Author: BC

In Maine, two news headlines illustrate our bipolar nation. One story highlights the finishing touches the Maine legislature is putting on its voters’ decisive support of a referendum legalizing cannibis.

After overriding Trumpie Governor Paul Le Page’s effort to nullify the popular will, Vacation State lawmakers are sorting out the specifics of recreational and medical pot use, culminating in a 2019 roll out of a functioning marketplace for marijuana sales and regulation. For now a citizen can possess up to 2 1/2 ounces or grow up to six plants of ganja without penalty. By 2019 boutiques should begin full operations, tax paying enterprises on the cutting edge of medicinal and recreational weed consumption.

Meanwhile, with the announcement of SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, all eyes are on Maine’s own Susan Collins, who now passes for GOP moderate in the US Senate, and along with Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, suddenly has a very strong hand to play regarding any Trump nominee to the Court. Today’s editorial in the Portland Press Herald called on Collins to show “less deference to the President than (she) usually demonstrates”, while appreciating Kennedy’s “unique position on the court over the last three decades.”

Whether Collins, who despite nurturing a political brand of independence, has been as reliable a yes vote for Trump initiatives as Ted Cruz or Orrin Hatch, decides to actually approach the nomination process with fealty to womens’ reproductive rights as a guidepost, there is little doubt that who she will be considering will have no regard for such concerns. And the likely ascendence of a newly solid vote against Roe v Wade means in 2019 Maine women will be able to do bong hits in their back yard without fear of incarceration, but if they take a “morning after” pill may be ripe for felony prosecution. Talk about one step forward and two steps backward! Trump’s America in a nutshell.

What the new SCOTUS reality clarifies is this will fully become John Robert’s court. With his breezy assent of Trump’s travel ban, and servile participation in deleting 70 years of established labor law, Neal Gorsuch confirmed he is Scalia with a fraction of the intellect. Alito joined Thomas in the “originalist” section long ago, and it’s sadly doubtful Trump’s latest nominee won’t follow along. So that leaves Roberts as the sole hope for any sort of discretion in what will surely be a wave of challenges to what were established cases. Reproductive and gay rights, minority protections, voting rights and limits on police conduct are likely to fill the docket.

Only Roberts appears to any degree amendable to something other than a rubber stamp. Of course the long term implications are enormous and will define how far social progress, paid for with blood and toil, will be rolled back by those imbibed only with grievance and resentment of groups they have no problem excluding from protections they take for granted.

So how reasonable is it to hope the Chief Justice will abide stare decisis at the expense of political ideology…in other words what he promised up and down to do during his own confirmation? In short, not very. The travel ban opinion Roberts himself authored requires one to ignore the most divisive political figure in US history and focus only on the authority previously granted by the court to his station. Roberts stipulates that, since the formal wording of the ban is “neutral”, Trump’s endless, fully documented, rants and rages behind the action are irrelevant. In other words, tidy legalese inoculates malignant intent.

While it certainly is true past SCOTUS rulings have sided with broad Executive power, considering action without intent makes no sense unless one accepts the democracy killing proposition that any POTUS can define “national security emergency” as he sees fit and all constitutional bets are off. The fact that Roberts declared Korematsu, the basis for Japanese WWII internment made exactly under such circumstances, unconstitutional 70 years too late, demonstrated breathtaking inconsistency by the Chief Justice on exactly that subject. Such constitutional acrobatics will come in handy if he decides to rule against Roe V Wade.

The American ship is sailing in the midst of a mutiny by the old and drunken tars of its crew. While the course of its voyage has yet to be brought about face, a war for control of its helm rages on; and right now the mutineers are pushing their advantage. Whether, after so long and costly a journey, they will be able to force heading back toward the nothingness of past failures we moved away from now seems to be in the hands of a very few, who have yet to inspire in their service to the mission’s success. We need to more fully engage the battle and tilt the balance. BC

It’s entirely possible that separating families at the border cooked the GOP’s goose in November. The images and audio coming from the southwest won’t be forgotten soon, and it was only a matter of time before otherwise indifferent fence sitters, acquiescent to a POTUS as unable to keep his mouth shut as he is to convey the least bit of empathy, would finally have enough. So what does a wave landslide in November look like and how will the vanquished react?

Trump’s rally in Minnesota and his unhinged cabinet meeting last week betray concern that November might be very ugly for GOP enablers. The more he repeats himself on a subject, the more preoccupied by it he is, such are the tells of a mental midget.

The primary season has brought good news and bad news for Trump. On the plus side loud and proud Trumpie nihilists have proliferated and sent a number of what passes for “moderates” in today’s Grand Old Party – or put another way, those who can read without moving their lips -packing. And the Neanderthal newbies are all in with Der Donald, bathing him in the props he requires to tweet for their cause. What was unimaginable two years ago is now a fact: this is Trump’s GOP. Even shameless Dems like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin are talking the talk (he may vote for Trump in 2020!), and walking the walk (enthusiastically voting for Gina Haspel for CIA.)

But Trump’s paving of the shockingly feckless GOP leadership and rank and file makes November’s elections unmistakenly a referendum about his constant obsession…him! And that’s a campaign few should be excited to run.

