden. Biden looked competent and effective--something of a surprise to many.  Inflation was a problem, and responsible people at the Fed are doing something about it, with the blessing of the executive branch. How refreshingly sensible. The gridlocked and dysfunctional Congress got something done addressing climate, the "Inflation Reduction Act." Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Both were passed over Republican opposition and messaging. Republicans have a narrative: If Democrats did it, by definition it is wasteful and socialist. The message has limited credibility. Most people have a recollection that when Trump was president Republicans supported the deficit double-whammy of big spending and tax cuts. Biden got agreement from Joe Manchin. How crazy-liberal could it be if Joe Manchin approved it? Republican partisans will be unpersuaded, but there is a vast middle in America's electorate--the margin of victory in close districts and states--who are pleasantly surprised. Somehow the grownups in D.C. got things done.

On top of that Democrats made a careful gesture on the culture wars, a law requiring states to recognize same sex marriages performed in other states. Public opinion has moved on the issue of same-sex marriage. (Live and let live. Love who you want.) Republicans are choosing to be the meddling scolds.

The Biden career arc improved. He wasn't an over-the-hill placeholder. He was a get-thing-done leader.  Biden was going to run for re-election. 

Now this. Biden had documents. Of course, he immediately turned them over. It was a matter of neglect, not intention, but that doesn't change the political effect. Biden isn't the scofflaw. That is Trump's brand. Biden is the guy who messes up by bumbling. Biden dug his hole deeper by saying the documents were locked along with his Corvette. I am saddened by the image of an 80-year-old man with aviator glasses driving a Corvette. 

Biden's stored documents muddle the political case against Trump. It now hinges on a distinction of intent, not national security. In the law the matter may be significant. Politically, it is a nit-pick. Hunter Biden is back in the middle of the story of Joe Biden. What did Hunter Biden see and when did he see it?  

I wish two things would happen. The first is that Biden appoint a special prosecutor to investigate both his own children and Trump's. Drain the swamp. This won't happen, but it should. Of course, Hunter peddled influence, as did Jared, Ivanka, Eric, and Don Junior. The influence-peddling might simply be ugly and corrupt, but legal. If so, clear their names of illegality. If they did illegal acts, prosecute them. Trump pardons corrupt people. Democrats should prosecute them.

The second is for Biden to announce, like LBJ in 1968, that he is not running for re-election so that he can devote his time and energy to addressing America's problems.  A week ago, I thought this was unlikely. Now Joe Biden has a real reason. Hunter is fragile at best. Joe needs to take Hunter out of the line of direct fire. This might happen, and it should. 

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