The Fourth Of Trump

Saturday's newspaper column, today:

My reaction to Trump making himself central to our capitol’s annual Fourth of July celebration is what Trump supporters’ would have been, had President Barack Obama done the same. Lest anyone thought the Fourth of Trump was a celebration by and for all Americans, he provided special-access, front-row, VIP tickets for his swamp-dwellers. 

For seventy years, presidents had chosen not to insert themselves into America’s day. Not Trump; but at least he stuck to the teleprompter, reading words wrongly attributing America’s greatness almost entirely to its military strength, starting when the Continental Army took over airports. Nice words. No mention of Democrats wanting to “destroy you,” nor the press being our enemy.

Including presidential plane and other flyovers, and obtrusively parked, decommissioned tanks, citizens chipped in $2.5 million in Park Service funds intended for improving national parks, as Trump Commander-in-Chiefed a military presence, aping Moscow and Pyongyang. There, dear leaders beam as troops march by. He couldn’t conjure goose-stepping soldiers, but his intentions weren’t subtle. 

Which brings us to that made-for-TV step across a painted line onto North Korean concrete, including camera-ready posturing and Kim Jong-Un calling Trump “courageous” for doing it. The recidivist draft-dodger whose daddy bought him a pair of disappearing bone spurs fearlessly took some of the most heavily-guarded steps in human history. 

At Fox “news” the swooning was unrestrained, even as they admitted that, had Obama done it, they’d have been outraged. Kim, they’d have railed, is one of history’s worst mass murderers. Who but a naïve narcissist would accept his compliments and believe his promises? 

Trump’s self-celebration in D.C. and his one poke over the line at the DMZ are of a piece. The first shows his pathological need for adulation; the second underscores the danger to America in having such an emotionally destitute “leader.” All it took was Kim calling him brave, and denuclearization fell off the table as if pushed by a cat. 

As Trump flatters men more all-powerful than he to earn their praise, they exploit his neediness, giving him the kudos he craves, knowing he’ll mistake the disdainful manipulation for admiration. Doing so, they get away with murder. And nukes. And contracts to manufacture secret American military technology, and tariff-busting opportunities with China. 

Accompanying Trump to Korea was white-supremacist hero Tucker Carlson, invited after he’d shared his unique insight that to be a great leader you have to murder the occasional citizen. Just the way it is. Not a deal-breaker. (Flaming out elsewhere, Tucker found a welcoming home on Fox “news.”) But it’s true: Kim, Putin, and MBS are nothing if not murderers. Trump has yet to order a hit himself, far as we know, but the subset of his supporters who are murdering Americans in documented, increasing numbers, claim motivation by his words. Not to mention renegades (we hope) in his unleashed and energized Border Patrol, discovered mocking immigrant deaths and spreading racist memes online. His people. 

While Trump turns a deaf eye to homegrown terrorism, he jokes with his most-admired strongmen about their crimes. Laughs with Putin over “getting rid of journalists,” which Putin has, repeatedly. Reaffirms his “friendship” with MBS, chopper-up and disposer of same. Neither has logged the murderous numbers of Kim, though, which may be why Trump reserves particular love for him. Kim, however, as revealed by the highest-ranking North Korean official to defect in decades, has a less romantic attraction to Trump: He’s “not moral,” and “doesn’t judge.”  

Democracy’s protector, though he doesn’t understand the term “Western liberalism,” Trump also traded laughs with Putin about meddling in our electoral process, which he’d previously announced he’d happily accept again. Obey American law? “That’s not how the world works,” he said. Aloud. On TV. The “president” of the United States says following our laws isn’t how things work. Not in his career of cheating his way out of his business failures, not now. Un-hyphen-believable. (Resisting the more colorful tmesis.) 

Paraphrasing a diagnosis invented by the late Charles Krauthammer, Trump’s Fifth-Avenue-firing-range boosters dismiss his critics as suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” We who point out and warn of the obvious are blinded by hate, according to Trumpists. But the truly blinded are they who can’t see the ease with which Trump’s narcissism is being exploited by the despots he emulates. 

The authentic Trump Derangement Syndrome causes people to look at his record of capitulations to dictators and neither recognize nor understand the peril in which Trump’s personal pathology places our country, abroad and at home.

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Take Back Your Tired, Your Poor

Next newspaper column:

Behold the newly-made greatness of Trump’s America: Ben Ferencz, last surviving prosecutor of Nazis during the Nuremburg trials, calls Trump’s policy of separating refugee children from their families “a crime against humanity.” He should know. 

And that was before we heard of hundreds of children crowded into foul-smelling detention facilities designed for far fewer, without soap, toothbrushes, showers, or beds. His remarks were also before a DOJ lawyer testified to Congress that kids really don’t need those things. Another 3,500 are being held in for-profit “facilities.” 

Behold the greatness of Trumpists’ America: “They’re children of criminals,” some have said. “They deserve what they’re getting.” In fact, they’re children of desperate refugees, of whom Jesus is reputed to have spoken favorably. 

Rather than considering the outrage itself, rightists attack those who’ve called those places concentration camps. Which is consistent with their general rejection of facts. If climate change, why not dictionaries? 

Outrage. Attorneys had to force Border Patrol agents to hospitalize children dying before their eyes. Unresponsive. “Eyes rolled back in her head.” Absent adequate help, older children are caring for neglected younger ones. At least seven have died, so far, in American custody, in our name. To be silent, to rationalize, is to expose one’s enjoyment of Trump’s cruelty.  

Notwithstanding statements last weekend from our “president” and vice-president, this is not okay. Nor is it a continuation of Obama’s policies, or the fault of Democrats, as those men lied, respectively, to Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper; the latter of whom tried, unsuccessfully, to get Godly Mike Pence to stop changing the subject and admit the inhumanity.  

