And I Don't Like The Guy Coming Through The Door

Having said my piece on Trump two days ago, I was going to refrain from writing about politics for a couple of weeks, but yesterday's idiotic, misleading and inaccurate utterances from Joe Biden are too much to ignore.

But first, since I'm back on politics, a few more thoughts on our soon to be ex-President:

Trump bears responsibility for inciting his most fervent supporters to believe that a merely ceremonial event, the January 6 counting by the Vice-President of electoral votes, offered a real prospect of changing the election results.  It is particularly bad when those around the President knew he really had lost.  For that matter, his entire behavior since the election has been a disgrace.  If it was just Trump this behavior impacted that would be bad enough, but everything that he triggered by his actions has played into the hands of Progressives who seek to impose a new regime of thought control on our country.

Alyssa Farah, White House Communications Director, stepped down in December.  She remains proud of what the administration accomplished but was disturbed by what happened in the White House after the election, giving this interview to Politico which was published today.

I made the decision to step down in December because I saw where this was heading, and I wasn’t comfortable being a part of sharing this message to the public that the election results might go a different way. I didn’t see that to be where the facts lay. 

The results of the election almost perfectly aligned with our internal polling. So this notion that everyone’s kind of surprised and it turned out so different than we were expecting—I mean, from what I was read into, we always knew Pennsylvania was going to be a huge uphill battle, as was Arizona. North Carolina would be a squeaker. We’d win Florida.

Georgia was the one that we just did not adequately have a read on, on how close that would be. But none of this should have come as a surprise to anyone who was following the data.

And early on, I truly believe the president knew—when I was still in the White House in late November, he knew that he had lost. And it was something that was almost like tacitly acknowledged, like we’re going to make this painful, but we know what happened. And then, something turned. And I don't know if it was the wrong advisors getting to him with bad information or what.

While Trump has now made a statement denouncing the rioters, it's more like a child's apology after getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  The truth is if, instead of a few hundred crazies, 25,000 had stormed the Capitol and forced Congress to change the vote, Trump would have been happy with the result.

This morning, Dominion announced it is suing Sidney Powell for defamation and promising to file additional lawsuits against those promoting the ridiculous conspiracy theories about the company.  This is a confident move, as a large company suing an individual defendant leaves the plaintiff more vulnerable to embarrassment in discovery unless it really has a strong case.  And, unlike Trump, whose legal team was led by Rudy Giuliani, an incompetent litigator at this point in his career, Dominion hired a top-notch firm specializing in defamation cases that has successfully represented clients from across the political spectrum including representing Sarah Palin in her meritorious lawsuit against the New York Times.  I wish Dominion the best.

And now on to the incoming-President.

This is what set me off:

Biden: "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that's true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/TfWa25VzEt

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 7, 2021

This is as inaccurate, misleading and inflammatory as anything said by Donald Trump.  The use of this trope demonstrates the new administration is not interested in racial reconciliation but rather encouraging racial divisiveness to achieve its goals.  The truth is BLM/Antifa and associated thugs supported by Progressives have been allowed to run wild in American cities for months.  Progressive mayors have ordered police to stand down, while these thugs ransacked and burned the properties of law abiding citizens, mostly minorities, destroying thousands of livelihoods.  Murder rates, again mostly of minorities, have soared, but Progressives simply don't care about any of this as long as they can get the vote out.  And those who tried to object are threatened with the loss of their jobs and careers and shut down by social media.  It is, in fact, this disparate treatment that outraged so many Americans regardless of what they thought of Donald Trump.  Let's be honest.  If BLM rioters forced themselves into the Capitol and occupied it in the name of achieving racial justice, the media coverage would be completely different.  And if a black person died in that action, we would have nationwide riots and an orgy of destruction with the media explaining it away.  The fact a white person died trying to force their way in on the 6th is a matter of indifference to Progressives and I say that as someone who would have supported Capitol police firing on anyone who attempted to enter as part of that mob.

Meanwhile, last summer the media went out of its way to pretend it wasn't even happening, claiming the protests were "mostly peaceful" and 93% non-violent (by that standard, I don't know why anyone would be concerned about Covid since the best estimates are more than 99% of those infected will survive).  If you are a Progressive you can remain in your media cocoon ignorant of reality.  Here's a report from an honest progressive about what's happened in our cities. 

