Lessons From A Virus

My next newspaper column:

Last week I wrote that Rudy Giuliani invested $2 million in the maker of Trump’s touted malaria drug. Though his credibility disappeared years ago, Rudy denies it, and no proof has been forthcoming. I should have dug further. More important were Trump’s ridding himself of oversight, and the preview Wisconsin’s primary gives us of voting in Trump’s America. For some, my carelessness detracted from that. Lesson learned.

The corona crisis is providing lessons, too. In no particular order:

1)   “Government is the problem” only when it’s mismanaged. More so when it’s been gutted, defunded, and filled with lobbyists and yes-people.

2)   Air is clearer, water is cleaner, animals are thriving. This puts to rest claims that addressing pollution and climate change will make no difference.

3)   The aforementioned have resulted from massive curtailing of human activity; but we know how to create non-polluting energy without shutting down. It can’t happen overnight like this has, but the need and means are clear. Uncaring, Trump and Republicans stand in the way, doing everything they can to promote fossil fuel and inhibit renewables. Choosing contributions from oil producers over the health of humanity and the planet is unconscionable.

4)   Tying health insurance to employment is dumb.

5)   Removing healthcare access from huge numbers of Americans endangers us all.

6)   An economy in which millions face bankruptcy by missing one paycheck wasn’t as robust as Republicans were proclaiming. Not to mention the crushing demand on food banks. Low-wage workers, targeted by Republican policies, are vital to our economy and deserve better.

7)  Trump arranged to get his signature on the "rescue" checks. As if it’s his money, his gift. It’s the only responsibility he’s taken lately, and it’s a self-promoting lie.

8)  Republicans filled the “rescue” with giveaways to their rich donors. Billions; unrestricted, unsupervised.

9)  Patriotism isn’t waving flags. Among other things, it’s caring how one’s actions affect others; willingness to sacrifice in order to help, even people you don’t know. Self-described “patriots” who refuse, because “freedom,” are, in fact, the opposite. The virus has stripped away pretense.

10)  Trump ignored warnings for critical weeks, making things immeasurably worse, costing lives. Recent revelations by determined, dogged journalists are undeniable. His intellectual and psychological unfitness for the job should be obvious to everyone by now. Persisting deniers are as dangerous as he is. 

11)  Republicans calling for “opening” the country prematurely value money more than human life. From the “pro-life” party, this is ironic.

12)  In addition to his experienced pandemic response team, which Trump disbanded, President Barack Obama left a sixty-nine-page document, which foresaw and addressed, in comprehensive detail, every challenge we’re now facing: struggling hospitals, shortages, supply chains, manufacturing, the role of each government department, states vs. federal responsibilities, testing. All of it. Despite Trump’s incessant blaming and repetitive lies, this pandemic WAS foreseen. And there were plans.

13)  Trump’s downplaying of testing, to hide the numbers, is immoral.

14)  So desperate is he to shift blame, Trump is lying about and, in the midst of a global health crisis (and flare-ups, around the world, of polio, measles, Ebola, diphtheria) cutting funds for the WHO. It’s another example of how unfit he is for the presidency: to blame his failings on others, he’s willing to cause death around the world. Mostly in poor countries, of course. It’s beyond shameful: it’s evil. 

15)  Claiming “total authority,” Trump neither understands nor respects the Constitution. Declaring himself a “wartime” president, he nevertheless left procurement to the states. If “war” doesn’t require federal management, what does? Worse, he’s making it harder for governors like ours, hurling insults and hijacking equipment they’ve obtained. 

16) Withholding needed supplies from governors who didn’t praise him enough, and granting them to those who did, is despicable. People are in need. Trump doesn’t care. Everything is about him.

17) Lacking federal leadership, several Republican governors are putting their people, and, therefore, all of us, at risk.

18) Suddenly all for it, Republicans who objected to deficits and stimulus packages during the Obama presidency clearly weren’t standing on principle, but on willingness to damage the country to keep President Barack Obama from succeeding.

19) Wisconsin showed why Trump fears mail-in ballots; and that when enough people understand the seriousness of what’s at stake, Republican voter-suppression can be overcome. For America, this might be the most important lesson of all.

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Kleptocrat-In-Chief

My next newspaper column:

Anyone having any two of five human senses operating at fifty-percent capacity or greater recognizes that Trump’s government is a kleptocracy. The latest of many examples: Rudy Giuliani bought $2 million worth of stock in Novartis, the company that makes the malaria drug he began hyping as a miracle cure for Covid-19 immediately after the purchase. Trump, Inc., has a stake, too. 

Trump’s “administration” purchased a million doses of the unproven drug, with our money. Anyone surprised? Remember that Novartis paid Michael Cohen $1.2 million for access to Trump. It’s all of a piece with several Republican Congress-dwellers cashing in by buying and selling related stocks right after being briefed on the coronavirus, before the rest of us knew anything. 

Serving in Vietnam, I took the Trump-drug as malaria prophylaxis. Despite seeing several cases while there, I stopped, because it made me sick. That it’s innocuous is another of Trump’s endless lies. Is it effective for coronavirus victims? We don’t know. But the studies touted by such unreliables as Rudy and Trump and Fox “news” fabricators and, unbelievably, Trump’s second-most egregious groveler, William Barr, are equivocal at best, and they’ve been the opposite of scientific. Either way, Trump will take credit for everyone who recovers after taking it, true or not.  

Fear of truth is why Trump fired two inspectors general this week and last, and attacked the integrity of another who’d accurately reported that hospitals across the country are in desperate need of protective equipment. Trump assumes his followers will believe him when he says everything is fine, because he’s done a “fabulous” job. It’s not, and he hasn’t. 

