Random Remarks: Michener’s “Young Colonels”

 

The old man

James Michener, in This Noble Land: My Vision for America, warned against what he called “the young colonels,” writing that what is often called a "revolt of the generals" (a military overthrow of democracy) is more often a rebellion led by younger men who take radical action, “fearing that time is being lost.” Michener thought that revolutions in Algeria, Liberia, and Haiti all had this flavor and considered Hitler the “archetype” of the young military rebels he was describing. 

 

I was curious then about the ages of our own Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin, of course, was an “old man” of the American Revolution, but on July 4, 1776, Ages of the Founding Fathers on July 4, 1776, James Monroe was only eighteen years old! Aaron Burr was twenty, Alexander Hamilton twenty-one, and James Madison a venerable quarter-century. 

 

The 1770s, however, were not the 1960s, and the young men put a lot of trust in Thomas Jefferson (age 33) and John Adams, Paul Revere, and George Washington (all in their 40s). Firebrand Patrick Henry was also a mature 40 years old, John Hancock nearly that age. 

Michener did not mention Americans among the impatient "young colonels" in his brief survey. And of course our Founding Fathers were not part of a standing army.

The young ones

My parents are rolling over in their graves.

Where are we going? Is that light up ahead growing dim?

A new standard operating procedure has emerged in the Republican Party: that of contesting results of what all know to have been legitimate political elections. If, that is, the Republican candidate fails to win. 

 

If a Democrat is elected to Congress, for instance, state election results are challenged, even where the sitting Governor and election officials are themselves Republicans. Lawsuits are filed, recounts demanded. No evidence of fraud is necessary. It is enough for a Republican to lose a political race for the party to spring into action, claiming suspicion of fraud, where said suspicion comes most often from baseless rumors claimants have themselves disseminated. (We all know the originator of this vicious practice, so there is no need to mention his name.) Indeed, such challenges are planned in advance of elections, contingent upon the results. 

 

Nor are partisan grievances confined to legal challenges. Ordinary voting citizens, stirred up by their party’s public statements and shenanigans, first mutter and then shout. Election officials receive threats, and across the country many of these honest, hard-working, experienced overseers of the democratic process are resigning. Some fear for their lives. Or fear a minor, innocent, technical error could result in crushing personal debt under new state laws. Others have simply had enough.

 

It’s hard not to see this loathesome practice as a long-range strategy aiming to put an end to free elections in the United States of America.

How anyone can remain loyal to a party behaving so reprehensibly and talk about its “principles” is way beyond me. My parents’ Republican party has turned away from principle, from conscience, from decency, and from the American way of life. If you couldn’t see it from the way the Speaker of the House treated President Obama, what do you say now, those of you who continue to call yourselves “conservative”? And please explain to me how undermining the democratic bedrock of our country – one citizen, one vote, all to be fairly counted – fits into any conservative agenda worthy of the name?

Moreover, hideous as this new political reality is, it doesn't stop at our shores. Would-be dictators and tyrants around the world are taking a tip from the new American playbook. Once again, we are leading the world -- this time, in a nightmare direction. Sometimes the light at the end of a tunnel is an oncoming, high-speed train.

Protests Then and Now

On this 50^th anniversary of tragic shootings on the campuses of Kent State University and Jackson State University, I can’t help thinking how different it might have been, and I’m not thinking, as I always have before, that those tragic events could have ended without fatalities. No, what I’m thinking now, in May 2020, is that the death count could have been much higher, had protestors in 1970 been armed with assault weapons, as were recent protestors this spring at the Michigan Capitol Building in Lansing. 

Think about it. Unarmed students at Kent State faced National Guardsmen armed for war. Those at Jackson State were met by 75 units of the Jackson Police Department and the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Shots fired in Mississippi lasted 30 seconds, killing two; in Ohio, four lay dead after only 13 seconds of shooting. 

Jackson State students had gathered to protest racism, a serious social issue for all Americans and a highly personal one to students at that historically black institution. The Kent State rally, originally organized to protest the war in Vietnam, became also a protest against the military occupation of their campus. It is true that some property damage had occurred in connection with both of these protests. But property damage – not violence against persons. 

Scenes from the recent Lansing protest showed angry white men, many carrying assault weapons, many not wearing the face masks most of us are wearing these days to protect ourselves and others from the contagion of coronavirus, and some carrying not protest signs at all but campaign signs. The angriest men got right up in the faces of masked police officers who were constrained from any kind of retaliation. Some of the legislators on the floor donned bullet-proof vests. 

No one was killed in Lansing, and that is a good thing. Maybe some think the protestors’ assault weapons protected them. I tend to give the credit to the forbearance of the law enforcement officers. 

If you think I’m wrong and if you believe that the assault weapons carried in Lansing are what prevented the eruption of fatal violence, how do you imagine events at Kent State and Jackson State would have played out if the protesting students had been armed? We’ll never know, will we? But I for one cannot imagine the Guardsmen and police sent to control the situations in May 1970 showing the restraint taken for granted by so-called “American Patriots” in Lansing on April 20, 2020, had they faced students with lethal weapons.

Predicting Election Results

Please, someone tell me what is wrong with my nonexpert analysis of predictions of election results based on probability:

Probability cannot foretell the outcome of a specific event—say, any particular flip of a coin—but can only be assigned in percentages to a range of possibilities. Weather is more predictable than coin flips, human actions more complicated than horse races, but for any prediction on a specific event’s outcome based on probability, no outcome will or can show the prediction to have been "wrong." The person having made the prediction need not even acknowledge having left out relevant factors. Picture the careless shrug and casual statement to the effect that a “less likely outcome” prevailed. What I’m saying is that anyone can criticize a prediction for not taking everything relevant into account but that no one can ever say, regardless of outcome, that the prediction was “wrong.” 

Am I right that such a prediction cannot be wrong? If so, tell me again why we should give a rip what anyone predicts? If not, please explain.