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Often, when looking back at history’s significant trials and tribulations, it’s an iconic photo that crystallizes the time and place better than any national headline could. A depression-assaulted Oklahoma mother’s sad distant gaze as her hungry children huddle close for comfort. A returning seaman planting a smooch on a woman as both celebrate peace. A naked, napalm-burned Vietnamese child running from hell. These are the vivid images that will come back again and again even as time inevitably dulls our recollections.

Two photos, one actually taken, the other a critically missed opportunity, would serve nicely to define the chaotic cruelty Trumpism has brought forth from the genie’s lamp. One is an elevated shot of a fenced off holding area stuffed to the gills with tired and desperate Latino men, whose sole crime was the now villainized belief America offers a better life. Dirty, exhausted and worried, the men beseech a cadre of white, Khaki-clad Republicans, led by VP Mike Pence and ever-reliable supplicant Sen. Lindsey Graham, who look right through the suffering group with less connection than they’d afford iguanas in the reptile house at the National Zoo.

The other picture we will never see would have captured Kurt Brockway hovering over a convulsing 13-year old he had just slammed to the ground for the offense of not removing his hat during the national anthem at a Missoula, Montana rodeo. Doubtless a timely photo would have caught the vacant malice in Brockway’s eyes as he carried out his personal interpretation of MAGA’s civic requirements. Perhaps the caption would note Brockway’s assault coincided in chronology with a mass murderer in El Paso, Texas, carrying out his own idea of those obligations.

The boy, who Brockway pile drove into the ground suffered a fractured skull, easily diagnosed as he was airlifted to Spokane, Washington due to the relentless stream of blood coming out his ear. Brockway, who nine years earlier received a ten-year suspended sentence for gun violence, made clear from the outset the victim deserved what he got for disrespecting the flag. Whether or not the judge who arraigned him after he was arrested agreed is sadly not clear, since he released Brockway on his own recognizance. No, that is not a typo.

Fox News Facebook threads provide clarity of the rot MAGA’s wretched core germinates on a daily basis. Regarding the Montana outrage the common theme between the bookends of “this criminal needs to be locked up” and “I bet that kid will take his hat off from now on” was essentially two wrongs don’t make a right. Sure, it’s infuriating to see such disrespect but this guy was out of line. As usual with Fox threads, bots abound, plenty of stolen identities with only six friends. Yet and still, a few thousand comments effectively distillate wretched core sensibilities. The consensus view…. while such disrespect for the flag is hardly forgivable, fracturing a kid’s skull takes things too far. Good to know.

Of course it’s a sure bet few MAGA Montanans worth their A River Runs Through It salt have forgotten when a GOP candidate for Congress, subsequently a comfortable winner, carried out a near identical attack on a reporter, who had the temerity to ask questions the candidate didn’t want to answer. Moreover, Big Sky State Trumpies have been amused time and again by the President’s reliable evocation of the incident, which he always remembers fondly during his frequent Montana rallies. So really, what’s the biggie? It’s the Montana way, albeit with a tinge of immoderation.

Meanwhile, at the southern border, endless tedium, hopelessness and despair are all that is on offer, signature indignities our President promised from the start. The wretched core, like the authoritarian apostles throughout modern history, conflate imposition of atrocities with courageous determination and political will…. “promises kept” is the newspeak du jour. Thankfully, the essence of the entire disgrace has been captured for posterity and will endure to remind future generations of when we failed miserably, and what exactly that looks like on the pasty faces of the men who went to survey the results of their cruelty.

The ruin offered at the precipice America teeters on is found in the new norms, always bolstered by lies and distortions, MAGA promotes every hour. The wretched core has digested children forcibly wrested from their parents with the lie it’s nothing new. Men held indefinitely in holding areas designed for hours-long detention has been digested as collateral damage of Democratic intransigence, another bald-faced lie only a cultist would believe. Fracturing a child’s skull for not removing his hat is digested as good intentions taken too far by a code of conduct the President has hardily endorsed from the start of his candidacy.

MAGA is a package deal that, with a full-on maniac at the bully pulpit, and a 24/7 multi-media communications platform, foists itself on America in ever growing totalitarian chunks. Tucker Carlson labeled Joe Biden a “nut case” last night. What for? Biden wants to outlaw assault weapons less than a week after El Paso and Dayton. Millions of Americans are being radicalized right before us, and just because the same mantra has to keep being repeated doesn’t make it any less relevant to the current situation: the degree to which we allow their sliding sensibilities the credibility normalization provides will determine our fate as a nation. Sometimes a picture really does speak a thousand words! BC

Autism’s most debilitating trait is its pernicious assault on relationships. And while those on the autism spectrum generally present such a wide array of unique characteristics, sadly, an inability to proactively create and nurture personal relationships is one disability most all affected by the condition share.

Years ago, not too long after my son was diagnosed, I was swimming laps at my fitness club’s pool when I noticed a lovely middle aged woman in the other lane with who I presumed was her 20-something son. The host of eccentricities the young man exhibited betrayed he was unique. As the two swam their laps together, he with full snorkel gear, I felt for the first time an overwhelming desire to ask those with experiences I was surely going to now live for insights I reckoned I’d require.

I sat against the wall and waited for her to pause her workout. Not mincing too many words, I asked directly if her son had autism. As pleasant as I expected her to be, she said yes, and answered my next query that “Tim” was 24 years old. After revealing my own recent experience of receiving a firm confirmation that my son, Luke, had “pervasive” autism, and our struggles to begin a rigorous therapy regime, I asked how she had handled things back in the day when the support and resources we now enjoyed didn’t exist. She acknowledged it was very difficult, but made clear Tim was high functioning, not to mention wonderfully determined in every way possible. In fact, listening to her generously relate their story, I was encouraged; he lived on his own, had a job in IT, and was fully independent in near every way. This was just what I needed to hear!

Grateful for her insights, and not wanting to become a pest, I asked her what I promised was a final question, one I assumed would be innocuous enough… what about Tim’s social life? Friends? I’ll never forget the way her cheerful disposition vanished, replaced by a sad frown. No, she said simply. What do you mean, I followed up, even as I regretted broaching the subject. “Tim doesn’t have any friends, she clarified.” Girls? No. Nothing? What about work colleagues? School friends? No. “He has me and his father,” she said with a resolved sadness, “it’s a very hard thing.” All of the encouragement previously on offer was gravely diminished as I processed the heartache of loneliness my boy appeared destined to suffer. It was a devastating moment.

