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Meet The Press has aired every Sunday since November 6, 1947. Each week it discusses vital current events with those possessing opinions and influence deemed relevant enough to justify their invitation to participate on the show. To be asked onto Meet The Press confirms one has established credentials worthy of enough respect to be taken seriously on the national and world scene, heady stuff. Through military conflicts, economic trauma, political and social upheaval, an invitation from the Sunday morning forum has always been seen as a feather in the career cap of most any public servant. Turning down the request for anything other than the most significant reason was rare indeed, until very recently.

Last Sunday, MTP moderator, Chuck Todd informed viewers the show had reached out to all 53 Senate Republicans with an invitation to be interviewed about their President’s unprecedented attempt to subvert the 2020 US Presidential election… nobody accepted. Not a single GOP Senator was prepared to go on the record regarding Trump’s claims the contest he lost by a relatively robust 73 electoral votes, not to mention more than 6 million overall ballots, was rigged against him, sans any evidence of course.

Now, in their defense, some were clearly busy with very important projects. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for example, made clear on Twitter her mind share was on public health in her home state. “As Chairman of the Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, one of my top priorities is ensuring healthier communities across Alaska.” Forget that, at 79.3 Covid cases per 100,000, Alaska is failing miserably at containing the pandemic’s spread just when the long arctic winter night forces everyone inside to aggravate matters, Murkowski’s attention and schedule are fixed. American democracy will have to wait. As will, apparently, any GOP pressure on the current administration to cooperate in a transition that experts say will be vital to the incoming team’s ability to save lives.

Murkowski wasn’t alone, either. Rob Portman of Ohio was still awash in the glow of his state giving its electoral votes to Trump, even as he appeared far less certain of who actually won the election. Ohio did its part. Buckeye voters, Portman tweeted, knew Trump “has the right policies.” Susan Collins, granted yet another chance by Maine voters to redeem her tarnished reputation for independence and integrity, was more interested in lobsters. Though only capable of a feeble shout out that the process she is certain legitimately granted her a fifth term, only provided Joe Biden an “apparent victory,” and with US democracy pushed to the brink, Collins was more focused on the $36 million “awarded to Maine lobstermen & women to date to help offset the financial harm they have experienced due to China’s retaliatory tariffs.” She was intent to make sure the twitterverse knew about the “funding I helped secure… through USDA’s Seafood Trade Relief Program.“ Perhaps she figured Chuck Todd wouldn’t be interested enough in such a parochial accomplishment.

Lamar Alexander, Mr. reasonable institutionalist, had nothing to say about Trump’s rabid, fact-free claims of multi-state voter fraud. His silence comes despite pending retirement, which is supposed to free him from the clutches of MAGA servility. Fat chance. Maybe he figures it’s simply no use. Either way, the soon-to-be senior Senator from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn, possesses more than enough fascist fascination for the two of them as she dutifully makes the Fox/AM rounds, Herr Bunker Fuhrer’s Eva-on-the-spot. And on and on. Nothing to see here. The process will play out. Always has.

Trump doing his worst is the least surprising thing of this election. That his keystone despot routine now reflects more than anything else a metric for GOP despicability, sadly, comes in a photo-finish second in that same “no duh” department. It also confirms the damage one term of Fox/AM governance can, not only inflict, but fully normalize. In fact, anything else would have probably seemed too good to be true, a head fake to warily ponder while awaiting the other shoe to drop. What in the last four years provided any credence courage and honorable good faith would be displayed by more than a precious few outliers?

This is where America now dwells, within the firm expectation one of our two major political parties, AT BEST, will remain silent as its leader openly subverts the crux of our national identity. Of course, many Republicans are doing far worse than that in service to their constituents thirst for totalitarian sedition, a fact that should keep us sleepless through the 2022 mid-terms. Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House should fill us all with dread. The anemic Democratic down-ballot performance this cycle inspired no confidence in any firewall Nancy Pelosi claims exists. A GOP House will do more than ensure policy gridlock, it will codify seditious disinformation as the basis for US governance, Biden’s White House will immediately become a wounded lion encircled by hyenas, the Fox/AM narrative gnashing away at truth and substance.

One week later, Chuck Todd scraped the barrel’s bottom and finally found one Republican Senator, Kevin Kramer of North Dakota, to come on and address Trump’s sedition. Unfortunately, in addition to being just about the chamber’s least qualified member, with little more than one year of service, Kramer is distinguished for his involvement with graft involving the award of a southern border wall construction contract to a donor who fully circumvented federal procurement guidelines, instead relying solely on the President’s own “approval process.” Moreover, Kramer being about as servile a Trumpie eunuch as exists in the Senate, offers no meaningful insight as to what calling out his dangerous disgrace might look like.

Alas, Todd shamed his program’s tradition of tough inquiry and fidelity to facts by providing Kramer eight minutes of nearly uninterrupted platform to polish Trump’s dangerous guff, repackaging Rudy Guiliani’s outrageous freak show last week as something “the President has every right to.” Kramer, free from any challenge by the complacent moderator, claimed Trump’s circus has merely thus far lacked an “evidentiary” setting to present a smoking gun that will justify why millions of voters in half a dozen states should be fully disenfranchised. In response Todd was only capable of citing Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey’s tepid tweet, which did finally express impatience that Trump’s legal filings have all been baseless and recognized Biden as President-elect. Otherwise, Todd merely shrugged off Kramer’s fiction, appeared pressed for time and moved on. Tim Russert, Lawrence Spivak or even David Gregory, Todd is not, nor ever will be.

The incredible spectacle of a soundly defeated American President overtly subverting our electoral process with baseless claims he thinks up in between rounds of golf continues apace. In the midst of the gravest health crisis in US history – a catastrophe he alone is responsible for – which stands to kill up to half a million people by its one-year anniversary, Trump spends all of his time either plotting how to overthrow his duly elected opponent, or sabotage Biden’s coming term in office. Very few take issue with that synopsis.

Republicans in the House and Senate are now divided into three groups: one that either unapologetically cheers on or more circumspectly roots for Trump’s treason; another lesser number that wishes he would go away, but have no intention of inviting his tweet storms or the unhinged walking dead hordes they unleash; and Mitt Romney, who has merely lived up to the obligations of the oath he took, which within this soulless band of criminals and cowardly mediocrities makes him what passes for a hero. That’s it. Nothing could capsulize our ruin more clearly. We are right now a sick and corrupted nation with nothing to offer the world but a cautionary tale. BC

As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of ‘Lost Cause’ emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed.

Drew Gilpin Faust

There are few pages of American history that produce such a clear and decisive verdict to the objective analyst than the Civil War, particularly as to the victor and the vanquished. Nobody without an eye toward revision will argue who caused the conflict, why they seceded and what led to the defeated’s surrender. Yet and still, to this day, many will debate exactly those points, holding firm to tropes the facts have disqualified over and over again. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy remains our nation’s most enduring lie, influencing generations of southerners and their northern sympathizers to forsake truth in favor of a narrative meant primarily to justify grievances that retard their ability to accept change and the social progress it stimulates.

That so many in the south refuse to face the atrocity that defines their history speaks to the power of family and community lore. It’s hard to fashion a heroic epic around a basic premise that, in a nation founded on the equal rights of all to pursue happiness, one group should be entitled to own another. The math of that will never add up. So what you get is slavery as an economic and political abstraction, “a state’s right.” The victims become the slave owners, denied a sacred way of life by usurpers to the north, driven to impose their despicable tyranny on simple farmers and aristocrats, whose honor and civility will never be compromised, even if heroic armed struggle becomes necessary. And the slaves they claim a divine right to do with as they please? They are simplified as merely part and parcel of the “Dixie” way of life, which Yankees never could understand.