Incredibly, it’s salvation may come from the Democrats themselves, who appear skittish about going to war against unhinged nihilism, proffering parlor debates about what’s best for America’s middle class instead. Whether Trump will allow GOP candidates to accept that gift is doubtful, as he has made clear his schedule is wide open for regular rallies, where actually discussing policy differences with Democrats will surely suffer to his lust for inane self-promotion, spiced with a torrent of ugly lies and bigotry. And while that may turn on the wretched 35%, it’s unlikely anyone looking for an excuse to atone for holding their nose the last election cycle will be swayed.

But what if the chickens come home to roost earlier than expected? It’s a certainty an aggressive tariff regime will harm the economy quickly, as trading partners respond in kind, intent on sending the message they will not be cowed by a bully. Inflation and job losses may start spiking by August. And the border now has America’s attention, the fate of families torn apart should remain in the spotlight, with fresh polling placing the blame squarely on Trump. Add to that his knack for digging new holes with divisive gibberish, and a wave trouncing could go from a strong possibility to inevitable by September, no longer if but how bad. And Trump’s response to reality he can’t deny, but surely sees as an existential threat? The abyss is the limit.

What if Trump decides, as he did in the run up to November 16’, when he was convinced defeat was a certainty, to attack the integrity of the electoral system itself? What if the twice a week rallies become dominated by the “rigged system” narrative? What if he takes it to the next level and calls on his lemmings to boycott the election, stay home and be a patriot; don’t participate in this sham. And what if Fox/AM falls in line, bestowing on his sedition crusade status?
If you think this scenario is outlandishly impossible, you haven’t been paying attention.

There exists no dichotomy for identifying which Trump stump vomit is more malignant to the nation because he has been unhinged from the start. Yet and still, we know the country’s well being pales in importance to him when cast against his own rabid survival instincts. Democratic control of the Hill is game over, so why not do what he always does… fully discredit the threat to his wretched core? It is a tried and true standard operating procedure that has served him well to this point. Seems unreasonable to expect anything else.

The soundness of the American electoral process has been the currency of global order since World War II. Trump has been relentlessly attacking that status quo since he took office, with complete obedience from the body our founders assumed would stop him in his tracks. In fact, it now seems tragically certain that the GOP will fully abet Trumpism, if not actively promote it. So where is the logic in assuming this enterprise, when facing certain electoral repudiation and the loss of control of its fate which accompanies it, won’t try to burn down the house to save the plantation?

My father was wise and told me many sensible things, but none more apt for our purposes here than this: “never assume an asshole can’t be even more of an asshole!” BC

“A lie told once remains a lie, but
a lie told a thousand times becomes
the truth.”
Joseph Goebbels

When Roger Ailes was rolling out Fox News he understood that two aims were paramount: 1) creating a point of departure that defined his competition in the worst possible light; and 2) aligning the mission of his new organization with a narrative his target audience could idolize, therefore conveying higher purpose to his news model. The results now devastate our country and the world.

From the start Fox conflated watching its news channel with rejecting established premises about the country’s evolution. The idea that social progress was zero-sum and came at the expense of Fox viewers was there from the beginning. Rights vs undo privilege has permeated the Fox narrative from day one. Affirmative action, aid to the poor, voting rights, gun control, abortion rights, even evolution and environmental protection all were redefined as unsettled us vs them questions, misrepresented by mainstream media for decades.

Who decided blacks had been discriminated against enough to require a federal response? And why did Mississippi still need to be monitored for voter repression that happened in the 60s? Who knew just how much welfare recipients were gaming the system? Nothing was firmly established, everything debatable.

From the outset, Fox existed to validate white grievance, and worked from the assumption government was picking their pockets to fund programs they at least felt unnecessary, at worst thought immoral. Facts were fungible and in service to the narrative, no different from what mainstream media had always done. There were no established standards, no best practices, merely a problem to be remedied.

If the mainstream media was the enemy to be opposed, American exceptionalism was the ideal to fight it with. A concept rooted in nostalgia for a time when the target audience felt safest and most preeminent. What began to take shape, trumpeted relentlessly on Fox and the AM talk circuit, was a shangri la lost. America as religion, where straying from the established text was heresy; and that’s exactly what the liberal mainstream media had been committing for years. It stirred discontent for imagined slights, ever trolling for votes to serve its liberal political masters. An existential threat that had to be, not just stopped, but reversed.

To this end, Reagan worship was employed. Who better to personify American infallibility than the man who had stared down the Soviets. Suddenly, what WAS became the focus, not what could be. Where we once were, and how to get back there, supplanted where we should be going.

Somewhere back then was the apex of US power and prestige which was now in decline. Somewhere was a sweet spot where we were the undisputed greatest, before liberals began undermining. Somewhere, presumably sometime during the Reagan years, we got it just right and should have left well enough alone. But instead there was the ACLU, and the EPA, and the NAACP, and Clinton, and whiny blacks, and homos foisting themselves on decent folk, and of course, always the evil of abortion.

