Author: BC

No term sparks more fear and loathing in Ukraine than Holodomor. It refers to the famine engineered by Josef Stalin in 1932-33 that killed millions. To be clear, this was not just a preventable catastrophe, like say the million American Covid dead. No, this was an orchestrated crime against humanity, a purposeful policy perpetuated under the guise of Communist necessity. Ukraine, once a rich agricultural “breadbasket” of Russia, was decimated to feed Stalin’s madness for the collectivization he dictated would impel Soviet industrialization. More than 3.5 million Ukrainians starved for no other reason than one man’s sick vision his unchallenged power enabled. No citizenry has darker memories of the Soviet menace than the Ukrainians.

From the first hour of America’s Cold War victory it was only a question when Russia would reconstitute itself enough to menace Ukrainians again. The notion centuries of autocracy was going away and those cursed by geography would be permitted the simple dignity of being treated as neighbors rather than peas to be podded by jealously insecure Czars and Party Chairmen was never more than an inevitable flight of fancy the West luxuriated in while the liberated took sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall.

Even as champagne was being poured in the White House, President George Bush Sr. and his national security team headed by close friend Brent Scowcroft understood whatever iteration the collapsing Soviet empire settled into, Russia wasn’t going anywhere and possessed enough weaponry to end everything. Moreover, assuming it was transforming into Eurasia’s largest democracy and bent on constructive engagement with the West was la la land thinking. The bear would lick its wounds and hibernate awhile. In the meantime redrawing Europe’s map, and more importantly NATO, was a task that should only proceed with a mind fixated on future risks new status quo antes could create, particularly in Russia’s backyard.

George Kennan as much as anyone helped create the US Containment Policy that ultimately outlasted the Soviets. As he aged Kennan became far more concerned about modern war’s destructiveness and US militarism than Soviet aggression. After the Eastern Bloc’s collapse, Kennan had no use for inviting its former members into NATO. Such a campaign would only set the stage for future conflict. In 1998, a 94-year old Kennan argued “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”

Grievous error or not, post-Cold War NATO moved apace to offer membership to former Eastern Bloc nations. Poland, Hungary, Albania, Romania, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Bulgaria all were offered and accepted membership in the alliance. Notable is the fact that no former Soviet Socialist Republics were included in that group. It was one thing to bring on board countries that suffered as a result of Stalin’s sinister Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler, or were left with no options when the Red Army “liberated” them from Nazi occupation and stayed on until Stalinist puppets were in place, quite another to consider pre-war Russian republics who declared independence as the Soviet system collapsed. Chief among those held at arm’s length was Ukraine.

Of course Gorbachev gave way to Yeltsin, who would then give way to Putin just in time for the new century. Within a decade of the Soviet collapse any dreams of Russian democracy were over, and full control was back in the hands of a Stalinist with regaining regional hegemony among his top priorities… along with the usual brutal repression of dissidents, personal enrichment and foreign troublemaking. The only thing slowing Putin’s timetable was his lack of capability; but make no mistake, the last thing he was going to tolerate was NATO membership for former SSRs like Georgia and Ukraine.

For Western leaders and NATO the challenge was acute. Ukrainian membership in NATO was hitting close to home as far as historical Russian security interests were concerned, but refusing to consider an independent European democracy for the alliance abetted Russian intimidation of its neighbors. An uneasy geopolitical murkiness ensued, with NATO giving lip service to the “right” of former SSRs to “pursue whatever alliances they saw fit” and Putin denouncing such “intrusions” but otherwise biding his time, while interfering in their domestic politics with an eye toward promoting dependent tyrants like Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. The fact that, for the most part, Ukraine’s leadership reflected Putin’s basic tendencies spared NATO from the pickle of having to ignore a democracy’s desire to receive the benefits of the “an attack on one is an attack on all” security umbrella.

That changed in February of 2014. Following the tumult of what became known as the Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainians decided they’d had enough of Putin lackeys and ousted Viktor Yanukovych. Putin then decided the time was right to push the envelope and moved to annex the Crimea, betting that claiming a small slice of ethnically aligned Ukrainian pie would not be too difficult for the West to digest. He was right. However, while Russian aggression in the Crimea achieved its immediate ends at a cost Putin was willing to pay, the new Ukrainian government moved with purpose to cement a much closer relationship with the EU, leaving little doubt in word and deed that, Crimea be damned, western democracy was the future.

Then in November of 2016 Putin drew a straight flush as a certified, fully kompromat stooge defeated one of his most implacable adversaries for the American Presidency. The windfall was immediate, as Trump made rebranding NATO allies as deadbeat moochers, interested in nothing past taking advantage of Uncle Sam’s goodwill, a top foreign policy priority.

Why get in the way of that? A Russian move on Ukraine was now only counterproductive; needlessly undoing all of Trump’s corrosive attacks on NATO unity. Why force MAGA sedition into the open by creating a situation that could only paint Trump into a box? After all, what more discouraging message could Ukrainian patriots receive than an American President who cared less about their democratic sovereignty than how their newly elected President could aid his own corrupt domestic aims back in the US?

Once Biden defeated Trump, Putin got right back to finishing the business he started in 2014. Any horse player will tell you that following a monster score is always a reckless time because one is playing with house money and is willing to risk more. That’s Putin to a tee. And why not? Trump continues to be an asset Stalin only dreamed of, as the Republican Party dutifully goes full nihilist to keep the MAGA wretched core content that their seditious grievances rule the day. Where America once boasted partisanship “ended at the water’s edge,” the gravest European military crisis since WWII is now processed by the GOP solely as just another prime opportunity to weaken their nation’s President.

Those who equate Putin’s move into Ukraine with Hitler circa 1938 are misguided. He has nothing like the conventional capability the Nazis were ready to launch. Moreover, not only is a resurgent NATO to the west, he has arguably the world’s most powerful nation to his east, and China is more competitor than ally. Assuming Putin is a rational actor, and certainly nothing he has done to date persuades otherwise, his attack on Ukraine really can’t be termed shocking, and it’s reasonable to believe it presages nothing more right now than carving the country up to his liking and making sure everyone understands who is still the boss when it comes to former SSRs. Besides, why does he need to rush things? MAGA House and Senate majorities seem right now to be odds-on propositions, and nobody should bet good money against another MAGA Presidency in 2024… the death knell for NATO, a new dark age. Time is on his side.

And the Ukrainians? They are going to suffer. Except this time, unlike near a century ago, the world will watch in real time and wonder how we can possibly be so powerless in the face of such unjust carnage. President Zelensky will likely become a martyr, a hero for the ages. But like his forefathers, the victims of the Holodomor, he is cursed by geography, doomed by man’s full potential for evil and the apathy that empowers it. Americans would do well to ponder his predicament. BC

Anyone at all interested in the sinister trajectory of MAGA influence during the last five years need only examine the disturbing metamorphosis of JD Vance. Once, not long ago, Vance was a thoughtful intellect and author, whose debut autobiographical story. Hillbilly Elegy, was lauded far and wide – even attracting Hollywood to make it into a movie – as a cogent explanation for the alienation felt throughout the Rust Belt. In recounting his own personal climb from a dysfunctional upbringing saturated in welfare-dependent, self-medicating Appalachian hopelessness to Ivy League triumph, Vance persuasively argued for more empathy toward those who facilitated Trump’s rise and comprised some of MAGA’s most enthusiastic membership.