If this all sounds ridiculous, it should because, of course, it is and always has been. None of it makes any sense at all, as educated and self-aware southerners will be the first to tell you, think Pat Conroy. It is clinical character disorder passed on through the generations. It would constitute absurdist amusement if it wasn’t so damaging to so many, and so debilitating to American governance. But it is, and that’s not funny at all.

Through the decades its ugliness has endured, sometimes lying dormant, but never for too long. Lynchings to voter suppression, discrimination to police brutality, all a product to varying degree of this false narrative. And now it threatens American democracy as never before. Make no mistake, Trump/MAGA is simply the latest, and perhaps most virulent strain of Lost Cause madness.

Jasper County, Georgia is about 75 % white. However optimistic one wants to become about the victory Joe Biden eked out in the state, or the two Senate run-offs in January, they still have to contend with this voting bloc. In 2012 it gave GOP nominee, Mitt Romney almost 69% of its ballots. It’s a safe bet black residents contributed a statistically insignificant amount to that total. Eight years later Donald Trump, 22,000 lies in, impeached and fresh off miserably failing to contain a pandemic and the economic distress it wrought, and uninterested in presenting any vision at all received 75 % of Jasper County votes. Again, it’s a good bet the area’s black residents did not contribute much of anything to that total. Plenty of the same old thing.

Interviews of local Trump proponents provide a homogeneous symphony of MAGA rationale, a smorgasbord of Fox/AM staples. Everything from Biden within the throes of dementia to, incredibly, Kamala Harris the foreign-born Muslim, socialism to -the horror! – mask mandates, cancel culture phobia and always the baseless certainty Trump really won the election; “they” are stealing it right from under our noses. Just another southern tale of woe, more victimization at the hands of outsiders bent on their obsession to change us. As one Jasper County native made clear “my own children went off to college and came back brainwashed with socialism and Trump knows this. He’s done something about it.“

Like the way too many who lean on Lost Cause fiction to ennoble their festering biases, Trump is always looking to rationalize his rabid monomania. He only cares if you are with him or against him, and if ensuring fealty requires only pandering to shortcomings he happens to also possess in spades; well, that’s a done deal. It has been effortless for Trump to glom onto Lost Cause grievance and amplify it gratuitously from his bully pulpit. After all, Trump has been racist dog whistling his entire life; it’s symmetry that’s smack dab in his wheelhouse. Now, two lost causes have merged into one, with
Trump’s current break from reality the embodiment to millions of the south’s 150-year refusal to accept its abject defeat on the battlefield, not to mention America and the world’s rejection of the basic tenet its crusade was always about.

The pernicious refusal through the decades of misguided multitudes to accept any blame at all for the cataclysm their forbearers forced on our country generations ago has made healing impossible, and periodic national trauma leached from the same toxic well inevitable. It’s here again, perhaps more delusional and destructive than ever, our democracy pushed to the brink. That millions right now don’t just tolerate a President refusing to recognize a resounding electoral defeat, but convince themselves he is courageously carrying their civic banner by doing so, not only clarifies acute collective delusion, but employs it as righteous sedition. Sound familiar?

Roughly a century and a half ago, one northern lawmaker was asked whether the south was even capable of reunification. “Give them time,” the old pol said, “they suffer life the same as we do. Just give them time.” Watching thousands of Trump’s maskless and fully delusional wretched core amble up Pennsylvania Avenue last Saturday, it’s easy to believe that observation is even less reliable now as it was then, and considerably more expensive. Worse, time doesn’t seem much in abundance these days. Biden’s got two years, and the clock is running. BC

Anyone who ever hoisted a warming draft in a plastic cup at the Bottle & Cork in Dewey Beach, Delaware will tell you there are few places more hedonistically raunchy. Although it has always branded itself as a “ premier concert venue,” and in fact does book a steady slate of noteworthy acts, on sultry August Saturday evenings I could get up on stage and belt out my worst with few taking too much notice. What brings summer crowds to “the Cork” is the hope of romance, however brief and transient. The Cork cauldron includes just several ingredients… males and females, testosterone and way too many Jaigermeister shooters. One doesn’t need a degree in sociology to accurately predict that stew will serve up conflict… plenty of it. Rare is the weekend Cork outing that doesn’t include box seats to drunken melees that quickly spill into the parking lot once bouncers intervene.

In the early ‘90s I was hard to miss. Six and a half feet tall and 225 reasonably well sculpted pounds made me easy to spot in most any crowd, and a target perhaps for malcontents with something to prove. One Saturday night at the Cork long ago, just such a provocateur decided to confront me. It wasn’t my first rodeo, and I was braced by a couple hours worth of beer consumption, so an otherwise sensible inclination to avoid escalation was less compelling. What appeared to me as cutoffs held up by a belt, a host of body ink and a wallet secured by a chain advertised both the very lax Cork dress requirements and that my boy was not in Dewey for the surf. He was greasy and shorter than I was, younger and even drunker as well. Although he had several friends backing his guff, I had a number of affiliates I could trust to at least ponder having my back in the general vicinity, so my blood pressure remained in check.

He claimed I had bumped into him and spilled his beer. I answered that, if I had, it was an accident and I meant no harm. Momentarily disarmed by my sane response, he moved on to accusing me of “looking hard” at him. I assured him he was the last person I would extend a glance to. I stepped on his foot and dissed him was the next complaint. And why did I act like I was better than he was? Finally, my patience exhausted and temper on the rise, I moved closer so only he could hear me. I asked him why he felt it necessary to come up with a list of excuses to justify calling me out. If he wanted to go why not just say so? Was he hoping I’d talk him out of it? Why was it important that he come up with reasons to get busy? Just man up about the whole thing; stop being a whiny bitch. Let’s do this!

I must have looked more intense than I thought because two bouncers asked us if we wanted the boot, and if not to chill out ASAP. By the time I had assuaged their concerns and reaffirmed my good standing, my nemesis and posse had vanished. And that was that, another senseless fight headed off at the pass, the night’s festivities allowed to continue unabated.

The millions of us who sweated out an excruciating “red mirage” scenario created by the impossibly reckless efforts of a nihilist President to politicize the public safety requirements a deadly pandemic necessitates, now face our own instigators looking to start something with excuses they know are baseless. Nobody believes Trump has any avenue anywhere to win an election he decisively lost, certainly no elected official. But that isn’t stopping them from hissing aggrievement to justify flouting more than 250 years of American democratic sensibilities and pretend their loser was robbed.

That we’ve always known this showdown was inevitable – as in 2016, Trump promised incessantly at his superspreader rallies leading up to the election that he would be the world’s ugliest loser – doesn’t make it any less disturbing or stressful now that it’s upon us. Fascists are always bullies and can only get their way if the other side backs down. Ask Neville Chamberlain. And so we get ridiculous guff about irregularities and fraud, ballot dumps and postal workers in on the take… blah, blah, blah. You made us spill our beer!!

Here are the facts. Biden now leads in the national popular count by more than five million votes, a total that will only grow as the final ballots are tallied. In the four most contested states that sealed his Electoral College majority, Biden leads by more than 100K votes, a lead that continues to steadily grow. In Georgia and Arizona, the two most contested states in that group, Biden leads by at least 12.5K votes. Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by less than 10K votes. In Pennsylvania his lead is now more than 50K, a margin that exceeds Trump’s entitlement to a recount. Biden’s 145K margin in Michigan alone doubles Trump’s 2016 advantage in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania combined. His total “Blue Wall” margin of victory now approaches a quarter million votes.

