Update on the Campaigns...

Election season comes early in Washington. Heck, it's already beginning. Candidates are announcing their campaigns left and right (pun intended), and the flurry of activity is beginning.

Let's start with the Democrats, since the pool there is significantly smaller than it is on the right. Essentially, the battle for the nomination is a struggle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders. A few other candidates are also in the mix, but none of them are truly likely to garner much support. Let's take a look at the two declared candidates (something I won't be able to do with the Republicans, given the amount of time that would take - that warrants a separate post of its own). Everybody knows Hillary - former First Lady, former New York State Senator, former Secretary of State under President Obama. Bernie Sanders is a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist," an Independent senator from Vermont who stands alongside Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren as one of Capitol Hill's most outspoken progressives. In a reflection of national trends, Hillary Clinton - who stands easily to the left of President Obama - is the more moderate of the two candidates. In essence, Clinton and Sanders share many of the same views on many of the same topics, with Clinton standing a bit more towards the center than Sanders. Clinton is notably more moderate when it comes to issues such as international trade, domestic surveillance, foreign policy, and others. Both have similar stances on social issues like gay marriage and abortion. Clinton, as it currently stands, is the heavy favorite for the Democratic Nomination - and, indeed, the election in general. Widely adored and admired across the left for her track record in the senate, she draws some criticism from Democrats - namely Sanders' supporters - for changing her views on certain issues, including gay marriage, foreign involvement, and financial reform. And, of course, she draws an exorbitant amount of flak from the right. If you're naïve enough to think the Republicans have forgotten about Benghazi...they haven't, nor will they ever. The right's criticism of Clinton centers around a few key points: they argue that she believes she's above the system and that she would be an ineffective leader with respect to the wider world, using her track record as Secretary of State as their evidence.

Now we get to the Republicans, where things are much less orderly. Whereas the two Democratic frontrunners are relatively similar in their respective ideologies, the Republicans are all over the map. Virtually every single faction within the Republicans has a candidate at this point, and some of the heavy hitters haven't even declared their campaign. The Tea Party and the grassroots conservatives have Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the libertarians have Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the social conservatives have Dr. Ben Carson and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the fiscal conservatives have former executive Carly Fiorina, and the moderate Republicans have Marco Rubio. This is without the likes of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, former Texas governor Rick Perry, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal...you get the picture. It seems like the only major Republican who isn't running is Mitt Romney, who managed to unite (more or less) the warring factions so well-represented here in 2012. But the biggest name of all is one who'll probably announce his campaign any day of all. He's the biggest name in the pool, of course, because his last name is the last name of two previous Republican presidents. In case I'm not being painfully obvious enough, it's Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush stands in what is perhaps the best position of the Republican nominees, despite calls from critics claiming that he's - wait for it - too liberal to win the nomination. Jeb is a staunch supporter of immigration reform, it's true, and most would agree that he's slightly more moderate than his elder brother on most issues. But don't for half a second take him for a centrist - Jeb Bush stands for most of the classical conservative values. Small government, gun rights, Christian nuclear family, the whole shebang. He did support environmental conservation while governor, but not in any earth-shattering way. Ultimately, Jeb's biggest obstacle will be his brother's legacy, which is hardly looked favorably upon in today's America. Already, he's been taking some small steps to set him apart from George. And you can expect all the former presidents - be they Clintons or Bushes - to remain fairly quiet on the campaign trail. We all know the reasons why.

A Clinton-Bush matchup would be an interesting one. Not only because it would involve America's two biggest political dynasties - because it would pit friends against each other. Hillary's oft-maligned husband counts Jeb's father as one of his best friends - Bill and George Sr. have worked closely together on a number of humanitarian projects in their post-presidency, including aid efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The former Democratic president is also good friends with his successor, George W. Bush. It's one of those stories that gives me a bit of hope for our overly-partisan nation. Whenever I see Bill Clinton and George Bush joking with each other on social media, or hear about one calling the other to congratulate him on the birth of a grandchild, I can't help but smile. It's one of those cases where I allow myself the liberty of hope. 

The World This Week: Terrorism Update

A lot can happen in one week's time. Take the week of June 28, 1863, when Lee's armies marched into Gettysburg in an invasion of the Union and were repulsed. Take the week of December 7th, 1941, when America entered the Second World War and Japan attacked half the Pacific. And, though it wasn't as significant as either of these weeks, you could make the case for this past week. No, I'm not saying that this past week comes close to being an extremely important week in American history, or that it's even one of the most important weeks of the 21st Century. But I would dare to say that this past week has been among the most significant, in terms of terrorism, since the fateful years that began our current century. This week may even outdo Bin Laden. On the other hand, everything is relative. But I digress.

