The Race Card, a Joker

You do not have to be an expert in history to know that hatred, blind, bigoted, ignorant, cruel hatred is a pervasive element in the human psyche. Perhaps, given the bloody record from the beginning of time, it is one of the most dominant features of the human condition.

The litany of hatred is infinite. Yes, there are people who hate blacks because they are black. People hate Jews because they are Jews. People hate Moslems because they are Moslems. Buddhists hate Moslems, Moslems hate Buddhists. There are endless sub categories, Shiites hate Sunnis, Hutus hate Tutsis. The point has been made. The sad fact is that this endless menu of hate has had horrendous, appalling, painful and murderous consequences, resulting in the deaths of millions of our fellow creatures.

Even in enlightened America where our Declaration of Independence proudly proclaimed that “all men are created equal” it has taken more than two centuries and a bloody civil war that took 700,000 lives to begin the process of “equalizing”, a condition that is still a work in progress. Even the most dispassionate observer can point to this progress with pride, optimism and impatience.

What prompts me to offer these historical and contemporary clichés is the current absurdity that any criticism of President Obama is a litmus test on racism. That is an insult to the innate intelligence and maturity of the American people who, despite all the parsing and hullabaloo gave a resounding electoral slap in the kisser to the idea that we are still an ignorant racist nation.

In a strange way, I feel sorry for President Obama, who wisely has rejected the characterization. The attempt to racialize his Presidency is a direct blow to his credibility and legitimacy. People who attempt to use this sledgehammer of stupidity are doing all of us a disservice. Yes, there are white people out there who continue to hate blacks and black people out there who continue to hate whites. We all know they are on the fringes, hardly mainstream considering the evidence of the last election.

Besides, the President is neither all black or all white, which makes the charge ludicrous. Indeed, the situation is made even more bizarre by a senile and increasingly shrill ex-President, Jimmy Carter, our worst chief executive in modern history, making overheated and absurd statements that tend to embolden rather than cool the ever-present forces of bigotry. The poor man is obviously suffering from a galloping case of white guilt caused by generations of his southern ancestors who abused, tortured and enslaved black people.

President Obama is right not to dip his toe into this simmering and bitter cocktail. Indeed, the growing middle class of black Americans should slap down such criticism before it gets out of hand, especially by some black politicians, who seem to be sprouting increasingly desperate methods to assure themselves re-election.

Sure there are minefields out there that continue to inhibit people’s aspirations because of prejudice and bigotry, but there are multitudes of people who have learned how to pick their way safely through these aberrant minefields of nastiness and hatred and take advantage of the vast opportunities offered in our multi-cultured, multi-layered, multi-racial landscape of opportunity.

It is both dangerous and foolhardy to label anyone who disagrees with President Obama a racist. It is time to declare it outside the rules of political combat. Such an act is antithetical to our concept of democracy. Worse, it sets up a false barrier to protest.

I, for one, would fight vigorously against anyone who would inhibit my right to protest, however vehemently, against the policies of any President, including our present one.

In my lifetime, I have seen all Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt publicly praised, lauded, vilified and disparaged. I have seen them cursed and satirized and burned in effigy in the streets and castigated in the media. So what else is new? Why should Obama be given a pass? Besides, he is well aware that he is the target of the opposition and is undoubtedly prepared for the virulent antagonism to his policies. He also knows that race is the joker in the deck and that most card games are played sans jokers. Race, for him, is a joker. It must be thrown out of the deck.

I will always remember the ugly hatred of my colleagues in the Pentagon, during my service in the Korean War, who berated President Truman for multifarious sins of commission and omission. He was characterized as the stupid haberdasher way out of his depth when he ascended to the Presidency after Roosevelt died in office. He is now a revered ex-President.

I keenly remember Johnson literally driven out of office by anti-war protestors and, of course, Richard Nixon who was roundly and universally condemned in the Watergate affair, which forced his resignation. And then there was Carter, contrived in his folksy sweater, telling us we were, to paraphrase, lazy and worthless, because we didn’t harken to his clarion bleat. History has proved us right on that call which moved him forthwith out of the White House and left him free to grouse, carp and castigate.