However, although Vance’s tale seeks to explain self-destructive cycles that inform MAGA sensibilities in dying mid-Atlantic factory towns and Kentucky hillsides, it doesn’t excuse the behavior. In fact, throughout the book, Vance cites one example after another of the exact “learned helplessness” Trump rally attendees and MAGA lawmakers endlessly crow epitomizes immigrants and African-Americans gaming of the social safety net. Alcoholism, drug-addiction, physical abuse and child neglect, or simply a general aversion to work, Vance catalogues it all, while making clear that personal accountability was near completely absent within his family and immediate community.

When Hillbilly Elegy was published in June of 2016, Vance quickly became a crossover darling, charming the full range of America’s political spectrum, the epitome of a thoughtful yet common sense conservative. Everyone from Hewitt to Hannity, Scarborough to Todd, sung his praises. He was the total package. A self-made Yale man with the intellectual credibility to infuse GOP tough love sensibilities with the humanity his up-from-bootstraps experience conveyed. Whatever “the left” wanted to scream about Trump and his MAGA troglodytes, here was a genuine rejoinder who thought first and spoke in complete sentences free of insults and vitriol. He even credited one of his Yale professors for inspiring him to write the book.

To provide context for where Vance and his right wing admirers were back in the fall of 2016 it’s constructive to recall the praise American Conservative contributor and blogger Rod Dreher showered upon the bestseller’s author, gushing he “draws conclusions…that may be hard for some people to take. But Vance has earned the right to make those judgments. This was his life. He speaks with authority that has been extremely hard won.” Indeed, as Trump blathered to his growing faithful that their host of grievances were everybody else’s fault, here existed a conservative counterpoint that held ALL to the same standards of personal responsibility for their decisions.

Of course much can happen over five years, particularly when you elect a psychotic nihilist POTUS and he succeeds in consuming the Republican Party. What was a coming storm is now the devastation it left behind. What was a country on the edge of a catastrophic civic misstep is now a nation in crisis, maybe irretrievably too far gone down the road to ruin. And JD Vance? He no longer exists… at least not in any incarnation that someone who embraced his past refreshing novelty would recognize. Instead there is now an amoral opportunist recasting himself as just another MAGA cultist, and any semblance of thoughtful reflection on any matter is long gone.

Why? What is to blame for this ugly transformation? Turns out Vance wants to replace retiring Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman, who decided the price of avoiding a MAGA primary opponent – joining the Donald’s eunuch stable – was too high. Apparently, Vance has no problem morphing from hillbilly prophet to unhinged Rust Belt reactionary if that’s what is required. He’s grown an angry beard, which old friends say is weird and ominous, and taken to ranting. He’s Steve Bannon with a pristine complexion, a couch potato’s Dan Bongino. As with most all of the wretched core, social media now tells the sorry tale. Indeed, Vance’s Twitter feed goes lower by the day.

Nuanced ideas of economic dislocation have given way to Trumpism’s rabid populist tropes. What’s wrong with America? That’s now an easy question for Vance to scream about… “The biggest threat to democracy is the fact that speech (social media and “journalism”), knowledge formation (universities), and money (Wall Street) are all controlled by the same group of neurotic lunatics. Those who say anything else are lying.” It’s a one-size-fits-all approach.

Six years ago Vance was on Face The Nation having a cerebral discussion about the gulf between Trump promises and reality for the “forgotten people” who made his presidency possible. Moreover, he was touting a partnership with AOL founder Steve Case to bridge the divide between the disaffected and capital that could provide economic opportunity throughout Appalachia and beyond.

Now Steve Bannon’s podcast is Vance’s rage trough, and fostering cooperation is the last thing on his mind. Vaccine tyranny to 1/6 conspiracies, immigrant bashing to competing for the candidate who hates Black Lives Matter the most, Vance is now all in, and of course facts are the casualty. Nobody is happier with the change than the MAGA “intellectuals” who can now confidently call Vance one of their own. Dreher claims he was “appropriately radicalized” by “the left’s” treatment of Trump. Yea, sure.

“The fraudulent J6 Select Committee is the real assault on Democracy. Dems are using it to bully & torture their political opponents. The weak Republicans who can’t see this are part of the problem. A GOP Majority MUST fight fire with fire & investigate BLM’s Summer of riots.“ Marjorie Taylor Greene? Paul Gosar? Jesse Watters? No, just another grifter selling rancid snake oil to those he understands better than most. BC

On July 5th, while enjoying a spectacular beach day on the southern Maine coast, I cut my left shin. I won’t publicly abase myself with the details of my stupidity. Suffice it to say it was one of those instants you kind of blank out on, but wish you could have back, a moment of total concentration loss that could qualify for America’s Home Bloopers. Regardless, the gash and bleeding it produced were significant enough to consider a trip to the ER, which I did and quickly rejected, my second idiotic mistake on that day. By the time I got home one beach towel was soaked in blood. Sue got the first aid supplies, always a hodgepodge of different offerings in our house, the sum total of what’s been acquired on an as-needed basis throughout the years.

After eventually staunching the blood flow and saturating the wound in, first hydrogen peroxide and then Neosporin, Sue dressed it as best she could. I figured since it stopped bleeding and created a tolerable level of throbbing, I had dodged a bullet, sparing myself the time and expense of an afternoon in the ER.

Indeed, during the next two weeks or so, as I fastidiously attended to the gash, healing seemed to move apace, to the point that by the eve of my birthday weekend the injury appeared a non issue I was ready to put fully in the rear view. That afternoon I took a very long swim at our club and felt great. That evening the only thing reminding me of the cut was substantial itchiness I attributed to the final stages of healing. I scratched around the scabbing wound, seeking relief and was aggravated at myself when a drizzle of blood resulted. Still, I didn’t even bother to cover the area when I went to bed, figuring the air would aid in the scabbing process… And then things headed directly south.

The next morning I awoke to moderate throbbing at a wound site that now also seemed to be growing red and beginning to swell. Moreover, it was secreting a slightly yellowish stream of liquid. Instead of considering seeing my primary care “physicians team,” a pinpoint efficient patient factory always willing to see billable insured walk-ins, I merely splashed on some hydrogen peroxide and applied both Neosporin and gauze, hopeful they would stem the tide of this setback… yet another moronic health decision I would pay dearly for.

Numerous times throughout the pandemic hypochondriac impulses have caused me to feel feverish, certain the Rona had finally nabbed me. Our trusty underarm thermometer could always be counted on to abate such paranoia. So by late afternoon, when I felt ague setting in, I sought the reassurance my reliable 96.8 reading always provided. Instead I got 101.4. Hoping it was simply a misreading I tried again… 101.6 this time. Health hell had come a-calling.

By nightfall my temperature was 104.5 and I was a shivering mass of dead-man-laying under covers wholly inadequate to the job. Sue repeatedly offered to take me to the ER, but the tortuous discomfort I associated with such a trip rendered it out of the question; at that moment I couldn’t even summon up the the ambition to try for my bathroom. Calling an ambulance was considered but rejected due to the trauma it would cause my son Luke, whose autism anxiety levels would surely peak from such drama. I’ve been hit head-on by a car, which is hard to top in the pain and discomfort department, but the evening of July 25th was a not-that-distant second.

