Author: BC

At about 5:00 PM on April 12, 1945 President Franklin Roosevelt died. Anyone close to Roosevelt could not have been shocked by the news. In fact, looking at photos of FDR during the last year of his life, including famous images of him with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, one marvels at the collective delusion exhibited toward Roosevelt’s inevitable mortality; the man had simply not been at all well.

Yet and still, on the fateful day he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage it seems none was more surprised than the man who would succeed him. As all who mattered rushed to the White House to oversee the empowerment of a new POTUS, Truman sat “looking dreadful…. absolutely dazed,” according to biographical accounts. Taking the oath, Truman would later ruminate, he felt the “moon, the stars, and all the planets” had just fallen on his shoulders. Regardless how much previous thought Truman had given to FDR’s demise, it’s clear when the time came he was, at least for a while, a deer in the headlights. And why not? America hadn’t had another President in more than a decade, and the world was at war, a conflict yet to be fully decided by any stretch.

Fortunately, there were good men available to advise Truman and help develop a White House decision making process. Truman, was as well read as any President ever to serve, but he knew what he didn’t know, particularly after being near fully shut out by FDR from inner circle war planning. Luckily there was Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, who Truman recognized for the great statesman he was, and whose advice the new President was not shy to seek and consider.

Later, Truman would appoint Marshall Secretary of State, where he would be responsible for the Marshall Plan, one of the great US foreign policy achievements. Early on, however, it was merely the understanding Marshall and other able advisors were available for counsel that afforded Truman the critical confidence and well being to take on the plethora of momentous challenges he immediately faced. One can only shutter at how different history may have been if Truman had not been up to the task he suddenly inherited, if he had been too insecure and arrogant to cultivate wisdom from the braintrust available to him.

It’s a certainty Donald Trump was at least as startled when he became President as Truman was in the spring of 45’. By all accounts, nobody within the leadership of the Trump campaign, least of all the candidate himself, expected to prevail three years ago. As Election Day neared, Trump rallies were more him hissing about a “rigged system” that would ensure his defeat than any plans for a presidency. Indeed, to hear Trump “campaign” in Decision 2016’s homestretch was to absorb all of the whiney conspiratorial grievance and resentment MAGA had represented from day one. The feeling was it would simply continue as a central part of Fox/AM’s post-election sedition. Nothing is more ironic within the ever expanding slew of Trump outrages than the projection to those considering his overt corruption the “sour grapes” diatribes he was honing to a fine edge before snow fell in hell and he won.

There is a great picture of the Trump inner circle looking at television monitors as the impossible was playing out. While all look flabbergasted at what’s unfolding, the winner looks horrified, crestfallen at the cruel karma his hubris had created. Suffice it to say, Truman could not have looked more “dreadful” than our President-elect felt at that moment. Unfortunately for all of us, Trump never enjoyed access to the nation’s best and brightest, and moving into the final year of his term, it couldn’t be clearer this President only feels threatened and aggravated by counsel he makes no effort at all to digest.

All of which brings us to the last man standing in the West Wing with any sort of relationship at all to the purgatory between Trump’s unhinged impulses and the levers of government responsible for somehow translating them to practical policy. Saying Mick Mulvaney is no George Marshall is like saying Boone’s Farm Apple isn’t a Chateau Lafite Rothschild; Marshall would have thought twice about entrusting Mulvaney his sandwich order, but here we are. It’s comical to hear MAGA minions in Congress claim the President is focused on his policy agenda. Anybody with eyes and a twitter feed knows this is nonsense and looming impeachment completely obsesses Trump. To that end, Mulvaney is mobilizing his troops to go to war against House investigators, refusing any and all requests for cooperation.

Mulvaney’s impact on DC bureaucracy is as vast as any in the White House. After all, he currently holds three jobs. In addition to chief-of-staff, Mulvaney also still heads Office of Management and Budget, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all of his concerted efforts to fully destroy the latter notwithstanding. Word now is that Mulvaney loyalists at OMB like Russell Vought will stonewall Democrats as they piece together the mechanics of placing a hold on near a half billion dollars of military aid previously authorized for Ukraine.

Of course, Mulvaney, himself, admitted publicly during a news conference the aid had been held as a lever to pressure the Zelensky government to follow Trump wishes. Mulvaney declared without hesitation such actions were near routine, nothing at all worth a second thought. “Get over it” was the advise he had for reporters at the time. The contortions he subsequently went through to walk his prattle back, amid rumors he had sealed his fate on the way to becoming a former Trump lackey, confirmed chaos in the West Wing about which narrative to follow. Nothing new there.

What is new and increasingly ominous is the incredible idea that Trump may actually shut down the government later this month as part of his continuing tantrum against impeachment. Nobody believes for a second, the President came up with that one by his lonesome…. all roads point to Mulvaney. What better way to get back in Trump’s good graces than come up with out-of-the-box scorched-earth militancy? There is a reason Mulvaney is reviled by most who regret having to share his company; this idea illustrates why. It is at once as servile and gratuitously nasty as imaginable. What’s next? We’ll give San Francisco a little taste of a tactical nuke if Shifty doesn’t back off?

The battle lines in the White House are clearly drawn, the litmus test for loyalty unmistakable: you either cooperate with investigators or you tell them to get bent. As for shutting down the government, that’s always been in Mulvaney’s wheelhouse. As a Freedom Caucus backbencher, then Congressman Mulvaney was perhaps the most reliable yea on the Hill when it came to budgetary gridlock. Now he can furlough government workers just in time for the holidays as a foolproof way of insuring his own job security. What would George Marshall have said?! ….. “Son, are you sure you’re up to this? Last time you got me pastrami instead of corned beef. Maybe you better write it down.” Another ugly tint of ruin! BC

Historians and political scientists are scrambling to provide real-time academic terms and definitions for what currently ails our polity here in America. Those looking for solace search ardently for previous precedents in our national timeline, the better to assure we have faced this before and survived to tell the tale. Yet and still, the further down our current road we travel, the more difficult that task becomes.

Those who talk aimlessly about the prospect of civil war surely don’t appreciate the trials the last one created. And few would dispute that only the protection two oceans afforded at that particular moment in human technological development prevented foreign incursions seeking to capitalize on our cannibalism. Whatever another such conflagration would look like, it’s a sure bet our adversaries are in a better position to manipulate it for their purposes. But, histrionics aside, where do we really stand on the spectrum of national dissolution? After all, whatever our current plight, nobody around DC let it keep them from game 7 and World Series glory…. did they?

“Regime cleavage” is one of those preposterously obscure terms only a poly sci major with nightmares of mid-terms past or present would recognize. In a nutshell it refers to an erosion of respect of/concern for a governmental system’s foundations and established practices by a significant bloc of citizens and leaders who convey their will. Yesterday’s straight party line House vote on the next phase of impeachment fully clarified a GOP within the throes of such inclinations, stridently equating the rule of law with leftist intrigue, and setting forth competing elements that cloud our civic horizon.

