July 29, 2019--Zwerling's Law

Because I invoked Godwin's Law occasionally during the 2016 campaign when friends would compare Trump with Hitler, the Nazis, and fascists such as Mussolini--the Law states that as a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving the Nazis or Hitler approaches--they accused me of helping to elect Trump because I "normalized" him. As a result, more than two years later, some are still not talking to me.

I contend now and told them then I was just taking Trump seriously, not boosting him, and if we didn't try to understand his appeal, the worst could occur. And, while many liberals tried to ignore or mock him, look what happened.

Now, of my own, here's a very different law--

Zwerling's Law states that for people older than 60, unless there is something urgent, one is not allowed to bring up medical issues until at least three other topics have been discussed.

I have been noticing that as we age together, with friends, barely after exchanging greetings, we are talking about our latest medical test results, Mohs surgery, blood-thinner side-effects, diverticulitis, cataracts,  and of course colonoscopies. Frequently we begin with colonoscopies.

It is only then that we turn to the latest Trump outrage, what we have been reading or seeing in the movies, or how Joe Biden's poll numbers are looking.

Even after not having seen Mary and Al for three weeks and beginning by talking about the sultry weather, almost immediately, violating my own law, I got us to switch to medical talk when I reported about a recent visit with my neurologist.

I should have invoked Zwerling's Law on myself.

It makes existential sense for folks my age to be most concerned about how our hearts, lungs, and bowels are holding up; but it doesn't necessarily make for snappy conversation.

April 17, 2018--Fallout

I have been hearing from angry friends all morning. They are angry with me, actually most are furious with me for agreeing with the likes of Ann Coulter, criticizing the weekend missile strike in Syria.

One said, "So it's OK with you to let Assad get away with using poison gas to kill his people? Did you see those videos of children, babies gasping for their last breath as they vomited and soon died? I can't believe you wouldn't agree with using a targeted missile strike against his chemical weapons facilitates."

"The strike appeared to turn out well." I agreed, "We seem to have managed to avoid killing any Russians. If we had, who knows where this would have led."

"You're avoiding the issue," my friend pressed on, "Even in warfare there are rules and conventions. Combatants agree not to torture prisoners, engage in ethnic cleansing, or, in this case, not use chemical or biological weapons. There is the Geneva Convention that spells out a lot of this. I can't believe you would have not done anything. What Assad did was barbaric."

"I agree with that too," I tried to say. "I even agree with Trump that Assad is a monster. The last I read, he presided over the slaughter of about 600,000 of his own people. Hundreds of thousands more have been crippled and millions have become refugees."

"And, so, if it was up to you you'd stand back and watch this happen?"

"Though I wouldn't put it quite this way, I must admit I probably would. I would not get involved in what's happening on the ground in Syria, that godforsaken place, any more than I was in favor of invading Iraq or, for that matter, getting involved in Vietnam. Where more than 58,000 of our young people were killed, hundreds of thousands more wounded, and at the end of the day we lost the war. Haven't we learned anything from behaving like the world's policeman?"

"But a tyrant deploying poison gas on his own people is not only against the rules of war--what a concept, war having rules--but monstrous."

"I don't know how to put this," I said, "but what's the difference between using gas to kill babies and blowing them up with conventional weapons? Hideous barrel bombs full of shrapnel is seemingly the weapon of choice in Syria for Assad's air force. This is monstrous too so why not, using your logic, go after his air force and the factories where barrel bombs are assembled?"

"I can't believe your lack of anger or passion about this," my friend said.

"Maybe I've gotten to be too old and seen too much evil in my lifetime. That could be what has made me appear to be inured to barbaric behavior of this kind. About that, guilty as charged. But, still, I am not insensitive to this nor am I seeing your distinctions between poison gas and fragmentation bombs, and I am not convinced it's a good idea for us to try to chase down all the Assads of the world. Sadly, there are too many of them and I don't think it's our role to go after all of them."

