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Post-War Suffering

In 1949, Great Britain was still suffering from the terrible effects of World War II.  The damage done by seven years of constant bombings from the Germans was still evident.   The economic effort of waging a seven-year war of survival now required repayment.  And the loss of the “jewels of the British Commonwealth”; India, Pakistan and South Africa; were just beginning to be felt.

My Mom was British, and married an American during the War.   She came to the United States on a “Liberty Ship” in January of 1946, landing in a foot of snow in Portland, Maine.  She then met my father in New York City, and they travelled together to his home in Cincinnati, where they would truly begin their married life.  Mom’s parents came over for a long term visit in 1949, to meet their new grand-daughter.  Still, food was rationed in Great Britain.  

The family story goes that Mom, Dad and my sister drove to New York in a small car to pick them up from the ship. They then drove back across the Pennsylvania Turnpike with my grandmother straddling the “stick shift” in the front seat.  Dad bought a bushel of apples along the way, something that my grandparents hadn’t been able to eat for close to a decade.  They ate the whole bushel on the two-day journey home.

The New Abyss

Meanwhile the world was poised on the edge of a new abyss, the possibility of nuclear war so damaging that civilization might not survive.   After winning the “War to End All Wars”, World War I; then facing totalitarianism in a larger struggle two decades later in World War II; now an even greater threat arose, the Cold War.  It was in this environment in 1949 that George Orwell wrote his seminal fiction novel about totalitarianism, set in the near future.  It was titled 1984.

In the novel, three nations, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, all totalitarian dictatorships, battled each other for world domination.  Orwell’s story is set in Great Britain, part of Oceania.  To control the population, Oceania’s government had a “Ministry of Truth”.  The Ministry constantly fed the people propaganda, systematically designed to keep the population both supportive and passive.  No opposition is allowed, and those that oppose face exile, imprisonment, and becoming an “unperson”.  Their lives are literally stricken from the records. They never existed.

Oceania was constantly shifting alliances between Eurasia and Eastasia, with today’s ally becoming tomorrow’s mortal enemy.   When the alliances changed, the Ministry of Truth rewrote history so that Oceania was always aligned with the new partner, and always hated what, up until the week before, was a “life-long” friend.  

Our Friend

We young political science majors all read 1984 in the 1970’s, carefully comparing Orwell’s scenarios to the very real Soviet Union.   And as we approached the actual year, 1984, we gave a sigh of relief that his dystopian future hadn’t arrived. We sighed too soon.  

For the past three years, the United States has stood firmly beside the nation of Ukraine as it battled against Russian invasion.   We all held our breath as the seventeen mile line of Russian battle tanks, artillery and troop carriers came down the highway from the Russian border to attack Kyiv.  And we all marveled, first at the tremendous courage of the Ukrainians, and also at the gross incompetence of the Russian Generals. They were picked off and killed by homing in on their private cell phone signals.  The Russian fell back, the Ukrainians moved forward.  Millions of mines were sowed into the earth between the lines of the two forces, and a World War I style trench warfare battle dragged on over the next years.

Perhaps the most amazing thing of all was the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.   He went from a comedy star on Ukrainian television, playing the role of President, to election for the actual job.  And he “grew” into the new role as a Ukrainian, and ultimately, a world leader.  President Biden, NATO, and Europe all lined up behind the brave Ukrainian people against the Russian incursion.  

The battle grew old and ugly.  Here’s the Butcher’s Bill today:

• Russia – 300,000 casualties (120,000 dead, 180,000 wounded)
• Ukraine – 190,000 casualties (70,000 dead, 120,000 wounded)
• Civilians – 41,000 casualties (13,000 dead, 38,000 wounded).

Our Foe

But here in the United States, our “Ministry of Truth” (the White House) is busy trying to rewrite history.   This week, President Trump told us that the clear Russian invasion of Ukraine, was started by Ukraine, not Russia.  And that the elected President of Ukraine, Zelenskyy, was an illegitimate leader, who stole the Presidency.  We are in negotiations with the Russians led by a kleptocratic Putin, without even including Ukraine in the conversation.  Mr. Trump has told Ukraine, you better accept what we offer, or we’ll cut you off.

Eurasia is our enemy.   Eastasia is our friend.  It has always been that way.  And if you dare to question this (and are a Republican), Elon Musk will spend millions to make you an “un-person”. 

The Pennsylvania Avenue “Ministry of Truth” is also busy telling us that the United States spent $50 million for condoms in Gaza (a lie) . That Social Security paid benefits for folks that are 150 years old (also not true).  We now believe that tens of thousands of Federal workers are simply un-necessary.  Millions of migrants are criminals. Round them up and deport them. Billionaires know what’s best for us. They can’t be corrupt because they’re so rich.  And the biggest lie of all:  “I alone can fix this”.

Un-Persons

Even a mere MAGA foot-soldier, Republican Congressman Troy Balderson of the Ohio’s 12^th Congressional District, dared to grumble that Trump acted beyond his Constitutional authority.   He better be careful:  “un-personhood” is a sure penalty in MAGA-world.  Ask a list of politicians from Mark Sanford of South Carolina to Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to Rob Portman of Ohio (whoever they were).  Musk’s millions and a loyal MAGA replacement are at the ready.

It’s 2025, but we are on the cusp of Orwell’s 1984. The lies are already over-riding the truth.  Millions of Americans believe what was clearly ridiculous just six months ago.   And all of those who still know the truth are now concerned.  What will be the consequence of saying what we know is true;  exile, imprisonment, un-personhood?  It’s all possible in our new Trumpian World.

Napoleon

Last week, Donald J Trump, 47^th President of the United States, tweeted this on both his own “Truth Social” social media site, and his friend and advisor Elon Musk’s “X”: 

“He who saves his country does not violate any law”. 

To some it makes sense.  It was the premise of the old Fox TV show starring Kiefer Sutherland “24”.  He played Jack Bauer, a Federal Agent who had 24 hours to save the nation from some calamity.   Bauer’s motto was:  sometimes you have to break the law to protect America.  And he did.

But it has a whole different context when the President of the United States, the chief law enforcer of the Nation, the person entrusted with protecting American freedoms, says something like that.  And worse, it’s a direct quote from Napoleon Bonaparte.  

If you missed that part of world history, Napoleon was a general in the French Army. He stepped in to stop the chaos of the French Revolution, then proceeded to crown himself (literally) the Emperor of France and tried to conquer Europe.

Only I

Add to that yesterday’s Presidential Executive Order:

“…(this order) reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the President or the Attorney General can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.”

Only the President can speak for the United States.  And, only the President can state an opinion as to what the law is.  Only the President:  does  Congress, or the Courts have a say?  Only the President: it echoes his campaign phrase from 2016, “Only I can fix this”.  

According to Mr. Trump; he can decide what the law is, and he can decide whether to “violate” it or not.  Only HE (and, of course, Elon) can decide.  And let’s not forget, the United States Supreme Court has already granted him criminal immunity for anything he might do as part of his “official duties”.  

Shouts

I told you.

It was shouted it from the “mountaintop” (or molehill) of my computer.  I told you in an essay called “History Lesson”, and one called “Who Do You Trust” and another called “Godwin’s Law”, and even one from way back in 2018 called “America First”.   We now face exactly what was predicted, by me and others with much bigger megaphones, including President Biden.   This President of the United States is committed to personal power. And, this President has let loose among the government his own personal “hit team”, “24” style, to go into the structure and destroy it.  

Saving money is not the real reason that Elon Musk’s “DOG-E kids” are ripping the government apart.  The real reason is to destroy any opposition to Trumpian domination.   In the avalanche of government firings (most illegal) are the carefully chosen few, culled out because they might show some dedication not to MAGA’ism, or Trump, but to the US Constitution.  Their removal is covered by the general chaos.

We are living the dream that Steve Bannon preached “long ago”.  I wrote about that in one of my first essays in 2017, “The Bully and Bannon”.  Not only is it the “deconstruction of the administrative state”, but Bannon’s getting his “alliance” of the Northern, White Nations.  Trump is back to kowtowing to Russia’s Putin, and Ukraine will be the sacrificial lamb to the “cause”.  

I told you.

Governing by Fiat

And before MAGA acolytes claim that Trump is showing “leadership” through his executive actions, let me make an historic contrast.  Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House in the middle of the Great Depression.  He knew that he had a mandate for change; that he had the public support to do almost anything to alter the economic path of the Nation.  

But he didn’t do it by himself.  He called Congress into session, and passed 15 major laws in the first 100 days, the opening salvo of New Deal legislation.  FDR led through his negotiating skill to get Congress on board with change.   And while the Supreme Court ultimately held some of those laws as unconstitutional, Roosevelt was that force for change.

But Trump, even though he has a compliant House and Senate, has failed to offer legislation.  Instead, he is “ruling by fiat”.  He pre-empted the legislative process by issuing sixty-six (as of today) Executive Orders, commands that often overrule existing Congressional legislation.  The majorities in Congress have said almost nothing about it.  The Courts have intervened on a few, but also seemed overwhelmed by the avalanche of action.  And, when the Supreme Court finally gets the chance to intervene, there’s no guarantee that they will uphold the Constitution. The majority has already demonstrated their fealty to Trump.

I told you.  

And now, WE have to decide how to stand up for the America WE believe in.  Will WE stand up for our tradition of freedom and yes, even Diversity, Equity and Inclusion?  Because WE are NOT for the America that Donald Trump wants.   And history will judge US for what we do, now. 

Tokyo Bay

August 15, 1945:  the Empire of Japan signed the formal surrender treaty.  The Second World War ended on the deck of the battleship, USS Missouri.   It was a victorious affair for the Allies: the United States, Great Britain and the British Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Burma, India) and the Soviet Union.  Most of the US Pacific Fleet and more were in Tokyo Bay:  ten battleships, six aircraft carriers, five heavy cruisers, ten light cruisers, fifty-one destroyers, twelve submarines, and seventy-five smaller war ships.  More than a dozen other aircraft carriers remained outside the Bay, in case the Japanese had a change of heart.  

They were all there to make a point.  The choice for Japan was surrender, or overwhelming defeat and destruction.  Of course, the first two atomic bombs used in world history had already made that clear. The cities of  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed.  And there was a second message sent on that day seventy years ago.  Most combatant nations of World War II ended the War devastated.  Germany and Japan were in ruins, with over 5 million German and 2 million Japanese soldiers killed.  But some of the winning nations were little better.  The Soviet Union suffered over 11 million soldiers killed.  The British Commonwealth almost 500,000.  And the United States lost 407,300.  

But it was clear that one nation ended the Second World War much stronger than it began.  The United States, the “arsenal of Democracy”, made that point in Tokyo Bay.  The US was the dominant military power in this world.  The atom bomb, at that time exclusive to America, just underlined the strategic reality.

Cold War

But the Soviet Union, despite their enormous losses, soon made it clear that they would contest the US for world power. They built their own “bomb”.  Within two years, the era we now call the “Cold War” began.  From 1948 until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was a time of the “balance of Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD).   The US and the USSR knew that, no matter what provocation or premeditation, in the end an all-out war between the two meant equal world destruction and the end of civilization as we knew it.  

In spite of the madness of Stalin, the criminality of Nixon, the scale-tipping gambling of Khrushchev, and the relentless pressure of Reagan; the US and the USSR avoided the confrontation that would end the world.  And while there were wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and Afghanistan (and dozens of smaller “proxy” battles in Africa and Asia), none ended in “super-powers” going head to head and world conflagration.   This era, after the two World Wars in the first half of the twentieth century, is called the “Pax Americana” (American Peace).  

The United States, both before and after the fall of the USSR, led the world to maintain that peace.  It wasn’t just a peace of military force. It was also a peace of benefit.  The United States spent billions of dollars in humanitarian aid as well as weaponry, to keep nations “on their side”.  In the process, America limited world diseases from smallpox to AIDS.   And millions were fed, educated, and given other health care.  Pax Americana was an American obligation to the world, as well as an American benefit.  