The pattern for Republican ingestion of and steady immersion by Trump’s incessant disdain for any sort of established propriety has been predictable and wholly unsatisfactory since the toxic launch of his campaign back in 2015. Now, however, it has metastasized into outright servile homage, where anything other than unquestioned support of his rabid sedition is seen as apostasy. Early on the routine had four main steps: first shock and measured criticism; then deflection of the act by attacking the Democratic response; next creating equivalence for the act and asserting the other side does it as well; finally, forgetting about the whole thing and declaring the American people expect bipartisan solutions to problems “they care about,” not dwelling in the rear view to make political hay out of yesterday’s news.

The ugly saga of Trump’s scheme to extort a newly elected Ukrainian government for the purpose of disabling the Biden presidential campaign now highlights an odious new trajectory to the way Republicans respond to his corruption. Instead of shock there is simply grudging passivity, with both deflection and equivalence almost immediate and reactively prosecuted without reservation. Instead of coping with the burden Trump’s fait accomplis force them to bear, much of the House GOP now sees opportunities to brandish pro-MAGA bonafides with no quarter to the facts that are beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, pressuring Zelensky to do Trump’s dirty work is ennobled as exactly what “this President was elected to do,” another promise kept!

As Trump’s term has deteriorated into one unprecedented nadir after another, GOP lawmakers have actually narrowed their range of options, more comfortable putting themselves into the same corner Trump occupies. Of course, unhinged Trump rhetoric is now business as usual, Trump being Trump. “Inappropriate” or “not how I would have put it” is the most one gets these days up to and including the worst of his rabid gibberish. As for patently impeachable conduct like the Ukrainian affair? It’s no longer the crime but instead how it is investigated… process.

A steady stream of rock solid witnesses, with comparable credibility, continue to come forward to fully validate the President wanted to withhold near a half billion dollars of critical military aid to a former Soviet satellite now again under siege by Russia, yet the House Minority Leader is only interested in “transparency.” When a group of Hannity darlings “stormed” a hearing they whined was “shutting out the American people,” the implication was sinister Dems were secretly kneeling around a cauldron chanting Soros mantras. Last anybody checked every committee in Congress consists of exactly half minus one Republican, but mobs seldom dwell on details.

The White House has based its entire defense on the transcript it provided to the public of Trump’s July conversation with Zelensky. Despite one nail after the other being driven into the quid pro quo coffin, the President has tweeted again and again the transcript renders all else void and absolves him. But now, as both decorated veteran and National Security Council staffer George Vindman, and another NSC staffer, Tim Morrison, decimate that proposition, a shameless shift is underway toward regime cleavage territory. Who cares if there was a quid pro quo, what’s wrong with doing whatever is necessary to drain the swamp? Why should we give military aid to a pipsqueak who won’t help lock the Bidens up? Add that to what Minority Whip Steve Scalise breathlessly terms “a Soviet-style process” and we get 40 percent or so of the US and their elected officials saying “so he did it, who cares?…. Try and do something about it! The Constitution doesn’t apply to, how did our beloved leader put it, oh yea…. human scum!”

A quick trip to Twitter or Trump’s Facebook page confirms wretched core sensibilities are now at least malleable, at worst outright hostile, toward the Constitution or any previous White House best practices. If the Mueller Report’s meticulous verbiage and open ended conclusions left enough light for a benefit of the doubt, the Ukraine investigation does not. It really is open and shut.

Yesterday not one House Republican voted to even approve the open impeachment inquiry they have ceaselessly claimed the Democrats were resisting. Even Florida Republican Francis Rooney, who was literally forced into retirement after only two terms for casually stating a desire to “get all the facts on the table,” fell back into line. Incredibly, more Democrats (2) voted no than Republicans voted yes. Forget “big tent,” this GOP couldn’t muster a lean-to.

About 160 years ago roughly half of America declared their desire to secede rather than take yes for an answer on slavery. “Do something about it” was their challenge then, just like it’s the seditious wretched core’s now. This is what it’s come to, the manifesto of Trump’s GOP: we back a lazy, unhinged and utterly seditious lunatic, who brazenly breaks the law and engages in conduct the Constitution clearly defines as impeachable. Elections have consequences and you’re just going to have to lump it until 2020. But, by the way, since you have refused to do that with this latest coup attempt, we reserve the right to fully discredit 2020’s results if we don’t like them…. we’re playing under protest. Oh, and also you all are socialists who want to disarm us and teach our kids to be atheists; if you take back the White House all bets are off! The regime cleavage of Trumpism and the $64,000 question…..“What are you going to do about it?!” BC

Between 1936 and 1938 Joseph Stalin moved to fully complete his total hold on Soviet power by purging most every remaining founding member of the Bolshevik party. In a series of farcical show trials, badly tortured and defeated men were paraded in court rooms to confess to crimes that ran the gamut from plotting to assassinate Stalin to mobilizing counterrevolution in service to the Romanov Dynasty. No accusation was too absurd, and the entire sham confirmed for many western observers their worst fears, that Russia was now under the iron grasp of, not only a devout communist, but also brutal autocrat. Many an international comrade saw the spectacle as a tragic crossroads as well, when they realized Marxist ideals had succumbed to individual depravity.

George Kennan, then a young deputy and translator to American Ambassador William Bullitt, would be so affected by the public purges that it would solidify his view of the Soviet system as a grave international threat. The post-war “Long Telegram” he would wire to Truman Administration officials more than a decade later, which provided the foundation for US containment policy until the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in November of 91’, was fully informed by lasting impressions the Moscow show trials had on Kennan.

Authoritarians use a panoply of methods to repress opposition and corrupt government toward their narcissistic whim. Perhaps the underhanded deceit most often employed is the libelous discrediting of critics. Whoever the opponent is, or how lofty their public standing may be, autocratic strategies require whatever is necessary to bring their veracity into question. Rumors, half-truths, innuendo, third-party whispering…. outright lies; nothing is out of bounds if it helps to confuse the issue and cloud the facts. The focus is never on what is being said, but who is saying it and what their motives may be. To actually address the substance of the charges validates them. Far easier to simply destroy the reputation of the person providing the testimony.

Were one to be tasked with making up a resume of distinguished public service, it would be hard to exceed the career of William Taylor. A graduate of West Point, Taylor served in the famed 101st Airborne in Vietnam, where he was decorated for heroism. A subsequent graduate of Harvard’s public affairs program, Taylor served as a staffer for Senator Bill Bradley before moving on to postings ranging from the Department of Energy to the US Ambassador’s office for NATO, Afghanistan to Iraq under Colin Powell. In 2006 Taylor was appointed by W. Bush to be the Ambassador of Ukraine, where, it was later reported, “he took charge of the embassy in a remarkably effective and positive way.” After serving in the Middle East under Obama and eventually becoming the executive vice president of the Institute for Peace, Taylor was called on by Trump in June to head back to Ukraine as interim charge d’affaires, presumably to clean up the mess made when Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch was recalled in May.

