Conning The Conned

Notwithstanding its faults - slavery, native American genocide, Japanese internment, misogyny, persisting racism, favoring the wealthy, the Electoral College - I've always believed America was a respected and trustworthy force for good in the world. By votes of its people, it made efforts to correct those faults, showing the world that, unlike dictatorships, democracy's ills can be self-healing.

Trump's first election challenged those beliefs, but he'd lost the popular vote and, four years later, was rejected and ejected: beliefs restored. Then, despite January 6 and his election lies, threats, mishandling Covid-19, and promises to punish anyone who'd challenged him, he was elected again, though more votes were cast against than for him. Now, only weeks into his second term, Trump's America is, observably, no longer a force for good. Predictable from how he campaigned, America is siding with enemies, forsaking friends and the health of our planet. Once-true beliefs have become untenable. It's hard to take.

Amidst a brave war for democracy in a land murderously invaded by a dictator whose political opponents tend to become dead, America has switched sides. If it still existed, Trump would have us join the Warsaw Pact; his kind of people.

Knowing it can no longer count on us to stand for and protect freedom, the free world recoils. Trump's besotted party, which once condemned Russia's criminal dictator, now praises him. For reasons about which there's speculation but -- not yet -- no revelation, Trump has always done Putin's will. Confirming the obvious, Russian state television's Vladimir Soloviev just said it's "no coincidence" that, after his conversation with Putin, "the phrases [Trump] is saying are so deep and so correct. They are in total alignment with the way we see things."

MAGA is Trump's most dangerous con job. Pretending to make America "great," he's blinded millions of gulliblized voters from seeing that he's eliminating every aspect of its greatness, including standing for freedom around the world. People who've never understood or accepted the value of America's founding principles see what's happening and love it; trying to descale those eyes is wasted effort. But we're approaching the point at which the machinery to bring the world's greatest democracy back into being will have been dismantled forever. More people need to join those speaking out. The need isn't subtle.

Dictators have in common controlling all centers of power: first, the military and law enforcement, to make good on threats. Then the press, legislators, investigators, and judges. With no resistance from Republicans and willing capitulation by others, Trump is remaking all of those entities, purging people who've stood for the Constitution, replacing them with his most loyal sycophants, guaranteed to do his bidding. Which they already are. The latest example: selecting as FBI deputy director former Foxer and current right-wing screamer Dan Bongino, who describes himself as "all about owning the libs." For MAGAs, that's all a resumé needs.

Thanks to America's most hypocritical senator, Trump has our Supreme Court mostly in hand, too. And he's been removing from office everyone whose job it is to keep the government from illegal overreach. JAGs, there to keep the military within legal constraints; inspectors general, ethics overseers, and US Attorneys who'd been investigating him. Moving us further toward autocracy comes his delusional executive order granting interpretation of laws only to himself and his Attorney Genuflector. In their silence, Republicans, other than Alaska's Senator Murkowski, have purged themselves. 

MAGAs hear Trump refer to himself as "the King," see the White House officially picturing him wearing a crown and rejoice. "Command us, Your Majesty. We believe your promises, even as they go unfulfilled. Attack those we fear or hate and we'll ignore the harm you're doing, including to ourselves." (Sick, but not sic.)

Ironically, the victim of the biggest con of all is Trump. The Project 2025 creators he's hired have convinced him he's in charge, encouraging his monarchical madness. Meanwhile, they're getting him to implement their true agenda: erasing the vision of America's founders, in which they've never believed, that individual freedom, defended by the law and by separation of powers, should be paramount in a democratic republic; that ultimate power resides with the people.

It's starting to feel like this: Following Project 2025 page by page, the Projectors are securing their anti-American dream of a Christian Nationalist theocracy, by and for only straight, white, native-born, wealthy males; limiting the vote, if they could, only to them. So certain they were of Trump's malleability, they published their plan pre-election. With no pushback from them, free to use the presidency as an ego-fondling, tribute-providing ATM, Trump ceded to them the real power. Especially Elon Musk: boastfully, recklessly ruining lives, barely denting the federal budget, lying about reasons and results; convincing MAGAs they're seeing patriotism at work. 

Time is short. Watch this speech by Illinois Governor Pritzker. Its truths are self-evident, its warnings a cri du couer. Stay for what begins at 4.00.

King Me

 

If I were to discover that any thought I had or any demand I were to make would be actualized, I wouldn’t use that power to rename bodies of water. Because I’m not a psychopathic narcissist, I wouldn’t decide to take over a national artistic institution and declare, like “Soviet Realism” back in the day, what art is and is not acceptable. Or threaten to shut down news agencies; not even Fox.

I wouldn’t stop sending food to starving people around the world or issue edicts intended to harm LGBT people. Or, for that matter, anyone. Nor would I ban words. I wouldn’t demand that critical information about diseases and science be removed from circulation. Because my grandchildren’s future concerns me above all, I wouldn’t denude the Environmental Protection Agency or push for more pollution or end support for renewable energy. No one who’s not a walking ICD-10 would do any of those things.

In the wake of a sudden spate of airplane disasters, firing hundreds of people at the FAA responsible for maintaining air traffic control infrastructure wouldn’t happen. Same with nuclear safety workers, meat inspectors, forest rangers, federal inspectors general, and ethics watchdogs. Given the rapid rise of influenza, bird flu, RSV, and who knows the next one, I wouldn’t gut the CDC. Only a lunatic would.

Because consumers benefit from protection from usurious banks, I wouldn’t defenestrate the CFPB. I wouldn’t threaten to end FEMA or dismember the IRS as a favor to my rich, tax-avoiding friends if I had any, which I don’t. Close to last on my list would be imposing inflationary, economy-killing tariffs and lying about how they work. None of those things would make me feel good about myself.

I wouldn’t prevent people from using whatever pronouns they like. Arresting migrants, documented or not, who’ve been here for decades, working, paying taxes, raising American children, wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t pretend I could rewrite the US Constitution by declaration; or claim to be for free speech while shutting it down, coming from people who disagreed with me.

There’s no way I’d hire an unimaginably wealthy megalomaniac, paranoid, nasty, and conspiratorial pusher of blatant lies, to bring disarray to every agency, like a can in a kidney store, firing people willy-nilly, for show, often mistakenly and without justification, with no evident plan for the aftermath. Nor would I turn my office into an ATM. 

For a day or two, I might relish knowing that no matter what I did, no one in my house or in power at the other end of the street would raise alarms; instead, they’d toss their integrity like a used Kleenex, heaping praise on me like the Second Coming. Propose my birthday as a national holiday, want my head on Mount Rushmore, when, if I did those things, the proper place would be on a plate. But it wouldn’t last. It’d be embarrassing. If people compared me to Jesus I’d demand they pray for forgiveness and never blaspheme again.