Our hospital, where I’m assisting in surgery, is in better shape than most. Still, PPE is under strict control. Having changed masks between cases for my whole career, it’s now necessary to reuse them throughout the day. Other locations are facing far worse.  

The first I.G. Trump fired was the one who fulfilled his duty by informing Congress of the infamous whistleblower complaint. Informed. Didn’t opine. Informed, as required by law. Trump’s vilification of him was as illuminating as it was disgraceful. The second fired Inspector General was chosen, independently, by IGs from several agencies, to oversee the dispensing of the trillions of taxpayer dollars in the rescue package. A respected, reportedly “dogged” inspector, fired summarily. Has it anything to do with Trump’s hotels’ eligibility to cash in?  

The thievery isn’t just about our money. They’re stealing elections, too. Wisconsin’s this week was the Party of Trump epitomized, demonstrating the ways by which democracy will die they’re allowed to pilfer another four years. Which is, explicitly, their goal.  

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has a majority of unqualified rightwing ideologues, selected by no-longer-governor Scott Walker, whose “conservative” policies, like Brownback’s in Kansas, ruined his state’s economy. One of those judges is up for election, facing a credible Democratic opponent. Like the national Republican Party, Wisconsin’s is desperate to keep its compliant court majority. Because of Covid-19, far more people than usual requested absentee, mail-in ballots. Surprise: the state was slow in delivering them, especially to minority areas. Days after the election, some still hadn’t gotten theirs.  

To allow time to receive late-arriving ballots, in consideration of the pandemic, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor ordered a delay. Republicans ran to their reliable judges, who invalidated the order. SCOTUS, predictably 5-4, upheld the invalidation. Issued remotely so as not to endanger themselves in person, their decision forced thousands to endanger themselves in person. Trump, who voted by mail in Florida, “because I’m allowed to,” says mail-in voting is corrupt (it’s the least corruptible, as Washingtonians know). He also lied about when and why Wisconsin Democrats requested the delay.  

In cities most populated by Democratic constituencies, polling places were drastically reduced. Milwaukee, which has the highest black population, a demographic hit disproportionately hard by the virus, went from one-hundred-eighty to five. Choosing democracy over threat to life, people waited in lines for hours, just as their Republican legislature wanted, though they must have figured more would stay away.  

A political Amber Alert, Wisconsin warns of nationwide voter suppression, ideologically activist courts, disregard for public health, disadvantaging minorities. With more Democrats voting but Republican-controlled, by virtue of gerrymandering sanctioned by their corrupted court, Wisconsin is Trumpism’s future America. 

Like Wisconsin’s, Trump’s judges won’t protect voting rights or democracy. Absent massive, united Democratic turnout in November (Trump/Russia is already sewing dissension, effectively) it’s over. 

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Businessman-In-Chief

My upcoming newspaper column:

If it wasn’t clear before, it is now, to all but the contentedly Foxified: putting a multi-failed businessman ostensibly in charge was a bad idea. What was the Electoral College thinking when it gave him tenure? 

This week, our businessman-in-chief finalized his killing of automotive fuel standards, gifting oil companies at the expense of public health and the future of our planet. Those are things about which he’s never cared, of course. This was well-known before his “election.”  

In one of his recent, beautiful press conferences, the ratings of which he’s touting like he once did his sexual escapades, Trump shared his idea for saving the restaurant industry: let businesses resume deducting expenses of sending their execs to lunch. He was serious.  

Nor is it surprising, having scammed his way through life, that he’d accuse hospitals of doing something fishy with the equipment they’re receiving. Long suspected of laundering mob money, Trump figures everyone’s as dishonest as he. And he needs scapegoats to distract from failure. Hospitals. Democratic governors. China. Impeachment, laughably.  

Republicans were once outraged when Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Now, as Trump follows the script, they’re silent. His EPA is using Covid-19 as an excuse to relax pollution rules. William Barr wants judges to suspend habeas corpus till further notice. Texas has banned abortions during the outbreak. And, as predictable as it’s cruel, Trump rejected an extended Obamacare signup for the millions who’ve just lost their jobs. People about whom we’ve always known he couldn’t care less.  

Made more challenging by Trump’s unnecessary, business-friendly, trillion-dollar-deficit-creating tax cuts, the too-small economic rescue package is larded with giveaways to large businesses, including – surprise – real estate investors; while sending a comparative pittance to low-income people, who Steve Mnuchin said can live on $120 a week. Democrats managed to force oversight for the half-trillion dollars heading toward corporations. Forthwith, Trump announced he’d not abide by it. Never been his thing, rules. But he wants his name on the checks.  

Also not his thing: reality. While declaring his “decisive” embargo of flights from China saved us all, figuring he’d done everything necessary because the rest was hard, Trump sent tons of supplies to China in January: the very materiel of which there’ve been shortages ever since. Masks, PPE, even ventilators. In early February, Senators met with White House officials, who rejected offers to fund stockpiling supplies. Why? Not good business? Meanwhile, his initial foot-dragging and denial, reinforced by Fox “news,” lingers in many red states, where Trumpism is literally killing people.  

But he just praised himself for not listening to “those” who said Covid-19 was like the flu. “Those” were he, repeatedly. Astounding. If he sold people on Trump University, in Trumpworld, he figures he can sell that lie, too. Also, only in Trumpworld, where facts are anathema, a truth-teller like Dr. Fauci receives death threats.  

After months of ignored warnings, rejecting the pandemic team and plans President Barack Obama left him, and after irresponsibly wasting time downplaying the threat, which Trump wants you to forget, and which the Foxified already have, some things are improving. Where followed, social distancing is working. Still terribly inadequate, testing is ramping up. That’s because, while Trump was claiming there was no crisis, smart people knew better and began preparing. 

