Where the Attacks Will Happen: Turkey As A Warning

In the Washington Post this morning, Fred Hiatt writes that amazingly, he's hearing people who were once vociferously against 45 starting to settle in with him a little bit. After all, they say, the economy is humming along, we haven't gone to war with anybody else and, outside of a fierce acceleration of political rhetoric, nothing has changed all that much.

He warns us not to get complacent about all that. America's position in the world has deteriorated signficantly. Our advantage in leadership has eroded. Much good we could be doing is being ignored behind a Why Us mentality.

Bottom line: For heaven's sake, we can't afford his re-election. Not only will these tendencies begin to gallop out of control, but other things that 45 hasn't had the time to focus on quite yet will then get his undivided attention.

One of them will be academia. It's ripe for attack. You know, intellectual elites who some think are smarter than everybody else. 45 will insult professors who do not fit his idea of teaching. He will start calling them "un-American." He will question their loyalty. It might start a new, McCarthyist witch-hunt.

Most of them are liberal. They promote human rights, free speech and press (despite issues on campus that will provide 45 a path for undermining them), women's and reproductive rights, the separation of church and state, and questioning the military-industrial complex: Things such people have been doing for as long as university systems have existed.

It's especially true of public university systems. They can be enormous: Texas, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, to name just a few. Their faculties are loaded with liberals. They are represented by unions. They have some control over hiring practices.

Conservatives have complained for a long time that conservatism is being pushed out by these faculties. The playing field should be leveled, they keep saying. Conservatives, they say, are being attacked endlessly for trying to promote their kind of thinking.

I got a dose of this at a conference I attended in Washington, DC, 14 years ago as a member of the NEA Executive Committee. I pretty much invited myself to it, with permission from our president. I wanted to know what went on. A man named David Horowitz, well-known for his opposition to the university system that he claims does little more than breed liberals, conducted it.

Victimization overwhelmed the day. Students were invited to tell of situations in which they expressed their conservative philosophies--mostly religiously flavored, the disingenuousness of which has caught on much more widely now--and, they said, were unceremoniously put down by liberal professors who didn't want to hear of it.

None of those professors were in the room to respond, of course. Some significant pushback was provided, though, by a representative from the American Federation of Teachers during a panel discussion later in the weekend, especially on the topic of academic freedom. (Why the NEA had no one there, officially, continues to be a mystery. But once it was learned that I was in the room, Horowitz took special notice.)

Consider, if you will, a David Horowitz-type, ready to skewer academics, at the top of our government. He'll be in a position to leverage a distinct lack of funding for a bastion of public education in which the U.S. has always been known as the leader. Foreign students, those that still can, of course, continue to flock here to do research. We are known for it. We should be proud of it.

45, if re-elected, will start telling people that we should be ashamed of it and avoid it. It will become one of the new armpits of his angry, pointless, misleading verbiage. Think Mr. F. Gow with fangs exposed: think about what he did to the University of Wisconsin system and its Wisconsin Idea, that research should be utilized to improve society. Taking that apart, he arranged to drain $250 million of it to give to someone wanting a new basketball arena in Milwaukee (the direct link not established, but the two items had the same price tag). In other words, a private entity draining the funding from public education.

Think about that. 45 would be in perfect position to manipulate that in dozens of universities. Federal funding might dry up in a hurry if colleges didn't adhere to some new kind of hiring practices. He could move the money to private institutions of learning--of which there's certainly nothing wrong on paper (I attended one), but there would be another attempt to make the rich much richer, and the commonplace, middle-class students would be out of luck. And unquestionably, he would shift those funds to religiously-connected or established colleges.

All this will be backed by Fox News, just as much as it conjured a report about Baltimore to make House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings look like he had neglected his constituents. Count on it.

If he's re-elected, this will happen. Count on that, too. Someone else's leader has already done so: Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A feature in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, written by Suzy Hansen, discusses it.

Turkey's Ankara University used to be a bulwark of liberal thinking. Its political science department, called Mulkiye, was particularly known for its cultivation of collective action and government protest. Mulkiye was usually at the center of that.

But Mulkiye was also the source of some of the more distinguished government representatives in the country's history: foreign ministers, ambassadors, and governors. A certain tension existed between those two realms. At times, some professors were harassed. The faculty split into left- and right-wing factions, so it isn't as if conservatism didn't exist there.