And it's worse than that.  During the campaign Joe Biden denied that Antifa was a real thing and Biden and Harris staffers contributed to bail funds to allow these thugs to go free while Progressive mayors and judges dropped charges against these creatures. (ADDED: Just rechecked and what do you know, it was even worse than I remembered - Kamala Harris actually used her twitter feed to encourage followers to contribute to a Minnesota bail fund to spring members of the Democratic Party's paramilitary wing from jail). 

Meanwhile, when Antifa spent 50 nights trying to break into the Federal building in Portland (and did the same in other cities though not as persistently) with arson and other violent attacks, outlets like the New York Times studiously avoided reporting, except to blame the Trump administration when it reacted to protect the buildings.

And what are BLM and Antifa?  BLM is a straightforward revolutionary movement dedicated to overturning American society and abolishing the nuclear family, while Antifa is their white wannabe wing.  They bring the same analysis to society as do white nationalists - that everything should be analyzed through the lense of race, a lense which explains everything.  They only differ in who should be one top in the end.  Why would an American President endorse them?  Just because your granddaughter, who is evidently incapable of thinking for herself, writes you a note (and what another indictment of college education that is!)?

Do we have race issues still in America?  Yes.  But these organizations and their Progressive enablers are only interested in those issues as a pretext to overturn society and move us into a post-Constitutional era where only their rights are protected and they are vested with ultimate decision making powers.

Meanwhile the incoming President and Progressives are piling false narrative upon false narrative, yelling about "systemic racism" as an excuse to ignore the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which banned discrimination on race.  Here's the truth about "systemic racism".  In the 19th and early 20th century, black Americans sought to pass as white because it bestowed advantages they were otherwise denied.  When in the early 1820s Thomas Jefferson freed two of the young adult children of Sallie Hemings (of whom Thomas was the likely father), those children (who were 7/8 white), went north of the Ohio River, passed as white and passed from history.  But look around you today.  Today we see white people trying to pass as black, Hispanic and Indian because that is where the advantage lays in 21st century America.  There are racist people, of all races, in 21st century America, but "systemic racism" is a made-up thing, created in an academic laboratory, that somehow escaped and is now infecting large parts of our society.

[ADDED: The incoming administration seems determined to re-racialize America, which would be a tragedy for all of us.  We spent decades trying to get beyond a racialized America and now the Democrats want to take us back.  This is a reactionary path.  We would be going backward as a society, not forward.  I find it all terribly dispiriting.  That this lense will be used for everything by the new administration is evident in this statement tonight by the President-elect.

 

This is more pretend oppression theater as we have targeted small business programs for all of these groups for decades.  What we have never done during these decades is place a group at the back of the line based upon race and sex.  I never thought this day would come in America.  I did not think in 21st century America we would see an ideology triumph that denies our common humanity while at the same time obliterating the idea that individuals might think in ways not solely determined by race, ethnicity or gender.

 The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice.  But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society.  It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination, and exclusion.** END OF ADD]

Violence of the Left is either endorsed as righteous or ignored if inconvenient.  A Progressive attempts mass murder of Republican congressmen.  Flush it down the memory hole.  A Progressive attacks a U.S. Senator, ending up with him hospitalized and losing part of a lung.  Never happened.  A mob descends on the Capitol chasing U.S. Senators through the halls in protest of the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.  Righteous!*

Remember prior to the election when store owners in D.C., Manhattan, Boston and other cities were boarding up their shops?  They weren't worried about Trump protestors.  What they were worried about was Progressive mayors letting loose once again their paramilitary wing to wreak havoc if Trump won.  Progressives were openly talking of the violence they would be unleash if Trump got a second term.

And finally let's not forget there was a real coup attempt and it succeeded, at least partially.  That was the effort to first derail the Trump campaign and then impede and destroy his administration after the election via what we call the Russia Collusion Hoax, an elaborate and influential mirage constructed by the Democrats and their allies in the federal bureaucracy and media.  That remains a much more dangerous threat to our country and its institutions than a few hundred crazy people running through the Capitol.  The latter is the more shocking, but the former more profound and serious, particularly if it goes not only unpunished, but unrecognized, by much of the American public.

The bottom line is you should be shocked by yesterday's events and repulsed by Trump's behavior.  Everyone involved deserves condemnation and Trump deserves removal.  But be careful to step back and try to observe objectively about what is happening.  Don't make up your mind based on what you read in the Times and Washington Post or Breitbart or Gateway Pundit or what you see on CNN, MSNBC, FOX or Newsmax.  Investigate and decide for yourself.  Based on President-elect Biden's comments the Progressive line will be to continue with the fake narratives and get you to ignore the fundamental undermining of America they are undertaking.  This is their strategy:

For more on my outlook on the future of both parties for better, or mostly worse, read Are The Parties Over?  If you're younger you may want to read the Your Future series.