With few exceptions, people arriving at our southern border are refugees, not criminals. Seeking asylum, they’ve escaped from intolerable conditions. Trump’s policy of effectively kidnapping their children, placing them in filthy, neglected, intentionally horrible, “message-sending” conditions, ought to be denounced by even the most avidly pro-Trump (and pro-life?) Americans. Surely, were it their children, they could imagine the pain. Surely, they retain a modicum of un-Trumpian empathy. 

But it’s not denounced. Defended, denied, excused, is what it is. What’s that word, again? Oh, right: deplorable. Or, like a recent letter-writer claiming Democrats want illegal immigration to get voters, Foxified. You have to lap up lots of lies to believe such absurdity.  

Failure to address our immigration problems has been bipartisan. If answers are hard to come by, though, making things worse ought to be off the table. Yet that’s exactly what Trump, in his short-sighted, ill-considered, please-the-worst-among-us manner, is doing. 

These people are fleeing their countries out of fear, or hunger, or hope for their children. An obvious, cost-effective, long-term approach would be to help improve the conditions from which they’ve fled. In reducing aid to the Central American countries refugees are abandoning, Trump does the opposite. “Punishing” these poor countries for not stemming the tide. It doesn’t get more bass-ackwards than that. 

Moreover, as previously noted, Trump is actively making a root cause – climate change – worse. This he’s doing purposefully, apparently motivated by sticking it to liberals and universally more-admired President Barack Obama. Drought, famine, and floods: all results of climate change, compel those people to leave. Some, who ran for their lives, were sent back home, where they were killed. Just now, U.S. asylum officers are requesting a court injunction against Trump’s simplistic “remain in Mexico” policy, saying it endangers asylum-seekers’ lives. But it pleases his base.  

We Americans are facing imminent, critical decisions about no-longer-ignorable issues, solutions to which will be difficult and costly. Not just immigration: climate change, deficits, health care, education, infrastructure, energy. But first we must decide whether to reaffirm or renounce what we once were: generous, welcoming, innovative, willing to sacrifice when the times required it. Which, if any, of those values remain? Are we willing to spend money in service of them? Are there better investments than weaponry to protect the futures of our children? Are we ready to make them?  

Can we even discuss these things as long as we have a “president” who tells his supporters that over half of Americans want to destroy them; whose party seems fine with it? Preserving their power takes precedence, evidently, over future sustainability. Unwilling even to debate Democrats’ solutions, Trumpists reject them reflexively, obediently branding them as socialism, as told to. 

It’s a downward spiral with nothing but bad outcomes ahead. Only they can stop it. 

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Hard To Believe

My next newspaper column:

Turns out, truth matters. Turns out, having a “president” who’s exceeded ten-thousand documented lies in office, and a party and millions of voters who don’t care, isn’t ideal. Who knew?  

If ever it’s preferable to find this “president” believable, it’s as he dangles desire for war. Tells us another country threatens us, violating agreements, moving weapons around ominously, attacking tankers. 

Time was, I believed our government wouldn’t lie about war. When in college, I signed a letter to LBJ, attesting that if he says we need to be in Vietnam, we trusted him. Two years later, my graduating class staged one of the earliest war protests, on the occasion of Robert McNamara receiving an honorary degree. Several classmates turned their backs; more walked out; one refused his diploma. By then, my certitude was wavering. When drafted, though, I went. If not me, someone else, I reasoned. Unlike Trump.  

And now, this draft-dodging man of ten-thousand lies, who gathers around him people similarly disposed, whose appointees turn over like rocks in a tumbler, tells us Iran is making warlike moves. The same man who assured us, after an hour with Kim Jong Un, that North Korea’s nuclear threat was no more; who said he had no business interests in Russia; who still contends Putin didn’t mess with the election and refuses to protect future electoral integrity. 

The man who’s broken his promises to replace the ACA with something better; balance the budget; eliminate our debt; protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; build a Mexico-funded wall. The man who says liberals want to end capitalism and execute newborns. The man who says China, not US consumers, pays his tariffs; whose EPA, disliking death projections from coal-fired pollution, plans to change the projections, and increase the pollution. The man who’s been calling our intelligence officers traitors.  

That man. Who continues to insist Hillary Clinton received millions of illegal votes, that his electoral win was a historic blowout, that he barely knew Paul Manafort, that Robert Mueller said there was no obstruction; who’s blocking testimony from witnesses to his obstruction; fires pollsters whose results he doesn’t like, after telling George Stephanopoulos those polls “don’t exist.” Priming us for war on claims he says are true but which our allies insist are false. 

Also, he cheats at golf.  

No longer is naiveté like mine, back then, an excuse. There remain people who insist Trump doesn’t lie, that he’s fulfilled every promise, that he rescued our economy after Obama, not Bush, crashed it. To such loyalists, truth stopped being important long ago, as they welcome authoritarianism with blinkered enthusiasm, figuring they’ll not be among those endangered by it.  

But now we’re talking war. Trump has threatened that, if it comes, Iran will cease to exist; in which case millions will die. Muslims, mostly. Perhaps that’s why so many Trumpists claim Jesus put him in office. 

Iran is breaking agreements and mining ships, Trump tells us, after he broke the nuclear pact they were, by all accounts, honoring. In doing so, he goaded them to do the same; yet we’re to believe it’s Iran that wants war. Maybe. But by what standard can we believe this “president,” downstream from his scaturient mendacity? After how many lies is trust extinguished? Fewer than thousands, surely. 

Neither owned nor flagged as American, it’s unclear why Iran would attack those ships. Perhaps they did. Shall we go to war, though, to protect Saudi oil? The Saudis, to whom Trump would sell weapons without Congressional approval, whose murders he ignores? Who he wants to build our high-tech weapons? His personal business partners, urging him to attack? And where was that drone, really? 