World Economy

In the process, the US became the greatest economic power in the world as well.  Americans built so many things, so well, that their standard of living became high enough that it was cheaper and easier to move some industries “off-shore”.  Today, less than one percent of “US shoes” are made in America.  Even the United States Shoe Corporation was bought out by Luxottica (1995), an Italian corporation.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States took a larger role in maintaining world peace.   Even when America “failed”, in Afghanistan for example, it was a failure that did little to impact their world standing.  And when Putin and the exploding Chinese military aggression raised concerns; the US made it clear that the “Pax Americana” still reigned supreme.

Make America Small Again

That was, until the past few weeks.  The new Trump Administration ran on a slogan of “Make America Great Again”.  But their foreign policy is closer to the isolationism of post-World War I America.   For reasons that are beyond understanding, the MAGA theory is that the military problems of Europe and Asia are no longer a United States concern.  They have told the NATO allies, who stood by us after the attack of 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan; that the US is no longer interested in protecting them from Russian aggression.

And Trump made it clear to our ally, Ukraine, that the Trump Administration will deal directly with Russia, behind Ukraine’s back, and make a “separate deal”.  American leaders are meeting today with Russia’s leaders, and without Ukrainian representation.    The implicit threat:  either Ukraine goes along with “whatever” the US decides, or lose all of the military and humanitarian support for their war.  Quite simply, after three years of valiant Ukrainian defense against an “overwhelming” (overwhelmed) Russian military and 80,000 Ukrainian military deaths; the US will leave them high and dry.

Sell Out

And if the European NATO allies decide to support Ukraine in spite of US decisions, then Trump made it clear that the US will not stand with them either.   Trump, single-handedly and in a few short weeks, is Hell-bent on ending Pax Americana.

That message will not be lost on China.  One of their core goals is to take control of the nation of Taiwan.   That island became the refuge for the Nationalist side of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the Communists took over the Nation.  Ever since, the Communist Chinese Government lusts for the island, especially as Taiwan is now an economic power, ranked 22^nd in the world.   The US has made it clear that they stand with Taiwan against a Chinese incursion, until now.  After Trump sells out Ukraine, it won’t be so clear.

Jack Boots

The Trump world policy is no longer Pax Americana. It’s America “Vince” (Conquer).   Take all of the seemingly “crazy” statements Trump’s made in the past few weeks:   taking over Greenland, Canada, Panama, and the Gaza Strip.  If Americans can “make a buck”, then the US military can “make it so”. 

MAGA wants the resources of Greenland and Canada, and the “canal back” from Panama.   And Trump envisions the Gaza strip as the next “Riviera”, filled with luxury hotels and beaches.  He’s even demanded half of the mineral resources of Ukraine in return for continued aid.  It’s as if the United States, once the “protector” of the world, now has become the world’s exploiter. Trump is turning our defense into a military “bully”.  It is exactly what the US fought against in World War II, the jack booted aggression for resources of both Germany and Japan.  Now, those jack boots seem to be on American feet.

The Mayor

Eric Adams, Mayor of New York City, was in deep trouble.  The attorneys of the Federal Southern District of New York (SDNY) were after him for corruption.  The case seemed rock-solid:  Adams took money from foreign nations, including Turkey.  He took “gifts”, including free plane tickets.  He put his relatives in charge of contracting for the city, and they paid out to friends.  It was typical, Tammany Hall (also in New York) style city corruption.  

Adams refused to resign, declaiming his innocence.  And, even as the facts piled up against him, he held out hope to his supporters. After all,  we are in a new era of “innocence”.  The Nation just elected a convicted felon as President. (Can’t say the word “felon” at the White House anymore; that’s another Executive Order).  

It doesn’t matter that Adams is a Democrat.  The “Democratic” Biden Justice Department brought the charges in the first place.  And the SDNY was in full pursuit, ready to go to a grand jury with even more charges and issue a superseding indictment.  But there’s a “new sheriff” in town, the Trump Justice Department.  Adam’s negotiated with the highest level of the Department, all the way up to Emil Bove, Deputy Attorney General, second only to the Attorney General herself.   Bove was Trump’s defense attorney for multiple cases, including the January 6^th Federal charges, the multi-million dollar New York civil suit, and the national security documents case.

Sword of Damocles

Bove and the Trump Administration, are understandably sympathetic to politicians under fire.  They could have granted Adams a pardon.  That legally would for forgive him for any criminal acts he might have committed.  And certainly Trump knows his way around the “pardon power” with 1500 pardons issued on his first day in office.  But they didn’t.

Instead, Bove reached an agreement with Adams.  He ordered the SDNY to drop the charges against Adams, with the legal proviso, “without prejudice”.  That simply means that while the charges are dropped now, they could be reinstated at any time.  Adams will have a legal sword of Damocles hanging over his head.  In return, the Mayor agreed to allow ICE to use New York jails to store the undocumented migrants, and ignore the City ordinances making New York a “sanctuary city”.  (New York City limits its cooperation with ICE, as does Chicago, Los Angeles, Columbus, Ohio, and many other US urban areas).  He used his political office to make one more private deal, this time, with the government of the United States: a quid-pro-quo arrangement.

So now, attorneys for the SDNY will have to go before a Federal District Judge and essentially tell him, “never mind”.  It doesn’t matter that the facts overwhelmingly show Adams to be a corrupt politician profiting from his office, with even more charges in the pipeline.  Emil Bove has made a “political” deal with the Mayor.  The facts of crime don’t matter.

Unbiased Justice

Multiple Assistant US Attorneys resigned; unwilling to follow the Deputy’s orders.  Bove himself will have to appear before the Judge, explaining the Government’s new position.  But ultimately, the charges will be dropped, and Adam’s will be a “made man” in MAGA world.  He not only owes the Trump Administration, but, as the Immigration Czar Tom Homan clearly pointed out, the charges can always be reinstated.  Homan said if Adams fails to deliver, he’ll be “right up his butt”.  

The United States used to have a “norm” of an independent Justice Department.  Joe Biden made it clear that his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, was independent of White House control or interference.  Garland allowed a politically motivated investigation of Biden’s son Hunter, to fester for four years.  In fact, many Democrats, including me, were incredibly frustrated by the pace of Garland’s investigation of Trump and the January 6^thInsurrection. (Can I even use that term anymore, or will the DOGE kids crash my website?)  The Federal charges against Trump were too little, too late.  And, as the old adage goes:  “If you strike against a King, you must kill him”.  We all know the outcome of Garland’s belated attempts at getting justice against Trump.

Watergate

But those norms are only fifty years old, a result of the criminal actions of President Richard Nixon.  Before Nixon, the Attorney General’s job was, in large part, to protect the President’s back.  There’s a good reason that John Kennedy appointed his brother, Bobby, to the job.  And Nixon followed suit eight years later, appointing his campaign manager, John Mitchell, as his AG.  Mitchell was “hip-deep” in the Watergate scandal and coverup, and ultimately was convicted of Federal violations and served nineteen months in jail.  (But oddly, despite his criminal record, Mitchell was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  He was a  World War II Navy veteran, and served as Attorney General.  That qualified him regardless of his conviction).

After Nixon, most Attorney Generals have kept a distance from the White House.  Bill Clinton’s AG, Janet Reno stayed “hands-off” the Whitewater investigations that led to Clinton’s impeachment.  And while there was a famous friendship between Barack Obama and his AG, Eric Holder, the Justice Department still maintained an arms-length separation from the White House.

Trump’s Demand

So when Trump’s first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from Department investigations of the Trump Administration, it was in-line with Department guidelines.  But Trump was furious.  He expected more from his AG, and ultimately pressured Sessions to resign.  He then appointed Bill Barr, who made sure to have Trump’s back. The Russiagate investigation was hamstrung, and ultimately discredited regardless of the facts.  

And in his second go-round of the Presidency, Trump placed loyalty first.  Newly minted Attorney General Pam Bondi has been a Trump backer for years, and his personal defense lawyers now play important roles in the Department.  

Now we are back to the “good old days”.  A lot of what the MAGA “philosophy” preaches is that America was at “it’s best” in the 1950’s, the heady post-World War II days.  That fake memory ignores the fact that it was a time of racial discrimination, political McCarthyism, and environmental ignorance.  But it doesn’t matter.  The Department of Justice was an arm of the White House then, the FBI fully dominated by J. Edgar Hoover.  It’s what Nixon tried to replicate in his own Administration that came crashing down in  Watergate.  And now, the direct descendants of the Watergate failure are back in power again.

This time they want to “do it right”.

Old Days

I was born in 1956, in Cincinnati, Ohio.  We lived in a residential section of the city called Clifton, just north of the University and near the Zoo.  Clifton had (and still has) a small business section, from the corner of Clifton and Ludlow.  Mom didn’t drive, so we walked a lot; to the movie theatre on Ludlow (with air conditioning) the Graeter’s Ice Cream next door, and the IGA grocery across the street.  And when I got old enough, I’d follow my sisters to Clifton School, a couple of blocks up Clifton Avenue.  It was “old” even then, with a beautiful fountain in front of the building, originally designed for the tram horses, dogs and people to get water back in 1887.  It’s still there today.

I went to kindergarten at the Clifton School “annex” in 1960.  To get to school we had to pass The Annunciation Roman Catholic Church.  Kids went to school there too. I remember wondering why they weren’t “good enough” to go to Clifton was us.  And while we moved to Michigan for my first grade year, by second grade we were back, in 1962.  

The Lord’s Prayer

All of that time, it wasn’t unusual for my teachers to tell Bible stories, or even start the day with the Lord’s Prayer.  It didn’t seem odd or different to me; they were the same prayers and stories I heard right down the street at Calvary Episcopal Church on Sundays, as I squirmed in the pew and Dad struggled, and usually failed, to stay awake. (Now that I’m older, I appreciate his struggle so much more!!).

What I didn’t know then, was that the Supreme Court was already in the process of ending teacher led “religious instruction” in schools. In 1962 and ’63, there were a series of cases where the Court found that prayer and Bible stories were in violation of the First Amendment religious freedom clause.  It was actually simple reasoning:  my second grade teacher, Mrs. Meyer, was employed by the Cincinnati Public Schools, the “government”.  And when she led us in the Lord’s Prayer, she was, in fact, the “government” teaching a specific religious belief, something that the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment prohibited.  

So by 1963 teachers no longer told Bible parables, and no longer began their classes in prayer. But, for the next couple of years, they did allow some students to leave, once a week, for an hour of religious instruction.  We’d walk past the fountain up Clifton Avenue, make the hazardous crossing over to Calvary Church, and spend an hour in the basement learning about religion.  I don’t know if kids went to other churches, or synagogues, then as well.  My friends mostly went to Calvary, or they stayed at school.  But that ended as well.  Courts ruled that the school was still “establishing” religion by allowing “school time” for specific religious instruction.

Pray in School

It stayed that way for my public education.  We moved to Kettering near Dayton, and then back to the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming.  Religious instruction by the school was banned.  But that didn’t mean we didn’t learn about religion.  

There was a lot of student-to-student instruction.  And, in a highly academic school like Wyoming there were lots of choices.  The early 1970’s was an era of Christian evangelism, and there were lunchroom discussions of who was going to Hell.  There were also Jewish kids, who seemed to know more about the Old Testament Bible than anyone else.  Then there were the “new age” kids, those that fell into the Hare Krishna’s or the Moonies or the other cult religions of the early 70’s. And there were a lot of kids (me included) who were skeptical about the whole concept of religion.  We were often the targets of all of the others evangelistic ideas.

So there was always religion in school, and prayer in school as well.  The old saying is; “As long as there are tests there will be prayer in school”.  And that’s true.  Kids could pray, kids could talk, kids could even instruct.  But the institution, the government, wasn’t allowed to have “a hand” in the game.  Schools were the government, and had to be neutral on religion.

Government Employee

When I became a public school teacher and coach, I was very aware of the boundaries of the “establishment clause”.  I taught about it to my senior government students.  My “daring” lesson plan opened with a recitation of a prayer: “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare, Hare, Krishna, Krishna”.  Students in those days at my school, Watkins Memorial in Pataskala, didn’t recognize what religion that represented. (Today there is a strong minority of West Asian students who know their own religions well).  And almost every time, some kid would finally say “You can’t do that!!”.  So the lesson would begin.

And as a coach, I often had athletes want to pray before a competition.  That was always their choice, but my coaches and I stayed out of that “huddle”.  We had a full-team huddle were I did my best to inspire and prepare them for the contest (followed by “1-2-3, KSA”), but any religious gathering was on their own.  They could pray if they wanted; we, the “government” (employed by the school) could not “establish” religion.

