Author: BC

It’s doubtful any situation could be worse than having one’s direct well being wholly dependent on the whims of Donald Trump. The Apprentice, primarily responsible for our current national crisis, used the formula of contestants placed in just that situation and milked the ugliest human inclinations they displayed in the “boardroom,” begging our now President not to literally kick them to the 5th Avenue curb, for Nielson ratings relevance. Of course, what’s guilty pleasure humorous in prime time is now ruinous in real time. The crisis is here, nothing to debate. The least informed, most amoral and hypocritical, nastiest and self-centered political bloc since the Civil War pulls the strings of a POTUS with identical qualities, ultimately in service to a foreign adversary who likely forced his candidacy for the office he occupies in the first place. Whew! That’s a mouthful. Tough to contract a national nightmare.

It’s now just this simple: if you aren’t horrified by what the news offers us about this White House, your informers hail from the deepest bowels of Fox/AM. Congrats, reasonable Americans are at your mercy. Or, you are part of an equally deleterious group of citizens so intent on ignoring anything outside of their personal life narrative/struggle that militant insularity is the path you would rather die than abandon; currently, we are your subjects, too…. enjoy. The rest of us are left to suffer the chaos psychopathic personalities typically offer those unfortunate enough to dwell within their sphere of influence. Worse than a stick in the eye!

One of the most surreal and impactful scenes in movie history occurs in Apocalypse Now, after Martin Sheen’s lead character hooks up with a boat patrol crew and heads way up river to the intestines of the Vietnam War. Eventually, they come upon a situation straight out of hell, as a platoon without any leadership at all runs amok, with no rhyme or reason, aimless in a playground of death and destruction. It’s movie magic that creates nightmares, but we can awake and realize it’s fiction and it’s over. This is real, and we’re all in it up to our knickers!

General Mattis’ letter of resignation is a masterpiece of understatement. While its essentials are eloquent and constructive – the exact opposite of its recipient’s means of communication – the thesis is two big middle fingers directed toward a former employer he could no longer abase himself for. All adults have officially left the building, Fox is in the house! Government by Miller and Bolton, Pompeo and Conway. When Mick Mulvaney is guarding the codes, one best seek distance… plenty of it.

Anyone wanting to make sure they don’t overeat this Yuletide season merely needs to repeatedly ponder who Trump may land on to replace Mattis. Secretary of Defense Hegseth?! Levin?! The crazy cross-eyed Judge whats-her-name?! Even Roger Ailes is rolling in his grave. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Richard Nixon was forced to resign under a cloud the growing list of charges against Trump surpassed long ago. And say whatever you want about Nixon, he was a highly educated man, a deep and fully informed geopolitical strategist, and, for all of his insecure dishonesty, in the end at least cognizant of the depth of his responsibilities. Of course, Trump possesses not an inkling of any of those qualities; we are way up river with Martin Sheen.

To those who want to make some argument that the policies he is pursuing aren’t all that bad. For example, there is a point to be made we shouldn’t have one toe in Syria, or it’s time Europe did more for its own security. You all haven’t been listening. Process and continuity are everything, and neither now exists. Try to turn a container ship on a dime and everything falls into the ocean, and believe me, Queeg’s got nothing on our imbecile. Without a Presidential decisionmaking process, with its numerous filters and safeguards, its diverse collection and analysis of information, its policy working group recommendations, rigorous executive debate, you get what we now have, policy by whim. At that point the world stands at the mercy of the qualifications and temperament of who is calling the shots…. nuff said.

There is not an indicator available that suggests the Trump Administration will do anything other than further implode. Trump has always isolated himself, it’s what wretched malcontents do. Albert Einstein could offer nothing he would record and learn from. By now there is no mystery. Shameless self-promotion, one lie after another, ceaseless attacks on anyone not wholly sycophantic, constant whining about being victimized or unappreciated, zero preparation for public remarks, zero interest in learning issues or policy, full indifference to the standards and traditions of his office, full determination to divide the country… the list is endless and certain.

It’s never been about the daily Trump inanities, or even the normalized disdain for the pluralism he is supposed to protect, the real danger is the catastrophe rendered exponentially more possible under his sorry watch. An economic meltdown, regional military conflagaration, 9/11 type terrorist venture, all will force acquiescence to whatever this White House brings to the table because such crises offer no other alternatives. At that point Mueller no longer matters, checks and balances don’t apply, no other condiments will be available to make our lot less distasteful… a shit sandwich will be all the menu offers.

In short, this buggy is heading toward a cliff and at least a third of its passengers are psyched about its direction. The rest of us better figure out fast how to regain the controls because parachutes aren’t available. Why more of this nation’s governing “establishment,” – those in attendance at George HW’s funeral etc. – aren’t making overt efforts to remove Trump befuddles and worries me. Perhaps the “deep state” and remote nooks and recesses on Capitol Hill have some things going on to speed his departure and prevent calamity. Who knows? One thing is certain… all of the fail safes and layers of protection we imagined kept us safe from Trump’s worst last January have fallen away one by one. We are all now in the boardroom. BC

A wonderful woman I know well lost her son to a drug overdose several years ago. I had watched him grow into a handsome and charismatic young man; his death was shocking and, as one could imagine, devastated his mother. Like many other parents of kids lost to opioids, she has assuaged her grief by jumping head-long into support activities, creating a group that meets on a regular basis to confront the opioid epidemic’s ruinous reach into families, and advocate for education and understanding of the disease that is addiction. Of course, she uses social media, primarily Facebook, to spread her message, detail her activities, and otherwise bestow the wisdom her personal experience has taught her. Like so many others in her situation, she clearly finds it personally therapeutic to both help prevent others from suffering her heartbreak, as well as aid those in the throes of similar tribulations endure the plight she now knows all too well. Oh, and like an overwhelming majority of West Virginia voters, she strongly supports the President. 

On March 23, 2017 the Admiral Processing Plant in Boone County, W.Va., leaked more than 5000 gallons of coal slurry into Crooked Run, a tributary of the Coal River. The spill happened upstream from several municipal water intake systems, potentially poisoning drinking water for Lincoln County residents. Yet another spill occurred a week later during cleanup operations, the result of a pump that failed moving contaminated water. Water samples taken at the site came back showing maximum toxicity. Black Castle Mining Company, responsible for the spill, was issued a “notice of violation” by the WVA Department of Environmental Protection, which no doubt had Black Castle executives shaking in their suspenders. And while area water treatment officials maintained tests on tap water returned “in line with normal values,” it’s a sure bet bottled water sales in affected areas will remain high for more than the foreseeable future. How many Lincoln County residents will now or eventually become fierce and committed defenders of the environment as a result of their Erin Brockovich moment is unclear, but it’s likely safe to say few still ignore the issue of relaxing coal slurry regulations, a Trump EPA priority. 