Like any decent American given that power, I’d seek ways to improve lives rather than shatter them; bring together people of all backgrounds, establish gatherings in every city to air differences and find paths to common ground. Having appointed competent, dedicated department heads, I’d insist that their purpose is to serve all Americans, not themselves. Rather than cutting funds for education, Head Start, healthcare, food, and research, I’d increase them, because, directly and indirectly, we all count on them. To pay for it, I’d end subsidies to oil companies and several corporate tax breaks, and return rates to where they were during President Obama’s booming economy. Or Clinton’s, when they produced a surplus. And I'd do the same as Trump

with the Pentagon's budget. Imagine that.

So here we are. In Earth's greatest putative democracy, a pathological, vengeful liar, having spent a lifetime bullying the powerless, was again handed the world’s most powerful office when there was no mistaking his lust for unbridled power. Given, in effect, unlimited wishes by a genie, having the opportunity to do enormous good, he chose unchecked harm, and not just at home. Via VPJD, he insulted NATO, all but cutting it loose; praised European fascists; sold out Ukraine to secure Vladimir Putin’s territorial aims, handing the “most powerful” title to him and China's Xi.

Knowing Trump as we did, even those who voted for him because they relished “sticking it” to people they dislike, it was obvious that giving him that kind of power would be sending a shark to swimmers wearing chum suits. Cruelty isn’t unintended: it’s the point and purpose. Making life so miserable for so many people, I couldn’t live with myself. No moral human could. For Trump and Musk, though, and Stephen Miller and Russell Vought and Kash Patel, et awful, it’s their raison d’etre.

RFK, Jr is too delusional to be doing it on purpose, but the suffering he’ll inflict could be even worse.

Is Enough Enough?

 

If a dictatorophilic “president” refuses to obey the law, and when his party in Congress doesn’t care, who’ll stop him? The Constitution is but a piece of parchment. What can believers in democracy do? Roll it up and smack him with it? The weakness of constitutional democracy is “Consent of the Governed.” It works only when citizens and their leaders willingly submit to its laws.

When our government, established by men who escaped tyranny and sought to prevent it here, ignores it, who’s there to enforce it? The Supreme Court? The body that granted Trump nearly unlimited immunity, gutted the Voting Rights Act, and grafted words onto the parchment saying that unlimited, unaccountable political donations are free speech? That decided corporations are people? Ignores Justices Thomas and Alito’s corruption?

If the Court were to declare any of Trump’s or President Musk’s actions unconstitutional, Musk, Vance, and Holy Mike Johnson have been clear: they don’t care. SCOTUS can direct US Marshals to arrest people who ignore its rulings, but they’re under the aegis of Attorney General Bondi, whose first actions were to do Trump’s bidding in going after prosecutors who lawfully targeted his crimes. We’ll find out soon enough whether Trump will uphold the Constitution. And whether Trump’s foresight-deficient voters will rejoice if he doesn’t. 

Until Republicans restrict it to Republicans, the ultimate restraint on leaderly lawlessness is the vote. But, following successful, long-term efforts by rightwing media, that’s failed, too. Which leaves only the slimmest of hopes that the taken-in will take back out; something toward which the Foxified have shown no inclination. They need to understand how democracy protects them, which they don’t. They need to realize and care what’s happening to it, which they can’t. They need to seek sources of accurate information, which they won’t. If Trump, who just opined that CBS and 60 Minutes should be abolished, deplatforms all but Foxoid media, they never will. Free speech, which Rs once claimed Ds were against, is in the eyes of the office-holder.

I’ve mentioned The Bulwark previously, a group of former Republicans boldly calling out Trump’s unfitness and the dangers he represents. Among them is Bill Kristol, founder of the conservative Weekly Standard, former Fox “news” contributor. Presumably to silence him, Elon lied that he’s on USAID’s payroll, using that as a reason to take it down. Swallowing the lies like seals do salmon, mixing and neologizing metaphors, Muskovites jumped on the slandwagon. 

To complaints about Musk’s illegal neutering of USAID, Trump has assured us that Elon gets nothing out of it. Well, except that he happened to be under investigation by USAID’s inspector general. And that, by diminishing its benefits to America’s image abroad, he enhances China’s. Which might have something to do with the fact that Elon does billions of dollars of business there and hopes to keep doing so.

Yale Law School grad Veep Vance’s response to a judge enjoining Musk’s illegal incursions was that it should be ignored. Musk called for the judge’s impeachment. The response of Congressional Republicans to this anti-constitutionalism can be summarized in no words. MAGA voters? Even fewer. “Ominous” would be mine.

MAGA was founded on xenophobia, homophobia, and anti-diversity. Because Trump is making good on it, his supporters find damage anywhere else irrelevant, if, jubilant about deportations and anti-trans actions, they notice or care.

They may soon, though, if any of them experiences credit card or banking fraud. Immediately after confirmation, Russ Vought, Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget and Project 2025 mainliner, disbanded the Consumer Fraud and Protection Bureau. Of the four million people to whom it has refunded over $1.8 billion fraudulently taken, surely many are Trumpic. Who benefits from killing it? Banks. Republican donors.

Nothing is more confirmatory that Project 2025, whose playbook Trump (“I never heard of it”) and his appointees are following page by page, is about enriching the rich and ignoring or intentionally hurting everyone else. Likewise, defunding the National Institutes of Health. Even people who reject science and distrust allopathic healthcare will be hurt. Losing access to its publications harms physicians and their patients. Research funding is being limited, threatening progress in cancer treatments, among others. It’s inexplicable and malicious. For countless Americans, including Trump’s idolizers, it could be fatal. 

So what is it, MAGAs? Are you okay with Trump’s march toward plutocratic autocracy because you think you’ll be fine? You know the aphorism, right?

If not, you should.

Let Me Count The Ways

 

The US Agency for International Development is a “criminal organization,” says President Musk, so, illegally bypassing Congress, he’s ending it. Cowed Republican members say nothing.

USAID represents about one percent of the federal budget. It’s the world’s largest provider of food to the hungry. It distributes schoolbooks and vaccines, promotes democracy and good will toward America. In ending it, Trump, ceder of the free world, passes leadership to our adversaries.

It’s what happens when a “president” who knows little and cares less, hands our government to the world’s richest man, unelected, given no powers by Congress. A man who, like Trump, loves dictators and seems to enjoy hurting the powerless.

It’s not only Musk whom Trump loosed upon us. He’s putting in charge, if Republican Senators forsake their duty, people who should never run important agencies, who’ll weaponize them for Trump, as opposed to President Biden’s non-weaponization about which Trump’s cadre of liars lied endlessly instead of legislating.

