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DC law now prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people, a relatively modest concession to Covid-19. It’s easy to imagine how fast the virus could be spread if just half that many people congregated closely together with even one fully contagious. Oh, current regulations also call for strict adherence to social distancing as a second layer of protection against transmission. Last Saturday’s Rose Garden rollout of the GOP’s stunningly casual Supreme Court appointment hypocrisy clearly violated the substance of the law (upwards to 150 attendees), it’s spirit (zero distance in the seating arrangements), and common sense (few masks to be found).

As bad as the actual formal ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett’s selection was, video of the informal socializing afterwards was even more gross, rife with the stereotypical images of high-powered politicos -or more appropriately here, Mafia capos – whispering sweet intrigue into each other’s ear. Like so much of this Administration’s destructive insanity from day one, nothing to the imagination, literally behaving as if the pandemic had – poof! – disappeared. Forget all the canceled proms and graduations, or why they couldn’t happen, both delusion and entitlement on thoughtless display.

Now all hell is breaking loose, the big kahuna of Trumpist chaotic recklessness coming home to roost. In addition to the first couple, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Ron Johnson, Sen. Tom Tillis, Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Chris Christie, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel all now suffer the virus. Indeed, the list grows by the news cycle of new Covid infections among the MAGA elite, who like Trump, appear more than ready to enjoy “an abundance of caution” and make sure world class medical attention is at the ready for symptoms most previously scoffed at as “nothing more than the flu.”

Fox/AM sees opportunity for improving our worst-person-in-the-world President’s dreadful profile and is in full lionization mode. Laura Ingraham seemed to be struggling to keep her emotions in check while describing our stoic leader’s grudging assent to a five minute helicopter ride with top medical pampering his destination. Old Tucker Carlson was already incensed regarding “the left’s” cruel indifference to, even celebration of Trump’s plight. However the President fares, it’s a certainty the wretched core will be filled with righteous indignation for, er… forever. We were polite and reverent toward RBG and look at this! Endless Fox and Breitbart comment threads to the contrary.

In fact, the White House is technically exempt from DC law, responsible for cleaning up its own mess. DC health officials have asked the Administration to spearhead contact tracing of what is now rightly seen as a super spreader situation. That’s like asking Britney Spears to please get her financial paperwork in order for an audit. Regardless, most agree contact tracing such a large event is close to impossible, which is a big reason any sane pandemic strategy bars such large gatherings in the first place. But I digress, or merely recognize MAGA circular insanity…. whatever!

The real point to make is, just as with his debate meltdown, his embrace of white supremacy, the shameless hypocrisy on display with the Barrett appointment, the ceaseless effort to discredit November’s election results, refusal to recognize or really do anything other than sabotage climate science, ongoing stochastic terrorism toward the press, BLM, and all others on his expansive enemies list, etc. etc., the only observant inquiries to make are who could possibly be surprised and what took so long?! Trump declared before April Fools day that as far as he was concerned the pandemic was over, old news he tolerated for roughly three weeks. Spring had barely begun when the issue was deemed a binary choice between needlessly destroying MAGA’s economic miracle and catering to mainstream media-generated hysteria. After all, the hotspots were “lib” jurisdictions, what with their radical left mayors, crowds and all those sketchy immigrants. The danger had not only passed, it never even really existed for flyover America. Much ado about near nothing.

From the beginning of the pandemic it’s been clear keeping the spread in check would most require best practices the public was willing to, not only abide, but participate in. At a critical juncture, the most important point of America’s response to the crisis, when responsible leadership was most critical, our President consciously decided to push a narrative audiotapes would later fully confirm he knew was false. Can the damage really be exaggerated? Enabled by a servile fleet of MAGA governors, as well as the House and Senate GOP leadership, Trump knowingly made it his word against the facts about the worst national health crisis in modern American history. To sell his talk he had to walk its walk; after all, why would people believe it was harmless if he was wearing a mask everywhere? And so dangerous fantasy became reality and the die was cast about whether the US would be able to fully flatten its curve. No chance.

Seems many pundits and politicians want this to be “a teachable moment” for those convinced by Trump’s lies to do their civic worst, the army of Karens his seditious duplicity unleashed. See, goes the plea, this thing is real and dangerous, at least wear a damn mask! The bare minimum for the lowest common denominator, our civic dregs who equate spreading disease with demonstrating solidarity. Good luck with that.

Hannah Arendt observed of totalitarianism’s component parts:

“Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.”

Seen through this prism, the self-destructive stupidity and recklessness displayed at the top of the MAGA food chain lays bare its own mindless adherence to whatever fiction it created for the masses. How pervasive is that sensibility and will recent events modify it? Johnson knew he had been exposed at close range to Covid but refused to alter his activities while awaiting what he had to suspect would be a positive test. He attended a fundraiser with no apologies for exposing its other attendees, his donors! Apparently Bill Barr had no intention of quarantining, even though pictures and videos have him literally inches from Conway at the Rose Garden. Latest reports contend he will now grudgingly isolate. How long will that last? In other words, yes, it is rabidly pervasive, and no, there will be little accommodation made to protect others; we’ll do as we please, the rules don’t apply to us.

And such is the crux of MAGA. It’s a mob, who above all else got sick of following rules they were told 24/7 by Rush and company placed a terribly unfair burden on them only because they are white and Christian, hard working and patriotic. In Trump they found their avatar, one who has never bowed to such constraints, who does what he wants and pays lawyers to sort out the consequences. A guy who never apologizes because he doesn’t have to. That he is hideously self-serving doesn’t matter. That he is corrupt and lies as he breathes doesn’t matter. That he may not actually give a fig for them doesn’t even make a difference. All that counts is he won’t bend to the boogie men Fox/AM has taught them to fear and loathe above all else. If Soros-led devils can bring down Trump, nobody is safe.

That he now suffers from the “hoax” he has constantly discounted will provide no constructive epiphany because Covid and the practices necessary to prevent it were just more rules for Trump to flout; and guess what, if he can do it, so can they! Moreover, if he can evade the consequences, so can they. And if the virus ends up getting the last word with Trump? What then? I doubt the lesson gleaned will be one the rest of us hope for, or feel content to live with. MAGA, like its now infected leader, doesn’t do constructive reflection on the errors of its ways. The rest of us are entitled to better than that. BC

Trump doesn’t do debates, never has. Debate requires structure and discipline, thought and preparation, and most of all civility. Trump only knows how to argue and berate, lie and insinuate, and most of all be a relentless bully. Last night never stood a chance and now it’s yet another case of believing your eyes and ears, or actually allowing Decision/2020 “gamers” to create more false equivalence.

CNN’s Dana Bash called it a shit show on national television, but that’s like saying the carnage of a mass shooting is a “crime scene with suspected foul play.” This was yet another new nadir of our existential national crisis, complete confirmation a sociopath has the nuclear codes. Biden was more ancillary to that hideous predicament than participant in US history’s ugliest Presidential debate.

