Barr: To Impeach, Or Not To Impeach?

Less than three months ago, I wrote about Bill Barr, the current U.S. Attorney General, officially the people's litigator, and unofficially Roy Cohn's (and Rudy Giuliani's) replacement as fixer-in-chief on behalf of the Commander-in-Cheat (sorry, Rick Reilly).  I denounced his proposal to use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to suspend the Bill of Rights, and argued that his record overall makes a compelling case for making his office subject to direct elections by the voters, as is the case with its state counterparts.  I concurred with a former deputy Attorney General that Barr's conduct justified and required his resignation.  I did so with the expectation that he would not do so.  You can find all of this, and more, here.

I left unsaid the question of whether or not I thought there was any hope that Barr's abhorrent behavior would improve, or would be checked in any way.  The answer to that question seemed painfully obvious.  But, just in case it wasn't obvious to anyone, recent events have made it painfully clear that the answer is no.

Last weekend began with Barr's botched, comic-opera-level attempt to replace the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a career prosecutor currently investigating several areas of Donald Trump's unsavory life, with a crony who had never prosecuted a case.  Gee whiskers, why would he do something like that?  Couldn't be for the purpose of undermining the aforementioned investigations, could it?

Well, if you still have some doubts about the answers to those questions, consider the fact that, tomorrow (I write this on Monday evening) two other Justice Department employees, one current, the other former, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about even more Barr-related corruption:  the attempt to interfere with the sentencing in the department's case against Roger Stone, and the hijacking of the department's Antitrust Division for political purposes.

The naked corruption of Barr, played out especially as it has in broad daylight, has reached the level of egregiousness at which faculty members of his law school have publicly denounced him.  Will that stop him?  Of course not.

Only two things can do that.

Option Number One:  we wait until next January, and pray that, in the intervening election, his boss loses to Joe Biden, giving Biden and the Democrats (especially if the party controls both houses of Congress) the chance to finally clean up all aspects of the Trump carnage, including what's been done to the Justice Department.

Option Number Two:  impeachment.

I can literally hear your eyes rolling, even now.  We've been down this road earlier this year, with regard to Barr's boss.  And we all know how that turned out:  Mitch McCONnell and his Senate "colleagues" did their best I'm-not-listening performance and, with near unanimity, let Trump off the hook.  If the House did in fact impeach Barr, there's no reason to expect that the result would be any different.

And, unsurprisingly, the signals on this subject being sent out by some of the key players in the House suggest that, as of now, the consensus among Democrats is that they're not prepared to go through what would admittedly be a study in forgone conclusions.  Jerry Nadler, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee that would be in charge of drafting and sending articles of impeachment to the full house, has already signaled that consensus, citing the corruption of Senate Republicans as the basic reason.  Just recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially said much the same thing, expressing the view that the question of Barr's corruption, as well as his corruption of the Justice Department, would at this point be best addressed in an election.

Would it?

It's a seductive conclusion, which, in an of itself, is one reason why it should be resisted so vigorously.  By not pursuing impeachment proceedings against Barr, the Democrats avoid the dreaded risk of polarizing the electorate, even though the electorate is already as polarized as it can be.  It would save them time for passing more legislation that would die a lingering death on McCONnell's desk.  It would give them more time to investigate corruption in other agencies of the most corrupt government in the history of the Republic, and allow them to issue subpoenas that, based on their track record to date, they have absolutely no intention of enforcing.

In other words, how much of a real waste of time would it be?

In fact, it would be the exact opposite:  it would provide a showcase that would allow House Democrats, witness by witness and question by question, to dismantle the Potemkin illusion of a functioning executive branch and expose it in broad daylight for what it is, a crime syndicate of the first magnitude.  It would give them the opportunity to issue massive numbers of subpoenas and then take them to court, asking for decisions on the whole lot of them and using the election as a justification for expedited action by the court.  It would create a media narrative that would be impossible to ignore, which in turn would be a campaign asset for Democrats running at every level of government, shaping public and, ultimately, electoral opinion in their favor.

And if, as seems completely likely, the Republican caucus in the Senate wants to walk the plank of perfidy for the sake of "protecting" Barr and Trump, let them.  Let them hold the hammer that puts the last nail in their political coffin.  Bullies have no other recourse when you show them that you are not afraid of them.  In fact, the impeachment process would force not only Senate Republicans to walk that plank but also, by doing so, to follow House Republicans in the process.  Judging by recent events, they seem to be more than willing to do so.

Frankly, all of this seems like pretty obvious stuff to me.  It should be obvious to people like Pelosi and Nadler, who know far more about national politics and the lay of the D.C. land than I do.

Let's hope that this is one sign that it truly is that obvious, and that they end up doing the right thing.  For themselves, and for all of us.

Do We Really Need to "Defund The Police"?

I write this on a Saturday night on which there has been yet another senseless killing of an African-American male by police offices who used deadly force in a situation that did not call for it.  This time, it took place in Atlanta, yet another large American city with a history of distrust and fear on the part of its citizens of color toward the men and women who are sworn to protect everyone, yet seem fundamentally unable to do so.

This has to end.  It should have ended a long time ago.  But how?

One answer might lie in the slogan that, in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, has emerged as a rhetorical companion to the phrase "Black Lives Matter":  "Defund The Police."  Taken in its most literal sense, that would mean eliminating all law enforcement agencies, so that citizens would have no protection at all against career criminals, to say nothing of natural and human-made disasters in which everyone looks to police office to help, at the very least, maintain some semblance of order.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of media mouthpieces on the right-wing side of the political divide are using the popularity of the slogan to "prove" that all "liberals" and their constituencies are total anarchists, solely interested in destroying all law and order for the sake of achieving total political dominance and power for their own ends.  Sorry, ladies and gents but, if that's what you think when you look at us, find your local mirror.  You're more likely to find what you're looking for there.

I don't think, in any case, that people who are using "Defund The Police" as a kind of mantra for this moment literally mean that.  As I've followed the political discussion over the past week, it seems that the real request being made here is to stop trying to use police departments to address problems that are better left to different types of professionals, social workers and doctors for example.  In my own work as a domestic relations attorney, I can relate to this desire in a very powerful way.  How many times have I been involved in a case where one spouse alleges domestic abuse against the other, the police are called, the officers arrive on the scene with no witnesses or other evidence to help them put the pieces together, and they leave without making an arrest or filing charges?  More than I can think of at the moment.

And in that conundrum, and similar ones throughout society all across the country, lies a part of the answer behind the present crisis.  The systemic racism that pervades more police departments than we care to admit is, ultimately, the same systemic racism that pervades the attitude of most Americans--or, at least, far too many of them--and influences their preferences on how their tax dollars are spent.  For almost 40 years, we have systematically cut spending on social welfare programs that are able to provide resources to successfully address problems like domestic violence, drug abuse, vocational training (and re-training).  We've allegedly done all of this in the name of fiscal prudence, even as we blow holes in public budgets with bribes that we call tax incentives, and wars fought in the name of democracy but actually prosecuted in the name of profits.

But I'll let you in on a little secret, even though I think that many of you know it already.  Racism is the overarching motivation for cutting social spending.  White taxpayers perceive most of money going to folks that, in the taxpayers' opinion, don't deserve it because they allegedly don't do enough to make it worth anyone's while.  Never mind that the actual experiences of these taxpayers play no role in supporting or even shaping those opinions; for the most part, none of them have ever spent enough time in urban neighborhoods or poor rural areas to have any sense of what is actually going on.  They're far too busy making sure that they're being misinformed by Rush Limbaugh, by Fox News, or whatever other media outlet they've pre-selected to grease their prejudices.

But that's not to say that we haven't been increasing spending in some areas.  In fact, for the past 30 years, and especially in the post-9/11 era, spending on police departments and other law enforcement agencies have gone through the proverbial roof.  And it's not just the amount of money being given out; it's also what it gets spent on.  Not just rubber bullets and tear gas, but heavy artillery, including tanks.  Tanks!  Would someone explain to me why police departments need that level of firepower?  Do people with dark-colored skin really frighten racists that much?

I think that, right there, we have the beginning of the solution  It doesn't involve raising anyone's taxes  It doesn't involve even an increase in overall spending levels.  Take the money that's currently being used to outfit the nation's police departments at the level of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, and use it to beef up spending on the social ills that we long ago decided to abandon.  Use it on the problems police are so often called upon to solve, but without the training or other resources needed to solve them.