I came to at dawn sopped in sweat, grateful my fever had broken. However, my relief was short-lived as the now intense throbbing from my leg grabbed my attention. I was frightened to look at it, certain that only grossness awaited. It was worse than expected, my near entire left shin red and swollen. What was a three-inch scab 24 hours before was now a gaping crevice that exuded a vile pus, a sight straight out of Google’s worst images catalog of dire skin infections, necrosis in the making.

It would take more than a month of several different very powerful antibiotics and the fortunate intervention of a top-flight “wound-care” practice to cure the near devastating results of my reckless health decisions. My doctor was adamant that only the greatest of fortune kept me from an often fatal case of sepsis. Moreover, the infection “exploded” a tunnel in my leg that required thrice-weekly professional attention, lest it become reinfected and a hideous new infection cycle take hold. In all it was a harrowing ordeal I should offer prayers of gratitude for surviving intact. Should I fail to appreciate its lessons throughout what is left of my future, I deserve whatever befalls me.

In November of 2016 America stumbled badly and suffered a deep gash to the trunk of its governance. Rather than recognize the seriousness of the wound and provide it the care required to heal properly, we stuck a band aid on it, normalized the symptoms it exuded, and went back to our routines, confident in our system’s ability to fight off infection.

On 1/6 the folly of that approach filled our television screens, and what had been festering for four years exploded into the hot and heaving mass such negligence was bound to produce, blowing open wide tunnels for bacteria to spread further and strengthen. Yet even then we convinced ourselves the ER was not essential, that the swelling and ugly secretions could still abate on their own. A committee here, a public scolding there… perhaps a criminal referral or two.

Incredibly, as 2022 dawns, scores still hold tight to the delusion our body can cleanse itself, even as many each day wonder if it is now too late for any effective intervention. American democracy and the governance it creates limps listlessly on legs that only throb harder and grow a deeper shade of purple, immersed in the uncontrolled spread of virulent toxicity. By this time next year there will be nothing left to doubt. Somehow we will have discovered the will to pursue effective treatment of our condition… or the infection will have overwhelmed us, and like Augustus McCrae, who in the seminal novel Lonesome Dove, refused to allow “old sawbones” to cut off his other blood-poisoned wheel, all that will be left is a few last gulps of whiskey. Either way, the DR aims to steadfastly chronicle our fate. BC

Those interested in the intangible benefits of a full college experience need only appreciate my wife’s relationship with her University of Virginia Kappa Delta sorority sisters. Forty years after graduation the group is as close and supportive of each other as ever. It’s hard to imagine a tighter more enduring bond than that exhibited year in and year out by Sue and her KD cohorts. Whether it’s a pandemic-necessitated weekly zoom club, a now vaccine-enabled return to monthly pot lucks, or even daily texts and emails of support during tough trials, this group of ladies are true blue to each other, rain or shine. Doubtless, the daunting challenges we have faced over the years would surely have been considerably more injurious without the emotional KD safety net always available to my wife whenever she needed it.

Sue’s relationship with her various college compadres is as diverse as the group itself. Some became her best friends, who live near us and are daily parts of her life. Others have gone separate ways, but with the rise of social media became more accessible and up for reunions should circumstances coalesce. And so it was that Sue informed me her old college buddy, “Cathy” and husband, “Steve” would be stopping by our Maine house for a short overnight visit a couple of weeks ago.

My marching orders for these get togethers are always the same: take care of basic infrastructure such as dining options and our son Luke’s requirements – thus freeing up Sue to focus on the joys of her reunion – and engage with the significant other, who usually comes to the enterprise with a similar game plan that informs his supporting role. Of course, it helps matters immensely if the spouse is easy to get along with and on board with the program.

Steve couldn’t have received higher marks in all those areas. He was someone I quickly felt fortunate to know and looked forward to seeing again. We shared much in common, including a pressing interest in current events and the national discussion they create. And even though Sue alerted me ahead of time that Steve’s “retirement” job was pastor of a small non-denominational congregation, and that the couple were ardent Christians, it soon became clear we could converse about politics and society without undue tension and conflict arising to poison the general atmosphere of Sue’s agenda. In fact, their brief stay with us was wonderful, actually leaving me near as anxious to see them again as Susan… a first to be sure.

Yet and still, my discussions with Pastor Steve, while engaging and constructive, also underscore what ails us as a country right now, and what permits further corrosion of the ties that increasingly fail to bind us. He, like millions of other Republicans, doesn’t appear to adequately appreciate either the depths of the party’s descent, or what a devotion to democracy demands their response should be. For all the joviality and common ground we could agree on, the yawning chasm of that disagreement, frankly, renders all else moot. For the sake of comity I wasn’t going to push him and demand he provide any lines in the sand MAGA sensibilities have or could cross for him. And he wasn’t willing to volunteer them.

Steve was “appalled” at the events of 1/6 and cognizant of who was to blame for them. But he was considerably more interested in discussing “policies,” repeatedly defaulting back to the pre-MAGA paradigm of Washington politics when the peaceful transfer of political power our common faith in the US electoral process enabled. That he doesn’t seem to believe things have changed too dramatically regarding that fundamental premise is what separates us.

It’s easy to understand the predicament someone like Steve is in. No doubt a substantial slice of his congregation abides if not embraces the Big Lie and its various nonsensical trappings. When I asked how he navigated that terrain he chuckled and conceded it was not easy. I was very interested to hear what those conversations sounded like, but respected boundaries I assumed existed regarding his interactions with congregants. But whatever he felt regarding the percentage of his flock enamored by MAGA fiction, it didn’t seem to weigh on him too terribly much.

Honestly, I remain baffled as to how a thoughtful Christian pastor should handle the issue, but feel certain that, apart from fully avoiding it within the religious sanctum in line with church and state separation – an approach that seems neither feasible or appropriate – church leaders should, as Mitt Romney very effectively put it on 1/6, “start by telling them the truth.” Either way, our discussions avoided most all details of that issue, instead favoring his opinions as a Republican “political junkie,” with an emphasis on critiquing Biden and considering differences between “liberals and conservatives,” not the existential implications tied to one of America’s major political parties surrendering totally to Fox/AM disinformation.

In fact, rather than directly confront the question of whether devotion to lies should be disqualifying, Steve instead preferred to riff on “the concept of truth.” His implication seemed to be assessing lies from politicians was a subjective matter, a partisan affair. Of course, this was troubling, but to pursue it further only promised taking the conversation to a more contentious level, which, given my past track record, would probably have led to rancor. So I shifted back to our glory days as beach patrollers on the Delmarva coast and the rest of the evening was non-controversial.

Lately a slew of books document and confirm what the DR was certain of in 2016, that Trump and MAGA are ruinous to America. Despite the epiphany many have undergone since 1/6, too many others, who should know better, remain obtuse about the continuing threat we face. Across the spectrum of our most daunting challenges, from climate change to immigration, Covid vaccinations to confidence in basic electoral processes, the GOP is devoted to easily demonstrable lies for no other reasons than its craven standard bearers are either too cowardly to lead, too criminal to care, or actually believe the yarns they purvey. The whys are less important than the result… a major American political party unapologetically disinterested in anything other than spreading absurd fictions in pursuit of sabotaging basic governance. In other words, sedition.

