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The Kavanaugh saga should force 40 and 50 something men to reassess how we were raised and what lessons about the treatment of women we took to heart. I openly confess to views and behavior that relegated women to goals of my personal narrative at some expense to their unique identities, and fully believe those attitudes weren’t just wrong and intensely unfair, but cheated me out of countless opportunities at rewarding long-term friendships.

That so many jerks like me exist, so many needlessly burned bridges, speaks to a deeply flawed culture, a Mad Menesque ingratitude toward the better half of our species, and an unacceptable failure to appreciate opportunities our lives offer.  MeToo is altering that landscape, forcing men to assess their pasts free of locker room insecurities and male bonding idiocy. Women are better than men, it’s really that simple. To demean them or take their affections for granted, or much worse attack and abuse them, strikes me as not only a grievous sin, but self-destructive behavior as well.

The male propensity to categorize and wall off into segments life chapters provides perhaps the largest chasm between the sexes. The ability to completely shed the skin, and responsibility, of who one was as a full blown narcissist, before marriage and kids, before they quit partying and “got serious” about life, spares many a man the reckoning his mistakes should offer.

Women neither excuse themselves from such emotional chores, nor are allowed by our society the luxury of on-demand reinvention. It’s why doting mothers of teenage girls see them and theirs in an attack on another’s child. Meanwhile, men, in the throes of political tribalism and partitioned experiences,  actually empathize with a 17-year old boy getting  “a bit carried away” after 12 beers and “roughhousing” with a girl at a rowdy party, even as they innately understand it would all be very different had their little girl come home traumatized and sobbing from such an experience.

Regarding Kavanaugh, it becomes “irrelevant” to a 50 year old’s resume and character how he acted in high school or even college… now he’s a stand up husband and dad… with daughters of his own!! That women seem less ready to extend such a pass speaks to higher standards of personal responsibility, and cognizance of the necessary vagueries of life’s continuity. A far healthier perspective to my eyes.

I freely admit going to bars and parties with groups of buddies was how I spent way too much of my time as a youth, but the goal was to meet a girl and get away from those morons, certainly not to foist them on somebody I was lucky enough to impress! Isolating drunk women to exploit was inconceivable to us, the hallmark of a creep. Evidence of such a predilection, at any age, in the past of a candidate for the highest court should be thoroughly investigated, and if confirmed, disqualifying.  Kavanaugh’s formative years appear punctuated by the notion of sex as a group pursuit for cliques of white males, with women more as prey than companions. Who could give out a pass for that?! Moreover, his absolute declarations of innocence and determination to make it his word against hers speaks to a temperament more interested in removing obstacles than pursuing justice. Besides, I don’t believe him.

Of course we did just elect as our POTUS a man whose behavior in his 50s and 60s was as ugly as anything he could have conjured at 17. A man who betrayed our now First Lady  with an adult film star, almost immediately after Melania had given birth to his son…. oh, and also with a former Playboy bunny, whose feelings he hurt  by offering to pay afterward. A man captured on tape boasting about being a pig, more suited to a sex offender registry than the White House. So perhaps seeking collective emotional growth from the current controversy is a bridge too far.

Yet and still, as we watch this Thursday a victim recount an act of idiocy by a drunken preppie that scarred her youth and impacted her adulthood, it’s fair to ask ourselves how much of the backwash she is sure to receive from inquisitors more concerned with ruining her credibility than discovering the truth defined our upbringing on such matters. It will surprise no one that the GOP, led by their mysoginist champion, will roll over whoever necessary to ram Kavanaugh through. Fox/AM has made it a defining act of purity, and pledged not to forget apostasy. Consciences are for snowflakes; a durable high court majority is at hand.  No matter how ugly it gets, the ends justify the means. A nomination that, in most any other time and with any other group in our history would be DOA, might just seep out of the Judiciary Committee and prevail… like every other stain the last 19 months has spilled upon us.

Perhaps this nadir can offer some degree of silver lining and further encourage rigorous examination of why much in our culture and national life still tempts our sons to degrade our daughters.  Finally gaining clarity on what creates victims both affords them some closure and protects others. Who knows, it may even help restore some of the dignity Kavanaugh will exact from the institution he revised his history to join. BC

 

Texas is enigmatic, a love/hate thing. The greatest American novel, Lonesome Dove, is quintessential Texas and Texans. Woodrow Call and Gus McCray are the greatest characters ever put to a page. Ditto Giant, the Edna Ferber masterpiece and  Hollywood classic. Yet for every Bick Benedict there is a Jet Renk, for every Molly Ivins a Louie Gohmert. When I worked on the mountain in Breckinridge, CO renting skis back in 1984, oil prices were sky high and Texans were easy to spot by the full length fur coats worn on the slopes… honest to God! Yet I also worked with John Miller, born and bred in Arlington, Texas, and as folksy and wise as anybody I’ve known. Mixed bag.

Nothing would salve our wounded republic like the election of Beto O’Rourke to the US Senate. And nothing will clarify our ruin more than his quixotic quest coming to naught. That’s how high the stakes are in Texas; it’s all or nothing. Either glorious redemption of the promise we possess, or sad confirmation of the morass we have become. A referendum on the future, not only of America, but the world we once led, and are now becoming irrelevant to at astonishing speed.

