Letter to Liz Warren’s campaign:
Letter to Liz Warren’s campaign:
Liz is my Senator and I started out supporting her. Now I am leaning Bernie or frankly, any Democrat but Liz. My disenchantment started with Liz wiffle-waffling over Medicaid for All. Is she for it or against it now? Having some third system for a transition as Liz has reportedly proposed is a trillion dollar opportunity cost which can and should be avoided.
Why can Liz not say anything nice about socialism? I am a union member and DSA member, and Liz’s program is a socialist program. Why can she not acknowledge democratic socialists such as Eugene Debs, Upton Sinclair, Michael Harrington, Bayard Rustin and Victor Berger? We don’t want ‘Bernie Lite’ and we definitely do not want another entitled, neoliberal, rightist candidate like Hillary Clinton. I’m so disappointed, and looking forward to a progressive challenger from the real Democratic party of the people when Liz runs again for Senate.
I was a credentialed voting state delegate to the 2018 Democratic convention. I welcome your response.
best,
Henry Edward Hardy
Copyright © 2020 Henry Edward Hardy
Trump Appears to be Unfit for Office
Trump Appears to be Unfit for Office
This is not normal. It isn’t normal for the President of the United States to call himself a “very stable genius.” Repeatedly. It isn’t normal for the President to refer to his own supposed, and indeed, hypothetical, “great and unmatched wisdom.”
It isn’t normal to threaten to destroy an allied country, NATO member Turkey, if they do what the President just told the Turkish President they could do.
It isn’t normal to call respected senior members of Congress traitors, or call for impeaching them, as if that was a thing under the Constitution. It isn’t.
I disagree profoundly with Mr. Trump’s behaviors and statements. I can’t offer an opinion about Mr. Trump’s policies or beliefs, because he blows every which way with the opinion of the last person he talked to, or the last thing he saw on TV or some crazed internet trollery.
Donald Trump is manifestly unfit for office. These past few weeks he’s eclipsed Richard Nixon and even the madness of King George and is saying things every day which are not only manifestly untrue, and self-contradictory, but which one sees and wonders where does this end?
Mr. Trump should not have access to anything which could be harmful to himself or others, much less nuclear weapons and a military which spends as much as the next ten military powers combined.
It is time, long past time, to remove Mr. Trump from office by legal means, whether that be by the 25th Amendment, Impeachment & Trial, or the ballot box. The sooner, the better.
letter to the New York Times, Trump’s Ukraine Call Was ‘Crazy’ and ‘Frightening,’ Official Told Whistle-Blower
Copyright © 2019 Henry Edward Hardy
Trump is like Elmer Gantry, only not smart, cool, or clever
Donald Trump reminds me a good deal of the fictional character Elmer Gantry from the eponymous 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis and 1960 movie by director and screenwriter Richard Brooks. Gantry is a ne’er-do-well small time swindler and hustler with a sordid past who becomes involved with a charismatic evangelist and barnstormer who in the film is modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson.
Like Gantry, Trump is a liar, a womanizer, a cheat, and a scoundrel. Like Trump, Gantry is a manipulative psychopath who happily leaves a trail of ruined lives in his wake.
But unlike Trump, Gantry is cool, he is smart, and he isn’t blinded by malignant narcissism. Although Gantry doesn’t have any evident sense of conscience, he does seem to grasp that doing good feels good, that exposing the hypocritical and wicked feels better and best of all, he knows when the jig is up and it’s time to get out of town ahead of the posse.
Copyright © 2017 Henry Edward Hardy
Civilian Control of the Military?
This was written in response to a thread on the facebook group, The Constitution of the United States of America, titled, Do you think a President should have to serve in the military because he is Commander in Chief?
To ask, “Do you think a President should have to serve in the military because he is Commander in Chief?” is completely the wrong way of posing this question. The proper way of framing it is, “Do you think that the Commander-in-Chief should always be a civilian, elected President, in order to secure a democratic republic from military control?”
As James Madison said: “In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” [1]
This principle of civilian control has been and remains the fundamental precept upon which the command and control of the US Armed Forces depends and from which it draws its legitimacy:
“From the birth of democracy in ancient Greece, the idea of the citizen-soldier has been the single most important factor to shape the Western way of war. In a democracy, combatants bear arms as equals, fighting to defend their ideals and way of life. They are citizens with a stake in the society they have vowed to defend. They do not fight as mercenaries, nor are they guided by coercion or allegiance to the whims of a dictatorial leader. Rather, their motivation stems from a selfless commitment to an idea that far exceeds the interests of any individual member of the society. For the armed forces officer of the United States, this ethos began with the militiamen who defended their homes, secured the frontier, and won a war of independence against the most formidable military power of that era. The American military tradition has since been governed by a strict adherence to the primacy of civilian control and, within that framework, has continued to champion the role of the citizen-soldier as the defender of the nation’s ideals.” [2]
[1] Max Farrand. 1911. Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1:465. Civilian control of the military
Copyright © 2010 Henry Edward Hardy
Swiftboating
Swiftboating
President George Bush Jr. was not “swiftboated” — his Democratic opponent in the Presidential election of 2004, Senator John Kerry, was. Kerry was a Vietnam combat veteran who received three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star.
Bush Jr. had served stateside in a National Guard unit, and was later accused of failing to report for duty or take his required physical for more than a year.
To counter the possible impact of the contrast between the military record of the two candidates, a group of prominent Republican supporters helped to organize and provided most of the funding for an organization critical of Kerry’s war record called, “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” (SBVT). According to wikipedia:
“SBVT characterized itself as a non-partisan group both in the legal sense and in spirit, yet several prominent individuals who assisted SBVT also have had close ties to the Republican Party. According to information released by the IRS on February 22, 2005, more than half of the group’s reported contributions came from just three sources, all prominent Texas Republican donors: Houston builder Bob J. Perry, a longtime supporter of George W. Bush, donated $4.45 million, Harold Simmons’ Contrans donated $3 million, and T. Boone Pickens, Jr. donated $2 million. Other major contributors included Bush fundraiser Carl Lindner ($300,000), Robert Lindner ($260,000), GOP contributor Aubrey McClendon ($250,000), George Matthews Jr. ($250,000), and Crow Holdings ($100,000).”
Military career of John Kerry
George W. Bush military service controversy
Swift Vets and POWs for Truth
Copyright © 2010 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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