Author: 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

There is a great scene in HBO’s drama about the onset of the AIDS epidemic, Angels In America, where Roy Cohn, played by Al Pacino is told by his doctor he has AIDS. Cohn declares it’s impossible because, afterall, only gays, junkies and hemophiliacs contract AIDS, and he’s none of those. His doctor reminds him he has treated Cohn since 1958, diagnosing all manner of STDs with symptoms that made clear long ago his sexual preferences. Cohn dares him to call him a homosexual, promising to ruin his reputation and practice if he does. Cohn hisses that he is a heterosexual with a taste for boys now and again, and henceforth he has liver cancer, not AIDS. He lectures his disgusted physician that clout defines a man, not sexual preference. His incredulous doctor accedes to the demand, but points out what can’t be denied… whatever the title of his affliction, it’s a killer and Cohn is done, unless his “clout” is substantial enough to get him to the head of a very long line for AZT, the then experimental treatment offering a shred of hope. Pacino is fantastic looking smug, satisfied with the empty victory his bullying just gained him.

Those looking for a near impossible task would conduct a search for a figure in US Post-War history more loathsome than Roy Cohn. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s right hand man, Cohn was singularly responsible for much of McCarthyism’s damage to our civic foundations. He lived the adage that villains do to us only what we allow, as he spent a lifetime making life hard for those unable or unwilling to stand up to his bullying.

Although he was gay, Cohn and McCarthy made closeted men a targeted subset of their anti-Communist inquisition, using sexual preference as a weapon to both coerce cooperation as well as simply a gratuitous means to destroy reputations and careers. To his last day, the widely despised Cohn never offered a sliver of regret for a life spent being a hypocritical pestilence to those forced to share the planet with him. But of all the odious liabilities Cohn foisted on the world while he lived, his most nefarious legacy is our POTUS.

On August 18 of this year, Trump, in one of his hundreds of missives attacking Robert Mueller’s investigation, tweeted his followers the “rigged witch hunt” made “Joseph McCarthy look like a baby.” The irony wasn’t lost in the barrage of responses from the twitter universe. Even Fox Trumpeteer Brit Hume labeled the attack “ridiculous.” Whether Cohn would have embraced having his seditious work with McCarthy emasculated is uncertain; what is clear is the technique was part of his MO, which he taught his protege Donald Trump from the first day he took him under his wing as a client back in 1973.  In fact, Trump’s Presidency has been not much more than a living reminder of Cohn’s worst, which Trump embodies in near everything he does.

Never admit a mistake. Never show weakness. Truth is a liability. Hit hard, hit often. Never let an attack go unanswered. Always be dividing and conquering. A sense of shame and a sliver of integrity is the other guy’s problem. Courts are simply a tool to intimidate.  Agreements are negotiable at every stage, most importantly when payment is due. Loyalty above all… others’ loyalty. And on and on.

We elected the worst man in our country, who learned at the knee of one of the worst men in our history. Fox/AM admits neither while celebrating both as unappreciated saviors of the wretched core, who are all that count. This Presidency is first and foremost the revenge of Roy Cohn, a middle finger to all who rightly loathed him.

As Cohn dissolved painfully from the virus he refused to admit he contracted, the chickens of his ugly life came home to roost. His infirm condition denying him the energy to keep his pursuers at bay as he had always done, by bullying through the courts and scurrilous innuendo, Cohn was vulnerable to his enemies, and they were numerous. The IRS was moving to freeze his assets. The New York Bar was in the process of disbarring Cohn for a number of infractions. Columnist Jack Anderson actually got a hold of Cohn’s medical records, making clear in print that AIDS, not liver cancer, was responsible for doing Cohn in. It was all falling apart as death neared, and Cohn was not interested in passing with grace, bitterly complaining he was suffering opportunists in between bouts of denial that took issue with the notion he was even sick.

One friend Cohn believed he could count on to the end was his client and young protege, Donald Trump. On everything from prenups to tax abatement to plain old stiffing vendors, Cohn had taught Trump most everything he knew over the last 13 years. Indeed, Trump emerged from the tuteledge the mirror image of Cohn, ever ready to go to court, never concerned about acting despicably, and the best friend a lie could ever have.