Look, here’s the deal… when you emerge from what is supposed to be an exchange of ideas and positions on leadership of a country within the throes of a pandemic and accompanying economic collapse, with only sympathy for your President’s otherwise god-awful children, that’s more than a shit show, it’s The Twilight Zone. Joe Biden made clear last night he is no spring chicken; he’ll get much older if he is forced to suffer yesterday’s indignities twice more. Nobody should have to. I dare say none of the globe’s worst dictators, who moonlight as the leader of the free world’s role models, would have been as depraved within similar forums.

Could Biden have done much better? Of course. In a perfect world he would have been Obama, coolly and with humor slicing the blubbering beast to pieces without any perspiration. Or he would have been Reagan at his best, the actor shifting quickly into the role of B movie hero to Trump’s villainous disgust. One can imagine Elizabeth Warren watching and wishing if only she could have been on that stage. Biden was more like the Karate black belt who, after endless hours in the dojo, when suddenly attacked on the street abandons a bit of his training and reverts to a fight or flight mode, instincts taking over. Fact is, because he has rightly avoided crowded rallies, Biden was not as sharp as he could have been. Daily speeches to packed events provide a tempo for a campaign, a constant requirement to be at the top of your game. Biden isn’t getting that and it showed.

It was a real mistake to abandon addressing Trump as “Mr. President,” but honestly, what would you do? What would Harry Truman have done had Thomas Dewey called his beloved daughter, Margaret, a trollop? Whatever it was, up to and including walking over and punching his opponent in the nose would have been understandable, even desirable. But alas, as Nancy Pelosi has accurately observed, he’s not worth it. Think about that one for a moment.

Biden’s worst moment came when Trump challenged him to name one police organization that has endorsed him. That he drew a blank was bad enough; that he looked wounded and in pain was much worse. It punctuated his age more than anything else, the gears under stress refusing to engage for a response. Fox/AM will run with it way past any end zones. A rejoinder was not hard. Biden could have very easily pointed out that the reality so many law enforcement unions see Trump as preferable only highlights how far we need to go, and how necessary it is to bring the parties together instead of seizing on political advantage. Easy Peasey.

Yet and still, like war or paddling out to surf 25-foot Waimea Bay, it’s really impossible to throw popcorn from the cheap seats on Monday morning. Gathering your thoughts on national television as a psychotic freak constantly interrupts and taunts you can only be credibly surmised by those who have actually experienced it. That anyone, let alone 35-40 percent of America’s voters refuse to take the obvious culprit to task, says everything about why last night went off like it did in the first place.

Following the disaster, CNN and Fox exemplified where things stand. The former’s panels exhibited shock and dismay similar to their reaction after Trump’s notorious remarks at the CIA on his first day in office. Even ridiculous Trump toady Rick Santorum was flabbergasted and found spinning things a bridge too far, opting to merely modify Anderson Cooper’s disbelief or Gloria Borger’s disgust. As for Fox? More normalization, with Juan Williams reaching a new low in equivalence pandering. After all, this sad spectacle was really not too different from a typical Trump call-in to Fox and Friends. Just more of the same.

Three takeaways are undeniable. First, an incumbent President aims to actively sabotage an election he knows he is going to lose. Moreover, he has zero problem with whatever level of chaos he is capable of fomenting, up to and including calling on right-wing terrorists to create bloody havoc. Next and connected, the worst kept secret going is now official, Trump embraces white supremacy and fully believes they will respond to his whims. No longer merely a stochastic terrorist, our President last night made clear the likes of the Proud Boys are valued members of his wretched core, deplorable on demand. Finally, Joe Biden is every bit of 78 years old and not what he was even four years ago. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a good President and begin to repair the extensive damage MAGA has wrought, and it certainly doesn’t mean there is any other option but to risk Covid if that’s what voting for him requires. However, it does mean nationally televised brawls with unhinged nihilist psychos will not bring out his best. It also means Kamala Harris better be razor sharp and presidential ready when she debates Trump’s man-servant. Those stakes couldn’t be higher!

For my money the best post-fiasco insight was provided by former Obama senior advisor, David Axelrod. Why would anyone be at all surprised by Trump’s behavior, he wondered, seeming genuinely mystified his colleagues were so taken aback. Too true. Trump is a destroyer; he has been all his life. The list of people he hurt as a private citizen – including tearing asunder his own family – was only limited by time and opportunity. As a candidate he demolished what was left of the GOP’s decency; as its President he has extinguished the party’s soul, demeaning its membership to nothing more than servile accomplices to his overt criminality. He’s destroyed our leadership position abroad and our fundamental government institutions at home. He’s poisoned the interplay between our three basic branches of government, to the point where his Supreme Court nominee no longer is insulated from the slime of his corrupt intents. And on and on…. So why would last night’s awful spectacle be anything but expected? Can we really even envision anything else? This is Trump, for worse or even worse than that! The national ruin comes from the millions who now – and last night particularly – would have him no other way. The coming storm. BC

When W selected John Roberts to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Sandra Day O’Conner’s retirement he was well on his way to becoming as reviled a President as any since Watergate, subject to abject derision from large swaths of the electorate. Long past a temporary post-9/11 boost in popularity, or the “political capital” he swore he would use after reelection, increasingly bogged down in two conflicts advertised as quick shock and awe affairs but instead looking more Vietnamesque by the week, and his own worst enemy when it came to bumbling public messaging, 43 was taking hits from all sides. Fox/AM worked overtime to keep the GOP base attuned to the tribalism W now fully depended on to keep his approval numbers out of the dumpster, but that didn’t stop a growing flock of pundits from opining about another US President’s second term heading off the rails.

Yet and still, the Roberts appointment was a big deal, a grand spectacle. Whatever his judicial philosophy, Roberts represented a vibrant young face for the high court, and few begrudged the pride he beamed from the podium as he accepted a President’s confidence in him. More than one jurist and his patron, the ceremony reflected the majesty of two basic US institutions refreshing each other. Whatever baggage the President was lugging around, filling a Supreme Court vacancy received a pass and, so long as the selection was sound, tradition would insulate all parties.

Bush sorely tested this proposition not long after picking Roberts, when Chief Justice William Rehnquist passed, creating another vacancy. After reinserting golden boy Roberts into the top slot, he badly bungled his next move, selecting under-qualified crony Harriet Meiers for the other seat. But even when she was forced to drop out after demonstrating an embarrassing lack of constitutional grounding, subsequent pick Samuel Alito received no penalty or any less deference when he stepped forward to accept his appointment. After all, W’s shortcomings weren’t his fault. Again, the institutions carried the moment.

Fifteen years later, any wholesome synergy between the White House and the Supreme Court is just another memory that makes our current state of affairs ever more desperately tragic. Amy Coney Barrett’s selection ceremony merely reinforced the only thing Trump and his GOP eunuchs are reliable for: debasing everything they come in contact with. Whatever intrinsic luster used to exist when a youthful applicant to the high court is formerly introduced was MIA Saturday.