In other words, this is no more a “disputed election” than 2012, or 1996, or 1952, and certainly, and most relevantly, 2016. In fact, by most every credible account, America can be proud as it’s ever been of how our electoral apparatus serviced a record number of voters, during a rampaging pandemic no less. Trump has no more valid argument to contest this election than Adlai Stevenson had after Eisenhower spanked him for the second time back in 1956. So why do so many have the drizzles about “legal challenges” or “audits” by individual states?! You stepped on my foot!

That Fox/AM is capable of convincing millions of Trump’s wretched core what they already knew they would be certain about should their grievance empath lose is no more surprising than Mitch McConnell’s refusal to validate an election he just accepted his own re-election from. Orwell anyone? This is what MAGA does! This is the GOP we are now burdened with. Nobody thought it would be otherwise and it isn’t.

What’s most important at this minute is clarity. Of course, after four years and the 25,000 lies that form the basis of the Trump Presidency, as well the GOP’s full servility to it, that’s easier said than done. Yet and still, without it we needlessly extend our pain while permitting Trump, at the very moment his chickens should all be coming home to roost, at the exact time we should be celebrating our system for surviving the greatest threat it’s ever faced, to further damage what he’s always despised, for no other aim than to rebrand yet another of his unqualified failures.

History will show his legacy to be nothing but incompetence, corruption, dishonesty and treachery. Right now he’s simply doing what he’s always done, picking a fight while claiming it’s a righteous response to the wrongs we dealt him. This kabukifest of “pursuing all legal remedies” only clarifies a still cowered nation that somehow can’t find the resolve to do anything but humor its bully’s rabid whims. That needs to change yesterday. Call a crook a crook, and a two-bit coup attempt a two-bit coup attempt, and slap him silly on the way out the door. Then make his continued existence difficult. As for his wretched core; it starts with each of us. Call them what they relentlessly confirm they are… ignorant fascists with little tolerance for election results they disdain. You want to foist nihilist autocracy, that’s up to you. But we’re going to label you the plague you are. They want to rumble? Fine, let’s go. But, wherever it leads, make sure there is certainty what the fight is about. BC

I’ve experienced misfortune and been down and out enough times to understand what despair feels like. Two occasions since November, 2016 stand out in that regard. The first occurred on Trump’s first official day as President, when he made remarks at CIA Headquarters that erased any doubt regarding what he was and wasn’t capable of, how at odds with basic presidential temperament and competence the Trump era was going to be. In front of a wall honoring heroes of the American intelligence community he would quickly scapegoat, the bully pulpit became just that; the world according to an unhinged narcissist became US policy, and the national interest was now subordinate to rabid whims conjured by an unstable mind.

Watching CNN’s stunned panel attempt to make sense of a President bragging how he was “like a smart person,” because an uncle was an MIT professor, and the military “gave us tremendous percentages of votes,” not to mention wondering why the US didn’t “keep the oil” in Iraq, I lost my appetite, which only happens within the throes of a virus or dire emotional stress. Anyone could see the next four years were going to be very ugly. No attempt to normalize this was going to be anything but a partisan exercise meant to gaslight the fears anyone with eyes, ears and a working memory of established best practices would be guided by.

The second occasion, far worse by comparison, was at 5:00AM Wednesday morning. I had gone to bed fairly confident in the “red mirage” scenario, cautiously optimistic the tide would turn blue as votes were counted. To me, it was all about Wisconsin and Michigan. If Biden couldn’t carry them both, there was no chance. I grabbed my phone and anxiously pulled up the data; he was desperately close in Wisconsin, but was not moving the needle in Michigan.

My heart sank and I felt like throwing up. I imagined a Trump Inaugural rant to thousands of the wretched core, promising revenge on his critics as chants of “lock them up” echoed across the Ellipse. I shuddered, or maybe had a seizure; it was too awful to fathom. What was my next move? Since my grandmother was born in Ireland, apparently there was a path to emigrate there. Or, maybe get Sue and the kids up north and search out resistance fellow travelers? It was hard to think clearly at that moment, but there was no doubt in my mind four more years of MAGA was not doable for me! …And then, before I could finish my first cup of coffee, the red haze began to clear at a tortuously slow pace.

This weekend we have everything to be thankful for. When all the ballots are counted, cognizant of the sad fact so many who produced the civic catastrophe we’ve suffered had no problem validating their role by asking for more, Joe Biden’s victory will end up perhaps as decisive a verdict as we realistically could have hoped for. Certainly the wave of joyous relief punctuates the seismic power unleashed when we, and the world, accept the verdict of an American Presidential election. Four years ago that energy was dark and menacing. Now it is nothing short of existential rejuvenation, the final scene of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi provides the best mental image.

With church bells ringing in Paris, the free world celebrates with us. Pushed to the brink of the previously impossible prospect of actually perceiving the US as more threat than protector, the relieved sighs of NATO members are near as aerating as ours. The office of the Presidency has always been primarily responsible for our foreign policy; now we can reengage in our rightful role as dedicated leader instead of the feckless transactional bully Trump personifies.

It’s hard to imagine a more important position within the Biden Administration than Secretary of State. It will require the bulkiest of heavyweights, up to and including a former President, if Obama is inclined. Biden should at least offer it, all he can do is say no. The items on the repair list are endless… rejoining the Paris Climate agreement, the WHO, NATO, reestablishing some degree of credibility as a honest broker in the Middle East, reconfiguring our now disgraceful positions toward authoritarians, helping to mitigate the damage of Brexit, leading the coordination of a global response to Covid, and on and on.

At home the numbers get worse by the hour. Driven by the incomprehensible three-a-day Trump/2020 election rallies, and the August Sturgis calamity, where 460,000 covidiots spent a week ensuring the virus would be unleashed throughout the country just in time for fall’s opening of many school districts and colleges, we are now registering record highs of cases on a daily basis. Tragically high death counts are sure to follow.

It’s a certainty, even with a benign Trump posture up until inauguration, nothing meaningful will be done to help reverse things. In fact, one can easily imagine Trump rolling out another “thank you” superspreader tour, a chance for him to continue his nihilist railing, with after-office relevancy and a final financial fleecing of his base the goal. Biden will inherit a full blown national health crisis and immediately be forced to coordinate a federal response that millions, obedient to the odious propaganda mill they rely on for a world view narrative, will digest as immediate confirmation the worst case is upon them. No doubt MAGA governors from DeSantis to Ducey will cloak themselves in grievance righteousness while working diligently to nullify federal guidance. Thankless doesn’t begin to describe the task that awaits Biden; one shouldn’t wish it on an enemy.

Yet and still, now is not the time to dwell on our uncertain future. We remain a going democratic concern with more than 140 million of us determined enough to confront extraordinary circumstances in our efforts to matter. Instead, it is a time for celebrating our now accredited repudiation of the immediate past, a first giant step toward collective atonement for the unnecessary damage we have done to our foundations, which, thankfully, still appear strong enough to deliver us from evil.

These last near four years have been a long slog, with more than a few hopeless moments. For many, myself included, it has awakened a patriotism we had no idea was so powerful and consuming. Never again will we take for granted the peaceful transfer of political power in this country, or the chaos and destructive uncertainty a President is capable of. Never again will we scoff at what we once digested as merely pro forma White House platitudes regarding national unity because we now understand what the alternative sounds like and produces. Moving forward most of us now take to heart the line Michael Douglas delivered in what then seemed a formulaic and trite film, An American President… “the Presidency is completely about character.”

