Where We Are This Week
Birthdays, ballots, and Blackbeard.
My birthday was a few weeks ago. Sometime in the last decade or so, I shed the solipsism of my youth in favor of the realization that the occasion is as much about my parents as it is about myself. Each year that I live, I become even more appreciative of the circumstances that brought me into existence. That’s a hard thing to contemplate, isn’t it?
For the majority of my life, I viewed my existence as chance; one number in a random distribution across the whole of the universe. Now, as a parent, I see it differently. I see it as my parents likely saw it.
My daughter’s birth wasn’t chance, it wasn’t an accident. It certainly doesn’t feel like the result of the winning number of the cosmic powerball. It feels a lot more like fate than it does a shot in the dark. When my daughter was born, I had the unshakeable feeling that I was always waiting for her; that it was always going to be her. I had the same intuition when I married my wife.
Of course, time doesn’t allow for second chances or do-overs, but nothing about the intractable nature of the way time unfolds suggests I’d be able to do it any differently - not that I’d want to. But recognizing the role your loved ones play in your life, forces you to reevaluate the role that you play in theirs.
How do you grapple with the weight that is accompanied by the gift of the feeling - or at minimum, the illusion - of chosenness? The only reaction that seems to be appropriate is the one that I’ve applied to the people who’ve been so blessed to have been able to receive. Boundless and constant gratitude.
I’ll be the first to admit I fall short of that lofty goal, but it’s recommended to aim high, right? Maybe, it’s the newest year under my belt that will provide the wisdom and maturity I need to reach it. Here’s to hoping.
A Primary to End Them All
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, buckle your seatbelts. Admittedly, I’ve only been of voting age for a small handful of presidential elections but this one looks as if it will be the wildest one we’ve seen for quite some time.
You thought the 2016 and 2020 elections were unprecedented, well, prepare yourselves for an unending deluge of the word ‘unprecedented’ over the next twelve months. In the sagacious words of Terrell Owens, I advise you, dear reader, to ‘get yo popcorn ready.’
In a move that almost no one was talking about beforehand, last month, in a 4-3 ruling, the Colorado Supreme Court voted to remove Donald Trump from the primary ballot citing the 3rd Section of the 14th Amendment. That particular section prohibits individuals who have previously participated in an insurrection or act of rebellion against the federal government from running for public office; it was established in 1868 to proscribe soldiers and officials from the Confederacy from being admitted into the halls of Congress or otherwise. Reasonable.
Fast forward a century and a half or so, and we finally have our first instance of this law being used against the boogieman himself, Donald J. Trump. Soon after, Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, announced her decision to remove the former president from her state’s ballot as well. Bellows’ decision doesn’t suggest the same finality as the Colorado decision, however, as it will be promptly appealed by the Trump campaign in state courts.
The only problem with these decisions, other than disenfranchising about half the voting population of the nation, is that the former president has never actually been found guilty of participating in an insurrection. So, the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court - all of whom were appointed by various Democratic governors - and Bellows decided, by virtue of their own opinion, that the frontrunner for the GOP nomination should be withheld from appearing on the primary ballot.
Funnily enough, ‘due process’ is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment as well. But who am I to tell the experts that?
Let us pause for a moment to go back in time. The Election of 1876 featured a contested result between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Four states, South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon, had the legitimacy of their electoral votes in question as accusations of voter intimidation, fraud, and other irregularities were levied against the two major parties. South Carolina managed to collect all 101% of the ballots cast!
Seeing as both parties claimed victory in the contested states, an electoral commission was set up by Congress that - through a level of complex inside baseball that even I won’t subject you to - was comprised of 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats. Predictably, in a series of party-line votes, Hayes was awarded the disputed ballots and won the election. Hayes likely deserved to win the election, yet thanks to the contempt still felt by the post-war Democratic South for the Union and the ostensibly imbalanced scales of the electoral commission, Tilden supporters felt as if they had received a raw deal.
In the end, Hayes’ victory was accepted by Democrats as a condition of the Compromise of 1877 which saw an end to the Reconstruction era in the South as federal troops were officially withdrawn from the former Confederate states. The Compromise may have navigated the prickly nature of the election results successfully but the unintended consequences were much worse for the nation in the long term. The end of Reconstruction conceivably paved the way for Jim Crow in the South and an uphill battle for black southern Americans to be treated as equals that would last for the better part of the next century.
This might seem like an irrelevant detail from our nation’s past, but bear with me. America in 1876 was about as split down the middle as a country could be - with the exception of the Civil War. Democrats dominated the Southern states while Lincoln’s Republican party reigned supreme in the North. If it weren’t for the fact that the Union had just beaten the pants off the South a few years earlier and that the Democrat party was almost certainly guilty of defrauding the election, the legitimacy of the federal government could have been called into question.
I don’t think we’ll be so lucky in the coming months. Like the man or not, preemptively disenfranchising whole swathes of voters by removing the most popular presidential candidate from the ballot is a move that is just begging for unrest. I figured that 2020’s election would have ended in violence after that beautiful summer of masks, fire, and peace - remember all the peace? - if Trump would’ve won. I admit that I was surprised by the events of January 6th. But as Dubyah said, “Fool me twice, can’t fool me again.”
