March Madness

 I learned to play Chess as a boy but never had much of a chance to play until I retired fifteen years ago. Since then I have been an avid, if average, player, playing every Wednesday with a group of similar players at our local Senior center. I also play daily blitz or speed games online with players all over the world. 

Despite the common perception, I have come to believe that chess is a team sport. We all have the image of the solitary chess master hovering over the board and lost in thought while contemplating the next move. But to my mind the chess player is the coach and the real players are the pieces on the board. It doesn’t take much experience to realize that if these pieces don’t work together, they will not win.

It is the coach’s job first to get his players into the game. In other words, they must be placed out in the field of play as quickly as possible. In chess it is called development. The major pieces (knights, bishops, rooks) are more powerful than pawns and constitute the starting team. Not only must the coach put them into play quickly, he must place them properly so that they cooperate and defend one another. If they can’t work together, the game is inevitably lost. 

Even the Queen, the most powerful piece on the board, usually cannot capture the opponent’ s King by herself. She needs the support of at least one other piece to checkmate. Only the opponent’s Queen can confront her power alone, but she can be neutralized and sometimes captured by being double or even tripled teamed by less powerful pieces working together.

Team work is the key to success in most sports. Basketball, with only five players on the court, is no exception. March is the month when the basketball season reaches its apex. The NBA regular season, where most games are little more than exhibitions, is coming to an end. The Pros will soon start to get serious in the playoffs. 

Despite the magnitude of the stars in the NBA, it is still a team game. Some think that  LeBron James is the best player to ever play the game, but the Los Angeles Lakers are struggling this year without a strong supporting cast.  The continued success of the Golden State Warriors is due to the way in which they have integrated super-stars  Steph Curry and now departed Kevin Durant into their team concept. On the other hand, fans will remember how the  New York Knicks could not rise above mediocrity  because they could not induce superstar Carmelo Anthony to embrace the team concept. 

The NCAA collegiate championship series is reaching its climax. It is usually called March Madness but insanity might be a better description. All over the country millions of people have filled out their brackets only to be disappointed when lowly St. Peter's turned out to be a real bracket buster.

Interestingly, the most successful college team in the past decade has been the University of Connecticut’s Women’s team. It is true that the success of the team has enabled UCONN Coach Geno Auriemma to continually recruit all-star high school athletes from all over the country. The team is loaded with talent and their average margin of victory often has exceeded 30 points per game in past seasons. This season has been different especially when the team's star player suffered an injury that kept her sidelined through much of the season.  Nevertheless, the team continued to win.

Earlier this week the UCONN women made it into the Final Four by beating a talented North Carolina State team in double overtime. It was a magnificent display of team play on both sides. UCONN's star sophomore, Paige Bueckers, excelled in the second half but she did not do it alone especially when the NC State defense clogged the middle and took away the three point shot. She had the savvy and skill to shoot off the dribble and sink one mid-range jumper after another, but she never forced her shots. As a result the whole team contributed to the win. In a brief interview after the game a visibly shaken Coach Auriemma discussed the team concept as well as the great responsibility he felt as a coach to his players. (click on link.) 

Obviously, Auriemma’s stature as a coach has enabled him to get his extremely talented athletes to play together as a team. I remember reading about a local high school men’s coach who urged his young studs to emulate the way the UCONN women play defense.  In other words, Auriemma has been able to get the UCONN stars to not just think of individual stats but to play defense as well as offense.

A few years ago, one of the UCONN women remarked that Auriemma would find it difficult to coach men because they are so thick-headed when it comes to team play.

Even on the high school level it takes a strong coach to get young men to play together as a team. The natural desire of athletes to show their stuff is magnified these days by pressure to get college scholarships. Also, sports reporters often become star-struck and concentrate all their attention on the high scoring players and their stats. 