Alas, Cohn’s faith in Trump’s loyalty was misplaced. Upon discovering Cohn was suffering from AIDS, the Donald swiftly cut off all contact with his mentor. He would admit to a certain affection for Cohn, but from a comfortable distance, and with nobody mistaking he was reflecting on his tutor of all things nasty from the rear view. As Cohn would surmise in a moment of clarity, his student “pisses ice water.”

So there you have it, the original rat from which our plague mutated. The foundation of our nihilist-in-chief’s wretched take on the world that suffers him. More than 50 years ago Joseph Welch asked Cohn’s boss a simple yet devastating question, one of the most famous inquiries in modern US history… “Have you no sense of decency?!” And while old Joe McCarthy didn’t have anything smart on the tip of his tongue at the time, his young assistant, and the protege he would groom a couple decades later surely would have had emphatic responses… No!  We don’t. It is as true now as it was then, and all times in between. BC

 

A logical coping mechanism for enduring this Administration is finding other US Presidents with similar deficiencies, who acted with comparable incompetence and disdain for the national interest. Identifying such examples, the thinking goes, assuages anxiety because, after all, if we neared the edge of the cliff before and lived to vote another day, we can do it again. Unprecedented circumstances produce higher anxiety levels than predicaments one can equate with past events we survived as a going concern, even if they were far from our finest hour. Been there, done that beats the road not yet traveled every time.

Andrew Johnson never spent a day in school, period. Born to abject poverty in Raleigh, NC, his father died when he was very young, leaving his mother, a laundress, to support her two children with a fully insufficient income stream. Instead of school, Johnson became an apprentice, and while dedicated to learning, which spared him illiteracy and actually made him a servicable orator, Abraham Lincoln’s successor had no formal education.

Johnson’s fealty to the Union’s cause – he was the only Southern Senator who didn’t resign his seat as war neared – appears to be rooted in resentments poverty instilled in him; he viewed secession as the seditious brainchild of entitled plantation owners, bent on maintaining their free means of production. And while Johnson never wavered in his opposition to the South’s agenda, he was just as much of a nasty racist as the next guy, actively opposing the most modest reparation initiatives, as well as the 14th Amendment. As Frederick Douglas accurately observed on Inauguration Day, 1865, as Johnson was sworn in as Vice-President, “…whatever he is, he is no friend of the black race.”

Black misery, either as slaves or freed men with no assets or prospects amongst  bitter vanquished white populations, never concerned Johnson. It’s not much of a stretch to say, while Lincoln understood the critical importance of melding former slaves into American life as citizens rather than property, Johnson could not have cared less. His tenure as President was dedicated to undoing most all of his predecessor’s agenda… sound familiar?

When Johnson persisted in trying to push out Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who bitterly opposed his reconstruction policies, The Party of Lincoln had had enough. The GOP-dominated Congress impeached Johnson, and it was left to the Senate to spare him dismissal by one vote. Regardless, few historians will argue against the idea of Johnson as one of our worst Chief Executives, proactively responsible for Jim Crow and corrosive racial estrangement that haunts us still.

One more thing… while in office, Johnson embarked on a national “Swing Around the Circle” tour, an itinerary of 20 political rallies comprising rambling monologues opposed to all things benefitting former slaves, while labeling Republican Congressional opponents as enemies of the people. In fact, in February, 1866, on the occasion of George Washington’s Birthday, Johnson addressed backers at the White House, and in an unhinged,  and many thought drunken soliloquy, boasted more than 200 times of his achievements as POTUS. Nobody could recall ever having witnessed a President create such a spectacle.

Trump is fond of claiming Andrew Jackson as a predecessor he admires and emulates. Although Trump and any knowledge or appreciation of history is like chicken crap to chicken salad, it seems he can indeed claim an uncanny likeness to a past President named Andrew. Though Trump and Johnson share ugly personal characteristics, not to mention overt delight in dividing the country they each took an oath to unite, Johnson was at least a self-made man, rising from destitution to the highest office in the land. What he would have done with his talents, and vices, if he instead had a father like Fred Trump, who funneled him the equivalent of near $500 million throughout his life is anybody’s guess. We know what his historical soulmate did… lost most of it, declaring bankruptcy time and again. And then thanked his dying father by attempting to seize control of all of his holdings, not to mention created a false biography that lied he only borrowed and quickly paid back a mere $1 million. Like everybody else but Trump’s wretched core, it’s a good bet Johnson would have found such scurrilous ingratitude unfathomable.