Anyone watching the first O’Rourke-Cruz debate without a jaundiced eye was impressed by the contrast between candidates, straight out of Hollywood casting really. At one lectern was this ball of enlightenment. Handsome, intense, thoughtful and well spoken. Each answer he gave went to a frustrating extreme trying to avoid partisan tropes. Two obsessions emerged consistently in his responses: the overarching need for more empathy regarding fellow citizens suffering at the whims of an indifferent, sometimes even malevolent,  political and economic system; and the related theme of unifying as one country, one nation. Thoughtful as they were precise, O’Rourke’s answers evaded nothing, electoral consequences be damned.

On the other side of the stage was a carnival barker, disingenuous as his opponent was sincere. If O’Rourke hobbled his performance by refusing to gorge on partisan red meat opportunities, Cruz compensated; in fact, stripped of worn out campaign falsehoods, the Senator has little to say. Nobody orates more but actually conveys less. If O’Rourke is a disciple for substance in our national discussion, Cruz is an oily televangelist passing the plate to his faithful, offering less while taking more.

Two issues best spoke to the chasm between the candidates and the views they represent… immigration and police-African American relations.

On immigration, perhaps the most important question to Texans,  O’Rourke made clear the preeminent fact politicians from both parties avoid like the plague… the “border has never been safer.” Meanwhile, speaking for those with property lines at stake, most misguided enough to have supported Trump and now rueful of that decision, the Congressman pointed out how eminent domain will seize and partition their land to fulfill the President’s outlandish scheme. O’Rourke also unapologetically stated what we all know to be true: Hispanic immigrants perform our economy’s most thankless jobs without complaint, grateful to have a small foothold on the American dream we are supposed to offer.

Cruz never met an issue he didn’t want to glean for white resentment;  immigration is no exception. Without challenging O’Rourke’s guiding tenet that no emergency exists,  Cruz simply barreled ahead as if it was a given. The wall is the answer, and not deporting 11 million people is unfair to his father, who came and waited in line. Family separation as basic fairness, that’s the ticket. O’Rourke cares more about illegals than he does about us – i.e fearful caucasions, bent on nastiness. To hear the grievance flow effortlessly out of Cruz’s mouth is to understand the fundamental pitfalls of pluralism.

On September 6, Botham Jean, an African American 26-year old, had the deadly misfortune of occupying the wrong apartment. Despite being farsighted enough to place a bright red welcome mat in front of his door, Jean unfortunately left it ajar, allowing an apparently drunk Dallas police officer to consummate her inability to locate home. Jean, understandably reluctant to follow orders from a stranger in his own apartment, was promptly shot and killed in an “unfortunate misunderstanding,” so said the initial department press release on the matter.

Cruz, given first stab at the event and its ramifications, proceeded apace with a Tucker Carlson script, immediately slandering O’Rourke by falsely declaring he equated police with Jim Crow. The accident was sad BUT, insert long list of fallen police officers and the assumption that pursuing justice for Jean is tantamount to spitting on their graves. As on immigration, O’Rourke favors “them” more than us, I go to police funerals, he doesn’t. And did I mention that cops are killed in the line of duty and are brave? Indulging the basic civil rights of a class of our citizens necessarily insults and undermines police who, did I make clear get slain in the line of duty?

O’Rourke was having none of it. Unlike so many of his congressional colleagues, wasting debate time to mindlessly establish pro-law enforcement bona fides is not Beto’s thing. Whether or not Texans recognize the failure of departments across the country to discipline their own as a crisis, he does and will lead on the matter. Even in a vacuum this tragedy would be outrageous. On the heels of countless other fully documented, mostly unprosecuted, nationwide police shootings of unarmed black men, it’s nothing less than a defining travesty. O’Rourke cited the damning numbers of African-American per capita misery related to being legally shot, as well as incarcerated for non-violent offenses. Above all, he implored voters not to view the issue through a partisan lens; basic justice and fairness should not be political.

It’s a function of the true awfulness of Trump that he has so completely eclipsed Cruz as the embodiment of hateful opportunism. Before The Donald, nobody was more overt in their disdain for the intelligence of the GOP faithful than Cruz, his shamelessness seeming to reach new lows every other news cycle. Yet and still, even with our President firmly establishing no human being  approaches his wretchedness, Beto O’Rourke’s tireless campaign reamplifies how ugly and insincere Cruz’s guiding ambitions are.

Some have said O’Rourke’s efforts have already produced a victory, forcing Texans to question themselves and at least consider the pros of empathy and the cons of blind tribalism. Even if he fails in November, he’ll surely break through eventually, the optimists maintain. But after the other night’s debate, such thinking seems nonsensical. If an all important state, supposedly comprised of genuine articles, can’t reward so unique a campaign with a chance to reform our addled legislative branch, choosing instead its most acute malady, the country’s second worst person, then maybe things are hopeless. The battle for America runs through the Lone Star this year…. failure can’t be an option. BC

 

 

Political recklessness is usually the product of either hubris or its opposite, desperation. Many an incumbent has said or done the worst thing merely because he/she convinced themselves big polling numbers equaled invulnerability, risk an unpleasantry of the past. Conversely, when a campaign’s chips are down, and polls are not friendly, hail Marys become more enticing as a bold way back into the game. Neither mindset works out very often, and frequently collateral damage, like legal troubles or impugned reputations ensue.

GOP candidates now exhibit both sides of the coin as November nears, many up against it as a Trump referendum tide rolls in, others blowharding MAGA tropes to ensure their nihilist bona fides in flyover districts that provide general election safety, but also lurking primary threats ready to accuse them of impurities, not to mention the hourly indignity of Trump as their daddy.