I thought of that conversation the other day when I learned of a YouGov poll which found 22% of US Millennials (ages 23-38) claim to have no friends… zero, nada, zippo. If it’s hard to absorb such a stat, it should be, it seems preposterous. How near a quarter of young adults could walk the planet burning every bridge they cross and arrive at a place utterly alone is hard to accept. Is the world that cruel to so many, or are there that many willfully disconnected among us?

Either way, it’s data I’m not sure how to feel about. Should I find solace that the loneliness my son suffers is shared by many more than I imagined, people without the explanation his condition provides? Or should I be angered that, while he struggles against the unfair odds nature stacked against him, multitudes of others do nothing with their blessings and now seem to share his fate? Regardless of how jaundiced the viewpoint, nobody can pretend the specter of abject isolation of more than one-fifth of adults supposedly enjoying their prime bodes well for our national community’s future, either as a body politic or greater society.

Thriving democratic systems require engaged communities. It’s hard to see those emerging when so many can’t even make a few friends. Cause or symptom? Probably both. A cycle where one end reinforces and perpetuates the other. But where either leads seems worrisome. Authoritarians feed on alienation with messages crafted to exploit what loneliness emphasizes… resentment and longing. Of course solitude can encourage insight and reflection; yet and still it’s certain a decent slice of the 22 % find MAGA attractive; lone wolves harbor the grievance Trump generously provides. In fact, let’s be honest, our stochastic terrorist-in-chief has never been too wealthy in the friendships department, himself. His tweets have always seemed a cry for connection and relevance, two attributes we once thought the nominee we elected should possess in abundance.

Luke does his best with what God has given him, but at the end of the day, even after he practices with his hockey team or even goes on an outing with kids he’s known since he could walk, friends by any other name, my wife and I (mostly my wife) must facilitate all his interactions. When we are gone…. well….. that’s not something we ponder very often yet. But Luke and those touched by the epidemic he is part of offer only goodness and the best of intentions, What of his millennial counterparts?

At press time 19 are confirmed dead in El Paso, Texas, victims of another loner armed with military-grade weaponry and apparently seeped in such bitter resentment he posted an ugly screed before carrying out his murderous tantrum. When all the facts are known it’s doubtful many will challenge the conclusion it was only a matter of when. So here we sit, with millions literally friendless and a demagogue inciting their worst, which we got another taste of today. Twenty-first century alienation is more than capable of producing what 20th century alienation gave us, and now much closer to home. An old southern blues man, maybe Albert King or Muddy Waters, sang “everybody got to have somebody, or else all they got is the blues.” That’s surely true, but what the rest of the world receives from such a situation should concern all of us. BC

“The Internet Research Agency (IRA) carried out the earliest Russian interference operations identified by the investigation – a social media campaign designed to provoke and amplify political and social discord in the US. The IRA was based in St. Petersburg, Russia, and received funding from Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin … widely reported to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin”

The Mueller Report

Success in life often requires one to think counterintuitively. Want to hit a golf ball further? Swing easier, not harder. Caught in a riptide? Swim sideways, not toward shore. While we’re at it, want to get to the beach quicker on a 4th of July weekend? Leave at rush hour on Friday. Want your teenager to do what you want them to do? Suggest the opposite! So many things in this world are built on foundations that are not as they seem, at odds with conventional wisdom, requiring full outside-the-box approaches that most miss.

Somewhere in the bowels of a nondescript Russian intelligence building, maybe around 2012, perhaps in the cyber espionage division – who knows – a heretofore anonymous bureaucrat had a bone shaking epiphany and sprinted down the hall to tell his superior about it. What if we have always been thinking about it backwards?! What if our target audience in America isn’t left-wing progressives, but right-wing reactionaries?! What if it’s been right there before us all this time? After all, if American ruin is our goal, aren’t there plenty of other ways to skin that cat?!

The blind spot for Cold War Soviets and Putinites alike was recognizing what was always most in Russia’s wheelhouse to export: invigorating a mob’s mindless servility by relentlessly promoting hatred of enemies to assuage their alienation. Forget Marxist tales of economic exploitation; it’s all about the grievance and resentment. Manufacture that, control that, and dominoes will fall. Like a nuclear reaction, just get the ball rolling.

Those still agog over how millions can worship a man who, not only embodies, but ceaselessly creates measures fully at odds with their most basic self-interest, are missing the forest for the trees. The essence of Trumpism is the salve so many require to soothe their alienation from what America’s narrative has always been. The rabid dependence on symbols like the flag and national anthem illustrates the whiteboard of American patriotism’s deep and complex attributes has been erased for millions, replaced by unquestioned allegiance to those who make conquest possible, and those who obsessively validate that fidelity. In North Korea you can do 10 years of hard labor for appearing insufficiently attentive when their national anthem is playing, nobody is interested in discussions about patriotism’s many layers.

Trump’s singular specialty is blaming people. The Apprentice was nothing more than a weekly display of contestants doing and saying anything to pass the buck. A weekly tutorial on avoiding responsibility, with our current President, and often his children, refereeing the backstabbing. Trump’s requirements for the prize of joining his company’s executive team were clear and unwavering…, always be the biggest asshole in the room, without ever making me doubt your sycophancy. The resume for impelling dictatorship is identical, civic responsibility is no virtue, unless it’s redefined as turning in your neighbor with the dark skin, or praise for Allah, or liberal leanings.

Back in the Vietnam days Soviet strategy for affecting American politics centered on inciting and goading to action the downtrodden and disaffected, unbridled capitalism’s most unquestioned victims… blacks, coal miners (yes!), exploited workers without a union voice, counterculture hippies against war and certain plastics were the beginning of the end (prescient it turns out). Now, the messaging targets bigots and the love em-or-leave em crowd. Those once seen as fertile soil for discontent are now the “snowflakes” on the other side of twitter wars. Alex Jones and Sean Hannity are current Russian assets, not some Stanford historian, or Columbia economics professor. The name of the destabilization game is unhinged, falsely informed grievance, and a nihilist pursuit of nostalgia, a feeling of control, of supremacy. We want what was once ours and they took away. Case closed.