More than 275 essays in, the DR will stay ever vigilant until and immediately through Inauguration Day. Make no mistake, this is a very dangerous time. The hyena is cornered and as rabid as ever, and he still has access to the codes. Trump has demonstrated time and again no depth is too low, and nobody will be surprised if he and his MAGA bottom feeders lash out to descend further. The mission statement was to chronicle the Trump era until it ended, come what may. Thankfully, there is now a widening beam of light at the end of the tunnel. When we fully emerge The Dystopia Report will need a new name and purpose. That’s the best problem I’ve experienced in a long time, the rewarding culmination of what John Lewis termed “Good Trouble.” I’ll take it. God bless the United States of America! BC

The first essay ever posted on the DR detailed my estrangement from a trusted, father-figure colleague due to his devout subservience to Fox/AM and the President it created. In describing my alienation I drew a line in the sand as to the intolerance I was willing to generate when it came to accommodating MAGA-infused tropes and the nihilist narrative, refreshed on the hour by Fox/AM and Trump’s twitter feed, they constructed. As otherwise wonderful as my friend “Jim” was, as many great talks we had engaged in over the years, as much wisdom as he afforded me on everything from spirituality to parenting, his wholehearted embrace of MAGA became a bridge too far for me, and that was that.

He died recently. We had met for lunch just before the national Covid lockdown, a too rigid and awkward encounter his unsettling physical decline and the intractable division our world views assured setting a tone no degree of mutual good will could fully offset. I left sure it was the final time I would see him, distressed such certainty didn’t unnerve me more. Had “Jim” passed five years ago, I would have surely spoken at least some words at his send off. As things turned out, I didn’t attend, unsure his widow wanted me there, while confident a number of my former work colleagues did not.

Meanwhile, it appears I lost yet another friendship several days ago. He was by no means a MAGA adherent, just sick to death of stridency on the subject, which it seems he now deems as hurtful obsession he won’t tolerate; I am the “radical left” and don’t care about him or his wonderful family at all, only my hatred for many people he still counts as friends. The blow up came on Facebook, where else, and almost immediately after he renounced me I was saturated with regret and reached out to apologize with no caveats. I made clear I was out of line pushing the thread past the good-natured bounds he established, regretting I had not first chatted about personal inanities before pressing my point. I tried to reassure him I was anti-MAGA, not radical left, but either way, it wasn’t worth blowing up a decades-long association with one I held in such high esteem. There were no “buts” in my entreaty; the apology was unconditional. So far no response.

It is Breeder’s Cup time, the World Thoroughbred Championships. Before 2016, my routine was to head to Ocean City and hook up with several fellow horse fanatic buddies, who I went back decades with. A weekend of bonding around exactas and pick 4s was an annual highlight that came as sure as daylight savings time. Now I’m persona non grata. OC is Trump country, up and down Coastal Highway there is little love for “libs” publicly disdainful of the Trump train. Haven’t had so much as a word with any of them since 2018. If civil war is not upon us this Saturday, I’ll be betting alone from my living room. Whatever great calls I make on racing’s biggest day will go unnoticed.

The personal wreckage the Trump Presidency has inflicted is vast and lasting. Whatever direction this election takes, it’s doubtful what I’ve lost will be regained despite anyone’s best efforts. That this same story is told and retold coast to coast speaks to trauma that won’t dissipate any time soon. How much it’s weakened us is not yet quantifiable, but the effects will be felt in countless ways moving forward.

The national brand we took for granted – our effortless ability, facilitated by shared confidence in the peaceful exchange of governing power, to benignly cast politics as more sport than conflict, more discussion than argument – has been lost, probably for good. Of course, things can still get much worse. Regardless, we have learned these last four years that civic failures – the first one electing a President who made clear from the outset national unity was the last thing he cared about, the next permitting our collective response to pandemic to become fodder for his rabid political requirements – can produce existential calamity that takes on a life of its own. The world’s shining beacon of freedom is now a heaving mass of divisive dysfunction, savaged by a malignancy that, if not removed, will metastasize into a terminal condition and kill our democracy. Win or lose tonight, Trump will show us his worst, which is all he’s ever capable of.

Trump didn’t just happen in a vacuum; he is a hideously debilitating symptom, but not the root cause of the disease. MAGA has been bolstered by a number of developments. Profound economic dislocation ushered in by the Great Recession, a torrent of political dark money made possible by Citizens United, insidious blowback produced by our first black Presidency, the increasing, often overwhelming complexity of daily life, all amplified by an unhealthy preoccupation with social media platforms, has collaborated to create a perfect storm for projecting destructive grievance and resentment.

Yet and still the Rosetta Stone is as clearly identifiable now as it was in 2016. Fox/AM’s narrative reconfirms every hour, 24/7, the validity of an alternate universe based on lies and distortions, the Orwellian proposition that news equals preconceived bias and facts are the enemy of truth. Millions of its devout consumers, including our current POTUS, have developed the entirety of their world view without reading a word, instead investing hours absorbing the monologues of Limbaugh, Beck, Levin and Hannity. For near three decades more learned and thoughtful opinion makers insisted confronting Fox/AM slander was beneath their pay grade. Incredibly, even now, the breadth of its influence and perilous scope of its ever-present malevolence still escapes too many of them.

An old college friend of mine, a DC veteran and perhaps as sage about national policy as anyone, has always been a challenge to discuss political matters with, never wanting to place to much importance on a single perspective, always carving out space for other contributors, different explanations. These days his outlook is pessimistic and the reason is singular: the GOP is now beholden to a fantasy with no relationship to the reality it claims to explain. What good can be expected from such a situation? Millions certain in the veracity of easily discredited lies defines North Korea. That it now also explains the Republican Party means national unity requires the rest of us to accept lies geared to aggrandizing Trump, doing so only makes us one and the same as Kim’s pitiable subjects. Bitterly divided or totalitarian, pick your poison.

Whatever happens today, whoever wins this election, by however much, Fox/AM will be spinning it tomorrow with the same absurd dishonesty they spun it yesterday. That narrative is why we suffer today and why, even if Biden prevails and Trump is vanquished, national “healing” and bipartisanship will not be possible. Years ago, about when I was becoming fully cognizant of how damaging 24/7 white resentment on the AM dial could become, and the Fox News channel appeared to be ever more popular in doctors’ waiting rooms and on televisions in fitness centers, I asked my father his opinion. He shrugged and called it “the price you pay for freedom of speech.” On election night 2020, with our fate as a going democratic concern in the balance, I have no better answer than he did, but I am certain the price has gotten much higher. More importantly, it’s hard to see how we can keep paying it indefinitely without destroying what it’s meant to protect. BC

Negligent homicide is a criminal charge brought against a person who, through criminal negligence, allows another person to die.

Definition of Negligent Homicide

Putting aside hospitals, private residences and old-age homes, almost all of these superspreader events (SSEVs) took place in the context of (1) parties, (2) face-to-face professional networking events and meetings, (3) religious gatherings, (4) sports events, (5) meat-processing facilities, (6) ships at sea, (7) singing groups, and, yes, (8) funerals.

Working Definition of What Qualify as Superspreader Events for Covid-19

In September of 2017, Spencer Hight, his blood alcohol level four times the legal limit for driving, burst into a party his ex-wife was hosting and gunned down eight people. Almost two years later Texas authorities arrested the bartender who served him that evening, charging Lindsey Glass under the “Sale to Certain Persons” law. Prosecutors contended it was egregious Glass continued to serve Hight even as he acted unhinged and severely intoxicated round after round.