When most of America is unable to feel much more than disgust toward all manner of Presidential recognition or job appointment, perceiving it as a badge of servile complicity rather than an honor of any sort, that is a very bad place to be; nonetheless, here we are. What was palpable with Gorsuch and unmistakably tangible with Kavanaugh, is now impossible to ignore with Barrett. That enthusiastically embracing Trump’s patronage, gushing about how “overwhelmed and honored” she is to be MAGA’s Supreme Court designee, discredits her to so many eyes speaks to the rot of this Presidency and creates an awful gut feeling we may be too late, even if November goes better than one could hope.

After one nominee sullied by Mitch McConnell’s refusal to even meet with Merritt Garland, an ugly final act following seven years of seditious obstruction of our first black President’s entire agenda, and another pick who demonstrated a nationally televised temperament leagues below what most all expect from a Supreme Court Justice, everything about this round carries the undiluted stench of illegitimacy. Trump and his GOP bunion massagers will doubtless respond with incessant righteousness about their “brilliant” darling being the innocent victim of inside-the-beltway hardball tactics as Democrats turn up the heat during her questioning, which will only accentuate the invalidation.

No, how much of the taint metastasized from the limitless hypocrisy her facilitators required to make her opportunity happen Barrett can shed will depend on her answers. Whether she’s a serious jurist prepared to rise to the occasion despite the bottomless depths her sponsors occupy, or the high court equivalent to Alex Azar, will to a substantial degree be fleshed out by how she handles herself under the pressure her appointment deserves. Saturday’s roll out was less than encouraging.

Nobody expects this White House to ever do more than the least; it will always fail to meet the lowest expectations. Downs Syndrome children are, by all medical assessments, particularly vulnerable to Covid’s worst. One imagines a mother of such a child would be particularly aware of her public surroundings and take all reasonable measures to avoid exposure. That Trump made a point to pack the Rose Garden full of maskless partisans was par for his sorry course, grossly insensitive to his nominee’s situation.

For what it’s worth, Barrett seemed wholly untroubled by the super spreader surroundings, as a firing squad of air droplet shooters faced her square on. Perhaps she was put off, but masked her concern. I doubt it. Either way, it’s a reasonable question for any Senator to ask what her feelings were about such a reckless public health spectacle on display in her honor. Her answer should prove enlightening and provide at least a hint to whether her most basic maternal instincts are impacted by MAGA sensibilities. That would matter… a lot.

As to Barrett’s pro forma praise for RBG and her promise to strive to approach her caseload with similar rigor toward obtaining justice, her past is even less inspiring than her workmanlike Rose Garden recitations about the one who really made her career dream possible. Her benefactor mindlessly seeks to create health care chaos by striking down the ACA with nothing to replace it. Only vacuum-tight judicial recklessness would side with such a plaintiff. There seems little doubt Barrett is willing to do just that, transforming the Roberts court into the Judge Jeanine Pirro court. Guns for felons. Why not, as long as they’re not too violent. Roe v. Wade. History. Declaring absentee ballots void and stealing the 2020 election? I wouldn’t bet your “skyrocketing” 401K against it. In other words, a true MAGA “originalist,” prepared to deliver the goods.

The majority of us have fully awoken to understanding a real-life villain occupies the White House. Perhaps the best description of his hideous oversight was expressed in a Washington Post editorial: Trump doesn’t govern so much as harass the nation. At this point, he and his House and Senate accomplices neither deserve nor really care to receive categorized dispensation depending on the historical solemness of a particular duty being performed. Barrett, by all accounts a very decent person of advanced legal intellect, fully capable of deep dives into constitutional minutiae, embodies whether the entire MAGA menu is toxic, inedible regardless of accoutrement or garnish. After all, the Joker only has henchmen. the Penguin only flunkies. We’ll know more about how much of a disservice such generalization is to Barrett in the coming weeks, whether she deserves better, which will then promote a bit more optimism about how she will rule on the high court. So far, she deserves our doubts. BC

“The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you do with it after you cut it down.“

Rush Limbaugh

Barreling toward either the end of the Trump scourge or a dramatic intensification of America’s darkest age there is no let up in the tempo of daily outrages. Whether it’s the purposeful spread of disease he now insists on or unintelligible gibberish he spews from the stage of his super spreader rallies, going to war with US cities or with American allies, Trump is a man unhinged from anything other than his rabid perception of what continued relevance requires. There is no plan, per se, he is following to achieve his shifting goals of remaining the most disruptive human being on Earth, only a continuous series of outbursts that create their own individual set of consequences, always destructive, that the system he is assaulting must address until another bomb is thrown, another inferno started. To paraphrase a WaPo editorial, he doesn’t govern so much as he harasses.

Yet and still, Trump is a moron, a complete imbecile. Granting him the credit for bringing the world’s great superpower to its knees is like saying pneumonia killed my dad, who suffered from late stage pleural lung cancer; what’s on the death certificate hardly tells the full story. The passing of RBG and our collective helplessness in the face of some of the most odious hypocrisy ever displayed on Capitol Hill clarifies what the founders could not conjure: that no democratic institution, no matter how old and established, can withstand a sustained category 5 hurricane of bad faith and criminal intent by both a President and the party who backs him. Nixon never stood a chance, not because the GOP leadership was so honorable, but because they surmised their constituents would take them to task if they weren’t. Those days are obviously over.

Lord knows America never expected its politicians to be perfect; but the contract always stipulated they at least present good faith and a cursory nod toward honor and integrity. The supposition, up until last week, was always that the taint of hypocrisy had to at least be offensive enough to discourage behavior that couldn’t be publicly defended. That is what passed for the honor code of US politics. Like so many other accepted practices and traditions that existed before January, 2017 it is now a fatality. As usual McConnell and company surprised nobody, but the wanton despicability was shocking nonetheless. They’d do better to simply shrug and taunt “sue me.”

Either way, their base, which is to say the MAGA wretched core, now demands dishonor and would surely penalize anything else. Ask Mitt Romney or Chuck Grassley. The chicken or egg question of whether the destruction of our democracy is a GOP scheme, pushed forward behind a nihilist horde they manipulate, or the collateral damage of cowards unwilling to try and put back the nihilist genie they let out of the bottle is fairly meaningless at this point. Whether McConnell is diabolical or merely an invertebrate, or a combo of both hardly matters. The ruinous results surely do. Suffice it to say a sizable minority is getting the governance they have been indoctrinated to revere and couldn’t care less whether it works or not, whether it abides the Constitution or not, or whether it ends the American democratic experiment or not.

The mission statement of Fox/AM starts and ends with creating the circular reasoning necessary to digest any proposition its “personalities” insert. That begins with the tenets that undergird all narratives. Abortion is murder so anyone who supports it is utterly disqualified from making value judgements. Check. Social progress is simply the way liberals keep minorities and other supplicants, like LGBT folks, within their voting bloc. Far from necessary, it only takes from whites and creates entitled classes. Check. Tax cuts always pay for themselves and are at least revenue neutral. Tax hikes are the bread and butter of Democratic theft from the working man. Check. The list goes on and has expanded over the years but these fundamental false premises form the basis of all Fox/AM story telling and the corrosive impact it has on the national discussion. The most paramount axiom of them all? Bipartisanship equals betrayal and is grounds for immediate excommunication. See John McCain.

