Author: BC

By all accounts there wasn’t much that frightened Earnest Hemingway. From the front lines of WWI to the chaotic carnage of the Spanish Civil War, and all manner of exploration, fearless was not a misplaced adjective as applied to the literary legend’s disposition. However, one scenario did unnerve him throughout life, to the point of self-imposed worry and distraction. Franco fascists “papa” could deal with, but catching the Spanish Flu or its offspring terrified him.

It really gets down to the most basic of human urges, control of our circumstances. Pandemics exert their will and distribute harm to any and all, nobody gets special dispensation. Rich or poor, smart or stupid, anyone dependent on basic socialization is asking for it. Hemingway, who was born to connect the dots and convey stories based on the consequences of humanity’s struggle for purpose, was simply terrified by the randomness of the flu’s trek , and the purposelessness of its damage. Really, who can’t relate to that?

If the normalization of US history’s ugliest public servant has demonstrated anything at all, it’s that Americans are pathologically committed to our routines. Nothing seems powerful enough to deter that obsession. Veterans returning from any war of the 20th and 21st century struggled with hometowns and loved ones utterly the same as when they waved goodbye. Whatever chaos and hell our boys experienced abroad, when they returned nothing had changed. Clubs, weekly meetings, church pancake breakfasts, high school basketball games, one could still set their watch by each of them. The dichotomy between ceaseless repetition and war’s devastating spontaneity was in itself a trigger to many a troubled transition back to civilian life.

After 9/11, the most traumatic event in American post-war annals, the crusade was to get back to our routines. The Towers were still smoldering and Rudy was in his box seats for the World Series. Everywhere the mantra was “don’t let them win, get yourself to a mall!” Sure we were heading off the cliff of endless war and occupation without markers and plenty of unprecedented ugliness, but Saturday soccer mornings would not be denied! In America the occasion, whatever occasion, must go on. That’s all about to change. The critical question that will literally determine the death toll we suffer, is if we’re capable of changing enough.

Our White House resident infant’s constant idiocy aside, this is a genuine, certified, lose-some-serious-sleep crisis. In Italy, a doctor’s desperate Facebook posts have gone viral, and it’s horrific. Wave after wave of hospital admissions, all diagnosed with the exact same thing… bilateral interstitial pneumonia, Coronavirus’ clinical calling card. Dr. Daniele Macchini, who works in the northern city of Bergamo, provided chilling details of overwhelmed resources and exhausted staff in a “war zone” setting. While youth may spare most, the “target group” elderly in northern Italy are surely dying, only to be replaced by a new group of critical patients…. again and again. The country is now locked down and nobody is worrying about canceled weddings. Deadly serious stuff.

Here, our Executive government has utterly failed us. Trump, a soulless child at his core, has publicly demonstrated over and over he is not up to the task of crisis management. When Hitler turned on Stalin and blitzkrieged Russia, the murderous Bolshevik went into denial and hid from view for several days, leaving his entire realm without any leadership at all. Trump has been no different, instead of a Dacha, it’s Mar-A-Lago and the links of Doral, but the denial is the same. Children have trouble with proportion, to Trump three percent is “a real low number.” Dr. Brian Monahan, physician to Congress and the Supreme Court, believes between 70 to 150 million Americans will get Coronavirus, with a one percent fatality rate. That’s 700,000 to 1.5 million dead, uh yea, a real high number! Anybody witnessing our President’s goofball routine at the CDC had to wonder whether any kind of coordinated response is possible.

Thankfully, seemingly overnight, serious adults are acting with the haste required. A plan now seems to be taking shape, as state and local governments rush to fill the void, taking their cues from the best national and international guidance they can determine. In other words, anybody but Mike Pence and Alex Azar!

The emerging strategy is to try and slow the progress of the virus as much as possible in order to stagger the numbers of seriously ill people taxing the medical infrastructure. This can only be achieved by preventing socialization, particularly events with large crowds. March Madness will be spring silence as the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament will be played with only family and essential personnel in attendance. Whether CBS et al will try to drum up hype by filling up sports bars for viewing frenzies, thus sabotaging the whole point of the effort, remains to be seen. The NBA just suspended its season after a player tested positive for the virus. Now, that is messing with routines.

Yet and still, some routines are more valuable to certain groups than others, and without governmental coercion, it becomes like an honor system; some will act responsibly, others won’t. Some officials will be Roy Scheider in Jaws, some will be Amity’s mayor. The stakes now pertaining to those decisions are very high.

In Panama City, Florida they are raking the sand and preparing for the annual spring break invasion of college kids from every corner of the country. Judging from their civic leaders’ public declarations, with the exception of worthless lip service to following hand washing protocols etc., all systems are go. Few aren’t familiar with how that looks. Thousands of near naked young people doing just about everything one could imagine to spread a contagion… beer bong anybody?

After a week of this annual gropefest, they will then disperse back to countless cities and towns to spread whatever they have received. Being young and in good health, most will suffer minimal symptoms while fully transmitting the virus to all they encounter. Whatever good work has been done to counter the disease’s spread will quickly be undone as typhoid frat boys and girls unknowingly convey illness to those they love. Will Panama City Beach reconsider its plans? Will Governor Ron DeSantis, heretofore a mindless Trump lackey, make the call for them? One example out of thousands, one looming disaster out of thousands of other potential calamities. The movie script writes itself!

It’s the height of irony that, at a time we need national unity most, lockstep cooperation and sacrifice of our most precious touchstone, the routines we follow to the letter, we are as divided as can be. Maybe this desperate exercise in collective discipline will bring us back together and prevent countless deaths. I hope I live to see that.

Many of us have felt alone since January of 2017. Now, many more surely feel the same way, and before this is over many others still may suffer such fears. But we are all in this together, and that must be enough to bind us. We can be confident as things worsen this President will lash out for scapegoats and pursue the division he needs for continued relevance. Only if we ignore him and stick to the plan, while supporting each other, can we get back to the precious routines we measure normalcy by. Our greatest challenge. BC

A very wise man once advised not to “accept assumptions until you are dead certain nothing better is on offer, but once embraced, only the indisputable should force you to release them.” Our current crisis, and the struggle to effectively confront it, has everything to do with the assumptions we have adopted, recently rejected, and are considering taking to heart now. Make no mistake, the fate of the nation and the world rests on this shuffling of intrinsic attitudes.

MAGA’s destructiveness comes directly from a zero-sum relationship with so many established premises our country’s experience has validated. Like the absurd basis of its Sauronesque master, Fox/AM, Trumpism rises and falls on how many it can convince to shed fealty to the basic assumptions it slanders 24/7. On every meaningful issue of our time, climate change to Civil Rights, public education to tax policy, gun ownership to NATO, the MAGA gospel is no different from any Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity installment from yesterday or ten years ago. Whatever the deceitful mainstream media beguiled you to believe is a lie.

Relentlessly shrill Mark Levin, perhaps the most volcanically unhinged of the entire nihilist echo chamber, has a tried and true way of introducing pathogens into his ugly monologues. He’ll shriek some heretofore off limits absurdity, some libelous attack on a person or common assumption, and then declare “there, I said it!.” Something like: “Obama was a pothead. How the hell did he get into Harvard?! … there, I said it!” His wretched implication is twofold: first, Levin is the utter profile in courage for saying this publicly; and second, listeners should thank God a hero like him has liberated them to repeat this previously repressed controversy.