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* The Kavanaugh nomination was when many moderate Republicans realized Progressives were not just after Trump, they were going to personally destroy anyone in their way.  Brett Kavanaugh was about as milquetoast and moderate a Republican Supreme Court justice nominee as possible.  Yet Progressives and their media ally pressed a narrative that he was a gang rapist and treated seriously the accusations of Ford about an event that allegedly happened 35 years ago when Kavanaugh was in high school.  This despite that, to this day, there is no evidence the event happened nor that Ford and Kavanaugh even met.

Contrast the accusations of sexual assault against Joe Biden by a former staffer which allegedly occurred when he was a U.S. Senator.  I have no idea if the accusations are true, but in contrast to Ford's accusations, we know the staffer actually worked for Biden and complained to at least one other person at the time of the alleged incident.  Yet after ignoring her, the press just decided to torch her reputation (we call that "The Hillary Method") and then ignore her again.  

** This last paragraph is a direct quote from Donald Trump's Mount Rushmore speech on July 3, 2020.  I endorse every word of it.  The only Trump speech with which I agreed 100%.  For more on my take read this.

Sawdan

For twenty four years in the 9th century an Arab Emirate existed in southern Italy.  In 847 the seaport of Bari, on the Adriatic Coast, was seized by Saracens and held until 871.  For the final 14 years of its existence it was ruled by Emir Sawdan Al-Mawri, a figure of whom we know little, but the little we know indicates he was a remarkable figure of his time.  While other cities and towns in southern Italy came under Arab control in the 9th and 10th centuries, including Taranto and Otranto in Apulia and Reggio in Calabria, Bari was the only emirate recognized by the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad.

A word on terminology.  The raiders and conquerors of Muslim faith who dominated the Mediterranean in those centuries go under many names in Christian chronicles and documents, including Arabs, Saracens, and Moors.  We will use Arab for simplicity sake, though most of those involved with the events described were not from the Arabian peninsula.  In fact, many were Berbers, native to North Africa and recent converts to Islam, descendants of those who invaded Spain in the early 8th century, or natives of those lands who had converted. 

In 698 the Arabs captured Carthage, the last outpost of the Byzantine empire in North Africa.  By early in the next century raids were being conducted on Sicily and Italy but it was not until in the early 9th century that the nature of the threat changed.  In 812 Arab raiders plundered the island of Ischia (near Naples), while in 827 a full scale invasion of Sicily began.  Within 20 years much of the island was controlled by Arabs, who made Palermo their capital; in 877 Syracuse fell, and the last Byzantine outpost surrendered in 902.

Italy was vulnerable. Relatively poor compared to the Arab states, its main asset were people who could be captured and sold as slaves.  The peninsula was also politically fragmented with the area around Rome ruled by the Papacy while further south there were multiple polities.  Gaeta was a small city-state to the north of the Duchy of Naples, nominally subordinate to the Byzantine Empire but, in reality, autonomous.  Northwest of Naples was Capua, under Lombard rule (a Germanic tribe which entered Italy in 568),  eventually combined with Benevento.  There were two remaining Lombard principalities, the Duchies of Benevento and Salerno, usually antagonistic to each other, while Amalfi, tucked away on the coast which now bears its name, had carved out an independent (and prosperous) seafaring existence.  Since the time of Charlemagne, late in the prior century, all of these entities owed allegiance to the Carolingian dynasty which ruled what is today France, the Low Countries, Germany and North Italy, but it was an allegiance mostly honored in the breach.

In 846 an Arab fleet landed in Ostia, raiders marched a dozen miles to Rome, sacking those parts of the city outside the ancient Aurelian walls, and looting relics from the original St Peter's Church.  Marching down the coast, they wintered near Naples before leaving in spring.  Three years later the Arabs returned in another attempted raid on Rome, but were defeated in a naval battle.  That did not end the depredations.  For the next century, hamlets, villages and small towns were at the mercy of these raiders.  Even religious sanctuaries were not spared.  The famous abbey at Monte Cassino was sacked and the surviving monks did not feel safe to return for a half century.  All along the coast "Saracen" towers were built to provide early warning to communities.