PPE shortages remain, including locally; and, notwithstanding Trump’s continual disinformation, struggling states are having to pay inflated prices to outbid the federal government and each other to obtain them. But, hey, it’s good business. What was it Rahm said, again?  

But Trump’s self-praise-fests are getting beautiful ratings, like no one has ever seen (“I’m number one on Facebook,” he said, mid-crisis. Another lie. President Obama has more). Some watch because when he stops congratulating himself, experts speak. For the rest, is it the scripted sycophancy or the made-for-TV attacks on journalists? When a reporter directly quoted him admitting he told Pence not to call governors who aren’t nice, Trump lied he never said it. It’s on tape! 

Trumpists must love the politicization of aid to blue states, though. Perfectly normal. Remember how President Barack Obama did it with Chris Christie after Hurricane Sandy?  

The effort it took to dissuade Trump from declaring victory on Easter to boost his electoral chances confirms his unfitness. Dead people, he had to be told, could threaten reelection as much as a recession. Not the first thought, evidently, of a businessman.

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School's In Session

My next newspaper column:

This coronavirus is becoming a great teacher, exposing the falsehood of Republican shibboleths handed down through the decades, starting with Ronald Reagan, and still believed. For example, their Senators’ first-attempt bailout package was “trickle-down” at its worst, unregulated gifting of the wealthy, crumbs for the needy. Democrats managed to make it somewhat better.

Equally important, the virus is confirming the vulnerabilities of human nature. 

Regarding the first, it’s possible, seeing the lack of preparedness and initial governmental inaction, the Republican party will finally regain its sanity. Till then, it’s easy to show how “modern” Republican philosophy has brought us here. Writing from the inside, a few lifelong conservatives have done just that. Here’s an excellent example, presented to edify Trumpists.   

The linked article spells out the roots of their current national leadership failures. If we’re to handle things better next time around, today’s Republican leaders must retire their disregard for science, expertise, education, international cooperation, and good government. Then, improbably, they might even apply it to the more existentially devastating and economically challenging threat of climate change. 

Unlikely. Even now, they cling.    

Which brings us to the other viral unmasking: the blindness of half of humanity. With eons of evolution behind it, that may never change. Something fundamental separates humans into two very different world-views: for simplicity, call them liberal and Trumpic. Responses to the corona crisis make the distinction visible from blocks away. People maintaining separation in lines: liberal. People ignoring it: Trumpic. The latter is the equivalent of idiots in pickup trucks coal-rolling people in electric cars. 

Humans separate along willingness to accept difficult challenges and deal with them, versus the desire for easy answers and pretense. What better demonstration is there than Trump’s “news” conferences and campaign rallies, rife with fake news and false promises? It explains why, despite the damage he’s doing, supporters eat up everything Trump says, including his claim that “no one could see this coming.” Except for the intelligence warnings he’d been receiving and ignoring for months, and despite which DHS ended its preparedness program. Trump’s half of humanity wants to be lied to. Which tells us who the real “snowflakes” are.  

Trump’s predictably pathological first response to Covid-19 was to pretend it away; just Democrats and “fake news” trying to take him down (because everything is always about him.) Trumpists were happy to believe. Similarly, his response to the climate crisis is to say it’s a hoax and, in order to prove it, to take actions that are making it worse. Trumpists love that, too. God gave us Trump, Trump says not to worry, turn off brain. Same with his rallies: Easy answers, gut reactions, thought not required. It’s a dangerous, but effective, positive feedback loop. 

That cerebral software is pre-loaded, and has been exploited by demagogues like Trump throughout history: make people distrust expertise and education, provide scapegoats, and they’ll demand to be fed pabulum. The more of it they consume, the more they’ll reject truth-tellers and follow the liars. 

Worried about the effects of sheltering on his reelection, Trump, who, even in crisis, can’t stop his infantile tweeting, is ready to have us return to dangerous behavior. Other Republican leaders, too, arguing, because they’re only about money, that people should be willing to die for the economy. 

Unconcerned for the people he’d put at risk, Trump wants the country “opened up” by Easter. Experts don’t. Intelligent governors, concerned for their citizens and not themselves, don’t. Will Trump try to convince people to ignore their local leaders? And if they do – in red states, one assumes, and the red parts of blue states – and if some get sick and die, will he tell us again, “I take no responsibility”? For them, or the Colorado man who killed himself taking Trump’s touted cure?  

Covid-19 has turned America into a massive social experiment; a test to determine whether liberalism or Trumpism is our future, and what that future will look like. Red state governors and their like-minded citizens are ignoring the warnings of science. Laughing them off. Coal-rolling themselves. Blue states and the thoughtful among their citizens are paying attention, for their own and for the greater good. 

Liberalism vs. Trumpism. Cuomo and Inslee vs. Trump and Rand Paul. In the next few months, we’ll learn about ourselves, about our national sense of community, and in what direction “American exceptionalism” is headed. Especially those who survive the culling. 

Good News/Bad News

My next newspaper column:

First, the bad news: Trump is still president. Two months after lying that everything was “under control,” finally acknowledging the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis, which he’s now calling “the Chinese virus” because he never misses an opportunity, he’s still getting it wrong. Focusing first on the stock market, for continuing the Obama recovery of which he took unwarranted credit, and which has lost all post-election gains, he wanted spending where it’s least needed. 

What if his first economic move had been getting money to people losing jobs, small businesses losing customers, hospitals running out of protective gear and beds. What if he’d listened to experts, instead of Jared Kushner? Imagine him having the leadership instincts of this man.  