First and foremost, I should discuss some events that occurred beyond the boundaries of this past week. Two weeks ago today, in Garland, Texas, two gunmen launched an attack on a cartoonists' contest featuring caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, not unlike the ones featured in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. If you're unaware as to how that instance played out, the would-be killers wounded one man before they were gunned down themselves. ISIS claimed responsibility for the event in the days after the attack, seemingly in an effort to rattle Americans. It's unclear if the men were operating on ISIS's orders (and little evidence supports it), but it appears that the men were in contact with members of ISIS residing in western nations. At any rate, if ISIS hoped to strike fear into the American public's hearts, they failed miserably. All they managed to accomplish was to give us a new Texas joke. The government is taking things more seriously, though - security has been ramped up at military bases across the country. But there are other reasons for that, which I'll discuss later. In another string of events that has been occurring throughout recent weeks, a Saudi-led coalition is continuing to launch strikes against Shia rebels in Yemen, who forced the Yemeni president to flee to Saudi Arabia. The rebels are backed by Iran and are one of a number of factions in the war - among them, Al Qaeda. Yemen warrants several posts of its own, so I won't elaborate much here.

Earlier in the year, I posted about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber, whose trial began months ago. Well, it turns out he may not be surviving much longer - Tsarnaev was sentenced to death this week. He was charged on six counts, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. To recap -  Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan, religious extremists, wanted to get revenge on America for its actions in the Middle East. They rigged two pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon - one to kill the runners, the second to kill the rescuers as they rushed to help. Three spectators - a restaurant manager, a graduate student, and an eight-year-old boy - were killed in the blasts, and hundreds were injured. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar would later kill a young MIT police officer while on the run. The defense in the trial will undoubtedly try to get the case before a court of appeals. If the sentence stands, Tsarnaev will be executed by lethal injection in Indiana. One of the great ironies of the case is that the defense wanted Tsarnaev's trial to occur outside of Boston, for fear that the odds would be stacked against him. Recent polls show that only 15% of Bostonians and 19% of Massachusetts residents (I'm not sure what the proper demonym is) feel that Tsarnaev should be executed - compare that with 60% of Americans overall. There's another factor at play here, one that gives it even more weight: if the sentence is carried out, Tsarnaev will be the first terrorist executed in the United States since September 11th. A chilling milestone, no matter how you look at it.

Perhaps the most significant events of this past week, as they relate to the world as a whole, involve the Islamic State. ISIS took Ramadi, the capital of Al-Anbar, Iraq's largest governorate (the equivalent of a province) this weekend. This marks a significant blow to the Coalition's overlying goal of halting the Islamic State's advance through Iraq. But earlier this weekend, the Coalition struck a major blow to ISIS. In one the first American ground operations revealed to the public (only one other has been confirmed so far), soldiers of the First Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, better known as Delta Force, raided an ISIS stronghold in Syria. They killed an ISIS commander known as Abu Sayyif (not his real name, it seems), who managed ISIS's oil funds. In a struggle that involved hand-to-hand combat and intense gun battles, Delta Force killed about a dozen ISIS militants, executed Abu Sayyif, captured the commander's wife, and freed a Yazidi girl being held as a slave. The White House confirmed that the raid was a success, and that the commander was killed. ISIS hardly took the news well. In one of their usual messages, they threatened to execute President Obama and western "cross-worshippers." In a more chilling twist, they released a photoshopped photo of President Obama being beheaded. I'm not going to share a link. I mentioned earlier that the Pentagon is stepping up security on many of its bases...that's among the reasons why. Ultimately, only time will tell if the events of these past days will make the world a safer place, or a more dangerous one. But in the short run, one thing is clear: chaos is gaining ground in the world.

History this Week: The Cold War

May 8th marked the 70th Anniversary of the formal end to hostilities in Europe. The Americans and the Soviets had linked up, the Russians had taken Berlin, Hitler and many other high-ranking Nazis had offed themselves, and the world was getting ready for peace. Of course, I'm kidding about that last part. The Pacific War was still going strong, and the Cold War was just beginning.

By the end of the war, Stalin was the only remaining member of the original Big Three. Churchill had been voted out of office to be replaced by Clement Attlee, and Roosevelt had suffered his tragic brain hemorrhage. This made things difficult for Stalin, who had planned to take all of Western Europe into the Soviet Bloc. Whereas Roosevelt had been soft on communism, Harry Truman was hard. Truman didn't trust Stalin or the Soviets in the slightest. And while Clement Attlee, Churchill's rival from the Labour Party, didn't share his predecessor's (and, incidentally, his successor's) belief that the Wehrmacht could be used to strike the Russians, he wasn't about to accommodate Stalin's dreams of global conquest. And so we got the Cold War, which shaped the world as we know it today. In theory, it shouldn't impact us to the extent that it does today. The Soviet Union fell, America is the sole remaining superpower, and everything in the world should be fine and dandy. But it isn't, and a lot of that is due to the Cold War, with either the Americans or the Russians to blame.