Most of us invested in keeping the US a going democratic concern would sleep much better if we were confident that, at the least, Trump’s post-election outrages shocked the Pastor Steves of the world enough to instill a determination to exert future accountability at the ballot box. The idea that somehow otherwise decent and thoughtful folk can ingest Trump’s consumption of the GOP, and its now near total reliance on his torrent of imbecility, as just another stage in our nation’s political continuum – simply an “ultra-conservative” look and feel that has a counterpoint “on the far left” toward which the Democrats are trending – portends nothing but continued stress and worry.

Talking with Steve, I was fishing real hard for such assurance. Several times I felt obliged to point out that I really hadn’t offered much in the way of opinions about specific issues, only intolerance for assaults on democratic norms that I held Trump and MAGA responsible for. I wanted nothing more from Steve than some optimism he shared at least a measure of my disdain, some glimmer that the last four years were out of bounds, an unacceptable lurch over the line he’d desert the party for if it continued into the ‘22 cycle. He wouldn’t give that to me. Then we had lobsters. And that, as they say, is the hell of it. BC

Truth is one of life’s most essential elements. It is often painful, but seldom futile. Of course, it is clarifying, but frequently confusing. It in no way guarantees success, but refusing to abide it makes failure a certainty. Truth hides in plain sight or can bury itself under many layers. Sometimes it smacks you in the face; other times it casually allows you to avoid it. Truth can demand to be heard or whisper softer still, even as we beg it to speak up. It’s all around us… like air, and just as necessary to our existence. Yet we can lie to ourselves far longer than we can hold our breath, even if the result is ultimately the same.

It’s easy to describe truth poetically, placing it on a lofty pedestal and ascribing it spiritual qualities that demand a deeper level of contemplation. But truth is like time, a constant we have no choice but to pursue and accept, basic to our understanding of the world and ability to organize our place within it. Coalescing around falsehoods at odds with actual events can only create futility. Those who prefer it as a means to their ends generally are shunned unless they are powerful enough to impose their deceit. Democratic government is synonymous with respect for truth. Authoritarianism is only about making lies more palatable. When a democracy exceeds a tipping point and loses control of its ability to be guided by facts, it passes on and gives way to despotism. These days America gets ever nearer to that cliff.

Republicans are no longer concerned with the value of truth past whatever momentary utility it can provide in the relentless imposition of their retrograde resentments. Almost three decades of ever increasing entrancement with Fox/AM messaging has obliterated their willingness to comprehend truth as a guiding ideal for American life, instead relegating it to a malleable prop meant to support a narrative that only services a totalitarian sensibility, one at odds with anything that diminishes its resonance with those who now completely rely on it to process the world they experience. On virtually every important issue our politics is obligated to confront, the GOP now assaults truth in service to fabrications Fox /AM has succeeded in convincing its base to believe.

Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post Fact Checker, determined Donald Trump publicly lied a then astounding 492 times within the first 100 days of his Presidential term. On election eve 2020 alone, bouncing from one super spreader rally to the next, Trump bellowed 503 falsehoods, according to Kessler’s team. Anyone who wants to try and lie more than 500 times in a single day… be my guest. It’s near impossible, not because one couldn’t actually come up with the lies, but because it’s certain they couldn’t find an audience that would allow it…unless of course it was composed of only MAGA faithful.

Read member biographies of the Loudoun County School Board and one is impressed by the breadth of civic participation. Many years of teaching and parent groups, non-profit activities and military service. Of course, resumes can always be padded, but this seems to be a panel made up of fairly accomplished people, who came honestly to their current positions based on both educational experience and dedication to their community.

Indeed, they seem the last group who deserve to be descended on by a know-nothing mob of right-wing zealots looking to tar and feather Fox/AM talking-point monsters of PC indoctrination crusades. But that’s exactly what they faced last week. The average yearly salary of $20,000 that comes with a board seat hardly seemed worth it as chaos enveloped a meeting ostensibly called to wrap up the pandemic-challenged academic year, but instead attracted a packed house of rabid Hannity-infused culture warriors out for the blood of any who would force “our children” to endure the evil du jour of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

At its base CRT holds that racial bias pervades American society and institutions despite specific laws and policies designed to eliminate it. However, it is a broad and complex paradigm that nobody who actually takes the few minutes necessary to gain a minimal understanding of it could possibly mistake for the basis of some radical new approach being rolled out to teach high school kids history.

Of course, the wretched core is never interested in even trace factual underpinnings, and the Loudoun County mob of MAGA’s finest was true blue to that indifference. It was Marxist this and indoctrination that as they lined up to personify a Fox News Facebook comments section. When the volume, the vitriol and the violent vibe reached a grotesque crescendo, the board did what they should have done at least thirty minutes earlier and adjourned. That turned the mob mad with righteous indignation and things got more ridiculous still, with the ugly spectacle resulting in two arrests.

Tucker Carlson spent a good part of his show the next evening demonstrating exactly how the mob was informed in the first place and why the hysterics are sure to continue. Carlson launched into a series of outright lies to introduce the segment, claiming falsely London County has banned To Kill a Mockingbird from its classrooms before going full unhinged. Loudoun County, howled Carlson, “has stopped teaching” and instead “indoctrinates” children with “poisonous and creepy… master race stuff…. assigning pornographic novels…” while teaching that America is an “evil racist place.”

As always Carlson had nothing whatsoever to back up his claims, but proof is one thing his audience has never demanded from him… or for that matter, any of his echo chamber compadres. He went on to interview one of the fiasco’s arrestees, who no doubt sees a path to his 15 minutes in all this and plans to milk every second. Carlson was glad to oblige. So is the entire Republican Party. It’s become a circular conveyer: outrageous lies stoking apocalyptic imaginings among the viewership, which in turn creates nihilist neophytes for the burgeoning MAGA political class, who then enjoy support from the far right’s dark financial and logistical shadows. Voila! A primary opponent.

In fact, now that Fox/AM nihilist absurdity fully forms the intellectual basis of the party’s messaging, “grass roots” leaders of these local uprisings – whether they be knuckle dragging against masks or now Covid vaccines, demanding the right to own a bazooka, or calling for yet another “people’s audit” to stop the steal – see politics in their future. After all, honestly, if Taylor-Greene and Boebert can do it, how hard can it really be? Tweeting sedition and getting interviewed on OAN and Newsmax… what’s not to like?!

To hear Trump lackey Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin tell it, the time has never been better to run for office, preferably local office, which will “take back our culture.” Shocked a US Senator would declare such a thing? Get over it. Dog whistles are for RINOs. This GOP leaves nothing to the imagination anymore when it comes to its core motivations. That’s one truth it embraces! BC

Throughout the Cold War, even the most confrontational US strategies, like the Eisenhower Administration’s otherwise reckless “brinksmanship,” – the policy of playing nuclear chicken to obtain geopolitical advantage – recognized there were certain encroachments Moscow would never tolerate and were therefore to be avoided. In the nuclear era even maniacs like John Foster Dulles stepped lighter near clearly-drawn lines in the sand.

For example, it was one thing to directly confront Soviet efforts to cultivate client states in areas like the Middle East or Africa, quite another to question its control of the Eastern bloc. But wholly out of bounds was questioning the legitimacy of the Kremlin’s power over the republics that made up the USSR’s pre-WWII borders. To directly agitate for the demise of Soviet dominance over that sphere of influence was a provocation that could make for real trouble. In fact, even as the USSR began to fall apart at the seams, with the Eastern European satellite network fully crumbling, the US was cautious not to be perceived as actively contributing to the party’s troubles, lest a fluid situation become existentially dangerous.