Trump still looks for people to blame (Obama, the Chinese) and credit to take. On a scale of one to ten, he awards his initially irresponsible, belated, and inadequate response a ten. Now he’s saying “I always knew” how serious it was. Then why did he waste weeks saying otherwise? Incredible. 

The words by which history will remember this “president” are those he uttered when asked what responsibility he takes for the lack of testing and other missteps: “I take no responsibility.” That’s Trump, encased in his own words like Han Solo in carbonite. It’s his “Ask not what your country can do for you…;” his “… of the people, by the people, and for the people…,” and his “… a day that will live in infamy.” Plaster it on billboards and write it large: “I take no responsibility.”  

Oh, but now, like George Bush, he says he's a "wartime president." How'd that last one work out? 

Suddenly socialist, Trump is okay with giving struggling Americans a thousand bucks or two. Consider again that $1.5 trillion to bolster stock markets. Divide it by the number of Americans who are and who’ll be in need, and get it to them. There’s the economic horse we need, not the cart Trump put before it. The stock gains about which Trump had baselessly bragged are wiped out. Lies aren’t soothing markets, nor are the incompetents and yes-men with whom Trump has surrounded himself.  

More bad news: Moscow Mitch McConnell is still Majority Leader. While Nancy Pelosi worked out a rescue package with Trump’s people, Mitch left town. When the plan was made known, he dismissed it as a “liberal wish-list,” and engineered severe dilution of paid sick leave. Now, as even Republicans are agreeing to massive critical spending, the stupidity of Trump’s unnecessary tax cuts and trillion-dollar deficits in a time of prosperity, emptying the treasury, becomes obvious. This is the time for deficit spending, not then. The price will be enormous. 

The good news: Fox “news” screamers flipped like a switch when Trump finally woke up, never acknowledging their prior politicized attacks. Maybe their viewers will realize they’ve always been lied to. Also, people like Alex Jones and Jim Bakker, soulless scammers of bogus cures, are being told to shut up.  

The best news: notwithstanding examples of the worst, we’re also seeing humanity at its finest. For everyone selfishly hoarding goods, fighting over remainders; for every scalper, every paranoid deplorable buying guns and ammo, there are hundreds looking out for their neighbors, shopping for them, sharing what they have. 

If the corporations Trump wants to bail out (socialism!) are refusing to provide help for their employees, many small business are; and they’re finding ways to supply their customers at a distance. A distillery in Portland (hippie libtards!) created a hand sanitizer and is giving it away. Zoos and museums and teaching institutions (educated elitists!) are offering free online teaching. Celebrities (Hollywood liberals!) are giving free online concerts and donating money. Conservatives, too. 

People are hosting video gatherings to help parents do creative, fun, and educational activities with homebound kids. Shuttered schools are still providing meals to students who’ve counted on them.  

Hilarious videos of dealing with social isolation are being posted online. Around our country, governors have filled the federal leadership vacuum with reality-based, tough-but-wise directions which, except where ignored by Trumpists who can’t believe Trump finally told the truth, will help curtail the spread. Generous countries are donating supplies to others.  

Humor, community, and creativity will get us through. Now, perhaps, people will see that “government is the problem” only when people like Trump and McConnell are running it; and that ignoring the least of us endangers us all. Maybe they’ll even resume appreciating reporters who pursue important stories despite being called enemies of the state. 

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The Incompetence Is At Last Undeniable

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Dr. Robert Redfield, Trump’s head of the CDC, is a virologist, which is good. One investigated for questionable research, which isn’t. Called AIDS God’s judgment on gays; opposed, on religious grounds, providing needle exchanges and condoms to at-risk people. Has no management experience. Also not good. He’s the guy smiling lovingly as Trump brags about his aptitude for science, lauding him on cue, laughing appreciatively when Trump called our governor “a snake.” Might Redfield’s Trump-fluffing have something to do with CDC’s tardy, disjointed response to Covid-19?

Soon after Donald “Chinese-hoax-windmill-cancer-virus-will-disappear-like-magic” Trump revealed he hadn’t known people died from influenza, he claimed “a natural instinct for science.” Nearly seven-hundred-thousand Americans died in the flu pandemic of 1918, and our “president” didn’t know. Previously, he’d asked why the flu vaccine wouldn’t work on Covid-19, and expected a vaccine in two months. For him, that’s natural, all right, but instinct it’s not. It illuminates, however, how he bankrupted six businesses before becoming "president." 

In 2016, Republicans overlooked Trump’s prior failures. Now, like those businesses, we’re imperiled by a person convinced he knows more about everything than anyone. Who ignores expert advice. Who’s more devoted to protecting his image than fellow Americans, fabricating lies to maintain it. Who, visiting the CDC, presumably to appear in charge, instead let loose an astounding string of falsehoods, self-congratulation, and gibberish. His unfit leadership was writ large as the gilded name on his hotels. Then he absconded to Mar-a-Lago, compounding the hundred-thirty-one-million in taxpayer dollars for his golfing -- not including hundreds of thousands in inflated prices his properties charge the Secret Service.

Issues like climate change, budget deficits, capitalism-destroying disregard for middle- and lower-class Americans while enriching the already-wealthy, are too removed, too arcane to concern hardcore Trumpists. Nobody who’s much beyond voting age is likely to die anytime soon from those things. And if some will die from such destructive policies, his supporters figure it’ll be people they never cared much about in the first place. Like minorities and the post-born.

But this virus thing? People ARE dying. Now. Close to home. Not just poor people. Parents. Grandparents. The impacts are universal. Countries are shutting down, and, God help us, Costco ran out of toilet paper. 