Take the conflicts in the middle east. Not just Iraq or Afghanistan - the entire region. Israel-Palestine, Iran, Syria...the entire region. Let's look at each one, shall we? The whole schism between Israel and the Arab world, while not caused by the Cold War, attracted its attention. The Soviet Union, which initially favored Israel in the long-standing conflict, sided with the Arab states by the early fifties. And America, of course, backed Israel early on, recognizing its statehood from the late forties onward and eventually supporting it wholeheartedly. For the most part, this was a conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs. The same couldn't be said in Iran's case, where the US did its utmost to keep the anti-communist, pro-American shah in power. This led to the Iranian revolution, which produced the Islamic Republic of Iran that we know and can't make up our minds about today. Ironically enough, the Americans backed the Islamic Republic in the Iran-Iraq War (with the infamous Iran-Contras Affair), whereas the Soviets sided with Saddam's Iraq. And then there's Afghanistan, the big one. The Soviet Union invaded to keep the communist puppet-state that existed there in place. The US backed the rebels known as the Mujahideen, providing them with firearms, surface-to-air missiles, and other weapons. The Mujahideen eventually pushed back the Soviet Union. To call Afghanistan the Soviet Union's Vietnam (where a superpower was embarrassingly defeated by supposedly inferior forces) would be a gross understatement - the conflict in Vietnam utterly destroyed the Red Army's prestige. The Soviet military would never be taken seriously again, what with the concessions made in eastern Europe and the fear of American buildup in the eighties. But the Soviet interference left Afghanistan without a legitimate government, paving the way for the Taliban's takeover in the nineties. Some of the Mujahideen fought with the Taliban, while others fought against them. Whatever side they took, the Taliban would remain in power for a few long years, supporting groups such as Al-Qaeda. And I don't think I need to describe what happened next.

Of course, we also need to consider the mess that was made in Europe. Soviet domination was the only thing that kept the different parts of Yugoslavia together. For those in the younger generation who don't know what Yugoslavia is, it was composed of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia. To put it nicely: once the Soviets were out of the picture, the bull manure hit the rotating blades. This lead to several wars, in which the United Nations and NATO were entangled. And, of course, there's the situation in Ukraine, which is essentially the Cold War reborn. I've discussed it quite a bit - Putin wants Russia to remain relevant, Crimeans and many Ukrainians would like to be part of Russia, the civil war is bloody, and so on. There's more, though. The sentiment towards the rest of the world is different in different parts of Europe - sometimes in different parts of the same country. Take Germany, which was split into east and west after World War Two. The Americans had annihilated much of what became West Germany, while the Russians had obliterated the East. But once the two were split, the Americans rebuilt West Germany under the Marshall Plan, whereas the Russians propped the East back on its feet. As such, the people in western Germany tend to look upon the United States in a more favorable light than their countrymen from the ex-Soviet bloc. Every last foreign policy relation of ours is shaped by the Cold War - our biggest allies are the members of NATO, Israel, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and other nations that refused to give into communism. Our rivals (on a national scale) - are Russia, China, North Korea - nations that rested on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Our old enemies, like Saddam Hussein, were on the Soviet payroll. We don't identify nations as our friends and enemies by who they stood with in the great conflicts and battles of the past century - we identify them based on where they stood in the war that wasn't a war. And I'm not sure if that makes me hopeful or concerned.

Top Ten: Literary Characters

Most of you who know me know that I'm a pretty big reader. What's not to love about books? And anyone who loves reading loves certain characters that they read about. So I'm listing my ten favorite characters from literature. Before I begin, I should mention a few qualifications I put in place for characters on this list:
-No characters from plays were included here. Let's face it, Shakespearean characters warrant their own top ten list.
-Characters from classical poems (Greco-Roman, Anglo-Saxon, etc.) won't feature in here, unless they also feature in other works of literary merit (there is one such instance on this list).
-If the characters later appeared in works of film or theater, those adaptations may be discussed.
Now, without further ado, my top ten literary characters!