One word is ever found amidst the bromides and true substance alike of our chaotic national political discussion… freedom. It populates most every campaign speech, punctuates endless comment sections, and generally begins and ends the assessments  of where things stand, how far things have deteriorated, and what we should aspire to. The concept of freedom is ubiquitous to our national identity. But for my money what most Americans place at the top of the list concerning how freedom should define their existence reflects nothing more than the ambitions of citizens residing in autocracies, with no pretense regarding the concept at all – the freedom to remain blissfully oblivious! 

Nihilism won out in 2016 and we pay the price for its victory every hour. That we suffer a President more notable for unprecedented tirades and narcissistic preoccupation speaks to the utter indifference of the electorate he won over with a campaign focused on nothing more than reversing a laundry list of grievances tied to his predecessor, who earned the disdain of millions more for his skin tone than anything substantive he pursued while in office. 

Community relies on acceptance that actions and policies have consequences everybody shares in. The idea that certain groups have it coming to them, or somehow act in ways deserving of special disdain for what are supposed to be uniform rights and protections requires purposeful ignorance, a willful desire not to pay attention to events one has convinced themself can’t apply to their situation. 

Figuring it’s not possible that you or yours could ever live down river from a coal slurry spill, so hearing Trump soulessly attack responsible environmental safeguards as “job killing” regulations on the campaign trail doesn’t register or even resonates with you, requires a level of willful ignorance fully at odds with the minimum requisites of democracy. It’s an abdication of civic responsibility, capable of tolerating our worst, which we are. 

For decades heroin addiction and fatal overdoses were the stuff to justify “a war on drugs” and mass incarceration of inner city minorities,  not to provide resources for education and addiction recovery. Why? An easy question with obvious answers. But now “our” kids are dying and the issue’s suddenly far more complicated, more heartbreaking, something worthy of involvement. Gun violence. Climate Change. Even healthcare.  All seem increasingly relevant and harder to ignore. The price of pretending the world effects only those we don’t need to worry about carries a steeper price tag than once thought. The  world eventually knocks on all of our doors. 

Trump’s approval rating in West Virginia in October was 58 %, among the highest of any state in the nation. Of course West Virginia is a coal mining state, but that industry continues its decline as the world shifts away from fossil fuels, and easy to mine veins have been exhausted. In fact, since 1990 coal jobs provide a sliver of West Virginia occupations, exponentially outpaced by government and healthcare employment, two top targets of Trump grievance.

And while West Virginia is still ranked at the bottom of the nation as a state to do business in, it has consistently led the country in one category since 2015…. the rate of opioid overdoses. Most all agree the the Trump Administration’s response to the opioid crisis has been worse than sluggish. “Lack of leadership” is the phrase most often heard to describe Trump’s performance.

Such criticism is restrained compared to common views of the President’s role on the environment. Forget about Scott Pruitt, Trump’s scandal-ridden choice to lead the EPA, who he still defends even after he was run out of DC on a rail, there is not a meaningful clean water or air protection on the books that is not in this Administration’s crosshairs. Surprise! West Virginia, though relatively sparsely populated, ranks 6th in the nation for dirtiest air and water.

Trump enjoyed holding rallies throughout West Virginia in the run up to this year’s mid-terms. Defeating blue dog Democratic Senator Joe Manchin became a top priority for the President. Aside from gratuitous exclamations about “rescuing” the coal industry, no talking point received more raucous applause than Trump’s border wall. Indeed, he could barely even start in on the issue before being interrupted by prolonged “build that wall” chants from his country roads faithful. Meanwhile, West Virginia ranks 48th in the nation in Hispanic population. Less than 1 % of the state’s residents are immigrants from Mexico or Central America….. go figure.

The crisis of US politics is said to be in large part the result of too many citizens believing government does not reflect their priorities. But what exactly are those concerns? Looking at West Virginia, and the politicians its voters prefer, one would be forgiven for simply scratching their head and professing to not have a clue what the hell is going on. Or maybe assuming rationality by parsing objective facts and figures is a dead end. Maybe intangible emotions rule the day. Maybe narratives created out of thin air by failed djs and hucksters selling gold shares and lifelock subscriptions tell the true tale. Either way, the many benefits freedom is meant to bestow don’t seem to be enhancing the daily routines of West Virginians very much. Yet and still, they are free to continue to ignore that unfortunate fact, perhaps while heading to the Walmart for another case of Poland Spring. BC

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Abraham Lincoln

There is little doubt the greatest blessing bestowed on the United States is geography. Two oceans assure our national security. Of course, nuclear proliferation being what it is, coupled with ghoulish biological technology now available, we have become far more vulnerable to foreign danger than anyone should be comfortable with. Yet and still, no foreign tanks will be parading up Pennsylvania Avenue anytime soon… unless we invite them. At the end of the day we the people are what we have been since just past the turn of the 19th century, potentially our own worst enemy.

It’s now as clear as a bottle of Stoli that Russia engaged the Trump campaign and incoming Administration on numerous fronts with multiple people. Russian interests joined an army of social media trolls to both get Trump elected and discredit charges of collusion and overt corruption once he was sworn in. The evidence is mounting that it is reasonable to suspect this White House actively collaborated and may still be cooperating with the Kremlin. While the President rails daily about witch hunts and deep state cabals, more and more pieces of the collusion puzzle are coming together, and they present a chilling picture of foreign influence that becomes harder by the day to refute.

From probes aimed to feel out an enthusiastic Donald  Jr. to an actual spy working with NRA staff and the GOP donor network to meetings in Russia with Carter Paige and now a Moscow building project Trump himself was involved with deep into the campaign, revelations are emerging one after the other, and they now connect a narrative that points to an ambitious effort by Moscow to help Trump gain and stay in power.  However, the smoking gun that most clarifies Trump’s treachery won’t be found in any efforts to aid in his election, or spin his corruption, it’s going to be found in what motivated him to become a candidate in the first place. That is where the unprecedented sedition will be discovered; perhaps it already has been. To do so will require exploring the full extent of Trump’s business failures, and how financially compromised they left him. 