Taylor’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee about Trump’s efforts to extort incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could not have been more damning. If Trump’s own admissions, or the clumsy public confession of inept acting Chief-of-Staff Mick Mulvaney weren’t enough to confirm nefarious intention, certainly Taylor’s meticulously documented timeline of events and his purely professional and non-partisan concerns got the job done. What he verifies in exquisite detail is far more than a phone call, it’s a systematic extortion effort in plain sight, before the incredulous eyes of a top notch foreign service professional.

If Taylor’s testimony indicted the entire scheme that led to Trump’s fateful July phone conversation with Zelensky, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security staffer with his own sparkling life story, convicted the phone call itself. A decorated veteran wounded by an IED in Iraq, Vindman’s family actually escaped the Soviet Union. His is an idealized vision of America and the Constitution he expects to guide its governance. Calling him a patriot is like calling Tom Brady a QB; it doesn’t near hit the mark.

Like Taylor, his testimony reflected a straight arrow shocked at what he was witnessing, appalled at its sleazy brazenness. Trump and his minions have latched on to the “transcript” defense, claiming the written account of the call with Zelensky the White House furnished offers full vindication, case closed. When Judy Woodruff of PBS, an inquisitor nobody would mistake for Perry Mason, had Trump poodle VP Mike Pence on the ropes the other night, he continually fell back to the Alamo of the transcript and its cascading flow of exoneration. But Vindman told House investigators of his dissatisfaction with the furnished account’s veracity, and made clear he thought it incomplete. Game, set, match.

Taylor and Vindman now join Yovanovitch, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strok, Lisa Page, Robert Mueller and his elite team of investigators, and a host of others who all share two main attributes: they dutifully performed their jobs, which required investigating the most corrupt Administration in American history; and they all boasted previously exemplary careers and reputations as public servants. All are now under scurrilous attack by our real incarnation of Buzz Windrip and a host of cowards whose ambitions can only be pursued as servile expendables to his lies and criminality.

The hideous crescendo of the show trials of Stalin’s Great Terror was the persecution of Nikolai Bukharin, an OG Bolshevik present at the creation of the Soviet State and previous right hand to Stalin himself. At his proceedings, the once vibrant Bukharin was a shell as he listlessly heard the state’s prosecutor label him a cross between “a fox and a pig.” Of course Bukharin’s crucifiers got nothing on Trump in the abasing insults department. Speaking of those he has collectively libeled as “never Trumpers,” the leader of the free world declared: “Watch out for them, they are human scum.”

Right now the Attorney General of the US is devoting the full resources of his office to skew and augment puzzle pieces, jamming them into a conspiracy tapestry recklessly created on the fly with no other purpose than to discredit Trump’s investigators. Whether his efforts end up as the desperate gasps of a criminal enterprise cornered by democratic institutions they failed to destroy, or a specific place and time where previously inept miscreants mutated into cogs of an unleashed machinery for repression, it’s no longer crying wolf to equate the well being of those on Trump’s ever expanding enemies list with our prospects as a going concern. A critical juncture. BC

Seems in every high school class there is the one guy and girl who rise above the needless parameters idiotic cliques impose. Since I wasn’t yet much on fully interacting with girls back then, I’ll limit my observation to Churchill 78’s baddest dude. His name was Lester and he was something to behold. Blond and Adonis-like, but with a slight scar on his face that only added credibility, he moved with confidence through the halls and meeting areas, fully comfortable in his own genetically blessed skin.

It was impossible to label him. He was way too athletically gifted and involved to be a stoner, even though few appreciated Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull or not inhaling more. And while he was one of the track team’s fastest runners, and may still hold a record or two at his swim club, nobody bemoaned him as some oafish jock. Although he sometimes joined us chronic truants at the house of somebody’s working mom, more of a rarity back then, I always enviously assumed his academic performance was more than adequate.

What Lester effortlessly demonstrated back when Carter was President is the priceless freedom self-assurance provides, the blessings of the road less traveled. He moved free from inane narratives about who was and wasn’t worth befriending, who could or couldn’t elevate your stature, who had or didn’t have something worth offering.

He liked to run, so he ran, and enjoyed the friendship of other runners. He loved rock and roll and partying, so he counted all of us as amigos. He saw girls as fellow humans rather than startling enigmas or prey grazing on hormonal hunting grounds, so he enjoyed their company. It was all so easy for him because it came so natural; nothing was overthought, no pretense entertained. If it felt right he did it, free of any taint pre-judgement could impose.

For those of us bound by adolescent insecurities and the failure ghosts they conjured, Lester was viewed as, say Ted Williams, on a different playing field we weren’t qualified for. When I was in his company I felt fortunate and paid attention. He had a way of casually admonishing inanity with a sarcastic chuckle as he intoned your last name with a hint of dismissiveness; it was all that was required. He hailed from one of those families everybody knew, each of his siblings both receiving and getting respect for their loyalty to the other. If his older brother was intimidating and a bit aloof, his younger brother was easy to talk to and great to hang around with; each was their own person, but proud to be part of a set.

After graduation I believe he and a good buddy hitchhiked across the country, a saga fully in line with his gigantic persona. While my opportunities to hang with him during my 20s and early 30s were spotty, they were always rewarding. He never became rich and famous, instead settling down and raising a family like most of us. Yet and still, the natural awe and respect for him I always felt never substantially waned, and enjoying his company was always a privilege.

Today is his 60th birthday and I was honored with an invitation. No doubt the party will reflect his life, attended by folks who feel as I do about the good fortune of counting him as a friend. His wife is wonderful, his 20-something kids are as attractive and refreshingly genuine as he was at their age. Years pass, but the song usually remains the same. Who we become generally owes to who we were. In this case that’s an indisputably good thing.

I’m fairly certain most of us have occasional fantasies of what we would do differently if somehow permitted to revisit our formative years. Who doesn’t ponder the senseless counter-productiveness of youth with an eye toward solutions impossible revisionism can provide? Speaking for myself, the answers are never very hard and always take me back to the same proposition…. I would have been more like Lester. BC

The rivalries of the various Eastern European peoples go back centuries upon centuries. To adequately understand why Hungary now has testy relations with Ukraine would, at minimum require returning to before WWI and the days of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Ten to twelve paragraphs will not get that job done. Suffice it to say that a sizable minority of ethnic Hungarians – more than 150,000 – reside within Ukraine. Many have pursued duel citizenship even though it violates Ukrainian law. Their native tongue is Hungarian, which they insist their children should be permitted to be taught in, lest they lose the foundations of their ethnic identity. Such sensitivities and other cross-border issues make for tensions ripe to be manipulated in service to nationalist political agendas.