Approaching an election clouded by unfavorable polls and calls for impeachment, Trump faces the very situation in which he claimed Obama would start a war with Iran. Repeatedly, Trump serves his own interests above all else. Reasonable conclusions may be drawn. Based on simple observation, past and present, it’s wise to assume Trump is lying, unless proved otherwise. It is, as we’ve seen, what he does.   

Timely update: Last week, I pointed out that would-be despots create enemies for people to fear and hate. At his reelection kickoff rally, rife with animus and paranoia, Trump shouted, “Democrats want to destroy you.” Sharing space with Proud Boys and Q-Anon believers, attendees cheered him and praised the Lord, believing every word.  

Then, he lied some more. 

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Coming To Terms

My upcoming newspaper column, previewed:

Hoping to divert attention from their agenda of enriching the rich, cutting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, censoring science, polluting the environment, taking healthcare access from millions without replacement, controlling women’s bodies, worsening climate change, gutting consumer protections, and suppressing minority voting, it’s clear that Republicans’ cries of “Socialism” will be central to their attacks on Democratic candidates. So let’s address it, starting with three compendious definitions:  

Socialism: state-owned production and commerce; workers are government employees. 

Capitalism: private ownership, workers employed by the owners. 

Communism: ownership of everything by everyone. Give what you can, take what you need. No private property. 

Only right-wing media and people unhappy with certain opinion columnists mention communism, and no Democrat advocates it. In purest form, it’s existed only on Russian kolkhozes, Israeli kibbutzim, and a few ephemeral, utopian enclaves in this country. A socialist dictatorship, the USSR was never “communist.” Because humans tend toward greed and jealousy, comm-baya fails. 

So does pure socialism. Which is why, Trumpic lies notwithstanding, Democrats aren’t proposing it. Touring the Soviet Union when a student of the Russian language, I saw it. Their products were junk, their workers unproductive, and it seemed their only incentives (other than avoiding Siberia) were omnipresent warnings of an enemy to fear and hate: namely, us. It’s what despots do. And would-be despots. Not that anyone comes to mind. 

Venezuela, the right’s disingenuous definition of Democrats’ desire, and one of two potential stages for performing our next war, is failing for many reasons, including incompetence and authoritarian corruption. For those seeking partisan analogies, there they are. Venezuela is as far from what liberals want as Trump is from veracity.  

We’ve never seen pure, unfettered capitalism, either, although the US came close in the Gilded Age, when regulations were few, capitalists were extraordinarily wealthy and oligarchical, and their employees, including children, were overworked, undercompensated, and disempowered. Workplaces were unsafe and unhealthy, often fatally. Along came liberalism and unions to rectify, at least partially, the inhumane inequality, but not before unbridled greed led to the Great Depression. MAGA, it turns out, means Make America Gilded Again. 

So there’s a spectrum, at the unoccupied extremes of which are absolute capitalism and absolute socialism. Most countries lie somewhere between. Given the worldwide breadth of that scale, differences between Democrats and Republicans are comparatively narrow, and none but hardcore Libertarians and “Freedom-Caucus” Republicans are aiming for a far end, despite what one hears from Sean “Tell ‘Em Liberals Hate America, Donnie” Hannity, and Donald “Liberals hate America” Trump. 

Believing regulations stifle growth, conservatives favor abrogating most of them, arguing “market forces” will ensure that corporations won’t, say, pollute, and, out of charitable patriotism or something, they’ll do right by their employees. History suggests otherwise. 

Liberals are proud of producing workplace-safety, child-labor, and pollution-control laws, plus other Republican-hated programs like SNAP and Medicaid. They believe seniors are better off with than without Social Security and Medicare, that education and press freedom protect our constitutional democracy, and that voter suppression doesn’t.    

Some prefer to disparage these accomplishments, but it’s Fox-level fakery to suggest liberals want anything like pure socialism. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and other targets of right-wing lies have issues with the sort of capitalism in which widespread, crushing poverty exists alongside unimaginable wealth; in which enormous corporations pay no taxes; which creates leaded drinking water, contaminated canals, and coal-ashed rivers. Everyone should.  

Which brings us to “Democratic Socialism.” Before reflexively dismissing it, people should consider what it is, not what they’ve been told to think it is. In short, it’s capitalism with a conscience. Flourishing capitalism. Like Sweden’s, with worldwide, for-profit, tax-paying corporations: Volvo, Saab, Ericsson, Ikea, and more; and, by all measures, happier, healthier, better-educated, more financially-secure citizens than Americans. Higher taxes, better perks. Fewer worries, better sleep.  

Democratic socialism replaces profit-above-all with profit for a purpose, recognizing that capitalism endures when its workforce is educated, healthy, has decent benefits, predictable retirement, and enough income to buy what capitalists produce. It thrives by not salting the soil in which it grows. 

Rather than engaging in honest debate, Trump’s rally-joiners prefer chanting “AOC sucks.” That’s Trumpism: reflexive, simplistic nescience replacing thoughtful discourse. That’s fatal to democracy. And it’s intentional. 

Among those who’ve gained the most and will gain still more from progressive policies are Trump’s fact-free adulators, obediently swallowing the lies without a moment’s thought to who’s telling them, and why. 

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A Climate Of Lies

My upcoming newspaper column:

I’m just back from Boston, having accompanied my wife to her fiftieth college reunion. There, classmate Al Gore spoke about, no surprise, climate change. Nothing he said was surprising, though; not to those who’ve read the science and are awake to the disinformation campaign from polluters and their payees, which makes Big Tobacco’s campaign against cancer-causation seem like George Washington’s cherry-tree confessional.  

The science is clear. Everything happening has been predicted by climate scientists; their errors only in underestimating speed and severity. Drought, floods, cataclysmic rainstorms, stronger hurricanes, the Polar Vortex sending frigid air to North America, changes in ocean currents. Record-breaking heat, bone-chilling cold. 