"There's a point to what you're saying, but complete hands off when there are holocasts going is also not acceptable. I don't know how to determine where to get involved and when to ignore evil behavior, but a version of America First, or anything that smacks of that is not acceptable to me and shouldn't be to you. I know you were a young boy during the Second World War and were aware even then of Hitler's regime--including how some in your family died in concentration camps--and in later years you knew about other atrocities, but you're opting out now is not attractive or, to me, acceptable."

"I love you a lot," I said, "And respect you. I'll have to do some more thinking about this. One thing I won't concede though--all of this is very complicated and can lead to a lot of hypocritical talk and behavior."

April 3, 2018--"How Democracies Die"

In a powerful book of that name, distinguished Harvard professors of government, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, worry that the election of Donald Trump is unleashing his and America's totalitarian impulses.

They set their analysis in a comparative context with considerable attention paid to the decline and at times death of democracies in, among other countries, Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, Peron's Argentina  Chavez's Venezuela,  Pinochet's Chile, Erdogan's Turkey, and Marcos's Philippines.

But the central focus is on the history of threats to democracy in the United States--the Civil War; the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow era of institutionalized racism; the McCarthy threat; and now Trumpian times.

About America their analysis includes the gathering number of ways Trump is challenging the very notion of democracy itself and how he is systematically undermining it further by exploiting people's fears of the "other" and the internal and external dangers that they see around them, including a rigged electoral system, a corrupt judiciary, an unfettered press, a compromised legislative process, a debasement of our culture, and the political opposition treasonous. 

The book, though comfortably readable, includes a great deal of data to advance its arguments, including some that are unusual, even quirky but metaphorically illuminate the nature of the problem and its near total reach.

From the chapter, "The Unraveling," about our growing polarization--

Consider this extraordinary finding: In 1960, political scientists asked Americans how they would feel if their children married someone who identified with another political party. Four percent of Democrats and five percent of Republicans reported they would be "displeased."  

In 2010, by contrast, 33 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans reported feeling "somewhat or very unhappy" at the prospect of inter-party marriage. 

Being a Democrat or a Republican has become not just a partisan affiliation but an identity. 

(Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes, "Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization")

None of this will help one sleep at night, but we need to be warned and find ways to resist.

January 16, 2018--Hitler

When I get an email from a friend who mentions Hitler in the subject line or makes reference to him in the first paragraph, I invoke Godwin's Law.

This is not classic Godwin's Law--an Internet adage that asserts that as a discussion grows longer the probability that someone will invoke Hitler becomes virtually certain--but a version of it: invoking it at the beginning of a hot interchange for the sake of preserving tender relationships.

The Law is not that evidence-based but still it has the ring of truth. 

In fact, nowadays, with autocratic Trump as president, in many encounters that involve him it is virtually certain that Hitler will be invoked by any or all parties early in the conversation. Or, more appropriately, since Trump resembles him in posture, behavior, and policies, he is compared to Benito Mussolini.

The latest example--

With a subject line--"Bring Him Down!"--a friend wrote just this to me:

"I think again--like Hitler he may be nearly indestructible until it is ALMOST too late."  

People most frequently invoke Hitler when backed into a corner and their argument begins to run out of gas. It's as if when evidence and logic fail, to have the last word they nuke the discussion, claiming Trump is just like Hitler or it's the same here as it was in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy.

In my view, when this occurs, since I do not see Trump (yet) to be our homegrown version of Hitler or Mussolini we are so irreconcilably not on the same page it's better to cite Godwin's Law and change the subject, log out, or ring off.

Tempted to say little in return, since this came from a close friend, I wrote back--

It will be about how self-correcting our system is. Trump's not quite Hitler (just a pathetic racist, which is bad enough) and conditions there and then versus here are not comparable.  

Among other things Germany had a collapsed economy and ours for most now is doing well for many. Then there are the critical differences between our histories and commitment to democracy as well as the structure of our traditions, institutions, and governing bodies. 

Our system of checks and balances should (hopefully) work to confine anyone with strong authoritarian tendencies or aspirations. 