It’s not as bad as predicted, though. It’s worse. And, like the cliché about drinking from a firehose, it’s impossible to take it all in. Intentional, most likely. Having limited space, we’ll mention only a few transgressions with which we’re being hosed.

Most consequential is what’s happening at the DOJ and FBI. At Trump’s bidding, those critical law enforcement agencies are being turned into Soviet-style tools of repression; agents and prosecutors who did their Constitutional duty are being replaced with ones who won’t. They’ll destroy the lives of innocent citizens while lessening America’s ability to confront terrorism, home-grown and foreign, endangering us all. It’s rule by threat and intimidation.

When federal crimes are suspected, the FBI investigates. If suspects lie or refuse to cooperate, this may include obtaining search warrants. When evidence of crime is uncovered, the DOJ prosecutes; if they make their case, a jury of citizens, chosen by both sides, convicts. It’s how American jurisprudence, till now, has worked. For Trump’s multiple crimes, those steps were followed. People who did their sworn duty are being fired; many will be “investigated.” It’s conceivable that Trump’s minions threaten jurors, too.

If approved, his disingenuous testimony to the contrary, Kashyap Patel will recast the FBI as KGB. (Maybe not the juror thing.) Nothing coming from Republican members of The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body suggests he’ll be rejected, so thorough is their surrender of integrity and respect for the law.

As Florida’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi’s refusal to prosecute Trump’s pre-presidential crimes, after which her campaign received a generous donation from him, means it’s naive to believe she won’t do the same with the DOJ. In fact, hot off the presses, she already is.

While the FBI and DOJ focus on serving Trump’s pathologies, what will happen to their central mission of protecting America from threats within and without, and prosecuting actual criminals? From the once and former “party of law and order,” their silence is profound. But expected.

A sampling of other transgressions deserving mention, for none of which is there space to do justice:  

Like the abortive rollout of curtailing practically all government spending, which lasted about one day before Trump was made aware of the predictable consequences, his tariffs on Mexico and Canada went on hold before they happened. Trumpists, of course, assign it to Trump’s cosmic superpowers. Or was it that the markets crashed, his pals lost lots of money, and his benefactors screamed about the negative effects on their businesses? Whatever the reason, Trump’s justifications changed approximately hourly. Which is uncharacteristic of well-reasoned, purposeful plans.

No concession, the 10,000 touted troops Mexico will send to the border are fewer than it sent in previous years. For the interested, here’s an expert’s discussion of the tariffic dangers.

Trump’s heartless, fact-free accusation and purely political response to the air tragedy over D.C. has been hashed aplenty. Was it intended to forestall mention of his scrapping the Aviation Safety Committee? In any case, his lack of empathy for the victims was the opposite of presidential. But pure Trump.

Whatever one thinks of gender pronoun use, Trump’s banning them from government communications seems to violate the First Amendment. Same with LGBT-related words. As opposed to, say, Facebook banning Trump, about which Trumpists continually connipted.

If briefly and clumsily, Trump banned distribution of life-saving HIV drugs. This harbings life (or death) under RFK, Jr, who’s one step away from confirmation.

Removing security details from Milley, Bolton, and other intended targets of assassination by Iran, is just short of doing it himself. But they weren’t nice to him.

Banning public communication from the CDC will harm all Americans, even MAGAs. Same with shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Samer with purging helpful information from other government sites.

His “turning on the water” in California accomplished only badness.

When his hotels are built in Gaza, will the Mediterranean become "The Sea of Trump"?

Though incomplete, this list makes clear: Trump’s ego and donors are top priorities. Lawfulness is at the bottom. The public weal has no ranking at all.

Bought any eggs lately?

Brick By Brick

 

             Image source: anntelnaes.com

After an exhausting week of stamping out human decency in his government, Trump spent the weekend taking the Miami golf cure. I spent it getting over not being confirmed as Secretary of Defense. I thought I had a shot; my resumé is on a par with Pete Hegseth’s, if not greater. We both served in the military in war zones, but, unlike me, he didn’t receive a Purple Heart. We both provide weekend opination via public media; and whereas mine is mine only, he shares his platform as a mere co-host. In managing huge bureaucracies, we’re identical. What put me out of the running, I think, is that I’m not a problem drinker or a sexual miscreant, both of which are touchstones in the upper echelons of today’s Republican Party.

Choosing Hegseth over me made Trump the only president who’s had two cabinet nominees requiring a Vice-Presidential tiebreak after a 50–50 vote. No other president has had even one. Which says everything about the quality of his choices. 

For those who believe Democrats’ unanimity in voting no was purely political, votes for the previous SecDef nominees, Democrats and Republicans, were as follows: Lloyd Austin, 93–2; Mark Esper 90–8; James Mattis 98–1. Ashton Carter 93–5; Leon Panetta 100–0. Robert Gates 95–2. The difference: credentials. If not all R senators are stupid enough to think Hegseth is qualified (?), only 3 had the guts to vote no, one of whose cynical hypocrisy put us where we are. It’s shameful and cowardly.

Arriving at the Pentagon, Pete went to work implementing Project Trump 2025: his first communiqué was about ending DEI, because any military member not straight, male, white, and Christian is inferior. Then, calling them “dishonorable” and “liars,” he banned trans people who, because they had the courage to be public about who they are, are braver than most; and about whom there’ve been fewer deportment issues than non-trans members. And he announced plans to interview top general officers to see which will kowtow and which won’t. Shoot protestors in the legs. 

Beyond turning the military into his domestic enforcers, Trump is eliminating people and programs that would keep him in check. He fired inspectors general of virtually all government agencies. His Department of “Justice” ousted every prosecutor who worked with Jack Smith and will subject them to “investigations,” and it just ended further pursuit of Trump’s crimes. The firing of the IGs was clearly illegal because the law requires thirty days’ notice. The message: Whatcha gonna do about it?

Same with the TikTok law passed by Congress, signed by President Biden, and approved in a rare 9–0 ruling by the Supreme Court. Trump ignored it. Likewise, his demented attempt to rewrite the Constitution by executive order. He’s convinced he’s above the law, which, thanks to congressional pusillanimity and judicial corruption, it turns out he is. Then, because they’d get in his way, he rescinded the ethics rules ordered by President Biden. 

In a silent coup, our country has been captured by a group of very wealthy men, Christian nationalists who are anything but Christian, whose aim is to remove from government all institutions that have, till now, protected us from people like them; that stand in the way of unchecked power and unregulated self-enrichment; that let people not like them retain the power of the vote. And they’ve put in place enough judges and justices to clear their path.