I often wondered how George W. Bush, could get up to work in the morning after the withering whipping he took from the media and the political left and right. History is still out on that one, although his Vice President can’t seem to shake off the lingering anger and personal animosity.

So now we have Obama, the ambitious upstart, black-white President, an amalgam of all of us, making a grand attempt at changes that most of the American people are not sure they want. Whatever the merits of his program, he is indulging in public relations gone amuck. It is one of the cardinal rules of public relations, of which I was once a practitioner, to know when to walk, albeit temporarily, off the stage. We’ve all heard his act so many times that he’s getting too repetitive and his speeches and pronouncements are quickly becoming somewhat boring clichés.

I know that sounds harsh, but he is really squandering his capital at breakneck speed. For the record, I am worried about the consequences of our astounding deficit, the terrible unemployment numbers and his ambivalent and dangerous foreign policy.

You can call me a horse’s ass or worse for my opinions. I will take no umbrage. But call me a racist and I will go along with Helena in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, don’t “bait me with this foul derision.”

What Was Madoff Thinking?

While the curious, the inquisitive, the lascivious and the various investigators and detectives of enforcement focus on what Bernard Madoff was doing as he bilked investors out of billions, I have been exercising my novelist’s prerogative by concentrating my speculations on why Bernard Madoff was doing it.

Just in case you were vacationing on planet Mars in the last few weeks, Madoff is the 70-year-old con man who is the mastermind behind the bizarre Ponzi scheme that cost friends, family, clients and charities 50 billion, give or take, in vanished funds. The scheme, named after a former practitioner of the racket pays out alleged dividends not from legitimate earnings but from fresh funds contributed by new “investors.”

By all accounts Madoff was a pleasant looking, low-key, soft-spoken fellow who oozed integrity and modest authority. He was apparently regarded as a financial whiz and a man of great wisdom and compassion by his peers, who inhabited his social realm of country clubs and philanthropies. He was worshiped by an army of sycophants who sought his counsel, market wisdom and especially access to his remarkable investments that returned fabulous steady earnings in good times and bad.

He had earned the trust of numerous fund operators who used his alleged expertise at getting high returns as their calling card to lure huge international players into the Madoff net. A kind of sucker virus took hold and spread across borders.

So what was he thinking as he doled out these lavish returns knowing that he was cheating family, friends, charitable institutions, banks and countries? Did he believe he was helping people by providing returns that actually dwarfed what similar investments were paying? Did he revel in the praise of his peers as he basked in their awe and respect? Did his ego require such constant iteration?

What was his justification? I am tempted to think that he might have actually convinced himself by simple arithmetic that he was doing good deeds. If, for example, one had “invested” a hundred million with Madoff say ten years ago, one would have garnered, at a minimum, a hundred and twenty million return. Who would not think that Madoff was a genius? A charity might be doing somersaults having such wonderful returns to dispense their good deeds.

An elderly couple, who had placed a large sum with Madoff and lived prosperously off the proceeds, might have felt that they had discovered nirvana by this association with the mild mannered super fellow that befriended and supported them. And Madoff might have told himself how wonderful he was to supply these people with such largesse, enjoying the applause and believing, really believing, that he had become a human Santa Claus.

Did he have trouble sleeping nights? Did any ripple of conscience disturb his tranquility as he enjoyed the proceeds of his own entitlement, the numerous lavish homes, the yachts, the jets, the joys of being a generous respected Dad and Grandad, the recipient of kudos and awards for his celebrated contributions to the downtrodden and diseased? Once a lifeguard, he might have easily believed that he was still in the business of guarding lives.

Did the joys of oversized respect and admiration trump any tiny pangs of guilt, as he knowingly screwed his new “investors” by using their money to provide a continual flow of cash to his older investors? Was it not one happy family, his own included?