Taking a Side

Today, I’m saddened to see that the government is now “taking a hand”.  Our divisive politics are blended with religious extremism, so much so that, for many, their political view includes “not discriminating” against  their accepted religion.  So the majority in many areas determined that schools should be “free” to teach their religion, or at least, make at convenient for their particular religious ideas to be taught.

No, teachers aren’t starting the school day in prayer, yet.  But our community, state, and nation, are starting down the slippery slope of “establishment”.  The Supreme Court now allows a coach to kneel in the middle of the football field in prayer at the end of the game, full lights on and the band playing.  Sure, he’s practicing his own religion, but he’s teaching by example with the full regalia of “the government” on his side.  His players join him, some from sincere belief, some going along with the crowd, some in hopes of getting in the starting lineup next week.

Cool Kid Time

And here in Ohio (and other states), an Evangelical Christian group has persuaded the Governor and state legislature to require school districts to allow them to “voluntarily” take kids out of school for religious instruction, much as I did back in the mid-1960’s.  The school is giving up its time to a religion, a mere step away from endorsement, establishment, of religion.  And from a kid’s standpoint, if the school says it’s OK, doesn’t it mean that it’s OK? Is that same school district going to allow the Church of Satanism to do the same – pull up in a bright red bus, to take kids away for “instruction”?  And if they aren’t – well – what is “established” then?

Of course, the Christian group wants to make their “pullout” a “cool time” for kids. They are, after all, evangelistic, wanting to spread the “good word” of their belief to the world.  Why wouldn’t any third grader want to be one of the “cool kids” who get out of school.  And that’s all well and good, except, they are doing it on public school time, and with the actual “blessing” of the school district, the government.

Sacred Trust

What’s the problem?  What about all of those Jewish and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and Agnostics and Atheists in the public schools here in Pataskala.  The district has “blessed” one group, giving them the sacred trust of custody of children during the school day.  What does that say to the other kids of other religions?   Not only has the local government “taken a side”, but the State legislature and even the new Lieutenant Governor have “put a thumb” on the scale of government and religion.  

It’s the job, more importantly, it’s the duty, of the schools to protect the First Amendment right of ALL of the children (and parents and taxpayers like me) in a community.  It is the sacred trust of the schools to teach religious freedom, not a religious belief.  Where does our fall down the slippery slope end?  It must be with a “special class” of kids who are “right”, and a second class set of kids who aren’t.  

That’s not what schools are about.  But it is what our schools are becoming.

Make Americans Grotesque Again

Elections have consequences.  We are now living the result of the narrow triumph of Donald Trump and his MAGA philosophy in the 2024 election.  And that result is, what Trump describes as a war on “woke”.  Now what does “woke” mean?  It’s an attack on a laundry list of alphabet soup acronyms:  from LGBGTQ rights to DEI hiring to CRT teaching.  And it’s granular:  a Presidential executive order against the ten collegiate and (maybe as many as) a hundred high school athletes who are transgendered women.  Think of that; the President writing an order against 110 Americans out of 335 million ( that’s .00000328%).

And sometimes it’s just silly.  Defense Secretary Hegseth, with all of the issues of US Defense in the world, spent time to “re-name” Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, and then blithely commented that it wasn’t after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, but World War II Silver Star Medal winner Roland Bragg.  Another “win” in the war on “woke”:  Pete Hegseth really “got the libs” that time.  And I won’t even get into mis-naming of Denali back to McKinley, or re-naming the Gulf of Mexico.  

Make Americans Greedy Again

We can rewrite the signs at the gate, or the labels on the map.  All that does is grate against the “libs”. And it does.  It’s the old taunt of kids in backyard football:  “winners talk, losers walk”.   But there are much sadder consequences, deadly consequences, of Trump’s war on “woke”.  Because MAGA believes that America isn’t strong enough, isn’t compassionate enough, to help other folks in need.  And one of the alphabetical targets of Make America Greedy Again, is the USAID program.

So let’s get something clear:  USAID had a budget of $63 Billion.  That’s a lot of money, but, out of a total US annual budget of $6.75 Trillion, it’s LESS THAN ONE PERCENT.  So for less than one percent of the US government spending each year, America had a tremendous impact on the world.  We saved millions of Africans from dying of AIDS, we fed starving people, starving kids, in countries all over the world suffering from droughts and wars.  We brought medical care to folks who never had it before, and shelter to those made homeless by nature and man.  

Make Americans Gross Again

USAID supported Ukraine with food assistance.  And it supported US farmers by buying grains here, and taking it there.  Right now, almost $500 million worth of food is rotting on the docks, because USAID is stopped.  And right now, folks are dead, because Trump wants to wage a war on “woke”.   He directly intervened to prevent them from getting lifesaving help.  He killed them.

MAGA has convinced many Americans that the money would be “better spent here”.  But, of course, that money isn’t coming back to “regular Americans”.  What will happen to the less than one percent saved by letting folks die?  It will go into Trump’s proposed tax cut for the top one percent of Americans, just like last time.  So when MAGA folks admire Elon Musk for the “sacrifices” he’s made to “Make America Gross Again”, realize this. He paid $277 million for Trump’s election to gain access to power, and he’ll make billions back in the resulting tax cut.  He’s all sorts of things, but he’s not stupid.

Make Americans Gutless Again

The saddest part of Trump’s war on woke, is that it is based on the premise of victimhood.  Trump wants Americans to feel that they are victims of the “woke” philosophy, victims of attempts to make America a place where “All men are created equal”.   Trump’s vastly white following feels that they have lost something, and they want it back.  He has convinced them that they “deserve” the advantage.  Why else would MAGA wage a war against the true story of America, white-washing it into some fairy tale where African-Americans and Native Americans were treated fairly?

He is calling on Americans to say that we don’t have the “guts” to live up to “created equal”.  Instead, we need to take the advantage, white over minority, American over the world, and be the “winner”, and make them the loser.  Because MAGA sees only a “zero sum” game; to win someone else must lose.  And if you’re winning, then don’t dare show strength and magnanimity to help others.  You simply rejoice in your winningness, and take advantage of their loss.

Make Americans Grovel Again

MAGA is based in fear.  And now, the “war on woke” is trying to generate fear in “the libs”.  They are rejoicing in their winningness, and literally rubbing dirt in the face of the “losers”: me, you; all of us who don’t want to be victims.  So we can decide.  We can be overwhelmed by MAGA, or we can fight back.  We can fall to the hurricane onslaught of Trump depredations, or we can stand firm for the America we believe in.  Americans who truly believe America is Reagan’s “shining city on the hill” know that if we slam the gates shut and ignore the world suffering around us, eventually that world will come for us.  Trump is slamming the gates shut in fear: fear of change, fear of difference, fear of the unknown.  

Be not afraid.  Instead, act, in one way or another, to demonstrate belief in America.  Dan Rather said it best when he used one word to close his nightly newscast.  He told Americans what they needed then, and now. 

It was this word — Courage.

Back to School

My Democratic friends have all said it: “Isn’t what Musk’s doing illegal?   Why don’t they just arrest him!” And they’re not altogether wrong.  So here’s the answer they’ve been waiting for:  DOGE and their actions might be illegal, or maybe not.  And there’s a second issue, that sounds like a Buddhist meditation question. If a crime is committed and nobody cares, is it really a crime?

Let’s go back to “Schoolhouse Rock” government.  The vast Madisonian Plan for American Democracy was based on balancing alternate ambitions and powers within the government.   There are the powers of the states versus the powers of the federal government.  There are the powers of the legislature, the Congress, balanced against the power of the Judiciary (Courts) and the power of the Executive (the President).  There’s the internal balance of the House and the Senate.  And, finally, there is the seldom mentioned Tenth Amendment to the Constitution:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  

It’s that old Sixty’s line:  power to the people!!!!

Madison saw the people as the ultimate check and balance on American governments.

Nuts and Bolts

More specifically, Article I of the Constitution grants all the legislative powers, the power to do things, to the US Congress.  Section 8 list a vast array where Congress is given authority to legislate. That includes number 18, the “elastic clause”.  It states that Congress shall have the power to pass laws “necessary and proper” to enforce the other powers.

If you ask a highly motivated eighth grader, they will tell you the Congress has the most power in the US Government.   The document grants most of the powers to Congress. And perhaps even more importantly, it gives Congress the ultimate power:  the “power of the purse”.  Congress not only  needs to pass a law to do something, but it has to pass a second law to fund the first law.

Dam Bill

I used to give a lecture called the “Dam Bill”. (It caught the kids attention right away, they got to say “Dam” over and over again!)    There’s a river that needs a dam; how does Congress address that concern?  Well, a member introduces a bill into Congress, the Dam Bill.  Congress investigates what needs to be done, how to do it, and how much it will cost; by holding Dam hearings in  Dam committees.  Then after all of that, the Dam Bill comes on the floor of the Congress (House/Senate) for a Dam debate.  And, if a majority agrees, the Dam Bill is sent to the President.  When he signs it, it becomes a Dam law.

But there needs to be a whole second dam debate and vote in Congress, because to build a dam, you need dam money.   So there’s a process to pass a Dam Money Bill, that also is investigated, debated, voted on and sent to the President.  In the end there’s a Dam Law, and a Dam Money Law.  That’s the whole Dam story!

Dam Builder

But once the laws are passed, who builds the dam?  It is the job, the Constitutional Article II  authority of the President to carry out the laws. So he/she has to arrange to get the dam job done.  Theoretically the President will follow the wishes of Congress; the Dam Law, and spend the Dam money they way that Congress intended.  But what if he doesn’t?  What if the President chooses not to build a dam, or wants to spend the dam money to build a Wall (somewhere) instead of the dam?

Congress addressed that issue in a law called the “Impoundment Act of 1974”. It requires the President to report “impoundments” (sounds like a dam thing, right?) of money authorized by Congress and abide by Congressional decisions.  Basically it calls on the President to spend the way Congress intended. But there’s a lot of loopholes (holes in the dam) that give the President greater authority than you’d think the Founding Fathers intended.

Ok, enough of the dam stuff.   But here’s the point:  the President can usually do only what Congress passed by law.  And if the President goes against Congressional wishes, then Congress has a couple of alternatives.

Balances

First, they can go to the third branch, the Courts, to order the President to obey the (dam) law.   The judiciary was always considered the impartial “arbiter” of the Constitution and the law.  And recently, the US Supreme Court has pushed back against Presidential actions that go beyond Congressional law.  Joe Biden was stymied on environmental regulations and student loan relief when the Court decided that Congress’s laws didn’t grant him the authority to do what he wanted to do.  

And the Courts have even gone farther, suggesting that Congress has granted the President too much authority to create “regulations”, specific rules like loan repayments and voting regulations.   The Court told Congress to pass the specific regulations themselves.

So the Madisonian “checks and balances” worked fine (I guess) against the Biden Presidency.   Not only was their “checks”, but there was a balance of political philosophy; the Congress (and Court) on one side, and the Presidency on the other.

Congress

And, of course, Congress has the ultimate authority, the ability to remove the President from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors”.   Certainly refusing to abide by the laws passed by Congress, or ignoring judgments of the US Courts would be considered a “crime” (breaking the law, literally) and fall under the “impeach and convict” power.  The problem with that:  a majority of the House has to agree to impeach (indict) the President to the Senate. Then,  a two-thirds majority of the Senate is required to convict and remove him from office. 

 As we saw in the first Trump Administration and the two impeachment trials, there’s not much that two-thirds of the US Senate agree on. Even while a majority of Senators wanted to convict Trump, it never got close to the overwhelming majority required to remove him from office.

And one last concern:  if the Courts ordered the President to do something, how could they make him do it?  There is no “judicial police” in America, no “Court Army”.  All of those enforcement mechanisms are in the executive branch, theoretically at the order and control of the President.  And with the “unitary President” theory of the MAGA-Republicans, there is no “independent Justice Department” (unlike Biden’s view of Merrick Garland).  No Trump-era FBI agent is going to the White House (or Mar-A-Lago) door and putting handcuffs on him.  