But by the 21st Century, fundamentalist thinking began to seep inside. My own experience in Ankara in late 2004 was illustrative. The main teachers' union, Egitim Sen, was hosted a conference while facing a legal showdown with the national Supreme Court over whether or not its members could teach Kurdish children--some of which were in families that had fled from the American-created Iraq War next door--in Kurdish instead of Turkish, which was part of the Turkish Constitution.

Hostility against Kurds, stemming from World War I, has existed in Turkey for a century. "In the political rhetoric of the Turkish state, to be pro-Kurdish is almost to be a terrorist," Hansen writes. The Supreme Court ruled against Egitim Sen, which had to submit or face dissolution.

Except Kurdish students began to attend Ankara University in much larger numbers. The Mulkiye embraced them. The students celebrated the greater ability to make themselves heard in the more liberal, secular atmosphere.

But just about when I had attended that international union conference, Mulkiye began to absorb greater and greater restrictions, spearheaded by Erdogan. Research funding fell into greater scrutiny. Far more students who participated in protests were disciplined. Pro-government media (See above) condemned Mulkiye faculty as being "enemies of Islam," in what's supposed to be a secular state.

Most of all, the word "terrorist" is thrown around like candy at a parade. "Across the country, academics were vilified, threatened and even arrested," Hansen writes.

The results? First, a brain drain. Students don't want to attend a place where their faculty members are harassed. Second, an academic drain. Thousands of teachers and professors have left.

Worse, suppression of critical voices has taken hold. "What the [ruling party] seems to propose for Turkey's future is a country without character," writes Hansen, "a country that can believe itself to be free as long as it does not adopt an identity that threatens [that party]." In other words, a 1984-type 'freedom' that is measured by repression alone.

And there would sit a president 45 who defines anything he wants in any way he wants it. With his continued power to be at the bully(ing) pulpit, backed by a newly-elected Republican Congress (which could still easily happen) which would have already proved itself completely pliant to his every whim and barely able to wait to double-down on destroying any whiff of liberalism, a devastating blow to public education would be at hand. A less-educated public would result--exactly what they, and he, have in mind.

There are advantages to resistance here, as opposed to Turkey: Sheer size. The Mulkiye is just one entity, as harassed and reduced as it is, but many universities exist here with vibrant faculties that would try to stand firm. The battle may boil down to the spreading of an already troubling trend: Adjunct faculties and their dependence on university administrators for their very existence.

It's truly frightening. It's a reason we can't get complacent or normalize this national zombie government, filled with dead ideas like that in Turkey, run by autocrats. Fred Hiatt is right: We must overcome it. We must keep caring enough, difficult as it is to sustain it.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Truth: The Final Frontier--Avoiding A Dictatorship of the Mind

Truth isn't truth.

What you're hearing and seeing isn't what's happening.

These are statements made by either 45 or someone who represents him. They demand that you not believe what you hear and see. They demand that you accept their reality based on whatever they say about whatever they wish.

A dictatorship of the mind, that is. They can only control what you believe if you let them. It's their only way to legitimacy in an open society--open as well to nonsense and the twisting of reality to fit their needs. They can't control access to information; they can only try to dissuade you from wanting to access it.

That they have persuaded anyone is testament to their abilities to intimidate and obfuscate. With those talents, they bring conversations and progress to a screaming halt. No one can proceed if no one really knows anything--which is their goal, to make you think so.

Don't pay any attention to Elijah Cummings, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, 45 says. His district is rat-infested. Nobody would live there.

Oh? More than half a million people live there. Nice image, huh? Half a million people live with rats. Elijah Cummings is black. His district is in Baltimore. Baltimore is a large city. Large cities have lots of black people. Of course they live with rats.

But Baltimore's Inner Harbor is also part of Cummings' district. Ever been there? It's a delightful mix of shops and restaurants. The ship U.S.S. Constellation, one of the most important ships in the War of 1812, is anchored there, and you can tour it. Maybe there are rats on it. Old ship, you know. A superb aquarium is within walking distance. Rats? I don't think so.

But 45 isn't racist. Never meant to connect any of that with race. Uh-uh. No way. He's the least racist person you know. He said so, right? All the rest is strictly coincidental.

It's that way because 45 says so. Don't go check on any other information; that wouldn't be the truth. Don't remember or even think about anything else he's said that would suggest it. The truth is whatever he says it is. Stop reading anything else right now. Stop watching anything else but Fox News. That is, if you want to fall prey to their quasi-informational trap.