When Limbaugh prattles about climate change, he never presents it in terms other than “the drive by media wants you to believe this.” Of course, “this” is the entirety of decades of scientific research, thousands and thousands of hours devoted to developing accepted consensus… an assumption we could rely on for solving the problem. It works the same way for virtually everything else. NATO didn’t keep the peace, it merely fleeced us and eroded our sovereignty. Food stamps aren’t a critical safety net for the most needy, a tiny sliver of domestic spending; they are a scam for cheats and bankrupting the nation while forcing a veteran to go without.

A close friend of mine, who would go full Trump if he wasn’t such an otherwise decent person, seems always looking for examples to justify unabashed MAGA sympathies. The latest is a story he heard from a friend about a family who drove up in a luxury automobile and paid for a dozen jumbo jimmy Maryland crabs with food stamps, thus proving beyond dispute both the rottenness of the program and the multitudes out to soak taxpayers. Skin color was never mentioned; sadly, it didn’t need to be. To my friend, the tale formed an unarguable basis for a set of assumptions sufficient to indict do-nothing freeloaders specifically and “libs” in general. Moreover, in the binary choice between Trump and the alternative, what else could he do?! When I trashed the imbecility of such conclusions and expressed my disappointment in his inane reasoning, he suggested I “get a hobby.” Another beautiful relationship sullied at the crossroads of Trumpism.

Yet and still, if MAGA is an existential emergency created by the destruction of previously accepted propositions, what of the assumptions relied on by its opponents, sanity’s deliverers? Tuesday dramatically narrowed the options of who will wear the mantle and do battle with ruinous Trumpist despicability. At heart, what really differentiates Bernie Sanders from Joe Biden is the basic assumption his campaign holds to vis a vis what has befallen us since 2016. Trump as merely the corollary of a broken system, or an unprecedented pox that renders any ambitions beside his removal meaningless. The crux of the choice facing us.

A “Berner” I know very well speaks for most of his fellow travelers when he condemns the Democratic National Committee with near the same visceral exclamation as the GOP. To his eyes Hillary, and presumably those who supported her, got what they deserved in 2016. It’s unfortunate the alternative turned out to be so particularly bad, but a Clinton Presidency would have been near as intolerable. The current feeling among the Sanders faithful holds DNC Chairman Tom Perez with as much disdain as his GOP counterpart Ronna McDaniel, a Trump door mat. The memes they toss around originate from the very Russian troll operations as those posted by the wretched core; indeed, many are the same. Surely, things will only deteriorate if Super Tuesday’s results are any indicator. A candidate is responsible for his supporters. Sanders seems increasingly disinterested in providing light between himself and those amplifying his rhetoric.

The notion of MAGA as nothing more than a concurrent symptom of our systemic corruption is fully at odds with what has transpired since Trump took office with only the agenda of pandering to his base’s subterranean sensibilities. To accept it requires a skewed set of priorities that issues grossly insufficient importance to L’Enfant’s habitual lies and relentless divisiveness, not to mention dangerous incompetence. Really, at the bone’s marrow, it embraces Fox/AM’s broad strokes… the nadir existed before Trump was sworn in. Trumpies will tell you that means anything else is an improvement. Berners will contend the differences aren’t important enough to distract from the opportunities at hand. That’s called six of one, half dozen of another and, at least to me, it’s a disqualifying premise.

As for Biden, why wouldn’t we want an experienced West Wing hand taking the reins after government by Sean Hannity? Eight years at the side of quiet competence seems just the type of bullet point on a resume we should be looking for right about now. The true disaster of Trumpism is the wasteland of talent it creates in the executive branch. There is zero doubt a Biden Administration will attract the best and brightest for the daunting mission of repairing our government infrastructure and the war now unleashed on the very mission statements of its departments. If MAGA has proven anything it’s how destructive pandering to the notion federal services are the enemy can be. Biden has been clear from the start about his intention to reset, something wholly at odds with Sanders’ titanic pledges.

Four years of Trump demands remediation and repair before ambitions can be pursued. Moving forward on the assumption this political framework we now suffer is capable of “a revolution” after enduring a riot is not idealist, it’s at best delusional, at worst disingenuous. I wish that weren’t so, but it is; and if I’m not buying, it’s a certainty the legions of far more skittish voters aren’t either. There is little doubt few could chew Trump up like Sanders; not many demand accountability like he can. Nonetheless, the baggage of his brand, and the assumptions its agenda requires, creates too much background noise for his best work to be effective.

Finally, the elephant in the room, the specter still rarely discussed, is the promise Trump and his wretched core are not going to cede authority in a constructive, perhaps even peaceful manner. The rabid frothing of Trump’s rally incoherence will only magnify as the election nears, particularly if his prospects diminish. There is every chance the one who evicts him will be forced to spend the transition prying the office from Trump’s cold tiny hands. Biden’s relationships run deep throughout the institutions responsible for peaceful transference of power, the military included.

All hands will need to be on deck when it’s time to swab the vestiges of nihilism’s term in office. Mobilizing such an effort will be far more difficult in the face of “the socialists are coming” hysteria Trump and his Murdoch megaphone will be ceaselessly screeching after a Sanders victory. The unprecedented measures that may be necessary will be perceived quite differently from Biden than from Sanders. One narrative will focus the spotlight on an authoritarian refusing to cede power. The other will be addled by the false sidebar of a socialist seizing office.

Last night the President of the United States mused that “his gut” told him official fatality rates of a burgeoning global pandemic were too high, and the actual numbers were less than one percent. He also declared most cases of the Coronavirus would be mild enough to suffer through at the workplace. Think about that, a shot of DayQuil and nose to the grindstone; after all, we have my four-year plan to meet, right?

If there is a central lesson one hopes this Presidency confers, it’s that no matter how many times a lie is told it never blossoms into the truth. However, the opposite is also correct; just because a fact becomes common wisdom, and is repeated time and again, doesn’t render it less true. Four more years of Trump is ruinous to our nation and the world. Moreover, the damage already done can not simply be ignored and built upon; it needs to be rectified, new safeguards installed so it never happens again. A Presidency dedicated first and foremost to those bare essentials is fine by me. And make no mistake, where that leaves student loan forgiveness and medicare for all is one hell of a lot closer than if MAGA stays in office. That’s an assumption nobody can dispute! BC

In 1994, on Martin Luther King’s birthday weekend, the DC area was hit with a savage ice storm. Residents awoke on Monday morning to a skating rink. As I gazed outside from our Arlington townhouse, I pondered a dilemma. Our Washington Post carrier had demonstrated stellar commitment to his job and delivered my paper on time; there it was on the ground just down the two jagged concrete steps at our iron gate. But the going was clearly treacherous, a perilous 10-12 footsteps to pay dirt. I could go rummage out back for some ice salt, but my coffee was hot and I needed that paper now for the world to be right!

And so out I ventured in only my skivvies and slippers, on a dangerous quest for data! Slowly I slid along the sheen, employing an effective side sidle. At the gate all was good, but the steps would be tricky, I knew. As I opened the gate, resplendent in a quarter-inch coat of frozen precipitation, I mometarily let go and slightly pivoted…. everything from that point is regret. In an airborne calamity only Dick Van Dyke or Seinfeld’s Kramer could perform on purpose, I levitated and landed on the edge of the cruelly unforgiving concrete. If I’m ever unfortunate enough to be knifed in the back, I’m certain it won’t exceed the preposterous agony of that moment.