A Missouri woman was charged in 2012 with involuntary manslaughter connected with a party she hosted for her son’s friends. After acting as mixologist for the kids throughout the evening, fully cognizant she was responsible for a number of drunken teenagers, the woman allowed them to drive home. One killed a 16-year old girl. Her parents were not too forgiving about it.

It is a uniquely human trait to demand accountability when tragedy strikes, often in addition to or even at the expense of the responsibility victims have for their own sad circumstances. Involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide laws address this inclination. Blame is often a balm for the frustration we feel when innocents suffer devastating results as a result of inexplicable degrees of separation. Yet and still, the laws are really meant to punish those who in fact clearly played a role as events unfolded, sometimes actually as the primary driver of the entire sequence. These aren’t merely scapegoats victims’ loved ones require for closure; they are fully culpable and to blame. They deserve to pay a price. Which brings us to Donald Trump.

How Covid-19 spreads is no mystery. Nobody believes large public gatherings can be held, particularly when attendees refuse to wear masks or seek space between each other, without risking the health of themselves and whoever they later come in close contact with. Examples of this rule are easy to find. A major Coronavirus cluster was created in Albany, Ga. after about 100 people attended a funeral and dispersed throughout the rural county. In Washington, one person infected 52 people at a single choir practice. The Rose Garden announcement of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court demonstrated to the nation how one event can lead to multiple infections, US Senators and MAGA elite just as vulnerable as anyone else.

We know with full confidence it is not “if” but “how many”group events will infect with Covid, and the larger the gathering the more will get sick, not just among the attendees, but throughout the communities they disperse to. It’s not theory, it’s fact that nobody disputes, but too many don’t seem to care much about it. Number one among those is Trump, himself, as recklessly disdainful of unarguable particulars his own White House Coronavirus task force has detailed as anybody.

In addition to certainty about how public gatherings spread Covid, we know the virus is dangerous, lethal to particular groups with underlying health conditions, particularly in minority communities. The numbers are clear, in just eight months near a quarter million have died directly from Covid-19. It is assured, not simply a random possibility, that spreading this virus will kill people. Just like, say drunk driving, there is no doubt that opportunity and increased numbers will result in the deaths of those exposed to others who were more reckless than they should have been.

If an otherwise upstanding citizen has a glass or two of wine at dinner and afterwards gets into a fatal accident that may or may not have been their fault, a slightly elevated blood alcohol could determine the legal consequences. However, if some guy pounds tequila shots and drives head-on into a family, his condition and how he got there is going to be the sole determinant of his legal fate. Negligent homicide accommodates the presumption he understood how criminally reckless his decision to drive was, accepting the consequences for anything that resulted.

Connecting the dots of our current national Covid status constructs a bleak picture. America heads into an ever darkening winter season at near 100K new Covid cases per day. Both deaths and hospitalizations are alarming public health officials from one coast to the other. Everywhere, in rural or urban jurisdictions alike, hospital administrators fret their ICU capacity is close to filled. Expert epidemiologists now grimly warn we stand at the precipice of the worst case we feared from the start, and necessitated the initial national lockdown nobody wanted to repeat. In other words, As Dr. Fauci grimly assessed last week, “we are losing control” of this pandemic.

Yet there is the Trump Campaign, day in and day out, playing the public health equivalent of quarters with Rum 151 shots up to three times per day. Wisconsin is perhaps the country’s worst virus hotspot, Trump packs together thousands in GreenBay and ridicules his opponent for “hiding in his basement.” Pennsylvanians are getting sicker by the day, but there is the President in Allentown hissing to maskless throngs all “fake news” wants to talk about is “Covid, Covid, Covid.”

Nowhere in the world is anybody doing what Trump engages in as often as his plane and advance teams will allow. After infecting himself with his own recklessness, the leader of the free world now literally equates patriotism with a willingness to inflict on others the condition he couldn’t get to an entire floor of world class medical treatment fast enough once his symptoms began. Of course, nobody else has such access; and thousands are dying and will continue to do so directly because of his unwillingness to modify what he knows is responsible for that carnage. Get another round over here! Pronto! We’re due in Florida soon! …It’s the negligent homicide, stupid! BC

Anybody who suffers the physical indignities of a bad back can share how a debilitating “episode” transpires. First, there is the sudden twinge, which immediately stirs the pathway of anxiety as the sufferer recognizes a telltale sign that a downward spiral may be in the offing. Separate and repeated spasms follow, each with their own serving of a fresh stab of pain. At some point the individual assaults merge into one long siege of discomfort, intermittently punctuated by agony when the beleaguered is forced to make various movements. Basically, hell on earth until the cycle completes itself.

Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign made clear his election would be one long and massive bout with chronic pain for the nation, as his relentless lies attacked the torso of our democracy. From the start Fox/AM’s Frankenstein shocked our system as he ignored long abided markers for veracity and personal attacks on opponents; MAGA was a spasm of repressed grievance and resentment. By the time Election Day arrived it was fair to ask what country the candidate was describing as he hissed about dystopian ruin our first black President and his progressive abetters were responsible for. Even back in 2016, his entire campaign’s leadership team certain of defeat, with each securing a personal lifeboat attuned to future ambitions they hoped would successfully erase the taint their embrace of MAGA slathered on their resumes, Trump promised he wouldn’t concede, repeatedly blaming a “rigged” system for his circumstances.

Now, 22,000 Presidential lies into our nihilist odyssey, Election Day nears and we can’t be confident our daily dose of disabling sciatica won’t do all he can to foment civil war if he loses. But even worse, we can’t be near certain he won’t win! That’s a disgrace we don’t deserve to live down and, should we manage to make it to the other side still intact as a going democratic concern, can never afford to forget.

Yet and still, with November 3 ever closer it’s essential to the DR’s mission statement that it dwell some on what we are voting to usher in, if for no other reason than as a response to critics who claim way too much of the last 2 1/2 years has been spent railing about what we should be forcing out! Joe Biden has developed a nice little tag line that decency and integrity are principle issues on the Decision/2020 ballot. The only people arguing against those broad strokes are spewing certified MAGA false equivalence about Biden’s regrettable tolerance of his son’s career moves being on a par with the ethics catastrophe this President embodies on the hour, a Clinton server redux. So, to go along with Biden’s obvious observation, three basic desires should strengthen our resolve as we wait in lines that can’t move fast enough.

Treating Allies as Friends Instead of Foes:

No matter how aggrieved one felt four years ago that America was footing too much of the burden for common defense against adversaries such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, it’s certain very few actually believed the proper gist of US diplomacy should be to, not simply insult allies, but actively undermine their governments. Germany is a perfect case in point. Not only has Trump spent the last four years constantly exhibiting his personal insecurities toward German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, berating her in both public and private, while lying about Germany’s position vis-a-vis Russia, but Ambassador Richard Grenell, a bunker poodle, has actually courted right-wing extremist political elements throughout the country he serves in.

Egregious doesn’t cut describing such actions. A vote for Biden accepts the previous notion that guided our foreign policy: American security is only as strong as the alliances it leads, and effective leadership requires respect for the led. Anything less is abdication. Statecraft is not an opportunity to score points with an incumbent’s base, or stock his quiver with rally punchlines; it is one of a President’s most important duties, one which history will be especially mindful of. Vote for the candidate who understands what before MAGA was taken for granted as obvious and indisputable.

Recognizing the Federal Government’s Importance to Our Quality of Life:

Nothing is more fundamental to Fox/AM’s nihilist narrative than the presumption federal careerists aren’t worth the cost of their cubicles. From Rush to Hannity, Varney to Carlson, and everyone in between, Fox/AM addicts, which for the first time includes our current POTUS, wake up and go to bed convinced no federal department – with the most notable exceptions of the Pentagon and Homeland Security – is anything but counterproductive and fully expendable. Two developments this week illustrate the lengths Trump and company will pursue to fulfill the prophecy Roger Ailes created thirty years ago, and how harmful such efforts are to most all Americans.