So there it is, we have sorta been here before. Our President most closely resembles a man every historian worth his/her research agrees is one of US history’s very worst White House occupants. Do what you will with the information. Of course the American electorate never elected Johnson POTUS like they did Trump, and his steadfast support of the Union in the face of an exodus by all of his southern peers in the Senate speaks to the presence of honor and courage nobody remotely imagines Trump possesses. Yet and still, we can at least grasp for the solace that comes with believing some precedent for awfulness exists and everything the Donald does to sully his office is not uncharted. It’s perverse, it’s sad and pitiable, it’s thoroughly inadequate and won’t lead to much of a decrease in Xanax abuse…. but it’s something. These days, with this monstrosity, even cold comfort is better than nothing at all. BC

“In the party of Lincoln, there is no room for intolerance and not even a small corner for anti-Semitism or bigotry of any kind. Many people are welcome in our house, but not the bigots.”

Ronald Reagan

”Oh, look at my African American over here! Look at him!”

Donald Trump at a 2016 Campaign Rally

The metrics historians will use to describe American decline during the Trump era will be many. Surely, they will measure markets lost to random tariff regimes. The amount of ground ceded in the fight against climate change will get much scrutiny, as will the effects of the open season Trump et al declared on US skies and waters, not to mention wildlife. And, of course, the setbacks inherent in an America First foreign policy, represented abroad by the boundless insults and inanity of America’s worst civic failure, will require its own school of assessment. But perhaps the greatest damage Trumpism will do is to the fabric of American society; and measuring that is a far dicier task.

Who we are and what our country means to us is no longer a bipartisan proposition as millions entertain their darkest foibles and bring, not just naked selfishness and xenophobia to the table of our national discussion, but raw bigotry as well.

Patriotism embodies aspirations for one’s nation as much as it encompasses a reverence for past achievements. Melding our history and potential for future acheivement creates our national self esteem. This can’t occur in a vacuum; it has to be informed by events on the ground, whether those happenings enhance or insult the narrative of our patriotism goes far in determining how we digest them and evaluate those responsible. Today, right now, a substantial minority, reflected by the champion they put in the White House, are reflexively rebuking a century’s worth of assumptions that have created the reflection we see in the mirror of our collective identity.

Trumpism is the complete disparagement of virtually everything we have celebrated about America since the turn of the last century. Like Dr. Jekyll’s Mr. Hyde, it’s a gruesome element of our personality given voice and a license to cause rancor and turmoil. If not checked and dissolved it could  destroy us. The idea that societal progress, much of it forged through the lessons taught by seismic conflicts created by past mistakes, is now seen by so many as responsible for making them feel aggrieved clarifies a grotesque misunderstanding of the civic obligations democracies require to survive.

Systemic racism  in this country was always the result of white America’s worst inclinations… entitlement, fear and insecurity. These are the very components MAGA is based on. It’s our country. Progress has encroached on that; the empowerment the civil rights evolution has bestowed to minorities is zero-sum, their gain is our loss. That’s the gist of it. The concept of America as first and foremost obligated to the prosperity of white Christians. MAGA rallies are increasingly characterized by a lack of effort to adorn this proposition with lip service to any other group.

Trump is becoming ever less concerned with the approval of anybody other than those who butter his bread. Code words and dog whistles are becoming more frequent and straightforward. This is a bloc desperately desiring to bring their visceral feelings fully out of the closet, equating the “fight against political correctness” with Lee Greenwood  patriotism. The GOP has been consumed by Trump’s wretched core, it’s leadership in both chambers now in lock step with MAGA exclusivity. The “big tent” is now “only nationalists need apply.”