And, while you're at it, take some of the money that you save demilitarizing the police and put it into better recruiting programs, ones that are designed to screen out the types of people who are prone to use a badge and a baton to express their hatred of people who are "not like them."

And, one more thing.

End private prisons in this country, once and for all.  They literally do nothing but create a market for prisoners.  They allow private corporates to create a workforce of slave laborers, circumventing the purposes of the Thirteenth Amendment right under our noses.  They are the primary reason why a ridiculously high percentage of our population is behind bars, often for offenses that could be addressed in a less punitive manner, with better results for everyone.

Just a few ideas, for starters.  No, don't eliminate the police.  But their funding definitely needs to be reduced.  For the sake of all of us.

Random Thoughts At The Beginning Of A Revolution

A revolution?

Last month, my last post described the current situation as the beginning of a second civil war.  Like the first one, race forms the basic line of division, even if our history books lean on the more obvious geographic labels.  Like the first one, one side (the white side) boldly proclaims its willingness to use force, to the point of violence and physical harm, to defend its interests.  And there has been plenty of violence already, the vast majority of it against people of color, and not just over the past three years, nor the early decades of this still-young century, but for the entire history of this country almost from the moment white people first set foot on it.  Maybe terms like "first" and "second" are irrelevant.  Maybe we should just accept the fact that racial turmoil, instigated by whites against people of color, has been the one thread that runs throughout our entire history.

And maybe, just maybe, we're doing that now.

Why is this moment different?  A few observations.

In a very real sense, this moment has come about in an era in which corporations have disempowered the people, while technology has empowered them.  In the past four decades, as the profit motive has become exalted to an almost religious level in American corporate life, the corporations that own media outlets have focused on news that the privileged want to consume, and not the realities that all of us, rich or poor, need to face and address.  In the process, the line between journalism and entertainment blurred to the point at which electing a publicity hound dog like Donald Trump as president seemed not too much of a stretch.

So, who's practicing journalism nowadays?

Thanks to the Internet, it's all of us.

Without smartphones, and the power of the World Wide Web to share video files, we may never have known that George Floyd was murdered by police, dying for the sake of being African American in the U.S..

Without smartphones, we would not have known the extent to which people of color and progressives across the spectrum were being libeled by random white terrorists and their fellow-travelers in the Murdoch media, by attempting to forment violence that they subsequently blamed on the vast majority of protestors, who were (and are, even as I type) peacefully protesting the violence that has been formented for far too many centuries.  Interestingly, many of those terrorists, just a few weeks ago, were getting unearned coverage from the corporate media for carrying semi-automatic rifles on behalf of their right to not wear face masks in the midst of a pandemic.  For them, the boundary between threats and actual physical force may be no boundary at all.

I have posted many times here about what I have felt is the death of journalism in America or, at least, the death of corporate-sponsored journalism in America.  I have wondered whether the solution might be for major journalism outlets to re-cast themselves in the form of not-for-profits, a structure that would allow them to truly publish the news we need to have without fear or favor.  In fact, here in Baltimore, there is a movement afoot to do exactly that to our city's major metropolitan newspaper, the Baltimore Sun.  I take this opportunity to invite you to take a look at the website that operates on behalf of this idea, and consider doing what you can to support it.

But, maybe, as is so often the case, maybe it's not a case of either-or.  Maybe, in the digital age, each of us is a journalist  Each of us, any of us, could be in a position to record and share a story that has the potential to change our lives, perhaps even to change the world.  What has happened over the past two weeks has already shown the potential for what this can accomplish.  As a result, rather than facing an extension of our centuries-long racial civil war, we may be on the cusp of a second American Revolution.

Let's hope so.

This much is certain:  Trump, who fancies himself as the most central, the most all-powerful avatar of traditional political and cultural values, has been exposed as little more than a symptom of the pandemic that has cursed this nation from before its founding:  the virus of racism.  That virus has now been exposed to such a powerful extent that it has resulted in one real blessing:  it has created an environment in which Trump can only cower in fear in the White House, now surrounded by an extra layer of fencing.  The man who bragged about stopping immigration by building a wall across the southern border is now walled inside his own bunker.

And, extra fence or no extra fence, it is now painfully clear that he has no right to be there.

He has used the protests, with the aid and connivance of his replacement Roy Cohn, William Barr, to form a personal, private army to assault peaceful protests with armed assaults.  He even went so far as to use physical force against peaceful protesters--tear gas and rubber bullets--to stage a photo op in front of a church, where he held up a Bible he has probably never read.

If Trump has not crossed a line for you prior to the death of George Floyd, his behavior since that death cannot be seen as anything but an abdication of any intention to obey the law and serve the interests of all the nation's people.  He must go.  He must go now, if any meaningful standard of justice is used as a reference point.

But, since his party has become every bit as law-breaking and otherwise as craven as he is, it'll have to wait until November.  Then, perhaps, the next American Revolution can begin.

America's Second Civil War Has Begun

I find myself doing my best to take in the events of the past few days, and I am at the brink of total despair when I think about the future of this country.  Maybe I shouldn't say "this country."  Maybe I should say what's left of this country.

And I am simultaneously haunted by Donald Trump's words from 2016 about how, when he was President, there would be so much "winning" that we simply couldn't stand it.

He was right about that much.  I can't stand it, and I don't think the vast majority of Americans can stand it, either.  If the following isn't perfectly clear by now, you are either working overtime not to pay attention, or you are so deeply in the tank for Trump that not even death could persuade you:  "winning," for Trump and his most devoted followers, means a full-scale racial civil war, one designed to upend the entire constitutional order of the past 200-plus years and replace it with a power structure based solely on white supremacy.

We have, almost from the moment of Barack Obama'a election, seen an acceleration of this trend, one that has been slowly on track under the media radar for decades.  White men armed to the teeth  Assault-rifle mass shootings in the most innocent of settings, even elemenatry schools.  "Stand-your-ground" laws that have no purpose except to facilitate the targeting and shooting of young men of color.  White people, women in particular, patrolling neighborhoods ready to make "citizen's arrests" of delivery drivers and movers who are guilty only of being black.  And the escalation of police assaults on suspects of color that has gone hand-in hand with the over-militarization of local police forces in the post-9/11 era.

But, in the Trump years, this acceleration has reached a climax, especially in recent months and days.

Breonna Taylor.

Amy Cooper.

The horrific murder-by-cop-knee of George Floyd, and the subsequent violence unleashed by the police against peaceful protests of that murder.

Assaults by the police that not only did not spare the media, but actually targeted them.

And outside agitators, mostly white and conservative, determined to upend the protests for their own purposes.  In the short run, to spread violence and fear.  In the long run, to lay the foundation for martial law and an open dictatorship of white men.

If you think that Trump and his more deep-pocketed supporters aren't behind this, you haven't been paying attention.

We all need to start paying attention now.  It may not be long before we need to do a lot more than that if we want to save our democracy.

No, Freedom Most Definitely Is Not Free

If, prior to the pandemic, you had told me that public health could become a partisan issue, to the point at which one side would openly declare war on science, I would have been, to put it politely, been skeptical.  Science, so far as I am concerned, and as far as the majority of as are concerned, is science, and that includes medical science, the science we rely on to live.  True, we have political dust-ups on some science-related questions, such as when life begins, and the extent to which the Bible can be relied on as a literal record of human history.  But I had thought of those dust-ups as exceptions that prove the rule:  namely, that if science says X, we don't immediately take Democratic versus Republican positions for or against Y.  We may have debates about how to address X, or about exactly how important X is relative to other things.  But we don't debate the truth of X.

We do now.

Face masks have suddenly become the new flashpoint in the culture wars that seemingly have no end.  Face masks.  A simple, affordable, highly practical way of containing the spread of a virus that is, to put a fine point on the obvious, a respiratory virus.  A precaution not merely endorsed, but strongly encouraged by every medical official with anything to say about COVID-19.  A precaution endorsed by the Trump Administration's own health officials.

But not, alas, by President Trump himself.  Somehow, he has conceived the idea that wearing a face mask is a kind of cowardly act, something that only fearful, gutless, liberal weaklings need to do.  Which is why he doesn't wear one.  Why he has managed to intimidate those who know better to let him refrain from wearing one.  And, worst of all, why he has managed to rally his supporters to intimidate others from wearing them.