From his arrival on the international scene with nothing but, first handlers futilely trying to keep his worst under wraps, then the guff that came when he was eventually left to his own devices, Trump has offered seasoned strong men around the globe a soft target to take full advantage of. Enamored by the imagery of world leaders coming to DC to pay him homage, Trump’s objectives for face-to-faces with a plethora of previously persona non gratas have seemed little more than photo ops designed to simply propagate the idea he was actually doing something. Intentions on the other side have been a bit more focused and most often yielded desired results, none more than Hungarian aims toward Ukraine.

Within the loathsome history of The Holocaust perhaps no subplot stirs anger in one’s soul more than the destruction of Hungary’s Jews. By mid-1944, with Germany’s fate sealed by its defeat in Stalingrad, Hungary’s government decided that maybe it had backed the wrong horse when it fell in with the Axis powers and sought distance from the alliance. Hitler wasn’t having it and invaded Hungary to ensure its obedience. Within just several months Hungary’s Jewish population was annihilated with the methodical efficiency Adolph Eichmann would later be hunted worldwide for. More than 550,000 perished in an operation that had no chance of succeeding without the full servility of the native infrastructure. An indelible stain on the country.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is as experienced and savvy a European politician as one will find. Since his election in 2010, he has also near fully transformed into an autocrat with ever lessening tolerance for constitutional restraints and a burgeoning docket of corruption allegations. Perhaps more odious has been Orban’s “double game” of pursuing close ties with Israel’s Netanyahu even as he plays to a burgeoning bloc of right-wing anti-semites, going so far as to openly question history’s emphatic verdict of Hungary’s Holocaust complicity. In short, just the type of “great friend” Trump wants at a podium several feet away while he tells most Americans how awful they are.

When adults were still allowed into the West Wing, no effort was spared to make certain Orbán would never get near the White House. All understood nothing good could come of it. But as McMaster and Mattis and most any other counselor with the national interest in mind ran for their lives – or at least reputations – the Pompeos and Millers and Mulvaneys took charge of Trump’s itinerary…. and Orbán suited them just fine. By May of this year he received the coveted invite, and proceeded to DC with a focused agenda pertaining to the discrediting of Ukraine’s incoming government.

It’s a mystery why anyone would be shocked that Trump would embrace any or all nonsensically dangerous conspiracy theories for explaining events he has never mustered the ambition to study factual sources about. After all, during the 2016 campaign he held the sinister Alex Jones close, and was never shy of, say, baselessly accusing a primary opponent’s father of helping to kill JFK, or giving comfort to any and all internet fever dreams about the Clintons.

How does this impact foreign policy, in Ukraine for example? Start with a base of macro-assumptions such as NATO allies are moochers, always looking to duck their fair share, and the image of immigrant hordes storming civilization as hapless libs do nothing. Throw in a phone call with Putin, who relentlessly pounds the narrative of Ukraine as an ultra- corrupt failed state. Add to that whatever wild rumors or quarter-truths an Iago-like lackey, say a Guiliani or Miller, may hiss into his ear, and voila!…. our current decision-making process.

Last May, as Viktor Orbán made his way for his photo-op, this was the chaotic prism Trump was looking through. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a foreign service stalwart, was already targeted for termination for not sufficiently resembling US Ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, a former jeweler and virulent Trumpie, who enthusiastically coddled Orban even as he moved steadily toward authoritarianism. Conversely, Yovanovitch had relentlessly pressured Ukraine’s chief prosecutor to address the corruption that had become endemic before reformist Volodymyr Zelensky swept into office.

Since 2017 Orban had intensified efforts to make Ukraine a straw man for his ultra-nationalism, railing at a mandate ethnic Hungarian middle and high school kids in Ukraine – Ukrainian citizens – be taught exclusively in the native tongue. Hungary aggressively opposed Ukrainian membership in NATO, and was accused of promoting illegal duel citizenships for ethnic Hungarians within Ukraine. On most all things Ukraine, Orban moved in lockstep with Putin, which was surely conveyed when he sat down with our feckless anti-statesman.

So it now appears last May the President, ever resistant to any sort of “deep state” policy briefings that reflected established US policy and common US-European interests, near solely relied on, first a lengthy telephone call with Putin, and then a White House meeting with Orban to fully poison his view of Ukraine and it’s resistance to Russian incursions. Meanwhile, America had already, with full bi-partisan Capitol Hill support, pledged more than $400 million in military aid to assist Ukraine’s fight against Russian hegemony. Although it seems clear neither of the autocrats suggested relegating Ukraine to merely a platform in service to Trump’s vile domestic political schemes, they succeeded in fully discrediting the country and its cause, convincing their vapid audience to view providing any US resources as far from the done deal everyone else in his government assumed it was. The sad sack plot to transform the aid package into a quid pro quo for extortion soon followed.

What’s so stunning about Trump’s disgusting odyssey with Ukraine, which has ended up in a basement House hearing room, a procession of witnesses fully connecting the dots of impeachable idiocy, is the certainty its far more rule than aberration. Autocrats everywhere, from China to North Korea, Poland to Russia, Turkey to Egypt understand orange chum is in the water. America is there for the fleecing, get in front of Trump while you can…… Another shade of ruin. BC

The most shocking epiphany Trumpism has foisted is the ease with which American politics, media, law enforcement and citizenry have digested a now near daily menu of unprecedented outrages. Anybody predicting back in January, 2017 that Trump would brazenly steer the premiere conference for Western allies to one of his resorts, and then cart out his chief-of-staff to flip off reporters and assure them taxpayers, who will foot much of the event’s bill, were not privy to the selection process, would have surely been labeled an alarmist.

Ditto for the surreality of the same servile minion admonishing the press to “get over” it’s interest in a quid pro quo for extorting a foreign government to screw with a Trump political opponent that the lackey was in the process of admitting to. Mindless authoritarianism requires the hits to just keep coming, and we’re doing our best to keep integrating them into lifestyles still attuned to the pre-2016 luxury that our politics can be categorized from our daily routine. As our mad king does his worst, most simply now rely on Decision 2020 to deliver us, even as more than a few mutter it’s the Democrats we really have to worry about, at least Trump’s a capitalist.

The canvas of the US electorate has never been more discouraging. As Democrats argue over plans for everything from tax policy to health care to gun control, one seems to always come back to the disclaimer “what does it really matter?!” Whatever merits or liabilities reside in any particular plan, the sad fact is there are precious few left whose vote next November actually rides on any distinctions. Abiding this conclusion makes the other night’s Democratic debate seem futile, almost an exercise in collective delusion. It also makes candidates concerned about dotting policy i’s and t’s appear petty and needlessly combative. After all, the menace we face is nihilist populism; the bar is very low for demonstrating wonkish bona fides.