Exceptionalism tolerated no remedies to problems of today because they had already been solved. Blacks had their rights now; stop making race an issue. Pollution was over; needless regulations only unnecessarily cost jobs. And when the hell would women ever be satisfied and stop complaining, particularly about so-called rights to their bodies? Anyone in uniform was under-appreciated, and government could do nothing right.

Twenty-five years of relentless 24/7 messaging later the carnage from such psychosis is in the West Wing, Fox/AM’s first POTUS. Exceptionalism is now laid bare for what it has always been…nihilism, a fantasy for white malcontents steamrolled by progress. The fallback for bad choices and personal failure, unable to compete in a rapidly changing world. How long an Administration devoted to such delusions can convulse before the country suffers irreparably is anybody’s guess. Yet and still, the success of Ailes’  model assures a base of supporters inured to fact, addled by more than two decades of day and night storytelling.

The target audience, now Trump’s wretched core of support, is no longer able to make distinctions between right and wrong, only us and them. What somebody does is irrelevant; it’s all about who is doing it, and who they are doing it to. There is no rule of law; there is only who is suffering or benefiting at its hands. And most importantly, whatever is currently happening can only be evaluated in relation to what “they” did or would do because whatever “we’re” doing can never be as bad and thus is an improvement.

The GOP, beguiled from the beginning that Fox/AM served its aims, tried and failed to harness this madness. Now it lies mortally wounded as its leadership surrenders to the Walking Dead. Assuming there are limits they will recognize is a fool’s errand; their allegiance is open ended because they abide no alternative.

Families separated at the border for a misdemeanor won’t phase them. Just like rounding up reporters won’t make any impression. We may be one cherry bomb away from Muslim IDs; nothing is impossible. If the Third Reich taught us anything it was never to underestimate the power of fear and alienation, or a lie relentlessly repeated. Roger Ailes certainly didn’t. That is why we’re here. BC

At the end of Costa-Gavras’ classic film Missing, after Ed Horman, portrayed magnificently by Jack Lemmon, accuses the US Ambassador to Chile and a slimey Military Attaché of complicity in the Pinochet Government’s murder of his son, Charley, the attaché drops his veneer of sympathy and gives dad the hard truth. He tells him Charley was responsible for his own death because he was snooping around where he didn’t belong in a country that wasn’t his…and he got what was coming to him.

It is a certainty Jeff Sessions would have been right at home supporting Pinochet’s murderous coup against Allende. I can’t imagine there is much in Beauregard’s skill set that he wouldn’t have been able to avail the host criminals, who rained blood on Chile’s hopes for democracy and reform.

Near 50 years later we are now getting a full taste from the buffet of those depravities, as Sessions turns us into accomplices to systematic human rights abuse at our southern border, even as he is abased weekly by his fickle employer. The fact that the Attorney General’s job security is a unifying theme in an otherwise frayed GOP conservative caucus underscores its full complicity in the outrage.

But just as Ed Horman discovered after finally learning his son’s fate, we have been informed directly by Sessions that the ordeals now suffered by migrant families, torn apart to be held in separate prisons for the crime of seeking a better life at the shining city on the hill, are entirely their own doing. In fact, our current policy is actually tough love because eventually it will discourage others from setting out on such hardships and stay put where they are, come what may…government attack, spousal abuse, gang violence, destitution…whatever.

This is principled leadership promised so articulately by Trump at his campaign rallies: “We’re going to get em the hell out of here!”

It is doubtful Sessions needs much in the way of rationalization to push this policy; his entire career has been one long dog whistle tribute to the glory days of Jim Crow Dixie. Yet and still, it is shocking, even knowing his bigotry well, the terse lack of empathy now displayed for children ripped from their mothers’ arms.

MAGA has always been an amorphous term. Of course, those clear-eyed enough to see Trump’s ugliness for the bile it is could imagine just such an outcome. To Sessions et al MAGA means simply whitening America, turning back the demographic clock with any and all means necessary. Conscience is for snowflake liberals, taking a country back requires the will to hurt people. It’s all for the best.

And what are Democrats doing as America’s soul is destroyed? That’s a good question. When you find out let me know. The increasingly bleary eyed Nancy Pelosi, as well as Chuck Schumer, appear intent on watering down the issue by mixing it with other grievances, like the tax bill, tariffs and Trump’s corruption. And while an increasing number of lawmakers are joining Jeff Merkley and others down at the border to see things unfold for themselves, no formal unified response to stop the calamity has even yet been floated.

It now seems to be dawning on people, formerly consumed by finding any shred of decency or genuine concern, that – surprise! – none is anywhere in sight amongst this collection of moral devoids.

Right now the awful reckoning of that reality is being suffered by immigrants misguided enough to actually want to become Americans. How long will it be before the natives themselves begin to suffer the same kind of fate? The lesson down south is as clear as the Texas sky after a tornado: the wretched core will go anywhere they’re told. Believe it! BC

There’s the story of the guy who kept getting told by his boss he was going to be laid off. Week after week he was warned the cuts were coming. At home, he budgeted and told his wife to spend as if there would be no paycheck the next week. Slowly, over time, he accepted his fate, and started actually enjoying life more. One day his boss calls him into the office and asks him to take a seat. The man sits down with a resigned look on his face. “Great news,” his boss smiles, “the company got a big new order, your job is safe!” The man lowers his eyes and doesn’t talk at all. “Don’t you have anything to say, buddy,” his boss laughs. The man finally raises his head and simply says… “I quit.”

