For Whom the Bell Tolls

By Ernest Hemingway
Originally published in 1940
480 pages

After reading The Hemingway Stories, the collection I reviewed on May 13, I pulled an old copy of For Whom the Bells Tolls from my home library, read it over the weekend, and was not the least bit disappointed.

I know a few smart people that don’t like Hemingway. One of them restricts his reading to non-fiction books and considers fiction largely a waste of his time. When I convinced him to read a Hemingway novel a decade ago, he complained that he found Hemingway’s style “irritating.”

An otherwise well-read woman friend says she doesn’t like Hemingway’s fiction because it is too “macho.” She equates his machismo to an aspect of toxic masculinity – i.e., talking endlessly about things (such as fishing and hunting and bullfighting) that are, from her perspective, “irrelevant and superficial.”

On the one hand, I am perfectly happy to excuse their Hemingway-phobia as a case of each-to-his-own. On the other hand, I secretly believe there is something missing in their literary sensibility that is worthy of condemnation or pity.

But never mind. I’m recommending For Whom the Bell Tolls to everyone that either enjoys Hemingway or is undecided because they have never read him.

The Plot 

For Whom the Bell Tolls tells the story of Robert Jordan, an antifascist American volunteer fighting in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. It is based on Hemingway’s experiences as a reporter during that war for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

What I Liked About It

What I always like in Hemingway. His prose style, which includes his unique way of composing sentences and paragraphs. His characters and their development. The way he establishes the mise-en-scene. The precision of his diction, the detail of his descriptions, his discipline of showing not telling, and the way he is able to put the reader into the action as a sort of invisible eavesdropper. I even like the way Hemingway makes dialog spoken in Spanish sound foreign by using antiquated English adjectives and pronouns.

What I Didn’t Like 

As with all my favorite novelists – C. Dickens, M. Twain, J. Austen, W. Cather, Dostoevsky, V. Nabokov, G. Orwell, J. Conrad, F.S. Fitzgerald, D. Hammer, E. Waugh, R. Chandler, R.P. Warren, J. Steinbeck, G. Greene, and M. Amis, to name more than you wanted to hear – there is really nothing in Hemingway’s writing that I don’t like. (And I have a much longer list of novelists I like very much, but with reservations.)

Critical Reception 

“If the function of a writer is to reveal reality,” Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, “no one ever so completely performed it.”

Widely considered to be one of the best war novels of all time, the Pulitzer Prize committee for letters unanimously recommended For Whom the Bell Tolls be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1941. The Pulitzer board agreed. However, Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University and ex officio head of the board at that time, found the novel offensive and persuaded the board to reverse its determination. As a result, no Pulitzer was given in that category that year.

Learning How to Forgive Yourself 

I recently delivered a video presentation to senior executives in a Japanese publishing company I write for titled “The Zen Secret for Never Regretting Your Business and Financial Decisions.” In that presentation, I spoke about how to set goals and be intentional about achieving them, but without attaching yourself emotionally to the results.

Following the presentation, I got a note from one of the attendees, who wrote:

As I was interpreting you confidently with my tone of “as if I’m doing it myself already,” I noticed I’m so not doing it. Suffering from what turned out to be the opposite of what I wanted it to turn out has been really big and I tend to blame myself.

But like you slightly touched on, it shouldn’t have been all because of me. There could have been some other natural forces that I couldn’t control that led to the unwanted result. When I think this way, I feel a little easier. I’d better detach myself from the result, and have Plan B.

was happy that I had communicated the thrust of my idea, but I was concerned about the statement that “there could have been some other natural forces that I couldn’t control.”

I realized that there should have been a Part II to my presentation: Learning how to forgive yourself without denying or diminishing responsibility.

So, this is what I wrote back…

What I Should Have Added to My Talk

After reading your note, I have another idea for you to consider. It goes something like this: “The moment you forgive yourself, the universe forgives you, too.”

Maybe that is too abstract – one of those statements that, while true, is nevertheless impossible to understand unless you have done it yourself or at least seen it done by others.

Your note inspired me to try to do a better job of expressing what I mean by it, so let me try again…

We must take responsibility for our actions. Trying to avoid that responsibility by blaming other people or other things cannot ease the pain we feel for something we regret doing.