Conversely, while the US has always been very rigid about the Monroe Doctrine, with Cuba the exception that, after Khrushchev blundered and pushed the envelope too far, proved the rule, the notion of Russian intrigue presenting any substantial threat to our union and the democracy that underpins it was never much more than the railings of paranoids or opportunists, John Birchers or Joseph McCarthys. Nobody other than back bench outliers lost a wink of sleep worrying that Russian agitation could exert any tangible impact on the fundamental cohesion of the US citizenry. Sure, there was always going to be conflict, sometimes dramatic and even destructive, but the peaceful transfer of political power, the coin of the democratic realm, was always taken for granted. That was then, sadly this is now.

Somewhere in the Moscow suburbs is a Russian intelligence officer with the Award of Lenin on his wall for going full counterintuitive and figuring out that, in the multi-media age, America’s Achilles heel for sedition lies on its right side, not left. Turns out, instead of infiltrating college campuses and no nukes rallies, Fox News comments sections and militia chat rooms were the soft and vulnerable underbelly of global capitalism’s essential nutrient, America’s previously unassailable electoral stability.

The likes of Rupert Murdoch and Andrew Breitbart built the disinformation infrastructure and populated it with their white grievance customer base. Once Putin and company realized the risk-free gains of spreading the virulent seeds of societal disintegration those roadways facilitated, they hit pay dirt. Even when Russia’s fingerprints were discovered – see the Mueller Report – the water was murky enough to dilute accountability. When Trump gained the White House bully pulpit and exceeded even the worst expectations, a perfect storm was unleashed and the process took on a life of its own, its effects going exponential. Now it’s a national security crisis the likes of which America has not seen, unless you believe razing democracy is no biggie. Biden needs to tell Putin, to his face, it must stop yesterday. Draw that line in the sand. Right now, few issues between us are more important.

Examples? They are everywhere. The most recent is as illuminating as any. It’s hard to imagine a more pressing national priority the US has ever faced than the spring’s vaccination roll out. Public confidence in both safety and efficacy was critical to assure levels of participation adequate enough to stop Covid’s disastrous winter death toll in its tracks and start driving case numbers down. The stakes – economic, political, societal – could not have been higher. Biden wagered his Presidency on getting “shots in arms.”

However, just like the GOP primaries of 2016 and then the general election catastrophe, or the campaign to downplay Covid’s seriousness and the insane anti-mask messaging, and of course continuous fulmination of the Big Lie, Putin sought to divide and discredit. Russian Intelligence was prominent throughout the web’s conspiracy incubators, spreading lies with only one focus… to increase wariness about getting vaccinated.

The State Department quickly linked four internet platforms to Russian intelligence. And while the scope of each was not particularly wide, and all ended up in Facebook and Twitter jail, taken together they were more than enough to get the disinformation ball rolling throughout MAGA conspiracy circles. Unproven claims of serious side effects and that the Pfizer vaccine actually caused people to get the coronavirus constituted one wave of disinformation. Attacking Pfizer’s profit motives and political ties to the Biden Administration were another,

Of course, it is classic chicken or the egg when it comes to assessing Moscow’s ability to warp our national discussion and further the Fox/AM zombie apocalypse. How critical Russia’s trolls are to seeding the disinformation clouds throughout the US online climate is a metric best left to our experts to figure out. Yet and still, there is an astonishing similarity to what one finds on Kremlin-affiliated influencers like New Eastern Outlook or News Front and US false content producers like The Gateway Pundit or The Daily Caller that suggests more than casual symmetry. Whether the meat of Judge Janine’s or Tucker Carlson’s daily scripts originates in a grey basement room of some dank building along Tverskaya Street is no longer too far fetched. Certainly there is no distinguishing the content.

But either way, the results have become unacceptable and need to be addressed at the highest level. Like climate change, it may very well be too late, but the direness of our predicament necessitates the pursuit of all remedies. Putin will certainly laugh at the notion the efforts he directs have substantially buttressed the rank sedition millions in the US now exalt, and the GOP now abets. Just as he will shrug that criminal ransomware outfits operating within Russia are a problem beyond his reach, he will scoff at being held accountable for MAGA insurrectionists. Only if Biden dramatically raises the costs will we get action instead of derision.

On that front he has a panoply of options, from the wrist slap kabuki of expelling Russian diplomats to economic sanctions kleptocrats like Putin weather without much difficulty to the far more serious and unpredictable frontier of cyber reciprocity, which can escalate things in a dangerously unpredictable way. But perhaps the best arrow Biden can pull from his quiver is a promise that he will use Russia’s attacks on democracy as a principle basis to resuscitate NATO. “An attack on one is an attack on all…” that’s damn right. A united West against Russian troublemaking, each nation hitting where they can best cause pain as part of a collective strategy to blunt Putin’s aid and comfort for seditious elements that now beleaguer all members of the alliance to one degree or another.

National interest is defined as “the interest of a nation as a whole held to be an independent entity separate from the interests of subordinate areas or groups and also of other nations or supranational groups.” Today in America a minority of millions no longer cares to reconcile its nihilist vision with anything the rest of the country seeks to promote at home or abroad. A totalitarian obsession of reinstating their grievance empath back to power is all they want to be about. Putin needs to understand the new sheriff views external support of such treasonous preoccupation a particularly hostile act, egregious enough to warrant most any kind of response… by the US and its allies. It’s a message he needs to hear in person. BC

Memorial Days worldwide are collective recognitions of selfless sacrifice for country. We Americans have always been fortunate enough to indulge the assumption our fallen protected democratic principles that are synonymous and effortlessly interchangeable with the concept of our nation-state. The men and women who died in uniform sacrificed themselves in service, not just to the United States, but also to the democracy that defines it, one doesn’t exist without the other.

And even when we belched hypocrisy back home, denying minority soldiers the equality they risked everything to protect, the US brand was its government’s determination to peacefully transfer power to its duly elected successor, which made improvement – progress – possible. We could always get better because the lessons we learned from our mistakes could become referendums we enforced at the ballot box. We were at least committed to that, with a trusted system we could count on. Nobody doubted this, particularly after a Black man was elected President, not once, but twice. Now they do, and should, because so do we.

Trump’s disastrous transactional approach to both our European and Asian allies was particularly disgusting for what he seldom if ever mentioned. Although its primary component was a constant harping about the US being taken to the cleaners by moochers intent only on avoiding their fair share of the weight, Trump was obsessed with monetary outlays and had little concern for the first part of the “blood and treasure” equation. It always started and finished with how much they weren’t paying, or how much more he had forced them to cough up. It’s hard to recall any instance of Trump expressing even a modicum of concern for actual lives being lost in fulfillment of the obligations he always brought back to the financial bottom line.

Of course, that was hardly surprising since it was reliably reported he had scoffed at Americans who died for the alliance as “suckers.” Seditionists aren’t known for their devotion to those who defend what they seek to destroy, and that’s all Trump’s GOP is about these days. Memorial Day weekend is an appropriate time to consider what things will look like if they succeed. How the essence of our national being, what we project to the world and vow we fight to preserve, will suffer.