In America people are working very hard to enjoy their lives, even as it becomes clear their political system and the government it produces are imploding. People want selfies with friends, selfies with celebrities, selfies with family, selfies with…themselves. There now exists a near pathological desire, reflected in Facebook and Twitter accounts throughout the land, to let people know “I am living life to the fullest. It’s great to be alive!” All this as a nihilist POTUS runs roughshod over the Congress meant to stop his rabid whims in their tracks.

Far from retreating toward any dustbin, Trumpism now seems poised to co-opt the GOP, which first held its nose, then got on its knees. And the electorate? Of course many are determined to resist, and lose sleep nightly, jaws clenched, pondering the outrage of the day. But many others, perhaps the ones who count most, are determined to tune it all out. They no longer distinguish narratives; it has all become one cacophony, shrill and more than just annoying, a threat to well being.

The Trump campaign portended to anybody with decency and a set of eyes and ears a breakdown of established norms that had to threaten something. No candidate for any public office, let alone the Presidency had ever spoken so recklessly, lied so casually, and basked in policy ignorance like Trump. As the campaign wound down, certain he would lose, and fully unbound by any responsibility, he began to resemble Jim Morrison in descent, stuperously fumbling lyrics, and actively trying to incite riots. The system is rigged, Trump babbled over and over. They’re going to steal the election! And then the impossible happened. Nobody was more crestfallen that Wednesday morning than the man with no plan. But awful men do not rise to occasions, they just don’t.

Inaugural hopes quickly gave way to the horror of his CIA speech. A full bank of CNN analysts sat stunned, afraid for the future. And the die was cast.

Now the 35-40% that celebrated Trump’s election demand he lead them further into the chaos of government by tweet, honing their grievance and hatred to a fine edge, moths ever more attracted to the light of atrocity.

The resistance, such as it is, determined to stand for principles they have only just discovered can be fungible, subject to different assessments depending on just how much one stands to lose, braces for the worst. The rest? They don’t say it, probably couldn’t articulate it, and surely would never admit it, but they are busy proving to themselves life can be enjoyed with democracy lost. Forget what it meant and you won’t miss it when it’s gone.

Dictatorships have kids soccer leagues just like democracies. And Thanksgiving will surely still be celebrated. And fireworks are fireworks, even if what they used to celebrate no longer means anything past an old beer commercial. It’ll be ok. Just take another selfie. BC

The stunning implications of Trump’s nihilism at the G-7 can’t be overstated. Everything was on display in this performance, which may well be remembered as the worst by a US President in our diplomatic history. Unprepared, disinterested, confrontational yet disengaged from actual discussions, our “master negotiator” shamed the country apathetic and uninformed enough to entrust him with the world’s most powerful office. And while his embarrassing conduct was nothing new, the venom his aides spewed spinning it afterward was.

Larry Kudlow, Trump’s Chief Economic Advisor, carved out a media career based on the myth he was consequential in the Reagan Administration. Whatever the gravitas Associate Director of Economic Planning for David Stockman’s OMB actually carried, it was more than enough for Kudlow to claim himself both a Republican political insider, as well as an economic expert. Now defunct Bear Sterns made him their chief economist in 87’, and when Christine Todd Wittman grabbed New Jersey’s Governorship in 1993, Kudlow was her economic advisor. All this as he was developing a ferocious alcohol and coke habit that would compromise his ambitions. He eventually landed, as many conservative refugees end up, on a Fox/AM perch, holding forth with decreasing responsibility to facts.

Where Kudlow went from mainstream to the outer edges to maintain relevance, Peter Navarro has been a back bencher from the beginning. Aside from being a perennial Democratic election loser in both local and national contests in the San Diego area, Navarro made a name as a fierce critic of US trade with China and Germany. In fact, stripped of the essentials, Navarro seems mostly a proponent of thoroughly debunked import-substitution approaches to economic growth. In other words, the US has little need for trading partners, only raw materials we can transform within our own manufacturing kingdom. This “who needs em” attitude has been on vivid display since previous Trump Economic Chief Gary Cohn, a free trader increasingly marginalized by protectionists Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, resigned earlier this year, replaced by the more pliant Kudlow. With Cohn gone, Navarro has enjoyed enhanced access to go full Rasputin, beguiling Trump about the horrors of being an American dairy farmer… forget price supports.

And so the “let Trump be Trump” hombres tag teamed the Sunday news shows and kicked some Canadian ass! It’s hard to imagine what Trump and his team expected Trudeau to say in response to steel and aluminum tariffs assigned under obscure national security provisions, presumably meant for adversaries not friends. No matter, the Prime Minister’s otherwise modest and restrained statement might as well have been delivered with the middle finger to hear the MAGA twins tell it.