Thirty-five years ago GOP god Ronald Reagan was clear as he could be that assault weapons belonged only on the battlefield. Now the Republican Party will crucify any of its own for the suggestion such guns even deserve additional scrutiny, or modifications to make them even more lethal may need to be prohibited. Do what you will with that information, but it strikes me anyone all in with that proposition isn’t voting for anybody on the stage last week. Moreover, it’s doubtful they are very receptive to any details of a buyback program, which is more for reassurance there will be some carrot with the stick than any step-by-step blueprint.

Yet there was Mayor Pete disdaining Beto O’Rourke’s plan to insist on gun sanity with jabs that the plan isn’t fully thought through. Does anyone believe the people who own these weapons care about the details right now, or are they simply ready to burn Beto in effigy for proposing it. In other words, at present it’s the balls that count, not the cerebral specifics. Following one mass killing after another the real issue is will one party demand we return our national sensibilities to what even the Gipper was glad to embrace. No program for doing it is going to be pretty because most of the people it effects are ugly on the issue. And they will surely get uglier regardless of details. Dismissing the moxie to insist on it says, at least to me, more about trying to gain traction with debate points than a focus on the crisis at hand.

Democrats make a needless mistake by failing to distinguish positions that reflect the existential battle against Trumpist nihilism and those where intelligent people can reasonably disagree. Culture war issues for the most part reflect what was either settled before 2016 or should be finally settled after it. Banning assault weapons, gay rights, abortion law, voting rights, climate change awareness and other environmental safeguards, the assumption arbitrary tariff regimes are economic liabilities, all of these areas were under an umbrella of national consensus before 2016, reflecting the fruits of American progress we attained through often painful trial and error.

That Fox/AM retrograde madness has assaulted such hard-earned lessons, should be labeled what it has been, a destructive aberration, going into next November. In other words, you think Climate Change is a hoax, that’s your problem, we’ll trust science and our own eyes; there is no discussion here, we’re going to get back on track. Now, is there really any chance a voter who wants to make that conflict the crucible of their decision going to vote Democrat under any circumstance? Of course not. Getting rid of assault weapons should be like the sun comes up in the east as far as the Democratic platform is concerned. Why pick a fight about details more than a year out? Thoughtful gun owners will draw a distinction, radicalized dittoheads won’t.

Conversely, arguments concerning health care or tax policy or higher education assistance should follow a different path. Details matter. We’ve seen before exactly how public fear and uncertainty can weaponize GOP messaging which now knows no restraint when it comes to the slimmest obligation to fact. Debating big approaches to policy and their execution is prudent, although one minute debate snippets are not exactly explanation-friendly.

Yet and still, whatever the time restraints, any discussion of Democratic ambitions must be tied at the hip with Trump’s wretched record on the matter. Constantly, relentlessly. Democrats suffer for intelligence in the messaging wars. The GOP has long known repetition is the key, boredom be damned. And while it’s true a smarter audience may demand more variety, the same thing can be pressed in different ways.

Whether it’s Medicare For All (MFA), a more relaxed hybrid or simply fixing Obama Care, the alternative is Trump’s nihilist policy of trying to wipe out all progress that has been made with nothing else on offer. Talking about one without assailing the other lets failure off the hook. If you are self-employed another Trump term will end your coverage., that simple. Tax policy? Well after Trump has needlessly blown up the debt during full employment with a near $2 billion giveaway to the upper brackets, here’s a plan to restore some sanity and economic equilibrium. One 30 seconds must always either proceed or follow the other 30 seconds of the answer. Every time. Without fail.

It’s inconceivable the coming Presidential election should be anything but a referendum on Trump’s disastrous first term. By next November his re-election should be a horrid specter to anyone other than his wretched core, who any effective campaign will do its best to identify and segregate; they are lost to us. More than a few worry making MFA a campaign centerpiece could scare undecideds into voting Trump for fear of losing their private health coverage. While I won’t dismiss such a concern, supporting MFA in itself won’t result in a Trump win. Only embracing a “horse race” strategy that fecklessly assumes the onus is on Democrats to “win the battle of ideas” and then offering policy seminars as campaign speeches instead of taking dead aim at our current pestilence will snatch defeat from victory.

This isn’t going to be Jimmy Carter futilely attempting to paint Reagan as the end of days in 80’. This is whether a Democrat will be determined and insistent enough to force undecideds to look past the unemployment rate and Dow to admit what most understand…. it has been four years of the perilously abnormal and four more years will only bring worse. The President at all times wants to be the centerpiece issue; next November is one time he should be. Trump’s term in office has been one vile outrage diluted by the next, creating a web of chaotic confusion. His effort to get re-elected must become a reckoning, a public education of how harmful he and the GOP have been, if for no other reason than we can be sure of where things stand the first Wednesday morning next November. If Trump is gone, it should be a mandate for never again. If he isn’t we’ll be certain what Americans want, or don’t want, and decide accordingly on how to proceed. BC

In 2005, when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, the owner of the company I worked for, ever the marketer searching for fresh signage opportunities, became one of the franchise’s first sponsors. Back then the line was not long for companies eager to jump onto the team’s bandwagon and the price was certainly right. Moreover the partnership came with perks, and as one of our sales staff’s bigger hitters, I was able to partake in most of them.

At the time Major League Baseball owned the team. With no new ownership group yet on the horizon, the Nats’ marketing and sales department was working on a shoestring budget that year. They focused much of their efforts on making sure those who had taken the leap of faith and signed on received access to the very basic menu of goodies they had to offer. Early in the season they flew my boss and I down to Atlanta for a game against the Braves. I don’t believe we were put up in the Ritz, but the downtown hotel was more than plush. Even better was a round of golf we were treated to at a local club.

However, best of all came that evening at the game when, dining from a nice buffet in the Turner Field VIP area, Henry Aaron ambled over to our table to shake hands. I felt weak in the knees as I rose to try and make intelligent conversation with the game’s greatest living legend! As he smiled and reached his elegant hand out to me, the best I could do was “Mr. Aaron, Ernie Banks will always be my number 1 but I God you’re a very close number 2!” He smiled graciously and said simply “Ernie is a good friend. You must be from Chicago.” I started to say yes I was and saw him get no-hit by Ken Holtzman but he was already pivoting to someone else. It was more than enough.

The spring of 2005 was a great sports period for me. Tiger won his fourth green jacket at Augusta, finally beating pesky and unheralded Chris DeMarco on the first hole of sudden death; I had 50-1 winner Giacomo in the Kentucky Derby (although I only got 28-1 when I bet my $80 on him in an early March future pool and favorite Afleet Alex getting necked out of second by 70-1 Closing Argument cost me a multi-thousand exacta payoff); and I could enjoy near any Nats home game from box seats about 12 rows up from home plate. Winning or losing was beside the point. Like glorious Redskin games from years past, Metro dropped you off a stone’s throw from RFK; the whole experience couldn’t have been easier.