10) James Bond (Numerous works by Ian Fleming)
Bond. James Bond. Undoubtedly, he's one of the most iconic characters in the modern anglophonic world. Who hasn't seen at least one of the movies? Virtually everybody you may encounter has seen one Bond film or another - they defined the superspy genre. That's part of the reason why I ranked Bond low on this list - almost everyone has seen the movies, but few people have actually read Fleming's works. The Bond of the novels is a more complex, somewhat darker character than many of the Bonds of the film, and there's no direct comparison - it's not as if Connery' Bond or Moore's Bond (and so on) is the Bond of the novels. The Bond of the novels is written a bit crueler and colder than the film Bonds, but many of his traits are similar throughout - he's capable of compassion, he doesn't kill for pleasure, and he's quite suave. Truly, a dark sort of gentleman.

9) Kurtz (Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad)
Kurtz serves as an examination for the lurking darkness within the human soul and psyche. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz, an ivory trader in a part of 19th-Century Africa heavily hinted to be the Belgian Congo, descends into the madness. But Kurtz only reaches the ninth slot of my list because his literary portrayal pales in comparison to his film portrayal. The adaptation isn't obvious at first - the setting is changed, and so is the title. Instead of reflecting on Europe's colonial actions in Africa, the film comments on America's policy of containment and takes the title Apocalypse Now. It's the reverse of the James Bond situation - in the film, Kurtz (now a rouge colonel in the US Army) is considerably darker and has much more depth. In both cases, the character becomes disgusted with the policies his homeland takes to the region in which he operates, and flees the established chain of command - descending into darkness as he does.

8) Gandalf the Grey/White (The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien)
This one will probably come as a surprise to most of you - not because it's on the list, but because it's relatively close to the bottom. Anyone who's read my blog knows that I'm a huge fan of Tolkien. And Gandalf is undoubtedly my favorite character. To those of you who live and breathe Harry Potter, think Dumbledore squared (Dumbledore is undoubtedly a Gandalf knockoff - a good one, but a knockoff still). Gandalf is thousands of years old, incredibly wise, and incredibly powerful. But he never rubs his strength in his fellows' face - and Tolkien heavily implies that he's capable of much greater magic than he ever performs in the book. Gandalf is a natural leader, kind to those around him, always ready to give counsel to those in need. He takes into account the views of those not quite so wise as he, and is shown throughout the novels to care about his friends above all other things - even himself. To this day, the literary scene that warms my heart the most is the one in The Two Towers where Gandalf reunites with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli months after they believed him dead. So why is Gandalf only number eight? Well, he's a bit too perfect. He's a role model, not the sort of person you encounter very often (if at all). And there's the fact that Tolkien's world, as much as I love it, is not our world. All these other stories take place in our world, or some more magical variation of it, which makes their characters a bit closer to home for us.

7) Captain Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
This was one of the first classical novels I read in its full entirety, back in the fifth grade. And it's still one of my favorite novels. Verne's writing is phenomenal - somehow, I can take in the lists of the fish, cephalopods and algae that occur throughout the novel without getting even remotely put-off by the Latin phrases I only rarely recognize. The imagery is beautiful, the story is well-developped and fascinating, and the characters are well-developped as well. My favorite of these characters is the enigmatic Captain Nemo. Nemo is bizarre in some respects, and relatable in others. He's the ultimate Romantic - his incredible ingenuity and his scorn for society drive him to fantastic ends and adventure. I ranked him fairly low because, compared to most of the other characters on this list, he isn't developed very much - a big part of his significance is the mystique about him. At the same time, though, he's bold, daring, courageous, and he commands respect...a noble captain through and through.

6) Grendel (Grendel by John Gardner)
This is the one I was referring to earlier, of course. In the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, the creature Grendel is among the creature that the warrior of the Geats faces on his adventures. In the poem, though, he simply attacks because the rowdy Danes disturb him. In John Gardner's 1971 novel, Grendel is given a motivation and a character. Although monstrous in form, he's very near human in his temperament, philosophical and violent in the same instant, and with a love for the spoken word. He's even a bit honorable for a monster, rarely killing in cold blood. Instead, with his cynical worldview, he breaks them down and taunts them - no weapon can kill him, so the Danes are helpless against him. From the shadows, Grendel comments on social structure, the nature of religion, and the futility of man. He's dark, cynical, complex, and quite well-spoken to boot - I can't help but love the character.