Across the planet, it’s affecting food and water supplies, creating climate refugees by the millions, inflaming politics here and abroad. Honduras, for example, is among the countries most affected by climate change; from the resulting poverty and hunger, citizens flee to our borders. As with his policies in other areas, Trump’s climate denial makes our immigration problem worse. 

Iran, which Trump pretends wants war, is suffering climate-related disasters. Deluges inundate homes and buildings, wash cars and buses down city streets like corks, even as overheated farms die. A country suffering such conditions seems unlikely to attack us.  

Among Gore’s slides was a picture from space, of Earth and its tiny atmosphere. Our planet is rare fruit with the thinnest of peels; into this fragile layer of life-support we dump forty-billion tons of pollutants yearly. The heat energy added to the planet by human activity is the equivalent of five-hundred-thousand Hiroshima-type atom bombs. Every. Single. Day. If, as some say, only God can affect climate, that’s how He’s doing it.  

The morning after Gore’s lecture, the New York Times reported Trump’s redoubling his ignorant attacks on climate science and President Barack Obama’s carbon-pollution regulations. It’s madness. It’s dereliction of his sworn duty to protect Americans. Never mind his documented obstruction and attempted destruction of Constitutional governance: this alone deserves impeachment. It’s tantamount to premeditated murder.  

And, whether it’s just more of Trump’s insane need for revenge for President Barack Obama’s prior humiliation of him, or run-of-the-mill cravenness toward big-money donors to him and the Congress-dwellers who’ve sold their souls, it’s depressing as hell. Typical swamp politics, augmented by the delusional actions of a damaged human being. Who knows?  

More depressing is how easy it’s been for Trump and those who smuggled him into office to convince so many voters to spurn reality. And not just climate change. It’s broad-based, carefully-cultivated, factual illiteracy. Disagreeing with opinions is one thing; it’s what makes for the sort of useful dialog that finds workable solutions. But pigheaded rejection of facts is something else entirely. 

Is it that Trumpists continue to excuse his lies because they justify their empathy-free selfishness? (Some people don’t like my shared-hatreds proposition.) Those moral failings were always present; Trump just allowed them out of the closet.  

This strenuously-maintained disbelief applies equally to the Mueller report. Well-aware of the tractability of his supporters, Trump, aided by the least general Attorney General in decades, set the narrative before truth had a chance. Only days ago, after his stage-managed walkout on Pelosi and Schumer, for a “spontaneous” press conference, he arrived at a conveniently waiting rostrum festooned with signs lying, “No collusion, No obstruction.” 

By now, presumably because someone drew him pictures, Trump knows what’s in the report. Unless they’re as pathological as he, those repeating his lies cannot have read it. Moving their lips to words of another like ventriloquists’ dummies, they’ve chosen ignorance. After Mueller’s subsequent speech laid the truth out, they shouted, “La la la, we can’t hear you.”  

How nice if all discourse began with factually factual facts. Manmade climate change is real, it’s existentially dangerous, and it’s accelerating. Mueller documented multiple acts of obstruction and, but for destroyed documents, would have about collaboration. Before opining on climate, or Mueller, deniers ought to read the report, investigate climate science, and become enlightened. It’s what honest, truth-seeking, self-respecting people do.   

Al Gore ended with hopeful inklings: China and India, the greatest contributors to climate change, are converting to renewables faster than any other country. Europe is close behind. And, despite Trump’s efforts, the US is, too. Where people recognize and understand the future, his lies fail. 

Climate. Mueller. Unlike today’s Republican leaders, Democrats believe truth-telling makes better policy than lies. In Trump’s America, who’s right?

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Memories of Memorial Day

My next newspaper column:

Monday, Memorial Day, a friend shared a Facebook meme: “Only two defining forces have offered to die for you. Jesus Christ, and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom...”  

And I thought, those who served in Vietnam as I did, before and after, killed there, didn’t die for our freedom. They died because they were poor, mostly, couldn’t get student deferments, or have daddies who bought them a pair of invisible bone spurs. They died not knowing or caring why they were there. Quoting another veteran, they died for a mistake. Taking and returning fire, they fought to protect themselves and their squadron, not anyone else. All they wanted was to ride those “freedom birds” back to the world with as many of their limbs as possible. The ones I evacuated mostly didn’t. Their Purple Hearts came at a much higher price than mine. And those who died were still dead three days later.  

I served in Danang, not far below the DMZ. “Rocket City,” we called it. When the rockets rained in and we dove for cover, it wasn’t for anyone’s freedom but our own. The beach there, China Beach, was beautiful, though; white sand, mild surf, and warm waters comparing favorably with the occasional nurse from the 95^th Evac stripping her combat fatigues down to a bikini, as choppers patrolled the shore, gunners sitting halfway out the doors, feet resting on the struts, protecting our freedom to swim.  

Just down the beach was the civilian MACV compound, fenced, guarded, green, quartering contractors making big money servicing the war. Someday, I figured, China Beach would be a destination spot, adorned with expensive hotels, win or lose. And so it is.  

Protecting America’s freedom had nothing to do with it. Especially not to the orchestrators. The Domino Theory was a useful selling point. Now our trading partner, Vietnam did fall. And it has hotels and McDonalds.   If the term makes sense, World War II was a good war. There was a definable cause, and undeniable need. It liberated people held in cages, terminating that practice and Nazism forever for a while. And it ended the Depression. 

Afghanistan was justifiable, might even have made us safer, had Rumsfeld not let Osama off the hook, had Bush not bailed to pursue unrevealed intentions. Iraq’s “Domino Theory” was “Bringing Democracy to the Middle East,” as bogus as the former, and as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It was never about protecting our freedom, even though more who fought there, and more people back home, believed it was; more than was the case with Vietnam. By then, propaganda had found a louder voice. Dick Cheney’s stock in Halliburton made out. Oil companies and defense contractors, too. Most everyone else paid dearly for the adventurism, and the bill still isn’t settled. 