Now, you don't have to believe this, but--Washington, DC, has rats. I've lived there. I've seen them darting between the rails of the Metro, below the waiting areas so they can't be accessed but make delightful viewing. Black people live there, too. Some have plenty of money. So do lots of white people and other people of color who are very well-to-do.

The president lives in the White House. It is anything but rat-infested. Or maybe it isn't. Who knows? Has anybody asked yet?

The White House is in Washington, DC. Washington, DC has rats. Therefore the White House has rats. Okay?

See what I just did? I said two true things, then concluded a third thing that in all likelihood can't possibly be true. It's false logic. It's fun. It's also dangerously irresponsible.

I asked questions that imply that something is potentially wrong when it might be considered absurd by others. Do you trust my authority to ask such things? Do you think that that indicates analytical skills that others lack? Or do you think I'm just making crap up to get back at a cruel jackass?

If you believe absolutely everything I've ever said, whether or not it's been researched (which I try to do), then you've locked yourselves into a vacuum in which the truth is only what I've said it is. Don't do that. Don't even do it with me. If you aren't sure, look stuff up. It's okay. Maybe I deserve to be corrected about something relating to the facts of a matter. If so, there's room to write it. That's what it's there for. 

Hell, I don't know everything; no one does. But I know a few things. And this regime needs alternative thinking to oppose it. We get to the truth by sifting through and absorbing what we wish to absorb. It's up to you. But the more, the better. You can just watch the weather on the local news if you want and skip the rest. You can create your own dictatorship of your own mind: no alternatives allowed. But your function as a citizen is, sorry to say, very inadequate should you do so.

I don't want to own a dictatorship of your mind, either. I want to present reasonable responses to the nonsense, exaggerations and lies that a strangely-elected monster puts out there. We get at the truth with a wide variety of reading, writing, discussion and acceptance. I don't want that kind of power, because that kind of power is, in the end, phony and conquerable. It's snake oil. People do get a kind of illness on it. It takes a long time to cure, too.

Everybody must, at some point, get on with their lives and stop absorbing information; people have to go to work, make dinner, take care of the kids, see a movie, too. If you focus on it, you can get overwhelmed. But for heaven's sake, don't stop until you're satisfied that more than one reliable source tells you the same thing for verification. Take the time to know. Take the time to be sure. And take into consideration where the information is coming from, too.

It's about voting. You can't cast an informed vote if you don't inform yourself. The more you do that, the more importance it has, and the better people we can elect. Do we do that enough? Look what we've done. There should be your answer.

Never be satisfied with one source. Never allow yourself submission to a dictatorship of the mind. Your mind belongs to you. We life in a society and a political culture in which it's still all right to think what you want to think. Don't lose the one freedom you need most of all: Your search for the truth.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Political Cover 101: Go Home and Get the Troops Ready

So the Mueller saga was, in retrospect, pro forma. It made for bad optics, nearly zero drama, and served to disappoint those expecting more. Maybe Nancy Pelosi already knew that.

As clumsy as Mueller's testimony appeared to be, he was there to repeat what his Gang of Fourteen concluded: That, though they certainly could have continued, they stopped their investigation because, even though 45 tried his best to say exactly nothing to more than 30 questions, that he somehow forgot about that much though he forgets nothing when people cross him. The reason? The special counsel's investigators basically had enough on him to move on indictment had they been given that opportunity. Translation: If we could get him, we'd have him.

Those were the magic words. A beachhead in the invasion of the legitimacy of 45's presidency has been declared. An impeachment "investigation" is now underway by the House of Representatives.

It is tempting to say merely "House Democrats," but remember: Justin Amash has ruined that for 45 already by declaring himself to be pro-impeachment before all this happened. He stopped being a Republican, choosing logic over stonewalling. Of course, the remaining Republicans will scream even louder. But the number of those favoring impeachment has reached triple figures. And Eric Swallwell is right: once someone goes there, they don't go back. The door on tolerance closes. The number will now only grow.

Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler seems to be leaning toward impeachment. Special Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff would rather withhold judgment at this point. Let's see what Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings says. In an earlier blog, I predicted that if all three of these key committee chairs committed toward impeachment proceedings, Pelosi would be sufficiently pushed toward doing it. In approving the very idea of an investigation, though, Pelosi is allowing the conversations to go public and spread.