5) Abraham Van Helsing (Dracula by Bram Stoker)
Van Helsing is almost a more realistic version of Gandalf the Grey, and I can't help but draw parallels between the two and suspect that Tolkien read Dracula at some point in his youth. Van Helsing and Gandalf share many qualities. Van Helsing comes across as a kindly old gentleman, and a very wise one at that - when he's first introduced, his numerous titles are listed. He's a doctor of philosophy, a doctor of medicine, and a lawyer, among other things. He's also, of course, a vampire hunter, and one of the true heroes of the story - without Van Helsing's considerable knowledge and iron nerve, the characters would have no hope to defeat Dracula. Van Helsing is open-minded, quick on his feet, smarter than most characters on this list, and a worthy rival to the dark Count. His bonds with his friends are virtually unequaled, making his character all the more admirable.

4) Edmond Dantès (The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas)
This is another classical novel I read in the past, and I don't think I understood it until I read it again earlier in high school. Dantès is somewhere between an adventurer and a psychopath. A victim of treason, Dantès decides to take matters into his own hands and seeks an elaborate revenge upon those who wronged him. He goes from a nobody-of-a-sailor to a fabulously wealthy man, who gives himself the title "The Count of Monte Cristo" - how can you not love that title? His somewhat-psychotic devotion is admirable - he spends nine years making himself the Count, invests his funds to help the innocent, and does all he can to expand his mind and his abilities. He does abuse his power and his assets, but it's all in the name of revenge, and he doesn't get the innocent caught in the crossfire. Dantès serves as a warning of the darker elements of obsession, while reminding readers of the power held by perseverance. And, at the end of the day, we can all relate to Dantès in some form or another.

3) The Creature (Frankenstein by Mary Shelley)
While Captain Nemo is the epitome of Romanticism, this character is the epitome of what happens of Romanticism gone wrong - or perhaps, denied Romanticism. Created by Victor Frankenstein and his dark obsession with reversing death (another cautionary tale, much like The Count of Monte Cristo), the unnamed monster is abandoned to roam the countryside. Essentially a child, he acquires a love of nature and learns all he can with great innocence by observing humans in the countryside. All he wants is to be accepted by those humans, but society casts him out, attacking him with all manner of weapons. And when Frankenstein refuses him the one thing he wants more than all else - a companion - he descends into rage and vows revenge. As with Dantès, the monster systematically seeks to annihilate his tormentors - only in his case, he does so by attacking those Frankenstein holds dear. And the worst bit is, he takes no pleasure in doing so. Although the things he does hurt his creator-enemy, they hurt his soul just as much. He takes no pleasure in killing and conflict, and eventually comes to seek his creator out to make amends - but he comes to late. You can't help but pity the creature - all he wants is compassion, and it is the one thing continuously denied to him. It's hardly a wonder that he sinks as low as he does - he's the most human character in the novel.

2) Yossarian (Catch-22 by Joseph Heller)
Oh, Yossarian. Zany Yossarian. Wacky Yossarian. Traumatized Yossarian. Poor Yossarian.
As you're all aware, I'm a bit of a World War II buff. It should come as no surprise that one of my favorite literary characters hails from a novel set in WWII. Captain John Yossarian pilots B-25 bombers in the skies over Italy, where he witnesses many of his friends die in horrendous, gruesome ways that scar him for life. And he's kept in rotation by a cruel irony known as Catch-22. The Catch states that any man who's insane should not have to fly missions, and can be kept out of the air if he only asks to be removed from combat; however, if he asks to be removed from combat, it means he's sane, and must keep flying missions. Yossarian's mind is brutally scarred by the traumatic stress he faces on a daily basis, and the fact that Catch-22 is working to ensure his death hardly helps matters. Through Yossarian, Heller comments on the perverse elements of war, societal institutions, economic policy and all the things we take for granted in society - to say nothing of the things that exist because we take the fact that they exist for granted. There's too much to comment on in a few lines - read the book if you haven't already.

1) Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)
Was there any doubt?
What makes Atticus my favorite literary character is just how realistic he is. Let's face it, we can't cast spells and kill demonic beasts like Gandalf. We can't be created in laboratories like the creature and seek revenge upon humanity like Dantès. We can't kill vampires, battle Danes, build submarines alone, escape into the jungles to be worshiped as demigods, slaughter the crown's enemies, or row to Sweden to escape death over Italy. But we can stick up for our fellow man in times of trouble. We can be honest with our friends and our family, and do what we can to help them out. And we can stand with what's right. Atticus isn't some superhero, or some radical idealist, or some ridiculous caricature. He's a single father who loves his children and his community - unfortunately, half of his community hates the other half. He's an ordinary, everyday guy you might bump into on the street without even realizing it. Atticus is just a man who believes that all men are created equal, and thinks that such a principle is far more important than his own personal reputation or notoriety. I'd elaborate on the story more, but let's face it - you already know it, and you probably already love it.

