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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ronald Reagan

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

Donald Trump at a 2016 Campaign Rally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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