                                                   (Saracen Tower on Amalfi Coast near Praiano; photo by me)
(From Wikipedia; includes some inaccuracies, such as missing Duchy of Naples, between Amalfi and Capua, and showing Byzantine territory not conquered until the 10th century but close enough)

While South Italy was under constant threat by the Arabs, the relationship between Christians and Muslims was not always antagonistic.  Neapolitan merchants sold slaves to the Arabs and imported Arab mercenaries to protect the Duchy from the neighboring Christian Lombard (Benevento, Capua and Salerno) principalities.  The relationship of the Duchy of Naples with the Arab states, and the numerous Arab residents of the city led the Carolingian Emperor Louis II, while campaigning in the area, to complain that Naples was a "second Palermo [the Arab capital of Sicily] or Africa".  For many years, an Arab band was encamped on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius at the invitation of Naples, being tolerated until they became indiscriminate in selecting targets for their raids. 

When civil wars broke out between the Lombard principalities each hired large bands of Arab mercenaries who were allowed to plunder the area during the "down time" between fighting.  In 842 the city of Capua was sacked and burned by Benevento's Muslim mercenaries eventually prompting its inhabitants to build a new city, in a less vulnerable location a few kilometers away (which became the modern city of Capua).  For the remainder of the century Arab bands used the ancient Roman amphitheater in the old city as a base from which to stage raids.  At one point, the ancient Greek temples of Paestum, south of Salerno, were also used as a base by raiders.  When Gaeta, a coastal city-state between Naples and Rome, felt threatened by its neighbors it imported an Arab band which carved out a territory from which it launched raids for three decades.  The Duchy of Amalfi grew rich on its trade with North Africa and Egypt and when the Pope and the Byzantines attempted to form a Christian alliance to drive the Muslims from the region it failed because Salerno, Naples and Amalfi entered into a peace treaty with the Arabs.  Moreover the limited documents available from that period show that individual Muslims lived in some of these principalities and even owned land.

It was during this period that Arab raiders attempted to permanently seize footholds on the peninsula. Reggio, at the toe of Italy, was seized in the early 10th century and held for many decades.  A band of Arab raiders seized the small town of Cetera, halfway between Amalfi and Salerno, raiding across the countryside for the next twenty years.  And in Apulia (the heel of Italy), other bands seized Otranto and Taranto (the latter held for more than 30 years).  But Bari was the biggest prize.

(The map below shows the situation in the mid-12th century but shows the locations of most of the cities mentioned, including Bari, Taranto, Benevento, Salerno and Naples.)

Bari was the most prosperous seaport of the region.  In later years it would become even wealthier serving as a slave depot, primarily for Venice, used to store slaves from Slavic lands (primarily the areas that became Poland and Prussia) before transport and sale to Arab principalities.

In 847 the city was seized by a band of Arab raiders under the leadership of Kalfun, a shadowy figure who may have been part of a mercenary garrison installed by the Prince of Benevento to control Bari.  Kalfun was probably of Berber origin, possibly an escaped servant of the Aglahbid dynasty which ruled North Africa and Sicily.  Kalfun's successor, Mufarrag, who became emir in 852, sought and obtained recognition as an emirate from the Abbasid Caliph and expanded its territory, launching raids across the southern part of the peninsula.  Sawdan was next in line, taking power in 857.

According to Barbara Kruetz, author of Before The Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth & Tenth Centuries, we only have fragmentary information about the emirate and Sawdan.  

At some point in the mid-860s, the Frankish monk Bernard, on his way to the Holy Land with two companions, came to Bari . . . 

They obtained from Sawdan safe conduct letters addressed to the princes of Baghdad and Jerusalem.

The narrative of Bernard's journey suggests no shock that Bari, 'formerly belonging to the Beneventans' was now in Muslim hands; Bernard and his companions received courteous treatment there and seem simply to have accepted the fact that Bari was no longer part of the Christian world.

Kruetz also writes of the Chronicle of Ahimaaz, an eleventh century Hebrew narrative of the history of a south Italian Jewish family:

Many of the anecdotes in this chronicle seem questionable, but it is noteworthy that Sawdan  . . . is memorialized in it as a wise and eminently civilized ruler . . . Doubtless much of this story was romantic fiction . . . Yet it is interesting that the author, who did not mince words concerning the havoc wreaked by Arab raids (and on some key Jewish communities), nonetheless depicted Muslim Bari as a stable and well-governed city.

