Aug 11^th

Today we ignore Donald Trump, pro tem, while we concentrate on George Will’s column. George has recently used this venue to review his favorite right wing books and to draw life lessons from them. Given the state of his party’s problems it is a smart move to go back in time to days of yesteryear when there was an Evil Empire to joust with and evil (them) and righteous (us) were clearly defined.

Will, is lauding Robert Conquest’s work, “The Great Terror” a vivid description of the evils of the Soviet Union during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. Then Will shifts to Alger Hiss who was convicted of perjury in 1950. As you can see George must go back in time to find something, anything, to distract his readers from the current conservative political mess.

At last Will gets to the issue he wants to tell us about: Bernie Sanders. He claims that, “He had chosen, surely as an ideological gesture, to spend his honeymoon in the Soviet Union in 1988.” Then George goes into detail about the moral obtuseness of Bernie Sanders honeymoon choice in contrast to Robert Conquest’s sterling character.

Isn’t it interesting how easily George Will, or anyone really, can characterize someone as “morally obtuse” if they can make up their own facts about them? What about Senator Sander’s “honeymoon in the Soviet Union (being) surely … an ideological gesture?” Did George Will bother to ask the Senator why he “honeymooned in the Soviet Union?” Did he bother to ask Senator Sander’s wife who presumably was there too? The answer is “no” to both questions. So why was Senator Sanders in the Soviet Union in 1988?

The Senator’s wife, Jane, tells us that the day after they were married, they and ten other people from Burlington, VT, left to visit Yaroslavl, in the Soviet Union to solidify a sister city relationship. This was the “ideological choice” made by the then Mayor of Burlington VT and his new wife for their honeymoon. (Always nice to have ten people along on your honeymoon should you run out of conversational topics.)

It seems to me that the real “moral obtuseness” here is George Will’s. Mr. Will seems to have no trouble whatever making up “facts” about people whose political views he doesn’t like. Mr. Will has embarrassed himself with this column.