On the other hand, there is also the thick centuries-long underlay of national racism and unfettered, predatory capitalism. And we have a disturbing history of know-nothingness, mass miseducation, and a saturated and banal popular culture that includes experiencing news as entertainment.

Halfway through I assume my friend nodded off but I thought, reprised here, he might like to read the whole thing.

December 15, 2016--Am I Missing Something?

If I am, it wouldn't be the first time.

When newly-inaugurated president Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton called for the re-normalization of relations with Russia, in the person of Vladimir Putin, progressives supported that and even chuckled when Clinton brought an actual reset button with her as a present to Putin on her first official visit to Moscow.

Thankfully, we felt, we no longer had a president who proclaimed that he looked in "the man's eye and found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy." The "man" of course was Putin.

We know how that worked out. First with Bush and now with Obama, who not only can't exchange a civil word with Putin or look him int the eye but, more dangerously, we have Russia allied with the murderous Syrian regime, perpetrating a holocaust on opponents to the Assad government, while we stand by impudently doing nothing.

And now we know officially that Putin's people hacked their way into the middle of our recent election in an attempt to bring Clinton down and tip the election to Donald Trump. And once again, we are sitting around fulminating but doing nothing. What was it that the Chinese said about "paper tiger"?

Whatever shred of tiger still resides within us is now expressing itself as moral outrage that Trump's nominee to serve as Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was too cozy with Russia and Putin during his tenure as CEO for Exxon Mobil.

Almost foaming at the mouth, John McCain, undoubtedly itching to get at the hated Donald Trump, has already declared that he will likely vote against Tillerson's nomination because his "friend" Putin is "a thug, a murderer, and a killer."

I wonder what McCain would have said about Stalin during the Second World War? Someone we disliked but depended upon to win against the Nazis. Historians have concluded that if it weren't for the Soviet involvement--defeating Hitler on the Second Front when he invaded Russia--we might very well have lost.

Stalin, this essential ally of ours, was more than a thug, murderer, or killer. He was a mass murderer the likes of which the world has thankfully rarely seen. He is reported to have slaughtered between 34 and 49 million of his own people. And yet, Roosevelt found ways to work with him.

And then later, President Nixon concluded it was expedient to reset relations with another mass murderer--Mao Zedong, who ordered the slaying of at least 45 million. This outreach to China was and is in our self-interest and therefore our leaders somehow found ways to overlook the flood of bloodshed and move on.

And now with Russia again challenging us, McCain and Paul and Rubio and a host of Democrats in the Senate are threatening to block Tillerson's confirmation.

If we could calm down about Tillerson in 2013 receiving the Order of Friendship medal from Putin, wouldn't we see his "friendly" relationship with Putin to be an asset rather than a killer virus to his confirmation? Or do we prefer the prospect of Secretary of State John Bolton? Or, help us, Rudy?

What would McCain and others have us do with regard to Putin and a resurgent Russia--bomb, bomb, bomb . . . bomb Moscow?

I'm just getting over the results of November's election and now I have to worry about World War III?

This is my 3,000th blog posting. The first was way back in August 2005. Thanks for taking the time to look in on these.

June 8, 2016--Donald trump Is A Jerk

He's not Mussolini; he's not Hitler. He is more mundane than that--he is merely a jerk and not fit to be president of our country.

His overt racism is evident in the way in which he has repeatedly slandered the esteemed judge of Mexican descent who is hearing the class action suit being brought against so-called Trump University.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel is as legally "American" as Trump's sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Both are decedents of immigrants. He Mexican. She German.

Even Republicans who have reluctantly endorsed him--against their better instincts--about this one are saying no mas. (Spanish intended.)

And I say that too.

I continue to feel it is essential to understand fully the discontents and anger raging in America which have fueled Trump's candidacy. If we ignore these forces, before long we may experience catastrophic culture-changing consequences.

Having said that, he is a despicable person with few saving graces and should be soundly denounced and defeated.