It’s been a concerted effort for years. In Trump, they recognized the perfect stooge, one they could convince he’s in charge because he so desperately needs to be; a frontman willing, for his needy gratification, to keep public eyes off what’s happening; to cede the agenda to Project 2025. It’s not Greenland or Panama or Canada. It’s in the backrooms of the White House, into which they’ve charmed and threatened unimaginably rich oligarchs to bankroll their efforts. Trump gives them what they want because they give him what he needs.

Trump was elected by a minority of voters, strategically convinced it was about eggs and immigrants. People who look worshipfully at his self-pity and rejoice as he strikes at the vulnerable, who will include, before long, themselves. When they realize that, it’ll be too late.

It’s hard to accept, to know whether to tune out or scream into the night. Trump has the limelight. For him, vengeance is the goal; that, and validating his neediness. He’s president of people who see the cruelty and love it. And of the string-pullers. The more distracting outrage he engenders, the more he lies and pounds his chest, the more he fools the media into focusing on the hole rather than the donut, the more easily the Project-iles can take down our democracy, all but unreported, brick by brick.

For those who still believe in democracy and kindness, it’s hard to watch and harder to know what to do.

God Help Us

 

We’ve just returned from visiting my brother and his family in NYC, which we hadn’t done for several years. Between getting up at 4:30 a.m. for both flights, long and sleepless, staying in one of the smallest hotel rooms anywhere, I’m still uncombobbled. This offering, therefore, will lack my usual cohesive brilliance.

Even if back to “normal” it’d be hard to process Trump’s inaugural speech and its sequelae. I still haven’t, dark as it was and dully delivered. Bravado and bull. Claiming a mandate where none exists, but joyously received by the select crowd.

Sidebar: why is the Vice-Presidential Oath so much longer than the Presidential? Perhaps the Founders anticipated the current short attention span and difficulty reading. But he managed to articulate the lies and contradictions. 

Trump swore that he would faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and would, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. It might not have been a lie. “To the best of my ability” is the escape clause. He’s made it clear he has no inclination to preserve, protect, and defend. But ability? Based on the last eight years, four in, four out, not much. So, no matter how bad, it’ll be the best he can do. Plus, he’s been granted immunity by the SCOTUS Five.

His speech was surprisingly listless, even when he described the past four years, in which a pandemic ended, employment and markets soared, businesses were created at a record pace, infrastructure finally began long overdue rebuilding, as the most bleak in all of history. And took credit for the (three) Israeli hostages being released.

As soon as circumstances were unpomped, he headed downstairs, where he unloosed a more typical tirade, the usual disproved untruths, the self-pity, the threats. It was far more nefandous and much more in character. 

Later, sitting behind the Resolute Desk, he signed out of the Paris Climate Accords, benefitting fossil fuelers and harming everyone else, especially those alive in twenty years or so. Same with abandoning the World Health Organization, saving a few nickels, potentially costing many lives. Also, making JD Vance look like an idiot for saying he wouldn’t, he pardoned or commuted all of the anti-constitutional actors of J6, including the most violent and those convicted of seditious conspiracy. There’s no clearer evidence of his disdain for the law and love of those who share that disdain in his favor. Has any Congressional R criticized the pardons? Does a bear fly in the sky? 

This is the lesson to be learned from his pardons and commutations of the J6 criminals: the rule of law no longer applies. It impedes his agenda and he has no intention of following it. Now he has 1,500 grateful foot soldiers ready to be the core he’ll call upon, to threaten lawmakers, federal and local. Scare them into falling into line. Fear worked during his two impeachments, even without an army of directed mobsters.

This time, the Proud Boys and their ilk, the “militias,” the racists and anti-Semites know they’ll not have prosecutions to worry about, whatever they do. They’ll be the core of Trump’s Gestapo, his SS, and he’ll use them to cow every Republican in office. Am I over the top? No. I got the message, is all. He made it clear: The era of Constitutional government is over. It had a good run, though. Will any of those who voted for him care? Before the election, he couldn’t have made it clearer. They saw it and voted him in. 

15,000 trans people are serving in the military, honorably. Trump has banned them. As usual, cruelty, not the best interests of anyone but himself, is the point. Same with his banning of further refugee admissions, which includes Afghan citizens and their families who aided Americans during the Afghanistan war.

Nor can I ignore the “my-chance-in-the-spotlight,” hyperbolic praise of Trump, the least religious, most un-Christian man ever to occupy the White House, by the inaugural clergy, including the Rabbi, virtually anointing him God’s avatar on Earth. To any but the most besotted, Franklin Graham’s elegiac effusiveness and prayerful praise, barely short of equating Trump with God, was borborygmic.

Next day, in his presence, a brave lady bishop preached love and charity. He’s demanding an apology. Too Christ-like, evidently. I can’t define “evil,” but I know it when I see it.

So let’s end happier: Importantly, people speculated about Melania’s hat. Some pointed to the similarity to the Pizza Hut logo; or the Hamburgler; or Spy vs Spy. Clearly, though, the purpose was to fend off any attempt by Trump to kiss her. It mostly worked. So there’s that.

Also, far as I can tell, day one has passed. Did the war in Ukraine end?

Oh, The Inhumanity

 

Upon learning of the horrific fires in Los Angeles, death, destruction and suffering by his fellow human beings, President-elect Trump wrote, “What’s happening in Southern California is an indescribable tragedy. When in office, I will continue President Biden’s skillful efforts at guiding federal resources to their aid. My government will do everything possible to succor the suffering and rebuild that great city.”

This was in a parallel universe in which Donald Trump and his political party are known for their generosity and concern for those in need, and in which Schrodinger’s cats roam free while Newton’s apples rise into trees.

In ours, as is well-known, if under-repulsed, he and his sycophantic similars chose to attack and blame Gavin Newsom, DEI, liberals, Joe Biden, and Ukraine, expressing zero sympathy, affording no comfort. It’s consistent with previously withholding aid for places where he thought people hadn’t satisfactorily kissed an anatomic ring, the location of which we care not to mention.

Across America, decent people are offering help and sympathy. Not Trump. Because it’s who he is: nasty, brutish, and short. On humanity. For which MAGA loves him all the more.

Trump’s nastiness has been accompanied by his signature disinterest in facts, and lies. Falling in line, avoiding any mention of climate change as a factor, his team piled lies upon lies. It’s worth noting how many Republicans offering effortless thoughts and prayers for LA residents and meaningless praise for the firefighters voted against a bill addressing wildfire prevention just months ago. 