Vanity Fair reconstructed a March 20 meeting between a select group of American business heavyweights and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner; the subject was a rapidly expanding Covid-19 crisis and the best way to coordinate a federal government response. Attendees were stunned by what transpired. Instead of any outline of a federal plan to supply states with the essentials most were short on, like PPE, ventilators and testing supplies, Kushner declared “free markets will take care of this.” Several participants later recounted they figured he misspoke or their hearing was off, but no, Kushner meant every word. Any doubt was dispelled when he began to rail against New York Governor Mario Cuomo, knee deep in Covid sickness and mounting death: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.” Most in the room were left speechless. What words are available for responding to such wretchedness?

Meanwhile, today Ronald Sanders, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Salary Council, resigned in protest over a White House surge he called “nothing more than a smoke screen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty” of thousands of federal workers and their supervisors. Even the Soviets understood party members could not make the trains run on time by themselves. Apolitical government careerists, specialists in their fields, are essential. Trump and his son-in-law not only clarify their disdain for that proposition, but also the notion federal services beyond making war, purging immigrants or stomping protesters, are necessary at all.

A vote for Biden firmly rejects such rubbish in support of the reality that a country as large and geographically daunting as ours requires robust capabilities to coordinate and deliver on mandates the states often lack the resources to provide for themselves. Without that capability, we devolve into the “States of America,“ which dramatically weakens our nation.

Respecting the Office You Have Been Elected to Serve and Administer:

Whether it’s snide remarks about the White House being “a dump,” ceaseless efforts to sully his predecessors’ achievements, or disgracing the office by constantly abasing it to merely a prop in support of megalomaniacal hubris, Trump does nothing but injure the institution he was elected to protect and sustain. If we really don’t revere our Executive branch of government anymore, why even continue with the charade? From day one of his candidacy Trump bellowed he was doing us all a favor tolerating a term or two as POTUS. That so many actually embraced such guff as attractive delineation of his run for office provided all the red flag any thoughtful observer required to comprehend we had a big problem.

America and the liberty it is designed to reflect relies on three branches of government, each with its own specific role to play, and all expected to both compliment the actions of the others, while also providing vital checks when excesses arise. Do we want judges who scoff at justice and remind any and all they could be billing $500 an hour? How about anarchist lawmakers? Why would we countenance a President with disdain for his office? Say whatever you want about Joe Biden; nobody can claim his fondest dream isn’t becoming POTUS. There is zero doubt he will respect, even cherish, the office he serves, making every effort to leave it stronger and more vital than he found it. And the disarray he is certain to encounter makes that quality perhaps as important as any.

Fact is, EVERYTHING is on the ballot this time around! Four more years of what we currently endure will end the American experiment. Whatever faults or strengths Joe Biden now exhibits really do pale in comparison to the specter Trump’s re-election poses. However, obsessing on a negative is a very depressing way to pick a President. Fortunately, we can be confident Joe Biden checks plenty of the boxes one should require of who we honor with our country’s highest office. Accepting less, as we have learned these last near four years now, will make your back hurt… a lot! BC

To say my academic record in high school was undistinguished is like saying the Washington Football Team could be better. I epitomized the rebellious stoner, straight out of the movie Dazed and Confused, but far less interested (and interesting!) than the most stereotypical of the film’s characters. My central purpose while attending high school was not to attend, and when I was in class my teachers wished I wasn’t. How much? This much….

I had a geometry teacher my junior or senior year – four decades blurs personal chronologies – who was a wonderful guy. Funny, thoughtful, passionate about his subject, “Mr. Jones” was generally liked and respected by his students. In other words, he didn’t deserve having me in one of his classes. Truth is I liked him quite a bit myself; it was the subject I found impossible to embrace and impelled me to often seek distraction, which he quite understandably took issue with.

Finally, after so many unexcused absence reports, and trips to the vice principal’s office, as well as countless comedy routines between us the class enjoyed, even as the lesson plan suffered, Mr. Jones asked me to stop by his classroom one afternoon to talk about things. I don’t remember many of the conversation’s details other than the offer he made me: if I never came to class again, instead signing in at the school’s math lab every day, after which I was free to “do what it is you all do,” he would give me a C each grading period for the duration of the year. I remember first asking if he was joking; he wasn’t smiling. I recall a pang of shame as I realized a teacher was risking some degree of professional consequence for no other purpose than to exclude me from his life.

Even as I accepted the offer, I wasn’t sure if it was a test, or some sort of ploy to motivate me to take things more seriously, perhaps produce an epiphany about how deleterious my attitude was. Turns out it was only what Mr. Jones said it was. And so I ended up with a free hour after lunch and Cs for the remainder of the year. Looking back it’s yet another sad portion of my teenaged indifference to most things constructive, as well as a cautionary tale about otherwise good teachers giving up on kids who are giving up on themselves. Mr. Jones surely rationalized his bargain with the proposition I was costing my classmates their teacher’s focus, robbing them of his best efforts as he was forced to devote teaching time to the discipline of a selfish brat, unconcerned with anything or anyone but his own amusement. Tough to argue with that. Most reading this surely wouldn’t.

The story is appropriate here as America heads into winter registering close to 70K new cases of Covid-19 per day, with the virus now surging in 75% of the country. We are actually in a worse situation than back in March when we shut the country down, only now we appear to believe it’s a problem we can live with, although near a quarter million of us have done just the opposite. Half a million deaths by the one-year anniversary of the pandemic is now more likely than not. Incredibly, to say there is no White House policy is far too charitable; Trump wants his people to stop talking about it. Herd immunity, whatever that is other than pretending Coronavirus is the flu, will deliver us until a vaccine comes to the rescue, so hisses Trump at his daily superspreader events.

Like my teenaged ignorance in geometry class, our President grasps only Covidiocy with no interest or patience for any incarnation of thoughtful rigor. And now he’s fully acting out on his disdain for the subject. Whatever Trump experienced during his own bout with the virus, any epiphany that may have resulted was quickly consumed by steroidal and antibiotic side effects that seemed to only accentuate already prevalent psychotic mania. It’s fair to ask when the President will start exhorting Americans not to let Coronavirus symptoms keep them from being productive. Man up and down some DayQuil, we’ve got a miracle economic recovery to get after. Would anything really surprise? Of course the obscenity is how many are fully on board with the messaging, proudly displaying their own wretched selfishness. MAGA’s version of personal liberty.

When I discovered Facebook ten years ago it was a revelation. The ability to suddenly find friends and acquaintances I hadn’t even thought of in years was intoxicating and made the world seem significantly smaller and more manageable, less transient. I remember a friend, who having discovered the platform perhaps a year earlier, assure me the novelty would wear off with the realization that there was a reason I had forgotten about many of those I now exalted about reconnecting with. At the time the observation seemed preposterously cynical, these days less so.

Turns out, as Facebook and Instagram clarify every day, our leaderless nation has become divided into those with sensibilities similar to Mr. Jones and a bunch of selfish brats. The scolds and the scolded, who really couldn’t care less. Whether it was happy hours in Florida bars back in mid-April or weddings down in Texas just last week, FB has reliably documented the historic failure of America’s response to Covid-19. It strikes me that, 30 years from now, if the worst you were touched by this pandemic is your daughter couldn’t have the wedding you both dreamed of, or your son’s basketball season was canceled, well, you got pretty damn lucky. Of course, too many don’t see it that way.