Unitary President

The Trump MAGA-theorists see the President as the direct “commander” of all members of the executive branch of government.   So if the President brings in a group to “takeover” an agency of government, say the USAID or the Consumer Protection Bureau or the Department of Education, they can “do what they want”.  This theory would say that the illegitimate DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency, not ever passed by Congress in a “damn” law), is simply an extension of the authority of the President to run his “branch”.   As Vice President JD Vance said this weekend:  “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power”. 

So, ignoring the whole “Department of thing”, Trump could claim the Elon Musk and his band of whiz-kids are an extension of the “management duty” of the executive, a legitimate power.   DOGE is simply a part of the existing Office of Management and Budget, already created by law.  

Standing Up

Can Congress stand up to the President?  Sure they can, but it requires a majority of House and the Senate to do so. Clearly the Republican-MAGA party is just as subordinate to Donald Trump as the those red-hatted Trump rally attendees.  Since Republicans hold narrow majorities in both Houses, it isn’t going to happen there.

Can the Courts stand up to the President?   Sure they can, and some already are.  But there are two “provisos”.  First, if a case is brought before a District Federal Court, that decision can go all the way to the US Supreme Court.  That’s the same Court that granted the President blanket criminal immunity from any “official” act he takes as President.  So it’s an open question if the Supreme Court would stand up to Donald Trump’s firehose of questionable power grabs.  

And even if they did, would Trump follow their decision?   The current President is well-known for his admiration of President Andrew Jackson. He’s the one that executed the Indian Removal Act, and pushed the eastern tribes into Oklahoma and the West.  The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall, ordered him to stop moving the Cherokee out of Georgia and Tennessee, in what we now call the “Trail of Tears”.  Jackson responded:  “Marshall made his decision, now let him enforce it”, and continued the removal.

Bottom Line

If Congress won’t stand up for its own power, the Supreme Court may not either.  And even if the Supreme Court does, there’s no assurance that the Trump Administration would obey.  Which returns us to the 10^th Amendment:  the ultimate power of American Democracy isn’t in the Madisonian Democracy.  It’s with the people.  

We, collectively, will make the decision what our Government looks like.   We, collectively, already allowed this MAGA-Republican philosophy to gain control.  So we, collectively, may be required to change our minds.  It’s up to us.

Power to the People.  And, as Madison might add, may they use it wisely.

Unbalanced Power

It’s week three of the Administration of the 47^th President of the United States.  For both sides of the Great American Political Divide, the amount of “Executive” activity has been…dizzying, overwhelming, invigorating, terrifying, satisfying, and threatening.   The dust hasn’t settled.  But there does seems to be a slight delay in the juggernaut of executive action today.  The White House has agreed to limit access to the Treasury Department’s computerized spending programs.   The “boys” from DOGE, are now blocked from ravaging through that particular dataset.

It’s a moment where we can step back to look at what the authority of the “most powerful office in the world” really is.  

The Constitution of the United States carefully divided the powers of the Federal Government.   Many remember their Eighth Grade American History class, where the three branches were outlined:  legislative (Congress) wrote the laws; executive (President) enforced those laws, judicial (Federal Courts) interpreted both the laws and the Constitution itself.  My eighth grade teacher extolled the brilliance of “Madisonian Democracy”, the intricate intertwining of “checks and balances”.  No one branch could act without cooperation of the other, at least in principal.  And the Courts, thanks to John Marshall’s early assertions, became the impartial arbiter of power.

Mandate or Division

We are in a new era of American politics.   The people are divided, as Mr. Trump might say, “like never before” (well, there was that time around the Civil War).  But, by incredibly slim margins, the Government itself is of one mind.  Mr. Trump declares that his electoral comeback is an unfettered mandate for action, despite getting less than half of the Presidential votes.  The House of Representatives are Republican by three seats (out of 433).  The Senate is Republican by four seats (out of 100).  And the newly partisan Supreme Court also now has “a side”, six aligned with the Republican agenda, and three aligned with the Democratic side.

MAGA-Republican control of all three branches of Government has “greased the rails” for Mr. Trump, and he knows it.   He has the “carrot”; achieving the his MAGA goals.  And he has the “stick” of his MAGA base, willing to throw aside any Republican who might stand up against the onslaught.  Add to that, Trump also has the power; billions of dollars supplied by one of the richest men in the world, to back down any internal opposition.  

The stars are aligned to allow Trump to do almost anything.   What all of those Democrats warned about:  the authoritarian streak in the Trump ideology and the clear desire for vengeance against his enemies; is now apparent.  And the danger represented to world peace by a man who says; we’ll just take over the Gaza Strip ourselves, along with Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, is obvious.

Who Rules

So is Trump the nightmare Presidency, the end of the Republic, the beginning of a Fascist regime that everyone, from Joe Biden on down, warned about?   He might be.  And if he is, it’s because Congress and the Supreme Court determines not to defend their own Constitutional powers.

If Congress “makes the laws”, than a President cannot create a Department of the government without a “law” passed by Congress.   So what is DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency”.  For sure, currently, it is NOT a Department of the US Government.  I’m not even sure it can operate as an “arm” of the Office of Management and Budget.  But the President, and his Henchman-in-Chief, Elon Musk, simply have asserted authority.  And Congress is not standing against it (at least the majority of Congress, the Democratic minorities are screaming from the rooftops!).

The Trump Administration issued hundreds of executive orders.   Some of those are “just” edicts:  what the President would like to do, but doesn’t have the authority to do so.  Dissolving the Department of Education is one of those.  Sure, that’s been a Republican bug-a-boo for decades; but what Congress “giveth”, only Congress can “taketh away”.  So Trump’s order is nothing more than an announcement of his intent.  It’s Congress’s intent that makes the difference.

Another is the “birthright citizenship” edict, changing American Constitutional law of almost a century and a half.   The President doesn’t have the power to “interpret” the Constitution, at least he didn’t have it until now.  By the current “rules”, that’s not his call.  Will see what the Courts say to that.

Immunity

By the way, there’s a method to the madness of the flurry of paper orders coming from the White House.   The Supreme Court has charted a path.  The President is “immune” from criminal liability for anything within his “official duties”.  So, whatever is on an “executive order” is official.  You can hear the Trump lawyers brains clicking away – they’ve got a prima-facie case of immunity should he (or they) are ever be held accountable, again.

Can the Executive fire hundreds, maybe thousands of Federal employees?  The answer to that is  a no as well.   There are a series of laws, (passed by Congress), establishing a civil service outside of the political realm of White House control.  Trump alone cannot violate civil service, even if he writes an order, or even if he devolves the authority to fire to a subordinate, like Elon Musk and the “DOGE” boys.  And, by the way, they can’t offer a retirement buyout unilaterally either:

Federal employees beware.

Tradition

There is an ultimate “exception” to all of this.   While Congress may decide not to defend their own powers, the “last, best resort” are the Federal Courts.  And while there are plenty of Federal Judges at the District and Appellate levels who will rule against Trump’s usurpations, when it finally reach the Supreme Court the outcome might not be so obvious.  After all, six of the Justices granted Trump unprecedented immunity from prosecution.  Who knows how far they might be willing to let him go with his “executive actions”. 

First we depended on tradition, but this President didn’t respect tradition.   Then we depended on “norms”, but this one didn’t care about rules.  Then we depended on process, but Congress failed to check extreme Presidential actions.  Finally we depended on “the people”, but the people were “fooled again”.  Can we depend on the Supreme Court to maintain Madisonian Democracy?

And if the Court does restrain the President, can we expect Donald Trump to abide by their ruling?   Or will he echo his hero, Andrew Jackson.  When Jackson determined, on his own, to move the Native American tribes across the Mississippi River and into Oklahoma, the Supreme Court said no.  Jackson famously said:  “John Marshall made his decision, let him enforce it”, and continued the “Indian Removal”, including the Trail of Tears.  He ignored the Supreme Court.  Nothing happened to Jackson.  Would Trump be held accountable?

I’m not so sure.

Lincoln

In 1983, one of my pole vaulters qualified to the National Junior Olympic track meet.  The meet was on the campus of the University of Nebraska, located in Lincoln.  We strapped poles to the side of the car, and headed out across the Great Plains of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.  After a thousand miles, we arrived in one of the hottest spots in the Nation.  Really, Lincoln, Nebraska at the end of July bakes in the summer sun, surrounded by hundreds of miles of corn fields.  That raises the humidity, making it a “perfect storm” of heat.

The meet didn’t go well competitively.   But we did manage to find a great steakhouse, and catch a first run movie in the local theater.  The movie was “WarGames” starring then-young Matthew Broderick.  He was a teenaged computer hacker (by phone modem from his bedroom), in search of the best gaming computer to challenge.  Without giving the whole movie away, Broderick manages to find a back door into the National Missile Defense computer.  The “Game” Broderick is playing, is a nuclear attack simulation. 

The problem, of course, is that the computer didn’t know it was a game, and the nuclear defense system went on full alert.  As the “game” missiles descended on the Nation, a real nuclear response was about to be launched against a very real enemy.   A child hacker was about to start World War III.  You’ll have to watch the movie for the rest.

Kids in the DOGE

Lincoln, Nebraska; it was also the home to one of the “kids” who are the point of the spear of “DOGE”.   That’s the illegitimate government “department” created by Donald Trump using an Executive Order.  “DOGE”, the Department of Government Efficiency, is neither a Department nor a legal part of the government.  But it is ruthlessly efficient. (OK, you have to be old enough to have attended the 1983 JO Nationals to know that the really ruthlessly efficient “department” is Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, with a fanatical devotion to Elon Musk).  

Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, heads “DOGE” (there wasn’t enough room at the top for Vivek Ramaswamy to stay).   And he’s brought in a “crack team” of computer “whiz kids” to extract information from government computers.  One of those “kids” dropped out of the University of Nebraska.  Another just got out of high school, and was enrolled in Northeastern University.  Like the teenaged gamer of “War Games”, these are the premier computer “hackers” of our time. 

Maturity

The “point” kids are between 19 and 24.   And they have names: Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Straotran.  Ethan was a “hackathon” contest” runner-up.  Akash went to Cal-Berkley, and was an engineering “intern”.  Edward just graduated from high school, but he was an intern at Musk’s own Neuralink last summer.  Luke dropped out of Nebraska, but he was an intern at Space-X, another Musk company.  Gavin attended Cal-Berkley, but more recently worked for an AI company called Databricks.  Killian (he goes by his last name) was an engineer at Jump Trading, specializing in algorithmic high frequency financial trades (Wired).

These are the guys sent into the Treasury Department to access the US payment system.   What’s in that system:  tax data, Medicare and Medicaid data; tens of millions of US citizens addresses and financial information.  We don’t necessarily know why they need that data.  Don’t worry – right?  It’s only DOGE.

These “whiz kids” are also analyzing the US Office of Personnel Management (the office that controls government payrolls) and the General Services Administration (controls government property).   Don’t be surprised if they are cross-referencing the millions of names and financial figures against political records publicly available – like voter registration and political campaign donations. 

Don’t Play

What could possibly go wrong?   Why is it a concern that six, brilliant and obviously talented young men, all with direct links to Musk or conservative billionaire Peter Thiel (the Vice President’s mentor) should all of a sudden gain this unfettered access and power over the US Government agencies?  In a Nation founded on the concept of checks and balances, the guys (and it’s all guys – Bro) have the ultimate power; the power of information, and no checks at all.

They have my information.   They have your information.  The “kids” can match tax information to political information to employment information.  And they are loyal, to the “master Bro”, Elon.

Not to be crass, but acne is still a concern.  Who knows what the outcome will be, but an old (very old to these kids) movie form 1983 might be instructive.  As Joshua, the computer in “WarGames” said:  “Strange Game.  The only winning move is not to play”.  

Melting Pot

 America was built on the backs of migrants.   Our essential “origin stories”: from Jamestown and Plymouth to Promontory Point and Pittsburgh (the transcontinental railroad and the coal and steel industry) are migrant tales.  America’s history is replete with what migrants did to Make America Great.  The desperate battles of the Civil War had Irish and German brigades, taking orders in their own language, on both sides.  But, the largely untold story of that War, was the great sacrifices made by Free Black men.  Nearly 180,000 served the Union Army, and near 40,000 paid the ultimate sacrifice.  That’s over twenty percent killed.