He was, of course, a man who knew the markets intimately. Perhaps he had reasoned that at some point in time, he would find a way to refund the coffers that he had rifled with his own bloated assets and what must have been optimism gone amuck. Perhaps he had tucked away huge bags of gold coins and artwork, waiting for the moment that he might cash in his horde and repay his funds. Perhaps he had stashed billions in overseas accounts or secret vaults hidden from investigators that he planned one day to retrieve and pour back into his empty money pit?

Touted as a family man, can one believe that he was really outed by his two devoted sons or, as many have speculated, a plot was contrived by the three of them to have good old Dad take the rap for the kids? Every avenue remains open in trying to assess how this man’s devious mind operated. Is it possible that behind the façade lurked other gossipy scandals, mistresses with outsized appetites, mafia dons who found ways to launder money through Madoff and other strange encounters with a shadowy underworld? Who knows?

Think, too, of the so-called “respected” money managers who begged him to take them on, throwing due diligence to the winds in the race for greater and greater returns. And what of the money managers who put all their clients’ funds with Madoff and took their usual commissions while doing not a lick of work to earn them? Never mind the obvious losses, think of the massive amounts of legal fees that will be enjoyed by that profession as everyone sues everyone else. The dominoes will fall for years as the big ego guys who made piles of money try to reclaim their tattered reputations in the law courts, a dubious proposition at best.

Most of all, people are speculating how Madoff was able to concoct such a massive fraud right under the noses of what could only be characterized as the brain dead SEC. If your own ox wasn’t gored, watching this crime unfold can be a form of entertainment. It would not surprise me if Madoff is currently fielding massive publishing and movie deals to satisfy the public curiosity about how he did it. And why? Look at me. Here I am spending time and mental treasure trying to figure out his motives?

Does Madoff feel any remorse? Perhaps this requires more expertise about the criminal mind than I possess? Interpreting the pictures of him being accosted by reporters and cameras as he walks along Madison Avenue, I see a cryptic little smile as if he is laughing at these hordes of busy bodies trying to probe his innermost secrets. From seeing that picture and my own reading of events surrounding Madoff, I’m willing to bet that in his heart of hearts, he feels no remorse or pity for the broken promises and wounded lives his scam has caused. I doubt if he feels anyone’s pain.

On the contrary, he may feel elation at having carried out this cleverly orchestrated scheme that escaped detection for decades and drew in people who considered themselves brilliant winners in the game of life, especially in the amassing of giant fortunes. Was he laughing at their greed and stupidity, celebrating his guile and cunning with his own internal laughter?

As for the ruined lives floating aimlessly in his wake, one cannot help but feel sorry for those who depended on these so-called returns to maintain their lifestyle. If they had any doubts about the origins of their good fortune, the avalanche of fat checks surely tranquilized their doubts. Indeed, if they had the temerity to question the source of their good fortune, Madoff was quick to cut them out of the roster.

To further prove his “integrity” he eagerly refunded principal, the origins of which came from entry-level investors. Wasn’t that a brilliant ploy to advertise his sterling reputation as a man of honor? This man was beyond shame.

As for the super rich who got their various appendages caught in the ringer, I feel no empathy for their bruised parts and crumbled egos. In fact, one has to cheer for their comeuppance and the explosion of their self-righteous worship of the Gods of Greed.

There is, however, a subliminal casualty of this strange affair and that is the earthquake of distrust that Madoff has inspired in these hard times. Without trust, we are all doomed to suffer the arrows of misfortune that people like Madoff take from their quiver to arm their bows. Without trust, the foundation that underpins our lives becomes a vulnerable house of cards.

Unfortunately, the punishment of Madoff will never fit his crime. His cunning lawyers paid for with the fruits of his ill gotten gains will game the system, and Madoff will become a star and advisor to fellow cons in the country club prison circuit devised for white collar criminals during what is sure to be a short penal vacation.

Perhaps it might be worth quoting the parting wisdom of that old rascal Carlo Ponzi, whose dying words characterized how he viewed the experience of his victims and sundry observers.

“Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."

Was it worth fifty billion? You tell me.