So, after more than a decade of devout fantasy baseball participation and the calculated cynicism it engendered, I once again became a genuine fan. It was the Nats or bust for me… emphasis often on bust. Indeed the 2005 Nats were a team only a real partisan could love, frustratingly uneven, offering hope and futility in even doses. Like most expansion franchises, the lineup was a hodgepodge of journeymen and diminished stars, rookies and cast offs existing on the margins. Yet and still, there was one name in the team’s game guide that stood out above all others, granting enduring credibility follies on the field could not tarnish….. Manager Frank Robinson.

Class can’t be faked; it can be earned, but often is simply a trait people either possess or are bereft of….. you know it when in its presence. With Frank Robinson it stemmed from both avenues. When speaking of baseball royalty there is usually a two camps approach. There is the old school – i.e Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Wagner, Johnson et al – and there is the “modern” game elites, who begin with DiMaggio and progress through Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Koufax, Gibson …. and of course Frank Robinson.

When Robinson retired his 586 home runs trailed only Aaron, Ruth and Mays; could it possibly get more elite than that? He won MVPs in both leagues, the result of the worst trade in sports history…. the Baltimore Orioles sent Milt Pappas to the Cincinnati Reds for their best player, who front office idiots figured was over-the-hill at 31! Robinson showed just how feeble he was, carrying the Orioles on his back to the 66’ World Championship over Koufax and Drysdale’s LA Dodgers.

Of course, by 2005 Robinson had long ago broken historic ground by becoming Baseball’s first black manager when he took over the Cleveland Indians as player-manager in 1975. Thirty years later, his career now squarely in the rear-view, he would slog through the Nats’ first season in DC along with the rest of us, generously granting his experience and wisdom to an enterprise often within the throes of futility, but showing gleams of promise. Whether it was calmly taking somebody to task for shoddy fielding or getting tossed for arguing an umpire decision on the base paths, offering lessons to rookie Ryan Zimmerman, who had Cal Ripken potential written all over him, or mercilessly giving a starter the early hook after being roughed up, “Robby” was the grizzled face of a team hoping for a future, even as it often stunk up the joint in the present.

Incredibly, at season’s end, the Nats stood at a respectable 81-81, .500 ball from a big bunch of nothing much! And all played out in a venue that wasn’t simply dying, it had already passed on and was now resurrected. Even so, stale hot dog buns and nasty restrooms only accentuated things to my eyes. The 2006 season was a struggle for the team as its roster limitations had their say, but also saw the emergence of a well heeled new ownership group, who showed their gratitude to my company by choosing an industry competitor at our expense for a new sponsorship deal, and their regard to Robinson by promptly firing him as manager. As I said before, you know class, or lack of it, when you see it. By the time Nationals Park opened in 2008, my privileged access to games and the club was history.

I reminisced about that wonderful first season last night watching today’s incarnation wipe their now pristine field with the Cardinals to take a 3-0 lead in the NLCS. Despite a recent history of choking up playoff advancement, there is zero chance this squad isn’t going to the World Series, the first in DC since Franklin Roosevelt was President. Only Ryan Zimmerman remains from the 2005 roster; and while the Hall of Fame will never mistake him for Cal, he has remained the face of the franchise while providing solidly consistent production and leadership.

Meanwhile, even though the great man passed in February, if and when the Nats attain championship glory, Frank Robinson must be one of the first names mentioned when thanking those responsible. Nobody deserves this franchise’s gratitude more than its first skipper, who defined what baseball excellence is and added the luster a struggling new team required to succeed. Washington may have been his last stop, but to him, and us, it was as important as the rest of them. He earned what he is owed. BC

The surging candidacy of Elizabeth Warren seems destined to become a referendum within the Democratic Party on whether to bet the house on the brightest, most adept candidate or play it safe and placate “conservative” – read white – men, who may be put off by her bossy irreverence toward regressive inclinations. The issue goes further than whether or not it is even worth the effort to solicit what was once the prize of national campaigns, or accept most are lost to Trumpist grievance and resentment. Now there is also some talk of Warren softening her edges so as not to “insult” or “needlessly incite” the goateed Ward Cleavers with paunches, lest it create a blowback that impacts other electoral tributaries like their wives perhaps. In other words, do your best not to bring out their worst. Why provoke them?

Exhibit A was an LGBTQ town hall CNN hosted Thursday, where Warren demonstrated why she has gained traction. Asked how she would respond to a voter who declared their strong belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, Warren was top notch, summoning her inner Molly Irvins. After asserting she’d assume it was a man she was dealing with, she flat-toned “I’m going to say… then just marry one woman. I’m cool with that.” Then, with perfect timing, she added: “…Assuming you can find one.”

At 70, Warren seems impossibly well preserved. Next to Biden and Sanders she looks to be a very attractive 50-something. And while age has an insidious way of dulling charisma, Warren showed Thursday that’s not a problem for her. Anybody who has watched her dismantle a petulant CEO in the hearing room appreciates her bona fides as a crusader for those without, or barely enough, or even with enough but doubtful the rules favor their interests. Ironically, it is Warren who suffers most as Trump impeachment takes center stage with Joe Biden an attached subplot, albeit with baggage to explain. As our President will be the first to tell you, even as he denounces “Pocahontas” at his rallies…. if you’re not part of the story, who are you?

Yet and still, it’s a marathon, and so far all Bernie has to show for his efforts is a new stent. Likewise, Biden has not been a world shaker. Dipping poll numbers and a son with no problem cashing in on connections in a very swampy way does not a winning campaign make. Meanwhile, Warren is thriving, gaining ground by the week where it counts, Iowa, New Hampshire, even down south. She is now the assumed heir to Bernie’s bloc, fully acceptable to their exacting anti-corporatism. It seems now only a question of when he will turn his holdings over. At that point, 25% becomes over 40 plus and that should get it done. But then what? What should Warren emerge as the nominee with to sell? And who are the qualified prospects she should be going after assuming Trump remains the nemesis?

The “horse race” crowd weighed in Friday to wonder aloud whether too much Warren is necessarily a good thing. Apparently, she needs to beware appearing too high and mighty. “It’s about telling people that don’t agree with you that they are backward,” warned one Democratic strategist. Her quip Thursday wasn’t so much evidence of her razor sharpness, but instead “a battle cry for men to turn out against Elizabeth Warren.” Better to finesse her response and adeptly ride the rail between what’s right (and the law!) and troglodyte sensitivities that may actually come around in November; but even if they don’t, why get them riled up? Honestly, with advice like that, who needs enemies!

What would be a more measured response? “Yes sir, I share your concern about the sacredness of the institution of marriage and understand your impulse to be selective as to who may enjoy its many blessings. However, perhaps we should expand our perception to possibly allow other more unconventional relationships to be sanctified. What do you say?” Newsflash… those obsessed with excluding gay couples from marriage are now devout Trumpies, far more inclined to yelling “Pocahontas!” and flipping Warren the bird than beseeching her to bless their bigotry.

