Today marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of World War II. On September 1, 1939 the Germans invaded Poland. France and the United Kingdom declared war against Germany; Germany proceeded to invade its neighbors ultimately conquering and occupying France in 1940. The Italians had invaded Ethiopia long since in 1935; Japan had invaded China in 1937. Today is actually the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Europe.

World War II is now nearly as distant as the American Civil War when I was a kid. Now as then a few doddering, ancient veterans of that war remain but it’s in the distant past. In a very real sense it’s even more distant since so few young people today know much history. For most people nothing of any significance happened before they were born and precious little since.

Most of what we know or think we know comes from motion pictures made during the war and those promote a number of misconceptions. Chief among them is that the war began in 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor which is when it began for us. The second misconception is that, watching old war movies, you look at them with the knowledge of what would actually happen. Those living at the time did not. The Germans had gone through the armies of Europe like paper; the Japanese had done much same thing in Asia. They were formidable opponents—the greatest military organizations the world had known up to that time.

Another misconception is with the age of the soldiers. The average age of an American soldier at the end of World War II was 25. John Wayne was in his mid-30s in 1941 when the war began for the United States. Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable were both over 40. That experienced middle-aged sergeant in the war movies? He was actually in his 20s. Our generals were, in fact, old men. MacArther was over 60; George Patton nearly as old; Dwight Eisenhower was over 50. They were all veterans of World War I. I wouldn’t be surprised if World War II saw the oldest general officer corps in our history. I wonder if it’s been studied?

Yet another misconception is the role of the Russians. They think they won the “Great Patriotic War” and we just stood around holding their coats while they fought. They’re not entirely wrong.

The one thing the movies get right is that we are right to be proud of our accomplishments during the war. I wonder if the people of today can understand that?

Megan McArdle uses her latest Washington Post column to remark on Mayor Lightfoot’s recent “State of the City” address which I commented on here:

It’s been obvious for decades what was going to happen to Chicago and also obvious what would have to be done about it: some combination of pension trims, spending cuts and tax increases. But that’s budget-scold math. The political arithmetic was much simpler: Everyone thought that 100 percent of the cost of adjustment ought to be borne by someone else.

And so, Chicago politicians kept opting for “later” whenever possible, turning to a series of one-time tricks to cover shortfalls. With each delay, the problem got worse as they borrowed even more money from the future to keep taxpayers and workers happy.

Compound interest is your friend when you’re saving and your mortal enemy when you’re borrowing. Every day you delay the reckoning means that tomorrow, you’ll have to run even farther just to stay in place. Chicago is now approaching the point where the growth of its obligations will outpace the growth of any possible revenue stream it might use to cover them. It’s a few steps from there to municipal bankruptcy.

Of course, Chicago politicians aren’t the first ones to say “later”; they certainly won’t be the last. In fact, we’re all saying it right now, except for those tiresome budget scolds.

I disagree with this observation of hers:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with paying generous pensions, if that’s how workers prefer to take their compensation. But that sort of compensation is actually quite expensive. To fund even a modest guaranteed pension benefit decades in the future, you have to invest a big chunk of money in assets right now. Over time, those assets will grow, and generate the cash to pay out the benefits you’ve promised —

I think there is something inherently wrong with defined benefit pensions for public employees. There is no way to compel politicians to put enough money to pay for them into the pension funds. Unless they do, future voters who had nothing to do either with the commitments that were made or the inability to pay them are bound by them. That is unjust.

I also think that Chicago voters have been the victims of a certain amount of unfair criticism and unseemly glee at our plight. I doubt that one voter in 100 voted to short-change the public employees’ pension funds. The blame for that lies squarely on elected officials, many of whom flee the city (and the state) when their terms of office are over. We have really had very limited choices. Many elected officials here run without serious opposition from anyone who would do much differently than they would. So, for example, there has not been a serious Republican challenger running for mayor of Chicago in a very long time.

In his column in the Washington Post David von Drehle muses on the decline of organized labor in the United States:

Why, then, if “labor is the superior of capital,” has labor union membership in the United States dwindled to just 10.5 percent of the workforce? Why has this erosion been going on for 65 years? Myriad academic papers and manifestos purport to explain the phenomenon, but I think the root of the problem is organized labor’s self-image. Too many unionists see themselves as outsiders battling the market economy, when they should be asking how unions can add new value to the marketplace and share fairly in the value they create.

I think he identifies one of the reasons for organized labor’s decline in influence correctly:

It’s no coincidence that the era of organized labor’s rising influence — the 1930s through the 1950s — was also an era of labor-intensive mass production. In steel mills and coal mines, in fields and factories, large numbers of workers toiled side by side like cogs in a machine. The dark cloud of such conditions had a silver lining for labor: It gave unions the power to severely disrupt an enterprise by going on strike.

