End Times

My next newspaper column:

That reactions from Ammo-Americans to the March for Our Lives would be fast and furious was predictable. Less so was how dumb, distasteful, and desperate they were. 

The guerdon for dumbness goes to Rick “Don’t google me surname, bro” Santorum, who, after sneering that the kids were asking “others” to solve their problems (it’d take more than one column to unpack that lunacy), suggested learning CPR would be a better use of their time. As an experienced trauma surgeon, let me point out that CPR is for cardiac arrest. If your heart stops after being shot, it’s because you’ve bled out or because your brain died. Attempting to revive an empty heart or a dead brain with chest compression is useless. (Somewhere in there is a metaphor for our times.) It’d have been more fitting had he suggested embalming.  

An NRA spokesdunce dismissed the children by pointing out that no one would even know their names if their classmates hadn’t died. Right. And a firefighter who rescued a family from a burning building wouldn’t be considered a hero if it hadn’t been on fire. 

Aptly dubbed a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like, Newt Gingrich declared the most salient takeaway from the march is to learn who paid for it. The left can’t govern, he said, but they sure can organize marches. (The simpering “can’t govern” would need a five-column response.) He chose not to mention that the Tea Party movement was birthed on Wall Street, disguised as grass roots, and underwritten by anti-tax billionaires. Of course people gave money to the marchers and to their cause! In what way is that inconsistent with democracy? How does it devalue the message, which, in contrast to the Tea Party, began at the bottom and worked its way up?  

As expected, there were those who called the students Nazis. Or Communists (C’mon, people, read some political science. Make a decision.) Blameless pundits denounced “politicization.” Well, yes, demanding legislative action is “political.” So is demanding no action. 

Stop badmouthing the NRA, they were warned. Then, because it’s become the preferred method of discourse by a certain stratum of Trumpists, there were death threats. And we heard condescending assertions that the students need to read the Constitution. But, in fact, it seems they have. Which brings us to the heart of it. 

First, some facts:  

Barely over twenty-percent of Americans own guns. Nearly half are in the hands of only three percent of us. The vast majority of Americans (including NRA members) favor the regulations advocated by the March for Our Lives students. There’s approximately unanimous approval for stronger background checks, with almost as much support for preventing dangerous people from acquiring guns, and for raising the age of purchase. By electoral standards, it’s even a landslide for banning military-style weapons. 

Here’s another fact, one that our friends of Foxotrumpian persuasion have come strenuously to renounce: we live in a democracy. Those poll numbers speak loudly of a failed one. Ignoring the incontestable will of the people it represents, Congress kowtows to the payola provided by the NRA and gun manufacturers, and to their gerrymandered, rabid, minority base. 

It’s worth recalling that until recently it was settled law that the Second Amendment didn’t confer absolute rights of gun ownership to private citizens. Ignored by Cammo-Americans and NRA spokeshorribles is that Scalia’s ruling allowed for regulation, including concealed carry, safe-zones, and military-style weapons. What’s being demanded is already constitutional.   

The kids understand our Constitution. They know it’s within our power to restore truly representative democracy by electing a new, responsive Congress. Behind the heated, dishonest, dangerous rhetoric of right-wing derogation of the marchers is the same realization, and they’re desperately resisting. But demographics don’t care. They ain’t going back.  

End times are approaching for Regressive, White, Male, Theocratic, political dominion. Among right-wing shibboleths destined for eventual rejection is the fetishizing of guns; understanding the Constitution means recognizing the possibility of repealing or revising the Second Amendment. The marchers do. RWMT politicians do, too. If they’re unable to legislate away fair elections before change arrives, they, like Saddam burning his oil fields when he knew he’d lost, seem intent on trashing the place on their way out. 

Which also explains their eagerness to boost pollution, reduce healthcare access, and crush the dreams of the poor. 

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Words Not Needed

Time To Stop Fiddling While It Burns

My upcoming newspaper column:

“It’s a great day for democracy,” proclaimed Donald Trump after pressuring Jeff Sessions to fire Deputy FBI Director McCabe (who, coincidentally, had authorized an FBI investigation into Sessions’ possible perjury). Autocracy, yes. Authoritarianism, sure. But democracy died a little more that day, its agonal moan inaudible only to people sharing Trump’s disdain for constitutional governance and the institutions that protect it. 

Knowing of his lying, cheating, business failures, threats, lawsuits, vulgarity, and aggressive ignorance, millions voted for him anyway. That millions of those see his current behavior and still rationalize support is incomprehensible. Surely the remarkable last two weeks have been dispositive even for the most calcified of the Foxified. Right?  