The US was “stabbed in the back,” declared a strung out looking Kudlow, accusing Trudeau of pandering to domestic politics as he betrayed his earnest patron, the Donald. A regular Iago, this smooth Trudeau hustler turned out to be, and on the eve of the Singapore Summit! What kind of an opportunist doesn’t abase himself and country to the West’s dealmaker extrordinaire at such a time?! How is Der Trump supposed to feel and touch his way to a deal with Kim after such treachery?!

Fear not, glowered Navarro to those patriots wanting Trudeau on a spit, “a special place in hell” awaits the Montreal ingrate. The fact that no foreign leader had been subject to such White House sanctioned vitriol since Saddam Hussein couldn’t have meant less to Navarro. For Trudeau to exert such uppity consternation – even after Trump signed off on the group’s “socialist” communique – was the lowest of low. He’s going to pay!

It bears repeating that Navarro does not believe in trading partners. Trade is unnecessary for a country as big and militarily dominant as the US. We take what we need for our own manufacturing base to convert for our domestic market. If other coloni…er, countries want to buy from us, fine, but we run no trade deficits…period. There’s a word for solving problems intransigent “trade partners” cause us….War!

Whether G7 countries and other Western allies will opt to try and ride out Trump, praying America comes to her senses, is of course up to them. Trump took his ball home, but they can certainly find another game to play, leaving us the loser. We need them at least as much as they need us; George Marshall fully understood this when he helped create the global trade system we have been prospering from since WWII, and Trump and his whacked lackies are unconcerned about destroying. Yet Navarro gets one thing right; we are a preeminent military power. How that power is deployed, more importantly whether it’s mission is corrupted in pursuit of facsi-nationalist economic aspirations should weigh very heavily on anyone paying attention to Trump’s new messaging. Sauron, himself couldn’t portend more darkness on our horizon. BC

One of the great scenes in movie history is when Oskar Schindler, on an otherwise idyllic horse ride with his attractive companion in Warsaw, gets a hillside seat for the liquidation of the city’s Jewish ghetto. Spielberg takes extraordinary care in portraying a situation so systematically chaotic, so absurdly violent, and utterly evil that a man who thought he realized his life’s dream of war’s riches suddenly understands it’s a pact with the devil, and he’s looking at hell itself. From that point on, for the sake of his very soul, he must atone. Enter Ben Kingsley…

One can only imagine, if provided a similar vista overlooking our southern border, what kind of images an equestrian could witness unfolding as desperate mothers have their children ripped from them to be taken away screaming and crying, embraced by the type of horror reserved for the bleakest circumstance. Yet here we sit, as people we know and maybe even once respected mouth inanities like “the law is the law.” News flash douchebags…the stormtroopers in Warsaw were doing nothing deemed “illegal”!

The crux of our situation remains the same as it has been since last January: how far will we follow a hateful nihilist. How low will we have to go before selfies with friends and graduations begin to lose their luster, dimmed by a palpable sense of national shame, and some inkling of a determination to turn course? It all feels so willful at this point; millions doing their damndest to ignore the fate of their country, and the damage this Administration extends on the hour. And let’s be as clear as we can be; if those doing their best to “only focus on what really matters” raised their voices, called their Reps., told their friends, posted on social media, and otherwise simply demanded better, we would be well on our way to cleaning up this mess.

But right now one is still left to ponder how much further this road goes. Trump is for all intents and purposes destroying our most basic alliance, fully disputing 75-year old core foundations. The transformation from ally to economic usurper to enemy can be swift once we allow ourselves to be set adrift, losing control of events. If one assumes that Europe’s elected leaders are loyal to the national interest, unlike our own, how long should we expect them to abide Trump’s recklessness. He has no vision for new trade arrangements, only punchlines about deficits and “horrible” past deals. Perhaps they are hoping to soldier on until 2020, when we come to our senses. What if Trump is re-elected? If they take the initiative to put together new military, political and economic agreements, freezing us out, what sort of response can we expect from this White House? It’s not a slippery slope, it’s a ruinous cliff.

Had our first Black POTUS hastily arranged a personal summit with the world’s most repressive tyrant, and then breezily admitted to not preparing for the encounter, confident his life experience was sufficient, a bipartisan outcry would have echoed through the land. Oh, that’s right, Art of the Deal!

Meanwhile, a GOP Trumpie running for Governor drives around pledging to fill his bus with “illegals”. And in West Virginia, Democratic incumbent Senator Joe Manchin is more than implying he will endorse Trump’s re-election in 2020. Were Trump to win in 2020 it would mean roughly a decade of his pestilence on our political and cultural life. Where could we end up? Consider that in 1928 Hitler and the Nazis were scarcely known other than “the butt of jokes.” By 33’ Goebbels was overseeing book burnings in Berlin. 1938 gave us Munich. Ten years is more than ample on the road to ruin.

We as a nation had, before 2016, long ago collectively agreed that prosperity and freedom required looking out and leading by example, understanding the parts were meant to add up to the whole. Leaders don’t keep score and bitch and moan about what they aren’t getting. They focus on the big picture, fully committed to the long game. Trumpism rebukes that common wisdom with nothing to replace it other than satisfaction that “liberals’ heads are exploding.” It’s the Greg Gutfeld doctrine.