Last week’s mid-terms highlighted the party’s contracting national support, as Democrats received more votes than any nationwide election since Watergate. Trump and the GOP appear unreceptive to any lesson from this development other than a need to roll out more effective voter suppression strategies. Make no mistake, Mitch McConnell’s comical demands for “bipartisanship” aside, it’s all “us versus them.”

You’re either for cops or against them. Circling the wagons after yet another recorded police shooting of an unarmed black man is the patriot’s response to a mob of militants bent on anarchy. Immigrants are invaders. ICE are heroes stemming the hordes. Even the tropes about being all for legal immigration are now giving way to a fearful broad brush painting brown skinned outsiders as threats to personal safety, to law and order. The proliferation of 911 calls from caricatures of irrational fear and entitlement feels very much like a cry for liberation; Trump is President, let us act accordingly. We are pushing back the clock and showing who is boss. Uppitiness is over, get back in your place or I’ll get my law involved.

I suppose the rest of us were in denial about the extent of this ugliness. Perhaps we were beguiled by the tone of local and national newscasts that pronounced diversity a good and noble pursuit in American life. Clearly, many stewed about such assumptions and became enamored with Fox/AM’s efforts to validate resentment 24/7, building it to the crest of nastiness we experience today.

It’s clear, nearly two years in Trumpism is succeeding in more than just fraying the unity of purpose and direction that has steadily evolved during America’s modern age; we are now two countries.  One simply continuing down the road we have travelled together, for better or worse, over the last century or more. The other taking a jackhammer to that thoroughfare and rushing headlong into the wilderness with little idea where to go or how to get there, united only by a certainty they hated where they were… and many of those they were with. Such a situation seems unsustainable, and the answers to the predicament are elusive because nihilists are illogical and self-defeating. Yet and still, one thing is certain… cut them off, fight them, tell them to go straight to hell, whatever else you want to do, but refusing to see them for what they are and the peril they portend is not an option. BC

In the summer of 1972 Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, MD., like its bigger counterpart across the Potomac River, Tyson’s Corner, was brand spanking new, a vision of things to come in suburbia. Transplanted from an established mid-west town with a Main Street that seamlessly accommodated  famous names like Marshall Fields along side mom and pop shops, a mall fit perfectly with the barrage of culture shocks assaulting my young sensibilities, an apocalyptic collection of commerce with parking lots conglomerated under a single roof.

Yet and still, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t cool stuff to see, nor comfort to be found with brands transcending the places they were exhibited. One of those was Sears, which prominently occupied two floors on the north end of the shopping complex, covering the full range of product offerings, and highlighted by a snack bar that provided the best chili dog to be found, resplendent in a lumpless, beanless chili that was to die for. Were  they to have a chili dog eating contest at the facility, I surely would have been competitive in the junior division. As years passed, Montgomery Mall both expanded and matured, becoming a fixture in the area, and Sears remained a touchstone, friends worked there, and the chili dogs remained as tasty as ever.

Now Sears Holdings  is bankrupt, another failed retail business done in by the internet and superstore competition that encroached into its generalist territory with specialized inventory priced to move and unconcerned with the intangibles tradition creates. As the corpse decays, investors and creditors are left to fight over the pickings, some looking to recoup investments, others actually bent on maximizing the returns on their bets against Sears’ survival.  What was a fixture of US commerce is now, not just a cautionary tale of the economic violence progress can inflict, but possibly a watershed of a future fiscal crisis other spectacular failures may ignite. For while the death of Sears signifies the end of how business was once done, the fight over its dissolution surely presages broader threats associated with investment instruments so complex as to literally defy description.

Calling the derivatives market  complicated is like calling a 5-egg brie omelet rich, the complexity of products like credit-default swaps makes for light-headed dizziness. Yet the ramifications of this marketplace that few understand could initiate another global economic panic. The example of Sears shows why.

Credit-default insurance is meant  to provide the protection necessary for lenders  to keep credit flowing through the financial system, enabling the creation of various products investors can wager on, which in turn provides creative financing for companies like Sears restructuring operations to remain competitive.

