A lesson for today from 1974

In the weeks before President Nixon resigned from the Presidency, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger called in the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Chiefs.  He told them he wanted to know about any orders that came from the President outside the normal chain of command.  He and the Joint Chief were prepared to countermand such orders. 

What was he worried about?  He was concerned that President Nixon might fake a foreign crisis.  Nixon could then go on TV with a speech something like this:

“My fellow Americans.  We are facing what may be the greatest crisis in our country’s history.  We have information that –––––– is ready to launch an attack on American cities, and I have ordered a preemptive strike.  In this hour of peril we have no time to be distracted by Watergate and its partisan intentions.  As a result I have dismissed the Congress and declared a state of emergency and martial law for the next three months.”

This is what Schlesinger and the Generals were prepared to prevent.  

Today we don’t have a Department of Defense.  We have a Department of War.  We don’t have a Secretary who obeys the Constitution.  We have a Secretary who violates both the Constitution and the rules of warfare.  We don’t have Generals who disobey illegal orders.  They’ve been dismissed.  We don’t have independent sources of news.  We have “Truth Social” and Fox News and X.  

And we have China and Russia taking notes.

Willpower is overrated

Have you broken your New Year’s resolutions yet?  You will.  

Many people no longer make a New Year’s resolution, having learned from experience it won’t be kept anyway.  

Today I read a great essay by Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology.  She says you should exercise “situational agency.”  Say you drink too much pinot grigio.  Say you have a tall glass every night from that economy-sized bottle you keep in the refrigerator, and then you resolve not to drink.  But you remember it is there, calling, calling...and you say, ok, just one more night.  And another, and another.  [Not that I would know about any of this, of course.]  

What “situational agency” says is that you don’t buy another bottle of pinot grigio.  If it isn’t in the house, you can’t drink it.  Nothing to do with will power.  

Dr. Duckworth gives the example of experiments with teens and their study habits.  Students who kept their phones in another room while they were studying had better grades.  She notes, “physical distance creates psychological distance:  Draw close what you want more of; push away what you want less.”

The essay was printed in todays Times.  It is entitled “Willpower Doesn’t Work.  This Does.”  

Where do you get your news?

In November Harper’s Magazine ran a graph showing the percentage of U.S. adults using four sources of news on a weekly basis from 2013 to 2025.   The sources were TV, print, online news sites and apps, and social and video networks.  

Here are the trends:

    2013 2025

TV     72% 50% down 22 points

Print     47% 14% down 33 points

Online news

sites and apps     69% 48% down 21 points

Social and 

video networks    27% 54% up 27 points

While we are on the topic, ten owners control 60% of the local daily newspapers in America.  Gannett Corp. alone controls 215 dailies.  

This explains a lot about the present state of affairs in our country.

morally exhilarating

Quite a few artists and performers have been cancelling their appearances at the Kennedy Center since Trump plastered his name on the Center.  One of them was Doug Varone and Dancers, a New York dance company that cancelled two performances scheduled for April.  

Mr. Varone, the head of the company, said it would lose $40,000 by pulling out.  He also said in an email quoted in the New York Times: “It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating.”

For 2026 let’s all do things that are morally exhilarating.

And if you want to do something that is simply fun, tape signs to Porta Potties and dumpsters and trash cans.  Take a Sharpie and some duct tape and write on a sheet of paper “Trump memorial toilet” or “Trump memorial dumpster” or whatever and stick it on.  Don’t get caught.

The Wounded Knee Massacre Anniversary

 Re-writing American history to make us look good is nothing new.  Yesterday was the anniversary of the Massacre at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.  

Approximately 250 Lakota Indians were gunned down.  They were unarmed.  The dead included women and little children.  In some cases those little children were babies.  Their bodies were thrown into a ditch for burial.  

Twenty American soldiers were awarded Medals of Honor for this “battle.” 

I wonder if Hegseth will award medals to the troops who shot the men clinging to their boat off the coast of Venezuela.

Brigitte Bardot, 1934-2025

In 1956 her hit movie “And God Created Woman” was playing in the Palm Theater in Palmerton.  The movie was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency for its sexual content and nudity.  American movies simply did not do that. 

Of course guys in Palmerton High School heard about the movie, read about it, and decided we had to see it.  Although I lived ten miles out of town, I could stay with my Aunt Florence on Lafayette Avenue if I had good cause.  So I told my parents I had to go to the library that evening and went to see Ms. Bardot.  

There must have been at least ten of us in the theater that night.  Everybody lied to their parents.  I think we made up a whole row.  The Catholic boys simply ignored the condemned rating from the Legion of Decency.  Today the film probably would get a PG rating.

I don’t remember the plot, but I do remember Ms. Bardot’s derriere all these decades later.  

In 1968 she was used as the first live model for Marianne, the symbol of French liberty.  In 1973 Ms. Bardot retired from films and devoted the rest of her life to the cause of animal rights, opposing bull fighting and the consumption of horse meat.  She was quite a woman.

Nancy Pelosi on achieving goals

You may remember that President Obama had difficulty getting his health care plan through Congress.  Nancy Pelosi gave him a pep talk:

“You go through that gate.  If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence.  If the fence is too high, we’ll pole-vault in.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in.”  

Nancy Pelosi, who is retiring from Congress at the end of this term, is one of my role models.  You can see why.

The quote is from "The Talk of the Town, The New Yorker (Dec. 5, 2022), p. 13.