As I understand it, the requirement mandated by state and local governments to wear masks in public places is seen as an affront to individual liberty--and, in the context of worship services, an affront to religious liberty.  Somehow, the notion that individual liberty also mandates that others be protected so that they can live their lives as they see fit seems to have never come up in this analysis of what it means to be free.  Not even from the angle of thinking about what it means for protecting the mask opponents themselves, so that they can continue to enjoy freedom.

In fact, some of the anti-mask folks have gone so far as to co-op the liberal argument for reproductive freedom for their purposes:  "It's my body and my choice."

Hmm.

If I thought that there was even a chance--a tiny, tiny one--that the mask foes could be successfully co-opted into becoming pro-choice (which I'm sure they aren't now) by my accepting their embrace of this argument, I just might do it.

Because I would still argue that we should all wear masks in public, by co-opting one of their war-on-terror slogans:  "Freedom isn't free."

This means that, in the face of a public emergency, one that threatens every member of the public, the government has not merely the right, but the obligation, to take whatever reasonable and necessary steps are available to protect the public from the emergency and allow them to otherwise live their lives as they see fit.  Government is not the tyrant here; the virus is the tyrant.  Viruses do not care about borders, constitutions, theories of natural law or Biblical verses.  They're viruses.  They do what they want.  We fight the virus on its terms, or we lose.  And, if we lose, freedom will no longer something we will be in a position to think about, much less exercise.

Perhaps this is the influence of the Boomer generation, of which I confess to being a part, but one of the things about the present age which worries me the most is what we have done to concepts such as freedom, to say nothing of citizenship.  We seem to have lost sight of the fact that freedom is not merely an individual experience, but an experience that we share as part of a free society.  Society exists because government exists--and, so long as government is ultimately controlled by the whole people, freedom isn't threatened by government, and government is able to take whatever steps are necessary at different points in time to protect personal and social freedom. 

Freedom, to put it another way, is not simply about what I want, but about what each one of us wants.  This is way we we were willing to tear apart our nation in the nineteenth century, so that it could be put back together as a nation in which no one had the privilege of infringing the freedom of others based on the color of skin.

That is why freedom is never free.

And it's why it may be about your body, but it's also about thwarting the virus' choice.

This Won't Be Over When Trump's Gone

When Trump's gone.

At this point, it's far from a foregone conclusion that he will be gone next January.  As far as the likelihood of that happening is concerned, it's not public opinion I fear.  True, there are times when I wonder why, as one fiasco has been piled on top of another, he has as many supporters as he does, somewhere around 40 percent of the voting population.  But I remind myself that, even at the deepest point of Richard Nixon's Watergate disgrace, he still had roughly one out of every four Americans behind him.  No, what I fear is not the voice of the people, but the insidious, behind-the-scenes activities of the real Deep State:  the one that has spent decades using dark money, gerrymandering, and outright voter suppression to squash that voice.

A free and fair election is not guaranteed by any means, but I hope and pray that it happens, as should we all, and will do whatever I can to ensure that outcome, as should we all.  So let's assume that it does, and Trump is sent packing (or into the arms of the law), and we get President Biden and, G-d willing, overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.  What then?

I wish I could say that, to borrow a phrase from General Electric, a great big beautiful tomorrow for all of us.  But there's just one problem:  all of us will still be living in the same America that put Trump in the White House in the first place.

And that America, I'm sorry to say, is in several respects a fundamentally corrupt place, at times almost as corrupt as are Trump and his fellow-travelers.

This corruption stems fundamentally from two basic, related facts.  Too many Americans define patriotism in essentially self-centered terms.  Perhaps worse yet, that self-centered perspective is flavored with a heavy, and not always well-concealed, dose of racism.

Both of those characteristics have been on display over that past few weeks, as demonstration after demonstration has taken place all over the country, in both red and blue states, allegedly protesting the perceived unreasonableness of various stay-at-home orders issued by governors in response to the coronavirus pandemic.  If you paid attention to the visuals that accompany the news coverage of these protests, however, you might be hard-pressed to know that that's what they're all about.  Between the pro-Trump signs and the Confederate flags, to say nothing of the military-level arms decorating many of the protestors, it's very hard to see the intentions behind these events as being strictly benign.

And they are not.

Listen very closely to what a lot of these people are asking for.  We're supposed to think that the protests are a reflection of small-business America, itching to roll up its sleeves and get back to pumping up the economy through good-old fashioned hard work.  The chattering classes on the far right are happy to help promote that image, even to the point of describing the pandemic in the language of class warfare, while simultaneously decrying the use by others of that very same language.  Sadly, Peggy Noonan, for whom I'd like to have a measure of respect, seems to have jumped on this particular bandwagon.

But these protesters aren't protesting the loss of their jobs  They're protesting the loss of being serviced by people in jobs that are often held by people of color.  They're protesting the loss of white privilege.  They regard masks as a sign of cowardice, and not as the cheapest, most practical way of protecting everyone from coronavirus transmission.  And they are willing to disable representative government itself in order to garner their fifteen minutes of "fame," even though the size of their crowds is not reflected in the popularity of their governors in the polls.  It's not an exaggeration to say that the Michigan state legislature's decision to cancel its session for this year is an existential threat to democracy throughout the nation.

Somehow, the us-versus-them posture of modern conservatism has left the movement and its followers utterly unprepared to fight a menace that doesn't care about where people live, or how educated they are, or whether they work with their hands or their head, or how much money they are or are not making, or (let's just say it) whether or not they look or sound like each other.  It's a virus, folks.  This is not about advancing one section of the country over another.  It's about protecting all of us from a menace we could be sharing with anyone and everyone without realizing it!  So no, you don't have a patriotic right to live your life in such a way that it threatens someone else's.  Freedom isn't a gift to one political party or another; here in the U.S., it's a gift that's meant to be enjoyed by everyone.

And, as those on the right are so fond of saying, it isn't free.  Sometimes, it requires sacrifice.  Should that sacrifice be spread as broadly as possible?  You bet.  That's why Democrats in the House of Representatives just approved a $3 trillion spending package to do that--a package that has already been shot down by Republicans, since it doesn't do enough for those who have already had enough done for them.

The protesters like the ones in these "events," and those who fund their Astroturf demonstrations, will still be around when Trump is gone, still wrapped up in themselves, still animated by bigotry, still willing to use violence to disable constitutional government.  They aren't going anywhere, and the media, dedicated as ever to the illusion of covering "both sides," will pump them up for short-term ratings at the expense of long-term safety.  That's why this won't be over when Trump is gone.

And I don't know what the cure for this state of affairs is, any more than I know what the cure for the coronavirus is.  I fear that suffering is the only immediate guarantee for the immediate months ahead.

We're In The Grip Of A Suicide Cult.

The mantra "Never let a good crisis go to waste" has become, in 21st-century American politics, an approach to achieving, maintaining, and expanding political power that both sides of our current deep divide have been able to claim for their respective purposes.  In fact, it was used first in the Obama Administration, which saw in the 2008 Wall Street meltdown an opportunity to gain ground in policy areas dear to liberals:  financial re-regulation, obviously, but also stimulus spending that employed union workers and expanded the use of renewable energy sources, and health care reform that would end the threat of pre-existing conditions to the insurability of many Americans.  And, to a degree, that approach paid off.  Not, of course, to the complete satisfaction of American progressives.  But to a degree that now fills those same progressives with a more appreciative, nostalgic perspective.

And to a degree that made most Republicans angry.  Hoping that Obama would screw up his Presidency and play into the racism that many of us have known for decades serves as the fuel for their own political goals, they waited for an opportunity to once again take control and smash all of his accomplishments to pieces  If they have not completely succeeded, it is mainly because of the determined efforts of attorneys (full disclosure to newcomers:  my wife and I have our own law firm), and the 2018 election that restored the House of Representatives to Democratic control.  Obama was their "crisis," so far as they were concerned.