When you are a party at war with demographics, pounding a narrative that revises history, everything is sketchy. One minute you’re at a fundraiser waxing nostalgic for donors looking to yesterday as the future, and the next morning you’re  swearing to reporters there isn’t a racist bone in your body. One morning you’re puckering up to smooch The Donald’s burgeoning backside, that afternoon you’re all in for covering pre-existing conditions and Medicaid expansion.

If robust debate defines a healthy political party, the GOP is dying day by day. It’s membership now consists of two camps: Trump sycophants, busy fighting over who agrees more; and the rest, busy trying to show they aren’t in the first group without being labeled RINOs and attacked for apostasy.

It’s certain many in the second group will be unemployed soon, perhaps the death knell of the party. After all, it’s hard to envision a bunch of Trumpies in the House, clamoring for a Fox/AM mic, doing everything to get in the way of real governance, and once the Freedom Caucus is all that’s left, there won’t be enough of them to even do that. As for the Senate, Marsha Blackburn is running to replace Bob Corker in Tennessee, nuff said. With no serious partners in the lower chamber, they will become a permanent minority, representing only parts of the south and western flyover states, simply bigger mouthpieces of resentment.

Why would any organization willingly accept its own destruction? They have no choice. Any efforts to broaden the base simply invites its ire, and threatens those reaching out. The GOP wretched core is extreme, with a reckless philosophy, developed by television bottom feeders unconcerned with political or governing viability, even as they currently control both. The purity they demand is lethal to national electoral prospects and fully seditious to government responsibility. And make no mistake, you’re either for or against them…there is no middle ground; that is RINO territory.

Of course this scenario comes with a big caveat… that we survive the GOP’s best efforts to subvert the democratic process and follow what most surely is on its way: Trump’s refusal to cede power back and allow America to clean up its mistake. Republicans have spent more than a decade corrupting the US elections process, resisting the no brainer that more voters is a good thing. Trump, of course, is fully prepared to lead them into no man’s land on that score.

I suppose it’s fair to wonder whether Democrats would seek to ignore Russian meddling if they stood to gain by it. Even so, it’s a preposterous question because the GOP would make life so miserable for all in such a scenario, they’d buckle simply to get a moment’s peace. Yet and still, Fox/AM already has a response for the meek objections of the loyal opposition to the scandalous indifference coming from both the White House and Capital Hill; you’ve been doing it for years, look at all the illegals signed up to vote! Any historian will tell you, truth is the first casualty on the road to dictatorship.

Does anybody really believe the wretched core has a problem with Putin picking our lawmakers, so long as it’s their people ?! I’ll confess to being as clueless as the next guy on just how vulnerable our voting booths are to tampering. Who really knows? It’s like sitting in an hour-long traffic jam only to finally learn they took out two lanes for construction, but nobody’s there doing anything! Who is the person who ordered the cones?! Punching a Chris Christie cut out doesn’t satisfy! You want answers! McConnell won’t even allow the questions.

So, to summarize… if our election systems don’t yield rigged results, and if our civic vibrancy and institutions can face down the coming authoritarian spasms Trumpism will wreck on its way out of power, one of our major parties is heading into the dirt, slain by its own hand. Where will that leave us? A hell of a lot better than the alternative. And that will have to do. BC

 

 

 

 

The idea Trump got elected based on economic dislocation by white voters previously enamored with Barack Obama was never convincing. His current overwhelming approval by the GOP faithful now imagining an economy, that for all intents and purposes existed in October 2016, is the result of deregulation and tax cuts for millionaires is more an alibi for ignoring unhinged incompetence, and a diversion from what really gets their juices flowing… a renaissance of long buried racist tropes.

Such smoke and mirrors to justify supporting the exhumation of Jim Crow sensibilities  will be laid bare once trade war economic chickens come home to roost, and the “historic economy” Trump tweets about hourly begins to crash and burn. Then there will be nothing left for wretched core proponents to lean on but the ugly nexus of what warmed them to 45’s nihilism in the first place. At that point it will be official, at least 35% of America votes, not with their pocketbooks in mind, but their disdain for what in our lifetime will become the majority of their fellow citizens. Diversity is the demon, the go to boogie man responsible for stealing the country away from its rightful owners; this has always been Trumpism’s foundational narrative.

When the essence of a bloc as large as Trump’s idea of patriotism is the entitlement to disqualify any notions others may have for exhibiting their own civic mindedness, that’s a big problem. When such idiocy actually originates and is constantly, methodically fanned by the White House, that’s a crisis. Either way there isn’t much doubt Trump’s own brand of dog whistles and identity warfare is what really gins up his base, rendering other factors like breathtaking incompetence, pathological insecurity and overt corruption mere background noise, discarded as opposition tactics delivered on demand by a corrupt media. There is no fine line between racial animosity and la la land; they are synonymous. Suffering through even part of a Trump rally validates this contention.

There is a good reason why Fox/AM personalities store a particularly strong measure of toxin for those accusing them of racism; that truth is dangerous to their existence. Were they to be fully unmasked as the bigots they are, any intellectual heft their circular explanations enjoy would evaporate. Moreover, they  hate being on the defensive, which requires quick feet they don’t have,  and are ever mindful not to cross lines that land them in hot water, even as they constantly gnaw away at those boundries, like rats on a cord.