Over thirty years of constant repetition, relentless application as accepted truths and divine principles, has imbued this reactionary code with a gospel quality and a guiding identity for its political adherents. The Reich had its superior aryan man, Fox/AM has its “true Reagan conservative.” That is, a class of zealots and opportunists wedded to the guidelines Roger Ailes laid out for their political fortunes. This is what the Republican Party has morphed into and must pursue. The fact it is headed by a lawless thug is subordinate to Trump’s willingness to follow the code to the letter, regardless of how much the national interest suffers. “He may be a lawless thug, but he’s our lawless thug.” That’s where we are at right now. It’s nihilist destruction care of the Donald, but in the name of Ditto Heads!

Few doubt Trump’s prime motivation for rushing through RBG’s successor. He has always relied on the courts to do his bidding, or at least muddle things sufficiently for him to exploit the uncertainty. He plans to declare victory November 3, whatever the tally, and sic his legal teams on the American electoral process. Judging from the servile exclamations from Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, the GOP will back Trump’s accusations all the way. The chaos he is willing to foist will only be as effective as the resources he can depend on to legitimate his false claims; a 6-3 majority at the top can’t hurt.

We now exist as what German political scientist, Ernst Fraenkel, in his study of Nazi rule circa 1932-38 coined a “dual state.” That is, arbitrary power rendered palatable by established institutions and economic interaction. Trump, like Hitler, has nothing but contempt for the system he is supposed to safeguard. The GOP House and Senate caucuses deploy formality and procedure to dispense and legitimate his capricious dictats, both using the power they hold while steadily eroding the institution that grants it to them. Where does it all lead? What does a continuation of the Trump era promise for American governance? History is clear on that score. All roads head to nowhere good. BC

Hillsdale College has never left much to the imagination concerning its worldview and the lens angle students who matriculate there will be looking through. A quick browse of its web page makes clear the brand it sells to recruits for both campus and on-line offerings. Long Fox/AM’s most reliable advertising dollar, Hillsdale’s site lays it on thick. Not just the Bible, but the book of Genesis as a seminar option. Founding fathers? Plenty on offer. Economics? Think Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer. Indeed, it is the world according to Ayn Rand for young conservatives looking to leave home for the Michigan frontier. Even faculty curriculum vitae will note NRA instructor certifications, just to make sure no doubt exists that, at Hillsdale, the walk is walked.

So there is nothing surprising about the college hosting public speakers attuned to its perspective. Indeed, a conservative who’s who has visited, everybody who’s anybody. Attorney General Bill Barr, despite coming into office with the reputation as a no-nonsense get-er-done type, a fully committed institutionalist with no love for useless drama, has morphed into a Fox/AM darling, in addition to Trump poodle. These days he never met a mic he didn’t like, so long as he can spout sedition and strike fear in the hearts of public servants who haven’t held office for near four years now. He is vendetta man and apparently loving every minute of it. If he could comfortably fit into tights with a cape he probably would, but like his master, more salads and some stairclimber are the last things he wants any part of.

No, Barr speaking at Hillsdale yesterday was hardly surprising; it was what he said that shocked. The fact it isn’t front page news only reaffirms ruinous normalization of this misfit nihilist band. Seems the pooch wants off the leash to go as unhinged as daddy. At Hillsdale, he was free to roam and couldn’t have been more seditious.

Barr, who now devotes equal time to running interference for Trump’s near continuous disregard for the law, and rattling sabres at those who had the temerity to take umbrage at Russian interference in a US Presidential election, was not coy about defining his role in the federal food chain. “What exactly am I interfering with,” he wondered, referring to those who have a problem with Barr personally intervening in the Roger Stone and Michael Flynn matters. “Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general.” Turns out Mr. Institutionalist has decided he’s the institution!

Whatever morale issues existed in the ranks of front-line prosecutors yesterday morning, they surely are considerably worse today after Barr likened his team to publicity hounds out primarily to “amass glory” at the expense of high-profile defendants. Alas, Barr rued, his people are “headhunters” defenseless babes like Stone and Flynn must be protected from. To hear Barr tell it, his is a lonely fight to reform a department long in the hands of subordinates his predecessors “blindly” deferred to. “No way to run an agency,” growled Trump’s now preeminent yes man.

Of course projection and hypocrisy are guiding tenets of this administration, but yesterday Barr astounded with a straight face when he mused about the “criminalization of politics.” “If you’re not in power, you’re in jail – or you’re a member of the press.” Hilarious! This not hours after Trump goaded his wretched core in Nevada to replace the “lock her up” chant, religiously directed toward Hillary Clinton at every MAGA rally since 2015, with “lock him up” in honor of Barack Obama, who Trump would arrest faster than taking another mulligan if he could. In fact, Barr appears ever more feverish in his efforts to criminalize Robert Mueller’s entire investigation. Forget hypocrisy, Orwellian best describes yesterday’s remarks on the subject of persecuting political enemies.

But Barr saved the best for last. In a White House devoid of any talent, with sycophancy the standard currency, Trump can be forgiven for giving the one member who once possessed genuine gravitas, albeit now a memory, permission to stray out of his lane. Barr was glad to do so during the question-and-answer period, the subject Covid. Along with falsifying Black Lives Matter as a Democrat political front using murders by police as “props to achieve a much broader political agenda,” the BillyBeast went looney tunes on pandemic lockdowns. Apparently, flattening the curve in March and April was “the greatest intrusion on American civil rights” other than slavery. Who knew? Expanding on his idiocy, Barr did his best Trump imitation: “All this nonsense about how something is dictated by science is nonsense.” It’s been clear since his election that loyalty to Trump is most effectively conveyed by becoming ever more stupid, a metamorphosis the President gains comfort from. Think above your station and you’ll be gone. Barr is certainly leaving nothing to chance on that score.

At the end of the day Barr established three things at Hillsdale. First, he is fully intent on living down to the common standard for Trump Cabinet lackeys: destroy the agency you are entrusted to lead. At his love fest confirmation the common assumption, shamefully accepted on faith by both sides of the aisle, was that Barr could at the very least be counted on to have the back of DOJ’s lawyers as they pursued cases, regardless the targets. He has obliterated that assumption, giving the worst like Mike Pompeo a run for his money at back stabbing his own people. It’s now clear a second Trump term means a complete purge at DOJ.

Second, at Hillsdale Barr’s tone took on a more gratuitous pitch, as in he’s getting off on this power trip. Let’s face it, with an addled psycho in charge, isolated and paranoid of everyone, cognizant of the legal apocalypse that awaits once he is again just a failed huckster, Barr is the muscle of this criminal enterprise, whose position at the top is rock solid. He was flexing in Michigan.