But, in a twist of fate, focusing on undoing everything the first African-American President done distracted them from the most fundamental obligation any government can have to the governed:  safety.  Trump's dismantling of the pandemic apparatus Obama had put into place, and his subsequent willingness to ignore the mounting warning signs, allowed the coronavirus pandemic to devour almost every aspect of our lives, and has created a physical climate in which, in the systemic absence of testing and contact tracing that would give us a more precise idea of the pandemic's scope (and how to treat and end it), no one can feel safe because no one knows what the path to safety looks like.  We have all been hoisted, along with the Republicans, on the petard of the way in which the Trump Administration has practiced its own form of "crisis" politics.

And, amazingly they are still at it.

Last weekend, I was reading this in the New York Times Magazine, about Hart Island, just off the coast of the Bronx.  Today, it's become the burial ground for COVID-19 victims who had neither families who could claim their bodies, nor the means otherwise to afford a decent funeral.  These people were predominantly those who were at the bottom end of the economic spectrum, the people who get ignored the most, in part because they remind us of the level of poverty all of us are separated from by no more than one small twist of fate.  An even more powerful reason for the neglect that we give is the fact that, not by coincidence, they are people of color.

As outlined in the article, Hart Island has historically been a convenient place to ignore the dispossessed in American society.  So it's not terribly surprising to see it fulfill that role again.  Indirectly, it reminded me of the controversy over Donald Trump failing to follow the precedent other presidential candidates before him have of releasing his tax returns.  This failure, which exist solely for the purpose of hiding his status as an utter failure in business, is of a piece with his utter ignorance of American history and his general mental instability.  Once this nightmare of an Administration is over, I think that we should pass a law requiring all presidential candidates to not only release 10 years worth of tax returns, but also submit to a full mental and physical medical examination by an independent physician, and pass a test indicating that they understand the basics of American history.

But I digress.

It's important to remember that, in a crisis of the magnitude of the current one, the hardest-hit are always people of color, because our Republic, from the very beginning, has placed them at the very bottom, first by way of their legal status, and later by way of laws that denied them the most basic opportunities for economic advancement.  As I read the Times article, I found myself thinking:  is that what this shocking defiance of medical science by Trump all about?  Is this simply, in the disco of his mind, one last effort on the way out the door of the White House to shaft people he has always looked down about, that he was taught from the beginning of his life to look down upon?  In and of itself, it's plausible enough; I mean, this is Trump we're talking about.

But the one thing that Trump never stops doing is calculating his self-interest, and how to preserve, protect, and advance it.  Thousands of people may be dying, but Trump, narcissist that he is, goes on.  Which is why I found this article by David Frum in The Atlantic so disturbing.  Frum, a Never-Trump Republican, describes what he calls a Plan A and a Plan B in Trump's thinking.  In Plan A, he just gives up entirely any effort to contain the virus and protect the American people, and throws anyone and everyone but himself and people who are useful to him to the pandemic wolf.  In Plan B, to shore up what's left of his chances for re-election, he takes whatever political spoils are available and deprives his opponents of them, while sharing them generously with those who are willing to help him.

And no sooner did this week begin than Plan A went into effect.

Per the Trump Administration, the daily death toll from COVID-19 is now predicted to double by next month.  To be precised, about 3,000 daily.

And what is the Trump plan for dealing with this doubling?

There is no plan, as it turns out.  According to the "President," we are supposed to think of ourselves as warriors, drafted into a war we are losing, and one that was launched in no small part through his own negligence.

And is our Commander-in-Chief going to give us any supplies in order to fight this war?  Doesn't look like it.  At a moment in our history when health care for everyone has been more essential than ever, he's still putting in a full-scale effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  Oh, I'm sorry; that's repeal and replace it with "I can't tell you until I'm re-elected, but it'll be some time after I show you my tax returns."  That, of course, is Trumpspeak for "never."  Even his own Attorney General, whose disbarment proceedings can't begin fast enough, had enough political sense to suggest to Trump that getting rid of the ACA right now shouldn't be a priority.  Trump, for once, ignored him.  Unsurprising again, especially coming from a man who refuses to even help pay for burying the dead, and forcing states like New York to make grim use of places like Hart Island.

Equally unsurprising, the rest of his party is no better.  Congressional Democrats are calling to stop using federal bailout money to comfort the comfortable, and redirect it to ending the affliction of the afflicted.  So what do we get?  Mitch McCONnell, calling the Senate back into session for the sole purpose of confirming Trump's rancid political appointees, and even more rancid judicial nominations.  (If it's any consolation, this week brought a thin ray of hope that something might be done to push back against the latter.)

And don't expect any help from Republicans at the state level.  With a few notable exceptions, their message is clear:  either go to work for employers who will not be required to protect you from death, or starve. In fact, the entire party has, for all practical purposes, been effectively Nazified, a process that has been taking place in earnest for several decades, and has finally reached the point at which its elected officials are cheerfully calling on those who don't vote for them to drop dead, so that the Dow Jones industrial average can continue to set new records.  This Daily Kos piece describes that process in detail, and I strongly recommend that you take some time to look at it.  At the same time, you can see two examples of how far along in the process we are:  law enforcement is openly disrespected, and Ku Klux Klanners feel free to announce themselves in your local grocery store.

Perhaps worst of all, Trump is taking his political cues from the evangelical Christian community, which has no political vision for the world as a whole beyond being raptured off of it, and leaving everyone else to suffer.  As a consequence, they believe any efforts to preserve and enhance life on this planet are essentially contrary to the will of God; good Christians, in this formulation, strive to accelerate the apocalypic timetable for their benefit, even though Jesus himself said that "no one knows the hour or the place"  (Full disclosure:  as a former evangelical, I know what I'm talking about.  So does the author of this Mother Jones article.)  This, of course, makes their anti-abortion advocacy even more hypocritical than it would be otherwise, but I'll save that topic for another day.

How does Trump himself sum up, for public consumption, this sorry state of affairs?  By focusing on himself, of course.  And doing it in a fairly spectacular way, one that, apparently, involved pulling a few strings.

He had the audacity to be interviewed at the feet of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, and compare himself to Honest Abe, in terms of suffering.  Lincoln himself, were he in a position to do so, would respectfully beg to differ.  As it was, when I saw footage of the moment in which Trump made the comparison, I half hoped for the statue to reveal that it had laser eyes and zap Diaper Donnie out of our misery, while saying "You want suffering?  I'll show you suffering."

But no.  It's up to all of us to get out of this mess, with G-d's blessing and help.  And what a mess it is.

We're in the grip of a suicide cult.  I hope and pray that we can get out of it after November.

It HAS Happened Here

Donald Trump likes to brag about his prowess as a real estate developer but, when it comes to the man underneath the comb-over, the only thing he's capable of building is a seemingly endless series of moral sub-cellars.  Everytime we learn about some new personal failing on his part, we pray that we've reached the end of the line when it comes to these revelations, and our knowledge of what he's capable of saying and doing can't possibly get any worse.  And, just as soon as we reach a point at which we think our prayers have been answered, the Donald reveals the existence of yet another sub-cellar, proving that he's only capable of descending further and further until he's reached Dante's tenth circle of hell--and, as President, taken all of us along with him.

Which is why I'm struggling right now to determine whether his announcement this past week to consider ingesting Clorox, Lysol, or ultraviolet light as a means of fighting COVID-19 means that he's truly reached rock-bottom, or perhaps is just a sign that this moment, like so many others before it, is just another subway stop on his (our) one-way subway trip to national damnation.

This much I will say for certain:  I can't say it's the single dumbest, most dangerous thing any President has ever said to the American people, because I'm only 63.*  However, I have heard a number of distinguished historians and other experts say that it is in fact the single dumbest, most dangerous thing any President has ever said to the American people.  So I'm going to go with that, and my Clorox and Lysol are staying in the cabinet, where they belong.

But where's the outrage, to quote Bob Dole on the subject of a far less outrageous President?  Where are the calls for his resignation?  Where is there any evidence that the sycophants who make up his Administration might be moved to finally invoke the provisions of the 25th Amendment.  Where is any of this?  Nowhere.  All we get instead is a whole bunch of explainaway malarkey, and a spike in calls to poison control centers.

Trump is officially Jim Jones, and his followers are drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid  There is no longer any reason to suspect that Trumpism is a suicide cult, fueled by racism and misbegotten nostalgia.  That can be considered a confirmed fact.

And so can one other thing.

The debate over where or not "it" can happen over here is now officially over.  Because it has.

Vote this fall like your life and freedom depend on it, and make sure that everyone you know who is 18 and older does the same.