These days, more than 25 years later, that ridiculous decision, coupled with being hit by a car as a teenager, not to mention the numerous indignities skateboarding “vert” inflicted, haunt my spinal column most every morning. Approaching the ugly 6 0 is bad enough without the torment of chronic pain, but what are you going to do? Yet and still, whatever physiological underpinnings exist for my discomfort, it’s a sure bet outrageous events of the day are fully capable of triggering spasm. And it’s a lock I’m not an outlier. No doubt Trumpism and it’s accompanying chaotic absurdity is good business for chiropractors and chronic pain specialists. Sadly, those we now depend on for deliverance, our resistance superstars, are not much helping matters.

If I had my way, the Democrats would head to some warm retreat and not emerge until a national unity ticket informed by only the objective of trouncing Trump was hammered out. It appears the Administration’s slapstick handling of the Coronavirus situation is forcing many out of their self-induced catatonia. When things are bad enough that a developing pandemic provides some silver lining, it’s darkness at noon time! However, the Democratic Presidential field does not seem affected, most all exhibiting unbridled devotion to personal ambition, which by definition only increases L’Enfant Terrible’s re-election odds.

Dana Milbank, the Washington Post’s Trumpism-centric critic, was spot on when, bemoaning the South Carolina Jerry Springerfest debate, he harkened back to the dark GOP primary days four years ago, as those with brain activity and some interest in responsibility to the job they sought were nonetheless too craven to sacrifice a sliver of personal ambition toward protecting the nation from calamitous nihilist populism. But while Milbank views a Bernie Sanders nomination as similarly apocalyptic to Trump’s dismantling of the Republican 2016 field, it’s only equivalent in so much as Sanders’ march to victory illuminates this group’s collective incognizance, or worse, deliberate indifference, to the national ruin another Trump term ensures.

First, let’s be crystal clear: only the Fox/AM set should be dense enough to equate Sanders to Trump, or his brand of populism to MAGA. Michael Gerson, who has previously distinguished himself as a neo- conservative willing to call out Trump for the menace he is, exuded his own limitations damning Sanders with the faintest praise by “not contending the moral character of the two men is comparable.” While “Sanders’s is clearly superior,” Gerson acknowledged, that’s only “clearing an ankle-high bar.” Really?

A guy who risked his life for African-American civil rights and consistently swam upstream against legislative groupthink follies like The Patriot Act and Iraq War is morally wanting? A youngster in Indiana was once so impressed by Sanders’ courage he penned an award-winning essay about him. Inspiring future Presidential contenders doesn’t strike me as bottom feeding in the morals department. Any comparison of Sanders to Trump on that subject is ugly slander, but no more than equating Sanders’ bloc of partisans to the MAGA wretched core. While both groups share a disdain for reasonable compromise, only one’s bigotry and incredible ignorance spawned our current pestilence.

Sanders has come to his formidable position atop the Democratic heap as honestly as one could expect. He’s done the work and created a genuine grass roots base of support. That his nomination – really in the works since 2016 – suddenly horrifies the party establishment speaks to their lazy delusions more than any sudden populist wave his candidacy is riding. He is saying nothing now he wasn’t holding forth on in 2016. Mayor Pete wrote eloquently as a lad about his hero’s disregard for conventional rigidity. Now, two decades later, within the throes of 1600 Penn. fever, Sanders’ past support of the Sandinistas, and abidance of Castro, is on a par with Trump’s disgusting embrace of MBS and Erdogan? News flash mayor, back in the early 80’s, if you had a major problem with overthrowing Somoza in Nicaragua, your running buddies were Bill Casey and Ollie North!

Whatever one thinks of Sanders’ chances in November, he is getting the votes right now. Acknowledging that reality means the other candidates have two options…. that is if they care about defeating Trump. The first is to get their minds around a Sanders nomination and work with him on broadening his message to reassure jittery centrists. Rather than a revolutionary, get him to adopt the “classic FDR Democrat“ brand. While focusing the message on economic fairness and a stronger government role guaranteeing it, stop with the scorched earth attacks on the upper brackets. Above all, present a united front, a team of rivals confronting the greatest threat to America since the Civil War.

The other course of action, adopted in the belief a Sanders-led ticket will be disastrous, is to take one for the team and coalesce around one moderate capable of denying Sanders enough delegates to discredit any argument a wide open convention reflects a rigged primary process. Whether or not the Berners will support anybody else isn’t near as important as whether the process overtly justifies their worst suspicions; that will fracture the party. Should he come into the summer considerably short of the magic number, only zealots can claim the issue has already been decided.

So will it be plan A or B? Incredibly, it’s a resounding “neither” for the foreseeable future. Just like Kasich, Rubio, Cruz and company, the current group reserves the right to indulge their own delusions of grandeur. Elizabeth Warren – she of the lowering single digits – would rather throw haymakers and interrupt at will than move in either direction. When asked whether she’d consider throwing in the towel to strengthen somebody else, Amy Klobuchar literally sneered at the suggestion. And Buttigieg? He’s still contesting Iowa while claiming Nevada was rigged. Son, 25 plus points is a lot of rigging.

Bloomberg can do what he wants because money isn’t a concern. Trending in South Carolina, Joe Biden will surely claim to be the comeback kid with a Palmetto state victory. Point is absolutely nobody is considering anything but the latest polling data and ad buys. The future of the nation? Uh, yea… sure thing. Meanwhile, don’t start praying for St. Bernie just yet. Faced with fierce and some downright scurrilous attacks, with claims his crusade resembles a different shade of destructive populism, Sanders has responded by….. beginning to resemble a destructive populist. Instead of “fake news” it’s “the media establishment.” Rather than “liberal elites,” it’s the “corporate interests.” Instead of just “us,” it’s “us versus them.” Sanders is sounding increasingly disinterested in unifying much of anything, least of all the party he’ll desperately need in November.

A year ago the grave consensus among Democrats was 2020 would be unlike any election in American history. Since that time we’ve witnessed a disintegration of responsible US government at the whim of an unhinged maniac. But something funny happened on the way to the convention; our prospective saviors forgot about their duty. Like Frodo, who when he finally reaches the ledge over the molten abyss, and prepares to toss the ring into its hellish depths, suddenly forgets his purpose while entranced by the lure of its power, these pols seem to have forgotten why they’re here. They better remember soon or ruin is nigh. Pass me a perc; my back is killing me! BC

My father was always loath to give me praise. I never really understood the reasons, but settled on the notion he simply never wanted me to get too big for my britches. Since his reticence to offer compliments forced me to generally talk up my achievements as a coping strategy, a convenient circular process was established. I boasted to him hoping for more of his favor, which he then withheld so I wouldn’t crow as much. Nice.

Anyway, once when I presented him with a near flawless report card from UNH, figuring he couldn’t possibly find anything to stifle at least a mini proper, he shook his head and chuckled. Uh oh. Why would I need all of these classes on authoritarians, he wondered aloud. “Hmmm, totalitarian political thought. Jeez, Willie, you live in the US. What the hell do you have to worry about?” Indeed.

If Wednesday’s Democratic Presidential debate achieved anything, and believe me that’s a reach one has to think on, it confirmed beyond reasonable doubt government by Chuck Todd would reflect only marginal improvement over the Hannity Presidency we now suffer. Make no mistake, whatever notes NBC has been taking as to the media’s rightful responsibilities, or the precarious balance between abiding truth and searching out news in the MAGA era, Todd and company clarified it has absorbed all the wrong lessons.

That this was the first debate since PBS legend Jim Lehrer’s death proves God does provide bread crumbs along our wayward path; what we do with them is up to us. Or, perhaps as the great journalist H.L. Mencken observed: “God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.“ At least we are all spared the worry of ever mistaking Chuck Todd for his predecessor Tim Russert. After Wednesday’s performance Todd is more toward calling Jerry Springer a peer.