The incumbent President most always has the power to define the campaigns of both sides for his upcoming re-election battle. Generally if the country is in arguably better shape than when he inherited it, voters will be presented with his side’s argument their interests lie in continuing with his prescriptions. His opponent will raise other issues and argue their importance and the need to better address them, or even deny things are as good as the incumbent claims. Either way, the sitting President determines the parameters of debate, while respecting general assumptions that national traits like unity, equality, tolerance and empathy are necessary virtues.

Trump, fully supported by both Fox/AM and Russian intelligence, seeks to destroy such templates. He is overt now in his desire to frame 2020 as Us vs. Them. We love our country, they don,t. We will keep power in white hands, they won’t. We will keep beaners out, they will welcome them in. Each day, each hour, any traces left to the imagination are consciously deleted by Trump and the GOP he now fully controls.

The Kremlin has hit the jackpot by embracing a strategy Khrushchev, Brezhnev, even spymaster Andropov never considered, and now enjoys a tireless White House effort to tear the US apart. One of our three branches of government is seditious, as is half of another branch. It’s all there in the open, right now, so emboldened it seems prepared to toss aside all pretense of anything else, all dog whistles, all window dressing, and make the first Tuesday of next November a referendum. Is our fear of demographic boogiemen greater than our fealty to the democracy that is supposed to define us. A very binary, straightforward choice. If Trump and the GOP have their way, Russia will influence the outcome. BC

It’s August of 2008 and Michelle Obama gets an e-mail from Valerie Jarrett, who informs her some Russian national claims to have dirt on John McCain. Things have been discouraging lately, polls have shown Obama struggling to maintain an ever-ebbing advantage. McCain coffers are overflowing and the GOP candidate appears to be gaining momentum. Sarah Palin has electrified the base, attracting overflow crowds on the campaign trail. The race is clearly shifting. “If it’s what you say, I love it,” exalts the Democratic Presidential nominee’s wife accepting a meeting with the Russian source. Campaign Chief, David Axelrod replies he will try to make it as well. It is arranged it will happen at a major Democratic donor’s law office to provide cover from the press.

Fast forward to the ides of March, 2009. Barack Obama is settling into office after his historic victory. Economic revival has been a preoccupation from day one, but Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, in a panic, storms into the Oval Office to inform the President a Washington Post reporter has called asking questions about that meeting with the Russian last August! Apparently, somebody leaked the event and provided details of what was discussed. They want to know if you knew about it, Gibbs tells Obama. “Tell them hell no,” responds the President. “Say nobody can even remember what was discussed, maybe adoptions, or something like that… but I definitely was never told about it!” What about the First Lady, asks Gibbs, how do we explain her involvement. “She heard it was about adoptions and wanted to hear more. Very simple. I went over this with you all last summer. Told you exactly how to handle it. Calm down. It’s nothing.”

Two days later Gibbs takes a call in his office from the Post reporter investigating the story. “Robert, your account doesn’t wash. We have it that, not only was the President fully aware of the meeting, discussions centered on how Russian government sources could provide damaging info. on McCain. What’s your response to that?” “My response is it’s ridiculous. Some unhinged Russian woman wanted the First Lady’s help with adoptions. That’s it!” The reporter replies… “if you say so, but we are filling in the blanks and it doesn’t look good. In fact, we may be ready to publish soon. I’ll give you the day to get back to me.”

“You moron! I told you to just keep cool about it. They probably sensed your panic. Why did I hire you? They told me it was a mistake! We never admit anything! Understand? These white devils are just trying to cheat me out of my victory! It’s a frame up. A fake story.” “Er, but Mr. President, it’s not fake. It happened.” “Who cares if it happened?! Nothing came of it! Just because we were willing to hear them out, doesn’t mean crap. It’s politics, for God’s sake!” Nobody can prove I knew about it! That’s what we’re going with, understand?!” “Yes sir, but this thing has legs.”

A month has passed and the Russian meeting is now national story #1. Emails, obtained by the Post clearly prove beyond question the President, despite denying he ever had any knowledge of the event, actually orchestrated the cover up from the start. Moreover, leaked minutes of the meeting, with near word-for-word details, make it clear Russian intelligence was reaching out to the Obama campaign through a connected intermediary with an offer to provide some McCain dirty laundry. It seems only when polls began to reflect a fresh Obama surge, the result of Palin’s full meltdown as a VP option, did the campaign lose interest in the opportunity.

At his third press conference, Obama is inundated with questions about the Russian meeting. “Mr. President, what do you say to those agreeing with Republicans that a special counsel needs to look into whether top campaign officials considered accepting help from Russian government sources to smear Senator McCain? Why did you lie about your involvement? “I didn’t lie. That’s a made up story cooked up by those trying to tarnish my historic victory. This is a nothing burger. The GOP wants an investigation so they can start a fishing expedition. It’s all a witch hunt. So what if we did hear them out? It’s politics. Who doesn’t look for an edge? People are saying the McCain campaign did a lot of things that need looking into. Why aren’t they getting grilled like I am?!”

Attorney General Eric Holder appoints a special counsel to investigate the Russian meeting, now being called Dirtgate. Meanwhile, the President has taken to the road on a “Hope and Change” tour, visiting inner cities and encouraging mostly black audiences. The talk track is generally the same… the GOP racists are trying to steal our presidency, making things up about this Russian affair. It’s fake news, the Washington Post never really wanted me to win. Don’t be fooled, the white media wants me out of there. They’ll do anything. We know it’s a rigged system. I rocked the boat and they’re already sea sick. Are we going to let them take this away? No chance!”

David Axlerod is indicted for lying to investigators about his role in the Russian Meeting. Obama accepts his resignation, but makes clear he feels his Chief-of Staff has been treated very “unfairly” and intimates he may pardon him. After firing Eric Holder for not rescinding his original appointment of a special counsel, Obama continues to interview replacements, unsatisfied most can be relied on to terminate the investigation. Meanwhile, calls for impeachment get stronger, Republicans parade ceaselessly on Fox News to demand he resign, and what was a trickle, has become a stream of “blue dog” Democrats expressing openness to the idea of an impeachment process. Obama continues to hold rallies, his rhetoric increasingly divisive and racially charged. When he calls Mitch McConnell a “cracker,” Speaker Pelosi declares enough is enough and agrees to hold a vote to censure the President as the Democratic majority now splits, with more than enough moderates supporting impeachment.