Except for providing help or not, Trump’s lies are of little importance to people affected by the fires. But they reveal what’s to come for the next four years. People suffering from the true “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” MAGAs who believe that, like Jesus, he can do no wrong, will forever fail to see that, for Trump, it’s never about the people he’s sworn to serve: it’s about him, always and only. And his fragile ego, need for praise, resentment of those who fail to provide it, and his desire for vengeance against them. If his reaction to the fires hasn’t convinced his supporters, nothing will. Assuming they care.

And why is that? A tsunami of bad information and outright lies consumed online have made it impossible for reality to find a way in. Even someone with resources the rest of us don’t have has given up trying: outgoing HHS Secretary, Xavier Becerra, said, in describing the impossible task of providing accurate information and having it accepted, “I can’t go toe to toe with social media.” In addition to which, Republican leaders like Holy Mike Johnson and hole-y Ron Johnson threaten to withhold aid until California Democrats change those policies about which R Congress-dwellers, holding their Johnsons dear, continue to lie.

Social media misinformation targets voters ill-equipped to recognize lies and uninterested in dispelling them. It’s unlikely, though, that Mike and Ron and their fellow spouters are too dull to know the facts. (Hannity, Waters, Ingraham, et al., on the other hand, do seem too dumb to know, and definitely don’t care.) Which makes the battle against willfully dishonest social media and rightwing propagandists even more difficult, as they force their knowing untruths into their listeners like an un-lubed colonoscope.

And so it is that MAGAs soak up Trump’s lies ever more eagerly, even as he breaks one promise after another. He’d build an impenetrable wall and Mexico will pay for it; balance the budget; wipe out the national debt. Promises forgotten or denied. This time it was ending the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of inauguration. Now it’s “try for 100 days.” Bringing down prices will be easy and immediate, he said. Now it’s “very difficult.” "Temper your expectations," said his incoming border czar, about "mass deportation of millions." But it got him elected.

Elon Musk said trimming “at least two trillion dollars” from the annual budget would be no problem. Now, “there might be a good shot at one trillion.” He’s lying about the LA fires, too. Steve Bannon hates him and, for once, is right. Poor Elon had no idea how the federal budget works and he’s beginning to realize it. Expect he’ll find a few billion; then see how he manages to get it through Congress.

Trump, though, deserves no such deference. He never fulfilled his false promises, but, because his acolytes have no memory and will believe anything, keeps making them. Annexing Canada and Greenland is purely performative (though many MAGAs are taking it seriously), distracting from the impact of tariffs and deportations, assuming he follows through. Retaking the Panama Canal, though, is about revenge for refusing his planned hotel there, accusing him of money laundering and fraud. Business as usual, in other words.

Comments on Jack Smith’s report just released and, more importantly, the one not, wait for another time. And the hearings. The ridiculous, embarrassing hearings.

Capitulants

 

The above cartoon was created by Pulitzer Prize-winning Ann Telnaes, then spiked by Jeff Bezos' Washington Post. So she resigned. The worst is yet to come.

Last time round, Trump lost the popular vote by millions, but the antiquated Electoral College, disinformation from Russia and others, and a rightwing media conglomerate devoted to replacing truth with fiction put him in the White House. He proceeded to run up massive debt, mishandle the pandemic to the tune of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and gift world leadership to our adversaries. Then, at the end, he lied about losing a free, fair, multiply-adjudicated election and instigated an attempt to overthrow it. The lie lives on.

This time, all memory erased, Americans gave him more votes than Vice President Kamala Harris; though, as in both prior elections, more voted against than for him. Baseless claims of receiving a “mandate” notwithstanding, it was one of the narrowest margins of victory in history. But they gave him both houses of Congress, too, Republican members of which are more MAGAfied than ever. The Supreme Court was already his. It’s a four-fecta. How quickly we forget.

Well, not forget, so much as succumb to four years of concentrated whitewashing. Because they know their agenda depends on obsequious acquiescence by Congress and voters, along with the press and social media, it’s been an all-out effort by Project Trump 2025. Who remembers Trump’s words on January 7, 2021, when he said that “the demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy”? He doesn’t. He never meant it in the first place. Now he agrees with Rep Mike Collins (R-GA), who said this week, evidently without irony, “On this day in history in 2021, thousands of peaceful grandmothers gathered in Washington, D.C., to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building.” And if he was being ironic, his colleagues and voters nevertheless buy the rewrite like Trump Bibles.

This Olympic-level gaslighting has been furthered by relentless attacks on big- and small- “ell” liberalism as hatred of America. Holy Mike Johnson, whose ear, by his own report, God has, just referred to Democrats as “the enemy.” Newly-elected MAGA Congressmen Brandon Gill of Texas and Riley Moore of West Virginia, on the occasion of their swearing-in, unlimbered themselves of their demagogic Trumpist bona-fides:

Gill: “We want to end the woke chaos that they have unleashed on this country, that boys can become girls and girls can become boys, and that boys should be in girls’ sports and boys should be in girls’ locker rooms.”

Moore: “My constituents have sent me here to this town not to work with Democrats but to destroy their agenda over the last four years that has crushed the American Dream and the American worker.”

After Vice-President Harris swore in three-time Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE), the senator’s husband shook off Harris’ proffered hand. Placing themselves on the side of the lawbreakers and against its defenders, Republican leaders have refused to install an authorized plaque in the capitol honoring the police who fought to stave off the riot. Thus is the division and hate Trump has stoked within his party and among his voters.

There are consequences to accepting this totalitarian repetition of lies and rejection of legitimate dissent. Before blowing up himself and a rented Tesla in front of Trump’s Las Vegas hotel, the deceased had written: “Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.” It’s all but a direct quote from Trump at every one of his rallies.

The perpetrator of the terrorist attack in New Orleans was immediately hyped on Fox “news” and the rest of rightwing dissemblers as an illegal immigrant rather than the US-born Texan he was. The truth hasn’t stopped Trump from continuing to blame it on President Biden’s so-called “open borders.”

The political inversion of America is nearly complete: an incoming administration promises to lie to us, suppress truth, and punish those who dare tell it. While claiming to be protectors of free speech. Rather than taking a principled stand, self-serving media oligarchs are pre-capitulating, donating millions to Trump’s inauguration, which, for lack of regulation, may as well have been slipped directly into his pocket. Because they knew President Biden and Democrats weren’t a threat, those same moguls gave nothing, or next to it, to his. 

Let’s assume not all Trump voters are happy with what they’re seeing now, that they’re not as enthusiastically destructive as those legislators and people like these. But, having been willing to overlook the obvious and believe the lies, they’re complicit. If it’s not already too late, they should consider Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 message to Congress as Civil War approached: 

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Healers

 

To start 2025 on the right foot, and because America has rejected the left for now, I’ll begin the year with a non-political column. Also, in the waning days of a nasty, flu-like illness, I don’t have the psychic wherewithal to address the prospects of another Trump “presidency,” even as it seems to be self-destructing like a “Mission Impossible” tape, which deserves a fun-filled column. Too bad.