To be fair from the outset, there are no easy answers for navigating the uncharted territory this Presidency carves out. American journalism as an institution, its foundations and traditions, now faces dilemmas only authoritarians can confer. It has had zero practice confronting such existential concerns here at home. Whatever it learned covering the same abroad surely loses something in the translation. Balancing “the story” and a dedication to truth, even as a President and vast legions of propagandists subservient to him lie at will, is like treating cancer; there is going to be trial and error involved, mistakes along the way…. and side effects. Yet and still, refusing to acknowledge the challenge even exists, and planning formats for events as important as Wednesday’s, in line with such willful obtuseness is flat out malpractice.

It’s hard to imagine exactly how Todd and his fellow panelists envisioned their role, or what they felt was to be achieved, following the format all employed and line of questioning they pursued. One thing is certain, Mr. Meet The Press in particular was wholly unconcerned with applying the differences between candidates he questioned in Nevada to the constant stream of unprecedented chaos originating in the White House. The only context he cared about was whatever grudge matches he could stir up on stage.

As Democrats squared off with the fate of American democracy at stake, the notion of perhaps exploring whether unity may be important to unseating an incumbent who will surely spin his 20,000th fabrication by Election Day was never entertained by the moderators, Todd least of all. The idea of asking whether finding common ground now may actually aid one of them in November was obviously given not even a passing thought. Instead, the bent they sought to create was that of a reality show, ambitious policy nerds ready to put the knife in if ambition called for it. Really not much different from The Apprentice boardroom of past NBC prime time glory. Desperate survivors trying to stay on the island by casting doubt about those currently holding sway. Lord of the Flies comes to Vegas!

The impression the debate left was, not comical, but not serious either. A bunch of squabbling about policy details that go back to the beginning of this slog, peppered with settling of scores and introducing a neophyte to his limitations as a savior. When Todd wasn’t losing control of the proceedings, he was luxuriating in the inanity of it all. Presidential politics as sport, or pro wrestling…. right up his alley.

But yet again, to be as fair as one can be, the candidates required precious little prodding to get started on one another. In fact, it’s doubtful, had one asked Elizabeth Warren whether the sun comes up in the East, as Mayor Pete suggested, she wouldn’t have poo pooed the assertion as just more consultantspeak. She certainly wasn’t interested in talking about Trumpian pestilence, other than as a pro forma intro or afterthought. After all, she had a campaign to rescue!

But, in a time of crisis, Todd’s propensity to ask questions like he already knows the answer has never been more annoying. Broader implications past polling and recent sound bites never interested him much. Wednesday’s performance mirrored that vacuum he and the entire NBC team seem to feel should always consume inquiries. In other words, what does pardoning white collar felons willy nilly have to do with the price of copays. Or wholesale purges within the foreign policy and intelligence communities? An unhinged President without advisors. Not worth a mention? Nothing to see there? At least nothing worth shaving time from cat fights or brawls over convention rules.

In a time of national crisis three paramount concerns seem exceedingly reasonable: 1) our leaders recognize the emergency exists; 2) they make some effort to place the national interest ahead of personal ambitions, sacrificing the latter in service to the former; and 3) they actually lead and tell things straight. even if it’s not what their constituents want to hear. Should they stray from such parameters, well, that’s where a robust media is supposed to ask for explanations as to why they are doing so.

Wednesday evening the Democratic Presidential candidates utterly failed to meet that basic criteria. Worse, their wanton disregard was, not merely encouraged by those we rely on to hold them to account, it was demanded! Fox/AM has always fallen back on false equivalence when it’s most egregious sins are brought to light. That is, so maybe we did it, the mainstream media does it all the time. Ditto now for Trump and his GOP’s most indefensible outrages – what about Obama?! The degree to which Democrats and/or, say NBC debate moderators, help to donate credibility to such tropes mirrors our descent into the authoritarian abyss. Wednesday night’s debacle was ugly confirmation of that observation. The codependency of ruin. BC

“There’s always another war coming. All we get to decide is whether to fight in it.”

Murtagh Fitzgibbons

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; we are enjoying the golden age of dramatic television. Never before, since the first grainy images were put forth in black and white, have the creative jewels of storytelling been laced together in such a marvelous tableau every bit as powerful and relevant as history’s great authors convey. Incredible series, beginning with The Sopranos and evolving through masterpieces such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and more recently The Crown, have given us anti-heroes we can embrace despite all of our previous inclinations. Their stories resonate with force and tie together the patches of our culture and society in a search for some redemption for sins life renders inevitable.

Add to this list of great works Outlander, a sweeping tale spun directly from the pages of a series of novels Diana Gabaldon began penning in the late 1980s. But rather than Don Draper, think Game of Throne’s John Snow when imagining the series’ heart and soul, James Fraser. We need no time to warm to this dashing Scot, no episodes spent tolerating his foibles as terms for endearment. He is true from the start. By season 5, which premieres on STARZ this weekend, his love affair with the story’s central figure, Claire, and the adventures their circumstances have forced upon them, has honed him into a legendary figure, a hero for the ages.

Without spoiling plot arcs of the story, Outlander is a time travel fantasy set following World War II in Scotland. A British woman, series heroine Claire Randall, happens on some “stones” with mystical Gaelic qualities that send her back in time two centuries, where she encounters James Fraser. Their love affair, and the march of history it inhabits, defines the storylines and endows the characters. The magnificent authenticity of the dialect and settings elevates Outlander to lofty heights.

Yet and still, it’s the development of Jamie as a hero fit to match our highest expectations that truly distinguishes the production. Not since Lonesome Dove has a character been so successfully translated from page to screen. Informed of history’s secrets, and humbled by unspeakable trauma, James Fraser matures into a towering leader without peer. Never asking what he won’t give, or expecting what he can’t do, he is a veteran of war’s worst and becomes a constant example of man’s best. To follow his lead becomes a righteous endeavor.

We hope in this nation our leaders can approach a discernible degree of such majesty. They seldom do. The shocking phenomenon of so many now pledging fealty to one utterly barren of worthiness highlights a terrible illness in our body politic. That said, it’s too late to worry about where it started or why it spread because something’s coming of it; time is not our ally. History’s sweep is upon us, building bit by inane bit, one ridiculous tweet at a time. Nothing but the worst has been realized in this Presidency, and far worse still seems a good futures wager.

Several days ago, after nationally televised overt corruption by the GOP Senate contingent, the DR beseeched Barack Obama and/or any who have distinguished themselves before in service to their nation come forward and be heard. Far too few yet seem interested. Meanwhile, Trump minions transition without opposition from comical toadies to instruments of coming repression that, once underway, will only pick up steam and render grotesque MAGA rhetoric reality.

Examples are agonizingly easy to find. Right now ICE readies operations to begin round ups of DACA kids and families, even as thousands remain detained in southern border hellholes. Trump henchman cum Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gaslights Trump’s destruction of NATO to European leaders, even as its membership makes clear US leadership is not desirable in its current incarnation and readies for the break four more years will make a certainty. Roger Stone, a self-described scum bucket, now enjoys a campaign by Fox/AM and the GOP to be redefined as a martyr of deep state persecution.

Voltaire called it correctly when he observed those who can convince one to believe absurdity can also impel him to commit atrocity. The wretched core is chomping at that bit, itching for lines of decency to be obliterated. After all, it made clear long ago sinking to totalitarianism’s deepest depths was not something to lose sleep over.