By now, isn’t the danger of a “president” like Trump obvious? If not to the “Trump was sent by God” people, then to hypothetical supporters who retain a toehold on reality? Isn’t it disquieting that Trump tweets infantile, fact-free vitriol and baseless braggadocio in the middle of a crisis, heads off to golf, tells infected people it’s okay to go to work? Expert advisers afraid to be candid, complicit henchfolk saying the virus is “contained,” even as cases – and deaths -- mount? Are no Trump voters wishing for a leader in whose words and competence they could believe? Who had experience in rational problem-solving rather than getting bailed out or leaving employees and contractors in the lurch?

Have none considered the benefits of having a “president” who didn’t squelch government scientists, wasn’t holding presumably political coronavirus meetings that excluded experts, hadn’t disbanded our pandemic response team; whose advisors were chosen for expertise rather than sycophancy? One who didn’t fire people for acknowledging truths he denies, who’d act on facts, rather than dismiss them or lie about them or sue news organizations over revealing them? Assuming he could tell the difference? 

Knowledgeable people are admitting they’re having to sneak truth into the conversation in ways that won’t anger Trump. How did being honest with a “president” become something risky? Who’s not endangered when professionals are deferring to Trump’s pathological self-regard and fantastical thinking? Are there no supporters on whom it’s dawning that we’re living in a Lewis Carroll novel?

On Wednesday, trying to appear serious, attacking the EU for who-knows-why, Trump, in his usual monotone, announced travel restrictions which do nothing about the biggest issue -- community spread. He completely ignored testing and the growing prospects of hospitals becoming overwhelmed. Immediately, the White House said he misspoke. But he’s still shaking hands. This isn’t leadership. It’s nuts. And it’s the opposite of reassuring. 

Trump and rightwing media claim it’s Democrats trying to take him down. It isn’t. It’s Trump taking himself down. After decades of getting away with cheating and fakery, never held to account, he hasn’t the tools of a competent leader. He never has. Now, the bill is coming due, and, once again, Trump has gone bankrupt. This time, though, he’s bankrupting us all.

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Science

My next column in The Everett Herald:

By now, Trump’s response to Covid-19 has gone viral: incomprehension of the science, contradicting the CDC, making up numbers, blaming President Obama, blaming Democrats, blaming the press, making it all about him, taking unwarranted credit: stopping flights from China, for example, which never fully stopped. His incoherence is revelatory, as is his greater concern for how it makes him look than for public health. There’s little to add. Happily, smarter people are still doing their jobs.  

So let’s talk more generally about viruses, which are actually pretty interesting; potentially able, someday, to save more lives than they take. To appreciate them, it helps to know basic genetics and to recognize that evolution is a thing; which doesn’t describe Mike Pence, Trump’s choice to wrangle America’s coronavirus response. But God chose Trump and Trump chose Pence, so let’s move on. 

Fact: in the way recipes are not food, viruses are not alive. Unlike bacteria, which are, they have no metabolism, can’t reproduce on their own, don’t, in fact, “do” anything. That’s because they’re nothing but protein-wrapped bits of DNA or RNA, the molecules responsible for speciation, reproduction, and evolution. There’s disagreement on how viruses came to be. Based on medical school facts and personal extrapolations, this is my concept:  

Those delicate, helical strands of genetic information are fragile. In the process of replication during cell division, sometimes pieces break off. And sometimes DNA mis-reproduces the strands they’re in the business of copying, causing mutations. 

Stuff happens. There are, in fact, areas of DNA in our chromosomes that don’t appear to do anything. Just stuck there after some mistake or other, doing neither harm nor creating an evolutionarily-impactful change. Since we have countless combinations of nucleotides (the “building blocks” of DNA), and since these events occur comparatively often, some broken-off chunks occasionally are the sort that can code the production of a protein. Which is what DNA and RNA are there to do: produce proteins. Useful ones, ideally. 

If, by happenstance, those broken-off bits contain codes for proteins that are inclined to enwrap them, you have genetic material wrapped in a protein shell: a virus. If the protein capsule is attachable to a living cell, human or otherwise, and if, in attaching, it’s able to be incorporated into the cell, wholly or just its DNA or RNA, you have a potential pathogen. Mathematically, highly unlikely. But, given billions of events, it’s enough.  

The acquired material might just sit there. Or – another improbable coincidence – the original breakup may have included preexisting coded instructions to the cell’s reproductive organelles, causing that cell to start replicating viral DNA/RNA rather than its own. It all depends on the nature of those detached pieces. Presumably, most of the time, nothing of that happens. Rarely, it creates advantageous mutations. (Most mutations happen to DNA randomly or from non-viral influences.) 

When it turns a cell’s machinery into a manufacturing plant gone wild, a gazillion virus copies burst out of the cell, invade and kill other specifically receptive cells. Without intention, you might say. Because they’re not alive. Nevertheless, until your immune system figures it out (sometimes antivirals help) you’re sick.  

Scientists (people like those Trump eliminated from government before Covid-19 showed up, and whom he’s been mostly ignoring and mischaracterizing since) are using viruses, the kind that attach to chromosomes and sit there, to treat genetic diseases: by attaching “good” genes to them and turning them loose to replace “bad” ones inside human cells. There’s potential for preventing some cancers, too. Science: a good thing. Including climate science. Who knew, right?  

In summary, viruses may result from the processes that led to the formation, behavior, and fragility of DNA and RNA, which then led to those molecules acquiring the ability to code and produce proteins, which led to combinations of proteins that have the ability to harness energy and reproduce: life. 

That the process is imperfect, making unexpected combinations randomly, is what leads to changes which, when of survival benefit, fuel evolution. If those random events are useless, nothing happens; or, as we’ve seen, sometimes they become what we know as viruses.  

Hopefully it won’t matter that Trump doesn’t understand and Pence doesn’t believe any of this, as long as some on his team, and governors like ours, do.  