Almost two months later, near fully isolated, and seeking immunity from any prosecution, Barack Obama resigns the Presidency. Not nine months into his term, the nation’s first black President is driven from office under a relentless funnel cloud of scandal stemming from a meeting with Russians during the general election campaign. Asked his feelings after Obama officially vacates the White House grounds, heading back to Chicago, Senator Lindsey Graham, the leader of GOP strategy to impeach Obama, asserts “for God’s sake, he met with Russians to discuss smearing one of America’s finest war heroes and statesman. What could he possibly have expected. Some things really speak for themselves. The day this nation ignores meeting with Russians to plan dirty tricks in a Presidential election is the day I will move somewhere else! Let’s just be thankful we nipped this in the bud before he did something really terrible, like meeting with Putin sans translators, or even exchanging love notes with our friend over there in North Korea. Can you imagine?!” BC

“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,”

Margaret Chase Smith

Lately, it’s a preoccupation of many to look for other areas of US history where our circumstances were as dire as they now seem to be without introducing an existential conflagration like, say, the Civil War. To my eyes McCarthyism fits that bill best, a relatively brief time frame when the US Senate’s worst was on full display. Imagine if most Democratic Senators were showing Trump the same servility as the GOP and you have exactly where things stood in 1950. Fear and loathing were the order of the day and it was left to one freshman Republican Senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith, a direct woman with clear ideas about what duty to country meant, to speak up. She did so brilliantly, providing hope to those fearful a tipping point may have been passed and America was prepared to consume itself. Perhaps it came naturally, a reaction to what she deemed madness, or maybe she saw history to be made and decided to make it. Does it really matter?

It’s always been the same sorry formula. Attack those with the most vulnerable constituencies, groups ill-equipped to fight back. Paint them by numbers as threats to God and country, all the while shouting how doing so is courageous and principled. Deem opponents to the bullying insidious collaborators and… voila. Very mindless and shameful stuff, otherwise how could Trump possibly succeed at it. That he learned at the foot of Roy Cohn, who sat at McCarthy’s right hand, and later, well after his boss succumbed to alcoholism, carved out a niche as the nation’s most vile citizen, is either ironic or fully logical… or both. Again, who cares? Point is we’ve seen it all before and sent it packing, er, sort of. Make no mistake, these episodes leave residue because they reflect where we are capable of going…. and we’re surely going there now.

Bill Cohen, another Mainer, served honorably wherever he found himself, whether it was as one of the first of the GOP House caucus to support Nixon’s impeachment, or in the Senate as a moderate voice countering Reagan’s Cold War schemes, and later helping HW Bush navigate the fall of the Eastern Bloc, and finally as Clinton’s 2nd term Secretary of Defense, where he struggled against Pentagon waste and outdated commitments.

Yet and still, perhaps Cohen, despite his splendid career, now rues one aspect of it, the rise of one of his protégés, a loyal staffer, to the Senate for a span much longer than the two terms she originally implied she would limit herself to. Susan Collins came to Washington branding herself fully in line with the sensibilities of both Chase Smith and Cohen. Like her predecessors, she would be a voice of reason and principle, nothing fancy, just hard work and courageous decency. Whether supporting the right to choose or backing spending priorities that balanced prudence with compassion, a position increasingly at odds with Republican inclinations, Collins was supposed to reflect independence, swim upstream when necessary. Now, however, like the party Trump abased and then fully consumed like a quarter pounder, Collins’ standing is in shambles, a cautionary tale about how making friends in the Cannon building cafeteria isn’t the same thing as having the guts to make enemies on the Senate floor, or the Twitterverse.

Trump is still in office, still out of jail, because the GOP has maintained its slim margin of control in the Senate. Only near constant Republican unanimity has permitted the ruinous conduct and agenda of the Trump Presidency. A couple of heroes could have stopped much of the travesty in its tracks. Nobody was better positioned politically to take a stand than Collins. Everything she had always claimed to be demanded she step forward. Sadly, nobody has disappointed more. At every critical juncture, from giving her blessing to a parade of US history’s worst Cabinet appointments to providing the deciding vote that passed a 1%-coddling, deficit ballooning $2 trillion tax cut at full employment. From approving the scandal-plagued and certain vote against Roe v Wade to shrugging off most all of Trump’s unhinged ugliness, Collins has been strictly rank and file. Nothing to see here as she proceeds to do what incumbents do best… raise cash for re-election.

Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, Sara Gideon, is running against Collins in 2020. She is young, attractive and, after being forced to deal with Trumpie Governor Paul LePage, whose nastiness and incompetence rivaled his hero, the President, seems well prepared for DC’s current climate of bad faith. No matter, the race will almost exclusively be a referendum on Collins and how Maine voters have digested her acquiescence to Trumpism. Certainly money will not be a problem for the challenger, as a torrent of outside contributions from national Democratic interests seeking to turn Maine blue come flowing Gideon’s way.

Since mid-2017, polls have punctuated how disenchanted Maine voters have become with Collins’ servility to Trump. She has lost 44 points from an approval rating that once made her the nation’s most popular incumbent. Indeed, as of last month, no Senator enjoyed less support back home than Collins. Near 24 years ago she promised Mainers she would never force them to give her the boot, assuring one and all two terms was more than enough time to make a mark and move on to other things. Now she seeks a fifth term and appears ready to do whatever is necessary to get it, including going negative against a very likable opponent.

Trump is making it clear the binary choice he wants to offer in 2020: keep it white vs. radical socialism. Of course his wretched core is all in with such bigoted mindlessness. Whether American democracy continues as a going concern depends on what roughly 8-10 percent of voters, now intent to clasp hands over ears and tune out the din they abhor, decide is the lesser of two evils this cycle. Collins fate will be instructive. After proving conclusively to Mainers, who pride themselves on inconvenient independence, that she never got Edmund Burke’s memo about evil’s requirement of silence by those who know better, and she was the wrong person to rely on for saving the republic, Collins should be an early casualty on the first Tuesday next November. If not, it may be a very long night…. and a far longer still walk in the wilderness. BC

Perhaps the least patriotic sensibility one can possess these days, a mindset that may end American pluralism, is the notion it’s just a game, a continuing day at the races, a constant parade of winners and losers, payouts and torn up tickets. This view understands the consequences of government as not much more than abstractions, our history as a mere continuum of time between post parades, “eras” and “revolutions” meant to label just how fleeting their significance was, chapters in high school history curriculums rising juniors and seniors can snooze past. After all, we only live once, and agonizing over the nightly news is time one never gets back, no? Relax!