Allen Weisselberg’s relationship with Donald Trump goes back 30 years, to a time when Fred Trump, Donald’s father, underwrote most everything his reckless son pursued. In fact, Weisselberg began his career as an accountant for elder Trump, eventually working his way up to CFO of the entire Trump Organization. Nobody, including the careless and disinterested other trustee of the Trump Organization, Donald Jr.,  knows more about the forensics of the Donald’s smoke and mirrors “fortune” than Weisselberg. That he testified this summer before a grand jury after being granted full immunity and has been stashed away for safe keeping surely portends damaging revelations are on the way. 

You don’t have to be Columbo to recognize Trump was vulnerable to compromise. Only those without interest in the facts don’t appreciate how truly awful his business performance was through the decades. It’s now understood by all but his wretched core that the fable of young Donald building an empire from a quickly refunded $1 million loan from his father couldn’t have been further  from the truth. In fact, the New York Times exhaustively exhumed more than $400 million Fred provided to cover the costs of one failure after another by a son more interested in nightlife and fame than the toil necessary to succeed. His father joined every other investor in the sad fraternity of those who lost millions supporting a plethora of belly up Trump schemes. That Fred Trump found tax fraud as a way to profit from his son’s incompetence only enhances any theories about unsavory doings. 

Weisselberg seems the only one who knows where all the bodies lie, and if he accepted full immunity, Mueller’s team received a complete map. It’s a good bet that map points east, where Trump was forced to go for liquidity after fully wearing out his welcome here. After all, you can only stiff so many vendors, renege on so many agreements, default on so much debt before you become a pariah. Trump became persona non grata in American financial circles, dismissed as far more trouble than he was worth….the Roy Cohn of business. 

Germany’s Duetche Bank inexplicably extended him a line of credit in the late 90s, when no US institution would let him in the lobby. Subsequent revelations of sketchy connections between Duetche Bank and Russian oligarchs provides the landscape to place Trump as a vehicle for laundering kleptocratic gains. That Trump eventually showed up with hundreds of millions in mystery cash to purchase in full at top dollar – a previously unimaginable prospect – golf properties with no profitability in sight seems more than suspicious; it’s a red flag atop a blaring siren.  All of which meant nothing more than the craven criminality of a grifter bent on maintaining both his ultra-opulent lifestyle and the lie it bolstered… until somebody in Russian Intelligence sold Putin on having their very own US Presidential candidate. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has tolerated the obfuscation of his GOP counterpart Devin Nunes for just about two years now. Nunes, perhaps Trump’s most overt facilitator in Congress, has done everything in his office’s power to derail and misguide the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign. Things will change dramatically in the next session. 

Schiff made clear yesterday his desire to examine Duetche Bank’s relationship with Trump as well as the head scratching all cash purchase of Turnberry Golf Club in Scotland. The increasingly unhinged tone of Trump toward the enhanced scrutiny heading his way betrays growing desperation. He appears content to pursue yet another diversion by shutting down the government and hightailing it down to Palm Beach for the holidays. It’s a safe bet the Mar-A-Lago crowd, which always seems to reinforce his worst inclinations, will have him ready for battle when he returns to the White House. That, coupled with increasing signs Mueller may be prepared to lay out all his cards on the table, means things may finally come to a head, and America may have to face the specter that it elected a Manchurian President.

More than 80 percent of Iowa Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance, and two-thirds make clear they will vote for him again. Whatever facts come forward, no matter how devastating, it’s not likely to impress millions of Americans who view anything deleterious to Trump as, not only lies manufactured to harm their champion, but sedition meant to destroy their country. They are informed by only one narrative and are unapologetic about the select number of news and information sources they trust. In other words, we are about to experience  just how prescient old Abe Lincoln was, and confront what has always been our nation’s most ominous threat, a danger even our geographical blessings are powerless to stop…. Us! BC

The search for perfection is a natural human inclination. To label with confidence that with no flaws provides a metric we can fully trust for all manner of endeavor. To know the highest standard also provides hope and optimism about the potential which hovers all around us, helping to balance out and cope with the low points our world constantly proves are possible. Finally, seeking perfection is a constructive intellectual pursuit because assessing possible examples, all at least great things worth noting, keeps us humble and decent, providing a counterweight to gratuitous celebration of what has been achieved before and making clear the folly of resting on our laurels. 

If perfection is possible, Alex Honnold’s  mountaineering qualifies, specifically his rope-free solo ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan in June of last year. It is a feat of such mastery and expertise, prepared for with such exacting detail, for the highest stakes possible, that it seems more of a challenge to argue why it isn’t a perfect accomplishment. 

Free Solo, a National Geographic documentary chronicling Honnold’s meticulous quest to attempt what nobody has ever even seriously contemplated, is both beautiful and excruciatingly suspenseful. For almost two hours we get to know a real-life Jedi Knight, a fellow human of such innate wisdom, discipline, bravery and expertise that it’s not easy to relate to him. Honnold, of course, doesn’t process fear and personal danger like the rest of us, but he carries around the same doubts and personal struggles we are all familiar with. Humanizing this extraordinary Skywalker-like individual is at the top of the production’s list of successes.

El Capitan is a sheer 3000 foot vertical rock face located in Yosemite National Park. It was first summited in 1958  by a 3-person team led by Warren Harding; it took them 47 days of “siege” efforts – meticulously placing pitons and ropes, toil measured in hard won feet. Basically, they constructed a rope system to the top. The first “free” ascent, using ropes only to prevent falling, not as aids in climbing, occurred in 1988. It took Todd Skinner and Paul Piana nine days to summit, but the gates were opened and free climbing El Capitan is now on every world-class mountaineer’s bucket list. Yet and still, the idea of soloing El Capitan without any safety system, total free climb, one mistake and you’re dead, has never been anything but some aimless, probably drunken, fireside chatter…. until Alex Honnold. 

It is a testament to Honnold’s well earned reputation as the world’s best free solo climber that his ambition to attempt El Capitan au natural was taken seriously by the mountaineering world’s elite. Tommy Caldwell, a legendary free soloist, spends hours climbing El Capitan with Honnold as he painstakingly plots his route. Yet and still, Caldwell betrays full ambivalence at the prospect of his protege, who he loves like a younger brother, attempting something so dangerous.