We remain as good as our electoral system. For all of Trump’s many outrages, the standard rituals of Decision 2020’ remain in place and proceed apace, even as Moscow Mitch sends any and all election security legislation to oblivion.Nobody wants to buy trouble, and if elections can successfully stop the bleeding of a thousand MAGA cuts, all the better. Of course, that proposition appears more wishful thinking than viable hope with each passing Trumpist abasement. The hell of it only pollyannas can deny is anybody who listens can recognize sedition when they hear it. Anybody with eyes can discern corrupt injustice when they see it. And anybody with any sense of intuition for the flow current events creates can feel something very bad building to a crest. Between now and November this chapter is going to close one way or another. We must be ready for either.

Trumpism is a community destroyer, feeding on the alienation fear, resentment and grievance provide with a surplus. That millions of our countrymen and women are squarely on the wrong side of a breach capable of ruining all we hold dear is a tragedy, maybe a sorrow for all time. But the interval for reasoning has expired, at least for now they are lost to us as peers. MAGA is a burgeoning evil that will consume our national greatness, extinguish centuries of lessons and the cumulative empathy their teaching imparted. It will kill the mission statement our country’s existence has until 2017 embodied and leave us reviled by the world, a pariah instead of a beacon, a crisis instead of a solution…. a soulless wretch among countries of this Earth.

As the season 5 premiere of Outlander winds down, James Fraser, cognizant of a coming war, moves to galvanize the future support of his neighbors. Summoning the example of Highland Scottish clan chieftains, he relates how when battle was to come, they would use a fiery cross to alert their followers to prepare for conflict. He then calls on his people to swear allegiance to their kinship and promises he will stand with them whatever the future holds, always giving sway to the bond they share. Much of our current angst lies with our uncertainty as to who stands where and how much faith we can have in those still unfamiliar with the threat of authoritarian encroachment. Perhaps between now and November we need to become certain who we can count on, who cannot pursue routines under MAGA. Who can we call with confidence a brother or sister in arms?! Who, to quote James Fraser, will “stand by my hand?!” BC

“Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
Simon and Garfunkel

For most, learning to read was like learning to speak or tell time, it simply happened and that was that. Personally, I don’t recollect struggling with “Dick and Jane” or “Spot.” I do, however, remember the first paperback given to me by my mom -The Book Of US Presidents! How many times I read and reread it, I can’t begin to calculate, but I loved every page. It consisted of short biographies of each President, from Washington to the current White House occupant at the time of its publication, JFK. Standard, less impactful Presidents received two pages within the larger-font, single-spaced format, the more pivotal Chief Executives perhaps twice that. I savored every one. Polk to Grant, Wilson to Ike, I loved them all.

In many ways the Presidency possesses a regal air about it. We are, after all, a nation descended from monarchy. We don’t view the highest office in our land as the purview of faceless technocrats or policy wonks. Each of us appreciates, or condemns I suppose, the POTUS in our own way. Who we remember has as much to do with presidential comportment than policy agenda. When Ronald Reagan’s name comes up, few imagine the thousand-page tax reduction plan he was responsible for, its legacy still addling our national balance sheet. Instead, we remember the guy joking with surgeons after he was shot, or demanding Gorbachev “tear down this wall.”

I make no apologies for my fondness of Barack Obama. He inherited what nobody in their right mind would want to shoulder. Despite united opposition from a GOP with only his political destruction a priority, Obama slogged through the economic nadir his predecessor bequeathed and by the end of his second term full employment had been restored. While his foreign policy legacy was mixed, many quagmires he confronted, like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq were crap sandwiches no amount of seasoning could make edible. Moreover, Obama repaired our global network of alliances, frayed by the impulsive hubris of post-9/11 overreach.

Yet and still, what made Obama special, and fully worth extra pages were he to be part of an updated US Presidents reader, was his style and grace, his incredible cool under fire. More than perhaps any predecessor, he strove for much more than talking points and redundant proclamations. He thought on his feet, and took questions as they came, addressing each with original thoughts and insights, a determination to answer what was asked rather than evade. Both refreshing candor and intellectual rigor, more than welcome after W, who had some of the former and absolutely none of the latter.

Although Obama represented America’s triumph as its first black President, only ditto heads and more unabashed racists made anything of it; the rest of us saw but a Chief Executive we could praise or criticize without a thought to complexion. To me, he was a giant, well up to the historic task he embraced, who performed his job with the hope and good faith he campaigned on to obtain it. That he was rewarded a second term at the expense of a millionaire with every advantage the emergent Fox/AM juggernaut could impart confirmed his ascension was no fluke, and at least momentarily solidified America’s best nature and ability to prosper from lessons its past mistakes offered.

After Mitt Romney was dispatched handily by Obama in 2012 most assumed that was the end of line as far as his ambitions for public office were concerned. After all, not since Richard Nixon had a vanquished Presidential candidate started from scratch to run again for a seat he hadn’t already occupied. Moreover, Fox/AM, aided by cheap seat Monday morning QBing from loudmouth Donald Trump, was intent to blame another Obama term on Romney’s feckless moderation and the weakness they equated his civility with. Safe to say, few saw Romney as much more than a footnote in history, Obama’s Wendell Willkie.

Anyone who doubts the gap between the GOP activist base and general population need only study Utah’s 2018 Senate election to replace the retiring Orrin Hatch. At the state convention Mitt Romney, the Republican national standard bearer only six years earlier, could not beat Trumpie state senator Mike Kelly. Kelly, who would fit nicely into A Handmaid’s Tale and believes limits on possession of bazookas a constitutional outrage, edged Romney in the convention’s delegate count. Lucky for Romney, he was competitive enough to force a run off at the polls, where he demolished Kelly with 71% of the vote.

Although a nice comeback from his walk in the desert, Romney’s narrative as a freshman Senator was not particularly compelling. Indeed, one could have been forgiven for wondering why, apart from the personal restlessness forced retirement imposes, he even bothered. Nobody within Trump’s GOP had the least bit of use for a moderate Mormon most personally blamed for four additional years of “hope and change.” Fewer still were prepared to abide any dissent regarding the Godzilla trampling anything resembling, forget 21st century progress, but any reform after Eisenhower as well. Indeed, it was very hard to see what difference Romney could make even if he had a mind to. Last week changed everything and cemented a legacy history will notice.

It is understandable to relegate the adulation of Romney’s singular act of conscience to little more than commentary on how far we have fallen in three short years. In the short-term it resulted in nothing. Not 24 hours later Trump was declaring victory in the White House, spewing his typical megalomaniacal gibberish to glassy-eyed sycophants, a number of whom now constitute the House GOP leadership.

Of course, Romney has been signaled out for ridicule, but not much more than any other of the President’s enemies du jour. What makes the Mittster’s “guilty” worth grasping on to is why he decided to stand alone, what he recognizes is at stake, and how the costs of becoming an outlier outweigh any benefit conformity conveys. How easy it would be to join the crowd was what gnawed at Romney. Perhaps it really was simply his faith, or maybe, as one who got close enough to the big seat he could taste it, abiding Trump’s overt narcissism and stupidity in the face of the air-tight case House Managers put forth became a bridge to far. Whatever. Finally an adult has entered the room. More must follow.