So that’s the first step.

The second and perhaps more difficult step is to forgive yourself. For most people brave enough to take step one, this is not easy. We’ve all been taught as children to feel shame and regret. For all sorts of things.

And there is nothing wrong with having those feelings. They are part of the larger recognition that we are all part of an interconnected universe, and that everything we do has some effect, large or small, on everything else. We all damage things. We all hurt and/or damage other beings. We do it purposefully through action or accidentally through inaction. Feeling regret and/or shame about it is a natural response.

But then we must move on.

And to move on, we must realize that the only way we can forgive ourselves is to give up the egoistic idea that we have control over everything we do – whether unconsciously, accidentally, or purposefully – and how it affects others.

We must be humble enough to accept our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. We must understand that, as imperfect beings with limited powers, we are no match for nature – that we should strive towards improving our awareness and behavior, but, at the same time, acknowledge that, however much progress we think we are making, we are, from the larger context of nature, bit-part actors in a very short scene of a very long play whose recurring principal themes are of tragedy and comedy with only a single thread that connects them. And that thread is irony, whose essential insight is, to paraphrase Newton, that each truth has an equal and opposite truth.

I’m writing this, as I sometimes do, as a hypocrite. I grew up secretly blaming myself for everything that wasn’t perfect in my life. I mentally tortured myself for every failure, every stumble, every disappointing outcome.

Looking back, I see that, at some egocentric level, I was seeing myself as a sort of heroic figure in a great struggle for human perfection. Not just for me, but for the rest of the world. Now I try to see myself more realistically, as a bit player in a cosmic comedy of never-ending moments of achievement and failure, love and loneliness, happiness and hurt.

But the failures and the loneliness and the hurt do not have to be constant and continuous. If we can see ourselves and our actions in the larger context, we can forgive ourselves – not to rationalize our mistakes or our limitations but to accept responsibility for the harm and damage we cause – and we can move ahead with humility and hope.

And if we can do that – if you can do that, even once in a while, you will notice that the world will be that much more ready to forgive you, too.

The Decline of the Convertible 

Something is going on in America that is not especially newsworthy, but it is intriguing. Because it must reflect some sort of larger social or economic change that perhaps is widely known.

Did you know that…

* In 2004, Americans bought 315,000 convertibles.

* In 2010, that number was down to 144,000.

* Between March 2023 and February 2024, sales plunged to 70,000.

* Today, they comprise less than one-half a percent of car purchases.

Meanwhile, purchases of SUVs have been climbing. What’s going on?

One unconvincing explanation: David Lucsko, a car historian, says automakers now design vehicles for consumers to seal themselves in. “I think the car has become more and more a cocoon where we go to be isolated from the world,” he says. “Driving a convertible means being exposed to the world.”

Another unconvincing explanation: Convertibles are often seen as easy targets for car theft. A thief can easily remove items out of a convertible or access the ignition if the top is down.

I suppose the real question this brings up is this: Why am I spending a half-hour of a beautiful, sunny, Florida day trying to figure this out?

Hate Speech? Or Legitimate Call for Resistance? 

SH sent me this article from The New York Times about Khymani James, a student at Columbia who was barred from the school’s campus after comments he made on social media went viral.

SH included this video of parts of James’ social media post.

“In my humble opinion,” SH said, “this is where social media has, again, a huge problem in allowing a totally misguided schmuck like this to post real ‘Hate’ online!”

I see it differently.

Because this jackass had his comments captured by social media, someone like SH can see them and be outraged, and then forward them to someone like me, who can then forward them to his friends or even publish them in his blog in a context that perhaps will wake up those people that still believe the pro-Palestinian movement is a socially conscious, liberal-minded cause.

What is going on right now on campuses all over the world is becoming, frighteningly and increasingly, a movement that has to remind us of the history of antisemitism in Germany and much of the rest of Europe prior to the Holocaust.

By now, we all understand what the pro-Palestinian chant – “From the river [Jordan] to the sea [Mediterranean], Palestine will be free” – means. It means: “Get rid of Israel.”

In recent months, these protests have become larger and more aggressive, with more specific antisemitic language, physical confrontations, and arrests.

What has also proliferated, according to Jarrett Stepman, a reporter for The Daily Signal, is the slogans themselves. The scariest one (for me): “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution!”