And always the question is how far will it be allowed to go. Wholesale round ups of profiled Hispanics? Arrests of reporters? War with Iran? Refusal to accept electoral results? Is there anything Trump won’t do if the legal noose begins to tighten? To gaslight these scenarios as paranoia requires one to discount what is already happening and present a cogent defense for actions already being taken. The silence on that front is deafening. Moreover, it is worth noting that some of Trumpism’s fiercest critics are Republicans, fully aghast at the complicity of the party.

A very dear friend, who I worked with in the 80s, is married to a wonderful woman… smart, obscenely charismatic and likable, really fantastic. Although we lost touch of each other when he moved north years ago, Facebook revived our relationship. It is clear his wife suffered and fully conquered some health challenges through feverish devotion to positive lifestyle changes – diet, exercise, attitude, etc. Her transformation was remarkable, fully justifying her evangelical desire to share it with others as a “life coach.”

But she has made clear to me there is not a sliver of her life available, at least publicly, for the downer of politics. No place whatsoever. She is nothing but positive; it was her salvation and it’s now her brand. The other day she posted a perfectly innocuous post about being stopped by a state trooper and how she was respectful and cooperative, and how nice he ended up being etc.etc. Many of the commenters, all white as she is, went right to the ol’ “see, if you are respectful to the law, it’ll all end up fine.” There was no doubt what informed their comments, and someone as sharp as she could never miss it. Yet she merely replied back with inane thanks and agreement. I pasted my DR column, “Division” about taking a knee and Black Lives Matter as a comment. She promptly, without a word, deleted it. That is where we are. Where we may go depends on when, if ever, she leaves that comment up…or maybe shares it. BC

Anybody intent on indicting the American educational system should watch Ken Burns’ The Civil War. The 9-episode, 11 1/2 hour documentary classic takes the viewer through our worst years from start to finish. I remember vividly watching its premeire back in 1990 and thinking how bad it made my Jr. and High School history teachers look; how did they manage to make such an important and compelling subject so deathly dull? How could it be that this riveting tale of American self immolation bored me to tears as a teenager?

Burns checks off all the boxes, conveying both war’s senselessness and glory, the human bonds it creates and destroys, and the lives it defines and ruins. But in so fully documenting America’s march to the brink of destruction and back again, Burns provides an emphatic answer to the conflagration’s most pertinent question: yes, the Civil War began and ended with slavery and race. Case closed.

Moreover, at the end of the day, the war’s primary legacy was the challenge for America to create the necessary circumstances for former slaves and their future generations to meld into the fabric of US society, as part of one community, all beholden to and protected by the Constitution. The degree to which we succeeded at that single task, Burns more than implied, would go far in determining our future prospects as a nation.

Of course our successes and failures at addressing the challenge are well documented; and, up to 2008, depending on who one asked, the glass was either half full or half empty. One man’s progress was another’s stagnation. Indeed, the issue of exactly how far we had come became central to the culture war as years slipped by and the memories of Jim Crow faded.

The election of Barack Obama provided a brief but glorious euphoria that the mountaintop, if not reached, was at least in view. For many African-Americans who had suffered through the shameful indignities of poll tests and klan thuggery, Obama validated their aspirations and sacrifice. More than simply a salve for the past, he represented the best opportunity yet for securing the future…walking the walk, not just talking. In January of 09’ even the most hardened and cynical could admit good things seemed possible.

But where one group felt hope and opportunity another feared the apocalypse. Many in white America, particularly baby boomers, saw, if not their worst fears realized, certainly those of their parents. Suddenly, “this thing has gone far enough” became “this thing has gone too far!”

Of course it’s probable that, sans the relentless drumbeat of Fox/AM, and a Republican Party not committed to full throated dog whistles and obstruction, many of those initially inclined to bigotry and grievance would have grudgingly accepted the sky had not fallen, and in fact, there was a good bit to like in this youthful and charismatic POTUS. One only needs to view the limbo like setting of Trump’s bar to appreciate how different things may have been if many in flyover country had afforded Obama the slightest bit of slack. Ailes, Limbaugh, Levin et al had other plans.

To Fox/AM the 2008 election was an ATM. Historians may be interested how much of the rotten hash Shit River personalities actually believed and how much was just business. Seems irrelevant. What is irrefutable is the billions upon billions of dollars the make-Obama-Satan machine raked in with nothing less than a 24/7 multimedia propaganda operation. Any pause an Iowa farmer may have had toward something decent he heard our first black President did never made it to the dinner table, as Fox got a hold of it.

Everything intersected at the crossroads of police conduct. Departments throughout the US, stocked with post 9/11 war machinery, and employing enough bad apples to cause problems now fully documented for public viewing, dealt with charges of brutality the way they always had… by circling the wagons. Nobody got the memo about a new sheriff in town on that score. Minority citizens were unreasonable enough to expect that, at minimum, a black POTUS should translate into basic personal freedom. One could argue about economic progress, or the nuances of income disparity, but walking to the corner store without being brutalized by cops should be a given.