In Texas they aren’t even pretending anymore. The “vote integrity” legislation GOP state legislators have come up with behind closed doors over the increasingly desperate objections of Democrats they despise, is a buffet of intimidation and duplicity. Specifically aimed at Houston and vicinity, part of increasingly diverse Harris County, the list of outrages stacks up nicely with some of Jim Crow’s dirtiest tricks. The mark up of Senate Bill 7 was like a book burning, becoming ever more incendiary as a feeding frenzy of MAGA faithful, desperate to have their own contribution to brag about, piled on gratuitous disenfranchisement. From actually making it a felony for sending out an unrequested application to vote by mail to granting partisan poll watchers carte blanche to intimidate whoever they feel like, the package could only be created by those trying to outdo each other for OAN and Newsmax face time.

That Democrats walked out instead of helping to codify the destruction of 50 years worth of progress is only noteworthy because they ever even considered doing otherwise. Voting no on such an overt attack on voting rights would be like a Juan Williams objection on Fox’s The Five, it only adds credibility to what deserves nothing but scorn and disdain. In Texas, like Florida, and Wisconsin, and Arizona, and North Carolina, and every other state meaningful to the national Presidential calculus, Republicans are either finding a sliver of integrity and therefore exiled, wretched cowards and opportunists, or MAGA cultists… there are no other options.

What once was merely the rantings of a clinical megalomaniac has coalesced into a frontal and detailed assault on, not simply voter access and basic minority rights, but the very infrastructure of American democracy. Republicans want nothing less than to rig future elections, not to mention veto power over results that somehow evade their best efforts to manipulate. This is what their base demands because it’s all their Jim Jones obsesses about when he’s not kicking his ball out of the deep rough or railing about the witch hunt set to indict him. Turns out, surviving Trump was only the first round, just a battle in a war his eviction from the White House provided but momentary respite from.

Coming into Decision/2020 the principle worry was what would happen if the results were razor thin. It wasn’t near that close, but Trump created an insurrection anyway, which Republicans are moving ever closer to fully revising as the misguided good intentions of patriots. The fiction Trump conjured – why it wasn’t called the “ridiculous lie” is a mystery – was amplified by Fox/AM no more or less than all of his other falsehoods. That, along with relentless Twitter and Facebook activity, and the shameful cowardice or avid participation of virtually every Republican who mattered was plenty enough to engrave Trump’s mindless atrocity into the party’s mission statement.

Now it’s hard to see a path toward redemption. Does anyone really believe electing, say, Kamala Harris is going to be done without the most profound national trauma? Forget 2024, McCarthy and company are making clear right now that they aren’t taking no for an answer next year when it comes to a GOP House majority, a specter every bit the crisis a MAGA Presidency imposes. Millions of Americans now “have lost faith” in democracy in whatever measure Tucker Carlson prescribes, even as hundreds of bills similar to the Texas abasement flood legislative dockets across the country. Which is to say it’s not about “reform” at all; it’s about fascism. It is happening here… quickly.

Germany’s remembrance of its war dead is a far more anguished national exercise than ours. The emotional trauma of having to reconcile loss with the evil it served should be a stark cautionary tale to citizens of all countries. How horrible to know family and friends perished as part of campaigns to spread authoritarianism instead of self-determination. How awful to know loved ones were history’s villains instead of heroes. That’s a narrative no nation wants to bequeath its children and ancestors. One of our major political parties now pursues robbing us of the piece of mind and moral high ground we sent kids to die for throughout our history. They do it enthusiastically and without apology, pandering to a mob informed only by zealots and hucksters. Our past and future fallen surely deserve better. BC

In late 1946 President Harry Truman wanted nothing more than to have George Marshall, who had served with extraordinary ability as Army Chief-of-Staff throughout WWII, as his Secretary of State. At the time Marshall was serving as Ambassador to China and attempting to broker peace between Communist Mao Tse Tung and Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Truman promised Marshall a virtual blank check in terms of the personal latitude he would be allowed to exert over US foreign policy. Ever the humble institutionalist, Marshall demurred and maintained he would only accept the position in line with the limitation of his role to merely an instrument of White House prerogatives. After all, that was how US governance was meant to work; he served at the pleasure of the POTUS.

That said, and times being as fluidly consequential as they were, Marshall would be involved in many momentous policy debates that occurred during his tenure at Foggy Bottom. Few of those controversies were as volatile, or carried such significant long-term implications, as the question of recognizing Israel’s independence. And no major decision by Truman would be opposed more adamantly by Marshall than his preference for aligning US interests with formal recognition in 1948.

For Truman it was a moral question… and personal. Eddie Jacobson, a lifelong friend, WWI comrade, and former business partner, advocated strongly and directly to the President in favor of recognition. As an American Jew, Jacobson humanized the predominant moral question few could seriously argue against as the Holocaust’s horrors continued to be documented: world Jewry required a safe haven from the relentless historical persecution the Nazis and their European collaborators had just proved was an existential crisis.

Whatever obstacles and conflicts formal support of a Jewish homeland might cause were worth risking to ensure such anti-Semitic pogroms never happened again. Moreover, Jacobson reinforced the arguments of White House advisors like Clark Clifford, who contended that supporting Israel offered domestic political advantages, providing a platform for the growing US Jewish community to become a dependable component of the Democratic base moving forward.

Marshall was forceful in his opposition to recognizing Israel, and even more against guaranteeing its welfare. He was certain Arab forces would immediately launch hostilities once independence was declared, and was pessimistic Israel could effectively defend itself against such an onslaught. While he appreciated the moral prerogative attached to Israeli aspirations, he was not willing to tie US forces to any future obligations as the infant nation’s protector.

But Marshall was most caustic toward the proposition that domestic politics should play any role in influencing foreign policy, particularly on questions involving complex geopolitical elements to which the American public gave little thought or consideration. Long after Marshall had passed, many did not hesitate to stain his otherwise splendid legacy by conflating his outspoken views on the “Palestine” question with either his own personal anti-Semitic inclinations or the prevalence of such bias throughout the upper echelons of the State Department. The former contention has been mostly discredited, the latter has not. Yet and still, 75 years later it’s impossible to argue Marshall’s many concerns were not prescient, as the US once again confronts the intractable bloodshed and recrimination tied to our evolving role as Israel’s patron.

None of the fundamental questions have dissipated; it’s still all about insecurity and displacement, enduring hatreds and the scapegoating required to maintain them. But the situation on the ground couldn’t be more different and perceptions have changed accordingly; Israel is now a hegemonic power, a nuclear-armed regional Goliath, who refuses to redefine itself as anything other than the David its national narrative began with. While it indulges this incongruity, most of the rest of the world does not.

The continuing specter of anti-Semitism can’t and shouldn’t alleviate the moral obligations that come with power over others; Israel struggles to balance that onus with the rhetoric from its neighbors that long ago vastly exceeded their capabilities to credibly pursue. But while Hamas mortar attacks on populated areas are illegal, reckless, unnerving, disruptive and too often lethal, Israel’s response is something else entirely. What its unopposed Air Force rains down on the dense Gaza skyline creates a stunning dichotomy that’s near impossible to reinterpret.