Click here to read Stepman’s account of an April 23 protest (participated in by NYU students and faculty) in New York’s Washington Square.

CEOs Should Never Be on Vacation 

I’m sure that many people who read the next paragraph will think I’m kidding. And I’m sure that those that realize I’m not kidding will think I’m both irrational and also inhumane. Nevertheless, I have to say it:

Running a company is and should be a full-time job. And by full-time, I mean 24/7, every day of the year.

You got that right. I believe that the time it takes to responsibly run a company, and especially a growing company, is limitless.

That commitment is, in my admittedly insensitive opinion, the first and most important truth one must accept when taking on the role of CEO.

This is a demand I would require only of CEOs. Employees – even executive employees – are entitled to days off and vacations. They are also entitled to leave those obnoxious auto-responder notes saying, “Hi! I’ll be away from the office and unavailable for the next two weeks! If you have an urgent concern, please contact Gini, my 23-year-old assistant, who knows nothing about the business and has been told to never, ever interrupt me when I’m ‘away from the office.’”

There is a big difference between the role of CEO and every other role in a business. All employees are expected to do their jobs earnestly, energetically, and well. But every employee’s job is to some extent limited in scope. If you’re the IT guy, you need to be responsible for competently helping employees with all things IT. If you’re the CTO, you are responsible not only for making sure all things IT are functioning well and correctly, but also for anticipating and developing IT solutions for the future.

Except for the CEO, each job in the business has finite definitions and identifiable expectations. Because of those two simple limitations, employees, even senior employees, can get away from the grid completely, so long as they have a suitable backup.

But when one takes on the job of “running” the business, one must accept responsibility for everything that happens within the business.

There is no way to deny that. If you are a CEO and don’t understand it, you are not the right person for the job.

Put differently, the CEO – and only the CEO – has the ultimate and final responsibility for the company’s life and longevity. That means assuming responsibility for creating the revenue needed to meet or exceed customer expectations and accepting the responsibility for making sure that the business is always profitable enough to pay fair compensation to all its employees.

I’m not saying that CEOs must sleep in their offices, like Elon Musk does during start-up and expansion periods. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a CEO to be away from the office on weekends and take a family vacation now and then. But I don’t believe they ever have the right to go “radio silent” (as they say) with their top executives and shareholders.

Most of the time, in my experience, a business can function perfectly well without the direct and constant attention of the CEO. But every so often, every business faces some sort of unexpected crisis or opportunity that cannot be dealt with “when the boss returns.” An immediate answer needs to be given. And that answer can come only from the CEO.

So Many People in Jail for Using Drugs…
What If We Decriminalized It?

It’s no secret that there are more people in jail in the US than in any other country. In recent years, it’s been about 1.8 million and 1.9 million. China is next with about 1.6 million of its population behind bars… and their total population is more than four times larger than ours.

Looked at from a percentage-of-population perspective, the countries with the highest percentage of their people behind bars are El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and American Samoa. The US is next, followed by about 16 or 17 countries with underdeveloped economies (such as Panama and Guam) before you get to another country with a developed economy (Russia).

Any way you want to look at it, the US is top of the list when it comes to incarcerating its citizens.

Why?

One reason often given is the growth of private prisons in recent years.

There are many undeniable benefits to the private management of jails and prison – more order, less trouble, and a better cost-per-prisoner ratio. But there’s also a downside. If private enterprise can make jails and prisons profitable, why wouldn’t they do whatever is in their power to grow the prison population, even if it means putting people in jail who should not be there?

I’ve done a little research into this. And while it persuaded me that the privatization of prisons is, in theory, a major factor in the growth of the jailed population, I found no data to support it. (One factual example: In 2000, about 80,000 people were held in private prisons. That number rose to about 140,000 in 2010. But by 2020, it had dropped to about 90,000.)

However, there is one factor that is considerably and demonstrably significant: the illegal drug trade.

In 2019, according to Pew Research, 1.6 million people in the US were arrested for drug-related offenses, compared to about 1.0 million arrested for property crimes, simple assault, and DUI. Among the +/- 1.8 million people locked up at that time, about 20% of them (360,000) were there for drug-related crimes, according to the Prison Policy Institute. Today, the total incarcerated population is about 2.4 million, of which 456,000 are serving time for drug-related offenses, according to The Center for American Progress.