*With apologies to the late drama critic Walter Kerr for that appropriation of a line from one of his more negative reviews of a musical.

Donald Trump Can't Handle The Truth

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

So said our second President, John Adams.  Ironically, this quote has, over many years, become a favorite of conservatives when doing battle with what they regard as the fantasies and fallacies of liberalism.  George Will has frequently used it toward that end.  But, to conservative politicians operating in the age of Donald Trump, the role of facts in their tactical decisions has been significantly altered.  Facts have ceased to be stubborn.  All too frequently, they exist in the alternative, depending upon the exigencies of the moment.  Even more frequently, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, they do not exist at all.

If you've had the stomach to follow Trump's antics over the past four decades, this is utterly unsurprising.  Trump has found that indeed, in his case, facts have frequently not only been stubborn, but close to lethal, given his contempt for the rules and desire to win at all costs.  In response, his preferred method of dealing with them is to hide them as much as possible, even to the point of deliberately creating chaos in order to manipulate the public's ability to both get and/or understand the facts.  Coupled with his ability to turn his press responses to the chaos into dumpster fires that a profit-first press can't possibly ignore, he has thus always been able to walk away from catastrophes that would have destroyed a con artist with any degree of personal shame.

But this is Trump's ultimate forte:  he has no shame.  Would a man possessing shame talk about his adult daughter on television about her potential to be a hot date for him?  Would that man openly mock the disability of a reported who provided unfavorable coverage of him.  Would that man openly brag about how his dubious status as a celebrity permits him to commit sexual assualt, using the coarsest terms the English language contains in order to do so?  Obviously, the answer is no.  At least that would have been obvious prior to the beginning of Trump's presidency; now, one cannot take this thought for granted.

So no one should be surprised that Trump's response to the pandemic followed all of the basics of Trump 101:  deny, dissemble, and then attempt to confuse everyone by openly lying.  And, in this instance, to lie above all about his own responsibility for the rapid spread of the virus, by essentially wishing it away with magical thinking and rhetoric that reflected it.  Let me pause here just for a moment to make this one point as clearly as I possibly can:  Trump has absolutely lied, and continues to do so, about his own neglect when it comes to taking the initiative that could and should have been taken in mitigating the harm that the pandemic has brought to the U.S..  Take a few moments to take a look at this.  Then come back and read on.

Trump has been spinning the coronavirus story in much the same way that he has been spinning the story that he hitherto had hoped would carry him past the dumpster-fire track record of his Administration  and on to re-election:  the economy, which he essentially inherited from Barack Obama, and then artificially inflated with a tax cut that went straight to Wall Street and never made it to Main Street.  Trump did nothing but create numbers, which is all he has ever created.  He knows that, although he would rather die than admit it.  But he knew that the threat of a pandemic might deflate those numbers overnight.  So he tried to spin the looming crisis away.

But that's the problem with spin.  It works much better in the private sector, and especially in the world of real estate development, where much of what is being bought or sold lies not in the reality of goods or services, but what people can be made to believe is being bought or sold.  Transactions in this area involve a host of players from different sectors and, if problems come up, well, the buck of blame can always be passed on to someone else.

The buck, however, is a much different matter when you're sitting where Harry Truman once sat, as Truman himself knew well.  In fact, in any sort of public service, it's a much different matter.  Perhaps because the public knows that the taxes it pays purchase the service it receives, it is a lot more particular regarding the quality of it.  Herbert Hoover, in many respects a much better person than his presidential record would indicate, found that out the hard way.  As Calvin Coolidge's commerce secretary, he directed the federal government's response to the 1927 Mississippi flood, and did so competently, while mastering the art of communication to let the people know how well he was doing.  When he tried to use those skills to sell bad or otherwise non-existent policy responses after the 1929 stock market crash, the result was different:  a new president named Franklin D. Roosevelt, one who combined great policies with great communication skills to carve a unique place in American history.  The moral of the story:  spin only works when it has something of substance to support it, and particularly something that the public can see and believe.  You can read more about this here.

Viruses are perhaps the most stubborn of all facts  They don't respond to spin, no matter how desperately the spin is being performed.  All that matters to a virus is science:  testing and, ultimately, the development of a vaccine.  Had Trump taken the early warnings about the virus, and the testing for it developed by the World Health Organization, he might have been able to greatly contain the spread of it and salvaged much of the stock market gains during his tenure, while otherwise enhancing his leadership credentials and perhaps doubly ensuring his re-election.  But that would have required putting that reputation at some degree of risk, depending on the results of testing and the public's response to those results, to say nothing of being subjected to a nationwide regimine of testing in the first instance.  Again, as I and others have previously written:  Trump is a narcissist, and narcissists countenance no risks to their reputation--even at the expense of other people's lives.

And so Trump spun away.  And, even as the facts grew worse and worse with each missed opportunity to control the coronavirus, he has kept doing so, even as the death toll mounted, because the only option was to tell the truth--which, in turn, would destroy his presidency, and force him back into the public sector to face financial ruin and criminal indictment.

And the press, which has for decades enjoyed the profits generated by covering the Trump three-ring circus, may be finally, reluctantly catching on, as individual reporters are increasing being fed up with being transparently used.  Another stubborn fact, reflected here, as well as here.  How much longer will Republicans, who have largely marched in lock-step with Trump, continue to do so, in the face of his melting media facade.  In an election year, one would think not much longer.  At least one Republican governor seems prepared to follow the facts wherever they go.  (I'm not a Larry Hogan fan, but I respect his response to the pandemic thus far.)

Donald Trump, in the words of "A Few Good Men," can't handle the truth.  He's spent his whole life fight it, successfully up until now.  But at this point, not unlike the Martians in H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," he may find his political career "slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this Earth."  By one of them, anyway.

Donald Trump Must Resign

We live in a time when, if you read or watch the news in any format, from any outlet, there is truly only one story.  It is, of course, a story with many different dimensions, almost as many as there are people, and the impact of which is felt in many different ways.

I'm talking about the coronavirus pandemic, of course.  But, when it comes to the United States, I could just as easily be talking about something else, something that is now inextricably linked to the pandemic, and whose future will be entirely defined by how and when the crisis is ultimately resolved.

Not something, actually.  Someone.

The 45th President of the United States.  Donald John Trump.

There, I did it  For the first time, based on my recollection  I've actually written out his full name, without using asterisks to conceal it.  I adopted that style to refer to him because I though it would be a way to discuss his odious term in office, and its disastrous consequences, while denying him the lion's share of the one thing he craves, above all else:  publicity.  To Trump, as it was to P.T. Barnum before him, all publicity is good publicity.  That's the way it has been for him, in his mind at least, for just a bit over four decades.  As they say in show business (which has been Trump's only real business), a helluva run.

But, to quote a line that Robert Downey Jr. made famous last summer (speaking of show business), part of the journey is the end.

And the end has come.

Trump may not see it.  His most devoted followers, that portion of the country's populace too stupid to see through him, may believe, as he does, that there is some brilliantly conceived plan or incredible stroke of luck that will bail him out again, as it has done any number of times in the past.  Most of that luck, of course, came in the form of his father, Fred, who is no longer around to bail him out.  And this time, in any case, his problems go way beyond money.  All of the Russian loan sharks that have paid his bills over the past decade or so can't get him out of the scrape he's put all of us in, not even with an assist from Trump's number one political patron, Vladimir Putin.

As of this weekend, the U.S. leads the world not only in the number of coronavirus cases, but also in the number of coronavirus deaths.  Over 20,000, in fact.  With no end in sight.  Sometimes, despite what many Americans believe, it's not a good thing to be able to say "We're Number One."

To be sure, this is a worldwide crisis.  In its early stages, the virus claimed thousands of victims in other countries.  China.  South Korea.  Italy (which is still suffering greatly).  Spain.  France.

But all of those nations have been able to flatten the statistical curve of cases.  Many others have been able to limit the number of cases within their borders.  In the case of New Zealand, the government has been able to keep the death rate down to one.

Why not here?

Very simply, because Trump is single-handedly responsible for a series of policy failures that has exposed the U.S. to what is already its greatest public health crisis in over a century, and may well end up being the worst one in its entire history.  It has been, to paraphrase Shakespeare, a tragedy of errors so extensive that it has been difficult to keep track of them, although, both for the record and as a guide going forward, doing so is essential.  I recommend this as a method for doing so, especially as it is written by a Never-Trump Republican, so it cannot be fairly accused of partisan hackery.