Our public education system still teaches that America is a “vast stew” of immigrants.  In the 1970’s, young students even watched cartoons about the “Great American Melting Pot”.

You simply melt right in,
It doesn’t matter what your skin.
It doesn’t matter where you’re from,
Or your religion, you jump right in
To the great American melting pot.
The great American melting pot.
Ooh, what a stew, red, white, and blue.

Of course, it wasn’t true then, and it certainly isn’t true today.

Insufficient Funds

I graduated from high school in 1974.  It was eleven years after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The reality King described in that address is today over-shadowed by his description of “The Dream”. But in the speech, King referred to the sacred obligation of the Declaration of Independence’s “All Men are created equal”, and the Constitutional amendments ending slavery and granting citizenship and the vote.  He called them all a “bad check”. 

“…Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

That was the “real” message, the “bad check”. It’s far more important than, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

King called for America to make the “check good”, before we judged everyone “equal” in character.

Segregation

And, it was only a decade before my graduation, that legal school segregation was the law in much of the Nation.  Black kids weren’t allowed in white schools (or theaters, restaurants, public bathrooms or swimming pools).  The demonstrations, marches and protests of the Civil Rights movement managed to alter the legal framework of segregation.  But, when public schools were integrated and black and white students learned together; many white parents took their kids out.  

That was both the beginning of “white-flight” to the suburbs, and to the growth of “private schools” where kids could get a segregated education.  It was also the beginning of state governments seeking to direct more public monies to private schools, a problem still growing today.  Here in Ohio we spend more than $13 billion on public education where 90% of kids go to school.  Almost $1 billion of that amount, and growing, is directed to private schools, where the state has no say in what is taught or learned.

The Pool

I learned about all of this from personal experience.  In the 1960’s, the best colleges in the nation took mostly white men.  The “applicant pool” didn’t include many minorities or women.  So the standards were not “the top students”, but the “top white, male students”, a much easier threshold to crack.  By the early 1970’s things were beginning to change.  Minorities and women were “jumping right in” to the pool, making it bigger and more difficult.  

Most colleges recognized that there was an inherent bias in education against minorities and women (there still is).  After all, a black student applying for college, wasn’t likely to have access to as good an education as a white student.  It just the way it was, and frankly, still is.

So colleges began to broaden the way they chose students.  It wasn’t about “weakening the standards”. It was about making the standards reflect what it took to be a minority or woman and achieve in a biased academic world.  They had to overcome literal centuries of discrimination and lack of educational access.  Their intelligence and effort to become competitive was, in and of itself, a mark of success.  

More Qualified

 I was a white, male, high school student with above average grades, good (to great) standardized test scores, and lots of activities.  A black student with the same grades, scores and activities might be “equal” by the numbers, but likely had to overcome more to achieve it.  Which was the better candidate for college?  

I was actually a “case in point”. I was put on the waiting list for an elite college. A nearly identical black student in my school was admitted. In the 1960’s he wouldn’t have had a shot, and I would have gotten in.  But I knew, then, and still believe, that the college was right in 1974. He was “more qualified”. 

Alphabet Soup

That common sense, make the “bad check”, good; might seem reasonable.  But today, fifty-one years later, teaching that in school is teaching “CRT” (critical race theory).  The current MAGA extremists might have the teacher “ridden out on a rail”. (That’s an historic reference to being tarred and feathered, strapped to a railroad tie, and expelled from town).   

The extremist majority on the US Supreme Court ordered any college that accepts Federal money (including scientific research grants and the like) must remove “affirmative action” from their admissions policy in 2023’s decision, Students for Fair Admission v Harvard (USSC).   In fact, the whole process of broadening standards beyond “the numbers” in college admissions, and in hiring in this country, is now branded “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion).  

Somehow, DEI is a “bad” thing.   But what’s really happened is that white men are defending their status of privilege; one that’s been gradually eroded since I graduated high school.  They are led by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roberts, President Trump, his “Presidential friend” Musk, and the MAGA movement.  They found political “energy” in trying to turn the clock back, before the 1970’s. MAGA wants the “pool” to be smaller. And they want to make sure Dr. King’s check remains marked “insufficient funds”.

It’s about power, politics, and “grievance”.  It’s also about getting votes:  in 2024 Trump get 60% of white male votes, the critical block in winning his narrow victory over Harris (Navigator).  So in 2025, it is incumbent upon Trump to “pay them back”.  

He’s doing it. Trump canceled the promissory note, the “check” written to Americans of color.  He’s handing them another bad check.  And he’s taking the balance of their account, and giving it to his supporters.

Knocked Down

I’m doing my best.  I’m trying to let the Trump outrages, from Guantanamo to Kash Patel to halting cancer research; wash over me. It’s like diving under a five foot swell coming into the beach.  But today, right now, he got me.  Sixty-four Americans lost their lives last night in a helicopter/plane crash in Washington, DC.  The investigation is underway.  Many of the bodies are still  strapped in their seats in the ice-cold Potomac.  The ultimate cause of the accident is still unknown.

Except, of course, to President Donald “F-kin’” Trump.  He just spent ten minutes denigrating the Federal Aviation Administration, and blaming “DEI” hires for the accident.  Trump spoke about mentally disabled controllers, and those with physical disabilities from paralysis to dwarfism.  He somehow claimed it was Pete Buttigieg’s fault, or Barack Obama’s fault, or, of course, Joe Biden’s fault.  

He made it clear that he blamed the Air Traffic Controller (whoever that person was) for the crash.  And he made it sound like America has unqualified, handicapped and disabled controllers killing our aircraft passengers, pilots, crew members, and military personnel. 

Then, after all of that reading of FAA hiring practices and the placing blame; Trump said, “Well, we really don’t know what happened”. 

Sycophants 

The new Transportation Secretary, the new Defense Secretary, and even JD Vance, Ohio’s addition to the Vice Presidency; backed Trump’s assertion.  They all paid obeisance to the President: “thank you for your leadership” (may I have another??).   And they all backed his “analysis” of the problem.  None of them gave the final, “Well we really don’t know…” after their statements.

So we now have a President doing his “level best” to tell us what happened in the Washington accident.  It’s as if he has some expertise in Air Traffic Control – which he doesn’t.  It’s as if he has some intelligence on this issue; which he doesn’t.  He’s just “spun” this problem into another Trump “triumph” of changing America.

It’s despicable.  It’s disgusting.  And it’s disrespectful to the living, and the dead.

And it’s the new era of Trump: a tidal wave of idiocy, racism, and hate.  This wave knocked me down; kicked the wind out of me; ground the sandy bottom into my face. But I will get to shore, and gather my wits, and head into the waves again.  

It reminds me:  how much I hate what America is becoming.

Just as every cop is a criminal (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)
And all the sinners saints (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)
‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo)

The Rolling Stones –Sympathy for the Devil

Criminals

Let’s look at the definition of a criminal.   My Mother’s ultimate source, the Oxford English Dictionary, defines a “crime” as:  “An act or omission constituting an offence (usually a grave one) against an individual or state and punishable by law.”  So a “criminal” is one who commits such an “offence”.  (Mom was British, and so was her spelling, much to my demise in elementary school spelling tests. “That’s the way my MOM spells it!!!”). 

To split hairs just a bit, the key element in the definition is the undefined nature, “usually a grave one”, of crime.   Going 40 in a 35 MPH zone is an “offence”, but not necessarily a “crime”.  It’s not “grave”.  In legal terms they are called “civil” offenses;  violation of regulation (like traffic laws) but not “criminal” law.  The difference:  if I was driving 40 MPH in a 35 zone AND I was drunk was an alcohol level of .15, I’ve committed the civil offense of speeding, but the criminal offense of driving while intoxicated.  

Crossing the United States border illegally can be both a civil offense, and a criminal offense.  That’s a problem when the leaders of the Executive Branch of the United States say: “We are only going to deport criminals.”  Is the single act of crossing the US Border “without papers” (see the  essay from earlier this week) criminal?  Is it still criminal if you’re in a canoe in the border waters along the Minnesota/Canada border?  How about if you walk across the Rio Grande River (it’s pretty shallow in mid-summer) in Big Bend National Park in Texas?  Or finally, what about the Canadian border from Point Roberts, Washington?  Point Roberts is in the US, but its 1200 residents can only be accessed by land from Canada.

ICE Raids

So when the new “Immigration Czar”, Tom Homan, claims that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are “only designed to round-up criminals”, what does he really mean?  Look, pretty much all Americans are in favor of sending “murdering gang members” out of the country.   It’s an easy out:  instead of long trials and paying for prison sentences, just send them back to “where they come from”.  But Homan has made his definition clear:  if someone is undocumented, therefore in the US “illegally”, he considers them a criminal. 

The ICE raids of the last weekend show what he means.  Fully half of the immigrants rounded up were actual criminals, accused or convicted of committing felonies.  But that means that the other half were, in fact, only guilty of the civil offense of crossing the border “without papers”.  But those folks didn’t get a pass.   They too were loaded up on military air transports, and flown out of the country.  It makes the “numbers” look better on TV.

And that’s caused panic in the migrant community.  Many families live in “mixed status” households:  some US citizens, some legal migrants, some without papers.  What happens when a child goes to school, and Mom and Dad are picked up in an “ICE Raid” for being undocumented.  Who will pick the child up?   What if the child is a US citizen, is it still “OK” to deport the parents? 

Jobs 

And what about all of the job categories where the undocumented are employed?  Who will pick the “truck crops” in Florida and California, who will roof the houses damaged by hurricanes or fires, who will clean the hotel rooms, or butcher the chickens?  It’s easy for the Administration to say:  “That’s more jobs for Americans”.  But, to be brutally honest, Americans don’t want those jobs.  Undocumented workers are doing what the newest entries in American life have always done: the tough work, the brutal work in the sun, the bloody work at the processor. It’s the work that longer term Americans found a way to get out of.   

To put it bluntly (as my wife would say) “What about the eggs?”.  Egg prices went up during the post-covid inflation, and became a battle cry for the Trump forces in the 2024 election.  What about the eggs, when the cost of agriculture shoots up because we no longer have the migrant workers?  Forget about who gets sent back to Guatemala – what about the eggs?

It’s not just a problem for the undocumented.  It’s a problem for all Americans.

Uniter-in-Chief

When Joe Biden became the President of the United States, in the middle of the Covid pandemic and just days after an Insurrection led by his predecessor, he made a choice.  He could have appointed an aggressive Department of Justice, led by an avenging Attorney General.  He could have made sure that everyone who dared to contemplate overthrowing the Constitutional process, the world-admired “peaceful transition of power”, were brought to justice.  Joe Biden might have made the prime mission of his Presidency to hold the leaders of that criminal insurrection accountable, to the United States and the world.

He didn’t.  Instead of an avenger, he appointed a “neutral arbiter” as the Attorney General, Appellate Court Justice Merrick Garland.  The Judge was exactly what you’d want in a member of the court  (or a Supreme Court Justice nominee, which he was).  Garland was a dispassionate, apolitical enforcer of the law.  He was appointed to hold the Justice Department above politics, and re-new American’s faith in “blind justice”.

Biden made his choice with both eyes open.  He knew Garland:  who he was and what he believed.  Biden wanted, above all, to return America to “normalcy”.  He believed (believes) that the “job” of the Biden Administration was to restore order, norms, and values in American government, after the “chaos” Trump’s Presidency.  Justice under Trump’s Attorney Generals; Sessions, Whittaker and Barr, became an extension of Trump politics. It was a truly “weaponized” arm of the White House.  Biden saw himself as a “uniter-in-chief”, and could only see one way forward for the Nation.  

Weaponized

Neutrality was so important, the Biden allowed his only surviving son to remain in jeopardy, under investigation by Trump Justice.  Garland kept the Trump appointed US Attorney investigating Hunter on the job and, in fact, raised his status to Special Prosecutor, giving him increased investigatory power.   

Joe Biden thought he could heal the America’s political divide.  His Justice Department didn’t give the Insurrectionists a “pass”, but they did have a very, very, deliberate process.  It took years to start, and it took the Democratic House of Representatives and the January 6^th Committee hearings to approach the actual Insurrectionist leaders.  Maybe, Biden didn’t really want to have all that in the open, a clear public wedge against the MAGA world.  But he put Garland in charge, without a political check.  And it became, like many things involving Trump, “If we do something wrong, we’ll accuse you of the same thing”. The “MAGA mantra” was that the Biden “Democrat” (sic) Justice Department was politically “weaponized”, not theirs.