In time, we’ll see the DOJ report, and perhaps we’ll be able to judge its significance. For now, I’m with McCabe. (He is, after all, like Comey, Mueller, and Rosenstein, a Republican.) Either way, Trump’s vainglorious, lie-filled gloating afterward confirms the firing wasn’t about the report, but about discrediting the investigations.  

And what of “the best people” Trump promised? We’ve just learned Ben “Gifted Hands” Carson, whose home features a portrait of himself with Jesus, lied about his expensive office furniture. Plenty of Trump’s other cabinet officers have been lying and/or misusing our tax dollars, too; but Ben drips with smug self-righteousness. Also disclosed: his information officer, along with another HUD liar, appears to have a side-business scamming Christians. 

Then there was the coincident Betsy Devos interview, in which she confirmed her qualification for being Secretary of Education consists of having donated $200 million to Republicans.  

Within the same span, Trump’s trusted “body man” was escorted out of the White House so fast he could take nothing with him, on charges of “serious financial crimes.” Before the taint was dry, Trump hired him as senior reelection campaign adviser. From criminal expulsion to inner Trumpworld. Thoughts, “values” voters?  

After announcing plans to meet with North Korea’s Kim, Trump bragged about lying to Canada’s Trudeau. Flat made stuff up, he preened. Presented with truth, he proudly pronounced it pabulum, which explains his devotion from Trumpists. But what must Kim think of negotiating nukes with a man who boasts of lying to national leaders, and of not knowing what he’s talking about? Spider. Fly.  

Speaking of which, we were shown Trump State TV’s reactions to his plans, juxtaposed with their fair and balanced reactions when Obama said he’d do the same. Hypocrisy? Business model. If Trump manages meaningful, verifiable agreements with NoKo, I’ll praise him. Until then, though, count me among those who, seeing with whom he surrounds himself, find it unlikely. But he’s sending Ivanka, so... 

Meanwhile, it’s just been revealed her husband, trusted adviser Jared, repeatedly falsified paperwork with NYC housing authority when he bought buildings, greasing millions in profit. America’s freshest face.  

In the same timespan came the firing of Tillerson, after he agreed Russia was behind the London poisoning. After that, Russian state TV announced “Trump is still ours.” And after that, Trump obsequiously congratulated their murderous dictator for winning a fake election. Lap, meet dog.  

Within the past two weeks, we also learned what a sham the oxymoronic “House Intelligence” Committee investigation was: if you don’t look, you don’t find. Another: if you deny a relationship with a porn star but threaten suing for $20 million for breaking an agreement not to talk about it, does a bear? More: the RNC spent north of $120K at Trump properties in February alone. And: rule-of-law-loving Pennsylvania Republicans moved to impeach judges who rejected unconstitutional redistricting.  

Topping it off, if you’re aware of Cambridge Analytica and aren’t concerned, you’re their victim whether you recognize it or not. 

It’s been a boggling, enlightening two weeks. Those who insist it’s fake news are beyond salvation; but despite representing a minority of voters, people just like them are in charge. Not knowing what else to do, I give money, near and far. All liberals who can, and all self-respecting conservatives ought to, also. Kim Schrier. Randy Bryce. Conor Lamb. Beto O’Rourke. Find others. Trumpism threatens our democracy, demanding that truly patriotic Republicans stand up to him by crossing party lines. 

Preserving democracy requires advocating for those who value it, and acting against those who don’t. Unsurprisingly, the latter are largely Trumpists. Choose America over party, conservatives, in this critical, defining time. You won’t be alone.

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Nooger. A Word.

My next newspaper column:

Like coal ash, Trumpic horrors keep fouling the waters; but here’s a note from my surgery days anyway:

It’s said medical students learn over twelve thousand new words. Some I enjoyed just for the saying: Inspissated. Radiculopathy. Tachyarrhythmia. Intussusception. Pancreaticoduodenectomy. Bezoar.

Bee-zore. For fun, say it like "air-ball" at a basketball game. (Digression: It's been shown that the chant is always in the same pitch, the same notes on the scale. F - D, matter of fact.) 

There’s also a more esoteric lexicon: words or terms that bubbled into the vernacular unofficially but have become universally understood within various medical sub-cultures: gomer, Q-sign, lipstick sign, chandelier sign (definitions on request). One of my favorites has it all: nice sound, excellent meaning, and, in my case, a connection to a beloved mentor. The word is “nooger.” 