I will, however, mention the passing of Jimmy Carter, whose post-presidency, in terms of integrity and righteousness, compares to Trump’s as light does to darkness. No matter what one thinks of his years in the White House, few can disagree that the life President Carter lived for decades after was exemplary.

Nor, though it’s not original with me, can I resist pointing out what might be Carter’s most fitting legacy of all: after the death of a president, flags on federal buildings and locations, by tradition and executive order, fly at half-staff for thirty days. Which means that, during Trump’s inauguration, American flags we and the world will see will be in the mourning position. What could be more appropriate? Thanks for that and for so much more, Jimmy. Also, think how much better off we’d be today if Ronald Reagan hadn’t reversed all of Carter’s green energy initiatives forty-three years ago.

And now, apropos of nothing and of only particular significance, here’s something I wrote, long ago, in my “Surgeonsblog” days: 

In no way is it false modesty to say that physicians are not healers. At best, what we do is clear the way, making conditions as favorable as possible for the body to heal itself. For without the body's amazing powers of defense and repair, nothing we do -- especially we surgeons -- would be lasting at all. The most immediate and palpable evidence of this is watching what happens after an operation. If healing within the abdomen evolves in secret, the incision itself is a biology classroom available to all.

Wound healing is a complex process, and it would be folly for me to attempt explanation in detail; mainly because, so long after medical school, I've forgotten the pathways, the kinins and the prostaglandins involved, and I'm not inclined to look them up again.  Anyone who's had an operation, from minor to a big deal, has had the opportunity to witness it themselves.

Despite having explained it in advance, I’d often get calls of concern about redness of an incision. Of course, it's necessary to separate the natural from the infected (nowadays, digital photography and email can save an office visit); but all incisions get red for a small distance out from the cut. The process of bringing the building materials into the work site is a form of inflammation: capillaries dilate and proliferate, blood flow increases, making a visible Red Zone. Of millimeters, though, not twenty yards.

That, and much more, goes on under the surface as well. Attracted by "injury chemicals," various cell types arrive and unload their cargo, set up lattice work, induce structural changes. The result of this cellular influx is a gradual thickening and hardening of the area for an inch wide or more, and which carries the unofficial-official name "healing ridge." When the ridge isn't there, trouble lies ahead. In the chronically ill, in people on high-dose steroids, in the malnourished, a soft and non-pink incision is an unwelcome and unhappy harbinger.

As much as feeling the swelling and firmness of the healing ridge can alarm the unexpecting, it's a sign of health, indicating that help is on the way, that the work of healing is carrying on. I'd warn people to expect and welcome it. To hernia patients, I'd say, "In a few days it's going to feel like a sausage under there. You might think the hernia is back." Or, after removing a lump of some kind from some place, "In a couple of weeks, you'll think I didn't remove it at all."

It takes months for the ridge to disappear. While the zone of redness dims, the incision itself gets increasingly red, and doesn't simmer down for a year or more. It's a living monitor of how long healing is active. Recipients of an operation get a ridge-side seat from which to watch the body do its work.

A corollary is the tiredness that most everyone feels after surgery. There's lots of work going on, I'd tell them. While you're feeling lazy, your body is doing the equivalent of walking around all day. So, if you’re recovering from surgery, give yourself a break. Watch and feel your body do its amazing work, rising to the occasion and making us surgeons seem like the wizards we aren’t.

A Musky Odor

 

I offer belated Merry Christmas wishes. And Happy Hanukkah. Also Kwanzaa. Let’s leave National Cookie Day, Ugly Sweater Day, and the hundreds of other December “Days” to those who observe them.

That Christmas fell, as always, on the 25th and, in a rare confluence, Hanukkah began on it, with Kwanzaa only a day later, feels like an event of celestial significance, like a transit of Mercury, planetary conjunctions, or solar and lunar eclipses.

It might remind us to celebrate, every day, the evanescent and improbable gift we’ve been given of life on this fragile, verdant (so far), life-sustaining (for now) planet; but a grain of sand on an infinite, possibly otherwise lifeless desert. And a reminder of humanity’s wasteful, ultimately useless fixations on political, religious, and racial differences.

In this holiday season of joy, reflection, and perspective, it’d be sacrilegious to focus on the tribulations about to befall us when virtual POTUS-elect Elon Musk takes the reigns of governance while PINO-elect Trump fulminates feebly, arguing agency.

But I will.

Because, whereas what goes on down here amounts to naught across the cosmos, affecting nothing beyond our imperiled atmosphere, it matters immeasurably to those of us currently alive and, more importantly, to our progeny.

Honoring the season, I’ll not comment on those who claim to love God more than the rest of us do while offering unwavering support for the most ungodly leaders this country has ever seen. Including those who, like Holy Mike Johnson, flaunt their prayerfulness like a bloody shirt, while showing little concern for our diminishing earthly abundance, respectful stewardship of which their professed religion demands.

Consider Elon Musk, who embodies the worst of what’s to come in a Trump “administration.” Unelected, wealthy beyond imagination, conspiratorial, nasty, undeservedly egotistical, and Nazi-adjacent, having received zero votes and occupying, at best, a filamentous position in government with no legislative role at all, he issued a last-minute warning about an agreed-upon budget bill on which both sides had been working for weeks: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!” And lied about its contents. Then, when Republicans fell in line like scared children, he tried to blame the potential government shutdown on Democrats.

Trump, it’s said, doesn’t like the implication that Musk is in charge. But, absent Musk’s willingness and ability to spend whatever it takes to defeat its Republican opponents (pocket change, to him), the bill would have passed. Belatedly, Trump chimed in, for appearances.

Whatever this is, it’s not democracy. It’s rule by threat and intimidation. Because Trump defers to the more wealthy and successful, practically unlimited power rests with the world’s richest man. What he wants, he’ll get. As long as he stays out of the way of Trump’s prosecutorial plans, Trump has no reason to stop him, and Congressional Republicans have neither the integrity nor courage.

So why might Musk have been so anxious to kill the bill? It’s been well-publicized that the stripped-down version that finally passed eliminated funding for childhood cancer research and for making cancer drugs and other treatments more accessible. Other than characteristic Republican post-birth, anti-life policies, and to ensure enough spending will be cut to allow his and the oligarch fellowship’s tax cuts, there’s a less well-known reason. Also stripped were limitations on and regulations of investments in China, where Musk has huge holdings in factories and plans for more. That bit of prestidigitation handed him millions.