When Honnold stops his initial attempt early on after simply not feeling it, there is a palpable air that all concerned hope he will come to his senses. Losing him weighs heavily on everybody, of course none more than his wonderful and dedicated girlfriend Sanni, who understands she will never outweigh the lure of impossible challenge in his life.

One day Honnold wakes up and decides enough is enough… let’s do this. To witness his attempt, documented by a crew who can hardly watch what they are filming, is to grasp how some of our species, a sliver, are capable of focusing every fiber of being on execution at the expense of fear. While we all look away, dreading the worst, he is enjoying every minute of an experience he appreciates as unrivaled, and has accepted the full consequences it will bestow, one way or the other. It is more than special, more than extraordinary, it’s…. perfect! 

We are now struggling through days on end of debating whether or not the most important individual in our Republic can get any worse than he was yesterday. Watching a fleet of gaslighters spin the unacceptable as not that bad forces one to fret the standards of excellence we at least hoped our system would pursue may no longer be possible.

Free Solo provides a welcome two hour respite from the descent so many seem bent on normalizing, and through the incredible narrative of one special outlier, punches us in the nose as to what our kind is capable of doing. Honnold’s greatness imbibes all avenues – vision, determination, relentless preparation, fearlessness, and most vitally, execution. Moreover, he is a man living a life of no excuses with an honesty, while often painful in its forthrightness, that accepts full responsibility for the choices it engenders. Today, right now, such qualities are more than refreshing, and recognizing and celebrating them is more than exhilarating, it is vital. That they exist and are fully documented for us to see provides a tangible alternative to the depths we’ve been mining since before last January. Just like Honnold’s previously incomprehensible accomplishment, it’s all about merely moving a step at a time upward toward our best, rather than sliding headlong downward toward the worst we continue to allow. BC

In Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, perhaps the greatest American novel ever published, legendary Texas Rangers Gus Mccrae and Woodrow Call are forced to hang their former colleague Jake Spoon after catching him riding with an outfit of horse rustlers and man burners. Young Newt Dobbs, who aides in bringing Jake to justice, but can’t believe his hero would do such a thing, declares to Gus afterward “Jake weren’t no killer!” Gus, as close to a father as Newt has known, explains wisely that Jake had no bearings and “any breeze could blow him.” Today our nation is addled by a Republican Party consisting in the main of Jake Spoons, moorless waifs of limited character and even less concern for the nation’s welfare. 

Just how morally aimless and without honor this group truly is seems about to be put to the test, as the wretched bully who has browbeat them the last couple of years heads toward his own reckoning. That he will make support of his corruption and general malfeasance a litmus test for what constitutes a GOP member in good standing is a sure bet; Trump’s itchy Twitter finger stands ready to isolate and denounce any who stray from his cause. Tuesday’s “meeting” with Pelosi and Schumer signaled a new challenge Trump demonstrated clearly he is not interested in meeting… negotiating with the opposition.

To be fair the President may do a better job meeting halfway on anything if he actually believed it was in his political and personal interest to do so. And that appears far from the case. To Trump’s eyes owning a government shutdown carries no risk at all because it is wildly popular with his wretched core and Fox/AM. Hannity, Dobbs, Ingraham et al have been beating the drums with glee over the prospect for months now, likening it to a Churchillian moment of leadership. Does the GOP rank and file in the House and Senate feel the same way?  Are they ready to bet their political future on Trump’s wretched core, take the 32 % for a test drive and see what she can do?  Do they even have a choice anymore? Besides, last month’s elections washed most who walked the wire between reason and visceral grievance out to sea. The House GOP is now near completely a back bencher caucus, uninterested in much more than getting booked for rants on the Fox/AM circuit, strutting its pro- gun and anti-abortion bona fides,  and getting a sip or two from the seemingly endless shit river donor trough. This is not a party exhibiting much concern for its future prospects which, in between the mortality of its most devoted and established trends in US heterogeneity, seem bleak. Nothing grand about this old party, more a terminally ill patient on life support.

The last major American political party to dissolve was the Whigs, who failed to withstand the chasm created by the issue of slavery in emerging western US territories. With the election of Abraham Lincoln the Republicans replaced the Whigs, providing the political platform to oppose secession and teaming locally with remaining Whig elements after the Civil War to pursue Reconstruction. Were today’s GOP to fail under the weight of its missteps trying to tip toe for advantage around the bigotry and nihilism of the Tea Party bloc that morphed effortlessly into Trump’s wretched core, turning the “big tent” into “white Christian only,” it’s difficult to imagine what will replace it.

The constant refrain that the Democrats are hostage to extreme elements of their own just doesn’t hold water; neither Pelosi or Schumer smack at all of unbridled progressivism. The ease with which the seasoned Pelosi brought to heel dozens of new insurgents, who had made replacing her topic A of their primary campaigns, underscores that, at least in one of our major political parties, there is still recognition of the necessary differences between getting elected and governing. Call it selling out if you wish, but Trump reminds us hourly where  “promises made, promises kept” gets us. New blood has been infused, and their agenda will surely be heard in 2020. For now national survival is paramount. 

No, it appears any new iteration arising from the ashes of the post-Trumpian GOP will be mostly the refugees displaced by the disaster he both represented and accelerated. But do the RINOs have either the resources or vitality to create an alternative to the white nationalist monstrosity they either abandoned or were unable to maintain viability within?  More importantly, are any of them really that far removed from the GOP mainstays now in charge?  What do they have to offer that is so fundamentally different from current party platforms?

Climate change acceptance? Not really, the party had lurched toward skepticism of scientific consensus well before Trump came on the scene, as fossil fuel interests railed about carbon neutral and their bottom line. Immigration? GOP hardliners have been fouling up the works on comprehensive reform since Reagan.  “Amnesty” has been a dirty word on the right side of the aisle  for 40 years now, non-European refugees the scapegoats for longer. Only the overt bigotry of Trump’s rhetoric and obsession with an idiotic wall as panacea distinguish him from a long line of predecessors. Civil Rights and diversity? While it’s hard to go anywhere but up from this Administration’s ugliness on the matter, note the GOP was home to Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms before Jeff Sessions and Tom Cotton. John McCain himself had trouble supporting an MLK holiday. Supply Side follies? Emerging doctrine since Reagan. Supporting Repressive Arab regimes? Please. Abortion? Pro-Choice Republicans were a critically endangered species in the 90s.