It’s easier to believe our wars have been to defend freedom than to consider other reasons. No matter what, those who died deserve our veneration. And contrition, for the lives we’ve enjoyed since they lost theirs. And for our complicity in sending them, unquestioning, to fight wars instigated by old men whose kids rarely did, for reasons obscured beneath star-spangled bromides.  

It’s wrong, and lazy, to define patriotism only in terms of war; equate it only with those convinced to fight, for reasons they’re made to believe. It’s not their belief that needs questioning: it’s that of those who slap “Support Our Troops” stickers on their cars and trucks, fly flags that say “Behold my patriotism,” coal-roll, vote for tax cuts that deprive veterans of their rightful benefits, and call themselves patriots. 

After serving in Vietnam, Memorial Day makes me more angry than sad. Once a year the tears are real; the absence of those who died is eternal. Yet we remain at war, even as phony platitudes and intimations of future wars from a “president” who dodged the draft by fakery expose the day of remembrance as the manipulation it has always been. My friend, an honorable man who didn’t serve, believes with all his heart. I respect him for that. My anger may be overly self-righteous, but military members aren’t the only Americans protecting our freedom. So are teachers, nurses, housekeepers, factory workers, researchers, parents, climate protestors, plumbers, Social Democrats, the remaining actual conservatives, community organizers… 

But not those keeping us in a state of perpetual war, selling the myth that freedom is the reason.

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To "I" Or Not To "I." That IS The Question

My next newspaper column:

Impeachment. There’s a political argument, to the “no” side of which Nancy Pelosi seems committed; and there’s a constitutional argument, for which the rational position is “yes.” It’s a monumental call.  

Were the House of Representatives to embark upon preparing a case, there’d be one of those storms the prefix of which was shared by Trump in his characterization of certain African countries. His tweet-thumbs would burst into arthritic flame, Fox “news” anchors’ rage would deoxygenate the entire troposphere, and melting TV screens in Trump-country would leak pixels like lava. 

If inquiries revealed murdered prostitutes and rubles by the millions in a Lincoln bedroom closet, the Senate would still acquit, McConnell’s grin would reflect eating the afore-hinted substance, and Fox’s Three Dolts on a Divan would praise Trump’s housekeeping skills. 

But there are times that demand principled bravery. Hills on which to die. If they don’t include trying to save our Constitutional Republic, nothing does. That impeachment of Donald J. Trump, serial liar, perjurer (in writing!), ongoing obstructer of justice, who comforts our enemies and threatens our friends, who calls treasonous (which requires putting to death) the constitutionally-empowered investigators of possible crimes by him, his campaign, and his administration; demands his underlings ignore legal subpoenas from a co-equal branch of government; calls for jailing political opponents; hires a sycophantic, dishonest Attorney General; undermines the mainstays of our democracy – voting, press freedom, and education; sabotages separation of powers the way any tin-pot dictator would; is prone to petulant rages leading to hair-trigger “policy” given less than a millisecond’s thought, likely to be reversed hours later; that these offenses cry out for impeachment is understood by all who consider the Constitution a still-relevant document, intended to protect us all. 

Do I write run-on sentences? Very well, then, I write run-on sentences.  

Impeachment would be a political risk for Democrats. A huge one. The aftermath could see Republicans regain both chambers and reelect Trump, which would be the final nail in the climate-coffin, seal the permanent loss of women’s rights, LGBT rights, minority civil and voting rights, equal rights of non-Christians. Minority views on nearly all issues, confirmed by ideological judges, would become entrenched, and those of us sharing ideals held by a majority of Americans could do nothing about it. A high price, indeed. And yet...  

As strep requires penicillin, so does Trump require impeachment. Congressional Democrats arguing for it, trying to convince Speaker Pelosi, are, in effect, announcing they care less about their careers than about upholding the fundamental principles of the United States of America, constituted as and which must remain a country where autocracy is held in check by respect for our laws; where “the people’s house” is able to restrain a lawless, power-hungry, mendacious leader; where those conditions that have led to dictatorships elsewhere are not allowed to take hold here. We are, they’re saying, willing to die on that hill. That’s actual, definitional patriotism. As opposed to the manipulated, phony sideshow of Trump’s rallies.  

During impeachment proceedings, Americans would hear witnesses to Trump’s unconstitutional actions, backed by layers of evidence. They wouldn’t need to read the Mueller report or seek out partisan punditry. Unfiltered by right-wing media, William Barr’s deceptions, or a Trumpic torrent of tweets, facts would be laid bare. There’d be more than enough to result in a House vote for impeachment; but, inevitable as Trump’s next lie, Mitch McConnell’s Senate would roll over, leaving him in office.  

And then, having seen with their own eyes, voters would face an existentially consequential choice: return to office those courageous enough to have impeached, while voting out those cowardly or avaricious enough to have refused removal; or the other way around. If the latter, then what many us have been warning about will have been realized. 

In failure, impeachment will have forced the sad truth upon us sooner, hastening recognition that America has come to prefer dictatorship. Decades of unrelenting focus by the “modern” Republican Party on intentional, multi-focal deluding of the public will have achieved its goal. Constitutional democracy will have become, in our century, nothing more than illusion. Its inevitable, intentional demise will only have been hastened, not caused.  

Notwithstanding rightwing claims, impeaching Trump would be about neither policy disagreements nor undoing “election” results, but, rather, about discovering whether or not the American experiment has failed. 

Perhaps it’s best if we don’t find out.   

  
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Ethical Dilemma. Resolved?

My next newspaper column:

Taking a break from Trump’s ethical failings, here’s a story of an ethical dilemma I faced early in my surgery training, involving necrotizing fasciitis, AKA “flesh-eating disease.” Excerpted and revised from my book about those times, it’s graphic. And I’m unsure what the lesson is.  