Honestly, it would be nice if one could credibly argue I was simply creating a straw man to make a broader point. Were one to put aside the wretched core, who flock maskless to Trump rallies, or even the 460K bikers who couldn’t put off Sturgis for one year, to convincingly maintain I am off base about others would be refreshing. I’m not, and a typical weekend now bears that out.

On Friday morning I went to my credit union to deposit a check. My teller was a lovely middle-aged woman named Veronica. Things were slow so we had a pleasant conversation. Masked up I asked if she and hers were staying safe? From behind the plastic partition she sadly revealed her 91-year old mother from the Chicago area had recently passed from Covid. A bit taken aback I expressed my sympathies and, lamely, clumsily, asked if she had been ailing before the virus infected her. No, answered Veronica with resignation, apparently her mother was a marvel of health and mental acuity…. until Covid got her. That night Judy Woodruff of the PBS News Hour, which Trump and his nihilists have branded the very epitome of “fake news,” closed out the broadcast with a now customary glimpse of five wonderful lives cut short by Covid-19. It was easy to imagine Veronica’s mother included as one of them. I felt enraged.

On Sunday evening another very lovely middle-aged woman I have known and admired since I required a comb and hair conditioner posted some recently snapped pictures on Facebook. Beautiful as ever, she was lined up with half a dozen of her equally pretty besties, capturing for posterity their attendance at a wedding of one of their children. Behind them a maskless band was playing, to the left a long table of other participants enjoying each other’s company within obscenely cozy confines… again, not a mask to be seen, not a concern exhibited. It could have been a picture from 2019; in fact, I checked hard to make certain it wasn’t a “memory” instead of yesterday. It was definitely the latter. The comments section of her group shot was filled to the brim with compliments like “looking good ladies” or “beautiful group” etc. I stifled the urge to send something along the lines of… “Covid, shmovid, I suppose,” which probably would have earned a block/unfriend response. Yet and still, the temptation was stronger than I wished it was; disgusted was the only way to feel, particularly with Veronica’s look of resigned sadness still a fresh image.

Four years of MAGA has come to this. We now are anything but an exceptional nation, instead defined by an ugly dichotomy of people who care and people who don’t, with the POTUS actually basing his entire re-election message on the latter group’s disdain for decency and civic virtue at precisely the moment we need them most. Make no mistake, the idea a revived economy by definition requires accepting Covid’s worst is a notion only an enemy of America could conjure. That too many we each know now nestle behind such sedition to justify their refusal to sacrifice most anything at all, even as 220K perish, is much more than simple carelessness to be scolded; it is grotesque recklessness to be condemned. How that reconfigures our friends lists is just another metric of the descent responsible for the national shame our abject failure to confront Coronavirus deserves. BC

In 1998, her husband under siege for engaging in sexual trysts with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, First Lady Hillary Clinton lashed out from behind the circled wagons. There was, she declared, a “vast right-wing conspiracy” laser- focused on destroying the Clinton Presidency. The notion, which was originally put forth by a White House staffer in 1995, was not something HRC could flesh out to Today Show host Matt Lauer. Instead, she cryptically opined it was a “great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it.”

The backlash was as swift and feverish as it was predictable. Whatever shadowy conspiratorial elements of anti-Clinton fervor working diligently in the background, there were plenty of public faces available to unabashedly promote the same agenda. Everyone from OGs on the fledgling Fox News network to Rush Limbaugh, already a seasoned hand at tribal insurrection, to the Drudge Report, responsible for unearthing the Lewinsky scandal in the first place, fired back she was losing her marbles and flailing wildly as Rome burned around her.

And why not? After all, modern White House history recounted few images less appetizing than a President carrying on with a young intern entrusted to his care and guidance. Whatever political enemies such a ghoul had cultivated, pointing out their underhandedness in the midst of the chickens his already well-documented sexual peccadillos welcomed home to roost, seemed less enlightening about a growing menace than merely an effort to distract and change the subject.

Near two decades later, during her own presidential campaign, HRC connected the dots between what she recognized in 1998 and what it had created by 2016…. “a basket of deplorables.” That the tag received similar quick and relentless push back was hardly surprising. However, the coordinated power available to seize on the diss in 2016 was confirmation that the charge laid out in 1998 was indeed true. In both cases, because of her own shortcomings, speaking her truth ultimately hurt HRC more than it helped. Yet and still, that result didn’t subtract from the truth itself, which produced Fox/AM’s first President at HRC’s expense, following the ugliest campaign in US history, exceeded only by his current re-election efforts.

Almost 25 years has provided the time necessary for a once ragtag collection of fanatical reactionaries to evolve and coalesce into a force that this Administration now allows to vet virtually everyone they hire and every judge or official they appoint. Horrifying is not strident enough a modifier to aptly cover that reality. On everything from pushing “herd immunity” as guiding Covid policy to Handmaid’s Tale sensibilities about a woman’s domain over her own body, a relatively smooth functioning mass of regressive nasties enjoys unfettered access to translate Trump’s capricious whims into a governing structure bent on taking the US backwards as fast as possible. Any doubt about that won’t survive viewing a cache of videos recently secured by the Washington Post. They clarify the obvious, but accentuate both how influential Fox/AM favorite sons like Charlie Kirk now are, and how extreme they expect both personnel and policy to become in a second Trump term.

The network of groups now calling the shots for fait accomplis Trump signs his illegible scroll to all have one thing in common: they make a mockery of laws designed to regulate 501-C non-profit organizations. Granted tax-exempt status under the premise they pursue no partisan political aims, every one of this network of dark money and influence has only one shared aim: directing the GOP agenda and ramming it forward by any means necessary. The Council for National Policy (CNP) – with noteworthy members such as Rudy Guiliani and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and an energizer bunny often at the center of pushing for the appointment of some of the looniest job candidates – is prominently featured in the trove of videos, and appears to be a lynchpin responsible for organizing many of the documented gatherings that brings together various right wing groups to ruminate on doing whatever it takes to confront its enemies – i.e. any non-MAGA interest.

Attendees constitute a who’s who of past and present Fox/AM darlings, from current It Boy Kirk to past hucksters like disgraced Jack Abramoff buddy, Ralph Reed, who never met a congregation he didn’t want to politically empower while fleecing them silly. Anyone who questions whether or how the wretched core has been radicalized should take in the videos. “This is good vs. evil,” declared CNP committee president, Bill Walton, “we have to do everything we can to win.” That literally none of the speakers caught on video would respond to WaPo inquiries for comment clarifies both utter disdain for mainstream journalism, as well as a tacit recognition the videos caught a degree of frankness they were loath to share with outsiders.

Mail-in voting is a shared obsession. The assumed, if unproven, fraudulent intent of “the left” behind the initiative justifies any and all responses, whatever it takes. These days Trump is tweet storming in capital letters to get rid of ballot harvesting because IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD, but back in February Reed, whose latest gig is heading up the tax-exempt Faith and Freedom Coalition, promised loudly “our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches!”

At an August meeting in Northern Virginia, Kirk was giddy Covid’s unchecked summer spread had closed down campuses because it kept up to half a million students from voting. To his audience’s delight Kirk exhorted universities to “please keep campuses closed…. Like, it’s a great thing.” Indeed, voter suppression was presented in various CNP meetings as righteous work, not for the faint-hearted. J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and obsessive voter roll purger, who like many in W Bush’s Administration saw riches in the rightest non-profit universe and now leads the Public Interest Legal Foundation, urged activists to tough out “accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth.” Head high and all that. Just get the job done.