Biden’s good intentions were for naught.  By a slim margin (really, about 255,000 in the swing states) out of 152 million votes, Trump returned as President.  Not surprisingly, he returns with vengeance in mind.  He is creating a truly “weaponized” Justice Department, to be led by a truly partisan Attorney General, Pam Bondi.  The “point of the Justice spear”, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is to be headed by Kash Patel, and avowed partisan who has published an actual “hit list” of enemies to be prosecuted.  Already the axe is falling:  several Justice lawyers, non-partisan civil servants, were fired yesterday, for being a part of legal teams investigating Insurrectionists.   

Hindsight

One of Trump’s first acts as President, was to pardon nearly 1500 people convicted of crimes in the Insurrection.  His first order was to erase history, and re-write the narrative.  There wasn’t an “insurrection”, it was a peaceful protest with a few that got out of hand, provoked to violence by the police response.  They are all free now.

Of course, hindsight is perfect.  Looking back, Biden should have appointed a “Pam Bondi” and a “Kash Patel”.  He should have allowed for Justice to be done to all those in the Insurrection, from day one of his Presidency.  Of course it would have furthered the National abyss that is our political divide.  But what would be the difference; we are just as divided as ever today.

And Americans would not be facing the daily outrage of Trump on almost every front:  from migrants round-ups to grave threats to public health (Robert Kennedy Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services), to a MAGA-Justice Department seeking vengeance.  

Joe Biden was the right man, with the right idea.  

Unfortunately it was at the wrong time in American history.

For those who read these essays regularly, I have an apology.  It’s been a few days since I published, and some asked me if I’ve taken a “sabbatical” from our political world. Like many of us, I’m trying to adjust to the deluge of Trump’s actions, almost all abhorrent to what I believe America is about.  Every essay can’t just be a rant against Trump. (Well, it could but that would quickly get old).  So I am trying to pick my battles, as we all will be required to do.  

At the same time it’s the heart of indoor track season.  While I am no longer coaching, I am officiating track a lot.  This weekend, it was a clinic for officials on Friday, a clinic for coaches on Saturday morning, a collegiate pole vault competition on Saturday afternoon, and a high school shot competition on Sunday morning. (Why does everything in Indoor Track start at eight in the morning?) Oh, and there was a total of 320 miles of driving in between.  So that was a big part of my absence from “Our America” the past few days.  But it’s Monday morning, and here we go! 

SOE

My Mom was a spy for the British during World War II, a member of the “Special Operations Executive”, Churchill’s personal spy organization.  Mom was lucky:  the fatality rate in her unit was beyond 100% (not everyone died, but most did, and so did a lot of their replacements).   Mom survived, even though she was in and out of Nazi-occupied Europe; France, Belgium, and even Yugoslavia.  

SOE did everything they could to protect their agents.  The details mattered:  making sure the clothes were made in Paris factories, down to the underwear.  The cigarettes had to be local, and so did the accent.  Mom was successful in part, because of her years of “finishing school” at the Sacred Heart Convent in Liege, Belgium.  He French wasn’t “French”, it was “Belgian”, and so were her clothes.  That gave her some leeway in the inevitable interactions with authorities.

Papers

But most important was the “quality” of her forged documents.  Authoritarian governments remain in power, in part, by controlling the movements of citizens.  They do that through a series of documents that every citizen is required to carry.  Sure there were the “standard” identity documents; proof of birth, age, height, weight, nationality, religious belief, work status.  In addition, she needed “permissions”, identifying that she was allowed to “move” throughout the country:  “passes” prepared by local authorities allowing travel.  

Each document was on “special” paper, signed and stamped by the proper person.  Regular cops and the secret police didn’t need to ferret out differences in clothing or accent; they simply had to find an error in the documents.  That was enough to trigger detention, investigation, and for many members of the SOE, death.

Watch any World War II spy or escape movie.  For the undercover operative, the scariest time was when some low-level authority made the demand: “Your Papers!!”.  

Black Shirts

One of the hallmarks of a free society is the ability to move about without permission.  We don’t need “passes” to drive from town to town officiating track meets (though we do, reasonably, need a license to operate a car).  No one has to give us “permission” before we leave.  And while authorities can demand identity, they are required to have some “reason”, some probable cause of a criminal action, to move onto further detention or investigation. If you’re not driving your car at ninety miles an hour trying to make the warmup start of the college men’s pole vault, you can travel unencumbered by authority demanding “Your Papers Please”. Sometimes you can even drive that fast as well.

But those liberties are changing under the new administration.  Today it isn’t whether your cigarettes were made in North Carolina or your sweatshirt by the “Champion” company.  No, today, some of the American authorities, dressed in the black shirts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), are looking at one characteristic; skin.  Ask the Puerto Ricans taken in a Newark, New Jersey ICE “raid” of a workplace.  They were arrested by ICE as “undocumented migrants” because they looked Hispanic.  

Swept Up

Check out your own driver’s license.  It doesn’t list a citizenship status.  It doesn’t note that since some were born in Puerto Rico, they are AMERICAN CITIZENS, even eligible to vote for the President if they are residing in New Jersey (Puerto Rican residents cannot vote for President).  They just get swept up in the crowd, some legal, some not, all scrambling to give the ICE agents their “papers”.

If you drive south of Tucson, Arizona, there are checkpoints along I-19 approaching the border with Mexico. That’s one of the places where ICE Agents are stopping cars and demanding “Your Papers”.  Whether you’re an American citizen or legal resident, or a migrant “with out papers”, you must prove yourself.  And for those without, even those citizens without, there is a high risk of detention, and possible deportation to some country where you might not have even been.

It used to be, like two weeks ago, that there was a presumption that citizens could travel freely, even close to the Southern (and now Northern) borders.  Now, even in church, or in school, or in the hospital; there might well be the demand of  “your papers”. 

That’s the new reality in Our America.

For those of you not familiar with horse racing, the audience participation is based on gambling.  There are many ways to bet the horses, including pick the winner, or pick a horse to “win, place (2^nd) or show (3^rd). There are also all sorts of groupings of horses, some over multiple races.  All to attract the “gambler’s dollar”, where the real money is in the racing industry.

100 Days

The tradition started with Franklin Roosevelt.  Elected in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, the nation wanted action.  About a quarter of the Nation’s citizens were out of work, desperately struggling to find the next meal for themselves and their families.  After FDR told the country there was, “Nothing to Fear, but Fear Itself”, he entered the White House with a mandate to get something, anything, done.

In his first 100 days in office, fifteen major bills passed Congress to try to alleviate the impact of the Depression.  On the list were many laws Americans are familiar with as the “alphabet soup” legislation:

• Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA)
• Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
• Glass-Steagall Act (established the FDIC)
• National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA).

It wasn’t just that FDR was making major changes in the American economy.  He was putting the American Government into action.  His predecessor waited for the economy to correct itself (laissez-faire economics), but it didn’t happen.  There was less to fear, because there was a President taking direct action to make things better.

Tradition

That began the American Presidential tradition of “the first 100 days”.  What used to be a time when the new President “eased into the job”, is now a flurry of activity.  It also made sense; it is the  time (other than when America is under military attack) that a President has the most political power.  Every President, from Roosevelt’s landslide victory to George W Bush’s Supreme Court triggered win, claimed a “mandate” from the American people.  Congress, fresh off elections themselves, wants to get things done as well.  And the President gets a “honeymoon” from the press and the people.  It’s the perfect time to exercise the powers of the executive office.

More recently, Presidents enter office with a whole range of “Executive Orders”.  Instead of introducing a plan for the Congress to enact into law, like the New Deal, they use their singular power to make all of the changes they can.  Trump, Biden, and now Trump again were well prepared on “Day ONE”, and part of Inauguration Day tradition has become the signing of a flurry of orders trying to redirect the executive branch. 

Project 2025

During the runup to the 2024 election, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, released their “Project 2025” document.  It was over 900 pages of changes that they saw as needed to alter the American government and align it with their own conservative views.  Many of those proposals outraged less ideologically inclined citizens, and the Trump campaign distanced itself from the plan.  Ultimately, Democratic warnings about Project 2025 fell on deaf ears when it came to the voters.  The Trump Administration is now using Project 2025 as their blueprint.

Part of the “Project” was a series of executive orders to be signed by an incoming Trump Presidency.  They were nicknamed “Shock and Awe”, after the US military strategy of the early 2000’s.  That was massive bombing attacks to obliterate enemy defensive positions.  Then Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld used the term over and over again at the beginning of the Second Persian Gulf War, as we watched the combat video from American warplanes.

Donald Trump was sworn (hand on the Bible or not) on Monday.  It’s Wednesday morning, and there’s been an avalanche of executive orders released, many signed in front of 20,000 fans at the Capital Center on Inauguration Night.  They encompass changes to the Federal government, alterations to the US Constitution, and, most importantly, the Project 2025 determination to wipe out anything that the Biden Administration did in four years in office.

Winners

Some of these orders are serious, with serious consequences.  Like them or not, they are within the power of the President to act “alone” (remember Trump told us “I alone can fix this”).  Those are the “winners” for Project 2025 and their MAGA followers.  Others are “placers”, Trump can say it, but it will take a lot more than just his “say” to get them done.  And others are a flat “no”.  They are not within the power of the President to decide, and are simply smoke; part of the “shock and awe” strategy to overwhelm Democrats before the “loyal (or not so loyal) opposition” can get organized.

”Winners”:  most of  the Immigration changes that Trump is making, including closing the border, ending remote requests for asylum, and “rounding up” undocumented migrants, are fully within his power.   While there’s going to be lots of attempts at Judicial intervention, the Supreme Court has already placed most of those powers in the sole hand of the President, (absent an actual immigration law passed by Congress).  It’s one of his greatest powers, and one of the reasons he ordered the immigration proposal tanked by Republicans in Congress last year.  

More Winners

Another “winner”:  Trump rescinded Biden’s Executive Orders advancing racial equity, not asking for citizenship status on the census, combatting Covid, preventing discrimination based on gender identity, and requiring executive personnel to commit to an ethics agreement.  Trump also removed environmental protections, worker protections, including the right of Federal workers to organize in unions,  and eliminating privately run prisons. And Trump ended the taskforce to reunify families that his first Administration separated at the border.  Whatever Biden did by Executive Order, Trump can undo.  And he’s doing it.

And the saddest “winner”:  Trump pardoned 1600 some convicted felons from the January 6^th Insurrection, including those who physically attacked and injured policemen, and the organizers of much of the violence. 

Placers and No

A “Placer”:  Trump ordered all Federal employees to return to “work”.  He ordered the end of remote work from home.  And for those Federal employees at the management level, who are not under a union negotiated contract, they are going back to their offices.  But for the vast majority of Federal workers their contract protects them from the arbitrary whims of the President, and would require re-negotiation.

And, much to Trump’s and Project 2025’s dismay, the President of the United States cannot re-write the laws of Congress.  Trump wants to end the Affordable Care Act, but he can’t, even though he signed an Executive Order trying to do that.  He also wants to remove the $35 cap on insulin, also passed into law by Congress (as well as much of the Inflation Reduction Act, another Congressional Law).   And he wants to “impound” the money already allocated in the Infrastructure Law, perhaps to use to “build the Wall”.  That’s not within his power either.

Trump signed an Executive order changing the Constitutional mandate to grant citizenship to those born on US soil.  That’s Black Letter Law in the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution, and clearly is NOT in the purview of the President’s executive discretion.  Even with a Trump 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, it’s unlikely that will fly.  Rewriting the Constitution is a “hard NO”.

Shock and Awe

So many orders, so much paper, all of the headlines:  it looks like a President jumping into action.  But a lot of the paper is just that, paper without substance.  Americans need to weather the storm, and not be overwhelmed by the swirl of Project 2025 propaganda.  