However, as the chickens come home to roost with the Sears failure, conflicts have arisen regarding what exactly does and doesn’t qualify to be insured. A 15-member “determinations committee” exists to rule on such questions; I hope it’s members are financial geniuses because one could sit for days studying the questions at hand and still be as confused as when they started. But the gist of it comes down to whether Sears, through “intercompany notes,” can essentially redefine what its debt was and how much its lenders can be recompensed through their credit-default insurance. But, according to economics writer  Sebastian Mallaby,  permitting Sears  such leeway threatens to turn the $11 trillion credit-default industry into another financial Jenga tower, with global crisis the result of jittery insurers unwilling to honor agreements they contend do not accurately reflect what they initially expected to cover. In other words, 2007’s mortgage swaps madness all over again.

All of this plays out as the Trump Administration moves aggressively in lock step with the GOP to gut reforms the hard lessons of the Great Recession presumably taught lawmakers. The conclusion we all thought was reached concerning moral hazard, the accountability Wall Street and corporations must abide for the great capitalist system our pols constantly worship to function properly, appears to no longer be a done deal. In fact, listening  to any Republican speak on the issue, one would be forgiven to mistake the subject for climate change, such is their certainty that the issue is still clouded in uncertainy.

So here is where we are: an Administration and Congress brought to power by a nihilist base of voters, far more concerned with whitening America and denouncing those with the secular temerity to exclaim “happy holidays” than anything economically substantive. Forget about derivatives, most in this group don’t have a 401K. And instilling their champions with the confidence to once again foist untenable vulnerability on, not just ours, but the world’s financial future, may indeed be their most destructive legacy… and that is saying something. Lame duck congressional sessions are capable of much malevolence, and there’s plenty of reasons to expect this vanquished caucus to do their worst.

Come 2019 Democrats will run the Longworth, Cannon  and Rayburn buildings. After they slice up each other picking a new leader, and placate  young turks not content to wait their turns, they would do well to discuss the best way to investigate and confront overt Republican sabotage of measures  designed to prevent a crisis similar to the one they created a decade ago. Few priorities are more important. BC

“General!! Get your ass in here!”

”What can I do for you, Mr. President?”

”Listen, you told me to wait until after the mid-terms; it’s after the mid-terms. Time to clean house. I need a team I can trust!”

”Who do you have in mind, sir?”

”Everybody except DeadBolt and lil Stevey Miller.  Oh, and Chubby over at State; he knows how to follow orders.”

”Have you given any thought to who will replace all of these people you want to pur… er, allow to leave for other opportunities?”

”Sean is working on the list. But they have to be team players, none of this “I am unaware of that” crap. If they can’t think on their feet, I don’t want them! Period!”

”But Mr. President, you yourself can’t keep track of all of your lie….. um, reconsiderations. How do you expect us to? We state current policy only to have you contradict us. How are we supposed to handle that?”

”Hello! Anybody home?! How did you become a General anyway?! Pretty stupid, Kelly! How hard is it to say “I stand by this historically great President 110%?!” Pence doesn’t have any problem doing it, and he’s dumber than dirt. Even Barbie Ann manages it. I can only take so much cue ball!  Instead of nagging all the time about reading a position paper or this crap about waiting 10 minutes before I tweet something, why don’t you get your troops in line?! Just one of the many reasons I want to can your ass and get Bannon back in here. At least he can scheme and chew gum at the same time. So unfair.”

”Mr. President, all we’re doing is trying to serve you. For God’s sake, you couldn’t even scan that Wikipedia I gave you on the Baltic States, and look what happened! Baltic… Balkans; is it really that hard? Did you see how horrified they were? You are the President of the United States! Blaming the wrong countries for war and genocide doesn’t cut it! Piss poor, sir!”

”This is what I’m talking about! If I want lectures on basic competence, I’ll call Vlad; at least he understands power. You and your little bimbo at DHS are weak! Look at all those rats pouring over the border!! And now millions are on their way in that caravan. Pathetic. Lindsey is right; it’s all your fault!”

“Lindsey?! Oh, really? So now it’s Lindsey who you trust? You used to despise him. Remember the primaries?”

”He’s had a change of heart since he saw the pics… er, I mean the light. Let’s just say he’s , hee hee, flying straight now. Just needed a little reminding about how, hee hee, tenuous his position was. No more trouble from Lindsey; he’ll be very fair to me from now on.  I might even appoint him to something if Sean is on board.”