Finally, it’s now clear there is another voice coming from MAGA la la land capable of distracting us in equal measure from the things that really count right now, like Russian election tampering and voter suppression, overt sabotage of Covid acceptable practices, and atrocities committed at the border in all of our names, not to mention war on peaceful protest. Barr appears ready to bellow in tandem and with Trump’s blessing. That’s a lot of very ugly white noise that’s hard to ignore.

About 45 years ago Elliot Richardson, a stellar public servant, put honor and country ahead of ambition and servility. By resigning instead of firing Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox, Richardson stood for exactly what this country can’t exist without. Now we suffer his opposite, a piggish nihilist ever more comfortable with the idea of enforcing the termination of the American democratic experiment in the name of “law and order.” Whatever reservations he may have started with seemed to now be history as he spouted Trumpist gibberish last night at Rush Limbaugh’s favorite college. Just like his master there is now nothing left to the imagination; it’s the worst case scenario. Believe what he tells you. BC

There’s the story of the junior high school bully, who spends his days terrorizing any and all he can strike fear in. Rare is the encounter he doesn’t make some poor kid’s life a misery. One day he picks on the wrong kid and gets his butt whipped but good in front of much of the student body, who after seeing him taken to task, lose their fear and simply shun him for his trouble. Distraught, he sinks into depression, which leads his parents to seek a consult with school administrators.

At the meeting, a vice principal, well familiar with the boy and the events that led to his alienation, fills the parents in. They become incensed and demand to know why their son wasn’t better protected. Taken aback, the administrator reminds them their son had made many kids’ lives very difficult, and in fact was trying to bully the boy who beat him up. “So what,” the father bellows, “two wrongs don’t make a right!”

Similarly, there is a certain genius to the circular rationalizations of MAGA malevolence. After all, near thirty years of hourly Fox/AM story telling hasn’t been for nothing, even as it has near every minute been in service to nihilism. Malcolm Gladwell, in his classic study, Outliers, contends to become a true expert at anything, one has to put in at least 10,000 hours of practice. Say what you will about Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin etc., they have put in the time, relentlessly mastering propaganda techniques they now employ as naturally as expelling so much hot air. We currently suffer their President, a Frankenstein they created and now guide, spinning his gibberish like so much other grievance and resentment they have molded through the decades. Civil war appears to be the end game now that re-election looks unlikely.

False equivalence has always been the Alamo for Fox/AM-fabricated narratives. When it finally reaches the point truth has them cornered, and the pyramid scheme of lies one of their suppositions rests on totally collapses, the final Rushbo fallback is pointing the finger at the other side and squealing they do it too. So what if he did it, they’ve always done the same thing… and worse. Why didn’t you care when they did it?! What a double standard! It’s not fair! Near 200,000 Americans are dead? What about Benghazi?!

MAGA picks and chooses when the rules apply and when they don’t. Trump is like the bad guy in WWE wrestling, looking to the ref to enforce a break when his opponent has him at a disadvantage, but then throwing a flurry of cheap shots when the hapless zebra gets distracted. Woodward has Trump on tape, word for word. Who cares, what about Pelosi and Fauci?! Or as the despicable Peter Navarro spewed to Jake Tapper, just as casually as one would tell you the sun sets in the West, knee-jerk travel bans, one that did little to stem the outbreak, the other that wrecked chaos, creating super spreader events at several US airports, “saved a couple hundred thousand lives,” and Biden condemned them as xenophobic. No, Biden, like everyone else with the ability to discern, said it was impulsive and ill-conceived. Tapper tried to make that point but Navarro took umbrage at his tale being interrupted, his sacred right to a filibuster on Tapper’s forum a given.

It’s now clear a sizable American minority wants only to hear reaffirmation their wretchedness is an attribute, their ignorance preferable to what they don’t understand. They are followers and they are following, and that is a crisis we may not be able to resolve. This is a group looking to hurt those they despise, a long list that keeps getting longer. It’s a mob doing the bidding of the upper brackets, a short list that keeps getting shorter. And it’s millions with no intention of cooperating in anything not sanctioned by a narrative their sociopathic leader gulps down every bit as much as they do.

Fully willing to kill themselves and their neighbors rather than endure the ghosts created by their otherwise stilted imaginations, this totalitarian mass is itching for atrocity they expect Trump to deliver. Whenever truth causes too much of a problem with everybody else, work the refs! If it was so bad, why did Woodward wait? Pelosi and Fauci were no big mask fans back in March! It’s all equal. No more, no less. He’s just the President, what do you want from him? We want to be safe from Antifa and BLM! We’re keeping our eyes on the ball!

Democracies decline as their citizens descend down the slippery slope of civic disinclination. In America it’s far worse than that. Here, too many have begun to detest the bare minimum asked of them. Forget whining about taxes, or excusing a President who declares military service is for suckers, millions of us now actually find virtue in harming public safety, unable to make the connection between libertarian mania and the danger it poses to others, including our own loved ones. Meanwhile, the President has packed, maskless houses scheduled right up to Election Day, and surely past then, when he will foment violence while refusing to accept defeat.

Turns out, after a Civil War, two World Wars and a Cold War, the sweet spot for American demise was always there to be squeezed, it just required the technology to juice it at all hours, to all places. MAGA is constantly refreshed by messaging its followers now consider, not just religion, but existential necessity, and they aren’t about to forsake it. Nothing Trump can say or do will change that because his worst, even when exposed as in the Woodward tapes, will never be as bad as what the “radical left” can be claimed to have done in the past or hellbent to attempt in the future.

Cults don’t do re-examination. Doubling and tripling down, refusing to believe the evidence, or, as a final defense mechanism, false equivalence is their rabid comfort zone. Armed to the teeth and afraid of their shadows, what they are willing to do or abide their President ordering gets more ominous by the hour, with every tweet and rally, every Limbaugh monologue or Carlson meltdown. When democracy’s processes are no longer recognized, it’s not how many you have, only what you are willing to do. Nobody who listens to our wretch-in-chief these days can doubt there is much left he is not prepared to try. When he sweats and slurs how seditious he is, please take his word for it. It’s the only thing he says one can still believe. BC

My son, Luke, copes hourly with a host of anxieties. Often, his go-to mechanism for dealing with the fears his imagination conjures is to repeat scripted talk tracks he pulls up. These are accessed like CDs from his memory and retold as if they had happened yesterday instead of, say, 15 years ago. By revisiting whatever the episode, he allays a current concern by relating to a comparable moment he actually lived.

Lately, he often repeats a script about a pre-school friend, who “couldn’t live at home anymore because he hit his mom…. he had to go to an institution.” He brings this up because, when he gets exceptionally frustrated and overwhelmed, he bites his mother. Now, this isn’t new behavior; he has been doing it for years, infrequently enough so it’s never become a preoccupation, but not such a rarity it can be deemed an aberration instead of a possibility stress can induce. Sue has always possessed the strength and fortitude to look past each episode, even while making clear how unacceptable such behavior is. What’s changed is he is now 6’ 5” and a 20-year old man, the act more an assault than annoyance, really a crisis if he doesn’t heed his mother’s screams to stop. It’s not lost on him that the matter is serious; and so he paces and reminds himself of his friend’s fate long ago, understanding it could be his if he can’t resist the urge to act out. Kind of a personal hell. Have I mentioned autism sucks?