To sum up, Trump has taken what could have been a difficult but manageable crisis, and turned it into a full-scale disaster right out of a Hollywood movie, complete with empty streets, shuttered businesses, overwhelmed hospitals, and panicked unemployed wondering whether they can buy next week's groceries.  And his response?  Not merely the ugliest form of partisan politics I've witnessed in over a half-century of following events in Washington, but a near-complete abdication of his most basic responsibilities as an elected official--an abdication that, in many ways, borders on the criminal.

Instead of using the full power of his office to battle the pandemic, he is using it to conduct an ever-meaner advancement of his political agenda, whether that means promoting pollution, blocking access to health insurance, or settling personal scores within and without the nation.  One particularly egregious example of the latter tendency:  forcing states to act on their own to obtain medical supplies, and then confiscating them when those states do so.  One is forced to wonder whether the goal is to use these supplies for political payoffs, as opposed to distributing them based on who has the greatest need for them.  I'm not alone in raising that concern.  Even some conservatives think that Trump is willing to let people die, so long as he looks good in the process.

And then, there's the evidence that comes from the mouths of Trump himself and his fellow-travellers in the media.  Here, Trump begs his blindly loyal followers to vote for him, even if it means dying from infection by coronavirus in the process.  And, if that happens, well, that's just the way the breaks fall, if you're looking at it from Bill O'Reilly's perspective.  These statements and others like them, taken together, amount to a confession that Trump and everything he represents is finished.  After all, he's admitted that voter suppression is the only way his party can win elections.

The fundamental cause of all this, as I've said before, is the fact that Trump is a narcissist, and all of the characteristics of the narcissistic personality are on display in his response thus far to the pandemic.  Again, if you want a concise recap of this display, I can do no better than to direct you to the New York Times on this subject.  I do, however, have a few things to add to it.

One of the worst aspects of narcissism is a tendency toward magical thinking, a belief that everything will always break your way, so you can avoid dealing with potential problems by ignoring them (after all, why ask for trouble?).

So, you ignore them,   In fact, you do so more than once.  And you go out of the way to avoid the blame.

And, since you can't stand giving others credit for anything, you destroy their good works.
      .
And, since you're addicted to pleasure, you abuse your body to such an extent that you can control neither it nor your thoughts.

And, since you crave popularity, losing it may be likely to make you "act out" in ways that don't take into account the interests of others, especially if it goes this far.

All of this leads inevitably to one conclusion:  Donald Trump, as President of the United States, is a menace to the survival of the nation and its people.  He cannot be allowed to stay in place.  He has to go.  Now.  Not tomorrow, and certainly not all the way to next January.  NOW.

As I'm writing this, I'm watching MSNBC and listening to an interview with Jon Meacham, the historian.  He's just said that this moment in our history is not merely about the character of our leadership, but also about our character as a people  Character, he is saying, is destiny.  Or fate.  And, with a narcissist in the White House, our destiny--or fate--is on all of us.

So, what should we do?

In the film version of Alistair MacLean's "The Guns Of Navarone," the soldiers attempting to destroy a German artillery installation face, in two separate instances, a crisis which requires them to ponder three different, difficult choices.  In each case, the third choice involves shooting an unarmed individual.  In the first instance, the third choice is avoided; in the second one, it isn't.

I'm about to broach a subject where it is incumbent on the person raising it to tread carefully.  So I want to make it clear that I am not now, nor have I ever been or will be, an advocate of any form of violence.  But, as a student of both American history and human nature, I am painfully aware of the fact that not everyone in this country feels this way.  And, when it comes to discussing the future, I am frankly tired of doing so one day at a time.  Just as we need to get ahead of the curve when it comes to responding to the coronavirus crisis, we also need to get ahead of the curve when it comes to the American people's response not only to the crisis as a whole, but to its impacts on individual people.

It's not in the American character to deal well with restrictions on their freedoms, especially freedom of movement.  We can tolerate it for a period of time, but not a long one.  And we can only tolerate it at all if we have full confidence in leadership at the top.  That confidence no longer exists.  And, given the violent nature of the American character, I worry a lot about someone, somewhere, deciding that the third option is the best option.  And again, I speak as someone who is virulently opposed to the third option.

Which, for discussion purposes, leads me to conclude that there are only, in fact, two options.  Trump's impeachment, and Trump's resignation.  And we need to discuss them urgently, as much as for any reason so as to avoid the third option, which is a path to tragedy for everyone.

Impeachment?  Well, we've been through that already, due to a different form of malfeasance other than ignoring and then failing to mitigate the spread of a pandemic.  The current malfeasance, in my judgment, is more than enough to justify a second bite of that apple.  The political circumstances, however, do not.  The previous impeachment trial demonstrated what has been already demonstrated more times than I care to admit:  the United States Senate is currently being controlled by a cabal of lobbyist agents who will do anything, quite literally, to keep Trump in place.  Even if that means holding a trial that isn't really a trial, and that worked overtime to thwart every effort to make it one.

Which leaves us with only one option.

Resignation.

Trump won't want to do it.  He loves being President, which is to say that he loves the perks of the office.  The publicity.  The access to taxpayer money for personal purposes.  The immunity to prosecution.

But not even Trump would be able to resist an outcry from the public so overwhelming that it virtually amounted to a national consensus.  And I believe that we are at that point.  He is, slowly but surely, losing his party.  He is even, slowly but surely, losing the press. 

And, if the press has finally lost the timidity with which it has tiptoed around him for the past four years, why shouldn't the rest of us?  Why wait, at this point for next year?  In the face of this much suffering, why wait at all?  True, it would lead us with Mike Pence in the Oval Office, and he hasn't shown any independence from Trump.  But having him there, with Trump's bad behavior as a model of what not to do, and with Trump having paid a price for it, gives us some chance for an improvement in the decision-making process going forward.

It's a chance I'm willing to take.

Quite frankly, it's a chance I think that all of us need to get behind.

Right now.

COVID-19: Don't Let T**** Turn A Threat To Life Into A Threat To Liberty

In my post this past weekend about the COVID-19 crisis, I tried to cover the proverbial waterfront in writing about it.  There is a lot to discuss, obviously.  And, as it has become topics A through Z in the media, I realize that, along with all of us, I'll be re-visiting the subject on a regular basis, even if that means I'll be largely adding to or updating my discussion of different aspects of the crisis.  But there's one aspect of it that can't be discussed enough, even if the repetition becomes overwhelming.  That aspect isn't the virus' threat to our lives.  It's the virus' threat to our political freedom--to our democracy itself.

I'm not talking about social mobility or economic opportunity when I say this.  I'm talking about the powers our government is willing to assume, without our consent (or, worse yet, with it), over our day-to-day lives, or even over our election system--our ability to choose who governs us.  Within this century, we have already had a taste of how this works.  The 9/11 tragedy led to, among other things, the enactment of the PATRIOT Act, which has been re-enacted despite concerns on both sides of the ideological fence about the extent to which it amounts to a unilateral surrender of our most basic constitutional rights.  Now, in the face of a very different and perhaps more dangerous threat to our safety, further surrender of those rights may be on the table.

Bill Barr is a name that should be written or uttered with the utmost contempt.  From the moment he became the T**** Administration's Attorney General, he has done everything in his power to act as though his "client" is not the country, but the man who appointed him.  After all, that's how T**** treats everyone who works for him:  not as professionals with the independent knowledge and experience to do their jobs, but as indentured servants with no responsibility except to obey, even if obedience requires them to rebel against every inch of what they know.

Barr, however, doesn't seem to object to this expectation.  Far from it.  Indeed, he has gone out of his way, against formidable competition from other toadies working for T**** (here's looking at you, Secretary of State Pompeo) to be Number One when it comes to waiting hand and foot on Dear Leader.  First, there was the gamesmanship with the Mueller report  This was followed up with the even worse gamesmanship with the impeachment investigation and the subsequent trial.  Now, however, he's really poised to top himself. 

Take a look.