Thus the summer recess. Pelosi wants everyone to go home and ask the constituents, and be thorough and open: Forward, or forget it? We are going to compile much more stuff now. Incredibly, it hasn't all come out yet. But now it will.

Would you impeach now? If not, we'll get back to you. You might change your mind.

She's doing that for the House members who are twitching, who are elected from districts 45 carried in 2016. They can say only that if public sentiment fades, the investigation will, too. And it can; she can still pull the plug. But it won't be abandoned any longer. It isn't the same thing as impeachment, because the House must take a vote on it. It failed not long ago, but the ducks weren't all in order. If it is brought back, that's because they will be. There will be no water-testing any longer. The next vote, if it happens, will be the real deal. If Pelosi wants it, she won't block it.

45's racist invectives against The Squad may indeed have been the push that Pelosi needed to take the deep breath and dive in: We will learn that by-the-by. In the meantime, expect some serious smearing by 45's band of hooligans, now increasingly desperate to rally the blindly faithful. There will be actions and inactions taken and allowed that will further erode the rule of law.

That those backing 45 would begin to fall away after things get even more tense is unlikely. It may still come to the 2020 elections to come to a definitive conclusion about the true state of things here. The tweeting would become more vicious, if that's possible.

But many are also inured to his insane hyperbolizing and lies by now (Note that media stopped the 'official' count when it got to 10,000. We're now at 11. Or 12. Or something.). It's getting more than a little tired. He will try his best to deflect by causing worry about foreign affairs (read North Korea and Iran, both of which are very, very upset) and even more border abuse, if that could be possible. But now, he's digging a hole and only Pelosi or skittish Democrats will allow him to crawl out, corpulent and ugly as a World War I corpse rat.

Accountability may not actually be achieved. But it could be with at least a public hearing of an impeachment trial. Now, Pelosi has 45 twisting in the wind, waiting and wondering.

With it all, a message to those interested in and those who actually participate in law enforcement: We have not given up on the rule of law. The Constitution still matters. Stay at your posts. If you give up, there will be no bottom to any of this.

To which I would respond: Will you give up, Madame Speaker? Will political expediency give way to the actual seeking of justice? Or will you become the Speaker of Nothing?

That is still the risk whether Pelosi goes forward or not. It is enormous and potentially jeopardizing to our very democracy itself. With due respect to him, Seth Moulton might be in over his head had he become the Speaker instead.

So can understand being a bit careful. Can't you? We'll see how it goes by Labor Day. But for now, the first toe's in the water.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

We Were Ambushed--By Ourselves. Time For Anti-Heroes.

It wasn't much fun to watch.

Robert Mueller didn't want to get up there yesterday and become the whipping post for the loathing that feeds our national divide. Now we know why.

He may have been familiar with the 440-page report attributed to him, but I'm not sure how anyone could have done much better in front of the circling Republican vultures of the House Judiciary Committee. His efforts to follow along with the House investigators--if that's what you want to call them--appeared detached and feebly slow.

I have a copy of the report. It's like watching paint dry to read. It's filled with lawyerese, sentences convoluted to eliminate the kind of counterattacks that the Republicans are fond of trying (notice that, if you were watching, almost none of them were actually devoted to the report itself, nor to the clear and present danger of Russian election interference). But it's essential. I haven't gotten all that far but at times, I beat Mueller to the passages that were quoted by some House members. That started to bother me.

He said, when he actually took the opportunity to discuss his own motivations for taking on this project--to investigate 45's passively permissive default in accepting assistance in his back-door election from the Russians and his active mendacity in trying to cover it up, clear and plain for all to see--that he did it for the challenge. It's obvious now that, at nearly 75, he might have lacked the energy to extend the investigation beyond what he did, and that might have been an unspoken impetus in shutting it down, politics notwithstanding and perpetually evident.

Thing is, he had plenty of help. There were many younger, more involved attorneys hustling to perform their crucial civic duty. He became not much more than a point man.

The New York Times reported as much--hours after Mueller's strange and oddly damaging testimony. It either knew beforehand and didn't want to say, or someone finally leaked information about what actually happened inside the investigation because they didn't want to damage the leak-proof facade built around Mueller and his snooping.