It’s a mean joke God plays on control freaks by issuing them a son with behavioral issues they struggle to temper. The love and affection you feel is only eclipsed by the worry you shoulder as his safety and welfare become gradually harder to personally ensure. Luke’s lifetime has educated me about the best and worst society offers our intellectually disabled, and whatever hope and confidence the cream can provide fails to offset the ghosts conjured by the dregs too often on display. Sue and I have always been by his side to protect him; yet and still, the tender mercies we see all the time aren’t enough to beguile us from the sharks swimming outside our safety net. Sadly, much of my fear on that score emanates from those I’m supposed to trust most in the pinch of a mental health crisis.

To view police publicly torture and kill Daniel Prude on YouTube one is required to sign in and prove their age, a process reserved for sexual, violent and otherwise “deeply disturbing” content. Watching Rochester’s worst with badges casually laugh and abase a man as he struggles to survive, and whose brother actually called them to help, I see the monsters under my bed. This documented outrage is as bad as anything my insomnia can create at 4:00 AM., something that will haunt me until I go into the dirt.

Rochester Police responded to a taxpayer in crisis and murdered his brother. The primary focus of news coverage of the atrocity has been on when they got busy suffocating him, but from the start of the encounter Daniel Prude was afforded no humanity at all. It was raw and wet that night, actually snowing, and Prude was naked, yet it never occurred to any of the several officers present to try and find a blanket or some clothing for a citizen who had not hurt a soul. He lay naked on the freezing pavement as his tormentors laughed about his plight, casually chatting as he writhed about.

Naked with his hands cuffed behind his back and a bag over his head, the cops still weren’t satisfied he was benign enough for their liking, so they killed him without breaking their conversation. The whole thing resembles a mob execution, not an arrest, let alone “helping” to subdue a citizen undergoing a mental crisis. There are an infinite number of ways for a man to die; one could think all afternoon and not come up with one more vile and degrading than how Daniel Prude left this world. Whether his killers were “adhering to procedure” hardly matters when the lack of empathy is so overt, the indifference to an unclothed and unarmed man’s distress so pronounced. If they followed the book, it needs to be shredded because any excuse for this is less about policing than it is about subjugating and destroying.

My son is not so far removed from Daniel Prude, the potential for him to have a meltdown is always there. Mostly, Luke brings nothing but joy to all he encounters, but when he does something he knows was wrong, he gets highly agitated and requires consoling to distract him from his guilt and regret. He can’t modulate his feelings in those situations and without reassurance things can quickly get worse. Were Sue and I not present, or an empathetic teacher or therapist, it’s entirely possible he could become inconsolable and beyond reasoning. Certainly crisply responding to questions and commands would be out of the question. Were a cop or cops to treat him hostilely without quarter, there is no question he would begin to flail. At that point he’d be at the mercy of…. who? Rochester sadists?!

Nationwide, the odds of a mentally challenged person being killed during a police encounter are more than fifteen times higher than the rest of us. Moreover, incredibly, a number of states require police to first certify a person is dangerous to others before they can be involuntarily hospitalized. One shudders at what such “assessments” look like. So where am I to find consolation? A reed of hope my son will receive the dignity Prude was denied? What is available to reassure that my boy would be treated differently?

That obvious answer is why Black Lives Matter exists and why, for the sake of this nation, its mission must be embraced as synonymous with basic patriotism, a sensible adjunct for civic duty. The notion my son’s basic safety, let alone civil rights, may only be found in the luck of his skin tone confirms why kneeling, and marching, and confronting are essential aspects to what surviving MAGA and its retrograde nihilism looks like. That one could be tempted to seek consolation by embracing white privilege as reassurance their loved one won’t die like a dog on wet pavement is exactly the heart of it. Whatever racial progress has been made since segregation and legal lynching, expecting it to somehow assuage what video footage documents on a daily basis is absurd, the addled reasoning of one with different standards for fundamental rights in mind.

Trump and his nefarious poodle, Barr, are now all in with the premise BLM is a criminal enterprise bent on chaos and violence. They know bigots hear nothing but the sweet sound of rationalization, a justification to finally act on their hatred. The image of white cowards armed to the teeth confronting unarmed black protesters is as apt a portrait of our national brokenness as could be painted. The fact one police union after another endorse Trump illustrates clearly circling the wagons won’t end anytime soon, and not without significantly more pressure on all fronts. It is decent and right to help coerce such change. Nothing could be more American, more fundamental to our mission statement. The crossroads we are at requires nothing less. Do it for your country, your family, your own sense of honor. Do it for Daniel Prude….. and Luke. BC

Our bully-in-chief is succeeding at really the only part of his skill set that distinguishes him – scaring people with unhinged behavior he has no capacity to back up. Yet and still, when you’re POTUS, with a wretched core of supporters, who plum new depths of imbecilic servility every day, the guff you puff is going to be more intimidating. The day that stops is when the Presidency can go no lower and lies mortally wounded.

Two months from Election Day and no MAGA resister worth their salt is comfortable where things stand, regardless of which poll they just looked at. From the drizzles the Michael Moores and Bill Mahrs suffer due to renewed dread of a decisive Trump convention bounce, to an organized criminal conspiracy within the leadership of the US Postal Service to do whatever is necessary to make that surge happen, nothing right now pertaining to November 3 reassures. Add to the list of worries a “red mirage” one group of prognosticators feels increasingly certain will occur and who can be blamed for hitting the benzo vial in a quest for just that wee bit of serenity, no matter how temporary.

What exactly is a “red mirage?” According to Hawkfish, a political data and analytics agency funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, America is going to tune in election night to an apparent Trump landslide, created by only one half of the voting pie, in-person ballots. The theory seems logical given the stark divisions created by MAGA covidiocy. Most all of Trump’s people have no plans or ambitions to vote by mail, the lion’s share of his count will come in on Election Day and be tallied in real time. Biden’s support, however, will lean much heavier on mail-in votes that may not be fully accounted for until days later, depending on the electoral infrastructure of individual states. . “We believe that on Election Night,” predicts CEO Josh Mendelson, “we are going to see Donald Trump in a stronger position than the reality actually is.” The notion makes sense. It also promises national trauma.

Anybody who thinks Trump and the GOP aren’t going to declare total non-negotiable victory if election night returns point to a landslide need only refer back to how they digested Attorney General Bill Barr’s initial roll out of the Mueller Report. Documented and succinct, with ten exhaustively detailed examples of wrongdoing, the stinging indictment was heralded as total vindication by the time Barr finished warping it. Wiggle room became endless expanse for redefinition of facts. Incredibly, to this day MAGA minions deform Mueller’s findings to punctuate Trump’s innocence.

