On leave

Every so often Diogenes needs to go away for a while to visit the source of his wisdom and to get some spiritual refreshment. He will be back when he feels ready. Meanwhile he has asked me to advise you to check out the archive here.

Inhumane Humana

I've known Diogenes a long time, and I've gotten used to his cynical, indignant, sometimes abrasive ways. He's generally an even-tempered soul, so when he returned from a task that had taken him away from the blog for a time, I was surprised to see him exceptionally angry.

The few times I have witnessed Dio's prodigious anger it has been directed at government officials. This time the target was an insurance company.

Diogenes had been away for a while at the behest of his longtime friend Sharon. She was having a problem with Humana, Inc. with whom she has a Medicare replacement health plan. The company was denying a perfectly good claim for no good reason, and she thought Dio might be able to help.

Sharon is a diabetic who uses an insulin pump. Insurance companies have a habit of putting insulin on the top or next to top pricing tier, making this truly life-saving medication very expensive for the 29 million Americans who need it. But Medicare offers a break for diabetics who use pumps. Their insulin is covered by Part B--the medical part, rather than Part D--the prescription medication part. The difference can save pump users hundreds of dollars in co-pays.

The reason for Diogenes' anger was that for a couple of days and hours of telephone calls he had been working on Sharon's behalf to get Humana to cover her insulin as the Medicare guidelines require: through Part B. The people Dio spoke with at Humana were uniformly deaf to his arguments. He was offered a long list of reasons--some of them bizarre, some ridiculous, some self-contradictory, and all false--why the company would not allow Sharon's insulin to be charged to Part B. The reason? Money, of course. The higher the co-pays paid by members, the more money goes into shareholders' and top managers' pockets.

Sharon told Dio she had had the same problem a few years ago with United Healthcare, which was why she had switched companies. Diogenes told me he was equally angry with Humana and with himself for not being able to solve his friend's problem.

So Diogenes is left fuming while giant corporations like Humana and United Healthcare continue to bend the rules and to prey on people with chronic illnesses by making their life-preserving medications so expensive they have to sacrifice something else in their lives to pay for them.

Sharon had said she had contacted her Congressional representatives about the problem and had hoped for some relief, but with the Trump ascendancy all those hopes are dashed.

This situation is not limited to diabetics. With corporations free to run amok, charging ever higher prices for their goods, the American people become more impoverished. This is something we must address if we don't want to live a Third World life.

--Richard Brown

Your opinion counts

Diogenes is--well, not exactly at a loss for words or comments (that never happens), but in a quandary. It seems the Trump administration has become such a target-rich environment he can't get a firm handle on what to tackle first. So, faithful visitors, he's asking for your assistance.

Here's a list of recent (going back 2 weeks or so) headlines from major news outlets. He would appreciate it greatly if you would leave a comment specifying, by number if you wish,which topic(s) you would like him to comment on. You're welcome to choose more than one. You're also welcome to suggest other topics.

1. Why Did Trump’s ‘Armada’ Sail in the Opposite Direction?-- LA Times
2. A look at President Trump’s six flip-flops in less than 24 hours.--Washington Post
3. What the Bombing in Syria Means for the Hermit Kingdom [N. Korea]--LA Times
4. Why Are Republicans Making Tax Reform So Hard?--NY Times
5. Restaurant Group Joins Lawsuit Against Trump, Citing Unfair Competition--NPR
6. Mr. Trump Plays by His Own Rules (or No Rules)--NY Times
7. Trump demonstrations turn violent--BBC

Thanks for your input.

--Richard Brown

What is it about power?

Diogenes was ruminating recently on oft-heard and familiar quotations, when I heard him murmur, "Acton missed a couple of steps." Upon my query as to which steps, he replied that when Lord Acton wrote "Power tends to corrupt" he was correct, but that corruption was not the first side effect of holding power. Dio maintains that power, like many things that carry a certain glamour of temptation, proceeds stepwise to corruption.

Society tends to break processes into parts, the better to define certain stages. While such an approach is arbitrary, subjective and far from universal, it does allow for easier comprehension by the general public. So we have many Twelve Step programs cloned from AA; the five stages of grief; and the stages of addiction.

Dio believes that power is an addictive thing, and he sees distinct parallels between the stages of addiction: Experimentation, Social use, Problem use and Dependency, and the stages of corruption: Fascination, Testing limits, Incipient corruption and Absolute corruption.