In “Cutting Remarks,” my book about surgical training, I described learning to dissect through distorted, inflamed tissues, calling the method "delicate brutality." (Too late, I realized that would have been a better title for the book.) Central to the technique is the ability to nooger; namely, judiciously insinuating a finger into a scary space, wiggling, pinching, until you find a way through without poking a hole into something important. 

Noogering can be done with other blunt instruments: a sucker, closed scissors, a blunt clamp, often along with the finger. Indeed, it requires a combination of delicacy and brutality, plus some sort of either learned or innate sense of touch; of tissue turgor (there's another good word: turgor) and confidence of anatomy. If you can't tell where a thing is, you need to be fairly confident in where it isn't.  

Not all surgeons need to nooger. Orthopods and neurosurgeons don't. Bone isn't noogerable, and brain, well... But a general surgeon incapable of noogering is bound for trouble. In a situation demanding it -- precarious as it usually is -- I'd rather do it myself than try to tell someone else how. Bad noogering can lead to death, or something a lot like it. 

Among my favorite characters from training was the chief cardiac surgery resident, a gangly, good-humored, soft-spoken, slow-walking but fast-thinking southern boy, Joe (full name: Joe) Utley. In stark contrast to the other men populating that department -- who were volatile, egomaniacal, crazy, nasty, or pretty much any combination of those characteristics -- Joe was laid-back, engaging, and highly talented. He told dumb jokes, quoted lines from movies, played the flugelhorn while wearing a sombrero, and treated me -- his over-worked intern -- with respect and caring; although, it could be argued, having an intern and his girlfriend (now wife) over and subjecting them to the horn and the hat was anything but respectful. 

I loved the guy. (Joe died not long ago. I sent a copy of my book, in which he played a prominent role, to his wife; she wrote back that she knew he'd have loved it, and she could imagine him laughing out loud while reading it. That made me feel good.) 

In connecting a person to a heart-lung machine, it's necessary to control blood returning to the heart via the venae cavae. That requires (did then, anyway) slinging the veins in a sort of noose around the tubes inside. That necessitates dissecting within the pericardium, behind those delicate structures, completely encircling them. Joe had a favorite instrument for the job, a very large clamp with a curved and bluntly-rounded tip. This he referred to as a "Giant Noogerer." 

Open heart surgery has a certain drama, and, in those relatively early days on the time-line, tension compounded by lengthiness. But as an intern on the service, because there was always lots to do, stretching into sleeplessness, time in the cardiac room was -- depending on who was in charge -- often unpleasant. With no opportunity to do anything but stand there and answer gotcha-questions from the chief of service, the hours dragged the day's work further into the night.  

Except with Joe. I found myself looking forward each time, as the moment approached, to hearing him ask for the tool. "Giant noogerer," he'd say, hand out, and it always arrived with no need for clarification. With his Carolina accent, it sounded like "jahnt nurgrer." In his hands, it was a delicate instrument; on his lips, though, it sounded like something you’d find deep in the Everglades, at night. 

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Trying To Catch Up

My next newspaper column:

Allocated only around 700 words once a week, I’m always playing catch-up. So here’s a time- and space-limited selection of mentionables from an endlessly accruing heap of Trumpworld items that should concern all Americans. Confirmatory links provided on request.

1.  In the White House, Jared Kushner negotiated around $500 million in personal loans from American banks. Shortly after Qatar denied a similar request, Kushner enabled a Saudi Arabia/UAE blockade against that anti-ISIS partner. 

2.  An indispensable article by Jane Mayer, providing revelatory, non-Foxolimjonesified background on Chris Steele and his “dossier,” and what the FBI did and didn’t do, almost parenthetically includes a claim that Russia vetoed Mitt Romney as Secretary of State, preferring someone more likely to end Obama’s sanctions. (Okay, here) If Trump isn’t fully in Putin’s pocket, he’s half-asset. 

3. Of $120 million budgeted to fight Russian election interference, our State Department has spent none. Of the assigned analysts, none speaks Russian. 

4. Whatever one thinks about tariffs, it’s consumers who pay for a trade war. Reports say Trump’s half-baked plan followed a fit of (stable genius) rage.

5. Shortly before Trump’s announcement, his pal, billionaire Carl Icahn, unloaded $30 million of stock in steel-dependent companies. 

6. Trump took, and, from the Foxified, received credit for the economy since inauguration day. Now, having added $1.5 trillion to this year’s deficit and more trillions to future debt, he’s earned it. His simple-minded tariff misconceptions will cost jobs in addition to money. Even cowardly Paul Ryan was appalled by Trump’s impulsive plans. Chief economic adviser Gary “Tax-cuts-for-the-rich” Cohn resigned over them. Trump’s support of Nazis didn’t do it for him. This did.