The worst day of Rush Limbaugh’s life was back in the early 90’s, when as host of a short-lived, early AM clone of Phil Donahue and Oprah’s talk TV format, he fully lost control of a hostile audience shouting him down for the bigotry he spewed. It was a pivotal event he swore to himself would never be repeated. Since then Limbaugh has not appeared in any setting with variables he can’t fully control; a non-negotiable rule of the road most all Fox/AM “personalities” have followed suit to observe.

Whether MAGAites actually believe having Diamond and Silk into the Oval Office is enough to establish Trump’s fair minded bona fides is irrelevant; he thinks it is, and we are now all painfully aware that the bias he brought to the party has been given a makeover  by Fox and Friends et al., the application of rouge necessary to dull its stigma.

The Democratic leadership seems intent on making sure everyone knows that a bigot in the White House doesn’t obsess them; unlike him and his, they really are concerned about middle class bank accounts. Fair enough. Yet and still, diluting the noxious bias of Trumpism’s brew ignores the emergencies its success will create.

Since the 60s this nation has been developing under the bipartisan presumption racial bias is a malady which  has exacted a steep price of blood and treasure, while unnecessarily hobbling our potential. More than three decades of political life and the governance it created acted in full accordance with that conclusion. Obama seemed to ice the cake and unequivocally tie our 21st century fortunes to the death of 20th century idiocy. This Administration endangers all of that. What was shrugged off as the blow back of elements refusing to progress now rules us and everyday attempts to recodify what most thought was dead and buried. Many took the proposition so for granted they imagined the luxury of making a personal statement against a stale Presidential candidacy by staying home, or voting for a 3rd party imbecile. How is that working out?

November is almost here. For those inexplicably unable to tie election prospects of Democrats to US survival, perhaps it would be at least as intriguing to understand that, along with abetting a destructive narcissist, the GOP also stands completely in line with the attempt to return racism, under the threadbare guise of reform, to everyday American life and government. Voting Republican actually jams a stake in a key tenent of US progress, returning us to the land of our grandparents, indulging attitudes almost all of us thought went to the grave with them. Think about it! BC

In Myanmar, also known as Burma, the Rohingya minority faces an existential crisis. The Southeast Asian nation’s military is systematically, village by village, executing people and burying the evidence in mass graves, not particularly concerned about the world’s horrified gasps. “Ethnic cleansing” is the dismayingly tame term to describe what is proceeding apace. Think the worst of human behavior throughout history and you are just about there in Myanmar.

But what emphasizes this particular genocide from others tolerated in the past, and adds surreality and immeasurable disillusionment, is who is sanctioning it’s occurance and cover up. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi inspired the globe with her Mandelaesque resistance of the same forces she now strains her neck to look away from. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for a dignified and heroic non-violent struggle against generals who repeatedly jailed and threatened her,  Aung San Suu Kyi never blinked…and ultimately prevailed, ascending to govern the country she had become the conscience of. The West collectively celebrated her triumph…. careful what you wish for.

Going from compassion and bravery to countenance of outright evil is often simply a function of circumstance. Denouncing the jack boot comes natural when it’s on your neck, yet becomes far more difficult, and a test of real character, when it’s being applied to those one has never particularly liked, or worse, holds accountable for past grievance. Courage is, of course, courage… but history has illustrated time and again the folly of  viewing it as synonymous with principle and compassion once the dust clears, and the oppressed shift way too easily into the role of oppressor.

Daniel Ortega led a revolution against the long established banana republic injustice of Latin-American militarism in Nicaragua, even as two-bit elements of the Reagan Administration created a criminal enterprise to stack the deck against him. Now, the liberator is as overt and nihilistic a tyrant as one will find, literally ruining his nation to stay in his palace, worse than the Sandinistas allowed Somoza to become. Sadly, Aung San Suu Kyi has joined Ortega’s ranks, shrugging off massacres as situations “that could have been handled better.”

However, even more of a tragedy for us than the metamorphosis of a hero to a scoundrel is the clear understanding the affliction only underscores how empty America’s inventory of moral leadership in the world has become. The crisis is acute, and there is no light at the end of any tunnel; it will surely get worse before it gets better. Our civic catastrophe of almost two years ago has created a strip poker game of decaying US credibility, as the amoral nitwit we empowered rips off one piece of our once suitable ensemble  after another.

How can one possibly criticize Myanmar murderers when North Korea’s maniac is our leader’s bestest new buddy, their relationship characterized by the White House as “a very good and warm one.”?   When our President extols Putin as a role model for “strong leadership?” When a Chinese autocrat, poised as no other since Mao for total control of his country’s billions, is a  “great President?” When the stated position of our nation, shrilly annunciated by its National Security Advisor, is the International Criminal Court, an institution  critical to any collective deterrence of atrocity,  is a threat to sovereignty, and any advocacy for inquiries into crimes by our citizens or actions of the only ally we care about will be met with the “harshest punitive measures?”

Anyone with eyes could see MAGA was the refutation of all but the lowest common denominator for American standards abroad. The American exceptionalism crowd has always used the world’s worst to apologize for US outrages like Abu Gharib and black site torture. And that nasty bunch is the heart of Trump’s wretched core,  its constituency fully represented in the Administration’s emerging foreign policy brain trust, led by the likes of Bolton and Pompeo. But make no mistake, they speak to the world for all of us. There are no asterisks in international diplomacy.