American History: The Flip

Everybody living in the United States knows about the partisan divide. There's the big break between the left and the right - liberals and conservatives, in office and out of office, are always at each others' throats. And then the partisan groups are divided into their own partisan group. The left is a loosely-allied coalition of moderate Democrats, socialists, social liberals, and fiscal liberals. The right is split into factions, the three biggest ones being the moderate Republicans, the far-right Tea Party, and the libertarians, who are all over the spectrum. And, of course, everybody knows that America is split into red states and blue states. The Northeast, the contiguous Pacific coast and Hawaii tend to be blue, whereas the South, Midwest and the Last Frontier are red.

And, in recent history, this was almost exactly the opposite.

Before I go on, it's important to note that, for the most part, this post will be referring to the Deep South and the Northeast and the Pacific States, as these regions saw the most stark changes in ideology.

Take the election of 1864. The Union's election, that is. The only states that voted democratic were Kentucky, New Jersey, and Delaware. In the aftermath of the war, when Radical Republicans made life extremely difficult for Southern Democrats (as briefly mentioned in last week's post), the South became deeply democratic. This didn't manifest for several elections, since the Radical Republicans made it extremely difficult for ex-Confederates to do things like vote, but it eventually did. During the early part of the 20th Century, things became more unified. With the fragmentation of the Republicans into Republicans and Progressives in 1912, it's no surprise that the Democrats won most of the electoral votes that year. And in the years of the Depression, the Democrats won big throughout. Even Eisenhower managed to win most of the electoral votes - though the Solid South remained staunchly Democratic. In each of the aforementioned situations where the democrats won big, the only states that cast their votes for Republicans were in the Northeast or on the West Coast. Things start to change with Kennedy. The Irish-Catholic from Massachusetts won a decent chunk of the Northeast while maintaining the Democrats' grip on the south.

Then we get to Johnson in '64, where the situation from Eisenhower's day flips entirely. In '64, only six states voted Republican, and only one of them had done so in '60, that one being New Mexico. The other five were the states of the Solid South: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. And, with the exception of Louisiana casting its vote for Eisenhower in '56, none of those states had voted for a Republican since '76. 1876, that is.

The issue at hand in this matter was race. This is where the "racist republican" stereotype comes in. Because, to their credit, Republican ideology is not in itself racist. The Republican Party, after all, was founded to combat slavery. After that goal was achieved, Republicans (in general) didn't put much effort into racial equality. But the Democrats (in general) of that period from the Civil War to Kennedy were much, much worse. The KKK was founded, among other sinister reasons, to intimidate minorities in the south so they wouldn't for Republicans. FDR himself refused to pass anti-lynching legislation. Jim Crow was, more or less, the Civil Wark-Kennedy Democrats. In 1957, the Democratic governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, sent state troops to block efforts to integrate public schools there. In response, the president sent federal paratroopers to enforce the integration efforts. That president, of course, was Ike Eisenhower, a Republican.

This is what went down: the democrats of the five southern states felt so betrayed by Johnson's support of the Civil Rights Act, they voted against him out of spite. The republicans in those states - ironically enough, the liberals - kept voting for their own party. Even though nothing in history or current events (roughly four-fifths of Congressional republicans favored the act, compared with about two-thirds of the democrats) supported the notion that the Republicans were suddenly the party of racism, the South still switched its voting platform. Most of those southerners who'd voted Republican in the past (the liberals of the south, ironically enough), it seems, saw little reason to change their stance. And so the south became thoroughly Republican, with the north beginning to favor the Democrats. The cultural revolution that took place in the '60's also played a role in the partisan divide - the deeply conservative southern states were in no rush to accept counterculture. Since hippies were often associated with democrats (though this was rarely by the democrats' choosing) and had more of a presence in the states that became our modern blue states, many conservative Americans were put-off from voting democratic. And likewise, the liberal culture that was generated in the '60's began to view the Republicans as the figures of the establishment. And all this isn't to say that there weren't exceptions to the rule, and plenty of them. In '72, almost every state voted for Nixon. In '76, almost every state voted for Carter. And in the '80's, with Reagan...do I even have to say it? Clinton received a mixed-bag of votes, mainly due to his southern heritage. But when things finally settled in and around 2000, it was tied to these factors, and still more.

So there it is: a simplified version of how our country reversed its politics and became more partisan than it has been since the days of the Civil War. This is why America is a mess. I miss the days when politicians stood up for what they believed in and actually worked to get things done. I miss the days when we did what was right and compromised with those whose views were different from our own. I miss the days when America and her people came first. And to be quite honest with you, I'd vote for Harry Truman or Dwight David Eisenhower over just about any candidate running in 2016. I don't care that one was a Democrat and one was a Republican, and that their political ideologies contrasted in more ways than they compared. I care that they were honest men who worked their asses off to do right by their nation. And that was most of the American people cared about in days gone by.