What will be done with an overwhelmingly red election map at 12:30 AM Wednesday morning? Does anyone believe Karl Rove and Brit Hume won’t be projecting him the winner? The OANN bots will be sipping champagne. It will be all the Bunker Duffer requires to declare it a done deal and anything further the “rigged” system trying to steal his “great win.” Trump does not do pleasant surprises; he certainly won’t do one here. We know this.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario that plays more into “deep state” psychosis than a decisive election-night “triumph” slowly chipped away as the ballots 35 percent of America already believes are illegitimate get counted. One can only shutter at the Fox/AM narrative, or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s take as such a process unwinds. Civil war, anyone?

Meanwhile, when is the last, or first, time national media has discussed what this may look like? Am I the only one who has heard virtually nothing concrete on how this election’s extraordinary dependence on mail-in votes is going to play out, when we can expect a winner to be confirmed? Fact is, most all of America expects to go to bed with a clear idea of who the victor is. If that’s not likely, there better be some serious public education but quick because one thing nobody doubts is how friendly confusion and chaos are to Trump’s shameless disdain for genuine legitimacy. We need a clearer idea about this year’s most likely electoral process chronology yesterday.

The “red mirage” scenario is directly linked to how efficiently individual states count mail-in votes, which is a direct function of when they actually start doing it. Many battleground states, including Florida, New Hampshire and Maine, aren’t allowed to even begin until the polls close. Others make it a point in their voter guides to describe scanning mail-in ballots into tabulation systems before Election Day, while taking care to make clear results won’t be shared until after polls close. Such language implies a faster count.

What’s certain is that how quickly mail-in votes are tallied varies significantly from state to state, and speed can be impacted by everything from technology glitches to the number of people deployed to carry out the task. One doesn’t have to be Alex Jones to imagine how schemes to delay results could play out. Regardless, it’s a no-brainer the American public must possess a set of expectations this year’s extraordinary circumstances are capable of producing. The possibility, or even likelihood, Tuesday evening won’t near determine a winner has to be a sizable chunk of our public discussion. Even a passing thought major networks don’t want to do that because viewer interest and ratings may suffer is simply too vile to contemplate. Resist that urge, while sadly recognizing there’s a reason it exists at all.

The eggs of America as a going democratic concern are all now in the Decision/2020 basket. The continued validity of the most non-credible President in US history will be decided by an electorate addled by millions who refuse to even acknowledge a global pandemic – that will have surely killed a quarter million citizens by Election Day – even warrants special procedures to protect public health. A massive, beyond-question electoral rebuke is what most believe will be necessary to render Trump’s inevitable protestations meritless enough to deflate his ability to pursue destructive transition mischief. No matter how illusory, an election-night Trump landslide that catches everyone off guard because of a failure to adequately prepare the public for how historically high mail-in voter participation may play out will be a disastrous bullet to the foot, and create precisely the uncertainty and chaos MAGA will exploit to the hilt. It can’t happen here… not this election. Don’t let it. BC

Political radicalization primarily evolves as the result of either of two completely opposite experiences. One is engineered and nothing but lies; the other is lived through and exclusively truth. While the end result of each is essentially the same – full estrangement from established governance, as well as most traditions and institutions that inform it – how each bloc gets to where its going has everything to do with whether their attack on the status quo possesses any merit. Right now in America both of these processes are at work. One has succeeded in creating the result it constantly reinforces. The other is slowly but surely getting to the same place, and when it does civil strife will move ever closer to past our ability to control, the luxury of pursuing daily routines we have enjoyed for generations critically damaged.

Since it started Fox News has beamed like a laser the same mission statement message 24/7: White America has nothing to atone for in its past, and in fact is now the victim of a false narrative that uses unfortunate events from generations ago to bestow undo privilege on the ancestors of those who suffered injustices resolved for decades. For more than thirty years this has been the Rosetta’s Stone of Fox/AM messaging, the common DNA that runs through every talk track every day. From Limbaugh to Levin, Hannity to Carlson, every paragraph is bonded by this trope. Whether the story is Obama ramming through health care or Trump being ceaselessly attacked for keeping to his campaign pledges, the subtext is always there – hardworking whites are getting screwed by a system drenched in “identity politics”.

Steadily, day after day, one of the tightest, most comprehensive propaganda delivery systems in human history has plugged away at the critical thinking abilities of its ever growing core of devout consumers. The grievance and resentment narrative they listen to at home, in the car, on the internet, and now interact within on social media has fully eroded their confidence in government, actually redefining it as a “deep state” committed to subjugating white patriots to the whims of entitled minorities and liberal elites who believe they are better than those without ivory tower educations. It has killed any ambition to seek other information sources, and destroyed any patience or trust in the viewpoints of friends and family who don’t parrot the world according to Rush. In short, but without a doubt, it has radicalized millions of Americans and consumed the GOP, mandating a new political class forbidden to pursue what has always been solely responsible for securing the peaceful interplay of US political power – compromise.

Trump’s Presidency has added to Fox/AM’s delivery network the world’s most powerful pulpit and exponentially magnified both the intensity and credibility of the white grievance narrative, enhancing it into an all-encompassing life proposition that combines Trump’s well being with the nation’s fundamental survival. That the GOP didn’t even bother to put forward a position platform this week clarifies a cult of personality no different than any of history’s most pronounced totalitarian movements. His acceptance diatribe last night confirms one of America’s major political parties is now fully beholden to the lies and bigotry Fox/AM has relentlessly cultivated since its inception. The Republican Party is now completely defined by the rabid whims of one of Fox/AM’s fanatical consumers, who also happens to be a sociopath, his message both informed and impelled by the only information source he trusts. The full radicalization of 35-38 percent of America is now complete. They won’t be modifying their nihilist extremism any time soon, and they equate electoral defeat in November with the end of days.

Meanwhile, the American Black experience has continued apace, its reality fully at odds with Sean Hannity’s fiction. Technology has validated what black communities and their leadership have always claimed, that encounters with law enforcement throughout the US have never become less dangerous for black suspects, who way too often are targeted for scrutiny only because of skin tone. This narrative hasn’t been spun for them by former house painters on the radio or television, it’s been lived one encounter at a time, one beating and jailing, one wrongful conviction, one hail of bullets, one ruined life after another. The notion of white privilege is not a figment of talking points; it’s the sad conclusion of systemic injustice. The advent of real time video capability has provided a verdict our own eyes can’t dispute. Over and over again viral documentation has confirmed outrageous abuse nobody can credibly contest, hard as many may try.

The steady stream of camera-verified police killings of unarmed or detained black men has eroded whatever faith in US jurisprudence may have been bolstered by Barak Obama’s election. Indeed, throughout his two terms, case after case of police brutality and outrageous shootings of unarmed black men resulted in the same thing…. nothing. Trump, he of the “I wish you wouldn’t treat them so nicely” sensibilities about basic civil rights, has viewed law enforcement as a vital constituency; he’s been wholly adversarial to anything less than grotesque coddling and slavish support regardless of how incriminating the circumstances are. It’s now a fair question to ask whether radicalization of black America isn’t actually MAGA’s objective, so overt is its indifference to police abuse and so hostile its attitude toward protesters. Trump has no platform for the coming election other than to equate Black Lives Matter with Antifa and promise war on anyone who marches when yet another police outrage occurs. “Law and order” is his constant bellow; he’s Richard Daley on roids.