More about this on subsequent days. But today is Rona's almost-big birthday and we plan to spend the whole day having fun.

May 18, 2016--Zwerling's Law

Back on March 1st I posted a piece about Godwin's Law. Actually about Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies.

It stated that "as a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazi analogies approaches."

This intrigued me because I was finding that this was what was happening to me with growing frequency whenever I wanted to have a conversation about Donald Trump's political success (no matter what one thought about it or him). Before very long Nazi or Fascist analogies would manifest  themselves. Generally he would not only be labeled a demagogue (perhaps fair) but would also most frequently be compared to Benito Mussolini (in my view, over heated).

I was reminded of this yesterday when reading Charles Blow's op ed column in the New York Times, "Trump's Asymmetric Warfare."

It's actually a pretty good piece that begins with a reference to MSNBC's Chris Matthew's perception that Trump is difficult to attack because "conventional forms of political fighting won't work on this man."

Blow asks, "How do you embarrass an embarrassment."

Well and good, but Trump so clearly makes Blow crazy that he also said, "There is no way to sully a pig or mock a clown."

I'm OK with the clown reference because Trump is a very entertaining entertainer, but "sully a pig?" This goes for meaningful discourse in the paper of record?

Further, there is the whiff of Godwin's Law when Blow writes, "This had made him nearly impervious to even the cleverest takedowns, and trust me, many have tried [think poor Elizabeth Warren who tired and is now referred to by Trump, devastatingly, as Pocahontas], comparing him to everyone from P.T. Barnum to Hitler."

Blow cleverly doesn't say he agrees with this latter comparison. As a journalist, all he's disingenuously doing is reporting what others have said.

Oh really.

But Blow has more to say. Now about Trump's supporters. These, he claims, are people who "tire of higher-level cerebral function."

And concludes, "Trump's triumph as the presumptive Republican Party nominee is not necessarily a sign of his strategic genius [Blow also refers to him as a "simpleton"] as much as it's a sign of some people's mental, psychological and spiritual deficiencies."

Thus, Zwerling's Law--If Nazi analogies don't work, blame the victims.

In this case, the victims are those duped by Trump. To the likes of Charles Blow to support Trump by definition assumes one has been duped. There can be no other explanation. And so to be venerable to Trump's lies and manipulations, one has to be mentally deficient.

It is just this sort of arrogance too common among liberal elites that is ironically proving most helpful to Trump in his ascendancy. Perhaps all the way to the White House.

Charles Blow

March 28, 2016--The Koch Brothers

For a deeper understanding of our current political culture, I cannot recommend anything more revealing than Jane Mayer's Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Much of it focuses on the Koch Brothers, whose combined wealth equals $84 billion, and the organizations that they have stealthily founded and funded. Including the innocuously-named Americans for Prosperity, the Cato and Manhattan Institutes, the Heritage Foundation, and dozens of others off almost everybody's radar screens. And of course, from its inception they provide all kinds of support for the many activities of the Tea Party.

In all of this, they follow in the footsteps of their father, Fred, one of the half dozen or so founders of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, who began to amass his fortune by building oil refineries in Germany for Hitler's Third Reich. He so admired the Fuhrer and Mein Kampf that Father Fred visited with him at least 11 times and spoke effusively about him in the years leading up to World War II.

Of course, this "episode" is not included in official histories of Koch Industries. The timeline for those half dozen years is blank.

What is most interesting and less well known are the things the Kochs would like to see happen to America and our government. The reasons they have spent hundreds of million dollars on these organizations.

To summarize their political agenda in a few words--they would like to see the end of government altogether. Literally.

Not scaled back, not pruned here and there, not just contracted in size with the Commerce Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and of course the Federal Reserve and IRS all eliminated. Kaput.

In their mostly private speeches and writings they call for the elimination of all manifestations of government. They would repeal all of the New Deal, including Social Security and unemployment insurance and all Great Society programs. This means, if they had their way, there would be no Medicare, Medicaid, much less any public accommodation or voting rights legislation.