The more one examines the GOP past and present, the more one appreciates what we see now is simply what it appears to be… the grotesque inadequacy of the President they fielded, and his apologists, taints the agenda most all never had a problem supporting. In other words, there no longer exists the possibility of creating a “moderate conservative” brand. It’s all about style rather than substance. What they left, they helped create. Louie Gohmert simply leaves less to the imagination and rants more. The song remains the same. 

Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham are currently in contortions explaining how Michael Cohen is a whole nother body from Donald Trump; anything he did was his own doing. Oh, and even if the President did order everything, it’s merely a civil matter, “weaponizing” the otherwise innocuous “personal’ transaction as a felony only reinforces what a destructive enterprise Mueller’s fishing expedition has become. Black is white, night is day. The flailing spasms of a narrative cornered with nowhere to go. Expect more of the same on the collusion pieces, and obstruction, and money laundering. Inane explanation followed by illogical rationalization… the death throes of a party in decline. With nothing to replace it… just more hot air to blow its fleet of Jake Spoons  in the preferred direction.

Yet and still, anybody listening to Freedom Caucus members act nasty to stem cell researchers in committee hearings understands, had John Kasich trumped Trump back in the spring of 16’ and eaten HRC’s lunch in November, his GOP would have been doing most of the same things this one is doing, less the defending an unhinged narcissist thing. The winds blowing them would surely have been less severe, but they would have headed in that general direction just the same, with similar intentions.

In other words, this really still is your father’s GOP. And to those just now exclaiming enough is enough, it’s useful to recall what Gus told Jake as his old associate pleaded he had nothing to do with rustling and killing, but merely “fell in with those boys to make it through the territory without getting scalped.” “Sorry Jake,” Gus replies, “but any man go along with six killings is making his escape a little slow.” BC

Growing up there  wasn’t much my father and I didn’t argue about. Everything from the shape my bedroom was in to my prolific appetite was up for discussion. Many a family dinner fell victim to my desire to get in the last word about some controversy that didn’t exist an hour before. “Just shut up and let it go…,” my unfortunate younger brother, John frequently intervened, hoping for the basic human right of eating my mom’s fantastic meatloaf in peace.

A classic was when my dad, in a rare moment of frugality decided my brothers and I were drinking too much milk, and rationed us to two glasses per dinner. Well, my acute sense of injustice alerted, I was not about to suffer limits on God’s bounty, even if they were imposed by the guy who paid the bills! I finished my second glass before even starting on the mashed potatoes, and all eyes were upon me, including those of my oppressor,  daring me to step over the line in the sand. As I stood to head toward the kitchen, prepared  to instigate a domestic dispute that would surely rock Farnsworth Drive, an epiphany took hold and forced clarity on my narcissism… I was acting like a jerk! I don’t pay a cent for anything! Who am I to feel so privileged I can demand as much as I please?! I sat back down, my mom exhaled in relief. I looked at my dad and in my most supplicanted tone offered “can I have more milk if I do some extra chores?” To which the man who created me, who bore my constant need to push the envelope of his reasonable disciplinary edicts,   who sheparded me through life, despite my near constant efforts to make things tougher…. that saint of a man looked down over his worn glasses and answered simply: “What are you talking about?! You don’t do anything around here  to begin with!” 

So much for memory lane and the wonderful diplomacy seeped within the Carey lineage. The point is finding things to argue about is as easy as picking losers at the racetrack; it is innate and never far from view. That it took so long for television and radio executives to discover the road to profits “debate” represented is a great mystery that surely spared us much societal trauma, and perhaps enabled our Post-War society to evolve free of the moronic populism we now suffer. 

Yet and still, there is nobility in disagreement. I doubt anybody ever described democracy as the protector of freedom because it allows everybody to agree with each other. Rather, it provides for peaceful and constructive disagreement. We can discuss things instead of fighting about them. We can finish dinner together after a political discussion and take things into the den over dessert… rather than the front lawn over bloody knuckles. Er, well… you get my drift. 

That we are going to disagree is a given; the substance, or more importantly lack of it, of what we are currently at odds about seems most relevant as our polarization continues apace. That Trump’s wretched core, of course heartened by Fox/AM, now equates any and all disgust with his daily hit parade of gratuitous outrages as “liberal hatred” clarifies both points. We are now actually arguing about behavior that until two and a half years ago it was assumed wouldn’t be tolerated for a minute in a POTUS, and it does not appear possible to carry on such “conversations” in a civil manner.

Trump true believers, most of whom were generous with their anger toward all manner of Obama provocation, from the tan suit to the awkward salute to having the unmitigated gall  of empathizing with black fathers of unarmed sons slain by vigilantes, now enjoy being the ones calm and in control, wondering aloud why there is so much vitriol over things that don’t matter. Afterall, it’s just a tweet! Sure, he could act more presidential, but it’s policy that counts. 

Do they have a point?  Nothing Trump does surprises anymore, and he’s sure not going to change… why keep obsessing about it? I have a neighbor with a Facebook page from hell, all in on everything Trump and GOP. It operates on two levels: one, gaslight Trump’s peccadillos as trivial in the scheme of things; two, highlight all form of left wing excesses as the reasonable mirror to Trump’s conduct. Trump may have tweeted his uncle was a scientist so, naturally, Climate Change is a hoax, but look at this Yale freshman screaming how ashamed she is to be white! Apples to Apples.

Meanwhile, almost $2 trillion was gift wrapped to upper income brackets at full employment, and the EPA doesn’t think scrubbers are necessary anymore for coal-fired power plants. The military budget is now well over $700 billion and lame duck legislatures in Wisconsin and Michigan seek to hobble the mandate voters clearly put forth. Maybe we are allowing Trump’s hourly inanity to dim the forest for the trees. Trump fatigue is real and it’s diluting the essential points to be made on the substantive debates that matter. Playing right into nihilist hands. Right? … Wrong! 

With apologies to my wife – who begs me to, get ready,  “shut up and let it go!” – acclimating to constant lies and disgraceful behavior is not an option if we want to remain a going democratic concern. The whys of how we got here are not as important as the whats we now endure. And while policy is of course important,  even critical, process is the ball game; and our machinery simply won’t survive if hourly lies and personal attacks in defense of corruption become par for the course.