”Sir, don’t you think giving Sean Hannity a voice in the make up of your Administration is kind of crazy? What the hell does he know anyway? He’s just a “news personality.”

“You’re on dangerous ground, General! JUST a personality?! Sean has been more fair to me than anybody! I trust him. We can’t all be Henry Kissinger, Mr. Big Shot! Common sense goes a long way, and Sean has plenty of it! He was right about Hillary, wasn’t he?!”

”Right about what on Hillary?”

”Everything! He and Alex Jones were way ahead of everybody! Anyway, I trust him and that should be enough for you! Stop trying to change me, Kelly! Trump is his own man. He governs by instinct!”

”When are you going to tell everyone they’re out?”

”I’m not, you are. And make sure you remind them about the non-disclosure they signed! I don’t want to get Omarosaed again! Tell them Trump will sue their asses to kingdom come if they so much as frown when talking about me. Capice? Ungrateful bastards!” When’s my next rally?”

”What do you mean, next rally? Mid-terms are over. You lost the House…remember?”

”No duh, John! Do I look as stupid as you are?! I want to get an early start on 2020. Besides, I have to explain some new things.”

”Like what?”

”I’m taking heat for not going to that damn cemetery. The fake news is really running with that one.”

”I suppose so; it really did look awful. I told you it was an important function. Really the whole reason we came over. You could have worn a hat. I thought your stylist had a “breakthrough” spray that could hold up to hurricane gusts. What happened with that?”

”Get out!! You are on my last nerve! A lot of wind AND rain. Very dangerous combination! I have a brand to protect. MAGA means a worldclass combover, a do that stays poised to the elements, General! Never forget, it is my real hair! No, no toupee here! All real!   I don’t need second guessing from you! Very unfair! Trump made the call to stay dry and tweet!”

”Well, how do you plan to explain it to the wretc… um, your supporters?”

”John… I’m going to tell the truth. There was near zero visibility, which I said who cares about, so determined was I to get there. But then there was also the possible deep state plot to sabotage the rotor thingamajiggy, which I also scoffed at and insisted we risk it. However, there was then word Antifa assassins may have penetrated the security perimeter. Just a perfect storm of obstacles. The Secret Service still had to physically restrain me, but hey, what’s a security team to do? Of course the fake news scum ran with lies. Traitors!”

”OooKaayy now!”

”Anyway, back to the reason I called you here to begin with. Uh, let me think a minute.!”

”You wanted me to see what PGA pros I can get to join you for a round at Doral next weekend….remember?”

”Right, right. And forget that kid I played with last time. Way too much of a rules stickler. No fun at all. You’re dismissed.”

”Very well, Mr. President.”   BC

 

 

It’s doubtful there exists a greater American hero than Christy Mathewson. One of the original five inductees into the Major League Hall of Fame, “Big Six” dominated hitters for the full 17 years of his career at the beginning of the last century, amassing 373 wins, while finishing with one of the ten lowest Earned Run Averages in history. While his legendary manager, John McGraw, was reknowned far and wide for having little patience for human beings in general, he openly adored his star pitcher. Although the two could not have been more different, McGraw the epitome of a hard-drinking, near compulsive gambling Irish hothead, and Mathewson, every bit the “Christian gentleman” one of his nicknames implied, they were as close as brothers, feeding off the respect each had for the other.

In 1905 the New York Giants won the World Series solely due to the efforts of Mathewson, who pitched three games, 27 innings, and gave up zero runs. McGraw would go to his grave assuring any and all that no feat ever came close to “Matty’s“ dominance that October week. Asked for his opinion, the ever humble Mathewson admitted “I was hard to hit.” And so a legend was born.

When Christy Mathewson told his wife he was set on joining the US war effort in 1918, she begged him not to… unsuccessfully. Sworn in as a Captain, Mathewson became a member of a gas warfare division and was deployed to the WWI European theater, by then a killing field, where he was accidentally exposed to toxic gas in a training accident, promptly inviting an eventually fatal case of tuberculosis. He died way too young in 1925, recognized along with Walter Johnson as Baseball’s greatest pitcher. The day after his death, the Oklahoma daily, The Oklahoman summed up succinctly where Mathewson stood in America’s estimation: “He was loved as no American athlete has been loved.” Tough guy John McGraw was said to have cried like a baby.