Culture war nonsense is the flyover sweet spot. Warren isn’t winning Oklahoma no matter how well she behaves for misogyny-addled creationists. Ceding them the credibility of a voting bloc worth anything other than a good punchline is exactly how you turn genuine articles into fakes. Who could forget when the man entrusted to rid us of W, the guy who made his bones protesting senseless militarism, bounded up to the mic to accept his nomination with a ridiculous salute followed by “John Kerry reporting for duty!” There was a candidate only a Democratic strategist could love.

Plenty in the Warren bag of goods needs to be tightened up for next year, most prominently her penchant to come up with costly fixes for everything wrong with America. Campaigns are about establishing priorities and she needs to trim down hers. Moreover, she will need to move from bashing CEOs and corporate greed to calmly schooling voters on how dramatic reform will help everyone’s bottom line.

But most important to her general election candidacy will be Warren’s embodiment of how much better the US can do than what our shirked responsibility produced in 2016. A big part of that is being herself… sharp, dynamic, poised and empathetic…. always the smartest person in the room and never afraid to speak her truth. That includes telling white knuckle draggers they can come along or be left behind, but the ship will leave without them. If they want to use the Bible to pick on those simply trying to make their way in this world with the same milestones to look forward to as the rest of us, they will only marginalize themselves. Four years of going backward is way too long! BC

George Kennan, perhaps America’s greatest diplomat, was fond of saying why people were doing something concerned him less than how they were doing it. Within the tactful arena of old world diplomacy in which Kennan was schooled and operated, less was usually more, and if more was being offered that meant it was prudent to pay particularly close attention. Bluster and careless rants were the dead giveaway a rank amateur was in the house. Words mattered because they were employed with thoughtful purpose. A country whose emissaries were reckless with their language could hardly be relied upon as an ally, and was surely demonstrating weakness as an adversary.

American government is structured to give the Executive Branch wide latitude in representing our positions to the world. Time and again the Supreme Court has dismissed challenges to the President’s role as “the sole organ of American foreign policy.” Of course this is wise, both from a common sense stand point as well as operational necessity. Who else is going to do it? Senators, who foremost answer to the narrow parochial needs of their states? No, micromanaging foreign policy was never a role the founders intended for Congress. They could impose their collective will as a function of approving or rejecting specific funding requests, but as far as US messaging to the world is concerned, the buck stops with the President, who is supposed to lean on the professionals.

This established practice makes Secretary of State a preeminent cabinet position. Whoever oversees Foggy Bottom must enjoy, not only the President’s full confidence, but also complete access to decision making. After all, if foreign countries aren’t confident America’s chief messenger speaks for the White House, how can the message have any resonance? Indeed, it would seem a no brainer that any serious Secretary of State would be adamant such confidence that he/she is fully in the policy loop is essential, and anything less wholly unacceptable…. grounds for resignation.

All of which brings us yet again to current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, burdened with the debilitating onus of translating a sociopath’s rabid tweets for horrified foreign leaders attempting to make sense of dangerous gibberish. Yet and still, anybody bent toward empathizing with Pompeo should resist the urge and first examine the record….. it is ugly and getting uglier, a cautionary tale about servility’s circular trail of tears for those without the integrity to refuse its obligations.

Before her appointment as Ambassador to Ukraine in May, 2016, Marie Yovanovitch had enjoyed what could be termed a brilliant career in the US foreign service. A graduate of Princeton, Yovanovitch was first posted in Ottawa. Assignments in Moscow, London and Mogadishu followed before she was tapped in 1998 for the prestigious slot of Deputy Director of the Russian Desk at State. In August of 2001 she became the Deputy Chief of Mission in Ukraine, and by August 2004 the Bush team thought enough of her to make Yovanovitch senior advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Safe to say, by the time she was appointed as Ukraine’s Ambassador by Obama, Yovanovitch was widely respected as the consummate foreign service professional she had become.

In Ukraine the prevailing issue was corruption, and the US Embassy worked closely with point man VP Joe Biden to make certain demands by both the US and NATO allies that the overt corruption of the country’s recently deposed previous leadership be addressed and rigid new standards be established were heard loud and clear. The US was approving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid for resisting Russian hegemony and it wanted guarantees its investment would not evaporate through rampant graft.

As the Obama era ended and Trump took office, progress had been made in Ukraine to create a judicial system with the teeth necessary to respond to government corruption and discourage its practice. By all accounts, Yovanovitch was aggressive in her efforts to push reform, enough so that she made an enemy of then prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko. Rudy Guiliani would later press Lutsenko to, not only discredit Mueller’s work, but also dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter and his relationship with Barisma, a Ukrainian energy company; this after the prosecutor had declared no impropriety had been uncovered.

From the start Trump was wary of government careerists, eventually lumping most into the “deep state” he maintained was ever out to get him. As he became more fixated on Ukraine as an epicenter of his persecution because of the prosecution of Paul Manafort, who had cashed in for plenty when it’s government was a cesspool, the President railed at the professionals within the US Embassy. His developing agenda to use Ukrainian sources to discredit the Mueller report was never going to fly with straight shooters like Yovanovitch; so he wanted her gone.

It is unclear exactly when Trump made his first demand that Yovanovitch be recalled, and it is equally unclear to what degree Pompeo, or perhaps his own staff, may have ignored the President’s initial impulses. After all, it had become common place for Administration officials to simply ignore unhinged West Wing edicts with the hope Trump would forget the whole thing. But regardless of when Yovanovitch first came into Trump’s crosshairs, as his obsession with putting the elbow on Ukraine’s leadership to do his dirty work grew, there was no doubt her days as ambassador were numbered. The central question became to what degree if any Pompeo had her back.

He didn’t. By May of this year, after a campaign of unsubstantiated innuendo that she was disloyal to the President and had actually been bad mouthing him abroad, which nobody within the State Department career ranks gave any credence to, Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled. On his now famous call July 25 to pressure incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump hissed that Yovanovitch was “bad news” and ominously assured she “would be going through some things.” At no time has Pompeo offered any public words of support for his employee. In fact, it’s come to light that, prior to Yovanovitch’s recall, Guiliani presented Pompeo with a report outlining outrageous charges that included she was in league with George Soros, but most shrilly whining that Yovanovitch was not adequately pressing the case to look into Hunter Biden. The math from that revelation is not difficult to perform.