7.  Devin Nunes, who pushed a pile of prevarication in his “memo,” evidently leaked classified information to Fox “news.” Then he called Stephen Colbert a danger to America.

8. First-Amendment-loving, small-government-pushing, free-market Republicans in Georgia would use public law to punish Delta Airlines, a private corporation, for charging NRA members what they charge everyone else.

9. Reversing Obama rules on coal ash, Trump has greenlighted pollution of America’s drinking water.

10. Ben Carson, after approving massive cuts in HUD’s budget and saying public housing shouldn’t be “too cozy,” got caught buying a $31K table for his office, and giving no-bid contracts to family members. Ryan Zinke’s and Scott Pruitt’s personal use of tax money makes Carson look cheap, though. So does Pruitt’s graft. Nearly the whole cabinet’s, in fact. Only the best people.

11. Contrary to Zinke’s lies, emails show shrinking Bear’s Ears Monument was about oil and coal.

12. Speaking of falsehoods, after promising the opposite, Trump cut Medicare and Medicaid significantly. Social Security looks to be next. And elephants. People actually believed his lies. Mysteriously, many still do. 

13. Trump joked Fox “news” is the “fourth branch of government.” Later, praised China’s Xi for becoming leader for life. Said he might try it. It was a joke, too. They were, right? Jokes?

14. There are laws against appointing relatives to positions of power by federal government officials. Same with using one’s position for self-enrichment. Now we know why. What we don’t know is why Congress no longer cares.

15. People still apoplectic over Hillary Clinton’s carelessness with emails are silent about Trump’s with security clearances for his White House enablers. (Irony: I needed top-secret clearance for some of what I did in Vietnam. It was delayed because I’d studied Russian and traveled the USSR in college.) 

16. Putin displays an animation of Russia’s “unstoppable” new missiles hitting Florida. Trump’s response: silence. Maybe he expects a Mar-a-Lago tax write-off. He did attack Alec Baldwin right after, though, so there’s that. 

17. Benefitting his admired dictators, Trump is undoing Ronald Reagan’s “Infrastructure of Democracy” around the world.

18. NRA made a deeply disgusting ad against critics.

19. Red states don’t like liberals voting.

20. Drip, drop, tick, tock.

For these things, concern ought to be universal. Mistaking cri de coeur for partisanship, people email me criticizing my tone, claiming they’re “reasonable” NRA members, or “thoughtful” conservatives, so I should be nicer. Time for those good folks to act on their professed moderation. Relieved as I am to learn of their unhappiness with Trump and/or NRA leadership, when I ask if they’ve sent complaints their way, too, none have. Maybe they’re planning to show their displeasure by their votes.

A guy can dream.

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(Not in the column, but to be emailed to anyone who requests them, here's the list of links promised above, which I'm too tired to have hot-linked for the blog. Impressive work on my part, though, eh?) 

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/jared-kushner-apollo-citigroup-loans.html

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jared-kushner-reports-role-qatar-blockade-true-leading/story?id=53487405

2: (besides the one in the column) https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-tried-to-sink-romneys-secretary-of-state-bid-too

3: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/world/europe/state-department-russia-global-engagement-center.html 

4: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/03/02/q-how-trumps-tariffs-could-affect-people-and-companies/388136002/

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/02/trump-made-tariff-decision-in-a-fit-of-anger-nbc-news.html

    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/05/trade-tariffs-trump-white-house-438278?lo=ap_c1

5: http://www.newsweek.com/carl-icahn-sold-millions-steel-stock-donald-trump-tariff-announcement-829029

6: http://www.weeklystandard.com/paul-ryan-speaks-out-against-trumps-tariffs/article/2011827

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/03/06/fact-checking-president-trumps-trade-rhetoric/?utm_term=.d0ad97980575

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/03/07/saving-speaker-ryan/?utm_term=.cd5aa7689c04

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a19153114/gary-cohn-leave-trump-white-house/

    http://fortune.com/2018/03/06/trump-steel-aluminum-tariffs-cost-jobs/

7: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/politics/senate-intelligence-nunes-leaks.html

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/rep-devin-nunes-calls-colbert-memo-sketch-a-danger-in-the-country

8: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-lawmakers-ok-big-tax-hit-on-delta-over-its-nra-stand/

9: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-epa-scott-pruitt-clean-water-coal-ash-829776

