Dutch and the Donald

Nothing personal, just business.

— Dutch Schultz

A judge last week ruled that Donald Trump must testify in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation of his company.

With the decision, Trump can no longer avoid justice. 

"He's running out of the tricks that he used in the past," one journalist noted.

Not quite.

He can take a page from fellow New Yorker Dutch Schultz. 

He can kill Letitia James.

In 1935, the Jewish mobster Schultz found himself the target of New York City’s special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who'd pledged with his appointment to rid the city of racketeers.

Dewey was a crusader, with eyes set on higher office (he would run for US president three times between 1940 and 1948). He pursued Schultz with vigor, indicting him for tax evasion. As Dewey wrote in his 1974 memoir, Twenty Against the Underworld, "I regarded it as a matter of primary importance to get Dutch Schultz."

Schultz's reaction was true to form. 

"Dewey's gotta go," he told associates and put out a contract on the prosecutor's life worth $25,000 (over $500,000 in today's money).

When Schultz advised the New York syndicate of the contract, the other family bosses balked, insisting that to rub out Dewey would only bring more government prosecution. They refused to authorize Schultz's hit.

"I’m gonna hit him myself," Schultz told the syndicate.

But the hit never happened. 

Instead, the syndicate rubbed out Schultz, whom they considered a loose cannon.

But, flashing forward, Trump doesn't have a syndicate to answer to. He can rub out Letitia James with impunity.

Stay tuned.

Fade up music.

Prediction

With all eyes on Putin, watch for this story to develop in the coming weeks: all along Mr. Obvious was a paid shill of the Russian autocrat.

Follow the money.

Goofy Governing

The repeal last week of Seattle's 30-year-old bike helmet law by the city's board of health exemplifies the sort of goofy governing that infuriates right-wingers.

As reported by The New York Times, Seattle scrapped the law—despite its proven ability to save lives—because police used it as a pretext to hassle Blacks.

“The question before us wasn’t the efficacy of helmets,” a board member said. "The question before us was whether a helmet law that’s enforced by police on balance produces results that outweigh the harm that that law creates."

As the basis of its decision, the board cited a local advocacy group's analysis of court records.

The analysis showed cops disproportionately ticketed Blacks for breaking the bike helmet law.

The analysis neglected to examine whether Seattle's Blacks wore bike helmets less frequently than other citizens, or rode bikes more frequently (both highly likely).

The same board declared racism a public health crisis in 2020.

You might credibly argue the bike helmet law was never fair, or that governments shouldn't "legislate safety" in the first place, and so the board's decision is the right one.

I don't see it that way.

Bike helmet laws have proven to reduce brain injuries and save lives everywhere. Their fair enforcement is a matter of police reform.

But if police harassment outweighs pubic safety, and social justice trumps public health, then it's only logical that all traffic laws be rescinded, and that police forces be defunded accordingly.

We don't need a lot of cops to enforce nonexistent traffic laws. Get rid of them! 

And it's that inevitable logic which sends right-wingers into apoplexy.

As it should.

Laws often have unintended consequences. (The mandate to stop at red lights, for example, often makes me late for my art classes, which really pisses me off.)

That doesn't make them laws we should rescind.

Goofy governing like Seattle's gives liberals a bad name. 

Toxic Masculinity

I have a bad feeling about this.

— Han Solo

"Toxic masculinity."

I overhear this phrase in coffee shops, cafés, and restaurants more than any other single phrase.

I don't know why it's on the top of women's minds right now—at least the minds of the women who frequent coffee shops, cafés, and restaurants—but it definitely is.

I don't know what's happening to women; but—whatever it is—I have a bad feeling about this.

Perhaps you can blame their wrath on Andrew Cuomo, Jeffery Epstein, or Texas's Republicans.

But, whatever the cause, I think men are soon up for a collective asswhuppin' (defined by Urban Dictionary as an "intense physical retribution involving heavy bruising, put upon a person in need of a life-lesson in civility, politeness, and manners"). 

The phrase "toxic masculinity" was coined 36 years ago by farmer and writer Shepherd Bliss. He thought it described the authoritarian streak displayed by his absent, career-military father.

Over the decades since, however, the phrase has come to denote practically all the attitudes and actions of men, who by dint of gender are not only vulgar and sloppy, but aggressive, competitive, homophobic, sexist, and misogynistic.

That's seems awfully harsh; but I'm not most men's target.

Novelist Norman Mailer, fairly macho himself, believed that contemporary American males were toxic because they were without honor.

"Masculinity is not something given to you, something you’re born with, but something you gain," he wrote in 1962. "And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. 

"Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men."

I think Mailer was onto something.

Somewhere on the journey to manhood, American men forgot about honor.

Endemic

There’s no finish line.

— Gov. Gavin Newsom

My hat's off to Gavin Newsom for declaring that Covide-19 is no longer epidemic, but endemic, in California. 

And so he's taking steps to mainstream it, acknowledging that government must combat Covid-19 perpetually, as it perpetually combats smoking, obesity, unsafe products, and water pollution.

And naturally, as with other public hazards, some people will die.

News flash, America: death is endemic everywhere. It always has been. It's inescapable and baked in.

Most of us simply choose to deny that cold fact.

Perhaps mainstreaming Covid-19, which to date has killed nearly 1 million Americans, will depoliticize it and wake sleepwalking citizens to the inexorability of their own deaths.

Our country would be a much happier place.

The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger defined the human being as finite, a "being-toward-death" (Sein zum Tode).

Where man is concerned, death is baked in, Heidegger claimed. Death is life's "fellow." 

Heidegger also believed that accepting death—your own death—brought you unbounded freedom—and unbounded happiness.

"Turning away from a flight from death," he said, "you see a horizon of opportunity." 

Embracing your death—denying your denial of death—"puts you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with a solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakeable joy."

Who knows but that mainstreaming Covid-19 could make common courtesy and civility—the "solicitous regard for others"—routine again; and make vaccination and mask-wearing badges of honor that announce to the world, "I can't outrun death and don't wish to try. I'm terribly mortal—and happy."

As to those discourteous, miserable many who resist vaccinations and masks I say, so think you can outrun your own death? Good luck with that. 

There's no finish line but one.