Plus there were regulations on “deepfakes,” computer-generated images of people saying and doing things that aren’t real. Musk’s more-influential-than-Trump’s social media platform, X/Twitter, is full of that stuff. And it’s a big part of rightwing disinformation campaigns. Another win for him, and for disinformers everywhere. And he isn’t even the most dangerous. But, according to Putin’s Tucker Carlson, anyone voting against Putin’s Tulsi Gabbard is an “enemy of the United States.” 

This is government bent to the will of a few very rich people, with no regard for the people who, deluded and distracted, put them in office. No one expects hardcore Trumpists to be bothered by any of this, and they never will be. For the rest of us, though, it ought to signal a maybe-final call for awakening and resistance.

Nevertheless, Happy New Year. I hope it’ll show I’m wrong about everything.

Fed

 

Today’s lesson is from the Federalist Papers. Open your textbooks to Federalist 76. Quilled by the recently resurrected Alexander Hamilton, it includes the following:

“It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. . . . He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward candidates who had no other merit than being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure. . .”

That, in a florid nutshell, is the rationale for requiring the Senate to investigate and approve or deny a president’s choices for positions of power. Mr. Hamilton must have had exactly the narcissistic, vengeful, self-promoting Trump in mind. (Wrongly, he presumed a human capability of shame.) Not alone among his colleagues, idiocratic Senator Tuberville (R-Alabama) believes Trump should be allowed anyone he chooses, without pesky, Constitution-mandated interference. 

Aware of human imperfections, the Founders almost had it right. But they seem to have assumed that, in aggregate, senators would not suffer the infirmities we see in Trump. That, tasked with evaluating obviously unqualified and dangerous nominees, senators would place duty to protect and defend the Constitution above all else.

In their defense, Our Fathers were surrounded by and were themselves men of good intention, having risked much to create a new nation. If they foresaw a sociopathic individual like Trump as president, they could not have imagined a Senate majority of them.

We’ve referred to Trumpism as oligarchy, plutocracy, kakistocracy, authoritarianism, dictatorship, all of which apply. We see now that the best description is a Mafia-style protection racket. Pay tribute, you’ll be safe. If not, you’ll regret it. As a flock of tech billionaires and media titans knee-walk to Mar-a-Lago, we see it’s working as intended.

Pre-election, Trump said about Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal he will spend the rest of his life in prison—as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

He’s made similar threats about media people and their organizations. Zuck caved. Bezos caved. Tim Cook caved. The CEO of the LA Times caved. After ABC News caved over the interpretation of New York’s “penil” code (oops! Was that a typo?), Trump filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that turned out to be wrong.

It’s the playbook used by all the world’s dictators of whom Trump is a fanboy: an overt, intentional attack on the First Amendment. Knuckling the press is authoritarianism defined. Seeing mainstream media falling in line like sheep is ominous.

Trump is flaunting his Mafiosical methods like a bludgeon. So is his smarter alter-ego Steve Bannon, who said, last week, “... we’re going to get retribution. [Media] need to learn what populist national power is, on the receiving end. I mean investigations, trials, and their incarceration.”

Retribution for what, one might ask. Exercising the Billed rights of American citizens?

What’s remarkable about such abject capitulation is the communal cowardice. Trump – so far, anyway – hasn’t caused Putinesque defenestration of opponents or death by exploding airplanes. He hasn’t yet – far as we know – poisoned anyone or, like NoKo Kim, sent them before firing squads. These groveling genuflectors are wealthy beyond words. They can afford highest-class lawyers. If they chose to, they could take forceful stands for the Constitution and against Trump’s lawlessness.

Bullies aren’t strong. Trump’s power isn’t internal. In a doom loop of ignorance, arrogance, and weakness, it comes from the pusillanimity and prejudice of his voters, convinced to reject America’s fundamental values; from the certainty of their electeds that those voters will preserve their jobs and cashflow if they, the “leaders,” vote with Trump, and dispose of them if they don’t; from those appointees who’ll do Trump’s bidding; and from Congressional greed and cravenness, knowing his nominees will unleash unrestrained, unconstitutional, government terrorization unknown in North America but afraid to stand against it; while Trump gloats, golfs, and goes AWOL from the responsibilities of office.

Maybe enough Republican senators will remember their obligations of office and reject Trump’s most preposterous picks. While we imagine that unlikely outcome, House Republicans are fine with Trump’s plans to prosecute members of the January 6 Committee for doing their constitutional duty. It’s mass surrender by an entire party to America’s greatest threat since the Civil War.

In control for now, Congressional Republicans are the only ones positioned to preserve our constitutional democracy, but they’re too fearful and selfish to do it. Sadly, “The People” are fine with it. 

Comes The Kakistocratic Plutocracy

 

We’re past the point where dactylonomy can account for the billionaires Trump has selected for positions of authority in his impending kakistocracy. Megadonors all, it’s likely they’ll execute the offices they bought to their own benefit, not ours. From this team of benefactors, unprecedented corruption is more likely than not. Role-modeling even as he ascends to Earth’s reportedly most powerful position, Trump keeps hawking eponymous, overpriced junk. The latest is cologne. Grifters gotta grift.

Consider Stephen Feinberg, billionaire investor who’s donated tons to Trump, as Deputy Defense Secretary. He’s invested in several companies that have Defense Department contracts. Then there’s Jared Isaacman, selected as NASA administrator. Described by Trump as an “astronaut” because he bought his way onto a couple of civilian space flights on an Elon Musk Space-X capsule, he has millions in investments in Space-X. It’s a lidless cookie jar.

Topping the list, of course, is Elon himself, the world’s richest humanoid, who spent close to $300 million on the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans. His companies are, collectively, the greatest recipients of government money. We await the scrutiny he and also-billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy will apply to those corporations as they erase $2 trillion from the national budget as promised. What cuts are more likely: your Medicare or Musk’s contracts?

One thing Musk will do for sure is strong-arm any senatorial dissenters from Trump’s proposed collection of incompetents. When Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) pushed back mildly on Trump’s plan to fire FBI Director Wray in order to install subservient, revenge-promising Kash Patel, he heard from front-line right-wing icons like Charlie Kirk, who said, “Senator Rounds, you are up for reelection in 2026. If you vote against any of Trump’s nominees a primary challenge wouldn’t be hard. Just a reminder.” To which Capo di tutti capi Musk added, “Those who oppose reform will lose their primary/election. Period.” He can find another $300 million in his couch cushions. It seems to have worked on Senator Ernst (R-Iowa), too. It’s government by cement overshoes.