What weight can our opinion carry on the arrest by Myanmar authorities of two journalists who reported on a recent massacre by an unhinged military?  After all, our President spends countless idle hours tweeting his fondest wishes for just such a capability. Jailing political opponents? If only, our petulant fascist wannabe whines to the heavens. US moral superiority used to be condemned by tyrants as propaganda; now it really is.

Trumpism has inflicted in less than two years more ugly scars on our national landscape than can be tallied, but none are more unsightly than the wound we now exhibit when facing the world. Anti-democratic critics used to question how we could presume to lecture others on human rights and respect for decency. Now they don’t even have to; we have nothing to teach any tyrant, only a President who wants to learn their tricks of the trade.  BC

 

In late September of 85’ I was attending graduate school at George Washington University and living with four roommates in a large aged house off McArthur Blvd. in Northwest DC. All of us were 20-something students of one form or another, given to garnering women’s approval, a good buzz and higher education in about that order.

This particular afternoon’s happy hour festivities found us fully focused on the local newscast and hurricane Gloria, a monstrous Category 4 storm barreling headlong toward Ocean City, MD. Of course it took precious little imagination to surmise the damage such a landfall would wreck on what, despite the trappings of full development and community, was merely a barrier island, designed by nature to sacrifice itself under such conditions.

Reporting from Ocean City, WRC reporter IJ Hudson conveyed all manner of preparations taking place for the approaching doom, most notably a mandatory evacuation. Hudson finished his segment by telling anchor Jim Vance that he could rest assured “only the National Guard and a few crazy reporters” remained in the resort town.  “Jim, anyone with any common sense is long gone,” Hudson promised.

Slumped on the couch with my preferred Miller High Life, I snorted with knowing disdain at his pronouncement. My roomies, all hailing from outside  the Mid-Atlantic region, asked what I was incredulous about. Having more than a dozen friends, who had turned Ocean City from our summer stomping grounds to their year-round escape from reality, as fall surf eclipsed adult responsibility on their list of priorities – and most all thoroughly replete in the common sense department – I flat out guaranteed Hudson’s declaration was full of crap. My new friends,  unfamiliar with my misanthropic cadre of childhood homies, collectively doubted my veracity. After all, the wrath of God seemed only 18 hours away; staying was suicide.

I sensed financial opportunity and bet what I had in my pocket… er, $13, that I could make a call to OC and one of my boyz would answer.  Soon our disgusting, beer-soaked, resin stained excuse for a cocktail table was resplendent in crumbled bills and loose change. I ran excitedly upstairs to my drawer to get the tattered little notebook I used for phone numbers; I figured three would be the deepest I’d have to go, since businesses appeared to be closed.

We all huddled around the old rotary phone somebody had salvaged when we moved in, and I dialed one of my closest Eastern Shore associates,  whose 7-year colligiate saga at Salisbury University, 30 miles west of OC, was nearing an end. We were all around the receiver when, after several rings, an irritated voice growled hello. “Orem?!,” I asked pumping my fist and celebrating my windfall, “what are you doing?” “Trying to take a nap. What do you want?” “Nothing! Go back to sleep!”  I hung up in triumph, pocketing my score as my flabbergasted friends shook their heads. Life was very good!

Miraculously, God intervened and steered Gloria north, sparing OC and  weakening significantly before a northeast landfall. Yet and still, my buddy, Billy, whose slumber I interrupted, later recounted walking to the beach in the face of 60 plus mph winds that threatened to lift him off his feet. When I inquired what he thought 140 mph winds would have done, he shrugged and muttered something about weathermen always being wrong. Who could question such sound wisdom?

The almighty was less vigilant last year regarding Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria hit it square, meandering the length of the island with every bit of its Category 4 fury. When it was finished, 100 percent of residents were without power…think about that a minute. Virtually the whole of the island’s infrastructure was in shambles.

A year later Puerto Rico is nowhere near back to normal. Power only recently fully returned, outages still a daily occurance. Roads are in terrible shape, with many parts of the island still inaccessible. Worst of all, almost 3000 people died as a result of Maria, most from health conditions rendered critical due to the damage suffered by the island’s support network. Unavailable medications, medical devices made inoperable by months long blackouts, inaccessible critical care, lack of clean drinking water (20 percent of residents were forced to drink from “natural” sources), failed emergency response due to downed communications, relentless heat, the list goes on and on.

To hear our President, Puerto Rico’s President, tell it, the government response he led was well oiled but “under appreciated,” hobbled by an aged electrical grid and “incompetent” local leaders. The island’s residents beg to differ.

In a recent Post/Kaiser poll over 80% of Puerto Ricans expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s handling of Maria’s aftermath. To be fair the island’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló didn’t do much better, but the discrepancy between Trump’s self-congratulations and sentiments on the ground could not be starker. In fact, 1 in 4 Puerto Rican’s are considering moving away permanently, such is their pessimism of future prospects.

When the corpse of this disasterous Presidency is picked through, presuming we are still a going concern, no disgrace will exceed Trump’s indifference to our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico. It incapsulates every rancid aspect of his soulless reproach of the job he never wanted: lazy indifference to adequate preparation, disregard for expert advice, zero fealty to facts that counter his self-serving narrative, and worst of all a pathological refusal to accept responsibility for the outcomes of his policies.

Yesterday, when he gaslit the emerging Puerto Rican death toll, labeling it a creation by Democrats to hurt him politically, the descent to the bottom was finally reached; it simply can’t be possible to go further. With Trump, it’s not just the buck doesn’t stop here, it’s who the hell says the buck ever really existed in the first place.

