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GELFAND’S WORLD - How would Donald Trump have negotiated with Hitler? We now have a pretty good idea, and it's spelled Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Accord. Except that Chamberlain was at least trying to buy time, even if he made famous the expression "Peace in our time," for giving parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
In previous years, the Republicans trotted out the term Appeasement each time that a Democratic president would engage in any kind of negotiation with the Soviet Union. The tables have turned. Donald Trump now argues that Ukraine should have given up territory to Russia in order to make a deal. You can read the details here. Of course, he neglects to mention that the Russians began the war by attacking Ukraine's capital directly, in the hope that a lightning war of a few days' duration would allow them to take the entire country, install their own puppet in the president's chair, and expand their sphere of influence. It's not unrealistic to see the original and subsequent Ukraine attacks as Putin's desire to rebuild the Russian empire.
American policy has been straightforward since the end of WWII. It was called containment while the Soviet Union existed and continues with the existence of NATO.
Now Trump proposes to abandon the whole philosophy of peace through strength and exchange it for a series of giveaways. He obviously doesn't realize that this would be the effect of giving in to Putin on Ukraine.
President Richard Nixon once argued for American preeminence in foreign affairs by warning that the alternative would be for us to become a "Pitiful, helpless giant." The remark was not as effective in carrying Nixon's argument on the Viet Nam conflict, but it did characterize the one-time Republican policy of military strength and resistance to foreign dictators who choose to contest with us in our sphere of influence.
Perhaps I go on a bit long in raising the appeasement issue, but how else to describe the latest comments by candidates Trump and Vance regarding the continued ability of Ukraine to stand up to the Russian invasion?
There should be no conflict over our support of Ukraine in maintaining and recovering its lands and autonomy. But Trump, Vance, and several Republicans in the congress have done exactly that. The current Republican argument is that Ukraine should have negotiated to give up its eastern lands, the ones currently occupied by Russian troops. The Trump-Vance policy is to give Russia everything it has demanded.
Donald Trump has now made clear what others suspected of him previously. He is contemptuous of Ukraine's desire to maintain its own freedom from foreign tyranny. J.D. Vance joins the fray by placing an unrealistic faith in Trump's ability to negotiate.
There's one more thing to be remembered. In spite of all the whining by Trump and his followers, it was Trump who tried to extract concessions from the Ukrainian leader in order to assist with Trump's reelection, an act for which Trump was rightfully impeached (the first time).
Let's give a few Republicans in the congress the minimal credit for raising the issue of Ukrainian president Zelensky campaigning on American soil and accepting American governmental assistance in pursuit of his goals. But any such criticism goes against the state department and the American military, not against a man who could have surrendered his country at the very beginning but stood heroically in opposition instead.
Addendum: A neighborhood council get together this weekend
The Los Angeles city Charter was amended by the voters back in 1999 to create and support a system of neighborhood councils. There are now 99 such councils covering most of the city and including nearly two thousand board members in total. The Charter created a city department known as the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, (DONE) which is invited by the Charter and other enabling legislation to aid neighborhood councils -- in putting on citywide meetings of neighborhood council participants.
About a dozen years ago, DONE explained that it would no longer run the annual congresses due to budgetary issues. The excuse was not all that convincing, but it was fait accompli. The neighborhood councils, through their Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition, decided that we could run the annual congress. Under volunteer leader Cincy Cleghorn and later other people, we have been running an annual congress ever since.
As a participant in the planning group over the years, I have always had mixed feelings about how such congresses are run. They are a very good way for people from all over the city to come together and (I hate this word, but here goes) to network. It's a good way for me to meet people whose words I read in CityWatch and who I have seen on Zoom meetings through the whole Covid experience.
Why I am frustrated is that there is a whole collection of topics that should be discussed but are not. For some reason, the developers of successive congresses have, for the most part, kept such topics away from the eyes and ears of participants. I must admit that on one occasion, I was allowed to host sessions on more weighty topics. For example, we had one titled, "What if neighborhood councils had real power?"
Last year, I proposed a session which would have been titled "Should DONE be abolished?" It's a not-unreasonable question, considering that the Charter language adopted in 1999 specifically allows for such an action after the neighborhood councils have been in existence for 5 years. (That 5-year mark has long since occurred, and the law would therefore allow DONE to be folded into another city department at great monetary savings and arguably a lot less hassle for our board members.)
That same title was proposed by one of the planners again this year, and I volunteered to organize and chair the session. The programming committee turned it down, apparently.
What will you get instead? You can see for yourself, here. (Go to 2024 Congress and click on Workshops.)
The first listed session is titled "How to read the city budget and affect change." This is a pretty good idea for a breakout session, considering the importance of the budget in everything that happens in city government and in the city. But what's missing is that other troublesome question, which is how the City Council and the mayor play politics with that budget by giving away the store to the municipal unions who get those City Council members elected. You've read about it here in CityWatch, but the topic is apparently taboo for the programming group.
I will note that corruption in city government was of strong interest to Ken Draper, the founder of this site. It's curious that the group of people who are directly charged by the Charter to evaluate city government are not invited to speak of this topic at our annual congress.
How about crime? Shall we talk about the understaffing of the LAPD? I think you will find that most police officers you talk to will agree that they need a larger LAPD, but for some reason we don't talk about this at our congresses.
However, you can attend a session titled "Building Neighborhood Community through Social Media." Maybe this will be OK. I've attended sessions on social media that had some useful information, but I would exchange this topic for something involving life and death on the city streets and buses. No, these topics are not mutually exclusive, but I think that the set of choices made by the programming group tend more towards pablum, and less towards the critical issues that most city residents would choose for discussion.
Here is a topic that should absolutely, positively have been placed on the agenda: How shall we respond to the current move to amend the City Charter? Note that members of the City Council are busy talking about Charter modifications, and also notice that the only reason neighborhood councils exist is that Section 9 of the Charter was adopted in 1999. It would be easy for the City Council to include the abolition of Section 9 on its proposed Charter modifications or, worse yet, modify Section 9 to give the City Council even more control over the neighborhood council system.
You won't find this discussion on the schedule for this congress, but you will see a session on revolutionizing paperwork and the usual sessions on outreach to seniors.
There are a few sessions that look to be meritorious. There is a morning session on how we will deal with heat emergencies. There is an afternoon session titled "City Hall's war on public input and how to fight back," chaired by Jamie York, who was brutally rejected by the City Council when she was nominated to the city's ethics commission. This one should be interesting.
But let's be blunt. There is a lot of pablum, and not one session devoted to reform. I have repeatedly asked that we set aside one thread in the congress to allow for such discussions. The programming group always manages to come up with some excuse for why we won't. Last year, the excuse was that there were lots of newly elected board members who should receive training in things like how to behave at a board meeting. The fact that there were equal hundreds of board members who already have that experience and might like to talk about meatier issues was ignored or outright rejected. There is no such excuse this year, but the same blandness is back. The programming group seems to have engaged in a process of shaping the program into something in its own image. Think of this weekend's congress as a performance rather than a real debate. But do come, for the networking if nothing else.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected].)