10: https://www.denverpost.com/2018/03/06/epa-scott-pruitt-aid-private-clients 

      https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/3/16967628/ben-carson-ethics-hud-son-baltimore 

      https://newrepublic.com/article/147077/scott-pruitts-first-class-travel-scandal

      http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/interior-secretary-spent-14g-government-helicopters-article-1.3684854 

      https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/03/02/cabinet-full-corruption/8ZJRHGO1yBPdeVdqGGvIyN/story.html?event=event25

     

11: https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2018/03/02/interior-department-emails-show-oil-and-coal-played-a-big-role-in-bears-ears-   grand-staircase-monument-redraws/

12: https://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2018/02/13/closer-look-trump-s-proposed-medicare-medicaid-cuts

      https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/03/06/trump-administration-reverses-promise-to-ban-elephant-hunt-trophies/23378320/

13: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/03/04/top-trump-jokes-2018-gridiron-dinner/393401002/

      https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/trump-maralago-remarks/index.html

14: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3110

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/trump-s-business-ties-and-that-emoluments-issue-quicktake-q-a

15: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/more-than-30-white-house-aides-said-to-lose-top-secret-clearance

16:https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/01/europe/putin-nuclear-missile-video-florida/index.html

     http://www.newsweek.com/trump-has-said-nothing-about-putins-satan-2-video-nuclear-missiles-aimed-us-827910

17: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-trump-administration-wants-to-dismantle-ronald-reagans-infrastructure-of-democracy/2018/03/04/8b94d7f6-1e54-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html?utm_term=.193948167de9&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

18: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nra-video-threatens-journalists-gun-laws-us-florida-shooting-twitter-dana-loesch-a8240341.html

19: https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/texas-republican-attorney-general-threatens-schools-taking-students-polls-election-day/

      http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article203705739.html

20: http://www.newsweek.com/mueller-cohen-russia-trump-ukraine-833237

       https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19122431/sam-nunberg-robert-mueller/

       https://www.salon.com/2018/03/05/robert-mueller-is-closing-in-on-president-trump-heres-proof/

Nasty. Mean. Brutish.

My next newspaper column:

David Brooks, conservative pundit for the New York Times, whose singular brilliance came to his own attention with his support of the Iraq invasion, has unholstered more wisdom: “… if you want to stop school shootings it’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points…” And then Wayne LaPierre and Dana Loesch spewed poisonous slander at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). And after Baghdad fell and all hell broke loose, Donald Rumsfeld said “Stuff happens.” 

Brooks wasn’t talking about my NRA friends, with whom I’ve gone target-shooting and hunting. He was referring to those cheering Dana and Wayne. So, no. I’ll respect them when they speak out against the kind of vile, paranoid, fear-mongering and hate-fostering speech of their association’s spokesprimates. And when they don’t leap to their feet cheering and making threatening gestures to members of the press. 

When responsible members of the NRA demand better of their organization, I’ll be happy to let them lead the way. It’s way past time for them to do so. If it once was an advocate for its members and for safety, it’s become little more than a shill for gun manufacturers. Even without the 1,688,442,000 rubles they laundered for Russia to help Trump, NRA gets all the money it needs from big gunnery.

[Item: The NRA, CPAC, and RNC ban guns at their events.]  

The latest mass murder at an American school highlighted the best and the worst of us. It remains to be seen which preponderates, but right-wing fabulists immediately began spreading fake news that those impressive, committed, eloquent high school kids, now receiving death threats, are hired actors; that Jewy George is behind it; that the attack was a “false flag” organized by Democrats. There’s nothing new about any of that, except for the impression those teenagers have been making. 

[Item: Most homegrown fake news comes from Fox and other rightwing sources. Also, surprising as darkness before dawn, studies show Russian fakery on social media was swallowed and shared by “conservatives” thirty-one times more often than by liberals.] 

There’s a flicker of hope that those high-schoolers have started an awakening which could lead to legislation more sensible than arming teachers and calling it a day. The dumbness of that idea is self-evident to all but NRA ammosexuals. Imagine: An overweight, orange-haired draft-dodger who bragged he’d do so, lumbers into a school where there’s an active shooter, bone spurs a-jingle-jangle-jingling. Newly-armed, an “adept” teacher, trained over the weekend, suddenly responsible for split-second life-saving decisions, sees a weirdly-coiffed stranger moving toward her…  

[Item]  

Close as those students are to voting age, maybe historically weak-kneed legislators will consider listening. On the other hand, the usual insane malevolence from the “coming for our guns” and “defend yourself from Obama” crowd has been cranked up to eleven, so who knows? Money, the ultimate instrument of power, will be piled high against the kids.  