It’s not that American governance as detached sport is in itself the central malady of our condition, in fact it’s actually accentuated our democratic process for decades. Acting as both announcer and referee. But that was when it was accompanied by good faith on both sides of the aisle, which now clearly no longer exists. Without the honor and guarantee that the foundational rules of the game will be followed, those intent on continuing to see sport in impending disaster become accomplices to our ruin.

One year ago, as a senior prank, four teenagers at Glenelg High School in Maryland’s diverse Howard County, decided to go and spray paint “Class of 2018” at the school’s front entrance way. Once they got there, however, seems each decided to spontaneously accentuate things with a variety of vile, racist offerings slurring everyone from Glenelg’s black principle to Jews to gays and so forth. KKK and swastikas were prominent, as were penises. The fact it was done the night before the school’s final day ceremony to recognize Glenelg’s best and brightest meant there was no time to cover the vandalism and students all got to see its full ugliness.

That millions equate a pro quarterback or woman’s soccer star impassively kneeling during the national anthem with what happened at Glenelg clarifies societal dysfunction that would seem impervious to rational discussion, which lumps it together with a host of other head scratchers MAGA has fully liberated. Yet and still, it’s hard to see how the knee jerk ease of so many to label those horrified by what occurred at Glenelg “snowflakes” bent on criminalizing teen shenanigans and prepared to “destroy” otherwise “good kids” isn’t a worrisome trend. Add to that the same bloc’s visceral urge to pivot and attack a captain and MVP of the World Champion US Woman’s Soccer Team as traitorous and undeserving of anything but vile scorn for kneeling and refusing to visit US history’s most divisive POTUS, and it’s near impossible not to appreciate a ruinous disconnect multitudes suffer. Very serious business.

When the vandals, who were almost immediately identified and confessed accordingly, faced sentencing near one year later, all wanted the court to understand what they did was not who they were. Not one was ready to admit spray painting nasty racist standards could possibly mean they harbored dark bigotry; it was all just the “biggest mistake I ever made.” One, represented by more ambitious counsel, argued the Fox/AM talking point that charging him with a hate crime violated his 1st Amendment right to free speech! Even though sentences of more than five years could have been handed down, the judge issued a potpourri of probation, community service and between 10-16 weekends in jail, which led to near breakdowns by mothers still processing how their babies could be treated like criminals for a “prank” that got out of hand. Can you say white privilege?

NBC news’ Chuck Todd could have come out of the movie classic Network. Todd is all about the horse race. The ruinous divisions being fanned by this MAGA White House, which wants to re-adjudicate basic premises of racial and sexual fairness long ago adopted by all but America’s darkest fringes, are merely “openings” available for Democrats to exploit in 2020. Trump’s outrageous slurs hurled at sitting Congresswomen are simply part of the “culture war” discussion “firebrand” conservatives want to have in 2020. Kamala Harris turning on Joe Biden, who, by the way, just served loyally for eight years at the side of America’s first black President, for his trademark rhetorical carelessness to make a broader point about the need for bipartisanship, is a left to the frontrunner’s jaw, and a debate coup she may ride to the top of the standings. By all means Democrats, argue purity while Rome burns, the panel needs to fill three hours before the next debate begins.

Trump’s recent unhinged racism against four young, thoughtful, and fully committed Congressional newcomers combines with the events at Glenelg to produce a depressing dichotomy. On the one hand, while Trump acts on the hour to display the most despicable biases, ugliness that would have him banned from most US Thanksgiving dinner tables, the wretched core, and GOP supporters, insist as long as he’s willing to do photo-ops with Diamond and Silk, and you can’t produce video of him using the N-word, he’s not a racist.

Meanwhile, in a Maryland courtroom, the parents of boys who created the worst racist graffiti imaginable want all to know they harbor nothing but tolerance, evidence to the contrary. What they admit to doing is not who they are, and we won’t consider the possibility. So there’s a full circle here, each arc playing against the other. The POTUS is just playing politics, and the boys were just killing time…. and the economy is doing fabulous.

It bears repeating, that Glenelg High School is in a “progressive” county, in a state where Hillary was projected the winner before dinner was finished. What goes on in flyover country? What sensibilities guide their handling of such instances? Perhaps a better topic for Chuck Todd led discussions to consider. Newsflash Chuck! The real story right now is far greater than the race for power; it’s what that power creates and the unprecedented predicament the last race produced. Trump and the MAGA-cowed GOP are breaking all the rules, and making clear hourly they don’t mind ending the game if that’s what keeping it white necessitates. That’s the hell of it. BC

“….Something touched me deep inside, the day the music died.”

Don McLean

To read Politico’s exhaustive recreation of how Trump weathered the outcry of his Access Hollywood misogyny is to fully realize how bleak America’s future may be, and how realistic the prospect of his re-election is. As the Trump candidacy hovered on the edge of dissolution, the victim of audio so bluntly degrading it spurred on arguments whether in fact Trump was confessing to criminal acts, his critics and defenders alike shared one fundamental flaw in their perception of the most important piece of the whole sorry affair…. how resilient the candidate’s base of support was, how utterly unconcerned they were of recorded evidence as unpresidential as anything ever publicly disclosed.

The Politico article may very well document the watershed event of when America reached its tipping point on a number of fronts, all coalescing to create an irreversible slide toward the shamelessness necessary to make democracy a thing of the past. As Trump’s team of misfits worked feverishly under the impression his “locker room” story of sexually assaulting a married woman would blow up his candidacy, only Trump was blissfully confident MAGAites would hardly blink. Of course we suffer the consequences of how accurate his assessment was, but the most ruinous aspect of the whole affair lies in how all of the “shocked and disgusted” GOP pols, from Paul Ryan to John Thune, Lindsey Graham to Susan Collins, so quickly came back into the fold once they realized the wretched core was going nowhere. Within 48 hours, following perhaps the ugliest public debate ever witnessed in America, calls for Trump to step aside ceased, outrage replaced by shrugs…. “what are you going to do?”