Of course this brings us to the Great Pretender. We need first to point out that he clearly has an addictive personality. According to the Federal Election Commission, Trump owns at least 515 entities. The number includes holding companies, real estate organizations, and other businesses whose reach extends deeply into world commerce. In short, Trump is addicted to acquisition, and there seems no limit to his need to acquire ever more property and influence.

So what about acquiring power--and by power Diogenes means the ability to apply force as a means of achieving political change. During the campaign Trump frequently spoke of his support and approval of the military and of police forces--organizations with the power to use force. He exerted his own power by expelling hecklers and dissidents from his rallies, and by urging his supporters to physically confront protesters. Diogenes thinks this behavior is indicative of the first stage of power corruption: Fascination with the notion of using force.

He leaped into the second stage, testing the limits of his authority to use power, on April 6, by striking Syria with missiles. and following up a week later by dropping the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal on a cave complex used by ISIS in Afghanistan. Both attacks are justifiable, but they raise the troubling question of Trump's self-control: Will he be able to stop these attacks and let statecraft and other nonviolent means follow up, or will his ego and his drive to overwhelm everything in his path lead to a continuous escalation? He has been indulging in sabre-rattling and trash talk aimed at some of the most dangerously unpredictable people in the world, such as Kim Jong-un. Given his own tendency to instability and unpredictability, and his need to dominate, Trump with weapons is a very dangerous creature. Is he corrupt in his use of power? Maybe not yet, but he's heading that way rapidly.

And let's consider the complete quote about power corrupting: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

--Richard Brown

Back soon

Diogenes' family issues have resolved well. He'll be back on Monday the 17th. Thanks to all who expressed concern.

Out of touch

Diogenes is faced with a family medical crisis and won't be posting for a while. Keep checking, though, because he will be back.

Bashing Bashar

Diogenes is suspending his series on presidential peccadilloes for a time to consider Trump's military adventure in Syria. Needless to say, his first response was, "Ha! The Pretender got to make things go BOOM." Upon reflection, however, he said, "Damn it, he didn't go far enough."

In his March 23 post, "Where's the Rottenness?" Dio came to the conclusion that in order effectively to change government one has to decapitate it. (Transparency demands we point out he was considering the U.S. government at the time.)

Diogenes believes the doctrine of proportionate response is ineffective, and only leads to a continuing--and likely escalating--exchange of blows. The only real solution, he believes, is the removal of one belligerent: In this case, Bashar al-Assad.

Diogenes is generally a pacifist, but he is also pragmatic. No reasonable person can deny that certain entities or forces pose a real threat to humanity. In some cases the threat may be existential, as the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction was during the Cold War. Or it may be something so foreign, so horrifying to the human spirit that to allow it to exist would profoundly destabilize our collective consciousness. The Holocaust was one such instance. Assad's program of continued attacks on his own people, using weapons banned by the United Nations, appears to be another.

Responding to Assad's horrific chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Trump ordered an attack on the Syrian airfield from which the attacking planes were thought to have flown. That response, of course, was met with protests from Russia and Iran, and Putin summarily canceled an agreement designed to keep Russian and U.S. aircraft at safe distances in Syrian airspace.

In Trump, Putin and Ali Khamenei may have met their match in stubbornness, hardheadedness and unreasoning assurance of being in the right. It remains to be seen which side might benefit from this three-way headbanging.

The most troubling unknown is Trump's mercurial temperament. His well-documented tenacity and inability to let go of an idea or a policy once he has decided it to be right, could well lead to further attacks on Syria and an attempt to stare down the Russian and Iranian leaders. Should he try that, Diogenes believes, he will find himself out of his league. If he finds himself humiliated by other heads of state--his alleged peers--he may retaliate unexpectedly, rashly and inappropriately.

Diogenes would not disapprove an action to take out Assad. But he remembers a 1973 meeting he had with a British colleague who predicted that World War III would begin in the Middle East. At the time he expressed skepticism, but as that part of the world has become increasingly unstable, he has become more concerned.

In this situation Dio fears that Trump has reached a tipping point: A reasoned and decisive action with the goal of removing Assad, coupled with aggressive diplomacy, might prove beneficial. But a typical Trumpian outburst could bring disaster.

The Great Pretender must listen to reason and keep the dogs of war in their kennel.

--Richard Brown

Quo vadis, Trump?