The American people are in a lose-lose position here. We’re being chased by a Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-sized boulder with no hopes of beating it to the exit. Over the past couple of decades, Congress and the Executive Office have made a habit of making the Supreme Court the de facto legislative body of the United States. No doubt, Trump’s Colorado case will make it to the highest federal in the coming year and will likely be overturned by the conservative majority of the court - three of whom were appointed by Trump himself.
The court system has no choice but to delegitimize itself to one-half of the electorate depending on how they rule in this case. Colorado’s and Maine’s rulings do not pertain to whether or not Trump’s name will appear in the general election but they force a ruling from the Supreme Court that will exacerbate the polarization of the public, and further call into question the legitimacy of the American legal and electoral system. The courts won’t be the deciding factor in the next election, but it will be a flashpoint for either side to assert its theft the moment the concession speech is read. (Yes, I recognize my foolhardy optimism in suggesting that Trump will be willing to admit defeat this time around.)
Every midterm and presidential election in recent memory has been billed as one that hangs democracy in the balance. I always scoffed at the idea because it was clearly meant as scaremongering in an effort to drive panicked voters to the polls. As it turns out, those street corner prophets must have been right. If only we had listened!
Yo-Ho! Yo-Ho! Yo-Houthis?
Piracy: it’s not just for pirates anymore. For the past several weeks, emboldened by the tacit support of the Iranian regime and the weakness of the West abroad, Houthi militants have repeatedly attacked commercial and naval vessels in and around the Red Sea.
For as technological as our civilization has begun, it’s easy to forget how much of our lives is dictated by the physical features of the Earth. Whether it be precious mineral deposits or shipping lanes, power struggles and conflict lie just beneath idiosyncratic geographic features like fault lines, ready to shake things up any moment. Look up the Bosporus Strait and you’ll see why Turkey is in NATO.
To further illustrate my point, I can point to Venezuela, whose president just described itself as a ‘nation of peace’ while threatening to invade neighboring Guyana to exploit its newly discovered oil. I could also point to prolonged US involvement in Iraq and Syria as additional instances, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here!
The Red Sea is one such place. The Red Sea serves as a massive outlet for consumer goods and oil from the Middle East but is bottlenecked by the Suez Canal. Remember the panic that set in when that ship went all horizontal in the Canal a couple of years ago? Drone strikes are worse.
The Houthis are an Islamic extremist group allied with the Shia regime of Iran and the de facto government of northern Yemen. Since the events of October 7th, the Houthis have invited themselves to the party, launching rockets into Israel and attacking any shipping vessel in the Red Sea that might be remotely connected to the Jewish State. For more color of who we’re dealing with here, the Houthi official slogans read as follows: God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam. Extra points for clarity, I guess?
Far be it for me to beg for President Biden to respond with the iron war hammer that is the United States Navy but come on! The terrorist organization has been able to launch attack after attack on American and commercial ships with little to no retaliation from US armed forces. Shipping giant Maersk has already exited the Red Sea due to multiple distress calls it had to issue over repeated Houthi attacks.
If you’re going to carry a big stick, a la Teddy Roosevelt, you have to use it once in a while. The United States and the West still give billions of dollars to Iran yearly in naive gestures of appeasement and goodwill. Iran, in return, then uses that money to support the ambitions of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, etc. The ‘big stick’ to which T.R. was referring doesn’t have to mean a show of military strength when pocketbook restraint could make as big of a statement.
But if you’re not going to deal with Iran, at least deal with the matter at hand. How hard could it be? We’ve got Captain Jack Sparrow on our side.
Not that it matters, but there’s precedent for this. This week’s newsletter wasn’t intended to be a history lesson but here’s another one for you.
Fed up with the tribute payments that the Barbary states of North Africa were demanding US commercial ships to pay to ensure safe travel in the region, President Thomas Jefferson refused to countenance an increase or continuation of the extortion. Upon his decision, Tripoli declared war on the United States in 1801, our first foreign involvement.
Not one to be intimidated, Jefferson sent a fleet of ships to the region to dispense with the matter. In relatively short order, the American Navy defeated the Barbary states - this is known as the First Barbary War - and even captured the city of Derna (located in modern-day Libya). In 1805, a peace treaty was signed ending hostilities and allowing American ships to travel safely in the region thus establishing the proto-foreign policy of our inchoate nation.
Fortunately for us, there are a number of ways that President Biden - and our Western allies - can resolve the matter. All they have to do is pick one. On Wednesday, the United States and its allies issued a statement, a last warning of sorts to the group demanding it cease its attacks on international shipping.
“Ongoing Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are illegal, unacceptable, and profoundly destabilizing,” says the statement. “The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways.”
If I were advising the Houthis - which I’m definitely not - I might suggest that it could be time to request a parley with the ships on the horizon.
The theme of this section has been brought to you by the mere mention that my parents were watching Pirates of the Caribbean the other night. I could have made it much worse.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA
“We asked President Biden to comment, but he was disinclined to acquiesce our request”