The non-reaction to, even enthusiasm for, the Access Hollywood audio by Trump rally crowds was the final act in several tales all playing out at once, First, since Trump had announced his candidacy with a bigoted diatribe against immigrants, the question was how powerful were the racist forces within the GOP base, and could unabashed embrace of bigotry and xenophobia actually eclipse all else in the eyes of a significant bloc of party faithful. Like pro-life zealotry, had Trump’s abandonment of all pretense and overt disdain of immigrants clarified sizable numbers of Republicans prepared to forgive and forget all else so long as “illegals” were sent packing?

Next, were the evangelicals, the pro-lifers prepared to look past behavior running mate Mike Pence’s wife found so ugly she initially refused to stand on the same stage with Trump. Did overturning Roe v Wade and “religious freedom” – read anti-gay and transgender nastiness with a clean conscience – provide an end to justify any means, any degree of hypocrisy?

Third, if Access Hollywood was a worst-case scenario, it also provided the ultimate test for how effectively Fox/AM could spin and reinvigorate the self-inflicted wounds its creation constantly foisted on his candidacy. Almost immediately the message from Hannity et al was singular and unrelenting: what about Hilary’s husband?! Fox prime time was far more concerned with Juanita Broderick than Nancy O’Dell. Don’t throw stones from glass houses. False equivalence to the rescue!

Finally, most importantly, there was never a more appropriate and critical time for GOP leaders to, er, lead. After all, if you can’t move the party away from this, when could you lead it. Any shred of principle left from the bad dream of Trump’s nomination dictated a clear, unified and sustained response was necessary, lest the party stand for nothing but the craven opportunism it’s critics had constantly accused it of during the previous eight years. If you can’t take a troglodyte who brags about grabbing pussies to task, what do you really have left to offer on the moral high ground front? Easy peasy!

History is always looking for pivotal moments, make or break situations. Politico accurately portrays the immediate aftermath of the Access Hollywood audio as just that in the minds of most everybody involved, except the two most important parties, Trump and his wretched core. Reince Priebus fought back an onslaught of GOP biggies demanding Trump be dropped from the ticket. Priebus, always light as a feather, had no stomach for such a move and saw no precedent or procedure for carrying it out. Trump, for his part, already regretting he even issued a quarter-hearted apology, and perhaps being told by Moscow it was not an option, tweeted he had zero intention of withdrawing from the race. He backed that declaration up by outrageously convening a hasty press conference of Bill Clinton accusers. When Hillary had the gall to call him unfit during that night’s debate, Trump hissed he would have her behind bars in no time. And just like that, the danger had passed. A fresh news cycle awaited.

In the days leading up to Decision 16’ there was nary a GOPer in DC who either gave Trump a chance at victory nor actually wanted him to win. With the exception of Freedom Caucus back benchers and assorted Senate extremists with a fondness for Fox/AM interviews, the Republican Party was focused on rebuilding its brand and maybe even attempting to lead the party away from la la land. However, the wretched core failed to get that memo, and Clinton payed with disgraced defeat for taking Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin voters for granted. All now suffer hourly.

The various rivers, flowing separately as Trump faced disqualification after the Access Hollywood audio emerged, have all met at one junction to form a mighty torrent. Yes, plenty in the GOP are now dedicated single-issue bigots, with more than 60% of the party faithful approving of border atrocities. Yes, evangelicals could not care less about Trump’s disgusting personal peccadilloes, as they will surely again show in fully discounting new documentation of the President’s friendship with Jeffery Epstein. Yes, Fox/AM is more than up to the task of shamelessly spinning every Trump lie and outrage for its regulars’ consumption, with overt racism now a specialty… ask Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham. And finally, no, the GOP never was up to the job of leadership, its cowardly stiffs all shuffling forth, tails between legs, seeking to at least remain off Trump’s twitter radar. Those most vocal about dumping him never recovered, and are either gone or fully marginalized…ask Paul Ryan.

Historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that, while “the mob and elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself,” the rest require propaganda. Go to any Trump rally and it’s easy to feel that momentum. Ditto watching flunkies like Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows carry his dirtiest water in Congress. The rest of us? Give it time. The Politico piece makes clear plenty were able to get past Trump’s worst with little effort, and watching Chuck Todd lately one can fully appreciate how insidious Fox/AM propaganda can be, how it can leach into mainstream analysis and normalize our worst. Three years in and I suppose the future is still our call, but the clock is ticking, and gravely, soon the die may be cast. BC

It was work hell for me several years ago, the dreaded all day product training. Watching paint dry or listening to fire and brimstone from the pulpit was preferable in my eyes to the minute by minute torture of a manufacturer representative’s curriculum. The bright spot, and believe me the pickings were slim, was that lunch would be provided. Usually that meant nice deli sandwiches from a spot I was partial to, so there was at least that.

When the lunch hour mercifully arrived bags with an unfamiliar logo were brought in and placed on the table… this was not my beloved deli. One of my colleagues enthusiastically intoned “Chick-Fil-A… nice!” I reached in and grabbed a room temperature offering shrouded in foil. To say it was unimpressive is charity on the vine. A solitary fried chicken breast with a couple of pickles was not what I had been pinning my lunch respite hopes on. “Who the hell ordered this,” I demanded. “I did,” averred one of our sales managers, and close friend, …”love this place.” “What do you love about it,” I wondered, placing the wilted bun back on my parched poultry. “They stand for something,” he replied, in between devouring his McChicken look alike. Curious now, I asked what could be so compelling in that regard as to counter the very mediocre offering I was now consuming. “They don’t care if they’re politically correct, that’s all. I respect that,” he concluded before turning his full attention to his lunch.

Of course, I quickly learned what my Pentecostal friend so admired about Chick-Fil-A, and its subsequent notoriety plus the always long lines at their drive thru operations has filled in all the blanks from several years ago. Suffice it to say few companies more effectively merge the culture war into their branding than Chuck-Fil-A, who despite still providing precious little in the way of creativity in its menu, now sits near the top of America’s fast food market.

It’s doubtful many would look to the old Soviet system to explain Trump’s wretched core, but the resentment parallels of average Muscovites subjected to the daily indignities of Russian Communism and the attitudes Fox/AMers from Iowa to Youngstown share are difficult to dispute. Since it’s clear Trump is at the least disadvantaged by Putin and Russia, there is irony that the history of the Soviet system and its central control of goods and services, and the inequities inherent in how they were distributed, proves a useful illustration for understanding how so many in America became debilitated by their grievances toward a system they felt similarly estranged from.