It has often been said that legendary players like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan were able to bring out the best in their teammates. In doing so, they also won numerous championships. This is true not just in chess and basketball but in business, politics, and practically every aspect of life. It is certainly true in family life where mothers and fathers give themselves to bring out the best in their children.

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Russia, the USA, and Ukraine

In going through the archives of The Weekly Bystander today, I came across this strangely prophetic post, dated 2/13/2015 during the last year of the Obama administration, about the war in Ukraine. Today, I underline some especially prescient remarks. 

In an interview in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal General Frederick B. Hodges, commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, made the case for military aid to the Ukraine and for an increased NATO involvement. Nevertheless, the General made some admissions that make one wonder if there might be another alternative. 

The General argued that Russia is preparing for war some five or six years in the future with some unspecified enemy. He believed that the Russians regard China as their greatest threat but that at the same time noted that they were conducting simulations of a nuclear attack on the United States. He did not mention that they might be concerned with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism all along their southern borderlands. *

To counter the Russian threat the General pointed out that our own resources are stretched thin. Nine out of ten of our divisions are currently engaged in missions all over the world. The General insisted that we cannot act on our own anymore and must rely increasingly on our allies. However, our NATO allies have not and will not live up to their treaty commitments. Only four of them dedicate more than the required 2% of GDP to defense spending. **

Finally, the General admitted that we need a strategy and that military aid to the Ukraine or any other country does not by itself constitute a strategy. He asks that we consider the outcome we want to achieve in the Ukraine.  Do we really want the Ukraine to become a battlefield where millions might die? Do we want a city like Mariupol on the Black Sea to become a desert like Mosul?

Why can't we consider Russia as an ally and not an enemy? Instead of confronting Russia with NATO, why not guarantee that an independent Ukraine will never be part of NATO. The Ukraine provides Russia with millions of customers for its vast energy reserves. After all, both the US and Russia will more and more have to deal with the growing power of China, as well as with radical Islam. 

The Journal has launched a barrage of editorial comment against Russia in the past week. One op-ed suggested that a military buildup is not necessary because we could crush the Russians economically with increased sanctions and low oil and gas prices. This is another dangerous suggestion since if we drive the Russians to the wall, they might become desperate. Why isn't a strong Russia to our advantage? If we think economic sanctions hurt the Russian oligarchs, what do we think they will do to the ordinary Russian citizen.

Journal columnist Bret Stephens, a longtime proponent of arming the Ukrainians, even quoted and praised a practically insane statement by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham who claimed that he did not know what the outcome of military intervention would be, and did not care how many Ukrainians or Russians might die, or even if we lost. All that mattered was that the US not back down and appease Putin. ***

It would be so much less costly in terms of men and money to bring the Russians into NATO than to confront them with a flaming sword on their historical Western front. It would be better to have a strong, economically viable Russia as an ally rather than an enemy in the ongoing war against radical Islam.

Notes:

*Before the recent invasion, Russia apparently made a deal with China.

** Readers will remember that not only did President Trump try to make NATO live up to its treaty obligations, but also, that his efforts to strike a deal with Russia were hampered by incessant partisan attacks claiming that the 2016 election was stolen by the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia.

*** Lindsay Graham is still a senator from South Carolina.

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St. Patrick's Day

  

                                           

Practically everyone must know that the great migration of the Irish to America took place after the terrible potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century. However, even before that disaster the Irish had been the subject of persecution going back to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century when King Henry VIII seized control of the English church. 

The Irish were longtime enemies of the English and when Henry, who considered himself King of Ireland as well as England, attacked their thousand-year-old faith the enmity only grew worse. Later, Henry’s daughter Elizabeth tried unsuccessfully to subdue the Irish Catholics throughout her reign. After the Puritan revolution in England in the mid-seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell brutally suppressed Irish resistance. By the end of the century William and Mary, after driving Mary’s Catholic father James from the English throne, delivered another devastating blow to the Irish at the battle of the Boyne.