There are real things that Donald Trump is doing; including providing cover for his flawed nominee for Defense Secretary.  But there is only so much outrage, and action, the “loyal opposition” can take.  And there is very real damage that Trump can do to America.  That’s where Democrats need to focus their opposition.  Let the noise, the flash, the nonsense, go by.  Democrats need to focus on defending the core essentials of the American Republic.  If it sounds like a war, it is, a political war to determine what kind of America we will have.  Like George Washington’s Army, Democrats lost a crucial battle in November. 

But the struggle goes on.

Trump Era

When High School American history teachers in thirty years (assuming we have high schools, and, assuming we still have teachers) look back, they will call this the “Trump Era”.  Right or wrong, he earned the distinction of having his name attached to a time in American history, just as much as the Roosevelts, or Jackson, or even Washington.  And, assuming those future teachers (I kind of have a “Jetson’s” image of the thing) are somewhat truthful, they will talk about the awful polarization of our time.  

We do that now when we teach about the Pre-Civil War period of the United States.  Starting with the aging “Great Compromisers” of the 1850’s Congress, the country found less to agree upon, and more to rail against.  By 1856, the compromising was over, and in five years the chasm over the issue of slavery drove us to Civil War.  When Lincoln intoned that a nation could not live “Half slave and half free,” he wasn’t saying something new.  He was just recognizing that all the other methods of conflict resolution had failed.

I’m not prophesizing a civil war now, but I am saying that most of our methods of conflict resolution have failed as well.  We used to depend on the Courts to balance our partisan conflicts.  But that is seldom the case anymore.  

North Carolina

Look at the current North Carolina Supreme Court election, where a majority of Republicans on the Court are still refusing to acknowledge the narrow victory of a Democrat, Allison Riggs for one of their seats.  After the original vote count, the Democrat won by 700 or so votes out of 5.5 million.  The Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin, rightfully demanded a recount. And when that count didn’t change the outcome, he asked for a second hand recount.  Riggs gained a few votes, to a winning margin of 734.

Then, after all of that, Griffin went to court to demand that 60,000 ballots be thrown out due to “ineligibility”.  This is after the state ruled them eligible and allowed them to vote, an ex-post-facto argument.  And who will determine whether Griffin or Riggs will be on the North Carolina Supreme Court based on this “after the fact” eligibility decision?  Well, the Republican majority of the North Carolina Supreme Court. 

It used to be that we would still trust “the Court” to do the right thing.  Today, no one will be surprised if North Carolina’s highest judicial body does the “political” thing, and puts another Republican on the bench.  It would just be another “marker” in our age of division.

Enemies List

Much as some would tell us to deny “our lying ears”, we know that Donald Trump and his MAGA minions declared the intent to “punish” those who tried to hold them accountable for trying to steal the 2020 election and the Insurrection of January 6^th.  Those to be punished are literally on an “enemies list”, published by Trump’s candidate for FBI Director, Kash Patel.  

And they are ingrained in statement after statement, in public and on social media, made by the candidate himself as he ran for President in 2024.  The “LOCK HER UP” chant against Hillary Clinton in 2016, became “LOCK THEM UP”, to include the January 6^th Congressional Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Jack Smith of the Justice Department, General Milley, and others.  In fact, Trump thought that Milley ought to be executed for treason.

What They Think

It would be easy to say that it was all “rhetoric”, and that no one would use the Justice Department to exact some form of revenge against an “enemies list”.  But there’s one thing this “Trump Era” taught us.  From the early “Muslim Ban” to child separation at the border: if they can think it, they can do it.  No one should be surprised if members of the list; from Liz Cheney to Adam Kinzinger to Dr. Fauci to the good General; find themselves under criminal investigation. 

I guess we could hope that the “norms” hold, and that the Courts would toss such investigations out.  But there’s little we’ve seen in the American Court system, especially the United States Supreme Court, that should give us comfort.  The Supreme Court has gone so far as created a blanket immunity for the President of the United States for “official” criminal wrong-doing, taking the ancient concept of “sovereign immunity” and applying it to the Presidency as if he was what George Washington refused to be, a King.  

Injustice

Joe Biden, in the last morning of his Presidency, recognized that we live in “different” times.  He issued a Presidential pardon to the members of the January 6^th Congressional Committee, to those who testified before that Committee, to Dr. Anthony Fauci, and to General Milley.  They are pardoned for any “crime” they might have committed in that time. And, they are now immune from investigation and prosecution.  General Milley, now retired,  was “deeply grateful” for the pardon, stating:

“After forty-three years of faithful service in uniform to our nation, protecting and defending the Constitution, I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights. I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety.”

There will be some, even some Democrats, who criticize President Biden.  They say that granting a pardon is conceding that there was in fact a “crime”, that needed pardoning.  Some will say that even if Patel’s FBI (if he gets appointed) did investigate, the Courts would protect justice and prove them innocent.

But we don’t live in a time of “innocence”.  We live in the Trump Era, where, injustice is not only possible, it’s likely.  It’s Inauguration Day, and dozens of Executive Orders will be issued this afternoon.  Many of them will highlight the injustice of our new leaders.  So for one last time, thank you Joe Biden, for everything you did, and for what you did today.  It was just.

I hope you don’t represent the end of justice in our Nation. 

Aware

I guess you could say I became politically “aware” in the summer of 1968.  I was always interested in politics; at four I was wearing a 1960 “Kennedy” button.  We went to see President Johnson speak in 1967, and I was shocked at the black turtle-necked protestors from Antioch College who dared to interrupt him.  And Dad introduced us to Vice President Humphrey on the tarmac at the Dayton Airport.  But in August of 1968, I broke my arm.  

The front wheel came off my bike in mid-pedal, and the bike flipped completely over on top of me.  I knew, right at that second, my right wrist was broken – bent in a direction I hadn’t seen before.  Dad took me to the orthopedic:  they had me hold a bar on the wall with my right hand and hang my elbow down from it.  I remember the nurse saying “I hate this sound”, and had just enough time to wonder what she meant.  Then the doctor grabbed my arm and set the bone – the snap – and the pain.  It was the 1960’s, no need for painkillers, just snap, pop, and it was in place.

I didn’t even have time to try out my new Second Class Scout profanity. 

Whole World Watching

They casted my arm, elbow locked at ninety degrees, and sent me home with orders to keep it elevated for a week.  I missed the Summer League Swim Meet, where I was scheduled to “clean up” at the top of the twelve year-old age group.  All I could do was sit on the family room couch, my arm on top of my painted Boy Scout beer box (where I kept clothes at Scout Camp), and watch TV.  It was the week of the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Back then it was gavel to gavel coverage, twenty-four hours of riots and disorder and verbal fights on the floor of the convention. The Democratic Party was without President Johnson, Bobby Kennedy shot dead in a Los Angeles hotel hallway, and a chasm between the Johnson war supporters, the Kennedy/McCarthy anti-war Democrats, and the students in the streets of Chicago chanting “The whole world is watching”.   

Math Class

Humphrey got the nomination, but was never able to unite the party.  Republican Richard Nixon promised a quick peace settlement in Vietnam, but we all knew he was lying (it wasn’t until five years later, that a deal was actually reached).  What we didn’t know was that his campaign was actively interfering with the ongoing peace talks in Paris.  They didn’t want an October “surprise” that might tip the election in Humphrey’s favor.

It was a close election on the first Tuesday of November in 1968.  It wasn’t until the middle of the next day that the votes were finalized enough to declare a winner.  I was sitting in Mr. Schnapp’s 7^th grade math class at Van Buren Junior High School in Kettering, Ohio, when the principal made the announcement:  Richard Nixon won.  It seemed like the whole school cheered:  Kettering was a very Republican suburb at the time.  I put my head down on my desk, near tears.  How could America survive four years of Richard Nixon, four years of division, four more years of war?

Close to 2 million Vietnamese died after Nixon won office, and over 58,000 Americans.  Elections have consequences.  

Faith

That was the first Presidential election that shook my faith in American decision making.  The second was twelve years later, when a glib actor turned Governor of California won an overwhelming victory over my former boss, Jimmy Carter.  Ronald Reagan used uplifting oratory, describing the United States as a “…Shining city on a hill”.  But his real agenda was to turn America over to private industry.  He sacked the air traffic controllers, he “freed education” from Federal interference by carving $10 billion out of the Federal funding, he ignored the AIDS epidemic because it was a “gay disease”.  

The third faith-shaking election for me was in 2000, when George W Bush won the Presidency by one vote (the Supreme Court ruled in his favor five Republican Justices to Four Democrats).  It seemed to me the “will of the people” didn’t matter anymore, it was simply who could more effectively pull the levers of power.  It didn’t hurt Bush that his brother was the Governor of Florida, the state in question.  

On September 11^th, 2001, I “united” under George Bush.  But a few years later, after the atrocities at Abu Gharib and the private profit-taking in the Iraq war and the Defense Department, my “first impression” of Bush was still the most accurate.

Head Down

And last night, I came face to face with the fourth time that my belief in America is shaken.  Yes, I know the 2024 election results have been well known for months.  But last night I watched President Biden’s “exit interview” with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC.  And right after, the ad came on about “gavel to gavel” Inauguration Day coverage on Monday.  And I realized, that now, at my advance age of sixty-eight, I am faced with four years of Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi, of Elon Musk and Steven Miller, of inhumanity at the border, and watching the rich get richer, especially if the rich is named Trump.  

Four years to a twelve year-old seemed like forever, a full third of a life.  But four years now (a nineteenth of my life) stills seems like forever; four years of “Making America Backward Again”.  At the end, if 2028 is the end; how much will we have to do to get America back on the “The Arc of the Moral Universe bending towards justice”. 

Can’t Watch

I don’t hate America.  But I hate the narrow decision that puts these oligarchs in control of our Nation.  President Biden last night, characterized his whole political career as fighting against “bullies”, like the those that bullied a scrawny stuttering kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania.  A slim margin of Americans have put the “bullies” in control now:  to bully  the migrants and minorities, the disabled and the disenfranchised, the queer and the quiet.  That’s the America of Donald Trump, now back for a second, more experienced, and more vindictive term in office.

I don’t hate America.  But it’s hard today to see the good, when we stand on the cusp of this awful period of darkness.  I want to go back to Mr. Schnapp’s math class, and put my head down on the desk. 

 I won’t write about this inauguration;  I can’t watch it.  

I listened to President Biden’s farewell address last night – an American tradition that runs all the way back to George Washington. Like Washington (avoid foreign entanglements) and Eisenhower (military/industrial complex) Biden warned us of a new threat – the power of billionaires and their influence on our government. Will we be a Republic, or an oligarchy?

Kennedy Button

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is one of my “original” heroes.  I was just four years-old when he was elected. But I proudly wore the Kennedy button that Mom pinned on my sweater.  One of my earliest memories is sitting in the hallway outside Aunt Leah and Uncle Howard’s apartment in the Vernon Manor Hotel in Cincinnati.  I was banned from the residence, unless I took my button off. I wouldn’t do it.  Eventually we reached a compromise;  Aunt Leah allowed me in, as long as I carried the lead elephant she presented to me.  That was American politics at its best!

Mom was a Kennedy fan, with direct connections to the clan.  Her roommate in college was Kathleen Kennedy, fourth in the line of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s children.  Kathleen tragically died in a plane crash in 1948, but Mom was still loyal to the family. And even though Mom was a British citizen, she remained a strong supporter of JFK’s career.

So I was a Kennedy fan, literally from birth.  I’m not so sure Dad was, he might have voted for Nixon back in 1960.  We never had that conversation, though I know he later converted to some Democratic candidates, including Jimmy Carter (after all, I was working for him) and Barack Obama.

Missile Gap

But as a college student and budding political operative in the 1970’s, I discovered that there were issues where the Kennedy’s played fast and loose with the facts.  One of those was a major issue in the 1960 campaign, the “missile gap”.  According to Democrats, the Soviet Union was building more nuclear missiles than the United States, and had created a “gap”.  It seemed to be an actual threat. If the USSR could blow up the US “more completely” then they might actually “win” a nuclear war.  That concept was later described by Herman Kahn, an academic, published in a paper called “Thinking the Unthinkable”.

Kennedy promised to close the “gap” when elected, and the US began to build hundreds of new missiles after he took office.  The fallacy: in 1960 there really wasn’t a “gap” at all.  The US actually had more missiles at the time, making the balance of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) especially effective.  Kennedy’s building program upset that balance even more.