In 1971, President Nixon declared illegal drug use to be “Public Enemy Number One.” Soon thereafter, Congress approved “the war on drugs” – a get-tough policy that has cost American taxpayers more than $1 trillion.

Unfortunately, this acceleration in arresting and convicting people for drug offenses has not deterred substance misuse rates. In fact, they have gone up. If that’s not bad enough, all these extra prosecutions have significantly increased the likelihood that, after being released from prison, ex-prisoners are 13 times more likely to die than the general population.

These facts have led many, including yours truly, to believe that America should end its costly and useless war on drugs by decriminalizing the use of drugs, and spend some of that saved money on deterrence and treatment.

This was the notion that the state of Oregon embraced in 2020, when they decriminalized drug use. I remember being happy about the prospect of so many fewer people being incarcerated for taking drugs, and hopeful that the number of violent drug-related crimes would be reduced because the market for selling drugs would become more relaxed and laissez faire, and less dangerous and competitive.

That’s not exactly what happened.

Decriminalizing drug use, obviously, drastically reduced the number of drug addicts in Oregon’s prisons. Unfortunately, it increased the number of drug users in the state and had no positive effect on treatment.

The 2020 ballot measure (which was supported by 58% of Oregon’s voters) simply dumped tens of thousands of people that would have been in prison onto the city’s streets. That, of course, hurt retail businesses and increased the cost of maintaining some semblance of cleanliness and safety.

As a result, earlier this month, the state reversed its three-year experiment in leniency and reinstituted jail time for drug use.

In retrospect, this shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Why? Because – like I’ve been telling you for months now – when it comes to bad habits, any kind of bad habits, people almost never change. They may try to change if you ask (or pressure) them to. But they usually only get worse.

So, if decriminalizing drug use only makes things worse, is there anything that can be done to minimize the enormous damage that is done every year because of drugs?

I have an idea that I’ll explain next week. It’s radical. But I think it could work. Stay tuned!

Trump’s New York Civil Fraud Case: 
What, Exactly, Was the “Crime” He Committed? 

Last week, a Manhattan judge fined Donald Trump and The Trump Organization $355 million and barred him from serving in a top role of any New York company for three years. The charge was that he “fraudulently inflated his wealth for financial gain,” including “falsifying records, issuing false documents, and related conspiracy offenses.”

This was wonderful news for the Anti-Trumpers. You could hear them gloating about it on every mainstream talk show.

For anyone who knows little to nothing about how the real estate business works, this charge must sound like a serious violation of law, and the penalty indicative of a Bernie-Madoff-level scam.

In fact, what Trump and The Trump Organization did was remarkably common in the high-finance portion of the real estate universe. It happens commonly, not just in NYC, but in every city in America and in every country. Moreover, the over-valuation charge is essentially meaningless because it involves a part of the loan application that is extraneous to what the bank looks at in determining whether a loan seeker has the liquidity and the resources to pay off the loan.

Let me break it down for you…

Imagine you are a big real estate developer wanting to construct a new building. The cost of construction is, say, $30 million. So, you go to a bank to get a construction loan. The bank wants collateral to protect its investment. And what they ask you to do is provide them with two sorts of numbers.

Their first and most important requirement is that you have liquid assets that (a) are sufficient to cover the loan, and (b) they can easily claim if your project fails to hit its targets. This would include cash and certain physical assets that, if needed, the bank could cash in immediately and without complication. (Assets that are encumbered in any way are correctly considered by the bank to be next to worthless for them.)

Banks will also ask for a list of assets that they would have no intention of going after – all sorts of assets that would give them a general idea of your net worth.

Valuing real estate is not a precise science. It involves calculations that are based on numbers that are really guesstimates, as well as guesses about what the property will be worth over the span of time that the loan is in play. If you have ever bought a house using the value of an existing house for collateral, you know that there is likely to be a range, depending on the bank’s assessment and the assessment of an expert you hire.

When it comes to valuing the assets on list one, the bank is going be conservative to give it leeway against miscalculations or future imponderables. If you think the bank’s valuations are significantly understated, you will make your argument. But the final decision is the bank’s.