One more thing, off topic but timely: Let’s hope Trump’s already-iffy Taliban peace deal holds. If so, good for him. Two words to keep in mind, though: North Korea. 

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Khruschev Was Right

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Notwithstanding Truthless Trump’s hypo-inspiring, politicized news conference, which left investors unconvinced, the fawning of HHS Secretary Azar, and Trump's previous firing of President Obama's pandemic response team, COVID-19 is less worrisome long-term (so far) than firing his Director of National Intelligence. So let’s talk about that, instead.  

In perhaps the most prescient prediction from any world leader, ever, Nikita Khrushchev famously said: “We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within.” If details were scant, Vladimir Putin has filled in the blanks, and it’s working beyond his most vodka-suffused dreams. That firing is the latest proof. 

Theories abound as to how he glommed onto Trump, whether he turned him or saw him as the proverbial useful idiot. Doesn’t really matter. Putin understands American politics better than most Americans. Trump, he realized, was Khrushchev’s perfect pathogen.  

Completing much of President Putin’s agenda, Trump removed sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama, has weakened NATO and the EU, handed the Middle East to him, gotten Japan and South Korea at each other’s throats, got rolled by Putin’s protégé Kim Jong Un. Climate change denial, too: oil is Russia’s main export, and Putin runs the company. 

But that’s just frosting on the borscht. Putin’s overarching intent is helping the US descend into political chaos, to distrust its own institutions, to see fellow citizens as enemies. To self-destruct. In Trump, he saw the means. Throughout his career, Donald has all but announced it; whether he’s consciously in on it is immaterial. 

A former KGB interrogator and, one assumes, a bolshoi judge of character, Comrade Putin recognized Trump’s weaknesses; narcissism, looseness with the truth, uninformed and incurious, his history so littered with illegal, incompetent, and mob-like behavior that Putin knew exactly what he’d get if he managed to help Trump through the door. Which, denials notwithstanding, he did. Three years into a “presidency,” he’s gotten his rubles’ worth.  

Trump hates the public knowing what President Putin was up to. Which is why he fired acting DNI Maguire for telling the truth about Russia’s help; truth being an unwelcome commodity in Trump’s reign. His replacement is someone wholly inexperienced in intelligence matters, but whose loyalty to Trump was confirmed by his prior nasty online presence, shady associations (which ought to disqualify him from security clearance), and pro-Trump trolling. 

The message is unmistakable: intelligence agencies work only for Trump. Those who disagree, who believe in protecting America and not just Trump are “deep state traitors.” (By contrast, when told of Russian intentions to push his candidacy – no mystery why -- Bernie Sanders denounced Putin, not the messenger.)  

We needn’t translate Cyrillic to know what’s in President Putin’s playbook: hoped-for Trump activities, beside which are checked boxes; in addition to the aforementioned, there’s attacking journalists as “enemies of the people,” saying Democrats “want to destroy you,” (he blamed Monday’s market crash on Tuesday’s Democratic debate), calling honorable public servants “scum,” undermining fair elections and, by appointing unqualified ideologues and attacking decent judges and jurors, destroying faith in our courts. 

As Trump’s supporters venerate his demagoguery and shout down anyone who disagrees, President Putin, grinning in the Kremlin, toasts his way through another round of blini and beluga.  

We’ve been this divided before. Back then, though, there were huge issues separating us: slavery, Vietnam. Now, it’s one person acting deliberately, fear-mongering, prevaricating, fomenting hate of “the other” and distrust in institutions, in order to use his office for vendettas and personal enrichment. 

We’ve never had a “president” who systematically attacked every governing principle that could protect us from him gaining unlimited power. We’ve never seen people working to protect democracy dismissed as unjustified haters. We’ve never had a “president” who so perfectly fulfills the wishes of enemies who seek our failure, and who squelches Americans pushing back and exposing it.  

Trump denies and hides Russia’s manipulations of our self-destruction. Trumpists do, too, obediently, despite the unanimity of our and international intelligence services, and digital footprints online and in voting machines. And now, aided by Mrs. Justice Thomas, Trump is undertaking a Soviet-style purge of people throughout our government deemed “disloyal,” by which is meant anyone who has or might speak up against him.  

If foreign interference in our elections is insignificant and hasn’t helped Trump and Republicans, why has that party become a serial killer of Democratic bills aimed at preventing it? And why is Trump firing those who are conscientiously warning us about it? Isn’t it obvious?    

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Barr The Door

My next column in The Everett Herald:

When President Barack Obama addressed his US Attorneys, he told them, “I appointed you but you don’t serve me. You serve the American people. And I expect you to act with independence and integrity.” When Trump took office, he fired them all. “Independence and integrity” are anathema to the presidency he envisioned and which he’s so easily spawned. 

He misjudged his first Attorney General. There was reason to believe Jeff Sessions would kow to his tow; and, mostly, he did. But he retained enough of something approximating integrity to recuse himself from overseeing Robert Mueller’s investigation. Naturally, this angered Trump. 

Enter William Barr, who hung what had passed for integrity on the White House pegboard as he entered, where it dangles still, alongside many others’. A career-long advocate for the unbound “unitary executive,” he’s been an eager doer of Trump’s bidding ever since.  

History won’t forget Barr’s opening gambit: distortion and outright lying about the Mueller Report, pleasing the “president” and his media, rightly figuring his dissembling would Velcro to Trumpists’ prickly minds. It has. Subsequently, Mr. Barr has made clear his full-time, exclusive commitment to carrying water for Trump. 

Under Trump and Barr, independence of our Department of Justice, indispensable to a functioning democratic republic, suffered a painful but quick death. Barr’s interventions in cases about which Trump has expressed displeasure is exactly what Attorneys General should not be doing, for reasons so obvious they require no mention. 