The good news is, the last time the nation was as partisan as it is today, it eventually went through a healing process and the partisan divide shrank down to the point that states who voted Republican in one election voted Democrat in the next, and vice versa. The bad news is, it took a civil war for that to happen. But we can hope that our elected officials, as much as we sometimes doubt it, remember the past, and will do anything they can to avoid repeating the horrors of civil war. Because if the worst should happen...well, that's a story for next week. Stay tuned.

History This Week: Lincoln

150 years ago this week, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Our sixteenth president, the man who oversaw the Union's victory and oversaw the beginning of the end of slavery. Abe Lincoln is widely regarded, and I don't think anyone can argue otherwise, as one of the greatest presidents in American history. But one title we give him is arguable at best: Honest Abe. Because Abraham Lincoln was one of the cunning, calculating individuals ever to walk the stage of American politics.

Let's start from the very beginning. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky - but you all know that story. Eventually, Lincoln made his way to the House of Representatives, a Whig representing Illinois. His opposition to the popular Mexican-American war and the territorial acquisitions that ensued cost him his seat in congress, and he went back to his law firm in Springfield. Not long after that, he joined a new political movement that was gathering steam. The Republican Party (yes, that Republican Party), so-named for its focus on the republican ideals emphasized by the founding fathers, opposed the expansion of slavery. The Radical Republicans of the day, as they were known, vehemently opposed the practice due to its inhumanity. The conservative Republicans of the time stood against it because it blocked economic progress and opportunity. And the moderates, the group most would count Lincoln in, opposed it because it stood against the founders' principles. Because this one fact is often lost to history: Lincoln wasn't entirely opposed to the practice of slavery. On a personal level, it seems that he found it unsettling, but he wasn't about to put an end to it. Many of his speeches from his early days in office display this notion. Lincoln spent his first few weeks trying to convince the southern states that he wasn't trying to take slavery from them. We all know how well that worked out. The slave states that stayed in the union - Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware - did so more because they feared they would be caught in the middle of a north-south conflict, and figured the Union, with its greater population and industrial potential, would win the day. Abe didn't view the Confederacy as its own nation - he viewed it as a rebellion, as did most Northerners. A rebellion to be quelled by any means necessary. Many of the actions Lincoln took while in office were unheard of in the days before - or since - the Civil War. Lincoln did more to expand executive powers than did any other president in our history. The president commanded the Navy to blockade key Confederate ports, distributed funds without Congress's approval, and imposed martial law. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus - essentially, the right to escape unlawful imprisonment. Thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers were arrested on Lincoln's watch. The only thing to come close to this in the entirety of American history is another dark spot on an otherwise fantastic president's reputation: the internment of Japanese-Americans on FDR's watch.

And the biggest kicker of them all? The Emancipation Proclamation, which made the war about freeing the slaves, was a political play. Many European nations watching the sidelines of the American Civil War favored the South, very much in the same way the US would go onto favor them in the World Wars. As hinted, Britain and France were among those nations that were willing to cast their lots with the south. Lincoln feared that European involvement would turn the tide of the war against the Union. But as I said before, Lincoln was one of the smartest men we've ever had. He read the diplomatic battlefield with a sort of strategic genius, and played the hand he'd been given to the maximum. Through the Proclamation, he turned the Civil War from a war about the rights of a country's subdivisions into a war over the practice of slavery. Therefore, if Britain was to enter the war on the South's side, they would have been entering the war on the side of slavery. Britain couldn't very well do that, given the fact that they'd been one of the first nations to abolish slavery outright on moral grounds. Any question of a European entry into the war was eliminated on January 1st, 1863. And the South lost its best chance for victory. Lincoln approved of Sherman's March and other such tactics to destroy Confederate morale and hasten the end of the war.

So why do we forgive Lincoln? Well, we forgive him because of his motivation. Lincoln wasn't taking upon huge amounts of power to rule the nation as a dictator or to crush the Confederacy into oblivion. He was trying to repair the Union. It's a key feature shared by many of the men we consider to be among the greatest presidents we've ever had - take Washington. Take FDR. And, of course, take Lincoln. All these men had the opportunity, at some point, to seize power for themselves. And each of these men turned their backs on that opportunity. Lincoln did all that he did to preserve the Union. That was his goal throughout the Civil War. He wasn't trying to achieve a political end, or conniving to become the most powerful man in the western hemisphere. He was trying to save the United States from utter ruin. And he did. Lincoln wasn't a vengeful man. Whereas many radical Republicans wanted to punish the south, Lincoln wanted to welcome them back into the American nation and rebuild their economy, preparing them for a post-slavery world. Then, 150 years ago this past Wednesday, he was assassinated. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson, couldn't stand up to the radical Republicans in Congress, and things didn't go well for the southern states. That's the biggest reason why there's so much animosity between the north and south to this day, to say nothing of the partisan divide.