Trump, after months of outright lies, which his defenders accepted and amplified, now accepts as true he oversaw hush money payoffs to women he slept with. The strategy now is to shrug and say big deal, none of it rises to anything more than a civil issue, fully comparable to Obama campaign shenanigans which were simply assigned a fine by the FEC. The magnitude of such deceit is clear when one dwells for even a moment on any comparable scenario involving Obama and payments to women, and imagines the GOP response.

With Mueller still keeping most of his cards to his vest, this is only the beginning, just one salvo of breathtaking dishonesty and hypocrisy Trump and the GOP are comfortable presenting those who elected them. There is a reason we can’t get past the nonsense…. it’s damn dangerous nonsense. How do you chat casually about such an overt liar as Trump? I’m all ears. 

Mark Twain once pointed out the person who tells the truth doesn’t have to remember anything. Our President is seldom honest and has a terrible memory; that’s a very bad combination. More than 75 percent of Republicans still support Donald Trump, many with the caveat that the policy ends he pursues justify looking past the ugly means by which he pursues them. Such illogic may end up destroying the GOP in the wake of their champion’s implosion, which seems more likely by the week. Regardless, what they are willing to abide is their problem, and of their own making. The rest of us need to keep the faith and appreciate what counts, working toward restoring at least the expectation of government by responsible people, where lies and abasement are career enders. That means never getting anything more than unbearably uncomfortable with the current occupant’s unprecedented demeanor, and making clear it is indeed intolerable. It’s a fight worth ruining dinner over. BC

American politics long ago became one continuous campaign. The lines separating election cycles began to dim in earnest with the advent of PACs and now it has become one long slog, with newly elected members attending fund raising dinners the very day they are sworn into office. That staying elected has surpassed governance as a priority for so many lawmakers clarifies a system more concerned with personal ambition and special interests than the national well being. Tribal allegiances now hold sway over even the most benign efforts at bipartisan cooperation. When it all becomes one long day at the track, merely picking and choosing winners and losers, the quality of what is produced at every level, from State Houses to the White House, suffers greatly. And now the system’s worst creation threatens its very existence.

It seems a certainty the new year will usher in a resumption of Trump rallies. The President will want to keep his wretched core close, lest he not feel fully validated when doing battle with Robert Mueller and his deep state collaborators. Every indication portends the Special Counsel is about to go all in with a hand that will rock Trump’s world, taking him to task on a number of fronts, backed by sworn testimony from a long list of minions who learned the hard way loyalty to the Donald is a one-way concept. Trump is vulnerable to charges ranging from collusion to obstruction of justice to graft and good old fashioned racketeering. The bumbling incompetence of his legal team, headed by Rudy Giuliani, who appears close to senility, surely isn’t lost on the President; so he’ll be playing the cards that brung him… his true believers and Fox/AM.

That Trump will bring America to a full blown systemic crisis as the noose tightens is a foregone conclusion. The rallies will serve that purpose. It’s a sure bet, as the details of his ruination become filled in, Trump will hit the road with a message seeped in seditious division. No doubt any and all of his persecutors will be villanized to the hilt, his reckless gibberish no longer limited by any pretense of responsibility. And Fox/AM will spin whatever spews forth, embellishing a narrative that begins and ends with Trump’s paranoid narcissism. Freedom caucus lackeys and other Trump supplicants will join the crusade, providing any legitimacy they can. What emerges will be a call to arms that equates Trump’s political and legal survival with that of the nation, a 24/7 road to insurrection if their champion is messed with. All paid for by American tax dollars. 

Whatever Mueller reveals, however comprehensive and damning to Trump, his family, and his Presidency, we can be sure most of the Republican Party will either ignore or attack it. Trump’s Attorney General nominee, William Barr, appears ready to provide the institutional luster of the DOJ in service to the White House, his pro-Trump inclinations being strategically leaked throughout his pre-selection process. How that plays out is anybody’s guess. For now everybody seems satisfied the ghastly Whitaker is being replaced;  oh, the ruinous impact of bottom-level expectations… the only tier this Administration functions on. 

As I’ve noted before, the gist of our pluralist governance is the honor of our officials. We simply haven’t had a Chief Executive who never wanted the job, but once ensconced in the White House felt liberated to be as lazy, uninspired and corrupt as he pleased. We’ve never had a President with zero concern for the fate of a nation he swore to protect, and in fact has no reservations about rocking its foundations to the stilts if his noxious self-preservation requires it. We never experienced a cabal of Congressmen and Senators explicitly dedicated to self and party over country and the world. Our institutions that serve our constitution seem, at the time we will surely need them most, subservient to, if not the best qualities of their executors, at least some absence of their worst inclinations. It is all uncharted. Nothing is certain. And so we steer warily into a season of discontent, addled by a corrupt nihilist determined to secure support against the chickens his own indecency is bringing home to roost.

Two, three times a week? We know he has nothing else to do… except tweet. Decades from now historians will assess the coming days and marvel how such an ignorant and unprepared man could have so preoccupied the world’s most powerful nation…. or ruined it. We shall see. BC

Global emissions of carbon dioxide have reached their highest levels ever. After two years of progress to the point where output actually leveled off, creating some hope that a downward trend was possible, 2017 saw global increases of 1.6 percent, with China, India and the US primarily responsible for the uptick. The sovereign nation-state, human kind’s preferred living arrangement, appears unable to secure its future as a going concern on this particular planet. In other words, it’s doubtful oceanfront  property in Miami is a very good long-term investment.

At a critical point when the most we could possibly do probably still wouldn’t  be enough, the globe’s major industrialized countries are actually going in the wrong direction. At a time when dauntless US leadership on Climate Change would still probably come up short to the perils we all face, we are instead fully retreating from the challenge, actually denying a problem even exists. This after historic fires in California, record breaking hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida, and a stark report from our own government detailing a bleak future without focused and decisive action.