But what have they done with Barack Obama, who appears to be enjoying retirement every bit as much as his old rival seemed to loathe it? Some months before Obama’s second term expired I engaged in a lively “discussion” with an FB friend who, sadly, has since passed on. He was a black progressive from St. Louis and had little use for Obama, who he felt sold out to corporate and military interests. Somehow the topic of what the President would do in retirement arose. Daryl predicted with confidence Obama would act no differently than W or Clinton and move toward the money. I heartily disagreed and was certain my hero would focus primarily on teaching, charity and community pursuits with no interest in corporate invitations. A wager was made. I still owe Daryl a French dinner.

During several weak moments since Decision 16’ – the turgid backwash created by the American electorate’s temerity in 2008 and 2012 – I have pondered whether it would have been for the best had Romney prevailed. Perhaps eight years of “moderation” at the head of the GOP would have marginalized its extremists and strangled MAGA in its cradle. Then I come to my senses and understand that Fox/AM and its wretched viewer and listener base was exactly why Romney never stood a chance; the party was already lost to him, even as he secured its nomination. That die was cast when John McCain conceded, his running mate already preening for the nihilists.

Broad coalitions win elections, not feuding campaigns that produce sour grapes. I suppose it’s a lot to expect Presidential candidates to check their ambitions for the sake of national survival. Just as it’s a tall order to call on a retired President, who spent many a thankless day taking relentless fire from both sides of the aisle, to quit enjoying post-high office life and again put a big fat target on his back.

That said, as Bernie Sanders seeks to contest a razor thin loss in Iowa, that may or may not owe to a bad app and nefarious GOP efforts to gum up the works, and the Buttigieg campaign starts to go full Machiavelli, the specter of four more years of MAGA has never seemed more possible. The off-season is over. The natural leader of this resistance needs to get back in this game; losing is not an option. Mr. President, the war effort needs you. It’s time for some heroes. After all, if Mitt Romney can do it, so should you. It’s the adult thing to do. BC

There’s the story of the guy who thought he was happily married until he began to pick up on a dishonest vibe from his wife. Despite trying to shake his suspicions, he only becomes more certain something is going on. When he confides his concerns to his best friend, his buddy laughs and promises there is no way his wife would stray. Reassured, the guy decides it’s just his imagination and vows to let it go, ashamed of himself for doubting his beloved.

However, as time goes by, try as he might, the husband just can’t shake the feeling there is deceit afoot. His wife seems evermore distant and preoccupied, nothing he can put his finger on, but disturbing nonetheless. He again confides in his friend, who again fully rejects the notion, this time admonishing him and warning obsessions like this ruin marriages. Nobody wants to be married to a jealous maniac. Get a grip on yourself, he orders.

Regardless, despite full self-loathing, the guy can’t ignore his doubts. Finally he decides to put the concerns to rest by following his wife to confirm she is true. He tells her he’s going on a business trip overnight and merely drives around the block and waits down the street. Less than an hour later she pulls out and heads into the city. Sure enough she pulls up to a hotel and gives her car to a valet who seems to know her well. The husband quickly tails her inside and his knees buckle as she embraces his best friend in the lobby. He then watches them disappear into the elevator and hustles to see what floor it stops on.

As he exits the elevator a few minutes later at the floor of their tryst, he almost immediately hears his wife’s unmistakeable lustful exclamations. He stands outside the door pondering what to do, wondering if standard hotel doors will withstand his attempts to imitate Dirty Harry. But then he sees a housekeeper down the hall and convinces her he left his key in the room. When he enters, there they are, caught in the act, nothing to the imagination.

“How could you do this to me? What about the vows we exchanged? And you… we’ve been friends since high school, you looked at me twice and lied to my face. Here you both are, screwing like rabbits! What do you have to say for yourselves?! “ The wife, stark naked, looks her husband right in the eye and declares “….I want a divorce. I won’t stay married to a man who doesn’t trust me. I can’t believe you followed me around. We’re done!” Stunned, the guy looks at his former best friend, who shrugs and matter-of-factly reminds him “I warned you she wouldn’t stand for it. Nobody but yourself to blame.”

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is who those looking desperately for a GOP Senate “moderate” not fully under Trump’s thumb pin their hopes on. They may want to look elsewhere. Coming into this week, Murkowski had voted with the President 75% of the time. Given how extreme this White House’s agenda has been, particularly its slate of judges for the federal bench, three out of four really doesn’t cut it in the profiles of courage department. Put another way, Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), presumably Murkowski’s opposite number as an outlier swimming upstream against his party’s agenda, voted against Democratic wishes 54% of the time. A real DINO vs. a phony baloney RINO.

Modern America has only been a two-party system. Sure, some independent candidacies have made their mark. In fact, the leading contender for this year’s Democratic nomination is at heart an independent. Yet and still, the vitality of our republic depends on healthy competition between the Republicans and Democrats, with a fidelity to honor and fairness, defined and enforced by the rule of law and the constitution that informs it. And make no mistake, the absence of one will kill the other and leave US democracy – the world’s ultimate stable currency – up the creek sans paddle. A rotten legislature is far more dangerous than an unleashed executive because it passes the laws meant to keep each honest. The corruption of both, in service to each other? Sayonara democracy.

Trump’s 2016 campaign was shocking in its flagrant, forget mere disregard, but outright disdain of established practices meant to promote civility and temper division, not to mention respect for the sacred electoral process. What rendered his victory as something less than an existential crisis to many was bipartisan confidence that his worst would impel at least a percentage of the GOP to hold him accountable. At the time, even with control of both chambers firmly in Republican hands, the belief even 10-15% of either GOP caucus would at least give others pondering dissent a refuge for thwarting the worst few doubted he was capable of provided essential reassurance for getting on with day-to-day routines.

Last Friday’s vote to bar witnesses from an impeachment trial with a foregone conclusion confirmed how delusional such assumptions were. Worse, caught in the bedroom, buck naked and fornicating with a despicably corrupt nation wrecker, unfaithful public servants like Murkowski want us to know it’s all our own fault. Who do Democrats think they are trying to hold Trump to account? How dare the House put Senate Republicans in such a position. Send us impeachment with no GOP support will you; who cares if he’s guilty?! Or, er… the transcript of the call…. I mean, why didn’t you wait and get Bolton to testify to you?! That’s it…. shoddy and lazy work. Doesn’t rise to impeachable anyway. So there! No witnesses!

Murkowski made a great show of both her indecision and seriousness at weighing the arguments throughout the trial, taking copious notes and asking numerous questions. Yet and still, in the end, her lame justification for denying witnesses was no different than Trumpie eunuch Rick Scott’s, just issued in more sincere tones. While Scott whined about refusing to “do the House’s job for them,” Murkowski solemnly derided “the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout…” The articles of impeachment were yet another chapter in the relentless victimization of our martyr President, according to Murkowski:

“…. I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.”

It’s hard to imagine a more comprehensive and impressive presentation than House impeachment managers put forward. The difference between drunken Lindsey Graham foaming at the mouth and Murkowski’s soft sell doesn’t mean anything when the result is the same. It’s like two golfers bogeying the same hole. One drives it right down the middle, chips on in regulation, putts to within three feet but then blows the par putt. The other guy drives it in the woods, chips back out to the fairway, hits it in the bunker, blasts out and makes a 25-footer for his five. One was uglier than the other, but each carded the same score.