In fact, they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. One of Trump’s signature lines back in 2016 was “I’ll hire the best people.” Best or worst, it’s the CNP network that now fills the slots, which it recognizes as its most important work. The clueless chaos of this Administration has opened the doors of opportunity to those who are simply able to help make the trains run on time. That Trump uses The Five talking points to guide his job interview criteria suits CNP just fine. In August, Trump deputy Paul Teller explained to a CNP-gathered audience of activists that an organization called the Conservative Action Group meets every Wednesday morning in a “little secretive huddle” at the White House. According to CNP member Rachel Bovard, such get togethers reflect a cozy relationship with the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. Makes sense when you consider that, as CNP vice president, Kelly Shackleford boasted on one of the videos: “Some of us literally opened a whole operation on judicial nominations and vetting. We poured millions of dollars into this to make sure the President has good information, he picks the best judges.”

And what do unacceptable personnel choices look like? That’s easy, whistleblowers such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. “All of these people that led the impeachment against President Trump shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” scoffed Bovard at yet another presentation. Indeed, it’s doubtful any others cut from such a mold will remain in a second Trump term. Those that do will surely be purged with haste. Promises made, promises kept. By then, to paraphrase the late great Eddie Van Halen and co., we won’t be talking bout representative government cause it will be “rotten to the core.” The ruin of ignored vast right-wing conspiracy.

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.

Lord of the Flies

There are few more enduring scenes of the wrenching heartbreak of Holocaust atrocities than children being casually ripped from their parent’s arms by Nazi processors. The images are indelible and form the basis for tortured narratives of both book and film, presented as the clearest and most defining proof of The Reich’s special place at the top of history’s list of cruel sadists, worst of the worst.

That America’s national brand has been steeped in its diversity and hospitality toward the world’s wanderers is simply synergy created by necessity. Such compatibility has only increased with time. The American economy has always depended on immigrants, both documented and undocumented. That’s as true in the 21st century as it was in the 20th. From bringing in harvests to applying fresh linens in hotel rooms to Silicon Valley startups, the quality of US life has been a function of an imperfect immigration system often required to wink at law breaking that serves everybody’s interests…. except right wing opportunists.

At some point, perhaps in the late 90s or so, racists gave up publicly fighting against black equality. Even the worst began to understand Jim Crow was history. White children of the 70s and 80s falling in love and having families with black peers, and a uniform media narrative that racial acceptance was, not only a done deal, but synonymous with essential patriotism, persuaded most but the worst that the gig was up, the deal done; America would move forward under the premise that black and white were one and equal parts. It didn’t mean they had to agree with it; however, it was no longer politically viable to openly agitate against the idea. This surrender roughly coincided with the advent of Fox/AM, and was reflected in an emerging narrative the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes constructed. Dog whistles would have to do, with the principle question shifting from whether black America is or isn’t entitled to an equal share of the pie to whether they were uppity and demanding more than the fair serving they had won.

Regardless, reactionary political guff is always a zero-sum exercise, and if one group’s humanity was being granted a raise, another’s had to be demoted, lest beleaguered white self-esteem suffer even more of a hit. Alas, that’s how bigoted wretchedness works. If the GOP – who had no intention of renouncing the white grievance voter bloc it gladly allowed the Democrats to bequeath it as they instead placed their futures wager on demographics rather than fear of change – was prepared to give lip service to black empowerment, it was also more than ready to retrain its guns on a fresh and easily identifiable menace, a new villain for a new millennia. Always the least imaginative of our species, the reactionary crowd lazily resurrected an old nemesis, the immigrant invader.

And so immigrants became MS-13, a scourge on the nation Democrats enabled for a few votes more. Of course, it wasn’t really all immigrants, just brown-skinned ones, mostly from south of the border, but also Africa. Whatever positive aspects they offered, however otherwise noble their pursuit of the American Dream might have been, moving forward they became a problem worthy of both fear and loathing. Republican hard liners and Fox/AM “personalities,” who increasingly wagged the dog, now had a talking point that delivered, more red meat to distinguish themselves from libs and RINOs. It was an issue that furnished no downside because the constituency they were attacking couldn’t fight back. A bully’s paradise.

When in 2015 the grossest manifestation of that petri dish shrilly announced a Presidential bid few took seriously, it was no surprise he would base his messaging on Fox/AM’s foulest bile. That it instantly gained traction spoke volumes about how far Tea Party sensibilities had descended. Apparently, the GOP leadership was the last to find out, and $110 million got Jeb Bush single digit support before he decided politics wasn’t so great after all. The rest is ruinous history with one of its worst chapters made public last week in the form of an 86-page report authored by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General. Disgrace doesn’t approach an accurate assessment of its shocking revelations.

The report’s findings, based on near 50 interviews of different officials. clarifies family separation at the southern border was a Trump/Sessions enterprise through and through, from start to finish. Although the Department of Homeland Security’s top leadership was in the loop, DOJ drove the program. It was cruelty the Attorney General initially wanted his signature all over, until the backlash it created became a liability. Turns out the misery of innocent kids was not collateral damage but rather the whole point of the fiendish exercise. As Democratic Senator Dick Durban summed things up: children were “targets of a cruel strategy to create a gruesome warning to others seeking refuge in our country that their children would pay a price.”

Moreover, apparently age and vulnerability didn’t matter. Rod Rosenstein, later canonized for taking on the Russia investigation after Sessions recused himself, adamantly declared infants should not protect their mothers from the most vigorous prosecution possible. Whatever it took to get the message across. This is no longer that shining city on a hill; a nasty nihilist is now sheriff and he doesn’t play. No Vacancy! Stay home if you know what’s good for you!

Nobody was caught more unprepared by the “must prosecute” policy than border patrol personnel, who suddenly found themselves under orders to violate the most basic human rights of vulnerable petitioners, many of whom had just completed harrowing journeys to get here. DHS officials and DOJ line prosecutors on the border peppered Sessions with questions – most troubling the absence of measures to reunite families after their cases were disposed – and sought to slow the roll out, but Sessions and Rosenstein weren’t having it. According to the report the department’s “single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family-unit adults and the resulting child separations.”

Most damning of all is the clear evidence, uncovered by investigators like the Southern Poverty Law Center, that family separations were happening up to a year before Sessions sought to codify it as official policy. After nibbling at the edges of atrocity on the down low, Sessions was clearly emboldened to hit the accelerator and claim credit for what was quickly condemned world wide. From April to June, 2018 more than 3000 children were taken from their parents. The total number of kids ripped from their families under the Trump Administration is close to 4500, too many still unaccounted for.

Sessions’ attempt to solidify the President’s good graces failed spectacularly as Trump scapegoated him for the Mueller investigation after he had the good sense and self-survival instincts to recuse himself. Two years later, seeking to regain his Senate seat, Sessions cut a truly pathetic figure groveling before Alabama voters, who continually took him to task for his apostasy. Trump of course applied plenty of salt to the wound, regularly tweeting derision. Sessions lost decisively to former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, himself incapable of finishing a paragraph that doesn’t praise the Bunker Duffer as heaven sent.

Last week’s report confirms Sessions’ culpability for implementing a program that should land him in a defendant’s dock at The Hague, with Rosenstein there by his side. As always, while lying that he was just following Obama’s lead, Trump has doubled and tripled down on the program’s “effectiveness,” and refuses to say it won’t be resorted to again. Few can be confident a second Trump term won’t resurrect what clearly demonstrated MAGA’s capacity for evil on a scale that, before 2016, it was presumed Americans would support confronting abroad wherever it occurred. Instead, we now all share some complicity for what did happen here: the evil Trump supporters lose not a wink of sleep over. BC