#22
POLITICS, Sort of...
By Alex Ness
May 26, 2024
I receive a lot of emails and private messages on social media and due to my blogs. I think it is a result of a few factors. I started my writing career with a goal of responding to every email, which I no longer do. And to reply to any response to any article I wrote or direct message as a result of the article. Certainly, I could be wrong that that is the reason but, I know many people in the present who have written to me for 20 years who say that when they comment or email an author of an article, through whatever means, they almost never get responses. The times I do not respond are when people write saying I followed your blog, now please follow mine and leave responses. While I try to reply to interest in my work, or questions about it, people trying to guilt me into following them will never get a reply. Someone on Twitter/X responds to every poem I post, every comment that isn't a link, and all the articles I share there. They do so via email because they "don't trust the CIA's social media projects". I like the person, even if I do not share their outlook, but I don't feel compelled to do so, I do it because I enjoy the dialogue with them.
But there will come a day, I think sooner than later, that I leave most social media. I was offered a long time ago a friend's services of setting up a AlexNess dot com orientated page, where I can do all my articles, post all my poems, and inform the public of all my available works, and where to get them. That won't mean stopping conversations. They just will have a single page for them.
One thing I do get, is weekly or more frequently, questions about my political views. And honestly I am more interested in the events and the inner workings of politics than I am the results. Also, my views are more about how rights are limited or expanded, and how certain personalities in politics draw their power. Trump was never my candidate, but it drove people crazy who hated him when I'd point out things he did or wanted to do, that turn out to be, not such bad ideas. He might be an asshole. He might be a bully. He might be a prick. But ultimately, many politicians are just that. Trump wasn't a politician. He was a guy who had money, power, and was an opportunist who didn't care about anything beyond his pathway to money and power. He had a big mouth, but he had ways of speaking to the common person that drove the elite mad, because they thought he was seeking personal glory, not the chance to govern. Which doesn't really make him an ideal candidate.
For me he did well in leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. He did well trying to get the moderate Arab nations to recognize Israel. Don't think the current situation with elite university pro Palestine encampments and heightened Anti-Semitism hasn't something to do with that. But I didn't vote for him. In 2016 I voted every choice but national Presidential, because I didn't see much difference from Democrats to Republicans in the regard of ultimately, what would be done on a Foreign Policy basis. I might have been wrong, but my views changed enough to vote for someone I liked almost as little as Trump in 2020.
I should say, my views have confounded people close to me as well as distant. My adoptive father, frankly didn't like me, but he thought of me and told me I was two steps to the right of A. Hitler. My father in law, did like me, but thought of me and told me that I was two steps left of Ted Kennedy. I don't like A.Hitler but I did Ted Kennedy, especially his views on race, rights and political prestige must be balanced by "humility." I didn't agree with the former senator on some issues. But he was like many in government, they might serve for people, not for personal gain. Yet, I think he received a lot of personal gain. This is really all to say, when you aren't party centered, people will just stick a label on you about how they see you, and let it stick. That rarely works with me, but oh well.
Enough about me, no, wait, how about more me and a contact from someone who deleted me from their Facebook in 2012 for making an offensive joke, which really wasn't, who wrote me a polite, let's be friends again note, and more. Off of of my friend's list for seeming decades, sent me a rather well written discussion of what they think my political views are. The thing is, their logic and speculation is seriously well done, but they don't realize that my views are really limited, and they think my favorite US President is recent, or within the last 30 years. That would be wrong. And like other speculative equations, if you are off at the beginning, the rest will be off the further away you are.
For the record, JFK is my favorite, followed by FDR, then IKE.
Why JFK? He was the man who sat between the Hawks and Doves in US Policy during a time both the Soviets and many neutral powers would do nearly anything to drive the US into rubble. Yet, he invited the Soviets to join us in the moon quest. After the Cuban Missile Crisis plans were secured so that no situation would go through 3rd parties or distant messengers, the crisis phone was established. He was a Democrat, who was considered by many on his own team as too militant, too military centered, and by the Republicans of his day, too soft on the commies. He would by views now be considered a moderate Republican, which means he'd be called a rino by the MAGA people. So kind of a Democrat regardless of label. I don't have a higher esteem of JFK due to his being slain in office, but it is important to consider why he was, who did it, and like any major question, who benefited the most by the act.
FDR was a socialist, but also a nationalist. Those two phrases appear in the title of the party of the enemy German regime, but he was not racist, and his wife was anything but racist. He was, whatever his party, for the people, and for the country. He was a figure I believe would not have been as popular in almost any other time. (Similar to someone who had issues with him, but still liked him, Winston Churchill. He had been a failure in WWI due to the failed Gallipoli campaign, but he became the savior of the nation, of sorts, in WWII). FDR told Stalin, we are both leaders of a people born of Revolution. This statement drove Churchill up the madness tree. But for diplomacy, he kept it in.
IKE Dwight Eisenhower was called on to be the candidate for both the GOP and Democrats, and just short of being a Democrat and more being Republican, he chose the GOP. He was frankly just short of JFK, in that he served in one of the most dangerous times regarding the state of the world and further wars. He was moderate, spoke out against letting the military defense industry becoming the driving force of the budget, and he was perhaps more diplomatically powerful by having a flawed but very bright VP, Richard Nixon. IKE truly kept America out of a greater war, by the respect he was held in, by foreign leaders who remembered how he held the alliance on focus, no matter the personalities clashes that could have driven it apart.
As much as I like emails and correspondence, don't send me questions about politics. I just shared all I have that I can share. If you want advice, I have none. If you want to know about an event and think I'll know something about it, feel free to ask.