The sham winds down this week, but this national nightmare promises to endure. When Trump finally does get his full party-line acquittal, one thing will be certain: his facilitators will all be in that hotel room with him. Each will be just as corrupt as the others, albeit some a bit more painful to discover. The blatant shamelessness of ruin. BC

There is not another group in America who has suffered more as a singularly direct result of Trumpenomics than Wisconsin family farmers. It is as though Trump and his tariff toadies, Peter Navarro, Larry Kudlow et al., get up daily and think “how can we screw those cheeseheads today?” Every bluster, every dictat, every impulsive declaration seems to come at the expense of the very voters most responsible for the 2016 election victory Trump never tires of rehashing in excruciatingly narcissistic detail. But like an abusive spouse, this Administration has constantly damaged Wisconsin’s dairy interests abroad, even as he swears they are the darling of his arbitrary tariff regimes. The numbers don’t lie.

In 2019 Wisconsin reported 48 farm bankruptcies, tops in the nation with most all small generations-old family outfits. Cheese exports, a Wisconsin niche, were down 14 % in 2018. Data from 2019 will surely punctuate that trend. Things have become so bad the US Department of Agriculture has made $2.3 million available for no other purpose than to combat the devastating emotional toll economic failure has wrecked, literally suicide prevention.

Last year one local cheese company executive made a doomsday prediction that, should export market conditions worsen, “I could see us getting to the point where we’re dumping our milk in the fields…. It’ll be a big ripple effect through the state.” Most agree that reckoning has arrived.

Reciprocity, the cornerstone of international trade relationships, assures that any protectionist inclinations by one partner will be met in kind by the other, toward a sector of their choosing. Moreover, markets are dynamic and don’t pause long for uncertainty; if one opportunity seems unreliable for long, other relationships will be pursued to reassert the balance. And it’s business… nothing personal. Unfortunately for them, Wisconsin’s farmers are favored pawns in Trump’s mindless attempts to bully concessions out of trade partners for interests that couldn’t be further from a failing dairyman’s dinner table.

The original North American Free Trade Agreement benefitted dairy interests, establishing new markets in Mexico and reinforcing advantages in Canada. Indeed, by 2016, when Trump was in Wisconsin calling the pact, “the worst deal ever signed,” Mexico had become the largest importer of American cheese products. Why a dairy farmer would enthusiastically vote for a candidate promising to tear up an arrangement fully benefitting his principle prospects is not near as mysterious as why he would promise to vote for the same pol after the pledge was carried out along with a plethora of other actions with similarly ruinous consequences. Yet and still, there it is.

As with everything else, White House messaging about family farm interests is fully conflicted. Trump never fails to mention at his rallies how “we love our family farmers and will always be there for them.” However, Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Purdue, the best friend corporate pork interests ever had, has been delivering an entirely different message lately. For example, last October, attending Wisconsin’s World Dairy Expo, Purdue offered blunt conclusions to those who embraced Trump in 2016:

“In America, the big get bigger and the small go out…..I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.”

It’s hard to imagine a clearer declaration of Trumpian priorities. The big dogs are going to hunt and the bones they leave just might not be enough… sorry Charley.

Last week, as the President was signing his USMCA – NAFTA’s replacement, which, except for a significantly larger big-money foot print, bears an uncanny resemblance to the deal it replaced – Wisconsin’s family farmers were holding out hope milk prices would rise and export opportunities would re-emerge. Even so, most are getting up even earlier and desperately plowing tracts of their land to grow soybeans and other crops in an effort to diversify. Of course, Trump’s trade war with China has blown up those markets as well. MAGA wing and prayers don’t offer much.

Near two years ago, as the first waves of Trump’s arbitrary tariff trouble started washing up on Lake Superior’s shores, the $64,000 question was whether rural America would permit the euphoria full liberation of their cultural resentments provided to sufficiently assuage the personal ruin MAGA economic idiocy would inflict. Today, as GOP Senate conduct crystallizes that our democracy is every bit as imperiled as Wisconsin family dairy farmers, and it’s clear our future will be decided this November, the latest polling data isn’t too hopeful.

Wisconsin voters appear as split now as they were when Trump eeked out his plurality in 2016. Since we can assume urban and suburban dissenter ranks have only grown, the polling more than implies Cheese State farmers remain MAGA-fervent. Apparently, sending immigrants packing, reversing Roe v Wade, and generally sticking it to the libs is worth a lot to them…. even generations-old legacies.

Or perhaps, like the blank-eyed Senate Republicans who reflect Trumpism’s grasp on flyover country, there is now simply a dystopian surrender to the futility of fate… a collective throwing up of the hands – “what can you do? He has to know what he’s doing, right? After all, he is a billionaire. Besides, it can’t be worse than the socialism Democrats offer.” Of course, subsidy checks now being cut to fortify farmers’ allegiance are the very essence of socialism, but that apparently complicates the narrative more than this addled and besieged bloc wants to consider. So, whatever the rationalization, it’s Trump or bust. Have some milk with those cookies! BC

Growing up as a young boy my father was of the Mad Men generation; he viewed his principle duties to our family as providing us with all the fruits his labor as an attorney could bestow, and being a protector and intimate partner to my mother. Standard stuff for his peer group. Spending off hours with his first born was not a priority for him. My brother John – two years my junior – and I enjoyed my father’s attention far less often than we would have liked, except when he was doling out discipline, which comprised a measurable portion of our dad-time allowance. Years later my youngest brother Alex would benefit from my dad’s post 60s enlightenment about “quality” time and perhaps some shame he felt for ignoring John and I, but we were beggars and couldn’t afford to be choosers.

One weekend night when I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old, my mother went out with an old friend visiting from out of town. Aside from the glee of getting a ten spot to run over and pick up some KFC for our dinner, the best part of the evening to me would be sitting on the couch with my dad as he attended to his Hamms (plural) and watched television. I didn’t much care what was on, hanging with him was enough. As it happened, that night I sat down licking my grease-stained fingers just in time for the start of To Kill A Mockingbird. When I asked my father what it was about, he mentioned something about kids growing up in the south, and upon reflection, grew more enthusiastic about me watching it with him. You’ll like this, he said with sincerity before ordering me to get some napkins for my hands!

I will always remember the experience of that night’s showing. Please understand, I was just a young boy with no idea or appreciation of any subtext that movie classic offered. To me it was just a story I was riveted by. Sure, Dr. King had been shot, and I got the broad strokes of what prejudice was, but institutional racism and injustice were not things I had any ideas about. And so I sat glued to the set, overwhelming my father with questions during the way too many commercial breaks. “Billy, just watch the movie!” still rings in my ears decades later.

I was horrified when they came to lynch Tom Robinson. “He’s supposed to get a trial, right,” I beseeched my dad. And I cheered on Atticus Finch as he laid waste to the prosecution’s case, finally getting Tom’s accuser to break down and replace details of the supposed attack with nonsensical gibberish that merely confirmed she was lying. When Atticus finished his closing argument I had a new hero to go along with Ernie Banks! But nothing prepared me for the verdict; it devastated me, made no sense at all!

Whether my father embraced the moment we shared that night, appreciated the enlightenment I received, I’ll never know. Perhaps he was heartened and proud seeing me agonize about racism’s cruel realities. Maybe he was just as glad to get me off to bed so he could pop open another brew… whatever. I do know that my education about the chasm between sanitized versions of America my elementary schooling provided and our actual civic deficiencies began then and there. Somehow I had to reconcile both sides of the equation: the trial of Tom Robinson I watched with the ridiculous conclusions of the jurors who found him guilty. Tough sledding for a wee lad.