I have yet to hear the President call Puerto Ricans citizens of this nation. Frankly, that might be just as well for them….who really wants to admit any association with Trump anyway. Yet and still, their experience should only strengthen our bonds, as well as our determination to aid in some small measure their rebuilding efforts, which this White House has never cared a wit about. After all, aren’t we on the mainland as leaderless as they are? BC

Drive in the DC area long enough and you will discover your own special traffic hell spots , those stretches of road created to torment you more than any other. One of mine is the turn off from Canal Road near Cabin John in Maryland that you have to take when Park Police turn it into a one way stretch every week day at 2:45PM. Blocking  off access to Canal Rd toward DC forces motorists to essentially make a U turn that funnels them up to McArthur Blvd., which can then be taken toward the District.

Thing is, two lanes of traffic now has to become one line, as everyone waits to make the U turn whenever a break in the stream of Maryland bound commuters from DC affords them an opportunity. Needless to say, this immediately backs traffic up, and the line steadily grows in size. Of course the right lane, which now goes nowhere except up to the barricade blocking Canal Road remains open, tempting nefarious line cutters to continue up as far as possible before merging into the left lane waiting to turn. And it is that temptation, and the willingness of so many to accede to its invitation that has caused many a heated confrontation.

The best image to describe the situation is a line to get movie tickets. Obviously, if a person walked toward the front and just cut in without a word, the wrath of all would descend on them. But being in a steel box with wheels imbibes many with nerve and gall that otherwise wouldn’t cross their minds. Some plead ignorance, acting as if they were clueless why one lane was uninhabited for a half mile and then relying on the good graces of others, who had just waited ten minutes to make it to the front, to permit their rudeness.

Regulars take to occupying the right lane as the line moves to prevent cutters from getting past, their spot secured by other motorists in the line. This tactic often leads to ugliness, as more determined and impatient cutters honk and gesture, unconcerned that they are acting like civilized society’s lowest life form. Point is,  a situation is set up daily between 2:45 and 6:30pm that provides an opportunity for countless commuters to flaunt established order and act as nasty and anti-social as is possible.

For a month or more after 9/11 the Canal Road turn off moved much smoother, the beneficiary of national unity. People thought twice about cutting, respecting the time and estimation of their fellow citizens, and figuring a few extra minutes wasn’t worth the collective scorn of neighbors; after all, weren’t we all in this together? It was a glorious interlude of civic cooperation; without the delays of cutters, the Canal Road turn off ebbed as a delay of consequence. Like everything immediately following one of our worst national traumas, “I” became “we”… and the benefits were tangible.

I can think of worse ways to honor our fallen from that dark day every year than to make a point to earmark 24 hours of national unity and cooperation, if for no other reason than to experience its benefits. Of course such a declaration should start at the top; it’s only right that our national leader set the example for us to follow. Perhaps a tweet, and a statement, calling for a one day moratorium on division? Well, I suppose that will have to wait.

Yet and still, we should remember with hopeful pride those days immediately following the 9/11 attacks as proof we can embrace what is most important precisely at a time it is most critical to do so. Perhaps if we remind ourselves once a year we have done it before, it will revitalize our ambitions to do it again, and demand leaders who speak of division as a national liability, rather than a snake oil remedy for ignorant fears necessary to gains of various special interests.

Any parent of young children in 2001 can tell you seventeen years have passed in the snap of one’s fingers. Dawn becomes dusk and repeat…over and over. Yet and still, much destruction and impulsive folly has filled those days in the name of avenging the victims of a small cabal of mad men and their sponsors. Meanwhile, we are far more divided now than we were September 10, 2001. Perhaps another catastrophe is the only thing capable of snapping us out of our intractable tribalism. But like that diet you put off, or fitness regime, or sobriety; change happens a day at a time. September 11 is as good a date as any to start  BC

The most unique aspect of Bobby Kennedy’s run for the Presidency in 1968 was his determination to find new things to say most every campaign stop. He simply was not wired to go robot with the same messaging over and over again. He recognized the attention he was getting as an opportunity to impact the national discussion, come what may to aspirations for high office. It was more than a campaign, it was a chance to press ideas and change thinking.

With the incessant discord of Vietnam, the civil rights movement and poverty as his canvas, Kennedy mixed and matched such disparate themes as unity and patriotism with the civic obligation of protest,  love of one’s country with challenging its laws, and the greatness of America’s destiny with the price other countries were paying for its influence. The candidate seemed to sweat every paragraph, and beat himself up when he thought points were redundant.

That RFK’s quest for original thoughts and ideas on the campaign trail made him so singular probably speaks to the inertia of our politics, and the stagnation of our discourse. Certainly the principle crises of his day reflected reliance on tired tropes meant more to manipulate fear than challenge civic spirit. But, above all, and most to the point, RFK understood what the body politic most required when he told a University of Kansas audience in March of 68’ that:

….we as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand.  This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the President of the United States.

Those words were prescient, and responding to them with lip service and half-measures in the years since only added acuteness to the condition they addressed. Now  we suffer from the misguided belief by millions who confuse abruptness with candor, and rudeness with honesty. They believe in their champion only because of his tone, with no concern for his lack of substance. And even as his clothes fall off and the circular destructiveness of his lies are laid bare, they stick with him because twenty plus years of propaganda has convinced them there is no other option.