Playing softball in Golden Gate Park, Eric A. took a knee to his thigh as he slid into second base. By that evening, it hurt too much to walk, so he lay on his couch for a couple of days until he started to feel ill, at which point a friend brought him to San Francisco General Hospital, where, only three years into surgery residency, I was in charge of the “Extremity Service.” Given his story, there was little urgency in the call I got from the Emergency Department. It figured to be an infected blood clot, needing routine drainage. 

As expected, his thigh was red and swollen, but I wasn’t alarmed until, palpating it, I felt the crunch of gas bubbles under his skin. Then, for the first of countless times in my career, I called the OR requesting a room ASAP; and, unready to be on my own, I called Dr. Blaisdell (rightfully known as “Blazer”), Chief of Surgery.  

You expect fat to be bright yellow and to bleed a bit as you cut through it. When it’s gray and fizzes, a thudding sickness arises in your gut. Even worse when it’s muscle, liquefying, frothy. The treatment for necrotizing fasciitis is aggressive, wide removal of all the involved tissues, and big doses of antibiotics. And going back to the OR as often as it takes, to do it all again. It doesn’t always work. Gas-forming infection moves so fast, you can see it.  

We cut away most of the muscles of Eric’s thigh, and the skin over them. Preserving his leg seemed impossible, but at that point we’d removed everything that looked infected; and since, in my inexperience, I hadn’t considered discussing amputation with him, I took him to the ICU to wake him up and talk things over before the next operation.  

He was lucid, and adamant: no amputation. He’d rather die, he said, than lose his leg. I was as persuasive as I could be. So was he. When his pulse and temperature began to rise, I took him back to the OR.  

Within minutes it was obvious: there was no way to save Eric’s leg, and it was unlikely we’d save his life. The infection now involved the remaining muscles of his leg, had forced itself around the buttocks, and, portentously, the fascia of the psoas muscle—heading up into the belly along its back side, all the way to the kidneys.  

“He needs disarticulation,” Blazer said, meaning taking the whole leg out of the hip joint, the worst kind of amputation. Without a stump, it’s hard to control a prosthesis, let alone attach one.  

“Dr. Blaisdell,” I said, “he was very clear: he refuses amputation. He said he’d rather die. Really,” I repeated, by now not at all sure what was right. “He was very clear.”  

“Then I’ll do it.”  

So I did it.    

When we finished, Eric’s hip socket was empty, his buttocks denuded to the middle of his back. His lower belly was skinned, his left testicle, denuded, was hanging like an egg on a string. We’d reached into his retro-abdominal area as far as we could, stripping the psoas muscle’s surface and leaving a bunch of rubber drains. It was going to be hard to face him when he awoke, as clear as his demands had been. On the other hand, I was certain he was going to die.  

Embarrassingly, Blazer was already leaving the ICU when I got there at 5:00 the next morning. “Your patient just wrote a note," he told me. "You’d better go read it.” (Still intubated, Eric couldn’t talk.) Get me a lawyer, was what I expected, and my stomach tightened as I reached for the clipboard. 

“I’d like information on prostheses, please” is what it said.  

After some late-night hilarity featuring too much soap in a jetted tub (it’s in the book), and several skin grafts later, Eric returned home to Boston. For years, he sent Christmas cards.    

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The Idiot In Charge

It's obvious by now that the guy reportedly in charge of our economy is a fucking idiot.

Some will argue, depending on the direction of said economy and of which party a president (or "president") is a member, that everything or nothing, good or bad, can be attributed to the person behind the Resolute Desk. In this case, there can be no argument: Trump opens his McDonald's-hole about tariffs on China and markets crash like Trump Airlines.

The idiocy presents in two forms: first, he has no fucking clue how tariffs work; or if he does, he figures he can lie about it, like he does everything else, and the Trumpic wing of the Party of the Uncaring will down it like Trump Vodka, for the brief time it was available.

To wit: he keeps saying "China is paying for the tariffs." By now we all know that's false: importers do. Then, by downstream effects, the manufacturers who buy it from importers, and, finally, consumers, for whom prices are raised accordingly. It's a burden and, in effect, a tax. Doubly so for those of us in states with a sales tax. So there's that. Thanks, Obama.

Second: he doesn't give a shit. This isn't about the US, its consumers, its producers. It's about him. The guy with the best words, whose very big brain hires the best people, who understands more about everything than anyone. His pathetic, destructive, vindictive, mendacious, prematurely-ejaculating ego, is in charge. He's gotta see himself as a winner, and the other guy, a "loser." That's his game. It ain't about us. It's all about the mushroom dick floating around in his hydrocephalic ventricles.

The proof of it is the fact that he obviously has no fucking plan. He shoots off his mouth when his ego is threatened, makes a bunch of threats or dishonest pronouncements, or both. Then, as his flunkies scramble to explain away or deal with the fallout, he comes up with an idea: we'll pay our farmers even more billions than we already are. Buy their stuff. Give it to poor countries (not even our own poor.) Nothing, so far, about every other business sector, nor the consumers thereof, though.

And the thing is, I don't think any of this matters to China, because they DO have a plan. Unlike Trump, whose "plans" come and go with the flash of a couple of outraged, lonely neurons, they play a very, very long game. Slow and steady. Win the world economy. If they can play Trump like a China doll along the way, watch the US economy creak as its deficits become unsustainable, so much the better. The US really doesn't fit into their long-range plans: everywhere else on the planet does. So says I, China expert and macroeconomic whiz.

But, to quote a stable genius, "Trade wars are easy to win." Could be. If the person in charge weren't a loser businessman who hasn't the foggiest.

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My Abortion Column, Revised

I posted this last week, as an upcoming newspaper column. I decided to wait, and in the meantime, I've revised it for publication:

Discussing abortion is dangerous territory for a column, but Trump, et ilk, are already giving it prime space amongst the next-election lies they’re spreading about Democrats. “Executing” newborns is how Trump put it at his recent “Rally the Uninquisitive” roadshow. By actual count his ten-thousandth, it’s his most loathsome lie yet. In the interest of accuracy, which used to be a thing, let’s revisit the origin of this odious demagoguery. 