Seeing nothing wrong with a “president” interfering, even when prosecutors followed DOJ sentencing guidelines, Trump’s defenders were quick to approve. Claiming it’s his right to do whatever he wants, they ardently defend using the DOJ as his personal vendetta and self-serving machinery, expecting “his” A.G. to follow orders in all matters. Nothing wrong with that, they argued, to Fox viewers. Take directions from Trump to investigate the investigators. Let the “president” decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t. 

Attacking judges and jurors is his prerogative, too; totally harmless to our system of justice.  

In fact, this is unrestrained autarchy, which shouldn’t be hard, even for Trumpists, to understand. Why don’t they care, and why have they renounced American jurisprudence?  

In response to Trump’s despotism by tweet, Barr spoke out: “It’s time to stop tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” he said. Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job ...” Oh, look, enthused the media: Barr is calling out Trump in public! It’s a new beginning!! 

Bullwaste. The “job” to which he referred is defending Trump no matter the cost to our nation. What he meant was, “Cool it, Donald. You’re making it hard to hide the cahooting.” Playing along, rightwing media feigned outrage at Barr’s pushback, helpfully pretending there was space between the two. Lou Dobbs, who cheerleads when Trump claims a constitutional right to absolute power, called it “A damn shame." Unfazed and uncaring, Trump escalated his “impossible” tweets. If Barr meant what he said, he’d have resigned.  

It’s not only Trump’s vendettas against “enemies” and helping friends that Barr is facilitating. At Trump’s behest, he tried to help Recep Erdogan stop American prosecution of a Turkish bank. Yet another abuse to benefit Trump, whose business failures have left him in hock to foreign banks. 

We’ve come to expect unqualified defense, by today’s Republicans, of whatever dictatorial move Trump makes. But to defend presidential manipulations of the Department of Justice is monumental hypocrisy. Those defenders would be shattering eardrums with their screams for impeachment if a Democrat did what Trump is demanding and what Barr is doing. 

If defending and obeying our laws and prosecuting those who break them is subject to presidential whim, especially this vindictive, prevaricating, uninformed, strongman-emulating one, laws are meaningless. Yet Congressional Republicans applaud it. Which illustrates the obvious: if it benefits the right people, corruption is fine with them. 

King Donald’s pardons of corrupt Mar-al-Lago pals, and current and future big-dollar donors should outrage everyone. That it doesn’t confirms Trump’s normalization of lawlessness and fraud, and the moral collapse of today’s Republican leaders. 

Speaking of which, the steel contract for Trump’s saw-soft, easily-climbable, wind-blown-over wall went to a group whose ownership gave $1.75 million to a Trump super-PAC. And Trump just waived federal contracting rules, so there’ll be more. It’s the story of Trump: the con and the conned.  

Trump hasn’t yet killed President Obama’s economic recovery. For Republicans, evidently, that’s all it takes to justify abandoning integrity. 

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Paving The Road

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Bosses fire employees. Therefore, Trump removing Alex Vindman and million-dollar-donating Ambassador Sundland for complying with legal subpoenas and responding truthfully is no big deal. Same with firing Elaine McCusker at DOD who warned withholding military aid from Ukraine was illegal. Fox “news,” rightwing radio, and Trumpists demand the head of Mitt Romney, who finally manifested integrity born of faith and respect for his oath. His “physical safety” would be at risk, says CPAC, were he to attend. It’s all good. 

When William Barr took control of all future investigations of political candidates, Trumpists smelled no rats. Same with his announcement of an “intake process” for Rudy Giuliani to send him dirt on the Bidens. With the mass resignations of attorneys prosecuting Roger Stone, after Barr’s takeover of the case, there’s no reason for concern that the DOJ is now, officially and solely, an instrument of presidential power. As in Putin’s Russia. When Trump attacked the federal judge in charge, Republicans remained silent, comfy in their reconstituting Reichstag. No worries.  

No klaxons were sounded when Trump’s Treasury Department handed private-citizen Hunter Biden’s financial information to Senate Republicans, having refused when House Democrats requested Trump’s. Unconcerned about current costs of Tribe Trump’s protected travels, they’ll investigate how much Biden cost taxpayers for security on business trips. 

Outrage over young Biden’s income from Burisma dissipates with JaVanka making over eighty-three-million while in the White House; and with Trump’s who-knows-how-much from foreign and domestic swamp-dwellers renting his properties. The hundred-million-plus his “I’ll-be-too-busy-to-play-golf” golf trips have cost us? It’s fine: he’s ours.  

Those who don’t find this frightening are those who don’t recognize America’s accelerating descent into authoritarianism; or who do, and welcome it. Those unfazed when information critical to Congressional oversight is withheld by a “president” and by agencies whose mission is to protect the nation, not Trump. Those unconcerned when Secretary of State Pompeo bans reporters who ask hard questions. It’s fine. He’s Trump’s. 

If Trump has the right to fire those who revealed his intended extortion, what of his and his adulators’ demand to expose the whistleblower, whose claims proved accurate? Rand Paul, libertarian, did it. Illegally. Why would a distruster of government do so, other than to silence other potential revealers of government criminality? And why do no Constitution-loving, government-distrusting Republicans seem to care? 

It’s not hard to understand. Purely out of selfishness, and personally safe, or so they imagine, from the depredations of the more powerful, such people ignore intimidation and muzzling of people willing to speak out against crimes committed by their protectors. 

We’ve seen it before: they’re sure it won’t happen to them, and don’t care when it happens to others. It’s Trumpism unchained. It’s the “lesson” Trump learned, dear Susan, from people like you. And your party.  