It was lost on nobody at HW’s exquisite funeral yesterday that virtually every asset the former President’s eulogizers expounded was an effortless yet brutal rebuke of our current POTUS, tensed in the front row, arms crossed with his signature petulance. Brian Mulroney, a former conservative Prime Minister of our now increasingly estranged neighbor to the north, lanced our national boil most directly when, pointing to 41’s stewardship of initiatives on NAFTA, clean air, and protections for people with disabilities concluded: 

“There is a word for this: it is called “leadership” — and let me tell you that when George Bush was President of the United States of America, every single head of government in the world knew they were dealing with a true gentlemen, a genuine leader – one who was distinguished, resolute and brave.”

At precisely the time we needed the US to galvanize the world on a crusade rooted in collective self-interest, we elected a pathological narcissist, whose campaign promised full retreat from anything other than the most craven “America first” priorities. And of course, as he has now mused several times, when the bill comes due “I won’t be around anymore.” 

Back in the late 80s the Adirondack Mountain region faced unmitigated disaster from acid rain. Lakes were dying and the entire vacation industry, which defined the area’s economic prospects, was endangered. Aggressive reductions in sulfur and nitrogen emissions needed to happen yesterday, but were caught up in the politics embracing their details. The Bush Administration made the federal clean air package a priority and slow but steady progress took hold. Between 2000 and 2010 sulfur and nitrogen emissions from coal-fired power plants decreased 51 and 43 percent, and while the region still suffers some lasting environmental damage, the worst days are in the rearview mirror. Focused government action equaled the necessary results.

Much of the success behind efforts to reduce acid rain came as a result of regulations mandating “scrubbers” be installed in existing coal-fired power facilities. The technology is probably what Trump has in mind, however dimly, when he refers to “beautiful clean coal.” Of course, utilities opposed the mandate from the start, but faced a bipartisan commitment to solve a major environmental problem and were forced to swallow their medicine. No longer. Trump’s EPA has proposed dumping the rule, and allowing existing plants exemptions from retrofit obligations. 

The wrecking ball this Administration has applied to whatever momentum existed behind collective efforts versus climate change is as indisputable as it was unnecessary. Nobody believes Trump reneged on the Paris Agreement for any purpose other than to pander to the Fox/AM narrative his wretched core slavishly adheres to. That he wears the decision as a badge of honor at his ugly rallies leaves little to the imagination as to his primary motivation. Make no mistake, his  carefully tended bloc of supporters, who somehow find honor in such imbecility addles our Republic to its nucleus. Nihilists don’t do continuity or proactive action because that inhibits their guiding practice of simply blaming others. Every hour it becomes more clear just how harmful government by mindless opposition is to most anything constructive.

The way forward looks grim without quick and decisive action. There is nothing to suggest a Democratic House will enjoy any success realigning the US position toward any collective efforts on Climate Change, let alone the Paris Agreements. Right now individual states like California have been forced to pledge their best efforts absent of any federal guidance or assistance. Two more years of Trumpist idiocy on the matter seems an eternity, six more a ruinous impossibility.

60 Minutes had a gut wrenching and poignant piece on the destruction of Paradise, CA by unrestrained wildfires last month. It’s hard to imagine how one who barely escaped alive after harrowing hours only hell could replicate feels toward a President so unconcerned with climatic forces responsible for the disaster that he literally sneers at the conclusions his own government’s study embraces. 

One UN official, commenting on various possibilities to address an increasingly dire planetary condition, averred “any action is better than no action.” He’s wrong and obviously hasn’t chatted with our inhibitor-in-chief, who would gladly expound on a menu of possibilities that promise only adding to the untenability of where we sit. Our “leader” pours gasoline on fires… nothing else. BC

 

 

The best, or luckiest, or both, politicians don’t often have to pander for votes. They are either charismatic and articulate enough to create a vision that exceeds the details of its parts, or are able to cash in on the ideological homogeneity of the area they represent. For every Beto O’Rourke, who almost upset swimming relentlessly upstream in Texas, there is a Duncan Hunter Jr., who won re-election as a devout Trumpie while under indictment for overt corruption. American politics takes all shapes and sizes. Yet and still, in the main, we prefer our candidates stand for something and show at least some backbone for sticking with and defending positions through political headwinds they inevitabley will face.

There were different reasons George HW Bush was not a great candidate for any office he ran for during his political career. He wasn’t particularly adept at connecting with strangers over small talk. Nor did he possess a passion for change he was chomping at the bit to tell people about. But I suspect what dimmed his enthusiasm the most at the retail level of electoral politics was his disdain for pandering, which early on he learned was often a requirement for victory. His discomfort for adroit  flexibility on issues was matched by his inability to spin the blowback it engendered. It’s no coincidence that the sharpest stake to his second term Presidential fortunes was the ineptitude of his defense for abandoning a previous pledge he never wanted to make.

In 1964, as a young war hero running for a Congressional seat in the hustings of Texas oil country, HW embraced the evolving GOP  Southern Strategy and went all in against LBJ’s Civil Rights Act. It would be the first of many chapters  in the saga of Bush’s struggles with doing the right thing on race, and it was a miserable failure. Not only did he lose the primary, but the strategy left an ugly aftertaste.  He later fully admitted his pandering in 64’ was wrong, and it served as a lesson. In 1968, with the comfort that comes with running unopposed for his second term in the House, Bush made amends by joining Republican moderates in supporting the Fair Housing Act, a move that helped reinforce enduring distrust by right wingers that HW could be counted on.

Throughout his eight years as Reagan’s VP, Bush held fast to the principle that his job required 24/7 team play, and anything but fully supporting the Administration’s frequently far right agenda was not an option. Of course, doing so conveniently enhanced the ideological bona fides he would need for the 88’ primary season to dispatch the likes of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan, but HW was very quick to tack toward the center even before the nomination was fully in hand. On issues like abortion,  gun control and tax pledges he was clearly uncomfortable tossing red meat around. To HW’s mind’s eye, his candidacy was defined by the competence of a resume full of check marks, not the emotion of continuing any “revolution” his predecessor ushered in. Governing, not changing political landscapes, would be the hallmark of his time in office.

But the road to the White House was not as straightforward; Lee Atwater had his own set of rules for running a campaign… no rules at all. Whatever comfort zone HW thought existed for him to bask in his patrician’s sense of right and wrong was not anything the morally vacant bestie of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone recognized.