Cool Hand Luke may have been Paul Newman’s best work. Set in a classic southern work camp for convicts, one of its finest scenes is when “Dragline,” a much bigger and loquacious chain-gang veteran feels dissed by newcomer Luke and decides a boxing match is the proper venue to make him pay for his impertinence. What starts out as a proper lesson quickly becomes much uglier as Luke refuses to give up, absorbing blow after blow, knockdown after knockdown. The collective camp enthusiasm steadily wanes until nobody wants to watch the beating continue. “You’re going to have to kill me,” Luke tells Dragline. Finally, Dragline simply hoists Luke over his shoulder and carries him back to the barracks, cognizant he is a bit nuts.

What’s happening now in Gaza is not boxing, and launching mortars isn’t a flailing left hook, but the mismatch is far more pronounced. All of which brings the issue back around to what was George Marshall’s most visceral concern, the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy. For four years Bibi Netanyahu shamelessly took advantage of a dangerous US Administration’s complete disregard for decades of policy continuity regarding the Palestinians. Netanyahu was glad to allow Israel to become merely a box to be checked off of Trump’s “promises made, promises kept” list so long as it accelerated West Bank settlement, Likud’s constant preoccupation, and enhanced his own electoral prospects which, like Trump’s, he long ago conflated with keeping himself out of a jail cell.

Where this left the Palestinian’s situation, particularly in Gaza, was a whole new level of hopelessness. Trump treated the Palestinians as less than nothing, literally a worthless expense we could pretend our way out of considering. Now they’ll invite destruction rather than be ignored. Bibi seems content to deliver that. Of course, Trump’s GOP will cheer on the beating as long as it lasts, terrorists getting what they deserve. Fox/AM long ago brought “standing with Israel” under the ever-widening Islamophobe umbrella, slandering the traditional American “honest broker” role in the Middle East as just more liberal treachery.

Biden rightly came into office determined to provide Netanyahu with time to ponder how shortsighted his dalliance with Trump was. Pretending the Palestinians don’t matter within the peace process was imbecility only MAGA could embrace. “Accords” with the likes of Bahrain and the UAE were exactly what Trump expected them to be, nothing more than a couple of rally talking points. They may have been better than a poke in the eye, but not much, and certainly inadequate to offset the damage inflicted to America’s credibility as a good-faith partner by Trump’s enthusiasm to be nothing more than Bibi’s goon.

The deleterious consequences of the policy’s assured broader failures were a when not if proposition; now they’ve arrived in spades. It’s certain Biden has warned Dragline he better stop pounding Luke yesterday, there is a new Captain on the porch and there will be no “failure to communicate” US intentions moving forward, yet another MAGA mess to be cleaned up. Israeli policy that agrees to once again recognize Palestinian humanity as necessary to wider ambitions for regional peace and stability is a reset Biden is surely now demanding. The danger is whether it’s already too late. The worst thing for Israel’s future has always been adversaries with nothing left to lose. That day may be here with a fight Israel can’t win, no matter how powerful it has become. Perhaps all the Palestinians have left is their refusal to say uncle, which may be enough to badly injure what Israel was created to achieve… back when it was in exactly that same place. BC

Except for Barack Obama, and Joe Biden of course, I never voted more enthusiastically for a Presidential candidate than for Walter Mondale in 1984. Aside from the contrast his relative youth and mental adroitness provided to the increasingly addled incumbent, “Fritz” Mondale was to my eyes a decent and honorable man. Anybody who paid attention could see Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, what happened when one half of “supply-side” economics is employed while the other is completely abandoned, pleasure without any pain.

One didn’t have to be an economist to understand revenues needed to keep up with spending or the equation would tilt. Reagan decided to simply start swiping the credit card for no better reason than to provide immediate economic gratification and reap the political goodies that went with it, a previously taboo practice subject to bipartisan scorn. Balancing the books unless faced with war or calamity was a guiding tenet of responsible Presidencies until the Gipper’s team decided messaging could rebrand fiscal recklessness as prosperity. Today’s catastrophic balance sheet is the result of that disastrous precedent.

Near 40 years and many trillions in red ink later, Mondale’s candor that tax hikes would be necessary to offset Reagan’s first-term spending binge seems pathetically naive, almost politically irresponsible given the historic electoral rout it helped facilitate. Yet and still, given the depths we have descended to since his exercise in honorable futility, only the shameless and moronic – read today’s GOP – wouldn’t welcome a return to such guiless decency in our national conversation.

It’s now clear the principle lesson Republicans took to heart from Reagan‘s landslide in ‘84 was that pandering pays, there is no dignity in losing the right way that outweighs winning the wrong way. Mondale could congratulate himself for sticking to his principles and being honest with American voters, more power to him. Oh, and he did win Minnesota and DC, after all! Truth is for suckers. Tell the people what they want to hear and deal with squaring the inconsistencies later while in office; that’s what the bully pulpit is for. It’s a good problem to have because not having it means you lost.

In fact, while Reagan didn’t have the stomach to go to the mat for spending cuts true believers of supply-side like his OMB Director David Stockman insisted were necessary for the theory to work, he still felt guilt pangs about ballooning the deficit. When all was said and done he did increase taxes and impose a number of measures to enhance revenues just like Mondale said he would. But as Reagan’s chaotic second term wound down, the GOP united behind one myth after another that, not only revised history to canonize the man, but also created litmus tests for party membership based on such lore.

George HW Bush would pay a tremendous price for failing to obey the dogma Reagan himself flouted – “Read my lips, no new taxes!” Bush saw a 90 percent approval rating accrued for spanking Saddam dwindle as the economy suffered through a post-binge hangover. Senior was willing to run up debt, but wasn’t reckless enough to completely refuse to pay for it, even if it meant breaking bold campaign assurances. He found himself sorely lacking in the Teflon department, particularly when it came to a Republican base that doubted his conservative credentials from the outset. If Reagan thrived from humoring the faithful, Bush crashed and burned from failing to deliver what he never wanted to pledge, becoming the first official RINO.

The Republican purity tests that began with Grover Norquist have ended up at Mar-A-Lago. Instead of pledging to ruin the economy with mindless fidelity to Arthur Laffer and an economic theory that isn’t worth the napkin he wrote it on, the bar can now be set no lower. Forget merely imperiling America’s economic future to provide upper bracket tax relief, now it’s the big kahuna… destroying democracy in support of a lying megalomaniac in order to further some delusion of restoring Mayberry. Reagan worship sprung from a big lie about the wonders of supply-side economics. Trump adoration is simply what nihilist white grievance becomes after four years of a Fox/AM presidency and the electoral reckoning it deserved.

More than 60 years ago JFK called on Americans to both serve their fellow citizens and to strengthen the core idea that our government reflects the effort we all put into it. Twenty years later Reagan pronounced that notion bankrupt and claimed all government can do is fail… and cost money. Instead of calling for our best, Reagan sparked a GOP sensibility that “if you want it done right, do it yourself,” which left open the definition of exactly who “yourself” was. Fox/AM was from the start determined to render that essence ever more exclusive, fully in line with its customer base. By the time its first POTUS hissed his inaugural dystopian hallucinations in 2017, “doing it yourself” meant simply blame everyone but you and refuse to cooperate with anyone who doesn’t start each sentence validating your obsessive resentment about who is getting what they don’t deserve.