Until Antonin Scalia originalisted his way into the debate, federal courts had all but laughed at the idea that the Second Amendment intended unregulated access to all manner of arms by all citizens. It was, in fact, a Constitution-sweetener for slave states worried if there were only a federal army they’d be unable to put down slave rebellions. “Militias. People. State. Well-regulated. Not infringed.” Our founders were brilliant, but could they have been more obscure or internally contradictory? 

So how about this: everyone keeps and bears a non-infringed, bolt-action, single-shot .22 rifle. Excepted, hunting armaments are stored at police stations. Everything else gets beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks. Nothing in the Second says all weapons to all people. 

CPAC couldn’t have come at a better time for contrasting today’s Republicans with those fired-up students. A couple of actual conservatives tried to talk sense and were shouted down, literally escorted out of the room. Otherwise it was the usual Fox-speak, bashing of otherness, paranoid claims, and Trumpic lies. With its purulent intolerance, conspiracies, theocracy, NRA talking points, and persecution complexes, CPAC is no fringe group. Trump, Pence, Ryan, Cruz, et ilk, all showed up. Preachers, too. 

If they once did, today’s Republicans no longer recognize the unique benefits of America, rejecting the very idea of society and its obligations. Social contract? They prefer a return to man’s “natural state.” But armed.    

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Puppetry Of The President

Here's Saturday's newspaper column:

We learned a lot from Robert Mueller’s indictments; more still from Trump’s reactions to them. Much of it we already knew: America is under attack by Russia; in social media, right-wing talkers, and the Foxified they found their weapons of choice; whatever their aim when it began, they decided they wanted Trump in the White House; using a multi-pronged effort and plenty of money to put him there, they turned the strengths of democracy into weaknesses. 

What we hadn’t known was the extent to which our intelligence agencies had eyes on the perpetrators. That the indictments contained direct quotes from inside was more than just a basis for charges: it was a shot aimed straight into the basket of Trump’s enablers having connections to Russians and denying wrongdoing. 

Though the indictments referred only to “unwitting” pawns who believed it was with fellow Americans they agreed to spread lies, the charges neither addressed nor exculpated Kushner, Manafort, Don Jr., et al. Nor, importantly, Trump. We know things, the indictments said. The opportunity to mitigate your punishment is finite. Gates and Van Der Zwaan are the first to catch Mueller’s drift.   

Because Russian efforts began before his candidacy, Trump made the spurious claim he was off the hook. Nice try. When it began was shortly after Trump took his puerile pageantry to Moscow. It’s a reasonable conclusion that by blackmail, shakedown, or simply seeing Trump’s neediness and narcissism up close, Putin recognized tillable soil in which to plant his flag. Unknown, so far, is how deep it went.  

There’s no denying Putin has gotten what he wanted. Trump continues to blame everyone but Russia; only grudgingly, then backpedaling, has he acknowledged their interference, much less enacted sanctions, including those he signed into law. It’s alleged Flynn promised Kislyak they’d undo President Obama’s, which, in yet another among his pathological lies, Trump claims never existed. Inconsistency and lies being Trump’s strong suit, he tried for a twofer: touting the 2014 starting date of Russian interventions while denying they happened. And he and Pence falsely claim it’s been concluded there was no impact on the election. 

Floating another deflection, Trump says it wasn’t about electing him, it was about dividing us. Right. And how better to do it? To Trump, though, it’s lawful investigations into unlawful activities that create division.  

“They’re laughing their asses off in Moscow,” tweeted Donald the Wordsmith, oblivious to the irony. Then, despicably exploiting the murders of children, he claimed the FBI’s mishandling of information about the Florida shooter was because they’re pursuing the “fake” Russia story. Will he go still lower? Of course. As will the execrable right-wing talkers and other deplorables slandering the Florida survivors, whose righteous eloquence they fear. You can’t scrape the bottom of a barrel that hasn’t one. 

A president’s primary duty is to defend our country from its enemies, foreign and domestic. Trump’s dismissal, despite “incontrovertible” proof, as National Security Advisor McMaster put it, of an attack on America no less premeditated and destructive than Pearl Harbor or 9/11 is dereliction. Worse is his refusal to do anything about it, for which derelict is the mildest descriptor. How about appeasement, a Foxian favorite? Had it been President Obama, everyone still excusing Trump, every Congressional Republican, would be proclaiming treason and readying impeachment. In their hypocritical hearts, they know it’s true. 

