We just spent a week in Baja California near Loreto, on the Sea of Cortez, with cool breezes coming off the sea, while I understand Malibu sweltered for a while. If you have ever wondered what Malibu must have looked like before we all arrived, visit Baja and look at its dry, craggily, windswept bluffs, with some scrub brush, but little in the way of trees. Mexico and Baja are places of strange contrasts. Part of it seems like third world, but parts are very beautiful and sophisticated and, despite attempts by some to paint a picture of hordes of impoverished people coming here, the reality is that Mexico has the world’s 15th largest economy, just somewhat smaller than South Korea and Spain, and somewhat larger than Indonesia, Netherlands and Turkey.Â
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Just before we left, there was a wonderful Malibu Veterans Day Public Ceremony celebration, honoring women in the armed forces, where a couple of 90-plus-year-old lady vets of WWII looked like they were just about ready to sign up to do another tour. Women have come a long way in the services. Before, they were clerks and nurses and such. Today, they are flying combat jets and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, a four-star admiral; the No. 2 post in the navy is held by an African American woman.
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While we were gone, the presidential primary races certainly didn’t get any mellower. Trump is still riding high in the polls and seems to be leading a successful race to find the lowest common denominator. The others are almost forced to follow just to stay afloat in a political world filled with very angry partisans who appear to be willing to settle for nothing less than blood. I keep waiting for the Trump phenomenon to run its course, but it’s beginning to look like he’s tapped into a very nasty vein in the American body politic, which may go deeper than any of us ever realized. We’re already seeing the effects of even more partisanship (if that’s possible) and also the surfacing of deep racism. Trump’s campaign has given people permission to say things that in the old days, they might have just muttered under their breath.
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The terrorist killings in Paris have also changed the world’s perceptions and justifiably raised the fears of a similar incident occurring here in the U.S. There is a lot of nonsensical posturing going on by many of the world leaders, and just about every presidential candidate is out to prove they can out-macho each other, but I fear the reality is that any group of terrorists willing to mount a suicidal attack anywhere in the world have a reasonable chance of being successful. The Paris attacks were very low-tech, and if it takes good intelligence to catch these things before they happen, that means there may be a need for email intercepts, wiretaps, electronic surveillance, some other very nasty stuff we don’t like to talk about and all sorts of intrusions on our freedoms.
The Trumps of the world are feeding on those fears, and it’s going to take real strength for any leader not to give in to the panic and take the cheap shot just to look decisive. Recently, French President François Hollande sent an aircraft carrier to launch strikes into Syria, which looked strong and decisive, but the reality is, that wasn’t security. What we saw was security theater, calculated to make Hollande look decisive. You may recall we flew hundreds, if not thousands, of sorties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we all know the result of that. What next? It’s only matter of time before Trump suggests we just nuke them all, whomever they are, where ever they are.Â
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A final local note: the school district, in its infinite wisdom, decided to try to turn a political dispute into a criminal case and brought in the sheriffs to try and shift public view away from the very clumsy way they’ve handled the PCB problems in the Malibu public schools. Sometimes, I truly wonder if there is anyone with any sense running our school district. Fortunately, the DA’s office and sheriffs did not get suckered into the controversy.