To the degree that the inner sanctum of die hard Trump supporters are not bigots and racists liberated by confidence one of their own is in high office, explaining how so many suffered enough alienation to become nihilists bent on reversing most American progress requires more than Hillbilly Elegies, it demands recognition of this mindset.

The Soviet Union was all about access to goods and services. That crucial network was administered by the Communist Party, and average citizens were generally last in line. The nomenclatura class of government managers and specialists, party aparatchiks, and advantaged groups such as musicians, athletes and other loyal achievers all enjoyed special access to both basics and consumer goods Ivan on the street could not dream of. The difference between Communism and Capitalism was that, even a piss poor American shlub could enjoy lobster and champagne if he was willing to blow his paycheck on it; an equivalent Soviet comrade had no such option. Thus, full dislocation between millions and the government who claimed to be an extension of their well being.

In America, the symmetry between blue collar economic dysfunction and alienation from mainstream political views began in earnest when Fox/AM contrived a narrative to reflect what stagnant wages couldn’t afford and the common political characteristics of those who could, a zero-sum approach between god-fearing, hard working “conservatives” and godless, entitled “liberal” elites, who lived a life of more abundance simply due to a political system they created by carving out voting blocs of dependent minorities and illegals they permitted to stuff ballot boxes.

When the technology boom of the 90s delivered extended prosperity and created fresh upper class members, Madison Avenue launched branding campaigns designed to go after those now available yuppie dollars. What ensued was the establishment of new consumer markets from basics to luxuries. A&P and Food Lion were for the proletariat, Balducci’s and Whole Foods were where elites brought the finer cuts of meat and fresher produce. Joe Blow went to Sears, Harvard professors and government check collectors went to IKEA or Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Slowly but perceptibly the US consumer landscape began to reflect more than haves and have nots, it’s divisions began to reflect cultural distinctions driven by Fox/AM’s shit river and ad campaigns designed to reach select groups with messaging based on cultural stereotypes. What one could or couldn’t afford became beside the point. Where one shopped underscored tribal devotion. Brand loyalties started to mirror political and cultural partisanship. Chevy trucks and Jeep Wranglers versus imported energy-efficient compacts, BMWs and Audis, Budweiser versus Heineken… Walmart versus any less conglomerated specialty shop.

Forty years ago the Soviet Union was oiling the skids for its fall by catering to elites at the expense of the rest. Now we have a grievance class feeling similarly dissed, but less because of what they haven’t been able to obtain and far more due to false narratives devoted to convincing them why they haven’t been able to do so.

Nobody should ever be prepared to call Trump a master of anything; he is too chaotic and unfocused for a label that implies expertise. Yet and still, his campaign from the beginning has been built on dividing America and carving out his devoted slice of the pie. More than two decades of branding and the constant din of Fox prime time has prepared his base to embrace its dislocation. “Proud deplorable” is subtext for “I no longer care or strive to a better station. Why would I want to? Then I’d be like them!” From the beginning both Fox/AM and now Trump have assured that’s not only ok, it’s Christian patriotism. Who gives a crap about filet mignon, that’s for godless libs. Look what he’s serving in the White House! Give me my Chick-Fil-A any day! BC

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

Charles de Gaulle

There once was a time when it was assumed different groups would celebrate the 4th of July in their own ways. Back before Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues, the Homestead Grays would sell out their game, for their fans on America’s big day, and the Brooklyn Dodgers would pack Ebbits Field with their faithful. Ironically, 1947 was the first Independence Day celebration televised on the National Mall, with a crowd estimated at 300,000 in attendance. One can wager there was a homogeneous quality in the turnout as veteran’s groups, military bands and fireworks provided the gist of the day’s entertainment.

Of course, back in 1947, the way white, Christian America counted its blessings on the 4th differed greatly from how the rest of its citizens calculated what their piece of pie amounted to. In 1946, a mob of white men shot and killed two young black couples in Walton County Georgia. The murder shocked the nation, including President Harry Truman, who was particularly upset one of the victims was a returning WWII veteran. Although, like every other lynching before it, nobody was prosecuted, the crime stimulated the Truman Administration to propose and make a legislative priority Federal anti-lynching measures. And while southern Democrats predictably opposed the bills, a national consensus began to emerge in opposition to mob violence against African-Americans.

Yet and still, on July 4, 1947 two Americas celebrated the nation’s independence separately, different cookouts, different baseball games…. different drinking fountains and bathrooms. Most fundamentally, in 1947, a black family of various generations in Atlanta would down their hot dogs or 4th of July bbq chicken with the bitter knowledge nobody, from great-grandma to dad to a nephew returning from battle in Europe, had ever been allowed to cast a meaningful vote. Thirteen years before JFK’s election and entire family trees were disenfranchised from the signature activity the 4th of July celebrated. Think about that.

Much has changed in the 72 years since television first captured DC’s 4th of July celebration. Most all of what the Civil Rights movement accomplished has surely been reflected on Independence Days that now highlight a far more unified America, unified in the crowds on the Mall, unified in the stands at Dodger games, unified at drinking fountains… and voting booths. What has been gained in the span of an average person’s lifetime may not be enough, but it’s plenty, and most in this country accepted the changes were for the good, a tangible commentary on the ability of America to pursue its promise. And the 4th of July celebrations on the Mall have fully embodied these sentiments, keeping to a strictly non-partisan theme, delivering a message rigorously attuned to the notion our country’s freedoms belong to everybody, and celebrating our progress is nothing if not an excuse to unify us. This has been clear, unequivocal and without controversy…. until now.

That Trump equates the 4th almost exclusively with militarism is not surprising. That he wants one of his rallies to eclipse our annual celebration of national unity and make things all about him is par for his course, and the GOP falling silently in line with his plans is, sadly, nothing out of their new normal. However, why his wretched core of supporters so welcome such an ugly usurpation of a great tradition is what should make the rest of us, the majority of Americans, madder than hell; it’s all about bringing back the good old days before others were included into the narrative Trumpists claim as only theirs. A Trump rally whitens the Mall and assures one group will be represented, and that’s just fine with them. This will be a throwback 4th, just the way MAGAites want it. Nationalism….. not patriotism. It’s not about who you love, it’s about who you’re now liberated to despise.