So there it is, two blocs at odds with the US democratic experiment, shaped by wholly different circumstances. One radicalized like a Frankenstein in Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes’ ghoulish laboratory, taught to fear their shadows and blame whatever failings they endure on those their ancestors have tormented for centuries. And the other camp, the tormented, who non-fascist America now fully depends on to help deliver electoral salvation in November, that has run out of patience with a system which makes going for a late night 7-11 run a life-threatening proposition, or calling the cops for help an existential predicament. A group who literally watches its own get executed for being black, and then has to stomach a peanut gallery of reactionaries swear it’s more than what the camera vividly displays because… did you see he had a record?!

NBA head coach Doc Rivers, as insightful as any political analyst, was asked the other night his thoughts on the decision by teams to sit out a round of playoff games to protest the police shooting of unarmed Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. Rivers became emotional. “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back,” he observed before perfectly crystallizing the current state of affairs:

“All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear…. We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. We’re the ones that we’re denied to live in certain communities. We’ve been hung. We’ve been shot. And all you do is keep hearing about fear.”

Not 48 hours later, like the windup menace he is, Trump validated Rivers’ assessment on the White House lawn to a cheering throng of hateful radicals, oblivious to the fact they are hastening what they’ve always feared most – streets filled with chaos and disorder. That they can’t make the connection and recognize chickens coming home to roost is hardly surprising. After all, where would they ever hear such a thing, and if they did, why would they ever listen to it? The new rules for radicals. BC

“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”

Thomas Mann

“ I am the one who knocks!”

Walter White

We have been raised to believe in the incompatibility between evil and inanity. Hollywood to history books reinforce the notion that the pursuit of evil is a structured quest, with forethought and dark strategy at work to impose the worst in sweeping and systematic fashion, nothing piecemeal or slipshod about it. When we think of notorious authoritarians we too often make them smarter and more deliberate than they were, as if launching a two-front world war against an ally fully prepared to cede you most of a continent includes some whiff of logic and intelligence.

Throughout Trump’s idiotic reign the principle solace many have grasped for is this assumption anybody so disorganized and ad hominem isn’t capable of destroying 250 years worth of democratic institutions and traditions, ushering in a dark age. Listen to him, they’ve regularly declared, he couldn’t plot a trip to the basement, let alone a coup to usurp the Constitution. When things get bad enough adults will abandon ship and he’ll turn to pudding. How has that worked out?

Fact is, nothing supports such confidence; history posts a long list of atrocity by incompetents. When it comes to the projection of evil, aptitude is never a requirement. Only two things are, both of which Trump boasts in spades: a sociopathic lack of empathy and self-awareness, and control of the resources required to impose it. When it comes to crimes against humanity, simply being devoid of conscience is more than half the battle.

We’ve learned on a near daily basis that our POTUS can always go lower, impulsively plunging to new depths. Yet and still, every now and again he will clarify straight up he is in fact evil and, with the immense power at his disposal, a grave danger to us all. Speaking the other day at a so-called coronavirus briefing, really just a platform for more unhinged gibberish, the Bunker Duffer wandered about his ever-growing enemies list, pretending it was still February and he hadn’t ruined the nation’s health and economy already.

Suddenly his eyes lit up at one of the bullet points Stephen Miller had provided for his teleprompter. New Zealand, who all but the worst took heart in for completely flattening their Covid curve, recently reported new cases of the virus. Trump was positively giddy about the news! “New Zealand, by the way, just had a big outbreak, and other countries, who were put up to make us look not as good as we should…” The next day, at a rally in Minnesota, Trump did a wink wink, nudge nudge for the wretched core chorus after revisiting the subject. “Of course, we don’t want that,” he said with the scurrilous smirk reserved for when he wants something with all of his ghoulish soullessness.

Since the turn of the 20th Century, America has been led by a number of Presidents with weighty baggage on their scales. Wilson had a stroke and was near fully incapacitated by the end of his second term. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt was heroic into four terms bound to a wheel chair. Nixon was corrupt and paranoid, but had enough shame and civic duty to leave when the gig was up. Clinton couldn’t help himself and felt victimized so many couldn’t get past his entitlement to seedy and improper personal indulgence – a kinder, gentler narcissism. Reagan was clearly in the early stages of Alzheimer’s toward 1988. The list is long. Yet and still, we’ve never before done evil born of sociopathic character disorder. Now we may get four more years of it. Oh, yes, he’s an imbecile to boot, Hitler and Klink all rolled into one.

The Democrats went after Trump as they had to do last week; anything less would have been complicity, a wanton surrender to consultants desperate enough for an income stream they don’t mind destroying its wellspring for. Nobody really doubted it would happen; but meted out over four nights among the companion theme of the genuine diversity Trumpism detests, its impact was a very pleasant surprise, more powerful than most expected. In particular, both Obamas provided long overdue bearings for defining how unfit Trump is for office with the style and substance anyone but despicables couldn’t help but celebrate as dawn to MAGA’s long night.

However, we’re still tip toeing through the tulips when it comes to what we confront, still trying to stick his square peg in our round avoidance of the indictment MAGA’s durability merits of our society at large. Our democracy is not meant to survive some certain tipping point when a collective lack of altruism makes the breeding grounds for despotism and atrocity sufficiently lush with too much apathy and self-absorption. At that juncture it’s just a question of when somebody is willing to consume whatever good is left; and they don’t have to be ingenious or even cunning, merely prepared to do what’s necessary without concern for precedent. Sound like anyone we know?

The next four days promise to be a true shit show. The temptation to permit the parade of America First clowns’ ineptitude on the stump to obscure the toxic platitudes all will slur, or amateurish production values to diminish the divisive cruelty they sloppily portray, will be strong and certain to allay some degree of alarm at the message this GOP enthusiastically embraces. But evil is evil, and MAGA is just that with increasingly diminished effort to disguise its ugliness. Worse, it’s doubtful this snake won’t keep slithering even if you do cut off its head in November; is their any doubt in the capability of any number of current GOP toadies to go full dark side as needed to replace Trump as the wretched core’s Jim Jones du jour? Cruz, Cotton, Jordan, Hawley, even ever more disgusting Marco Rubio, etc. No shortage of applicants.

We are necessarily wedded to the goal of trouncing Trumpism come November. There is nothing else we are allowed or should allow ourselves to consider right now. Blow them out. Landslide. Nonetheless, Trump provides hourly evidence he recognizes no such boundaries to his rabid inclinations, while now near constantly reinforcing how truly awful a human being he is, which both his niece and sister have provided their own depositions to support. Joe Biden was excellent last Thursday declaring “character and decency are on the ballot.” Indeed. However, we know, and should not forget, that he didn’t go near far enough. When it comes to Decision/2020 and beyond, it’s the evil, stupid! BC