They would eliminate all public funding for education. This means they would provide no governmental support whatsoever for any kind of schooling, from Head Start to college loans to funded research. They also would get the government out of efforts to reduce segregation or end abuses to voting rights. They not only would dismantle the IRS but would eliminate all forms of federal taxation. And they would strike out all regulations that limit corporate life and especially banking.

At the even further lunatic end of the scale, they would not have any public support for police or fire departments. I assume individuals would have to do their own policing and hire private firefighters.

They would also terminate the CIA and FBI. And unbelievably, even our standing army.

They would amend, actually eliminate the Bill of Rights with the Constitution protecting only one right--the right to own property.

They even call for ending the ban on slavery, claiming that it is an individual's right "to sell himself if he so chooses." They are that perversely, consistently Libertarian.

Like Grover Norquist (whose American's for Tax Reform the Koch's fund), they would like to see government so reduced in size that it could "be drowned in a bathtub."

I know you think I'm making this up. If you do, I urge you to pick up a copy of Dark Money. There's more there. And worse.

December 14, 2015--GOP Goose-Steppers

We need to calm down.

Those who are fearing that we are about to be bombed unrelentingly by ISIS need to get a grip. It's bad enough as it is and so the last thing we need is to get all hysterical and make things worse by overreacting.

Those drawn to Donald TRUMP, rallying to his bluster, believing his xenophobic proposals to suspend   the admission of Muslims to the country will keep us safe, need to take a deep breath and at least one step back.

And those of us on the progressive left also need to get control of ourselves--no matter what we think about him and his likely unconstitutional ideas, he is no Hitler.

Though that is what I'm hearing from liberal friends and reading in some hyped-up op-ed columns in the New York Times.

About the latter, on Saturday, Timothy Egan, in his piece, "Another Indecent Proposal," defamed TRUMP and his followers by labeling them crypto-nazis. With TRUMP assigned the Hitler role.

To make matters even more outrageous, the Egan piece, when it first appeared on the NY Times website, was more blatantly titled--"Goose-Steppers in the GOP."

Egan and some of my friends need to have a drink.

And while doing so, to give him his due, they need to quote TRUMP accurately. What he is saying may be bad enough on its own as not to require citation out of context.

For example, out-of-context Egan writes--

Trump's proposal--"a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering there United States"--is not just flotsam from the lunatic fringe. Well it is. But the fringe is huge.

Whereas in a campaign press release TRUMP actually said--

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what's going on.

Or as he put it more colloquially--"Until we can figure out what the hell is going on."

What TRUMP said and what Egan said he said is quite different.

We may still deplore what TRUMP is saying and implying about Muslims, but we diminish the effectiveness of our deploring by intentionally not quoting him honestly.

And we can't just ignore his charge that our "country's representatives" at the moment can't "figure out what the hell is going on."

They can't.

Homeland Security people this past weekend acknowledged that they really blew it when they reviewed the application for a visa from the Pakistani women who joined her American-born husband in perpetrating the San Bernardino massacre. For years, openly on social media, she expressed interest in joining in violent terrorist activities against the West. And though her application was reviewed three times, no one picked that up. And the rest is tragic history.

It probably would have helped if we had, sorry, taken a TRUMP-pause to figure out what was going on with this and her.

Here's a little more from the Egan op-ed--

And sure, all the little Hitlers probably don't amount to a hill of beans. But what about the 35 percent of Republican voters on the New York Times/CBS News poll, who say they're all in with the man sieg heiled by aspiring brownshirts and men in white sheets?

For me, when someone so quickly starts making Hitler analogies, I know they're out of control and are not thinking with their heads but with their fears and emotions.

Hitler was Hitler. TRUMP is TRUMP. As I said, that's bad enough.

December 10, 2014--One Jong-un

Isn't it frustrating that we know so little about what's going on in North Korea.