Laws created to guard against Trump’s authoritarian abuses aren’t enough, especially when our chief law-enforcer is a sycophantic tool. Free societies depend on the willingness of citizens to respect the law, the absence of which among his followers Trump has always exploited; and on others feeling safe in speaking up when they see leaders who aren’t. It’s why, until Trump, whistleblowers were shielded. 

Following the totalitarian playbook, Trump is purging those who have or might yet sound alarms, across all departments, including Justice, State, and Treasury, Secretaries of which are bending abjectly to Trump’s will, abdicating independence and their duty to us. Now he wants “his” military to punish Vindman. So it’s DOD, too.  

This is precisely the unrestrained despotism against which our founders created checks on executive power. Abetted by cowed Congressional Republicans and supporters who rationalize his worst, Trump is destroying those checks. His message to future truth-tellers: DON’T. 

Recalled by Trump for her incorruptibility, Ambassador Yovanovich knows of what she speaks: "I have seen dictatorships, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death. We must not allow the United States to become a country where standing up to our government is a dangerous act." 

We’re there. Even in America, whose democratic institutions are more deeply embedded than, say, Turkey or Poland, where they’re collapsing rapidly, or Russia, where Trump’s role model Putin was able to end its march toward democracy in a couple of years, institutions are only as strong as people’s willingness to defend them. Trump won’t. Barr and Pompeo won’t. Trumpists sure as hell won’t. Are there no actual conservatives left who will? Time is running out.

Acquitting Themselves Poorly

My next column in The Everett Herald:

Trump’s impeachment will be remembered for establishing that two-hundred-fifty years of Constitutional governance can be erased in three. That the party which elected Abraham Lincoln can choose and excuse a despot wannabe. And that when he behaves predictably -- raging, lying, ignoring the law, encouraging anger and fear and victimization like every successful dictator in history -- that party, when it still had a chance, will look away, cowering.  

Impeachment and Trump have shown that the world’s longest-standing democracy is capable of capitulating to an authoritarian bully. If there’s still time for responsible, forward-looking citizens to take America back from the mob-king, they won’t come from today’s Republican Party. 

Several Republican senators agreed what Trump did was bad. Rubio even admitted it was impeachable. Yet, except for Mitt Romney, they abdicated their responsibility to our nation. Why? Reflected power. Cash. But, mostly, fear. For their careers, of course; and, because Trump is Trump, Trumpists are Trumpists, and Fox is Fox, fearing threats to themselves and their families.  

That’s how dictators gain and maintain power. We saw it, bright as gunfire, dark as blood, during the Senate puppet show, as, out of cameras’ view, Republicans absented themselves from the chamber, leaving their integrity behind.  

Congressional Republicans fear Trump more than the seventy-five-percent of Americans who wanted witnesses and documents brought forth. That’s the power of tyrants to bend people to their will, and it’s how democracies end. Sherrod Brown wrote that many of his Republican colleagues privately admit their fear. As RFK said, “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.” 
 
History teaches that, facing autocratic amorality like Trump’s, even democracies may lack the means to stem the tide. Always, though, there are plenty who march to a despot’s rage and vindictiveness; who think they’ll never be its victims, but relish picturing those who will. 

With Mitchly reptilian grins, those recreant Republicans say we should leave it to voters, as if the founders hadn’t created impeachment precisely because they rejected that specious argument. Behind those smirks lie their aces in the hole: voter suppression, voter-roll purges, gerrymandering. Denying funds to protect against helpful foreign interference. Rejecting measures to safeguard voting machines, hacking of which we know Russians have done, and which has been shown to be child’s-play. Literally.  

The case was made beyond denial: Trump tried to extort a vulnerable foreign government into helping him with his reelection. Caught in flagrante delicto, he stonewalled and lied to cover it up. Shutting down further testimony and documents, Senate Republicans made it clear: Trump’s demagoguery works. 

Meanwhile, as his feared “enemies of the people” do their job, more of Trump’s illegality is seeping out. It’s certain there’s plenty more, for it’s always been who Trump is. Republicans still won’t care.  

“Trumpism is a cult,” people say. It’s worse. When cultists drink their leaders’ Kool-Aid, they destroy only themselves. Trumpism is destroying America. If we’re not a nation of laws; if we’ve stopped believing in limited executive power, we’re no longer America. If we accept a “president” who lies wantonly, uses division as a weapon, who convinces his minions they’re the abused ones, whose thirst for vengeance will now be unchecked, we’re approaching the end. 

If enough Americans continue to countenance a man who systematically tears down institutions designed by the framers to preserve freedom from monarchy, whose followers flash weapons as threats, even claim a constitutional right to “kill socialists,” it’s over.  

Senatorial capitulator-in-chief, Susan Collins said he’d “learned from this.” “It was a perfect call,” Trump responded. Proving the point, his State of the Union speech, the opposite of inclusive, was replete with the expected exaggerations, calculated divisiveness, slandering the opposition, claiming undue credit, omissions (Deficits? Climate change? Who cares?), and unregenerate lies. Lindsey Graham’s promise to investigate the Bidens post-acquittal was even more craven. And Rush “Barack the Magic Negro” Limbaugh? Wow.  

To recapture our democratic republic, massive voter turnout -- enough to overwhelm Republican-created obstacles and cowardice -- is the last hope. Liberals must vote for the Democratic nominee even if it’s not their favorite. Remaining conservatives, if any there be, must recognize they can survive Democrats in charge for a while, a more equitable and capitalism-enabling economy, better healthcare, less pollution, lower deficits; even background checks. 

But not the end of Constitutional democracy. They’ll need to outvote those rejoicing in it, to reclaim a fearful, Constitution-abandoning political party. The odds aren’t good. 

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