Anybody who has earned a living selling things knows making promises is a double-edged sword, razor sharp on both sides. Long-term success in sales requires repeat and referred business. The surest sale is one to a previously satisfied client. However, first they have to become a client, and that’s where the line between promising what you and your product can deliver and the limitations reality exerts come into conflict. Promising anything a prospect wants to hear, in spite of a clear understanding some expectations aren’t viable, may get you the business, but will surely create problems later in the customer satisfaction department. Many companies and the sales people they employ don’t care about future considerations when pursuing new business, and will say whatever is required…. thus, the negative caricature of the salesman,   and the enduring image of the beleaguered American consumer.

Presidential politics is not a speck different, which candidate Bush learned the hard way in 88’ and beyond. When HW entreated for all to “read my lips” and promised no tax increases, he came fully into conflict with the requisites competence and responsible stewardship in the office he sought would demand. When the Willie Horton ad poured racist toxicity into his campaign’s narrative, he understood how Faustian the bargain had become. And while his reticence didn’t stop him from pursuing both avenues to get over the finish line – which most contend he would have reached without either compromise of his innate sensibilities – it did render him completely inadequate to finessing the fallout they inevitably produced when re-election time came around in 92’. He learned the hard way it’s next to impossible succeeding as only a partial hypocrite, sticking just a couple of toes in the swamp. Bush was never all in with his deal with the devil… so in 92’ it was rescinded, and his fate in the history books was sealed, a hapless one-termer, merely keeping the chair warm in the transition from the bold ideology of Reaganism to the nimble expediency of Bill Clinton.

The Trump Presidency affords HW a larger slice at historical relevance than he enjoyed before nihilism’s rise to the White House. Now, like the others in the elite group he just departed, Bush’s tenure as POTUS affords a stark contrast to the nadir the office now suffers.

The HW years were jammed with international challenges he confronted with a level of seriousness and restraint we can currently only reflect back on with satisfied nostalgia as the rabid imbecile we most recently installed shames our country and endangers the world. But perhaps the real dichotomy we should appreciate is Bush’s tortured relationship with political expediency compared to Trump’s minute-to-minute efforts at satisfying his wretched core’s mindless grievance. Maybe what we should hold closest as we bury another US institution is his cognizance that a “right thing” existed, even if his human frailties compromised his ability to embrace it.

The lessons HW learned painfully from his failures punctuate a system  with an ability to enforce the consequences of bad choices made in the fog of naked ambition. Whether Trump will suffer those same repercussions may foretell if the system itself is fully endangered and may not survive. Our appreciation of the good faith public servants like HW aspired to at least reminds us of how much we stand to lose, and should strengthen our resolve to protect it. BC

 

‎”I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with [the unemployed, the sick without medical care, human welfare, etc.] and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution.”

No group of Americans has suffered more under Donald Trump than conservative pundits. George Will, Kathleen Parker, Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot,  etc. have all faced an existential challenge to their relevance in our national discussion.

Some, like Rubin in particular, have placed ideology on the back burner and focused solely on Trump’s malfeasance, accepting that policy distinctions that used to be the basis for argument now mean little with an unhinged nihilist at the helm. Max Boot has gone a step further and actually re-examined previously held positions – climate change for example – in light of his disgust for  fellow travelers he can no longer countenance.

George Will bashes Trump where he believes suitable, but also seems intent on cherry picking instances of liberal excess to  strut his right wing bona fides. But within this clan of wanderers, nobody is more lost in the wilderness than David Brooks, a man now far afield  from the safe and pristine niche of parlor chat conservatism he used to be able to dabble in, getting paid a fine wage and achieving multi media credence for doing so.

Trump has forced Brooks to confront choices he’d rather have his molars pulled than have to make. Discussing Trumpist nihilism simply does not allow for free range intellectuality, much to Brooks’ chagrin. For while Brooks had no problem taking Trump to task in favor of other Republicans during the primary season, once Trump became POTUS, an unmoored Brooks was forced to do something he disdains… take a stand. He doesn’t like binary choices with simple features that can’t be nuanced with a statistic or an author’s insight.

The news flash he has been very slow to understand is opposing this Presidency is simply the right thing to do, and saying loud and clear Trump sucks doesn’t mean you suddenly have abandoned Edmund Burke; but it does mean you accept what the ascension of Trump and government by Fox/AM fully signifies… “conservatives” now in power never did and surely are no longer interested in Goldwater’s challenge. The least among us never stood a chance as a priority within any dimension of this GOP universe, and now are simply disdained by the base as liberal enemies, even as a sizable chunk of Trump’s bloc endures the same scarcity as the group they villianize.

But Brooks seems slow on the uptake. Recently he’s bent on understanding how, with economic performance at all time highs, Americans are so dissatisfied and pessimistic with the current state of affairs. He’s mystified full employment and a Dow 25K isn’t sufficient to put most in their happy place. He bemoans a disconnect between what people are doing to put food on the table and how confident they are that their lives are going in the right direction and their futures are secure. A “spiritual crisis” exists, declares Brooks, and the blame is shared. Conservatives, liberals and progressives all got it wrong. Really?

The party in power of our country, which pundits like him sought and fully failed to influence, has the following list of priorities: Stem a flood of illegal immigration that isn’t happening; rebuild a military that has no need for repair; provide tax relief at full employment during a structural deficit crisis; resist a global scientific mandate to reduce carbon emissions responsible for disastrous climate change; refuse to accept reasonable gun restrictions in the face of one mass shooting after another; criminalize abortion; and finally, above all, stay politically viable even as you pander to a shrinking core of supporters bent on denying the sweep of demographic changes that will overwhelm them within the next couple of decades.

Faced with such a governing party, whose intellectual underpinnings are exactly the type of “conservatism” Goldwater presciently predicted would fail miserably, I suppose one could forgive Brooks his delusions, but that doesn’t make his panning for deeper reasons for our malaise any more relevant. Brooks is a salesman without clients. The world he presupposes doesn’t exist, and the people he seeks answers for aren’t interested in even posing the questions he wants to explore. The crisis he sees is the same most thoughtful Americans recognize… millions of our fellow citizens are addled by  grievance and resentment, which views social, cultural, economic and technological progress as a diabolical scheme to usurp their position.

Somehow Brooks imagines tangents and trends and societal misfires that tweaks to the relationship between government and the governed can remedy if only we think about it enough. Sorry Dave, some things are just not that complicated. Snake oil and nihilism is what your people now prefer, and unless you have some Eddie Burke chapters that cover such a contingency, you may want to adapt your thinking. BC