With all our human and technological intelligence assets we don't really know who's in charge, who is slated for execution, what's happening with supreme leader Kim Jong-un's health (minimally he seems to be limping), how his sister has seemingly somehow wheedled her way into his inner circle--assuming he even has one--and what's with those Kim family bouffant hairdos?

OK, so his father and grandfather, as well as Jong-un himself were barely five-feet tall. Not that impressive when it comes to leaders-for-life. The hair adds another inch or two of stature. On the other hand, Napoleon and Hitler weren't much taller and they both sported comb-overs. No wonder Jong-un likes 6' 7" Dennis Rodman so much.

More important, we're not sure if North Korea has two or ten atomic bombs or how close they are to being able to miniaturize them enough to stick one on top of missile capable of reaching our West Coast.

But one thing I do know is that I'm happy not to be Kim's uncle. We do know what that gets you--the firing squad.

Now there's another thing publicly known--there will be no more Jong-uns.

According to the New York Times, back in January 2011, soon after Mr Kim took office (if that's the proper way to describe his ascendency) there was a government document that declared that there can be no more Jong-uns in North Korea. Since it's a common name, anyone with it was required to change it to something else and now no new babies can be named Jong-un.

This should have come as no surprise because the North Koreans did the same thing when his father and grandfather took over.

How charming. But also disturbing. Disturbing because it took nearly four years for the South Koreans, who should have some idea about what's going on in the north, to find out. If we can't keep track of what names are or are not allowed in North Korea how will we ever get a line on their military capacity and intentions.

I suppose one reason that there is no electricity anywhere in the country except the capital, Pyongyang, is to keep both the North Koreans and the rest of us in the dark.

July 11, 2014--Best of Behind: In the Sunlight of Horror

From September 21, 2007. Not your usual light-spirited Friday posting but . . .
Some years ago I was in Munich. Primarily to visit the museums, but also to take in whatever remained of the atmosphere out of which Hitler emerged. My idea of fun!

So I visited the beer hall, the Bürgerbräukeller, where in 1916 he made his famous speech and launched the putsch that brought him and the Nazi party to prominence. I must admit, though decades had passed since that infamous night, when up in the private room where the early Nazis gathered, to hear the same songs from his day filtering up from the huge hall below, it was not difficult to project myself back in time. In my mind’s eye I could see Hitler surrounded by Rudolph Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, and Herman Göering.

The following day, as a part of my Nazi tour, I wanted to visit the Dachau concentration camp since I understood it was nearby and because it was among the first of the camps. I didn’t have a car so I tried to find out if there was a way to get there by public transportation. It was not easy to find someone to direct me much less get anyone to look me in the eye so I knew it and concentration camps in general were still not discussable subjects in Bavaria. But I did manage to find my way to what was in effect a commuter train—Dachau, you see, is only 16 kilometers (10 miles) from downtown Munich.

Thus, in a mere 20 minutes, on a beautiful sunlit day, I arrived in the town of Dachau; and since I assumed I would need to take another train or taxi to wherever the camp was located—considering what had gone on there I assumed it would be at a considerable distance—I wandered around again seeking directions. I was not ignored because of my halting German, though it was pathetic. I suspected it was more because no one in Dachau wanted to even hear mention of the real Dachau—the camp.

I did, though, eventually find a taxi driver who agreed to take me to it. I got into his car and sat slumped in the back seat not wanting to draw too much attention to myself by looming as a presence in his rearview mirror—I was happy enough that I was able to find someone willing to drive me there and didn’t want to put any pressure on him to have to acknowledge me.

But without any provocation he asked, “Would you like me to take you to the camp by the road along the railroad tracks?”

I didn’t immediately understand the implication of this, thinking only that I did not have much cash and since getting to the camp would be a long and expensive ride I didn’t want him to take a route that would run up the meter. So I said, “Whatever you prefer is fine, as long as it’s the shortest one.”

He chuckled at that and said, “Along the tracks is the shortest.” And added, “You see, they located the camp as close to the tracks as possible. They prided themselves on being efficient.”

Along the tracks we drove, following them as they wound their way right through the center of this medieval town. “You see where we are,” he said, “Where everyone could see.”