This brings me to an interesting point. The current blue states and red states were flipped before the sixties. The Northeast and the West Coast were Republican strongholds, while the Democrats commanded the South and much of the midwest. And then the whole thing turned on its head. But that's for next week's discussion.

The World This Week: ISIS and the Baathists

Now, this is something new, and something interesting. I've talked about ISIS a lot over the months, but not like this. To my understanding, it's not something that's been known for very long. This week has been fairly slow for new news, so I was getting discouraged as I surfed the web for a topic to discuss. Then I came across this article in The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/how-saddam-husseins-former-military-officers-and-spies-are-controlling-isis-10156610.html). In short, many of the high-ranking members of the Islamic State are ex-members of Iraq's Baath Party - the party of Saddam Hussein.

This is certainly interesting. Many comments have been made, and many political cartoons drawn, about the irony of the Coalition's air war against ISIS. In these cartoons, one character says something along the lines of, "We need a leader in Iraq who can control religious extremism!" to which one other figure replies, "Someone like Saddam Hussein?" And it's true - Saddam Hussein's government did a damn thorough job of curbing religious extremism. I say thorough job instead of good job because you can't really call anything the Baathists did "good." The Baathist leaders - and Saddam Hussein - took their inspiration from another all-too-familiar totalitarian regime from the 20th Century. In case it's not blatantly obvious, I'm talking about the Nazis. The secular Baathists persecuted the ethnic Kurds in the north of the country, which lead to the latter's steadfast alliance with the Coalition forces who invaded the country in 2003. Saddam's Iraq was one of the most brutal totalitarian states to survive into the 21st Century - estimates of the number of his own people his regime killed stretch into the millions. Saddam started out as the Baath Party's hired thug, which tells you a great deal about the man's character. Like the Nazis, Saddam had every intention of expanding his territorial empire for the sake of his own country - and his own government. He'd expected the international community to react to his efforts the way they'd reacted to Hitler's - Iraq's military in the early 1990's was among the largest in the world, with sophisticated Soviet-made weapons and a well-trained fighting force. Saddam wasn't counting on George H.W. Bush, a man who came across as quiet and meek, to rally the international community and create the Coalition. The Abrams tanks tore the Iraqi T-72's to shreds, while American fighters ruled the skies over Iraq. This halted Saddam's international ambitions, and he turned his attention to his own country. In short, members of the Baath Party were heavily involved in suppressing religious minorities and extremists.

To some extent, it shouldn't come as a surprise that many ex-Baathists now occupy the higher ranks of ISIS. One of the Islamic State's primary targets - the ethnic Kurds - was one of the Baathists' during the height of their power. It would hardly be a stretch for the Baathists to add Christians, Yazidis, and Turkmen to the list of individuals they persecuted - though Saddam's government wasn't openly hostile to these groups in the way that it was to the Kurds, there was certainly prejudice and bias against them. And ISIS could be their route back to power. As the Washington Post article reminds us, these men were accustomed to positions of power and influence within Iraq. Now that a legitimate government has been created, their only route back to power is through illegitimate means - just as ex-Confederates were banned from holding offices after the Civil War, ex-Baathists are banned from being elected in modern Iraq. It stands to reason that many of these ex-generals, officers, and officials would turn to ISIS to regain a taste of their former power. Deserters from ISIS have corroborated these notions. Saddam's lackeys are using the Islamic State as a vehicle to return themselves and their ideology to power. In short, they want to bring back Saddam's era to the whole of Iraq, extinguishing the flame of democracy that's been burning for the past decade. Frankly, this topic is extremely depressing. The Iraqi people have suffered just about as much as any group has in the 21st Century. And now, the Neo-Nazis of the Baath Party have aligned themselves with the terror group that's too brutal for Al-Qaeda to make them suffer even more. This is the jacked-up world we live in. As if we needed more cause to hate ISIS, we now know that a bunch of their highest-ranking members are directly inspired by the Nazis. What'll be next? They form an alliance with North Korea? You'd hope that their association with the Baathists would be the limit of their evil, but they've just continued to surprise me. I'm convinced there's no end to it.

On that happy note...happy Easter and/or Passover, to all those of you who celebrate!