Near a century later Europe is commemorating the war to end all wars, and our POTUS is attending the solemn proceedings. In flight toward Europe, in between rants about factless Democratic cheating in Tuesday’s elections, President Trump tweeted his disdain for French President Macron’s “insulting” remark that, in line with the disdainful recent statements by the US President, perhaps Europe needs to rearm with America as an adversary in mind. Trump, who has never given much thought to context or appropriateness, has no problem picking a fight with his host on the way to events meant to honor shared sacrifice. Apparently, rain and wind, always the enemy of our leader’s precision combover, precipitated cancellation of this morning’s planned visit to a cemetery of the fallen. Like his nastiness and resentment, Trump wears vanity on his sleeve. We should count our blessings he didn’t don  a MAGA hat to protect his fragile coif.

Projecting who we are as Americans is an important chore within the job description of our Presidents. Fair or  not, the world sees us through them. The noxiousness of Fox/AM, and indeed the first meaningful glimpse into America First ugliness, was on full display when our first black Chief Executive flew abroad.  Even as the world was dispatching huge crowds to raucously cheer our vibrant young leader, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh were abasing his every remark, shrilly accusing him of “apologizing” for American greatness.

Now their champion, met with near uniform derision, embarrasses us at every port he visits. Macron, auditioning this weekend to replace Angela Merkel as Europe’s preeminent advocate, has learned the hard way about Trump’s vapidness. The  ugly memories of our petulant toddler’s last visit to Brussels and Helsinki are still fresh in the French President’s mind, and his  domestic constituency exhibits little patience for acceding to L’Enfant Terrible’s guiding impulse to bully.  Tolerance for anything less than Trump’s best behavior will surely be in short supply.  Expect at best stilted politeness, at worst recrimination.

World War I claimed near 55,000 Americans in and around miserable trenches across France and Belgium. Associated deaths, many produced by a Spanish Flu pandemic every bit as lethal as a German machine gun bullet, also  killed more than 50,000. All told, more than 116,000 Americans fell in a conflict history makes clear resulted from grievous human miscalculations, which evolved rapidly into a series of events its instigators quickly lost their ability to control.

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended one world war while planting the seeds for another far more destructive conflagration, is a monument to how vengeful nationalist impulses threaten mankind. America First embodies most of what we hoped the deaths of millions of innocents taught us to forsake. Trump’s behavior on the world stage unabashedly displays our worst for all to see. Meanwhile, we sit across the Atlantic flummoxed at the pox we have unleashed, overwhelmed by the manic chaos on which his relevance depends.

It is not a question of if this President will start a cycle of ill will that could blossom into war, he’s already done it.  The same division he bestows on his home country he is hard at work exporting to Europe and beyond, something they need like a bullet to the temple. The country that blessed the world with Christy Mathewson, sacrificing him to the insanity concocted by Czars and Kaisers, has now addled it with our nastiest malignancy. This all plays out at a critical juncture, a familiar crossroads where it will be decided whether or not obsessions about national sovereignty, conjured up by consciousless troublemakers like our President, will be permitted  to incite events that lead to only one place… graveyards, sacred sites visited decades later by leaders unconcerned their hair weave will betray them in the wind and rain! BC

 

Authoritarian government is readily defined, not only by the pronounced lack of quality its executers display in making the trains run on time, but also in their careers prior to being tapped as “public servants.” Far from the sparkling resumes that should be part and parcel of those at the levers of public power, repressive regimes most always make expendable sycophancy the paramount concern when filling out government positions.

This isn’t to say that political patronage is not an enduring feature of representative government, it is. However, slots in pluralist government trees always demand much more career gravitas from applicants if for no other reason than the assumption transperancy will surely shine an unfavorable light on toadie imposters and create a political problem that didn’t need to exist. Tyrants are unconcerned with such optics.