One could offer Trump the benefit of the doubt, even as he rolls tanks into DC for his “yuge” event, and hope the words he offers are non-partisan and respectful of the occasion’s dignity. In fact, from his own parochial viewpoint, really all he ever takes in the world from, a speech filled with soaring verbiage in support of American unity now under so much stress is a political no-brainer. The impossibly low expectations most all of us now grade this President with would render any sort of good faith effort to keep things apolitical a Trump triumph.

Alas, I wouldn’t bet the holiday utility bill on that scenario. After three years we simply know this guy all too well. First, it’s now unlikely any speechwriter in this West Wing cares to indulge our nation’s better angels; next, one can be sure, once he gets going within the glow of nihilist energy so reliably created by MAGA throngs, Trump will exhibit little discipline for being leashed to a script he always struggles to read. So we can count on ugly, divisive gibberish to stain what heretofore has been a day to celebrate the progress of our national journey. Flyovers, tanks and Trump megalomania with your cheeseburger and cold Budweiser.

Studied from the removed objectivity history always imparts, this 4th of July fiasco may well be deemed a watershed event of the Trump era. Either way – as the apex of his tenure, when he went too far and galvanized the majority by staining the nation’s most important annual rite, or when he solidified his minority’s grasp on power and ushered in militarism to bury democracy while most shrugged it off as yet just another hideous indignity – what happens on Thursday will be welcomed by millions who, at the heart of it, are a cult of regression, zealous intolerants fixated on remaking things the way they used to be…. back when. “Promises kept” is simply subtext for a President who shares their dementia, and will ruin our nation to pursue it. Enjoy your drumstick! BC

From day one the Trump Administration’s approach to Arab-Israeli peace has been to make the Palestinians an offer they can’t refuse, a fait accompli they can either accept or add to their struggles. If MAGA has thrashed America’s brand as leader of NATO, it has obliterated whatever was left of the notion we offer even-handed diplomacy in the Middle East. Trump’s message to Palestinians since inauguration has been “get on board the Bibi train or get run over.” From the needlessly gratuitous relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem to cheerleading West Bank Settlement activity to overtly cruel budget cuts of U.N. Palestinian humanitarian outreach, nothing has proved beyond the pale when it comes to pandering to Fox/AM sensibilities on Israel, the one ally the wretched core doesn’t resent.

The Trump Presidency foists so many insults on America and the world it is a challenge to figure which offer more harm than others. Yet and still, the unprecedented, and shamefully, unchallenged nepotism of this Administration is breathtaking. From the night he was elected, Trump has accorded his daughter and son-in-law top-level access light years out of line with their experience and qualifications. In a White House of under performers on steroids and a full roster of players selected with only their servility in mind, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner stand out for the dearth of contributions they make versus the near constant problems they cause.

Kushner, in particular, embarrasses on a near weekly basis. Assigned a vast portfolio of projects he has made little progress on, Kushner has time and again drawn the worst kind of attention for ethical transgressions only the President and the GOP now beholden to him continue to ignore. This week he rolled out a strategy to capture Palestinian good will and bring them back to the bargaining table. Unimpressive would be a very kind assessment of its impact.

There has been nothing subtle about the Trump Administration’s disdain for a two-state solution of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. While breathlessly confirming what everyone has accepted for years, that the Golan Heights now belongs to Israel, Trump’s Ambassador to Israel, his former bankruptcy attorney, David Friedman, came right out and declared the Administration is “open” to annexation of parts of the West Bank. In fact, Friedman has equated support of U.N. peace parameters and a two-state solution as treacherous to Israel. So it’s no wonder that Kushner’s “bold” new approach offers nothing in the way of political accommodation, instead enthusing about the creation of Palestinian investment projects.

Kushner unveiled his plan in Bahrain with as much hoopla as could be mustered given that not a single Palestinian or Israeli official was in attendance. None… zero. Yet and still, Kushner got his pom poms out for up to $50 billion in future investments in Palestinian territories, almost all of which is under Israeli authority, as some sort of salve for heretofore Trumpist hostility to occupied populations.

The Palestinian response has been immediate and unequivocal… “is he kidding?” After more than two years of acting like Netanyahu’s enforcer, the US now talks of buying Palestinian acquiescence with phantom investors ready to make sweetheart deals. Empty Trump promises no responsible Palestinian partisan would ever risk a fig on are about the same as Mr. Potter offering George Bailey a cushy salary in It’s A Wonderful Life, acceptance would be complicity and betrayal.

It bears repeating that Likud, from its inception as a political party, has adopted as a central tenet the West Bank – referred to as Judea and Samaria by the party faithful – is holy Jewish land, unavailable for negotiation. This has been the unspoken elephant in the room since Begin was Prime Minister. Gaza, the Sanai Peninsula, even the Golan Heights, all were fair game in a land for peace framework… not so Judea and Samaria. Aggressive West Bank settlement has been a hallmark of Likud regimes, slowed only by American opposition to activity every President since LBJ understood was inimical to the peace process. To condone settlement means admitting the US is no longer interested in being an honest broker for peace. That is where we now are and then some. Only an Administration as unserious and shameless as this one would sanction Kushner’s charade.

A perfect exclamation point to the surreality of the exercise was one Israeli official’s take on Palestinian refusal to afford it any legitimacy. Economy Minister Eli Cohen actually suggested that Bahrain may have closed the door on further diplomacy.”We saw that, even in an economic conference where the Palestinians were meant to come and get money, to come and get tools and inducements, to come and develop their economy, they did not come.” Come and get your payoff for surrender or we have nothing more to talk about! Nice.

Too many in Israel equate annexation with security; nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever fidelity Israelis still possess toward the moral imperative their nation was created to preserve will quickly dissipate in the mire of the national security state West Bank annexation will require. Once land is no longer available to offer, how will anything but endless bloody attrition be possible? Israeli greats like Abba Eban and Shimon Peres understood this. Netanyahu understands but doesn’t care; he is corrupt and morally vacant.

It’s not hyperbole to aver nobody in the White House is equipped with even a basic understanding of the conflict they seem to view as a PR campaign, applying lipstick to the pig that is overt pandering to Likud aspirations. Jared Kushner presenting power points to emirs and shieks looking for value investments is really the perfect image of the Trump Administration’s ruinous incompetence. Palestinians aren’t fools, but even if they were, they wouldn’t be part of this “outreach”. How far have we fallen? Kissinger to Kushner… that’s how far.