You'll notice, if you look at the article, that no rationale is provided for this blatantly unconstitutional power grab, other than the fact of the pandemic itself.  This is T**** 101:  if you can fill people with enough fear, and then manipulate that fear with rhetoric (whether factual or not), you can get them to practically beg you to be as big a bastard as you want to be.  Or, if you please, to hand that role off to a willing sycophant.  Enter Bill Barr, stage extreme right, carrying a copy of the Constitution in one grimy paw, and a sharp pair of scissors in the other.

It offers a measure of comfort, however small it may be right now, to know that not all Republicans are willing to torch our most basic rights for the sake of short-term political gain.  Tale a few minutes to read this piece from the Atlantic, written by a deputy attorney general for George H.W. Bush.  He says everything that needs in this moment to tell you what Bill Barr really is, culminating in an utterly justified call for his resignation.  That call hasn't been heeded, of course, and won't be.  But it does tell all of us what we should think about Barr's latest proposal, and how little heed should be given to it.

In fact, as terrifying as the virus itself can be, we should be no less terrified by how that fear can easily be manipulated to do damage not just to our lives, but to our entire way of life, to what we hope we can leave one day (hopefully, far in the future) to our children and grandchildren).  As a lawyer, I know how easy it is to abuse the "slippery slope" concept in making an argument  But the truth is that it need only take a few small, easily-digestible steps to reach a point at which freedom is little more than a slogan. 

It has already happened in Hungary, a nation with an admitted history of despotism, but which in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War had been one of the new democracies that emerged from the rubble of the Warsaw Pact.  T**** and his cronies aren't worried about this, of course.  But you should be.  We can only hope that we will have an election this fall that will allow us to elect a real President, one who will have to deal with this and an thousand other catastrophes.

When (and, G-d willing, if) that happens, one of the first things that should be taken up is this.  Or, even better, a Constitutional amendment that allows voters in federal elections to do what they can do in state elections:  elect an independent Attorney General whose allegiance will be directly to the voters, and not to a President who expects him or her to be a toady.

And in the meantime, Barr's "proposal,' and anything else like it, should get the same response from the rest of us:  give it a long walk off a short pier.

COVID-19: One Plague Leads To Another

Where do I start?

That's how I felt when I sat down after the 2016 election.  Now I feel the same way again, and fundamentally for the same reason:  D***** T****.  Yes, I know he's not the COVID-19 virus.  But he is, and always has been, a plague.  And, for the reasons that make him a plague in the first place, he has helped to unleash another one on the entire country, and perhaps beyond it as well.

I'll take a few steps back from our own awful moment, on a day when both the number of COVID-19 cases and new unemployment claims both exploded, and focus on two aspects of the crisis that, had they been handled differently would have made all the difference in the world.  Handling them differently would not have kept the virus out of the U.S.. But doing so would have saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives.  And, to focus for a moment on the economic impact of the virus, the only aspect that seems of real interest to T**** and his followers (more on that later), it might have saved both the labor and financial markets.

First and foremost, don't be deceived by the question of whether we had any advance warning:  we did, and enough to have gotten far ahead of where we are in trying to flatten the proverbial curve.  We have known for decades that a pandemic on the scale (or worse) of the 1918 flu could easily stop our lives and societies in their tracks.  The Obama Administration learned this lesson the hard way, with the H1N1 crisis, and responded to that crisis by putting in place resources and personnel to get ahead of the next one.  As a result, when the next one came along in the form of Ebola, we were ahead.  And Obama's people did what they could to educate T****'s incoming team about the dangers, the need to be prepared, and how to do it.  And, even though many members of that team are no longer on it, T**** still had intelligence reports about what was happening in China this past winter to put him on notice that there was a danger, and he had a duty to respond immediately in order to stop it.

We, of course, now know that T**** is consistently derelict when it comes to his duty.  He's never seen the Presidency as anything but another trophy property, something to promote his self-image, not an opportunity to reach outside of himself to serve a greater good.  For T****, there is no greater good beyond himself.  And, thanks to that spiritual failure, he is a personal plague that has enabled a medical plague, one that, regardless of what is done going forward, will be with us for a long time, and will require quarantine practices that will have to be extensive, both in physical scope and duration.

I have said all along, even before the 2016 election, that anyone who studied T****'s track record over four decades would not elect him to the presidency of a washroom.  Time and again, I have thought about his open, public mockery of the mannerisms of a disabled reporter, and thought that it told people, or should have told them, everything you needed to know about keeping him out of public office. His campaign was not much different from his business career:  self-serving to the point of not merely getting himself ahead, but finding ways to push others further behind him in the process.

As one person who knew about his New York real estate career once said, with T****, it was never enough to merely make money off of a deal.  There also had to be a kind of "moral larceny" involved in the transaction; otherwise, there would be no "thrill" involved.  You can read more about this here.  It's entirely safe to say that, by "moral larceny," the person quoted was refering to T****'s propensity for screwing people over.  His conduct over the past three-plus years shows that age has not withered nor custom staled that propensity.

As described in detail here, as well as here, T**** is fundamentally a narcissist.  He is quite literally in love with himself, to the point at which he thinks he is destined for greatness, and the rest of us should either get out of his way, or sign on to support his crusade of self-magnification.  This explains the fact that no one who works for him displays any sort of independent thinking about anything--and, should they make the mistake of doing so, it explains why their association with T**** swiftly ends.

Narcissism explains why T**** accepts praise often for things he has not done or even addressed, and why he delegates blame even when every arrow of evidence points to him as the source of failure.  It also goes some distance toward explaining his chronic laziness.  Why work at all, when you are destined for greatness, and can persuade others to believe it as well and thereby be willing to do all of your dirty work?  Finally, it explains why he was so willing to take credit for the economic recovery that began under Barack Obama's White House tenure.  And, as we have seen recently, narcissism explains why he was willing to shift blame for the stock market crash that clearly reflected his own failure to heed the early COVID-19 warnings.  It would be poetic justice for Democrats to repay T****'s hijacking of Obama's work with commercials that set the record straight.

Does that sound overly partisan to you?  Perhaps it is.  I'm having a hard time calibrating the level at which it's acceptable to be political about a crisis that has already enveloped all of us, and that will require the highest degree of national unity if we're to get through it.  But T****'s own actions have made that calibration all the harder to perform.  Let's start by discussing the second aspect of this crisis that should have been handled differently, something that is absolutely fundamental in a pandemic:  testing that is freely and easily available to the entire population.  Testing reveals the scope and direction of the problem, and points toward the cheapest and fastest way of turning the corner on fighting the virus.  Testing in a situation like this, put simply (and crudely, which I do without apologies) is a fucking obvious course of action.

But not to a world-class narcissist like T****.  If you only care about your image, you do what you have to do to polish it, even if that means multiplying and extending the suffering of others, which is why he was willing to keep a cruise ship full of inflected people at sea indefinitely, for the sake of keeping the numbers down.  It is, in fact, why he has done everything he possibly can to avoid widespread testing.  He doesn't care about ending the crisis.  He cares about managing the public information that can either make him look like the hero he thinks he is, or the fraud that those who have looked at his record know that he really is.

The problem with his attempts at doing this, of course, is that it doesn't take very long for him to stumble over his past statements.  Of late, T**** has been saying, over and over again, that no one could have anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic.  This is a baldfaced lie; the truth is that the U.S. would have been far better positioned to combat COVID-19, with hundreds (if not thousands) of lives saved in the process, had T**** not gone out of his way to unilaterally disarm the nation's public health system in the name of saving short-term money.  As Obama's Vice-President, Joe Biden, describes in detail here, T**** inherited a system that was designed to fight the domestic spread of international illnesses, and systematically destroyed it.  In fact, T**** openly bragged about doing so, again and again.

And that's only the beginning of his pattern of deception.  Here is a step-by-step outline of T****'s efforts to lie his way out of having to deal with a looming catastrophe.  Here is an example of how he has actively gone out of his way to hide information about the catastrophe.  Bad enough?  Well, stick around; it gets even worse.  T**** has actually attempted to profiteer off of COVID-19, and, in the process, has done so in the name of patriotism.  Here's a sub-cellar beyond even that:  he's using the virus to settle political scores.  On top of all of this, he's put out misinformation about possible "cures" for COVID-19 that has already jeopardized lives.