Direct observation supports the conclusions. In word, deed, and non-deed, Trump is aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin, and has been from the start of his campaign. We don’t yet know how deeply Trump is in Putin’s tank, but we can assume his inaction on the attack is, at least in part, because he and Congressional Republicans want more of it next election. It’s their best shot.  

Our democratic institutions, we’re told, can withstand even a dangerous bedlamite like Trump. Are we sure? Congress turns a blind eye. Trump stacks the courts with right-wing ideologues, threatens judges already in place. He calls the press “enemies of America,” shuns expertise. Voters are stupefyingly susceptible to Russian and Foxolimjonesian propaganda. We’ve just learned Russia hacked into voter rolls: our complicit House Republicans responded by voting to end the only government agency responsible for safeguarding election security. “Laughing their asses off,” indeed. Pennsylvania Avenue is now Krasnaya Ploshad.  

On Monday, Presidents’ Day passed without a president of the United States in office.

[Image source. The post title is a reference to this, in case you haven't heard of it.]

We Live in NRAmerica

Change of plans. This will be tomorrow's newspaper column: 

Between eleven million for Donald “I’ll self-finance my campaign” Trump and another twenty million against Hillary Clinton, the NRA spent over thirty million on the last presidential campaign. Marco “Don’t jump to conclusions” Rubio has accepted more than three million from them in his career. So has Joni “Thoughts and prayers” Ernst, which is only half of what John “the maverick” McCain has received. And Paul “No knee-jerk” Ryan has taken in more than any other in the House of Representatives. If post-hoc doesn’t always equal propter hoc, it must have an effect. Otherwise, why would Mr. LaPierre keep doling out cash like pig slop in a sty?  

We know, because we’re told so every time, it’s too soon to talk about Florida; so how about all the others that have occurred in 2018 and before. For numbers of mass shootings in America, Trump’s first year in office wins the gold. I’m not suggesting that it’s all on him: American gun violence has been epidemic for decades. But he gets zero credit for improving things, because he hasn’t, and some for making them worse. Calling for violence at his rallies (Trumpists consider that a lie, despite the video evidence.) Ending Obama-era controls on the mentally ill getting guns. Cutting funding for gun-purchase background checks. Cuts in Medicaid, which happens to provide the bulk of mental health services for the poor. Removing the mandate for insurance coverage of mental health.  

After Florida, Trump blamed locals who knew about the shooter’s mental health issues but didn’t report him. Given Trump’s aforementioned actions, what would have happened had they done so? (We know the answer, because some people had. Thankfully, it was different here.) He, a white-supremacist MAGA guy, purchased his AR-15 legally. Florida has virtually no gun control laws. 

At this point in America, the demon is out of the bottle. If sales of all guns were banned tomorrow, there are already enough of them out there for every man, woman, and child. Notwithstanding even the most fevered delusions of Infowars-loving Trumpists, there’s no way an effort could or would be mounted, much less be successful, to “come for them.” We are what we’ve become. 

Maybe there’s still a way to deal with it; if so, it won’t come from Republicans. After the Las Vegas massacre, Republican House members rose to the occasion by passing a bill forcing states that don’t allow concealed carry to allow people from concealed-carry state to roam free, unconstrained by their own laws. That’s some righteous federalism, right there.  

But really? No laws will help? None? It’s a favorite talking-point of NRAiders that Chicago, with its gun violence despite its strict gun laws, proves they don’t work. Facts, those troublesome things, say otherwise: guns flow into Chicago from neighboring cities and states which have no such laws. The result of Australian gun laws after its lonely mass shooting has become a liberal shibboleth: it’s impressive, and will never happen here. Not unless Republicans are thrown out of office and a constitutional amendment were to pass Congress, get signed by a president, and validated by thirty-eight states. We’ll be drowned by rising seas, choked by unbreathable air, or poisoned to death by undrinkable water long before that happens.  

If there’s a solution, I don’t see it. Democrats say we have to do something, Republicans say we don’t. We all say it’s time to regain respect for each other, but no one really knows how. I do know, though, that having a role model in the White House doesn’t help. Not one who suborns violence at his rallies, calls the press an “enemy of the people.” Who says Democrats want open borders, illegal immigrants running wild and raping your women, doesn’t help. One who reads the usual hollow, tired words from a teleprompter, saying he’s with us. Reading it badly, unenthusiastically. One who admires Alex Jones who, as usual, claimed the Florida murders were orchestrated by Democrats. We’re now a country in which people believe that.  