The almost perpetual Irish resistance led the English and their Protestant friends in Ireland to pass penal laws that had the effect of depriving most Irish Catholics of all their rights including the right to their own confiscated properties. 

Many Irish left their homeland for good in the century before the great famine. They were sometimes called the “wild geese” and many of them made a name for themselves in Europe. In the nineteenth century the ruling family in Serbia was the Obrenovich family, heirs no doubt of some Irish O’Brien. Years ago, Ed Obradovich played linebacker for the Chicago Bears. His family must have come from central Europe but there must have been a Brady ancestor. I recall meeting a Polish American priest whose name, Okonski, must have derived from O’Conner. John Konecny, a long ago squash buddy, looked as Irish as Paddy's pig.

When the Irish came to America, they didn’t starve because of the availability of jobs and land. Nevertheless, despite separation of Church and State in America, the Irish were still objects of prejudice and discrimination primarily because of their Catholicism. I recall an American historian saying that the most long lasting and abiding prejudice in America was directed not against Jews or Blacks but against Catholics. That assertion may be disputed by some but the KKK was so called because its hatred was directed against Koons, Kikes, and Katholics.

Just because national or ethnic groups have been victimized by prejudice and discrimination does not mean that they themselves cannot practice such behavior when given the opportunity. Growing up in New York City in the 40s and 50s I vividly recall that only Irish need apply for membership in the City’s Transit Workers Union. I have never forgotten the resentment of my mother-in-law when her Italian parents were told by an Irish priest that they did not belong in predominately Irish St. John’s church and that they should attend the Italian church in town. 

Still, the success of the Irish in America means that we all are in their debt. I would just like to give a few personal examples. I was born and raised in the Woodside section of Queens, a neighborhood after WW2 made up largely of the descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants.  My best friend was my cousin Pete whose father’s ancestry was Irish and German. Pete’s father, my Uncle Pete, was a New York City policeman who always seemed all Irish to me, and so did my cousin even though his mother was Italian. My next best friend was Dermot (Dermie) Woods whose family was very Irish. Both of Dermie’s older brothers had served in the Navy during the war.

St. Mary Help of Christians, my parochial elementary school, matched the ethnic make up of Woodside. There were some Italian kids in my class, but the majority was Irish. I still remember Richie Moylan, John Regan, Tom Fay, Charley Dunphy, and top student Pat Ryan who would go on to become a Jesuit priest and get a doctorate from Harvard in Islamic studies. His father was a saloon keeper. 

Most of the nuns were of Irish ancestry. They were of the order of St. Dominic and their formidable black and white habits helped them keep almost perfect order in classes sometimes numbering over 50 students. Only years later did I come to find out that many of them were barely out of their teens and still attending college.

It seemed natural for me to follow cousin Pete to Power Memorial high school in Manhattan. Power was a Catholic school for boys run by the Irish Christian Brothers whose most famous graduate would be Lou Alcindor, who would later call himself Kareem Abdul Jabbar. I still remember some of the Irish brothers with great affection and respect. There was Brother Hehir, my first home room teacher, a saintly innocent man who was the butt of innumerable pranks and jokes by us “dirty little stinkers.” No one fooled around with wise old Brother Gleason, however. He was the Latin teacher with a passionate love of ancient Rome. Only years later did I discover that it was the Irish who had saved Western Civilization during the Dark Ages when monks in the mold of Brother Gleason preserved and later revived the lore and wisdom of antiquity. Finally, I remember Brother Conefrey who ran our honors class and exposed us modern barbarians to the wonders of English literature. 

Monastery Iona*

For some reason that still remains unclear to me I went to college at Fordham University, a famed Jesuit school in the Bronx. The Jesuits had been founded in the sixteenth century by Ignatius of Loyola, a young soldier from the Basque country in what is now northwestern Spain, but the Jesuit fathers at Fordham seemed to be largely of Irish ancestry. Nevertheless, in 1957 they taught and revered an old curriculum based on a model devised during the Renaissance. We studied Western philosophy, theology, history (eight credits in medieval history were required), rhetoric, literature, and language under scholars named O’ Sullivan, O’Callaghan, Mc Nally, Walsh and Clark. 