Listening to Adam Schiff and company dutifully carry out the thankless work of presenting, not only an airtight case for impeachment against Donald Trump this week, but the historical landscape for assessing how unprecedented his actions were, memories of my first viewing of the Hollywood classic came rushing back. Just as Gregory Peck brought life to my still nascent sense of justice more than 50 years earlier, Schiff’s steadfast recitation of the facts reinforces a clear understanding of right and wrong, validating how overtly corrupt Trump and his toadies have acted throughout this entire affair. It’s all there for anyone to see and hear; there is nothing to the imagination. To deny its specifics is to embrace the essence of corruption they embody.

A nine-year old boy, unsullied by the relentlessly false counter narrative Fox/AM continuously recites, and the full GOP Senate caucus shamelessly embraces, would come to the same emphatic conclusions I reached after Atticus’ closing argument 50 years ago. A naïf not yet coarsened by MAGA’s relentless gaslighting of truth would surely be shocked by the case Schiff’s team has laid out, appalled a President could pursue such a scheme, and then disdainfully refuse to cooperate in the subsequent investigation of his malfeasance. Surely, as I was a half century ago, the youngster would be rapt by Schiff’s final entreaty to the Senate that:

“Here right matters. … If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is…..It doesn’t matter how brilliant the Framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

In his innocence the kid could be certain of the verdict jurors would reach. After all, they’re Senators who swore an oath, right? They’d have to be criminals engaged in a blatant cover up to sit through such an hours-long litany and let the scoundrel off the hook.

Sadly, we adults, like my father decades past, can only look with knowing resignation at a child’s reasonable naïveté, aware of the incomprehensible disappointment coming his way. After all, we know this GOP all too well. Rand Paul would have thrown spit balls Schiff’s way if not limited by decorum. Marsha Blackburn openly flaunted the rules and left the chamber to grant an interview for MAGA consumption. Later, she tweeted scurrilous libel against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, whose high crime to Trumpie sycophants consisted of following the law and obeying a Congressional subpoena. The talk track none will veer from is they’ve heard nothing new, even as every single one votes not to allow additional witnesses and documentation. Circular obstruction.

Whatever passions and outrage Schiff could incite from those watching the proceedings on television, a decisive bloc of jurors are merely bored and indifferent, like children at church. After all, as most made clear before the trial began., their minds are made up. House manager Hakeem Jefferies was spot on today when he said with a hint of resignation in his voice, if we can’t hold Trump accountable for this sorry episode, “God help us all.” Tragically, his plea fell on way too many deaf ears. Tom Robinson wouldn’t have stood a chance with this bunch. BC

In 1956 Hungarians reached their limit with being a Soviet satellite and took to the streets. As grass roots as it could be, the uprising morphed into an armed struggle for independence the puppet government seemed ill-equipped to quell. Each day of conflict appeared to enhance the movement’s prospects as armed clashes got the better of government reinforcements, many who seemed conflicted about repressing their own people. The Kremlin was not happy with developments.

But Nikita Khrushchev had an ace in the hole on the ground, an otherwise invisible diplomat leading Russia’s embassy named Yuri Andropov. Repelled by what he saw as scurrilous mobs challenging the communist ecosystem, Andropov got to work transmitting intelligence and analysis back to Moscow. His reports calibrated the opposition’s strength and weaknesses, paving the way for Soviet military intervention. With a coolness and moral indifference that would become his calling card, Andropov directed the violent destruction of Hungarian independence.

His bones made under fire, Andropov returned to Moscow a couple years later and in 1967 was tapped by Leonid Brezhnev to head up the KGB. It’s not hyperbolic to say his near two decades there would and continues to steer history. Throughout Andropov’s tenure he masterminded both the ruthless efficiency of the KGB’s domestic and Eastern Bloc apparatus, which made dissidents disappear every bit as seamlessly as his predecessors, while overseeing an arsenal of foreign agents pivotal to destabilization agendas abroad.

Ironically, while fully committed to totalitarian relativity of truth, Andropov was a well educated and secure man who insisted on frank honesty from subordinates, formulating policy and procedures in line with facts, no matter how inconvenient. A paradox to be sure. Yet and still, nothing contradicts the notion Andropov was every bit as guided in his world view as Lenin himself that capitalists were vapid and weak, there to be steamrolled by history’s inevitability.

Flash forward to the fall of 1982 and University of New Hampshire’s outstanding political science department. It was an exciting time to be a senior poly sci major at UNH. After all, the campus was beginning to see the first visits by Democratic presidential primary candidates looking to unseat Reagan. Moreover, for a US-Soviet studies geek like me, the Cold War was perhaps at its peak, with Arms Control center stage, the no nukes movement roiling Europe. But what really had my attention that semester was Soviet succession.

Brezhnev was desperately ill and for only the fourth time in the history of Soviet power a change at the top of the politburo was imminent. My mentor at UNH was a Soviet studies professor named Thomas Trout. A dashing former naval intelligence officer, Trout’s lectures were the most well attended in the department, if not the entire school. As charismatic as he was handsome, Trout meticulously organized his presentations to both explain the mechanics of Soviet decision making and provide an interesting narrative for how its policies impacted current events.

By my senior year I was a Trout protege, flattered by the extra time he often granted me to discuss unfolding events. As to Brezhnev’s replacement, Professor Trout was adamant the successful candidate would be a “generalist,” a politician instead of a government bureaucrat. As in America, pressing the flesh and networking influence, a vast outreach amongst the nomenklatura was necessary to win a game of thrones few really understood.

Of course most all I knew of the Soviet system I had learned from Professor Trout, and I wasn’t inclined to doubt his inclinations. Yet and still, I had a tough time eliminating Yuri Andropov from the mix in my handicapping. It seemed to me common sense dictated that within a totalitarian security state control of the secrets meant you knew everyone’s weaknesses and how best to exploit them. And as George Kennan observed, the cutthroat nature of Soviet politics would make American mob bosses blush. Stalin was not a politician; he was a henchman. So why not Andropov?

Sadly, I wasn’t confident enough in my own instincts to follow through on my hunch. As Brezhnev gasped closer to death, I convinced myself some mayor of Leningrad had the “generalist” profile and enough Central Committee connections to grab the ring. The final exam of my Soviet Policy class contained a bonus question to pick Brezhnev’s successor, with the promise of personal public props from Professor Trout for any winners the next semester. Nobody had Andropov and I learned an early lesson about the propriety of swimming upstream against convenient conventional propositions.

Yuri Andropov survived just 15 months as Soviet Party Secretary before his own failing health caught up with him. However, his influence on history would far outweigh his brief tenure at the helm of the Soviet State. A young intelligence officer would embrace Andropov as a hero, and utilize the sources and methods institutionalized by the KGB before the USSR’s fall to facilitate his own rise to power and lead what was left through the slog necessary to restore past greatness. Whatever degree western democratic sensibilities pervaded post-Soviet Russia, whatever optimism existed that pluralism could effectively replace authoritarian rule and usher in a new era of regional and global power, Vladimir Putin was never on board.

In June of 2004, on what would have been his 90th birthday, a bust of Yuri Andropov was unveiled in his hometown of Petrozavodsk. That same day a ceremony was led by Vladimir Putin himself to commemorate his hero. Old school state power was what Andropov brought to mind, and Putin was not bashful in praising it. For younger Russian progressives it was yet another ominous sign of democracy slipping away,

Meanwhile, about the same time in the US, Trump Casinos and Hotels was $1.8 billion dollars in debt and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After going through near half a billion dollars of his father’s wealth, Trump had virtually no prospects left in America, not a bank or lender would allow him into their lobby. As one biographer put it: he was going down like the Titanic when suddenly help arrived just for him…. Russians. The synergy of ruin. BC