Yes, there are people who believe, in the rare circumstances in which third-trimester abortions are medically indicated, the decision must be left to parents and their doctors. Not Donald Trump, not Franklin Graham, not Sean Hannity. Having shared many tough medical decisions with patients, I’m grateful they never included that, the most wrenching of all.  

The big lie began when former pediatric neurologist, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s answer to a question was leapt upon by rightwing fake news, easily convincing the dupable he’d advocated infanticide. (Trump made hacking motions when saying “execution.”) The heartbreaking circumstance Northam described was a baby born so malformed that it wouldn’t long survive. He answered unambiguously: it would be cuddled in a blanket while the parents resolved whether they wished the baby to receive aggressive life-support or comfort measures only, while dying naturally. 

Some distant bystanders will argue the baby should be kept alive at all costs, until its inevitable death. More, one hopes, would apprehend the parents’ pain, and sympathize with choosing only gentleness as death approached. In turning such anguish into a heartless, deceitful theme of his rallies, Trump sank to a level of repulsiveness, disgraceful even for him. 

Perhaps those at Trump’s rallies should be forgiven. Made terminally indifferent to pursuing truth, they attend to baste in his lies, without reflection, whatever the target. Were they to make the tiniest effort to cleanse themselves with truth; had they the smallest sliver of empathy for people who don’t happen to be them, perhaps they’d reject his perfidy and be appalled by his confidence in deluding them, whatever the lies. So, no: in fact, they shouldn’t be forgiven. Truth is obtainable, and everyone benefits when people care to discover it. Those who don’t, go to rallies.  

Despite rightwing falsifiers and lunatic legislators, Governor Northam wasn’t referring to birth after a failed abortion attempt, either. Trump didn’t care; those lies work as well for him as ones about immigration. 

In a perfect world, there’d be no abortions (or birth defects). Unlike anti-choice proponents, pro-choice advocates favor birth control and sex education – not the abstinence-only kind – knowing they significantly decrease the incidence; and that the greatest number of teen pregnancies and abortions occur where they’re unavailable. To anti-choice folks, it’s immaterial. Because sin, one assumes.  

The decision to undergo an abortion is manifestly fraught. And it’s understandable, that, for religious reasons, some consider abortion murder at any stage, finding no distinction between a fertilized ovum and a full-term baby. Neither is it hard to grasp the difficulty, for those who see a difference, in agreeing at what stage of pregnancy abortion ought to have restrictions. 

There’ll never be consensus, especially downwind from such a poisonous “president.” Nevertheless, those whose no-exception stance is religion-based must accept that they’re in America, where no single religious view takes precedence over another. Not yet, anyway. 

Anti-choice believers can console themselves in their certainty of heavenly entrée, and that those who perform and receive abortions will suffer eternal damnation. (The Bible is notably silent on the issue, however.) And, because it’s said God knows us before we’re born and has a plan for us all, they may take comfort in knowing the aborted will be fine.  

Medical science tells us around a third of early conceptuses die in the womb, to be resorbed or expelled unnoticed; plus, there are countless miscarriages. And stillbirths. Given the religious argument for “no exceptions,” God is involved in every one of those deaths. That challenges religious objections to abortion, about which, again, the Bible is silent. It ought to be acceptable, then, that abortion remains legal, safe, and rare. 

To that end, programs which further its rarity should be supported by everyone. And funded. Because they’re pro-life, so should services that aid underprivileged, disadvantaged forced-birth babies and their mothers. And adoption. Tell it to Republican Congress-folk.  

Donald Trump needs to stop lying. Those who believe him should be ashamed. Why? Read this.

At Long Last, Do They Care?

My next newspaper column:

It’s time for the Republican Party and its members who continue to support Trump to decide if they believe in America. Seriously. That’s the question, right now, as Trump, Barr, and Congressional Republicans are declaring the Constitution of The United States of America inoperative, a meaningless piece of parchment. Is there any Trumpist who can look in the mirror and claim the person smirking back at them would make excuses, were it Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? 

That venerable document explicitly gives to Congress the authority, the duty, to oversee the Executive Branch. In a country founded by people who fled tyrannical monarchy, this is easily understood; a concept to be defended at all costs, lest we find ourselves back in the Seventeenth Century, with no way home.  

Donald Trump, a duplicitous egoist who’s bullied, cheated, and ignored the law throughout his career and who’s demonstrated not an ounce of patriotism beyond that which enriches him, is, without resistance from his party, claiming he’s above the law. He’s demanding his hired help do the same. And he’s getting away with it.  

The thing about the rule of law is that, alone, it doesn't exist. Citizens need to buy into the concept, see it as worth defending, even if doing so might lessen their personal power. Even if it requires sacrificing part of the present to protect all of the future. If it ever did, the Republican Party no longer accepts that premise. We see now how the system fails if people, particularly our elected officials, don’t respect it. 

When a “president” refuses to comply with constitutionally mandated congressional oversight requests, when his Attorney General unreservedly lies to Congress, while making farcical excuses for Trump’s lawlessness (“It wasn’t obstruction because he considered the investigation unfair”), how will subpoenas or contempt orders issued by Congress be enforced? Absent belief in the most basic American premises, namely separation of powers, and checks and balances; absent willingness to accede to its requirements, it breaks down. Rules become unenforceable. Which is what, precisely, is happening. 

We love seeing him stick it to liberals, say Trumpists. Forget the Constitution! Long as it’s our guy, take the rule of law, the lifeblood of our republic, everything that has, till now, preserved and protected our form of government, and shove it. We. Don’t. Care.  