Barack Obama, the long sought heir to RFK’s oratory legacy, who spent eight years raising the White House bully pulpit’s game after replacing a man all out to form complete sentences, emerged from relative seclusion yesterday to become the sorely missing counterweight to Trumpist nihilism. Coming the day after one of The Donald’s ugly monologues in Montana, Obama’s words were  like the fresh clear water swirling in the bowl after a clogged toilet is finally plunged.

Unlike his successor, Obama understands words should be thought through before spoken, cheapened if repeated too often. Shifting gears from abstractions he has hinted with in some previous public appearances to direct references, the former President took aim and did not mince words, attacking Trumpism in all its forms. How “hard can it be” to give Nazis what for, Obama wondered. And making sure “3000 Americans don’t die in a hurricane” seems the minimum a functioning government should attend to, said Obama, referring to Puert Rico’s misery (it bears noting that Trump seems unable to refer to the island’s residents as “Americans”… shameful.)

Like RFK’s quest for moral redemption 50 years ago, the Obama brand exists off the menu of partisan red meat, but after a long absence, it tasted pretty good. Yet and still, a former President declaring his replacement is not conducting himself in a normal manner and ushering in “dangerous times” has to be a wake up call for anybody still intent on ignoring the burning fire. Punctuating these dark days, the ever hopeful 44th POTUS made no promises, and created few soaring images. Two months hence we “have a chance” to “restore some semblance of sanity to our politics.” Obama telling it like it is…candor, if you will.

The principle threat of a Trump Presidency, aside from the obvious existential danger created by hourly incompetence, was always the drastic reduction of standards associated with the White House, notably the demeaning of the office’s platform to inform public discussion. Of course, Trump has delivered in spades on that concern. The promise of two full months of his clinical narcissism, while surely enhancing “sane” messaging by Democrats also portends a level of division this nation hasn’t seen since RFK’s tragic primary bid.

Simpleton that I am, the “two camps” approach to making sense of things has always appealed to me. That is, for example, there are those who love the ocean and those who seek out the mountains, those given to math and sciences or those preferring history and literature, romantics vs. realists, etc. Now it’s as simple as candidates with  a respect and at least the desire to articulate a vision, or the emerging clones of Trumpian nihilism , condemning any effort at thoughtful speaking as progressive hijinx, snowflake obfuscation meant to deceive and enhance the fortunes of “them”.

How ironic that RFK’s accurate diagnosis of our intrinsic appetite for truth was repackaged as a relentless multimedia narrative that succeeded in convincing millions to cheer on a pathological liar. But November beckons, and yesterday the man many more millions embrace as a living embodiment of promises RFK declared we were capable of keeping 50 years ago,  appears ready to try his best to counter the slogging pestilence created by demons Kennedy also assured us we surely harbored. The stakes couldn’t be higher. BC

Perhaps if one of Barack Obama’s inner circle, while considering options to confront Mitch McConnel’s rash, unprecedented and ultimately successful scuttling of Merrick Garland’s SCOTUS appointment, had painted a scenario two years hence of Tea Party vulcan Mike Lee preening his constitutional law bona fides while lobbing soft balls to Donald Trump’s idea of a SCOTUS pivotal vote, 44 may have gone all in for any means available against the Majority Leader’s outrageous gambit.  I suppose nobody did, so he didn’t, and today Lee and Kavanaugh were making love during the Utah Senator’s designated half hour.

The Kavanaugh hearings are a farce. And of course nobody in the GOP, including so-called sensible moderates like Collins or Murkowski, cares a wit. Yesterday,  Corey Booker implored Chairman Grassley to take the long view and understand “what goes around comes around” and this precedent will surely bite the Republicans when the shoe is someday on the other foot. Grassley and the other committee GOP members managed to keep straight faces. Whatever is in the more than 100K pages of correspondence documenting Brett Kavanaugh’s time in the W Bush White House –  and judging by how rattled the nominee became when Pat Leahy pressed him on stolen emails from that period, there may be some fire there  –  nothing is going to be provided in a timely fashion and will have zero affect on this rubber stamp ritual.

Precedents mean nothing to the GOP because they presuppose a certain preeminence of truth, which no longer motivates the Republican rank and file in the slightest. Moreover, assuming the GOP cares about the future is a fool’s errand… they don’t. Like Trump, Republicans live for today and only for today, locked into perpetual survival mode, addicted gamblers at the racetrack living race to race. Securing the country’s future is not good nihilist politics; it’s for snowflakes. Better to burn out than fade away.

Fox/AM, fully responsible for GOP disdain toward anything past today’s news cycle, and relentlessly engaged in spinning the deleterious results of such myopia, is ever ready to pretend McConnell never refused to consider the SCOTUS nominee of a President in good standing should the Democrats ever get audacious enough to follow suit. As in every hour of each day since the network’s inception, an army of storytellers will gaslight yesterday’s truths in support of today’s lies without thought, an autonomic nervous system of deceit…. and the base won’t blink, in fact they’ll demand it.  “Who is this Garland guy they’re talking about?… never heard of him!”

In the fight for the soul of American governance, the Democrats are like a kid with parents horrified by violence taking on a bully with a dad screaming “that’s my boy!”  They don’t bring a knife to a gunfight; they bring a spatula.

After Tsar Nicholas was deposed in 1917, the Kerensky government, concerned Russia’s infant democratic experiment may suffer, decided not to arrest a Bolshevik troublemaker named Lenin. That good deed did not go unpunished.