Bill O’Reilly didn’t see it that way. In the tightly closed little chambers of his brain Black America was the victim of its own ugly vices. Empathy, never an O’Reilly strong suit, was for others, like heroic cops forced to patrol hell zones every day and clean up the garbage. O’Reilly appointed himself their patron, and when a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Minnesota were caught on tape chanting “pigs in a blanket”, Bill O had all he needed. “I’m going to shut them down,” he hissed on his show that evening after declaring BLM a terrorist organization. From that point on BLM was never mentioned on any Fox/AM show as anything other than Hezbollah’s equal.

Obama, ever the deft politician, tried his best to placate flyover denizens on the issue, speaking eloquently of the challenges police departments face, while expressing empathy through his own humanity for victims of brutality. He could have saved his breath. A thoughtful statement issued in the morning, was Louis Farrakhan by Fox’s prime time line up. Mythology became common Shit River wisdom during a single news cycle. Anybody who doubts this need only have listened to Trump toadie Rick Santorum expel it word for word the other night on CNN.

After weaving its way through places like Ferguson, Mo., New York City and Cleveland, where young Tamir Rice was shot by jittery officers for playing with a toy gun, the issue of police conduct toward minorities has morphed into nothing less than the kind of pivotal challenge Ken Burns pointed out 28 years ago. The sorry fact that less than a minuscule number of officers ever get worse than fired for outrageous conduct often documented by camera, makes it a systemic issue, with a sum far greater than its parts.

Our nihilist POTUS, dividing us as his instincts always dictate, while also settling a score with a group who once refused to let him join, has moved things to the football field. And while the venue has changed, the principles remain the same: one group expecting nothing more than to be treated as the rest of America, to be part of a national community; and another unwilling to even acknowledge any problem exists, and ready to demand the same indifference from its elected officials.

Watching Sterling Brown get mugged by a bunch of cowards in Milwaukee the other night, that mountaintop seemed as far away as I can remember. BC

The Marshall Plan remains one of the sparkling highlights of America’s WWII triumph. While revisionists have questioned how much it affected the pace of European economic recovery, and its scope is certainly not what the American exceptionalist crowd extols in their efforts to argue for permanent US moral righteousness, it was a visionary act of generosity. Without it, the speed of post-war economic recovery would have been greatly reduced, imperiling the vitality of democratic governments challenged by communist movements as well as remnants of right wing populism.

The $13 billion dollar program cemented American consensus away from pre-war isolationism, and underwrote a new global economy, as well as geo-political strategy. The free trade regime that emerged from Bretton Woods promised generations of US prosperity, as we exported the goods our wartime industrial machine was fully ready to produce. The synergy of post-war European potential and available US resources and capability was undeniable. George Marshall was no fool.

How we benefited from The Marshall Plan, and free trade, as well as how our political system allowed itself to be corrupted, wounding the golden goose we created at Bretton Woods, are particularly relevant to the folly Trumpism is currently pursuing.

The idea trade relationships, or for that matter any of our dealings with the world, happen in a vacuum, free of any systemic context history creates is infantile. Yet here we are, apparently held hostage by a POTUS convinced fulfilling his nihilist promises to a base of supporters almost as ignorant as he will deliver him from personal ruin. But where knee jerk protectionism is involved, the Democratic response is usually disheartening. To hear Chuck Schumer muse he wanted to give Trump “a pat on the back” for tweeting up a trade fight with China, and then meekly “urging the President” not to issue sweeping tariffs against our closest allies under arcane national security provisions, is to realize there exists no resistance to White House nihilism furiously destroying our position abroad. Allies who have lost soldiers fighting along side US troops in Afghanistan and the Middle East are now treated as threats to our security.

Trump presents trade balances as one would an invoice to a delinquent client (talk about surreal irony)… “You owe us! This isn’t fair.” One can only imagine Trudeau and Merkel et al feeling a punch in their stomachs at the full realization of how ugly, misinformed, and worst of all, unrestrained Trump is. That Trump panders to a base of nihilists is dangerous; that he actually believes the guff he’s selling is a crisis; worst of all, that he enjoys some degree of bipartisan support for his trade arson is truly ruinous.

Both the public and private tone of the allied response to US steel and aluminum tariffs is unprecedented. Sources disclosed a phone conversation between Trump and Macron of France “went terribly”. Macron, applying lipstick to the ugliest pig at the fair, said simply he has a “direct” style of communication. And we all know how well our POTUS takes criticism. Speaking of which, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, interviewed on Meet the Press, flatly labeled the actions “insulting and unacceptable.” As for any new deals the tariffs may be designed to motivate, Trudeau rejected out of hand the Administration’s preference for pacts that end just as the ink dries. “You don’t sign a trade deal that automatically expires every five years,” declared the Prime Minister.

Newly minted Administration lackey Larry Kudlow, fully channeling his Fox/AM skill set for misrepresenting facts, downplayed Trudeau’s dismay, while exposing his own weak hand. He called the whole thing a “family quarrel,” while adding the measures “may go on for a while or may not.” Whether that is Kudlow admitting he has no idea what Trump will do, or lays bare a strategy to simply bully our closest allies and trade partners into concessions based on a false narrative conjured up for Trump’s wretched core base, American credibility is being destroyed in chunks.