So the NRA and its money-takers are right. The only way to protect children in NRAmerica is to turn schools into impenetrable fortresses. Steel buildings with foot-thick doors, no windows, armed guards and barbed wire outside and armed teachers inside. It’d teach our kids the uniqueness of America, too. But, sure as hell, we’ll need more tax cuts to pay for it.  

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Trump, Unmasked

My next newspaper column, sent in with too little time to address the latest mass murder. But Trump sent condolences, so it's all okay.

Based on emails I get, hardcore Trumpists are as impenetrable by facts as concrete by feathers. Either they enjoy being lied to, or they wouldn’t recognize a lie if it blackened their eyes. For everyone else, it’s incontestable: Trump’s campaign promises were free-floating falsehoods. Emailers insist he’s never lied, that he saved the economy after Obama crashed the excellent one he inherited. Which tells you everything.  

This isn’t about stupid lies, like the number of people at his inauguration, where the US ranks in taxation, how much tax reform will cost him, or voter fraud. This is about Trump’s lie-revealing, just-released budget, affecting millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him, inexplicably believing a man whose career was one of cheating, lawsuits, scams, and failures would be truthful and manage his office competently. 

Lies like protecting Medicare and Social Security. Like assuring us The Wall is indispensable and Mexico would pay for it. Like claiming he’ll never run a four-hundred-billion-dollar deficit. Promising to eliminate the federal debt (not the deficit: the twenty-trillion-dollar debt!) in eight years. Really, Trumpists? Now that we’ve seen his impossible budget, the mendacity is clear. Except to dead-enders, who, one assumes, consider arithmetic fake news.  

Trump’s proposal has the same chance of becoming law as I do of replacing Alex Jones on Infowars. Since a ten-page document directly affecting national security was too long for Donald to read, we know he had little if anything to do with producing it. But whether it was shown to him in pictures or highlights read to him with big words removed, he bestowed upon it his imprimatur. Presumably then, it represents his priorities. 

Like the Republican tax plan that’s already law, Trump takes the deficit, after Obama reduced by two-thirds the one Bush left him, to over a trillion for 2018. Using unrealistically optimistic predictions coming from the White House, which claim sustained economic growth fifty-percent higher than it’s practically ever been, the deficit would still be over four-hundred-billion ten years from now. According to economists using projections grounded in reality, it’d be around two trillion. 

How many Trumpophiles who raged at Obama’s (steadily decreasing) deficits will excuse Trump’s budgetary carnage? Or care they’ve been duped. How many understand why this is exactly the wrong time for such lop-sided tax cuts?  

Disagreements between liberals and conservatives about the role of government should, in theory, make for workable middle-ground legislation. Conservatives, though, claim social safety nets are abused by practically all recipients. Trumpists love cutting food stamps. Do they know it hurts military families along with their usual targets? Probably they’re fine with cutting housing assistance. But Medicare, Social Security? Even conservatives use Medicaid. The National Weather Service? Hanford cleanup? No concerns? Millions cut from gun-purchase background-checks: perfect timing. Condolences, though.  

What about people who believed Trump’s promises to return lost jobs? Okay with eliminating programs for displaced workers, neighborhood reinvestment, cutting mining safety regulations? Climate change research, sure: it’s a hoax. But the Chemical Safety Board? Legal services? Do no broke Trumpists need lawyers? Okay, cutting NPR, PBS, DOE, NEA makes sense: enlightened voters frighten Republicans. 

America already spends more on defense than the next dozen countries combined, but there’s a huge bump for the Pentagon, which can’t keep the F-35 flying. Billions for The Wall, naturally, paying for which amounts to giving a cookie to a child throwing a tantrum in aisle five. These aren’t the priorities that made America great.  

Remember that “only the best people” whopper? White House personnel turn over like tilled soil. Indictments, criminal behavior, ethics violations. Housing expert Carson gives a fat no-bid contract to his daughter-in-law. Zinke and Pruitt charge us for their fancies (the VA Secretary lies about his wife’s), while announcing they won’t enforce pollution laws. DeVos won’t enforce civil rights rules. Sessions plans to incarcerate more pot-smokers in private prisons whose stock he owns. Trump endorses sex predators, defends violent abusers, Kelley lies about when they knew. 

To anyone with a corpus callosum, Trump’s deceits scream out. Mismanagement, detachment, disinterest in new information, and now, a budget proposal designed further to enrich the wealthy and punish (and poison) those who, it makes sure, never will be. 

And Russia. Don’t forget Russia. The truth is out there.  

As to Trump’s promised infrastructure plan, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to the toll booth.    

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