Of course Brett Kavanaugh could insist that papers from his W years be made available, rightly confident they probably wouldn’t change a vote and his stature would benefit. Instead he used weasel words when questioned on the subject. “Not my place to get involved…a matter between the legislative and executive branches to decide.” As piss poor as it was illuminating.

From the looks of things so far, Kavanaugh is Gorsuch 2.0 right on down the line. Frankly, and this may seem unduly harsh, but that makes it no less true… Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are Stephen Miller, but they got picked when choosing sides for basketball. Not a whole lot of daylight.

Stare decisis, shmare podices…at the end of the day we know exactly where they stand. They’re more dynamic Samuel Alitos. Clarence Thomas with overblown senses of entitlement. In other words,  like the man who they owe their comfy lifetime positions to, precedent doesn’t mean squat.  Their opinions will simply justify their predispositions at the expense of this country’s downtrodden, and proponents of safe and sensible anything.

Listening to Lee and Kavanaugh wax intellectual about the Federalist Papers, aside from making one not hungry for a good long while, unintentionally struck the right tone for the whole sorry charade. A group of white men so cynical and obtuse toward the institutions they find themselves in control of, they figure  pretending to abide essential standards and safeguards is more than enough, and all the serfs now at their heel are entitled to. Elections do have consequences. Sometimes they are disastrous…. and without precedent. BC

I had just been freed from having to work the dreaded lunch shift waiting tables at a Pennsylvania Avenue restaurant and was entering my favorite dive two doors down, where my roommate was the bartender. My plan was to spend the afternoon with her, drinking away what I would now not earn, but I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked in. The lunch hour crowd was glued to the TV set over the bar; I had just missed it, but was in time for the immediate aftermath. The space shuttle Challenger appeared heading off as normal when suddenly it disintegrated into gnarled trails of smoke.

It was stunning, literally. Nobody was able to react, instead everyone just stared at the set. Several more replays only added to the pall; nobody had any words. And then a woman burst into tears, asking aloud how such a thing could happen. Challenger, only minutes before part of a process that had become so routine it was no longer even covered live on the major networks, became a paralyzing disaster. In the blink of an eye, a crew gone, our space omnipotence in tatters. Real time national tragedy.

On January 18, 1986 President Ronald Reagan underwent yet another surgery to remove polyps from his colon. There was no denying that, after taking a  bullet and later suffering colon cancer, Reagan was beginning to look at least like every one of his 75 years. While his popularity remained high, there was a feeling the White House was on auto pilot. It would eventually come to light Oliver North was selling tow missiles to Iran as ransom for captive Americans and funneling the money to evade the Boland Amendment, which prohibited US financial support of insurgents seeking the overthrow of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. History would report Reagan was anything but in charge of his foreign policy team in January of 86’.

Yet and still,  ten days after an  intrusive medical procedure, there he was addressing the nation, assuaging its grief, beguiling us from the unimaginable with straightforward words of basic decency.  Whatever opinion one had of President Reagan, at that moment, during that address, it felt obscene to do anything other than accept his condolences for a nation in mourning, his leadership of a country stunned and unmoored by such an unexpected turn of events. In short, the Gipper was earning his paycheck, performing a significant function of the job we twice elected him to do.

It is more testament to the awesome power of the Presidency than the individual’s unique prose or cadence that quotes from such occasions are revered by history. Yet and still, when Reagan finished by reciting a poem, avering the crew had “slipped the surly bonds of Earth…to touch the face of God.” He achieved some measure of greatness that no scandal or mismanagement could deface.

Flashing forward to last week, such recollections only amplify our current shame and abasement. The send off for John McCain at the National Cathedral was appropriate to his accomplishments as a fixture in the US Senate and perhaps the nation’s most famous war hero. Virtually the entire array of our living leadership, past and present, Republican and Democrat, was invited to the poignant ceremony.

That McCain wanted both of the men who stymied his quest for the White House to offer eulogies, speaks to a humility that is part and parcel of the job they denied him. And, of course, the crowd’s bipartisan composition punctuated what he understood to be the essence of democratic governance.

The whole affair was a wonderful display of the best of our aspirations. While soprano Renee Fleming caressed the mourners with her version of “Danny Boy”, one could be forgiven for forgetting, at least for the moment, our national plight, who was right then lumbering around one of his golf courses, tweeting nastiness in between mulligans… persona non grata.

Explaining to students a hundred years hence why a sitting POTUS was overtly shunned from such an important national event will be a challenge, no pun intended. For now we are left with the ugly truth, as awful as it is inane… we elected one of our very worst to the nation’s highest office. How else to explain such a surreal image? A sitting President effectively banned from  a gathering of the entirety of living US governance.

Just being disagreeable doesn’t warrant such exclusion; you have to be despicable. Mere dishonesty would never justify so grievous a snub; you have to be a liar, a slanderer of people’s good names. Certainly being politically partisan would not beckon such  leperous exile on a sitting President; he would have to be dangerously divisive, ever concerned only with his personal ambitions, an hourly enemy of national unity.

Of course all but his wretched core know this noxious criteria fits our pariah-in-chief to a tee. What will be hard for future generations to understand, presuming we survive Trumpism and posterity does not become propaganda, is why so many who knew better tolerated such a hazardous departure from all established precedent. How is it possible to go in one election from a man invited to give a eulogy at the funeral of a foe he vanquished, to a sitting President from his own party told in no uncertain terms he was not welcome to attend the same service? Who could possibly abide such a situation? You got me on that one. BC