Walter Mondale’s death last month provided an opportunity to consider what decency looked like in a national candidate. It also allowed for consideration of the costs that come due when one of our major parties deems such nobleness little more than a liability, slavishly customizing its membership requirements accordingly. The Reagan Revolution has become the Gingrich Insurgency has become the Tea Party has become MAGA. Reagan to Gingrich to Cruz to Trump to Taylor-Greene, the slippery slope to ruin. Ask not what you can do for your country, but demand it get rid of your enemies and let you pack heat without a permit so you feel safe while burning your mask. A very long way to fall…and longer still to climb back from. BC

My daughter, Iz, is one of a kind. Fiercely independent and perfectly comfortable launching into adventure alone, she was often a daunting challenge to raise toward adulthood. One of the worst mistakes I ever made as a parent was using the old “once you are 18 and not my legal responsibility you can go off on your own” trope to decisively stave off rebellious adolescent outbursts. Problem was, and it’s utterly incredible I somehow missed it, Iz was a January baby, which made her 18 with an entire semester of her senior year still left to complete. Simply amending the language to “when you graduate from high school” would have made all the difference. Instead, with modeling stardom tantalizing her imagination, and several New York City shoots under her belt, not to mention an agent who thought a GED was a perfectly suitable option, my baby girl/legal adult simply refused to return home one weekend following a NYC gig.

The rest of the story’s details are a private family matter. Suffice it say it was an ordeal I wouldn’t wish on an enemy, but resolved itself with both Iz’s future and our relationship intact. She walked across the Constitution Hall stage on schedule to receive her high school degree and, more impressively, recently graduated from college within the regulation four-year time frame. We couldn’t be more proud of her. Yet and still, it is a certainty, had she not been thoughtful enough to entertain sensible counter-arguments to her rebellious delusions of grandeur, and/or was under the sway of more sinister outside influences willing to go all in casting her parents as the enemy, things likely would have turned out far worse across the board. Reason and rationality eventually won out. More drastic steps were never required, but surely would have been considered had they been.

Who knew my own experience with parenting hell would form a suitable context for assessing the existential threat American democracy now faces. Everyone is somebody’s child, even MAGA’s wretched core; but even with a responsible adult back in the White House, indulging the GOP base’s malevolent delusions in hopes this too shall pass is not an option. Labeling what’s happening now within the Grand Old Party as something akin to a family squabble is like calling leprosy a skin condition. A very bad situation is only getting uglier, and it’s a grave danger to the entire US bloodline.

Thirty percent of our polity now predicates its support, or perhaps more accurately an absence of its fear and loathing, on embracing the Big Lie and manic efforts to transform its baseless claims into injurious actions against both the machinery and procedures that undergird US elections. To be clear: the Republican Party now at the absolute minimum tolerates without hesitation the wanton sedition most of its rank and file understand as necessary to maintaining their office. At best the leadership is a pack of cowards, at worst a cabal of traitors determined to end the American democratic experiment in order to maintain power the ballot box will no longer support. To ignore the peril with the complacency Biden’s sane governance encourages is to facilitate the next nihilist onslaught, the next iteration of 1/6.

It’s now clear Donald Trump has little appetite for anything more than the Mar-A-Lago buffet. A morning round of 8-foot gimmes at Doral and some phone calls before his afternoon nap seems about the extent of his new work habits, a comfort zone he gives no indication he wants to leave. Whether the GOP leadership believes abasement lite will get the job done keeping Attila self-satisfied until his irrelevance affords a permanent break is uncertain, for now they seem intent on regular trips south to kiss the ring in exchange for something resembling cooperation.

But what difference does it really make? The sedition ship left harbor a while back, packed to the deck rails with all types of wayward malcontents… Proud Boys to recliner bigots, QAnon loonies to Tucker groupies, a Noah’s Ark of grievance and resentment. While Trump can always make things worse – although today’s decision to maintain Facebook’s ban of his posts, along with Twitter’s steadfast determination to keep his seditious gibberish off its platform substantially inhibits that ability, largely because Trump is simply too lazy to pursue anything more ambitious – the MAGA walking dead have already been unleashed and are gnawing away at our democratic infrastructure, whether he’s goading them on or not.

At a Utah Republican party convention this week Mitt Romney, GOP statesman, Mormon elder, former Presidential candidate, was vigorously booed by a crowd of more than 2000 delegates. He escaped censure by less than 100 votes. The resolution was clear and to the point, charging that Romney “consistently publicly criticized” Trump. It was reported many in the crowd called Romney a “traitor” and “communist.” It got so bad the GOP Chairman was forced to admonish the crowd to “show respect” to the guy who labeled himself “an old-fashioned Republican.”

Though Romney was vociferous in his criticism of Biden’s agenda, the fact he recognized the current President’s legitimacy is all that a large share of the crowd cared about. Maine’s Susan Collins was “appalled” at Romney’s treatment. “We Republicans need to remember we are united by fundamental principles,” admonished Collins, who had little to say publicly past praising grants for lobstermen and local business initiatives while Trump stoked his insurrection last January.

In Maricopa County, Arizona state Republicans are getting their customized recount, conducted by an outfit who has promised results. The latest focus? It will be all about detecting bamboo fibers on the ballots… proof they originated in China before being dumped stateside in favor of Biden! Not a typo. Kelli Ward, a MAGA extremist whose own election as the state’s Party Chair is the subject of heated dispute, and who seems to spend most of her day retweeting Fox/AM’s most unhinged elements, ensured everyone of the “forensic” audit’s “integrity.” After all, Ward exclaimed breathlessly, it is “color coded.”

Rep. Ron Wright had lung cancer but kept his Trumpist priorities straight, exhibiting servility toward reckless Covid ignorance up until the day the virus killed him. Masks, closed schools, social distancing and the like… lib power grabs all, reopen yesterday! Like the good MAGA eunuch his Texas constituents demanded he be, the 67-year old, awash in co-morbidities, went to his grave in February denying facts. Now his wife is carrying his torch forward. Susan Wright was the top vote getter in the crowded race for her husband’s seat. And just in case anyone thought she may harbor any grudges against the mentality that took her beloved, consider that she out of all the Republican field received Trump’s endorsement, which was more than enough to ensure her the top slot leading into a runoff. “You will be very happy with this vote,” cooed Trump to his Texas faithful, “Ron is looking down and he is so proud of Susan.” Indeed. Now that is what taking one for the team is all about.

Whether it’s a participation trophy from Rick Scott or a docile and defeated Nicki Haley bending the knee and promising “I will not run if President Trump does,” shiftless “establishment” Republicans are doing what they do so well… hoping the bully moves on and lets them keep their lunch money until he drops out of school -or goes to jail. Even as a seemingly endless line of preening show horses audition to take over incitement duties, all remain as servile as ever, each vigilant to avoid the tag of excessive ambition. When Liz Chaney resembles Joan of Arc things are very dire.

Regardless, Trump or no Trump, the genie has long been out of the bottle. Fact is, the Donald can do next to nothing and his toxin will continue to erode America’s core. He could croak tomorrow and the die is still cast. Like the plague of mice now tormenting Australia, MAGA remains a pestilence few have any idea how to contain, least of all Republicans without rabies, who were as horrified by 1/6 as the rest of us. American democracy now entertains a vibrant, well-funded political class with no other goal but to destroy its host. It’s not a family quarrel, or even a domestic dispute… it’s a national crisis that can only be headed off if enough people recognize it exists… and begin to consider more desperate measures. BC