But Kennedy’s programs poured a lot more money into the burgeoning defense industry. That’s the same “military-industrial complex” that President Eisenhower (also a General of the Army) warned about in his farewell address (*see below), just days before Kennedy’s inauguration (“…ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”).   And the American marriage to the Defense industry far out-lasted Kennedy.  The Vietnam War, and Reagan’s strategy to “win” the Cold War by out-spending the Soviet Union into the ground (it worked) continued the military-industrial complex growth.

Better than Yours

That’s all “ancient” history.  The Soviet Union fell over thirty years ago, and was replaced by Putin’s oligarchy in Russia.  They are struggling today to maintain a war against Ukraine. Russia is using up so many munitions that they are dragging tanks from the 1980’s back onto the battlefield, and borrowing troops from North Korea to help replace the hundreds of thousands of Russians lost in battle.   From time to time Russia puts an innovative weapon on “display”, like their new hypersonic (11x the speed of sound) missile, but most of their weapons are “old school”.  

Overall, the Russian military complex is the remnants of the Soviet Union. The flagship cruiser Moskva of the Russian Black Sea fleet sunk, and the only Russian aircraft carrier is unable to move without multiple tugs for steerage and towing.  The “Fifth Generation” Russian fighter jet, the Sukhoi 57, is ridiculed for radar-reflecting screws in its body, and for fuselage sections that don’t completely fit together.  There are currently 31 in service.

That’s opposed to the US F-35, a more sophisticated fifth generation fighter.  The US has 630 already deployed, with another 400 to US allied nations.  China also has a fifth generation fighter, the Shenyang J35-A, with over 300 deployed. The Chinese also have three conventional aircraft carriers with a fourth nuclear carrier under construction. The United States currently has eleven nuclear carriers.

The Complex

There is no weapons gap.  But there is a loyalty to the military-industrial complex, demonstrated in the nomination hearings for Pete Hegseth as Trump’s new Defense Secretary.  There’s lots of personal reasons why Hegseth isn’t appropriate for the post.  And the fact he’s never successfully run even a small organization, much less one the size of the Defense Department, should be a warning.  But, underneath all of the conversation about alcohol, womanizing and abuse, there is an even darker thread.  

Hegseth claims that we are “falling behind” in the arms development race. He promises to re-direct funding to make sure we are never “second place”.  Like Kennedy (who had his own personal issues with women) Hegseth is planning on closing another “weapons gap”.  And, like my original hero, he’s fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.  

The winner will continue to be what General Eisenhower warned us about:  the military-industrial complex. They have a huge financial stake in expansion, and get that accomplished by  supporting Republican politicians.  Perhaps that’s why the Hegseth nomination, which seemed almost as sunk as the lost Moskva, is now not only afloat, but seems destined for success.

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

*Excerpt from Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1/17/1961)

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Towering Inferno

Southern California is an inferno.  Fires, driven by the incredibly powerful Santa Ana winds, are blowing out of the mountains, through the canyons, and into the suburbs of romantic cities:  Los Angeles (Beach Boys), Santa Monica (Everclear), Malibu (Miley Cyrus), Pasadena (Jan and Dean), and now, Ventura (America). There’s a California rock song about each of those places, because that’s where the  “rockers” were and are. 

Sure, there’s lots of “blame” to place – but the reality is that the Santa Ana winds are stronger than ever.  And they’re fueled by climate change – period.  Without the warming oceans, the winds don’t blow at tornadic force, and the embers from typical brush fires don’t travel miles to set new blazes.  It’s really that simple.  In the end, it’s hard to place blame on politicians for not “thinking the unthinkable”.  This kind of disaster was more the genre of the Hollywood studios, not Southern California politicians.

Action Hero

Speaking of Hollywood, there are Hollywood-like heroics going on daily.  As we watch the inferno clear neighborhood after neighborhood, with more than 12,000 homes, schools and businesses destroyed; we also are amazed by the efforts of the firefighters.  They are Heroes all: the crews with fire on all sides, desperately trying to save a single structure; and the amazing Canadian Scooper Planes, skimming the water at 70 miles an hour like pelicans to scoop up thousands of gallons to snuff out the closest blaze. Flying a helicopter is always a difficult task; “…like balancing a metal ball on a plate while on a unicycle”.  Now add the “gentle” winds (30 to 40 miles per hour) and the huge updrafts caused by blazing fires at the bottom of canyons, and it’s amazing they stay in the air, much less dump their water loads on target.

And there are the individual heroics of neighbor helping neighbor; fighting the fires, and aiding the elderly, sick and overwhelmed to evacuate before it’s too late.  Over 100,000 are out of their homes, and the greater community is taking care of them.  It is remarkable that the death toll (today 24) is so low.  It will be higher, but the videos look like there should be hundreds if not thousands gone.

Closer to Home

These fires are now striking close to home.  Our son lives in Ventura, a beach town up the coast from Malibu.  Last night, the “Auto Fire”, broke out on the east side of town, along a golf course.  It’s not far away.  He and his girlfriend and their two dogs (surprised?) are safe so far. 

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the was a lot of concern about the Federal response to the crisis.  Some of us remember “old Brownie”, the head of FEMA, getting atta-boys from President Bush, even as the crisis grew worse.  But, in the end, the Nation stepped up to rebuild.  When Hurricane Sandy flooded vast parts of New Jersey and New York, Democratic President Obama and Republican Governor Christie hugged, and went to work to help their citizens recover.  

The fires in Southern California aren’t under control.  The winds will whip back up tonight, and we simply don’t know where the next ember will land, and where it will ignite another conflagration.  It’s safe to say the cost for recovery is in the tens of billions of dollars, if not more.  And, just like the neighbors helping neighbors in Pacific Palisades, the Nation needs to “have the backs” of Southern Californians.

American Fiction

It’s already a political mess.  Disinformation (thanks to Joe Rogan and Alex Jones) from how the fire started to why there wasn’t enough water, is distracting from the very real crisis.  And now our Republican “leaders” in Congress, the “neighbors” who were more than happy to give aid to Florida and North Carolina just a few months ago, are demanding “strings attached” to help California recover.  

It doesn’t help that California’s Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, is a leading candidate for the 2028 Presidential election, and that the state is home to Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Kamala Harris.  So the MAGA campaign will begin, almost four years early, to “knock them off” before the election even gets started.

But that’s not how Americans are.  Here in Ohio, we help our neighbors when tornadoes ravage small towns, or when fire burns down a local home.  That’s what we do, without concern about political viewpoint or racial or gender identity.  We help folks in need.

California is going to need a lot of America’s help — no strings attached.  And we need to get to it.

Get In Line

Like it or not, the Nation elected Donald Trump as the President of the United States.  And, unlike Trump and his MAGA-followers in 2020, the Democrats got “in-line” and did their duty as American citizens.  They, we; accepted the election results.

That we (Americans) elected a man who supports fascist (that word!!) goals, programs, and ideas hasn’t changed.  Many of my friends believe we should just oppose everything that Trump tries to do, and I don’t blame them.  Working with a fascist, someone who puts a dagger to the throat of American democracy, is repugnant.  But…and this is what many “other” Democrats believe… perhaps we should oppose when we can, cooperate when possible to further our national goals, and prepare to win in 2026 and 2028, to save our country.  

Barack Obama talked to Trump at the Carter funeral.  That  wasn’t treason.  Kamala Harris and Joe Biden pointedly ignored Trump. That wasn’t wrong either.  Two opposite things can be true at the same time.

Norms

The American tradition, the “norm”, is that a newly elected President gets to choose his own staff.  That includes those staff members “consented” to by the United States Senate.   Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was a stern advocate of this “norm”.  He voted for Democratic appointed judges, cabinet secretaries, and agency heads, until he didn’t.  After the Kavanaugh hearings and the 2020 election, he opposed most of Biden’s appointments. 

But some Democrats are willing to give Trump his appointees.  In fact, they feel that they can give Trump the “rope to hang himself”, and are all-in for that.  

One of the valuable lessons we learned in the first Trump Administration, was not to get distracted by the “Shiny Balls” (an essay from 2017, no raunchy reference intended).  The first one was Matt Gaetz, who’s ill-fated appointment to Attorney General was doomed from the start (Flash/Bang).  Now that the side-show ended, we are “down” to the “real” Trump appointees.  Let’s take a look, divided into three categories:  the “normal”, the kind of “cray-cray”, and the “completely whack”.

Normal

• Marco Rubio – Secretary of State
• Scott Bessent – Secretary of Treasury
• Doug Burgham – Secretary of Interior
• Brooke Rollins – Secretary of Agriculture
• Howard Lutnick – Secretary of Commerce
• Lori Chavez-DeRemer – Secretary of Labor
• Scott Turner – Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
• Sean Duffy – Secretary of Transportation
  • Doug Collins – Secretary of Veterans Affairs
• • Susie Wiles – WH Chief of Staff
• • John Ratcliffe – CIA Director
• • Michael Waltz – National Security Advisor
  • Elise Stefanik – Ambassador to the United Nations

Cray-Cray

• Pam Bondi – Attorney General (2020 election denier)
  • Chris Wright –  Secretary of Energy (climate crisis denier)
• • Linda McMahon – Secretary of Education (Public Education Defunder)
• • Kristi Noem – Secretary of Homeland Security (Governor of South Dakota and confessed puppy killer)
• • Tom Homan – Border “Czar” (driving force behind the first Trump Administration’s child separation plan)        
• •  Russ Vought – Director of the Office of Management and Budget (a co-author of Project 2025)
• • Lee Zelden – Administrator of Environmental Protection Agency (opposed to environmental regulation)
  • Kelly Loeffler – Administrator Small Business Administration (no experience in small business – made her fortune in corporate investment firm)

Completely Whack

• Pete Hegseth – Secretary of Defense (potential sex offender and a man with drinking problem)
  • Robert Kennedy Jr – Secretary of Health and Human Services (leading anti-vaxxer)
• • Kash Patel – FBI Director (put a 60 person “political enemies list” for prosecution in his book)
  • Tulsi Gabbard – Director of National Intelligence (friend of deposed Syrian dictator Assad and Vladimir Putin admirer)

Shiny Balls

Clearly the “completely whack” list is a total distraction.  Who’s worse:  a drunk womanizer who has never run a large organization in his life (the DoD has 2.8 million employees), or a former Congressman who likes dictators?  Or how about Bobby, the leading anti-vaxxer in the Nation, a heroin addict with a worm in his brain?  Or good ‘ol Kash; who made his “bones” as Congressman Devin Nunes’ “hitman” in the early Trump years?

All four are uniquely unqualified.  But it will take three Republican Senators (along with all of the Democrats) to deny confirmation.  It’s simple politics:  maybe all three could vote against one, or even two.   The political ramification of voting (correctly) against all four is probably fatal.  Millions of dollars (thanks Elon) will be poured into a primary against the “offending” Senator.

 But the real point is, even if all four on the “Completely Whack” list were denied; it virtually guarantees the entire “Cray-Cray” list gets through intact.  And Trump couldn’t ask for anything better:  an election denier as Attorney General, a climate change denier at Energy, an anti-environmentalist at EPA, and a “administrative state” opponent at OMB.  Oh, and closer to my heart, a public education “de-funder” at Education.

Even the “normal” gang isn’t so great, but they’re the kind of appointments expected of a Trump administration.  They are likely to be, at least, competent in their area.  

Gibbs’ Rules 

NCIS has been a stalwart CBS television show for the past twenty-two years.  The lead character in the show (for the first twenty) was Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who had a very special list of rules, both for investigations and for life.  Rule #39:  there is no such thing as a coincidence.  It isn’t coincidental that two former Democrats (Kennedy and Gabbard, both cult-like figures), and a Fox TV host (Hegseth) are on the “Whack” list.  Win, lose or draw; they are the Shiny Balls, the baubles  placed intentionally to keep our eyes off of the rest of the appointments.  

There is minimal “momentum” for Republicans to oppose any Trump appointee.  And the “whack” list will absorb almost all of that energy.  It’s easy to think the Trump people are stupid, or crazy, to put these names up.  In the end though, they’ll win however it goes:  lose one or lose all four.  The rest of the program will roll on. Regardless how you feel about the MAGA leaders: don’t underestimate them.