She also points to evidence that "Bari under Muslim rule came to be accepted as simply another piece of the south Italian jigsaw puzzle, merely one more entity to be dealt with", citing Christian rebels fleeing to Sawdan for protection and the emir's envoys coming to Salerno where they were lodged in the bishop's palace. 

That is not to say that Sawdan was a peaceful man.  Far from it.  Plunder was essential to his survival and prestige.  His bands pillaged all over south Italy, particularly Benevento and Capua, burning the fortified town of Ascoli, seizing the castle of Venafro near the abbeys of Monte Cassino and San Vincenzo, from both of which massive gold ransoms were extracted.  He also defeated Lombard attempts to recapture Bari.

By the mid-860s it seemed like south Italy might be headed in the same direction as Sicily.

Enter Louis II, great-grandson of Charlemagne and, since 844, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor.   In response to calls for help against the Arabs and a desire to assert his real, as opposed to nominal supremacy, Louis II ventured south in 866 with a goal of retaking Bari. What he encountered was a tangled web of competing principalities and shifting alliances which delayed him, leading initially to several unsuccessful campaigns before Bari finally fell in February 871 Bari fell, resulting in Sawdan's capture and transport to Louis' headquarters in Benevento, where the most remarkable part of the emir's story takes place.

Mere months later, in August 871, Louis found himself and his family suddenly surrounded and put under guard in close confinement.  After a month of negotiations, Louis and the family were released but only after he had taken an oath never to return to Benevento; a humiliating end to what had seemed a triumphal campaign for the emperor.

What happened?

Although Louis came south to rid the area of the threat from Bari, he had showed no signs of leaving after its fall.  For the families ruling the local principalities that was a bad thing because they had no desire to submit themselves to Louis. And, according to all the surviving chronicles, much of the blame for the seizure of Louis was due to Sawdan.

Sawdan must have had a substantial reservoir of charm to draw upon.  He quickly became popular at Benevento, entertaining a constant stream of well-born visitors and dining frequently with Louis.  According to Kreutz:

"He became a lighting rod, attracting Lombard complaints about the Franks and Frankish complaints about the Lombards.  Then . . . he put to use what he had learned from each side . . . [Sawdan] purportedly inflamed the Beneventans by warning that Louis planned to send many of them north, in chains; . . . The evidence suggest that Sawdan had access to information from both sides, and that he passed it on in the manner most likely to be helpful to his own cause."

Louis left Benevento, never to return, dying four years later.  Sawdan, kept in comfortable captivity in Benevento, was released upon Louis' death and then, unfortunately, disappears from history so we do not know his fate.

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out

 My message to President Trump.  What a disgrace.

ADDED: I wrote this before learning of the storming of the Capitol.  Trump should resign.  Now.

FURTHER ADD:  If he won't resign, time to invoke the 25th Amendment.

I Was So Much Older Then, I'm Younger Than That Now

My Back Pages was the last song recorded by Bob Dylan for his album Another Side of Bob Dylan released in August 1964.  Signaling the end of his "protest" song period, it is an acknowledgement that issues and life are more complicated than he had previously portrayed.  His next album, Bringing It All Back Home in March 1965, included no protest songs and began his move into a new electric sound to the outrage of many of his earliest folk music fans.

Dylan never performed the song in concert until 1988.  The version below is from a 1992 show at Madison Square Garden celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of his first album (59 years have now passed!).  You will notice many familiar faces; Neil Young, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds who had a hit with the song in 1967.  The back up band assembled for the concert is also outstanding, including 3/4 of the original Booker T & The MGs - Booker T Jones (keyboards), Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass and Steve Cropper on guitar.  Cropper also composed Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay with Otis Redding and In The Midnight Hour with Wilson Pickett.  On drums is Jim Keltner who played with John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Joe Cocker, Dylan, The Traveling Wilburys and a host of others.  Musical director for the show was guitarist G.E. Smith (in the green suit), leader of the Saturday Night Live house band for many years.

 

 

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rolling high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon, " said I
Proud 'neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate, " I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

 

Girl's faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

 

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty is just equality in school
"Equality, " I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

 

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

 

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Here Comes The Flood

 "Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry"

Peter Gabriel performing Here Comes The Flood, from his first solo album.  Far superior to the album because it is stripped of the bombastic overproduction.  From a 1979 Christmas TV show by the incredibly irritating Kate Bush (admittedly, so can Gabriel at times).  This link takes you to it.

Not Gonna Do It