Now here’s what I think is crazy about Trump’s case. The assets that the judge says he grossly overvalued were in list two – assets meant to provide a general idea of his overall net worth. They were not assets that the bank really cared about.

It is quite possible that Trump overestimated the value of one or more of the assets on list two. But that is, at best, a technical violation that would have no impact on the solidity of the loan. And to me, it simply sounds like something he has been doing from the beginning – overestimating his overall net worth so he seems richer than he is.

Several things happened here that convince me the entire thing was another politically motivated example of rogue judges and prosecutors trying to put Trump in jail by cooking up and prosecuting phony charges. It was worse than the Georgia case because there was no trial and no jury. It was one judge, who either knows nothing about how real estate loans work or is downright unethical, deciding to exceed his legal and moral authority in order to cripple Trump financially.

To make matters worse, the way this judgment works, Trump must pay the fine before he can appeal the decision. One judge. No trial. No jury. And a huge fine that he must pay before he can get a chance to defend himself.

Remember… nobody was hurt in these loan transactions. Not the bank. Not the bank’s investors. Not the businesses involved in the project. Nobody. On the contrary, everyone made money.

The COVID Response: What We Got Wrong

New Information About Fauci’s role in the Cover-up

According to a CIA whistleblower and information obtained from the House Oversight Committee, Anthony Fauci did in fact play a major role in both the creation of COVID-19 and the subsequent misinformation campaign about the danger of the virus, the efficacy of the mRNA vaccines, and the cover-up that kept the vaccines selling as reams of data contradicting the government’s position began to appear in scientific journals.

Among other things, Fauci is being accused of:

1. Influencing a CIA review on the origins of COVID-19.

2. Pushing a bunk paper (titled “Proximal Origin of SARS CoV-2”) at meetings in the State Department and the White House.

3. Funding the Wuhan lab.

4. A history of bug escapes from his gain-of-function research projects.

And Fauci isn’t the only “villain” in this story. Read the details here.

Then click here to watch Fauci forgetting what he did and didn’t say about COVID at the height of the shutdown.

What If, as New Studies Suggest, the Alarmists Are Right?

Is There Anything to Be Done to Defeat “Post Vaccination Syndrome”?

In the Oct. 20 issue, I talked about spike proteins – projections on the surface of some viruses (including COVID-19) that facilitate the spread of the infection. In response, the body produces antibodies to fight the virus. Once the antibodies are made, the proteins are broken down so the body can get rid of them. The mRNA vaccines work by giving your cells instructions on how to make this protein to fight the virus if you later become infected.

But the spike proteins produced by the COVID vaccines are different than those produced naturally by the body. They don’t break down in a way that allows the body to get rid of them. Which is why, according to some experts, the vaccines have left about 15% of those that have taken them with some sort of medical problem. Click here.

Among the reported negative side effects of the vaccines are the late development of blood clots, myocarditis, and even cardiac arrest as long as two years after the vaccination was given.

So, what can we do to help prevent what is now being called “Post Vaccination Syndrome”?

While the media ignored this news and some government agencies refuted it, concerned scientists have been working on a way to detoxify the body of the “residual” contaminants from the mRNA vaccines. And on Aug. 25, the first detoxification protocol was published in the US medical literature. Click here.

In this clip, Dr. John Campbell explains and evaluates a recent Yale study on the negative side effects of the COVID vaccines. It is the first study I’ve read that used the term Post Vaccination Syndrome.

And if you are up for a technical explanation of the contaminants resulting from the vaccines, click here for the first of a two-part report by Sonia Elijah.

Nikki Haley’s Plan for Managing the Future of Social Media in America

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said that if she becomes president, the first thing she’ll do is make social media platforms show their algorithms. “Let us see why they’re pushing what they’re pushing,” she said. After that, she is going to ban anonymous posting on social media. She called it a national security threat. “When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say and… then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to [it].”

I’ve had that same thought many times, and had mentally filed Haley’s idea as “maybe a good one” until I came across this tweet in response from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “You know who were anonymous writers back in the day? Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison when they wrote The Federalist Papers.” He called Haley’s proposal “dangerous and unconstitutional.”

“Yeah,” he’s right,” I thought. “What was I thinking?”

A few days later, I read this.