Again not understanding, I asked, “See what?”

“What was going on,” he said.

Embarrassed that it had taken me so long to get what he was trying to tell me, I muttered, “Ach, I understand,” and pulled myself up in my seat so I could get a better view of things.

“The trains went right through the town. In the morning they were packed full of prisoners. In the afternoon they returned empty.” For the next few minutes we rode in silence. “And then at night, everyone could smell what was going on. You will see why because we are almost there. It is not far and the prevailing wind blew the smoke right over the city.”

We had been driving for no more than a total of ten minutes when he stopped at the entrance. “This is as far as I can go,” he said.

He refused to take any money from me and then looked back over his shoulder toward where we had been. The town of Dachau was clearly visible. 

He pointed. “Now you understand, yes?”

I did. 

August 7, 2013--Knight's Moves

Chess is a game; a passion; can be a way of life, an obsession; and, for those of us like me, who do not play seriously or well, it is about metaphors. 

The most obvious are the military ones--about conflict, attack, retreat, capture, defeat, unconditional surrender--while for me the most interesting are those about the rest of life.

I know all the moves. Though by this I am not speaking braggadociosly or metaphorically--that I smugly claim I know all the moves--rather I mean I know how each piece moves and some rules such as those about passed pawns and castling (the only play in which two pieces are moved simultaneously--if one is extra patient and does not move the king or one of the rooks and the spaces between them have been vacated, one is rewarded for that patience by being allowed to castle, to make a strategic and advantageous move--a life lesson in metaphor about the opportunities that accrue from restraint). 

But I do not have the mind nor the patience to do enough studying or playing to rise above the level at which I used to play as a young boy with my father, who took pleasure in regularly "mating" me (speak about metaphors!) in Guinness-Book-of-Records' time.

I was inspired to think again about chess after moving on to the second volume of James MacGregor Burns' excellent biography of Franklin Roosevelt, The Solider of Freedom. 

Writing about FDR's strategic style, Burns compared Roosevelt's moves to those of chess's knights and not to the king's, which is surprising since so many of FDR's opponents and haters claimed that he aspired to be an American monarch. 

Middling knight's moves are dramatically different from those permitted the all-important king's--one measly space at a time in any direction, though not into check, into peril. Burns compared Roosevelt not to a ruler but to the unpredictably eccentric knight, the sole piece that moves in two directions at the same time and with the sanction--again the only piece permitted to do so--in its asymmetrical, staggered way, to leap over other pieces, in all directions, over friend and foe alike, and over white as well as black pieces. 

Here from Burns, comparing FDR with Hitler--

Grounded in the security of doting parents, fixed home, social class, family traditions, Roosevelt could not easily gauge this product [Hitler] of social void and revolutionary turmoil. Hitler had lacked a home, but had found a new home in the Nazi party, in its ideas, and comradeship. Though Hitler knew how to use the carrot as well as the stick, he had become a terrible simplifier. While Roosevelt proceeded with a series of knights' moves, bypassing, overleaping, encircling, Hitler went right for his prey--opposition parties, Nazi dissidents, Jews, small nations.

But as quirkily strategic as knights may be, researching a bit, I learned that they are especially vulnerable to lowly pawns. Here, from something I turned up--

Since knights can easily be chased away by pawn moves, it is often advantageous for knights to be placed in holes [a square that a player cannot hold with his or her own pawn] in the enemy position as outposts--squares where they cannot be attacked by pawns. Such a knight on the fifth rank [there are eight ranks in total] is a strong asset, and one on the sixth may exercise as much power [as the usually much more powerful] rook. A knight at the edge or corner of the board controls fewer squares than one on the board's interior, thus the saying, "A knight on the rim is dim!"

Thinking and acting as a knight served FDR well as he confronted enemies domestic and foreign. For the rest of us just attempting to make it through life while pursuing happiness, thinking and acting more like knights--with their capacity to bypass, leap, and circle--sounds about right.