If you're one of those people who thinks, or used to think, that T****'s corruption could be stopped or at least tamed by the strength of the nation's' political and governmental institutions, you should think again, if you've not already done so.  COVID-19 has provided even more reason to do so.  Republicans have shown no hesitation to exploit the moment for its own unrelated political purposes, and even to put their own response to the crisis on hold to celebrate those purposes.  In fact, their response has revealed the party's only true philosophical calling:  everyone for themselves.  This is why some of them have focused on profiteering illegally from the suffering, or, in the case of Rand Paul, protect themselves, even while jeopardizing others.  And no amount of criticism from within their own party, even from someone who has iconic status within it, can dissuade them from acting out in the most blatantly corrupt ways possible. 

Speaking of institutions, what about the so-called Fourth Estate, the media?  Well, I gave up on their ability to call out this President on anything.  Media outlets in Washington and across the country have known for decades what T**** really is.  Despite that fact, they give him unlimited coverage at the expense of far worthier stories for one crudely simple reason:  he prints money for them.  The COVID-19 pandemic has only magnified that ability, even when he puts on daily news conferences that are meant to offer reassurance but only add to the pyramid of his previous lies. 

I said a few paragraphs ago that that testing is absolutely fundamental in successfully fighting a pandemic.  Even T**** knows that, which is why he has elected to minimize testing in the hopes of concealing his failure to get ahead of the virus.  Has the media called him out on it?  Hell, no.  Not even when provoked.  And, then, there's Fox, which is in a class all by itself when it comes to disinformation in the name of conservatism.  Here's a guided tour of how completely and systematically the right-wing equivalent of Pravda has, of late, eaten its words without even admitting to chewing.   

In this climate, you would expect even the best efforts of Democrats to provide counter-programing and better policy to be systematically squashed or ignored by the media.  And, sadly, you would be absolutely right.

And all of this creates raw material that T**** uses for his own benefit  I've already described what he fundamentally is:  a narcissist.  How does he advance his narcissism?  Through the creation and subsequent manipulation of chaos  Chaos allows him to create an environment that historically has allowed him, most of the time, to at least get away with massive mistakes, and even achieve some sort of accomplishment--for himself, not anyone else.  How else do you explain the fact that he went through multiple bankruptcies, while operating in an industry--casino gambling--where success is rigged in favor of ownership?  T**** loves bankruptcy.  He loves debt.  He loves anything that will allow him to shaft anyone who stands in his way.  As a consequence, he is, at least in my mind, a two-legged example showing that electing a "businessperson" is not a cure-all for all of our political problems.

T**** is, in fact, systematically generating chaos by slow-walking the response of federal agencies to the pandemic.  Take a look.  This is precisely why, when it comes to the afore-mentioned press briefings, and the lies contained therein, it would be better if none of us watched them--or, if the need to watch some or parts of them was needed, to ignore anything T**** says during them.  It would, of course, help if the press was less willing to broadcast them from start to finish, and/or to do so with more critical commentary than they currently provide.  But, as I suggested above, that does not seem likely to happen.

Perhaps it would be better to hope that the media would at least be effective in communicating the brazen willingness of the right wing to root for the deaths of the infected, in the hope that the virus will thereby wear itself out, and allow Wall Street to get back to bring America the great, big, beautiful tomorrow that only Big Business, and its favorite political party.  Once again, take a look.
And another.  For that matter, one more wouldn't hurt.

If that advocacy seems brazenly self-centered to you, consider the conduct of conservatism's faith wing, the evangelical Christian church and its leadership.  To that leadership, there is spiritual, financial, and political gold in our current misery, and they are mining that gold through appeals to the two emotions they love to exploit the most:  fear, and guilt.  Watching this going on, as a recovering evangelical, is pain on top of pain right now.  I'll spare all of you the details of what I went through, beyond what I've already put into this blog.  I need to save something for my memoirs.  I will add this much:  I have always believed that G-d gave us brains because he expects us to think as well as believe, and that G-d guides us in ways that are down to earth as well as miraculous ones.  Perhaps this expresses what I'm saying as well as anything does.

Apologies for the digression, and back to the political consequences of the pandemic.  They may include efforts at delaying, suspending, or otherwise manipulating the holding and conducting of the primary and general elections this year.  In the case of primary elections, this process has already begun, in Louisiana and Ohio, for example.  The general election?  T**** can't cancel or postpone that--not unless he decides to go full authoritarian, and, while I'm not convinced yet that this will happen, I can easily understand why some people are worried about it.  And, while I'm not completely sure that T**** is beyond establishing martial law, I'm also not convinced that it would be his first choice.  Basically, he's a lot sneakier than that, and prides himself on sneakiness.  Something along the lines of this is more his style.  In any case, no one should take anything for granted about our elections, especially after 2016.

If you've made it this far, and I forgive you if you haven't, I admit that this has been a bit of a verbal ramble.  It's a complicated subject, one that has multiple angles, reflecting the multiple ways in which the pandemic has affected all of us, and will continue to do so for a long time.

So, where does that leave us?

From the bigger-picture perspective, it may very well be the case that COVID-19 has exposed the extent to which 40 years of conservative ideology grinding down the New Deal and the administrative state it established has left conservatism with a hollow victory, one in which the now-neutered State is no longer able to fulfill its most basic obligation:  securing the safety of its people.  Indeed, what that grinding process may have done instead is turn us into a nation of mini-T****s, self-centered opportunists with no goal except coming out ahead of everyone else.  In its own way, the pandemic has provided opportunities to do just that. 

I say these things, however, not to be negative, but to be honest.  Being honest, however, also means acknowledging the many ways in which this crisis is providing opportunities to showcase the very best of what we can be as individuals, and as a people.  That is especially the case with regard to all of the first responders, both civil servants and private health care professionals.  What they are expected to do now is truly (forgive the cliche) a high-wire act without much of a net. 

As Americans, and as taxpayers, we should be doing much more for them than we currently are; a corrupt central government is largely responsible for that fact.  But look around you  There are lots of ways and means by which each of you can contribute to the process of getting all of us through this and getting to better days.  If you can do nothing else, please donate to your local hospital, to health care organizations, or any charity whose work is focused on combating COVID-19.  And no donation or effort is too small, as long as all of us make some sort of effort.

Perhaps that's the most important point I want to make here.  If any good is going to come out of this at all, it's going to be a national realization that we are, as Hillary Clinton tried to tell us three eternal years ago, stronger when we stand together than when we stand alone.  She wanted to embrace that ethos in incremental ways.  Perhaps that approach is no longer enough, if it ever was.  Perhaps this is an opportunity, after 40 years of marching steadfastly and sometimes stupidly in the other direction, to not merely turn around, but to do so in a big way.

I have come to suspect that T****'s reluctance to fully engage the powers of the federal government in combating the pandemic stems from certain advisors whispering in his ear that doing so would be the first step toward creeping socialism and a dictatorship of the proletariat run by Bernie Sanders and AOC.  (And yes, Lawrence Kudlow, I'm thinking very specifically about you here.)  If that's the case, we're in a lot more danger than we realize, with or without testing.  Viruses don't respect borders or ideology.  They're just viruses.  And they infect whoever they want.  And this one, in a matter of months, has already circled the globe.  The truth is that COVID-19 has created the second greatest need, after global warming, for international cooperation.

The United States, however, can only contribute to that if it first has national cooperation.  And T****, the President of the Red States of America, is as of the moment the single biggest obstacle to making that happen, along with the Republican Party and conservative moment that he has almost entirely co-opted.  I don't exaggerate when I say that replacing all of them with a Democratic President and Congress is absolutely essential to the survival not only of the Republic, but the world as well. 

And that Democratic President and Congress must not be afraid to address the pandemic with steps as large and as powerful as the virus itself.  No "Third Way" politics.  No reaching across the aisle just to find out that the other side has come up with new ways to cut off their opponents' hands.  No trying to be all things to all people  Time instead, at last, to be the right things to every American.  If nationalization of industries, short-term or long-term, is what is needed for the literal and physical survival of the Republic and the American people, so be it.  Nationalize, and damn the consequences.

This may be the only way by which we can become the nation that we have been promised to become, throughout the centuries.  If I can grind my own professional ax for a moment, it may be the means by which we re-discover our most fundamental and salient virtue, as a nation of immigrants.

If we can end the plague of T****, we can end the plague of COVID-19.  We can not only once again become a healthy people, but a free and secure one as well.