Not all of Trump’s picks are billionaires, but they have in common a wealth of inadequacy and/or inexperience: Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and more. Where checks are balanced, none ought to gain Senate approval. However, given the threats and intimidation Republican lawmakers are receiving, and their signature senatorial feebleness, it seems their ascendency is assured.

Also not a billionaire, but more dangerous than any to the lives of every American is Robert F. Kennedy, Junior. As a formerly practicing physician, husband, father, and grandfather, I find his positions on vaccines and other health matters profoundly disturbing. Like Trump – and maybe it’s the attraction – he’s happy to push thoroughly disproven lies. For example, on his festival of untruths and confabulations during his Meet the Press appearance this past weekend, Trump spouted off about Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora, Colorado, despite its political leaders and police saying it’s untrue. And, because every day is Opposite Day with him, he later announced, pulled from a sunshine-free anatomic locale, that “Democrats are fighting hard to get rid of the Popular Vote in future Elections." After which minds surely achieved maximum boggle.

It’s likely Trump knows he’s lying, but because it keeps his voters happy, doesn’t care. With Junior Bobby, though, who can say? Given his years of addiction to various forms of neurophysiological abuse, not to mention his resident brain worm that dined on parts of his brain before dying, of fright, possibly, he may no longer have the brain loci in charge of separating truth from fiction, science from conspiracy.

Whatever the reason, if allowed, as Trump promised, to “go wild,” his beliefs about vaccines, fluoride, disease vectors, and more become policy, there will follow, without doubt, deaths of many Americans. Children, especially. Having Dr. Oz, a Trump-level-charlatan, quacky pusher of bogus medical “remedies,” in charge of Medicare and Medicaid won’t stanch the death flow, either.

Based on Junior’s global history, deaths are predictable. His disinformation campaign about measles vaccines led directly to children dying in Samoa. His conspiratorial insanity about Covid vaccines was equally deadly. And his intention to curtail infectious disease research, given the certainty of another pandemic, is ominous.

If his hiring criteria indicate the disconnected world in which he lives, it’ll be worse than we imagine. The reported interview questions he asks are crazier but no less portentous than Trump’s. 

From his history of business failures as well as how he mishandled Covid-19, we know Trump is a terrible manager: impulsive, distractable, uninterested in details. As long as they’ll advance his announced need for vengeance, and unless they interfere with his golf game, he’ll be letting the aforementioned appointees do as they wish. It bodes ill in more ways than one.

Pardon Me, But...

 

Because I grew up in a family of lawyers, I indicated my intention to become one on college applications. Once there, though, I found myself having more fun in science labs than in libraries. Then, returning home on Christmas break, my mom showed me letters I’d never seen, ones she’d received after my biological father died, unexpectedly, after an operation, ten days before I was born. He was a doctor. They were wonderful letters of sympathy for her and praise of him, from friends, from patients. Several noted that after he died, I was born, as if handed a baton. Also, his name was Sid. I think showing me the letters was premeditated [no pun], since Mom always introduced me to her friends as “Doctor Schwab,”. I’d tell them, “You can just call me Doctor.”

Did it make me a liar, having told colleges I planned to be a lawyer? Or was it a change of mind? Is there no difference? I ask because people are calling President Biden a liar for pardoning his son, after saying he wouldn’t. So, despite initially deciding not to, I will opine, notwithstanding that, compared to the serious significance of serially selecting sinister sycophantic simpletons by Trump, it is but a blip. (What’s not a blip was Biden’s decision to run again. That had real consequences for us all.)

I’ve been asked if, under the same circumstances, I’d have done the same. My answer was yes, if the situation were identical. If I were President of the United States, subject of years of performative, fact-free, ready-for-Fox “investigations” by hypocrites like James Comer and Jim Jordan, and evidence-lacking, no-indictment accusations that mine was a “crime family;” if my son had, after suffering the loss of his mother and siblings, struggled and eventually turned to drugs and alcohol, committed victimless crimes for which he eventually took responsibility, paid what he owed, and, defying the odds of addiction, cleaned himself up; if a plea agreement proportionate to the crimes, one that similar offenders not bearing my name would have been offered, had been reached and then retracted under pressure from a Trumpy US attorney; if it was clear that he’d be pursued endlessly as a surrogate for attacking me; then, yes, I’d have pardoned him.

In doing so, President Biden finally brought the country together. Both sides agree: what he did is indefensible. From the right, it’s unprecedented abuse of power. (I’ll eschew applicable whataboutism.) From the left, though perfectly legal, it flouts the rule of law. Now, no matter what Trump does on the road to imperial power as his heads of agencies round up everyone on his enemies list, neither President Biden nor any Democrat can ever again claim to value democracy. They say. Absent the pardon, Trump and his tools would surely have behaved admirably.

For sure.

Liberal politicians and commentators whose opinions I respect are all but unanimous in their anger at Biden for what he did. Clearly, I’m wrong. So let’s move on.

Let’s consider the implications of Russian state TV host, Vladimir Solovyov saying about Trump’s intended appointments, “What an excellent team is coming along with Trump! ... If they are allowed to get in, they will quickly dismantle America, brick by brick. They are so great!”

That, I offer, has vastly vaster implications for America’s future than pardoning Hunter Biden. More than appointing a mega-donating art collector with no military experience as Navy Secretary. More than choosing Trump-pardoned Daddy Kushner, a convicted felon who served time for tax cheating and other deplorable behavior, to the Kushiest, most food-and-wine-forward of ambassadorships. More than Putin’s favorite defender as DNI. More than a morally deficient talk-show host as SecDef, who might be on his way out, and whose nomination confirms Trump’s hasty, superficial thinking in making his choices.

Latest atop the heap of horrible is Kash Patel, graduate of a low-ranking law school with a high admission rate, as FBI director. It’s the inverse of the boy who cried wolf. Having endlessly and falsely accused President Biden of weaponizing government, in choosing Patel, Trump has erased any doubt of his intention to do just that. Kashing in on right-wing media, Patel has been everywhere, promising to go after every politician, journalist, news station, and government employee who’d not shown similarly slavish devotion to Trump.

Mr. Patel, or, if he’s rejected, the next anti-constitutional genuflector Trump would appoint, will remake Trump’s FBI into the equivalent of Putin’s KGB. Seeing nothing wrong with that, selectively redacting the First Amendment, Republicans of the sort who attend Trump’s rallies will delight, unconcerned about future ramifications.

In South Korea this week, risking arrest or worse, its people rose up to force their president to rescind his declaration of martial law. That’s courageous commitment to democracy. With half of our country clamoring for Trumpian dictatorship, while their media revel in it, it seems unlikely to happen here. That’s indescribably more ominous than a parental pardon.