Three cheers for the Irish on this St. Patrick’s Day. 

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* Iona photo courtesy of David Orme.

Ukraine: Who's to Blame?

I do not know what the outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be, but I do believe that the war and its terrible consequences could have been avoided. Faced with Russian warnings over the past few years, the government of the Ukraine only had to pledge that it would never join NATO or the European Union, or allow foreign troops on its soil.

 

In other words, while affirming its independence of both Russia and the West, Ukraine would have opted for neutrality in the same way that Switzerland has done for hundreds of years. This pledge would have retained Ukraine’s independence as well as its ability to deal politically and financially with both Russia and the West.  A pledge of neutrality would not have been appeasement. It would allow the people of Ukraine to live in peace and shape their own destiny. It was worth a try especially now that we see the mounting devastation and loss of life on both sides.

 

The war in Ukraine is a tragic failure of diplomacy on all sides. It is easy to blame President Putin of Russia and call him insane as our media likes to do, but leaders in the West are also to blame for the diplomatic failure.

 

On March 22, the Wall Street Journal, always hawkish on Ukraine, published an interview with Robert Service, a respected historian and analyst of Russian affairs. In the interview he pointed out that in November of last year, President Biden dismissed Russian objections to NATO expansion. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from two immense strategic blunders; Robert Service says. The first came on Nov. 10, when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter of Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The pact made it likelier than ever the Ukraine would eventually join NATO—an intolerable prospect for Vladimir Putin. “It was the last straw,” Mr. Service says. Preparations Immediately began for Russia’s so-called special military operations in Ukraine.

 

People will remember President Biden’s history of meddling in Ukrainian affairs as Vice President during the administration of President Obama. He even bragged about bullying the government of Ukraine by threatening to cut off U.S. aid unless it agreed to dismiss a prosecutor investigating corruption in the Ukrainian energy company whose board of directors included his own son, Hunter, who somehow got the high paying post with no experience or qualifications. Ironically, President Trump was impeached by Democrats because of a phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky asking him to investigate corruption.

 

The Biden administration can now add the war in Ukraine to its growing list of failures which are too numerous to recount here. Any policy that results in war with its attendant destruction, loss of life, and displacement of millions of people must be regarded as a failure despite the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people.

 

I also blame Democratic politicians in this country for spending the four years of the Trump administration constantly harassing the President over a Russia collusion hoax that effectively hindered the President of the USA from coming to any kind of peaceful arrangement with Russia over the status of Ukraine. Remember that President Trump was a critic of NATO and its expansion. He even went so far as to question its existence especially since the European partners seemed unwilling to bear the financial burden. Nevertheless, NATO went so far as to include tiny countries on Russia’s border like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania as members. Does anyone seriously believe that the USA will go to war if those countries are invaded?

 

Of course, Vladimir Putin of Russia must bear the lion’s share of the blame for the tragedy in Ukraine no matter how the war turns out. It seems to me that he could have used Russia’s vast energy reserves as a much more potent weapon than his military. Ukraine and Europe are dependent on Russia for energy. Despite the long-standing animosity between Russia and Ukraine, they still could have worked together for each other’s benefit.

 

Despite his heroism in the current crises, President Zelensky could have and should have found a peaceful resolution to allay Putin’s fears. Looking at things now, what did he gain by signing the Strategic Partnership Pact with the USA last November?

 

 

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Political Hatred

In my almost daily walks in my quiet suburban neighborhood, I sometimes come across lawn signs that read, "HATE HAS NO HOME HERE." Nevertheless, in the past six years I have never witnessed so much hatred in my town and in my country as has been directed at former President Donald Trump. Like all hatred it seems visceral rather than reasonable. It is as if a large part of the population has received a political vaccination that enables the political immune system to form an immediate and violent reaction to even the mention of his name. 