When the Republican Party was producing decent people, like Dan Evans, Mark Hatfield, Margaret Chase Smith, Barry Goldwater, Everett Dirksen, Dwight Eisenhower, this would have been impossible. Even in recent memory, before whatever got to them got to them, Lapdog Graham considered Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot; Trump’s now-Chief-of-Staff called him “a horrible human being,” Rick Perry called him “a cancer on conservatism.” What happened? Power, and money, happened. Cowardice happened. Fox "news" happened.  

Trump calls a Constitutionally authorized inquiry into certain of his activities an “attempted coup,” and, predictable as acidifying oceans, his blind followers buy it, repeat the phrase like quoting the Bible. Write outraged letters to the editor. The potential end of democracy doesn’t occur to them. The history of our founding doesn’t, either.  

We’ve known for a while that today’s Republicans have discarded, like used tissues, the idea of fair elections, the importance to democracy of public education and a vigilant, inquisitive press. Have they now decided that, as long as he’s theirs, an unrestrained, autocratic “president” is okay, too? What do they think has, until now, made America great? Are those brilliantly rendered, permanently embedded checks and balances merely empty words, disposable on a whim? 

If you don’t see Trump’s dictatorial stonewalling of Congress as a danger, you neither understand nor accept the essence of America. You’re a false patriot. You reject the very concept of “a nation of laws.” This, of all things, shouldn’t be defined by party allegience.  

Bill Clinton embarrassed himself and his supporters. I found Lindsey Graham’s self-righteous, lip-quivering outrage, back then, phony (where is it now?); but I never thought Congress hadn’t the right to impeach. It’s codified. It deodorizes the stink of corruption. Do Trump supporters love America for its uniquely brilliant and successful constitutional governance, or not? If so, will they vote Trump and his Congressional co-dependents out of office, to restore the Republic? Given Republican Congressional dereliction, they’re our last hope. 

Nope. Not likely. It’d take acts of actual, selfless patriotism, not easy declarations. That ship has sunk.

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Executing Truth

Going there with my next newspaper column:

It’s undeniably unwise to columnize abortion, but Trump, et ilk, have made it clear it’ll occupy prime space amongst the lies they’ll be spreading about Democrats. “Executing” newborns is how Trump put it at his recent “Rally the Uninquisitive” roadshow. By actual count the ten-thousandth, it’s his most loathsome lie yet. For fictive Trumpists interested in accuracy, let’s revisit the origin of this odious demagoguery. 

Yes, there are liberals who believe, in the extremely rare circumstances in which third-trimester abortions are medically indicated, the decision must be left to parents and their doctors. Not Donald Trump, not Franklin Graham, not Sean Hannity. Having shared many tough medical decisions with patients, I’m grateful they never included that, the most wrenching of all.  

The big lie began when former pediatric neurologist, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s answer to a question was leapt upon by rightwing screamers, convincing the dupable he advocated infanticide. (At his rally, Trump made hacking motions when saying “execution.”) The heartbreaking decision Northam described was a baby born so malformed that it would soon die. He gave a straightforward answer: it would be cuddled in a blanket while the parents resolved whether they wished the baby to receive life-support or kept comfortable while dying naturally. (As God intended?) Despite rightwing lies, he wasn’t referring to a failed abortion attempt, either.  

Some distant bystanders will argue the baby should be kept alive at all costs, until its inevitable death. More, one hopes, would apprehend the parents’ pain, feel sympathy and understanding if they chose to provide tender comfort as death approached. In turning such anguish into a heartless, deceitful, inflammatory theme of his horrifying rallies, Trump sank to a level of repulsiveness, disgraceful even for him. 

Maybe those at Trump’s rallies should be forgiven. Made terminally uninterested in pursuing truth, they attend to baste in his lies, without reflection, whatever the topic. Were they to make the tiniest effort to restore themselves with truth; had they the smallest sliver of empathy for people who don’t happen to be them, perhaps they’d reject his perfidy and be appalled by his confidence in deluding them, no matter how vile the lies. (“It was an attempted coup!!”) So, no: in fact, they shouldn’t be forgiven. Truth is obtainable, and everyone benefits when people care to discover it. Those who don’t, go to rallies.  

Though Trump’s lie wasn’t directly about abortion, it evoked it. In a perfect world, there’d be none; no pro-choice advocate disagrees. Nor do any fail to understand that making birth control and sex education available – not the abstinence-only kind – leads to a decline in the incidence; and that the greatest number of teen pregnancies and abortions occur where they’re unavailable. To anti-choice folks, it’s immaterial. Because sin, one assumes.  

The decision to undergo an abortion is manifestly difficult and painful. It’s also understandable, that, for religious reasons, some consider abortion murder at any stage, finding no distinction between a fertilized ovum and a full-term baby. Neither is it hard to understand the difficulty, for those who see a difference, in agreeing at what stage of pregnancy abortion ought to have restrictions. 

There’ll never be consensus, especially downwind from such a poisonous “president.” Nevertheless, those whose no-exception stance is religion-based must accept that they’re in America, where no single religious view takes precedence over another. Not yet, anyway. Anti-choice believers can console themselves in their certainty of heavenly entrée, and that those who perform and receive abortions will suffer eternal damnation. (The Bible is notably silent on the issue, however.) And, because it’s said God knows us before we’re born and has a plan for us all, they may take comfort in knowing the fetuses will be fine.  

Medical science tells us around a third of early conceptuses die in the womb, to be resorbed or expelled unnoticed; plus, there are countless miscarriages. And stillbirths. Accepting the religious argument for “no exceptions,” God must be participating in every one of those deaths. That challenges religious objections to abortion, about which, again, the Bible is silent. 

It ought to be acceptable, then, that abortion remains legal, safe, and rare. To that end, programs which further its rarity should be supported by everyone. So, because they’re pro-life, should services that aid the underprivileged, disadvantaged post-born.  

Donald Trump needs to stop lying. Those who believe him should be ashamed. Why? Read this. 

[Image source]