Diogenes has decided to expand blog input by inserting, including and quoting material from other writers, both to give himself a slight rest, and also to point out that while he may be crying in the wilderness, he sure as hell isn't the only one with the message that Donald Trump is toxic, delusional and generally bad for the nation.

The first piece, by Robert Costa of The Washington Post, was published on March 23. Like most conversations with Trump, it requires multiple readings: The first time through generally leaves readers wondering if they've actually read anything, because nothing is actually said. The second time is to parse the conversation, trying to tie together related parts to make a meaningful whole. The third time is up to the reader. Some folks try reading Trump's utterings backward, just to see if they make any sense that way. When one figures out that the Great Pretender makes as much sense going either way, it's time to give up the effort.

Diogenes has italicized some passages to highlight Trump's disregard of facts, truth, and his own advisers' statements. Note also his triple mention of Paul Ryan's inculpability for the health care mess (protesting too much?) and pointing the finger of blame at ACA subscribers for increases in their own premiums. And you grammarians and speechwriters--take note of the repeated phrases throughout. The man has a bad case of Twitterbrain.

Trump on health care bill: 'We couldn't quite get there' Robert Costa, The Washington Post

President Trump called me on my cellphone Friday [March 24] afternoon at 3:31. At first I thought it was a reader with a complaint since it was a blocked number. Instead, it was the president calling from the Oval Office. His voice was even, his tone muted. He did not bury the lead.

“Hello, Bob,” Trump began. “So, we just pulled it.”

Trump was speaking, of course, of the Republican plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, a plan that had been languishing for days amid unrest throughout the party as the president and his allies courted members and pushed for a vote. Before I could ask a question, Trump plunged into his explanation of the politics of deciding to call off a vote on a bill he had been touting.

The Democrats, he said, were to blame. “We couldn’t get one Democratic vote, and we were a little bit shy, very little, but it was still a little bit shy, so we pulled it,” Trump said.         Trump said he would not put the bill on the floor in the coming weeks. He is willing to wait and watch the current law continue and, in his view, encounter problems. And he believes that Democrats will eventually want to work with him on some kind of legislative fix to Obamacare, although he did not say when that would be. 

“As you know, I’ve been saying for years that the best thing is to let Obamacare explode and then go make a deal with the Democrats and have one unified deal. And they will come to us; we won’t have to come to them,” he said. “After Obamacare explodes.”

“The beauty,” Trump continued, “is that they own Obamacare. So when it explodes, they come to us, and we make one beautiful deal for the people.”

My question for the president: Are you really willing to wait to re-engage on health care until the Democrats come and ask for your help?

 “Sure,” Trump said. “I never said I was going to repeal and replace in the first 61 days” — contradicting his own statements and that of his own adviser, Kellyanne Conway, who told CNN in November that the then-president-elect was contemplating convening a special session on Inauguration Day to begin the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Turning to an aide, Trump asked, “How many days is it now? Whatever.” He laughed.

Trump returned to the theme of blaming the Democrats.

“Hey, we could have done this,” he said. “But we couldn’t get one Democrat vote, not one. So that means they own Obamacare and when that explodes, they will come to us wanting to save whatever is left, and we’ll make a real deal.”

There was little evidence that either Trump or House Republicans made a serious effort to reach out to Democrats. Still, I wondered, why not whip some more votes this weekend and come back next week to the House with a revised piece of legislation?

“Well,” Trump said, “we could do that, too. But we didn’t do that. It’s always possible, but we pulled it. . . . We were close.”

How close?

“I would say within anywhere from five to 12 votes,” Trump said — although widespread reports indicated that at least three dozen Republicans opposed the measure. That must have hurt after all of his attempts to rally Republicans, I said. He made calls, had people over to the White House, invited House members on Air Force One. He may not have loved the bill, but he embraced the negotiations.

“You’re right,” Trump said. “I’m a team player, but I’ve also said the best thing politically is to let Obamacare explode.”

Trump said he made the decision to pull the bill after meeting Friday at the White House with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Was that a tense, tough conversation with Ryan, I asked? “No, not tough,” Trump said. “It’s just life. We had great support among most Republicans but no Democratic votes. Zero. Not one.”

I mentioned to Trump that some of his allies were frustrated with Ryan. Did he share those frustrations, and would he be able to work with Ryan moving forward on plans to cut taxes and build an infrastructure package? “I don’t blame Paul,” Trump said. He then repeated the phrase: “I don’t blame Paul. He worked very hard on this.”

