contempt

the clearer term for entitlement

America prides itself on freedom, but our chief characteristic for 2025 appears contempt.

The left can’t abide the right and the right finds the left evil. That is merely at the Joe and Joanna Q. Public level of society.

I am overwhelmed by the cases we see hourly, but I will highlight only a couple because the problem is so pervasive and cross-cutting that it defies simple characterization.

Senior foreign policy decision-makers used a commercial, non-secure communication method to discuss details of a significant foreign policy decision. Using military instruments is a big deal, after all. Just last week, the Pentagon warned against using that service for chats because Russians are gaining access to its contents.

The particular use of force discussed over Signal affected not only the mid-March target, the Houthis in Yemen, and their patrons in Teheran but also those conducting the missions themselves. Do we really care about the lives of men and women in uniform if that is our behavior? No, I suppose they are expendable.

The shocking member of the "chat" was not a journalist for a hundred-fifty-year-old respected American publication (remember, Goldberg did not even discuss this for several days after this bizarre chat transpired rather than trumpeting it immediately) but the administration's Middle East envoy, who was in Moscow when the chat circulated. I guarantee Russian (who most certainly accessed his Signal account) knowledge of these conversations had far more significant implications than Jeffrey Goldberg's. Envoy Steve Witkoff never took himself out of the chat while communing with Kremlin officials. The decision to travel to Moscow with a phone--personal or government-issued--was irresponsible. Maybe this isn't important in real estate, but anyone in U.S. government work, much less an envoy, is assuredly a target.

If China is as close to Russia as we fear, why would we assume that the known Chinese cyber thieves would not be sharing their infiltration methods with their Russian buddies? I can't accurately assess the relative potency of Russian versus Chinese hacking. Still, I am confident both countries employ armies of hackers targeting any phone carried by a New York real estate negotiator. The contempt regarding protocols is breathtaking.

I was similarly shocked when Hillary Clinton used her personal computer as a repository for email messages, so let's admit senior people on both sides of the political aisle were contemptuous of the norms that "little people" (aka everyone else) face.

The incident also revealed senior officials' sickening contempt for European allies. Of course, it's their privilege, as it's mine to mourn alliances. Foreign policy leaders discussed our European allies—formal partners for seventy-six years next month—as if they were discardable criminals. Are we genuinely unaware of Europe's contributions that we see them as freeloaders? Seriously?

These countries deployed troops alongside Michael Waltz, a former Green Beret, and Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guardsman, in Afghanistan. No, European allies were not necessarily in the same units as senior officials, but they were there because they sought to support us. Article V of the Atlantic Charter mobilized European forces only after the attack on the United States. Conflict in Southwest Asia wearied the public in each participating NATO member as it did ours. These are the same allies whose forces served in the Middle East as J.D. Vance served as a reporter for the Marine Corps in theater. I know that fifteen years ago, we valued allies who sent forces to augment our own. History is inconvenient too often for Americans.

The generations of NATO allies moving in lockstep with us ended the Cold War, regardless of who paid the bills. Americans are entering a dangerous mindset if we associate the financial remuneration of allies with our crucial national security objectives. How expensive would it have been if Germans, for example, chose not to be central to NATO's unity against the Soviets? Germany was the front line, not us. It would have been a much more expensive proposition without them, but we paid the bills because it was in our interest to do so.

Contempt rises to the highest levels of both parties, friends. That senior advisors for the 46th president sheltered him from adverse scenarios or scrutiny that would reveal the advancing deterioration of his conditions is beyond belief. It's hard enough to govern this country under constant stress, but covering up such mental deterioration is inexcusable and dangerous. Encouraging Biden to continue a quixotic desire to run, despite indicating earlier he would acquiesce to the sands of time, shortchanged debate on a successor, throwing the 2024 campaign into an unwinnable condition. Biden's foible empowered the election of a fact-challenged, often incoherent, and elderly candidate determined to pursue retribution against opponents and play golf rather than govern. This "victor" empowered an unelected co-president to undermine faith in government in conjunction with Project 2025 races to turn back time because of contempt for those powerless to stop these actions.

Some will say that Republicans are worse than Democrats. It's hard to dispute the contempt for less advantaged people as social safety net institutions blow up by Project 2025. It's impossible to explain why our government—and by extension all of us because we are government—lied to veterans who put their lives on the line by curbing their access to facilities such as mental health care. It's challenging to rationalize allowing non-medical personnel to pedal ridiculous conspiracies in the face of replicable evidence.

But stop kidding yourselves: both parties are contemptuous of our society. Dems are hardly offering solutions; instead, they act as a circular firing squad aiming at leaders who need to make way for new thoughts to address these challenges.

Congress refuses to do its two jobs: raise revenue before determining how to spend it and provide oversight of that spending. I defy anyone to show me that either party has a plan for the future beyond homesteading seats via the next election. It's pathetic, isn't it?

We serve the gods of tax breaks as if the proposed spending will lower the deficit. It doesn't work that way: we have already borrowed the money, eating us alive in interest payments. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Millions of people rely on the programs being cut (after all, DOGE occasionally admits they haven't found much graft or corruption), so transferring programs to the private sector will only shift costs rather than terminate the spending.

The judiciary currently tries to enforce the rule of law that we little people live under. Still, our system does not empower the judiciary (or anyone else) to implement the laws against those who ignore them. One party cannot wait for what it hopes will be the ultimate arbitrator, the Supreme Court, to allow an administration's unfettered behavior, while the other party fears that condition. Neither side respects the other side enough to think about what the little people in society want or need.

The lesson is that contempt destroys but never builds a better future. No one is coming out of this with a good look. For 340 million Americans and a world that long looked at us as exceptional, we most definitely are mortals marred in contempt.

Why?

There are many possible explanations, but at its heart, I fear, is the loss of empathy. It affects every single one of us, as hard as we prefer to fight reality. Until we confront that, we are going to sink further.

I welcome your rebuttals, thoughts, questions, and comments. I appreciate your time today. I am so thankful to those who subscribe financially to this column.

Be well and be safe. FIN