During the election when I questioned my neighbors about their Trump animosity, they invariably replied that they just could not stand the man, no matter what he might have accomplished in office. They could not even bring themselves to acknowledge that he might have accomplished even one good thing as President. He has been our of power for more than a year but still my Internet home page features almost daily anti-Trump headlines.

I have been thinking about this Trump hatred phenomenon for awhile, and recently I found as good an explanation as I have ever read in a biography of Sir Robert Walpole, an English politician of almost 300 years ago. It would appear that Walpole was as larger than life as Donald Trump, and just as hated despite his accomplishments. Below is J.H. Plumb's concluding appraisal of Walpole that brought Trump and his haters to mind.

All that he does and says in the early thirties argues a growing inflexibility of temperament, a greediness to grasp and exercise power; the anxiety lessens, and the future is contemplated less than the present. As a young man his contemporaries spoke of his gaiety, of his ebullient life, of the warmth and spontaneity of his nature. Some of this he never lost. Although he could be the most affable of men, quick to respond to his defeated enemies, this should not blind us to the essential ruthless nature of his political actions. Where he differed from many great men who have wielded political power as great as his, is this: he did not require the death or even exile of men who had vainly crossed his path. Their complete political impotence was all he desired. Nor did great power make him secretive or remote or grossly suspicious of his close friends. … He was available to all from field marshals to ensigns, admirals to midshipmen, archbishops to curates, princes to merchants, so long as they were prepared to wait patiently in the throng that daily besieged his doors. And to his colleagues, and to the Court, he remained open-hearted, generous almost to a fault, retaining his delight in ostentatious display, in gargantuan meals and vast potations; his coarseness, his love of lecherous sally, grew rather than diminished with the years… His frankness, his lack of pretentiousness, were nevertheless tinged with vulgarity, with a gross enjoyment, with almost a delight in stimulating the envy of men. 

Certainly that envy was stirred, more profoundly, more publicly than is the common lot of great men of state. He was hated more for being himself than for his conduct of affairs. Not only was his power resented… his whole manner of life bred detestation wherever he went. He paraded his wealth with ever greater ostentation. He bought pictures at reckless prices, wallowed in the extravagance of Houghton, deluged his myriad guests with rare food and costly wine; his huge ungainly figure sparkled with diamonds and flashed with satin. And he gloried in his power, spoke roughly if not ungenerously of others, and let the whole world know that he was master. Such a way of life invited criticism on a personal level. All the opposition press reveled in portraying the grossness of Walpole’s life; ballads were sung of his ill-gotten wealth; obscene caricatures illustrated his relations with the Queen; bitter pamphlets laid bare the graft, the corruption, the favourtism of his regime…. Year in, year out the gutter Press squirted its filth over his reputation. His friends did little better, the institutions by which he governed worse…. His sole aim in life was to amass gold and aggrandize his family. Day after day, week after week, month after month, this twisted and malicious criticism never ceased: and embedded in the heart of the sludge was a grain of truth, enough indeed for this uncontrolled  propaganda to carry with it a certain conviction. The good that he did—the stability, the peace, the prosperity, were taken for granted—the evil magnified to phantom proportions.

Public life and the institutions of government were thereby brought into disrepute: by 1734 Parliament had lost much of the respect it had enjoyed in the early years of the century; an ever franker acceptance of the greedier side of human nature strengthened self-seeking, weakened altruism and vulgarized politics, until critical issues of state became a matter of personal vendetta…. Each year that Walpole remained in power lowered the standards of public life, for the vituperation and criticism were as responsible as the long years of power for hardening his nature and coarsening his response to life.

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J. H. Plumb. Sir Robert Walpole, the King’s Minister. 1961. Pp. 330-332.