And again. “I don’t blame Paul at all.”

As he waits for Democrats, I asked, what’s next on health care, if anything, policy-wise?

“Time will tell. Obamacare is in for some rough days. You understand that. It’s in for some rough, rough days,” Trump said. “I’ll fix it as it explodes,” he said. “They’re going to come to ask for help. They’re going to have to. Here’s the good news: Health care is now totally the property of the Democrats.”

Speaking of premium increases, Trump said: “When people get a 200 percent increase next year or a 100 percent or 70 percent, that’s their fault.”

He returned again to a partisan line on the turn of events. “To be honest, the biggest losers today are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,” Trump said of the House minority leader and the Senate minority leader. “Because now they own the disaster known as Obamacare.”

Okay, I asked, they may own it, in his view, but he will at some point be tasked with shaping whatever comes forward as a partial replacement. What will that be? What kind of policy could he support?

“Oh, lots of things can happen,” Trump said. “But the best would be if we could all get together and do a real health-care bill that would be good for the people, and that could very well happen.”

Does Trump regret starting his agenda this year with health care? “No, I don’t,” he said. “But in a way I’m glad I got it out of the way.”

“Look, I’m a team player,” Trump said of the Republican Party. “I’ve played this team. I’ve played with the team. And they just fell a little bit short, and it’s very hard when you need almost 100 percent of the votes and we have no votes, zero, from the Democrats. It’s unheard of.”

What happened with the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line conservatives he had wooed over and over again? “Ah, that’s the big question,” Trump said with a slight chuckle. “Don’t know. I have a good relationship with them, but I couldn’t get them. They just wouldn’t do it.”

Trump alluded to long-running, simmering dramas on Capitol Hill, which he said had little to do with him, as a reason the Freedom Caucus could not back the bill. “Years of hatred and distrust,” he said. “Long before me.”

Was Trump saying, perhaps, that the inability of Ryan and his team to work well with that caucus was part of why talks stalled? “Well, look, you can say what you want,” Trump said. “But there are years of problems, great hatred and distrust, and, you know, I came into the middle of it. I think they made a mistake, but that’s okay,” Trump said of the Freedom Caucus.

As we wrapped up, I tried to get some clarity. The president was blaming the Democrats and was willing to let the law “explode.” Yet he also seemed to be teasing the possibility of doing something bipartisan down the road, a fresh start at some point.

I asked: Would working on a bipartisan health-care deal a year from now be something he would find more agreeable than whipping the hard right? “A lot of people might say that,” Trump said, laughing. “We’ll end up with a better health-care plan. A great plan. And you wouldn’t need the Freedom Caucus.”

What about the moderates, the Tuesday Group? “They were great,” Trump said. “They were really great.”

He turned once more to the Democrats: “They own it,” he said.

“You’ve said that,” I told him.

“This is a process,” Trump concluded, “and it’s going to work out very well. I was a team player, and I had an obligation to go along with this.”

As Trump tried to hang up the phone and get back to work, I asked him to reflect, if at all possible, on lessons learned. He’s a few months into his presidency, and he had to pull a bill that he had invested time and energy into passing. What was on his mind?

“Just another day,” Trump said, flatly. “Just another day in paradise, okay?”

He paused.

“Take care.”

The foregoing was reprinted from The Washington Post online edition of March 23, 2017. The only changes were the conflation of some paragraphs for the sake of length.

--Richard Brown

Seeking input

While perusing the Declaration of Independence recently, Diogenes realized that the charges leveled against King George III of England were very much like a writ of impeachment.

Starting from that thought, Diogenes is making his own list of the Great Pretender's insults to Americans, which he will publish shortly. Meanwhile, he would like to have your input on the matter, and invites you to leave comments.

Trumpfoolery

It's April Fool's Day, and from the wonderful world of English comes a word about fooling: Trumpery, which Merriam-Webster defines as "worthless nonsense; a trivial or useless article," and the Oxford English Dictionary further expands as "Superficially or visually appealing but [having] little real value or worth."

It's a perfect word to describe the current administration, isn't it? All smiles, beauty, charm and not a hint of substance.

Then of course there's "trumped-up," which the OED defines as "Invented as an excuse or a false accusation," and unquestionably describes how the Great Pretender finds his way through tight spots.

Diogenes proposes renaming April 1 Trumpfoolery Day for as long as the Fool-in-chief is in office.

--Richard Brown