NEVER CODDLE DICTATORS!

Today I was engaged in a spirited discussion about individual US presidents, specifically whether they were moral or immoral, weak or effective. My position (which many of you occasionally heard on radio) is this:

It is too easy to categorize any president as “moral” or “immoral.” Every president has taken actions that are moral and immoral, or pursued policies that ended up on the right or wrong side of what we deem as moral.

FDR’s New Deal saved us from both fascism and communism, yet he did not allow Jews to enter the US from Europe (not through anti-Semitism, but because he thought they would add to the huge numbers of unemployed) and allowed the disgraceful internment of loyal Japanese Americans.

LBJ was the greatest civil rights president of our lifetimes, but terribly miscalculated in Vietnam.

Reagan’s policies hastened the end of the Cold War, but his war on labor unions and obliteration of the social safety net savaged the middle class and is largely responsible for the huge gap in wealth and income equality we experience today.

With his AIDS policy, George W. Bush saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa, but we are still paying the legacy costs of his unwise invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As far as “weak” presidents, or “weak-looking” presidents, Carter certainly was no orator, but his Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, passed in 1980, may be the greatest environmental gift of the last 100 years, and the Israel-Egypt peace treaty still holds today. In fact, it remains THE stabilizing force in the region.

Joe Biden may stumble over words, but the Infrastructure bill he signed is the most important such legislation in several generations, and he is leading the greatest resurgence of NATO since its founding in 1949. Plus, he has restored democratic norms and values that were dangerously wrecked by his immediate predecessor.

Botton line: Things often are not as black and white as we see them or would like them to be!

Today, I also had to push back on the assertion that "Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still in office, because Trump would have mollified him."

Nonsense.

Trump's gift list to Putin allowed the Russian leader to wreak havoc inside Western democracies, including interference in our elections. There are credible reports that Trump communicated classified intelligence to Moscow, including some we had received from Israel. Trump often repeated Kremlin propaganda and did everything he could to weaken NATO for Putin's benefit.

In fact, when I attended a Portland fundraiser for Joe Biden on November 16, 2019, the first thing he said to us in his speech was: "If Donald Trump is re-elected, in four years there will be no NATO."

If anyone approves of Trump's coddling of Putin, I can only say this: Obsequiousness to brutal dictators is no virtue. Ask Neville Chamberlain.

The Power of The Power of the Dog

One of the reasons I am indefatigable in defense of Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog is that most who pan the film simply show no sign that they understand the story. This is a faithful and brilliant adaptation of Thomas Savage's 1967 novel.

And as a gay man, I see a common "straight" bias in dismissing or marginalizing or failing to recognize the story's core message and meaning. Gender stereotypes cause far more harm to gay men and women, and we want to be seen and heard about that.

The pivotal character is NOT Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose surrender to those norms has made him a bitter bully. It is the young man Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who audaciously tackles those prejudices. To me, that is the heart and soul of the modern gay rights movement. That this author and filmmaker chose to have that battle waged by an effeminate boy in 1920's rural Montana is original and powerful. When I hear people call this film "boring," I see closed minds, hearts, and souls. Art should challenge us to think more deeply and creatively about ourselves and the world.

Film professor and critic Tim Jackson gets it. The remainder of this post is from his review:

Peter, on the other hand, remains his awkward self, unapologetically effeminate. The character exudes an eerie calm, conveyed through his direct stare as well as his penchant for well-pressed clothes, for reading, drawing, and maintaining a journal, and for poring over books in his late father’s library.

Unlike those around him, Peter appears to be the most comfortable in his own skin. In another scene found in the novel, Phil, setting up a sly test of Peter’s intelligence and imagination, challenges the boy to describe what he sees when he looks at the mountain range.

“A dog,” Peter said. ‘A running dog”

Phil stared and ran his tongue over his lips. “The hell,” he said. “You see it just now?”

“I saw it when I first came here,” Peter said.

This is indicative of the quiet wisdom of a boy who, acutely aware of the gender games being played around him, has steeled his resolve to accept his nature.

The film’s title refers to lines in Psalm 22:20. Here they are from the American Standard Version of the Bible:

Deliver my soul from the sword

My darling from the power of the dog.

In the context of the novel and the film, “the sword” refers to forces that would destroy a person’s best, true, or holiest self. “My darling” alludes to the essential nature of a person. “The power of the dog” alludes to the powerful, to those who draw sustenance from destroying a person’s best self. (Dogs were once regarded as scavengers who attacked the vulnerable.) Campion’s sharp adaptation of Savage’s novel focuses on the damage done to those who surrender to the alluring but pernicious “sword” of social conformity.