I also think that the promises of presidential candidates to re-unionize the United States are largely useless and based on incorrect assumptions. The reason for the rise in relative and absolute power among public employees’ unions is a corrupt arrangement between politicians and public employees’ unions. That’s something that should be abolished not fostered.

I think that among the reasons for the decline of organized labor is that they got too fat and happy and forgot their identity as a world-wide movement in support of workers everywhere rather than just their own union members. They should never have tolerated what amounted to scab workers in other countries who weren’t union members and didn’t have the protections afforded to American workers being used to replace unionized American workers. They should have shut down American manufacturing companies rather than allowing it. They didn’t, preferring to get raises for their own present membership and letting their future members or workers in other countries fend for themselves.

Another reason is that in, say, Japan there is considerably more social cohesion. Rank-and-file workers and their managers are both ethnic Japanese. Here there is frequently an ethnic and/or racial gap between the managers and the workers. They look at each other and don’t see themselves.

It is possible to foster social cohesion other than by ties of blood but we’re not doing it. We’re promoting discord and that will never help working people.

Yesterday newly-elected Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot gave her “State of the City” message and, well, there’s a hole in Chicago’s budget of nearly $1 billion. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Carrying signs reading “Lori Lightfoot’s Broken Promise” in the style of her “Bring in the Light” mayoral campaign logo, homeless advocates criticized her for not living up to a pledge to fund affordable housing. Others urged her to cut off funding for the controversial taxpayer subsidy for the proposed Lincoln Yards development.

Lightfoot then took the stage in the library in front of hundreds of invited guests and said the key to digging out of an $838 million 2020 city budget hole lies largely in getting help from Springfield this fall. Lightfoot was unable to extract much help from the same legislature during its spring session that loosened the revenue purse strings for a variety of other big-ticket programs. And, since her Thursday night speech, some legislators have reacted with skepticism to her call for statewide cooperation.

The new mayor now faces the unenviable task of trying to convince Downstate legislators to join forces with Chicago to tackle “shared problems” like huge unfunded pension obligations, while also showing progressive grassroots organizations in the city she’s a true break from the politics of the past and that they were right to support her candidacy.

Mike Madigan, god-emperor of Illinois, has shown little interest in extending a helping hand to Chicago. It’s no skin off his nose. As long as a few thousand people in his district keep voting for him, as they have for the last 40 years, he’ll keep his job as Speaker of the Illinois House.

The mayor went on to say that everything was on the table. I’ll reserve judgment but my bet would be that everything is on the table except reducing city payrolls or amending the state’s constitution so that legislators could restructure public pensions into something that could actually be paid.

A key problem for Chicago is that it’s now a city of 2.5 million people with a city government footprint for a city of 3.5 million. That’s how much the city’s population has declined since 1970. The 2020 decennial census may reveal that Chicago’s population is now below 2 million.

Speaking of rules, I found myself agreeing with the remarks of the editors of the Washington Post about President Trump’s announcement that he would go ahead and build his wall anyway:

An eye-opening report by The Post’s Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey casts a spotlight on the lengths to which Mr. Trump is willing to go to deliver on his signature 2016 campaign promise, which — despite his constant assertions to the contrary — is still almost exclusively on the drawing board. Specifically, the president, who sees his deadline in explicitly political terms — he promises that 500 miles of fencing will be built by Election Day next year — scoffs at environmental rules, contracting and procurement procedures, and property rights.

What are the niceties of established law, federal regulations or eminent domain compared with Mr. Trump’s wish to satisfy his partisans’ chants of “Finish the wall!”?

In rushing the project forward, of course, there are potential pitfalls, among them the risk that officials in his administration may be legally liable. To this, Mr. Trump has breezily suggested he would grant presidential pardons to those who run afoul of the law — a suggestion subsequently dismissed by a White House official, who assured The Post it was a joke. Hilarious.

Whatever his intentions in that regard, word is out in the administration that Mr. Trump has approved a carte blanche for cutting corners on contracts and playing fast and loose with environmental impact assessments. As The Post quoted a senior official: “They don’t care how much money is spent, whether landowners’ rights are violated, whether the environment is damaged, the regs or even prudent business practices.”

Trump’s border wall should be built, if it is built at all, according to the rules. I only caution that the editors be careful of what they wish for. They may find that the rules actually allow the president to do what he allegedly plans to do. Congress may have granted him that authority. I suspect that they have.

I would not have presidents with such uncheckable authority. Not Jimmy Carter, not Ronald Reagan, not George H. W. Bush, not Bill Clinton, not Barack Obama, and not Donald Trump. I think the rules are more important than the political party of the president or even the person of the president.

Presumably in reaction to the court decision striking down a state law compelling electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote, the editors of the New York Times come down in favor of I’m not sure what, adding their voice to the clangor on the Electoral College:

If states were forbidden from determining how their electors vote, parties would only be more careful about vetting prospective electors.