Schumer has maintained all along Dems will work with Trump where possible. When he initially made that pledge last spring most read into it a carrot for sanity: reward responsible governance with some degree of bipartisanship and legitimization of Trump’s Presidency. In other words, act like an adult, we’ll treat you like an adult. A year and a half later we have an unhinged, uninformed and wholly adolescent POTUS, who tweets hourly his disinterest in anything other than what reinforces the ardor of his partisans. In other words Chuck, he has failed miserably to live up to his end of the bargain.

Yet and still, Schumer and company, steeped in past myths of “unlevel playing fields”, and accepting of Trump’s “we’ve been taken to the cleaners” guff, seem willing to at least stay muted as 70 years of good faith and trust is assaulted in clear contradiction of the national interest. Which does little for their knight in shining armor bona fides. Last January, after Trump’s worthless 16-minute inaugural diatribe, I declared we are all alone. To be charitable, the “noble opposition” seems deliberately paced at allaying such concerns. Honestly, at this point there is a word for picking and choosing Trumpism you can live with… complicity! Get pissed for your country. BC

There’s the joke about the blonde politician, who asks the voter what she could do to earn his support. The voter says stop pandering and stand for principles…To which the blonde pol replies: Sure, I’ll stop him, but first tell me where to find the principles so I can get the standing out of the way. Er, yea.

Point is, GOP majorities in legislatures across the country, more likely comprised of overweight white men with no need for a comb, have taken slavish indulgence of their bases’ least charitable or community-centric impulses to an art form during the last decade.

Rationalized at the altar of supply-side economics, whittled down to the local level, one GOP dominated flyover House after another has delivered tax relief at the expense of revenue necessary for luxuries their communities can slim down from…like a quality education for their children.

Local chambers of commerce and generous campaign donors, not to mention Fox/AM, have created a political climate where public education is brimming with punching bags – unions, lefty teachers bent on indoctrination, mooching immigrants and welfare princes…even mandated healthier lunch menus. Why should more hard earned tax dollars go to such a cesspool? Better to “give it back” to those who know best how to spend it. Bloomin Onions for all!

Oklahoma teachers- Oklahoma! – finally had enough, and following the example of West Virginia brethren – another state at the bottom of the list for teacher compensation – walked off the job. Governor Mary Fallin, a Fox/AM caricture, was quick to ladle from the Shit River troth in her reaction, likening public servants, many pushed to poverty’s edge by answering their calling, to a “teenaged kid demanding a new car.” To which one striker replied she would settle for being able to afford repairs on her 14-year old Chevy,

Oklahoma’s political graft drug of choice is energy subsidies. The adequate education of children has never stood a chance versus T Boone Pickens et al. The state that burdened DC with James Inhofe wears its priorities on its sleeve. So while near half a billion dollars in various forms of creative tax relief has been bestowed on the state’s energy sector, Oklahoma teachers average $41,380 per year…dead last in the nation.

Of course the disgrace in Oklahoma, aside from a Governor who accuses strikers of being pawns of Antifa, is that it has so many parents utterly indifferent to their children being served such a measley slice of the budget pie. Strikers, to a person, profess the sorry state of the educational system, from antiquated supplies and underfunded programs to 4-day school weeks in a quarter of the state’s schools, as every bit the reason for the walk out as compensation. In fact, adjusted for inflation, the Oklahoma school budget has actually lost 30 percent during the last decade. Meanwhile, the latest Oklahoma Business Incentives and Tax Guide is a full 75 pages of giveaways, Christmas in April.

But nobody seems to mind. Scandals of Darwin supplanting Jesus in the classroom get far more mileage than band club being canceled for lack of funds. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…if it is broke, ignore it. Striking teachers demanded a modest $50 million in additional education funding. To put that in perspective, before the strike the GOP dominated legislature was working to ram through a $120 million dollar package of capital gains deductions, tabled after the walkout. Still, Gov. Fallin made clear they weren’t going to force her to be decent when she signed a set of hotel/motel tax breaks, adding to the revenue shortfall. That’ll show em.

The strike was eventually settled, largely because the teachers accepted less. Fallin and the legislature grudgingly gave a $6000/year raise to full-time teachers, while agreeing NOT to sabotage revenue streams that were previously targeted. Of course the GOP messaging, fully informed by Fox/AM and Trumpism, boasted of “standing on principle” against the wannabe communists. Teacher’s Union leadership, for their part, admitted they settled for less but simply conceded they owed it to the kids to get back on the job.

The silver lining? Teachers are going to put parents to the test by running for office. As filing deadlines approached, more than 100 teachers or former educators were slated to run largely single issue campaigns, hoping to take GOP incumbents to task. How parents will respond in the voting booth could transform the state’s political calculus. One thing is certain; Oklahoma’s business and energy fat cats have 75 pages worth of goodies to defend, and they could teach a class on how to do so. BC