Joachim von Ribbentrop became Hitler’s Foreign Minister on the basis of nothing more than a cogent knowledge of international affairs, absent among the other Nazis in Hitler’s inner cabal… oh, and his willingness to let them use his house for meetings. While it can be said he did excel in mathematics as a young student, Leventriy Beria owed his entire rise toward the pinnacle of the Soviet security state to Stalin’s satisfaction with his loyalty. Rulers are ruled by paranoia; it has always been thus.

World Patent Marketing, established in 2014, was a fraudulent company shuttered by the Federal Trade Commission. It convinced inventors to invest money with a promise to get their inventions patented and fully licensed, but then simply pocketed their contributions and deceived them about its efforts on their behalf. Cut and dried, $26 million scammed from hopeful creators, abject fraud. Matthew Whitaker, our new acting US Attorney General, now fully in charge of the Mueller Investigation’s well being, served on World Patent Marketing’s board of directors,  an ignominious bullet point on a resume sorely wanting in the career achievement category.

Like many of the Administration’s higher ups, Whitaker’s career path shows considerably more failure than success, more mediocrity than excellence. While listed as a “politician,” Whitaker actually sought elected office only twice. In 2002 red Iowa voters decidedly rejected him for State Treasurer, awarding his campaign only 43% of the vote, his incumbent opponent never breaking a bead of sweat. In 2014 he entered a crowded GOP Senate primary field and obtained less than 8% of the vote despite his best efforts; as the Daily Racing Form often asserts in the racing lines of well beaten thoroughbreds, he was “never a factor.”

Like many during Obama’s Presidency, Whitaker sought income and relevance within the non-profit cottage industries dedicated to all things conspiracy. In October, 2014 Whitaker became the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), an organization dedicated to, aside from soliciting donations from gullible right wing true believers, getting to the bottom of Hillary Clinton’s private email server shenanigans.

Whitaker came to Trump’s attention after penning a column for CNN lambasting the Mueller Investigation for becoming a fishing expedition. Specifically, Whitaker labeled Trump finances a “clear red line” Mueller could not cross. A month later, Whittaker was in the Justice Department, heading toward a the top spot in Attorney General Sessions’ Office. Now he is in charge of everything, owing it all to a patron with a single reason for promoting him to a position  his past mediocrity never allowed him to even dream about. Calling Whitaker a Trump loyalist is like saying Johnny Carson enjoyed a day off. There is no mystery where this is going. The only two words Whitaker has for our POTUS are “how high.”

More than 40 years ago Attorney General Elliot Richardson told Richard Nixon to shove it rather than  fire Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox. His deputy,  William Ruckelshaus, followed suit, leaving the task to a then unknown Solicitor General and Nixon lackey Robert Bork, which clarified corruption, sparking a leadership crisis that led to the first resignation by an American President. At the time, next to the likes of Richardson and Ruckelshaus, Bork rightly appeared a featherweight yes man, eager to perform dirty work in the service of ambition. But here’s the thing, next to Matthew Whitaker, Bork is a titan of government, a rock of achievement and service. In Whitaker, Trump has exactly the expendable patsy he needs to carry out monumental obstruction of justice capable of providing the harshest stress test yet of this ugly Administration.

When Bork did carry out Nixon’s wishes, the bipartisan response on Capital Hill was swift and decisive. For months now, GOP leaders have been all but declaring their willingness to get past any repeat massacre at the Department of Justice. Expect muted GOP voices when Whitaker does his worst.

We’re  left to hope that Mueller is indeed the savvy insider our imaginations have created and bobs and weaves effectively enough to get the job done and serve justice. Democratic control of Congress assures Mueller a platform, and he has been hard at work.

Yet and still, it is certain the breadth of Trumpian malfeasance is wide and evolving; he and his remain in it up to their eyeballs. Crippling Mueller’s team can’t hurt in his eyes, and we know he couldn’t care less about blowing out envelopes concerning presidential propriety. The damage being permitted to do that free from swift and enduring consequences is just one more chapter of our ruinous civic failure. It’s all uncharted now, and regardless the caliber of public servant, from the pinnacle embodied by Mueller’s steadfast group, to the dregs reflected by the man now aiming to shut them down, where it leads may soon be out of anybody’s control.  When dominoes begin to fall, they often don’t stop…. and they crush things. BC