The best we can now say about our Secretary of State is he leaves those he pledged to protect flapping in the wind, laid bare to the disgusting intrigues of Trump and his “personal lawyer.” The worst we can say is he takes an active role in development and pursuit of such schemes. Pathetically weak and fully out of the loop or wretchedly corrupt and an accomplice to purges against his own people? Pick your poison. When he replaced indifferent Rex Tillerson, a demoralized foreign service hoped Pompeo would live up to his job’s vivid history and the standards for autonomy it had set. Instead he has ushered in a new nadir for a critical American institution…. just another fitting footnote to the ruin Trumpism has produced. BC

Near the end of Ken Burns’ epic documentary on the Civil War there is a scene which catches the viewer by surprise and produces a torrent of emotion. After hours of storytelling illustrated only by pictures and interviews with commentators, suddenly there is some actual grainy video footage taken at a reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg many years later. Re-enacting Pickett’s Charge, a group of ancient grey-bearded men resemble kids playing in a field, enjoying the horrible glory their hatred for each other created. Now, many decades later they shared a bond only those with a personal knowledge of life’s most desperate moments can understand. The “charge” lasts only a couple minutes as exhausted old foes collapse into each other with hugs and affection. An indelible image for the ages.

One would prefer to believe southern survivors of a reckless battle strategy, educated by the wisdom staying alive teaches, fully comprehended the common humanity their collective exposure to war’s trials forced upon them, strong enough to consume what in retrospect they could view as self-destructive resentments. Yet and still, the tug of war’s glory, and the salve time applies to both emotional and physical wounds, makes it uncertain how they would respond to the simple question of “was it really worth it?” Most rebels had no skin in the game for slavery, in fact, the southern slave economy created a skewed labor structure that surely cost hard working whites income; after all, how can you compete against free? But at the end of the day, the grotesque adage “if you ain’t better than a n*****, who are you better than” subsumed logic and fed sedition, nobody was going to tell them who to treat as a fellow human being.

Fact is, despite the hindsight a lifetime of living provided, the rhetoric responsible for the conflict impacts history’s assessment of it and often furthers an impotent judgement, even for those most directly affected. Union men fought to preserve the nation secession imperiled. Rebs fought to preserve a way of life the North was intent on destroying. What choice did either have? Forget that industrialization was going to end slavery anyway, or that Republicans were only adamant about preventing its spread to western territories, and Lincoln was prepared to do most anything necessary to placate secessionists. Passions rarely bow to facts, and what they produce most often renders why they were stirred meaningless. Once they begin to carry the day, events become increasingly more difficult to control. Spectators were having picnics at the edge of battlefields as the conflict began, by the battle of Cold Harbor, three years later, thousands were dead within half an hour. What most thought would be over within a month or two, morphed into enduring calamity. Wars are like fires; once fed enough, they become impossible to control.

Today in America our President, fully abided by the GOP shaped to his liking, foments civil war without much thought to its consequences. Trump, like secessionists 160 years ago, relies on a victimology narrative to define his own fate as synonymous with that of the nation; he’s a martyr in the making. Should he fall to the tyranny of a deep state coup, all hope will be lost, markets will tumble, immigrant hordes will storm the southern border, and the US will generally collapse into lawless anarchy. Impeachment or even electoral defeat in 2020 equals ruin.

Of course, anybody who wants a good chuckle, before they sob, should read the speeches by various antebellum southern lawmakers intent on secession and compare them to Trump tweets and verbal blusterings. Henry Lewis Benning may have been a racist traitor, but he did at least offer complete sentences:

“ … It follows that there is not within the Union any remedy by which we can escape abolition, and therefore if we wish for a remedy, a remedy we must seek outside the Union. … I say that a separation from the North would be a complete remedy for the disease.”

Today’s nihilist discontents set the bar very low indeed for nourishing their sedition with oratory. Trump’s tweets have trouble even qualifying as legible screeds. It’s a certainty old Jeff Davis wouldn’t allow the Donald onto his doorstep. But make no mistake, Trump delivers the goods on a near hourly basis to unhinged malcontents. Whether it’s libeling Joe Biden or retweeting American Taliban Robert Jeffress’ declaration that impeachment will result in civil war, labeling freshman Democratic congresswomen as Stalinist wannabes or the press as “the enemy of the people,” this President leaves little to the imagination as to what road he’s chosen as impeachment heats up. The only question that appears to still be unanswered is whether America is ready to get the ball rolling. Can we even imagine what civil war would look like?

Adam Kinzinger, an otherwise reliable House GOP Trump appendage from Illinois, knows something of what civil conflict can do to a country. An Air Force pilot with several tours of Iraq to inform him, Kinzinger made clear there is nothing good about it as he took Trump to task for waxing seditious. “I have visited nations ravaged by civil war,” the veteran asserted, “I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant.” It appears Kinzinger’s criticism will have to do as far as GOP lawmakers go, literally nobody else from either chamber had a thing to say about a POTUS fomenting bloodshed.

But what of the good guys in this national dissolution? We can see hourly evidence that Trump and his wretched core are fully radicalized, capable of ruining America’s good thing. What are we willing to abide before our patience has been exhausted and pitchforks look appealing? Four more years of Trump is unfathomable. After W beat John Kerry back in 2004, he smugly held forth on his new mandate. “I’ve got political capital,” Bush declared, “and I plan to use it.” How do we suppose Trump will digest a new term? Like all other nasty people, and he’s the nastiest, the only thing worse than Trump losing is Trump winning. Any other job in the world and our President wouldn’t have lasted a week. Chewing through a $500 million inheritance and President of the United States are the only two positions he’s been capable of keeping, and after three years of his worst, the US may re-sign him. Go figure.

What kind of blows will round two of Trump deliver? Well, millions of undocumented people will rightly fear deportations to countries they are no more familiar with than I am with Ireland. Round ups may very well go into high gear with daily images of cruelty and heartache. Bigotry as legitimate political thought will become the norm. Allies will immediately move to abandon us, no longer willing to wait out our civic madness. Climate Change initiatives will suffer full American opposition. The US will become isolated on all international fronts. The able government careerists who also tried to outlast Trumpism will leave or be purged, precipitating and across-the-board competence crisis here at home. RBG will step down from the Supreme Court, replaced by another young Trumpie. Steven Breyer is not getting any younger; if he were to retire it would be 7-2. Nuff said there. The list is as long as it is horrifying, but the worst thing of all will be an unquestionable desertion of the rule of law Trump’s re-election will consummate. No doubt Trump will be emboldened to ad lib his second Inauguration speech with rally gibberish, but this time there will be no speculation of hopeful “best case scenarios” for his approach to decision making.

The Chuck Todds and Amy Walters of the world enjoy viewing Trumpism as a game, imbuing his constant meltdowns and GOP servility to him as simply one side of Decision 2020’s discussion. Some of us are quite certain this is no game, Trumpism – defined as the all out fight for his rabid political survival and overt corruption – is totalitarian in nature and knows no limits to the means justified to achieving its ends. That’s not alarmist, it’s simply diligent observation. If civil war requires two to tango, it’s now certain one of the partners is ready to boogie. What the rest of us should at least begin to consider is what it will take to get us on the dance floor. BC