The point is that faithless electors are not the real problem. What really disregards the will of the people is the winner-take-all rule currently used by every state but Maine and Nebraska. Giving all electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote erases the votes of citizens in the political minority — say, the 4.5 million people who voted for Donald Trump in California, or the 3.9 million who voted for Hillary Clinton in Texas. Nationwide, this was the fate of 55 million people in 2016, or 42 percent of the country’s electorate.

The winner-take-all rule encourages campaigns to focus on closely divided battleground states, where a swing of even a few hundred votes can move a huge bloc of electors — creating presidents out of popular-vote losers, like George W. Bush and Donald Trump. This violates the central democratic (or, if you prefer, republican) premises of political equality and majority rule.

What most people don’t realize is that the winner-take-all rule exists nowhere in the Constitution. It’s a pure creation of the states. They can award their electors by congressional district, as Maine and Nebraska do, or in proportion to the state’s popular vote, as several states have considered.

Or they could award them to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide, regardless of the state outcome. That’s the elegant approach of the National Popular Vote interstate compact, which achieves a popular vote not by abolishing the College but by using it as the framers designed it — as a state-based institution. So far 15 states and the District of Columbia, with 196 electoral votes among them, have joined the compact, promising to award their electors to the national vote-winner. The compact goes into effect once it is joined by states representing 270 electoral votes — the bare majority needed to become president — thus guaranteeing the White House to the candidate that a majority of the country supports.

I don’t recall the Times protesting when Bill Clinton was elected president twice by a minority of the popular vote. But he won a majority of the electoral vote, fair and square. Or, in other words, once again where you stand depends on where you sit.

I should add that to date I have heard no one make a coherent argument in favor of plurality rule other than by implicitly defending the Electoral College. In other words you can accept the Electoral College which means that there will be presidents who receive a minority of the popular vote or you can reject the Electoral College and demand that presidents be elected by a majority of the popular vote, or you can oppose the Electoral College and demand that whoever gets the most popular votes wins. That’s not a defense of majority rule. It’s just changing which minority rules.

I see things drastically differently. Since the Founding our country has been governed not by a majority (however defined) but by rules. We have a rules-based system. Such a system depends on acceptance of the rules. When you find you can no longer tolerate the rules, you change them—according to the rules. If you cannot change the rules by the rules, you have some choices. You can take up arms against an intolerable system. You can accept the rules because the underpinnings of our system of government are more important than one or even a series of elections. Or you can go somewhere else more to your liking.

What you cannot do in good conscience is to continue to fulminate against the rules. That is merely sowing discord which helps no one.

I am not a Republican and I do not support Donald Trump. I do support the rules. As Robert Bolt wrote in A Man For All Seasons,

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

I am very, very confused after the release of the Department of Justice’s inspector general’s report on James Comey. If you believe that government officials have a primary obligation to conform to the law and the rules of their organizations, it’s a scathing indictment of James Comey on which the Attorney General may or may not act. That story has not been written yet.

If you believe there’s a higher justice which government officials must heed, then it’s a scathing indictment of the Department of Justice. Holding that view raises two follow-up questions. What is that higher standard? If it’s a personal standard, to whom does it apply?

So far, every commentary I have read is purely a case of where you stand depends on where you sit.

Contrary to my general practice in this post I am quoting in full the article of former Secretary of Defense James Mattis from the Wall Street Journal, which I find constitutes a sort of farewell address.

In late November 2016, I was enjoying Thanksgiving break in my hometown on the Columbia River in Washington state when I received an unexpected call from Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Would I meet with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss the job of secretary of defense?

I had taken no part in the election campaign and had never met or spoken to Mr. Trump, so to say that I was surprised is an understatement. Further, I knew that, absent a congressional waiver, federal law prohibited a former military officer from serving as secretary of defense within seven years of departing military service. Given that no waiver had been authorized since Gen. George Marshall was made secretary in 1950, and I’d been out for only 3½ years, I doubted I was a viable candidate. Nonetheless, I felt I should go to Bedminster, N.J., for the interview.

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Speaking of fires, the BBC reports that Angola has them, too:

The severity of fires in the Amazon has prompted a global outcry. But, amid the protest, some are questioning how this compares with the rest of the world, with surprising results.

The issue has got people checking out Nasa’s maps of fires around the world. When you look at the map from Sunday, it clearly shows more fires burning in central Africa.

Some have expressed amusement (or taken umbrage) that Africa’s fires, despite their being more widespread and, reportedly, intense, have not received the kind of breathless coverage in the U. S. media that Brazil’s have. I think that claiming that the difference in coverage is completely apolitical strains credulity but there are important differences. For example, many of the sub-Saharan fires are in savannah rather than forest so their implications are different.

However, the causes of the Brazilian and African fires are the same. They’re both due to poor people using slash-and-burn techniques to clear land for farming. The solutions to both are the same, too: the people need alternatives other than agriculture to support themselves.