That hurt Mueller and the Democrats, perhaps beyond salvage. For now, it looked like the old "Hannity and Colmes" show, where Sean Hannity's barking and gesticulating often made him look better than Colmes' calm rationality, facts be damned. (One of the first to point this out was none other than pre-Senator Al Franken, who used two books to wade into electoral politics, and whose absence due to his own failure to stand his own ground is hurting Democrats, perhaps daily, because his own formidable investigative abilities have now been silenced.) Some of that might have been headed off had we known beforehand that what we were dealing with in Mueller was the old soldier that, to quote Douglas MacArthur, was starting to fade away. The shock factor was directly attributable to his very observable lack of quickness on the draw, which like it or not reflected upon the competency of the document that so many had come to rely on as nearly biblical in its import.

Republicans won that battle again. They shouldn't, but they do. They grasp the crucial aspect of political theater to shock and distract (45's abilities to do which are widely admired, not condemned). They managed to introduce some old, moldy items--the Steele dossier has dust on it, for heaven's sake--and even tried to diminish the now well-established fact that Mueller didn't let 45 off the hook for obstruction of justice by saying that somehow, the notion of "exoneration" is irrelevant and beyond the powers of the Special Prosecutor's Office. (Does "we still aren't letting him off the hook" work for you, dude? Is "exoneration" too big a word for you?) They utilized their long-expected macho posturing to shout absurd accusations that were too many for Mueller to deal with had he even bothered to do so.

But then, Mueller had also tied his own hands by first, saying that the report spoke for itself; and second, choosing to abide by the Justice Department's reminder that he was to stay within the scope of the report when answering any questions from the House panels. So he couldn't, and wouldn't, wander inside anything that had occurred within his own mind as he and his assistants waded through the tons of information that could, if the House Democrats chose to do so, provide pre-arranged evidence in an impeachment trial.

So in a way, Democrats ambushed themselves. They didn't believe or want to believe Mueller's previous position that reading the report itself would suffice. By implication, bringing him into the hornets' nest yesterday was supposed to represent the spraying of Raid over it, killing off the opposition and driving the rest away. Instead, the nest was stirred and invaded without the best method of eliminating it, and lots of people got stung but good.

Had we known Mueller's more overseer role in this otherwise devastating investigation, the Democrats might have reached out not to him, but asked him instead who among the lawyers he assembled would have shed the best follow-up light possible, perhaps bringing in a known Republican within the group. Maybe they would have concluded that without Mueller, reaching inside the legal bevy might be attacked too well by the other side. Maybe they would have concluded, then, what Mueller told them to do: Just read the report. Let it stand on its own.

But MSNBC's Rachel Maddow didn't know it. Brian Williams didn't know it. Fox News didn't need to know it. If the New York Times and other media knew it and didn't say so, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Their own biases might have gotten in the way of themselves and kept the public from information that might have alleviated the awkwardness of yesterday's display. (I hope Brian Stelter discusses this on CNN's Reliable Sources this Sunday.)

Mueller is a man of unquestioned integrity, Republican sneering aside. But even he didn't have all the answers and wasn't willing to provide anything demonstrably extra to the Democrats who were thirsting for it. Instead, process was once again the wild card to win the poker game over product. The marvelous Adam Schiff saved part of the day at the conclusion of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, but I wonder how many of us had stuck around to finally see Mueller focused and revelatory. That, though, had the feel of the "surge" in Iraq, saving the day from Bush-43's near disaster.

Once again, someone of integrity was asked to drop his own principles to sufficiently get at someone who utterly lacks it. No wonder he failed. We thought he was Superman, but president Lex Luthor, brilliantly sinister, got away again, much like how Captain Kirk keeps reaching for Khan but can't quite grab him. It's clear now that we need some kind of anti-hero or heroes, not quite as washed clean but very effective, to take down this racist, sociopathic purveyor of evil, the worst possible person to actually be president, who nonetheless has enough support around him to inoculate himself against the good guys.

Hmmmmm. The Squad? Deputize them? Turn them loose instead of making excuses for them and treating them as victims? Young, female, idealistic and quite diverse? Nancy's Angels?

Far fetched? I don't know. Got a better idea?

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Fifty Years On: The One Thing We Haven't Yet Settled, Seeping Into A High School Reunion

The 50th reunion of my high school graduating class went well, as reunions go. Many of the facades that we all developed have broken down by now. All things considered, people looked pretty good and still full of life. I was there nearly four hours and could have stayed longer.

But one moment in the evening's festivities made me pause. There's something we haven't gotten over yet. I'm guessing that that's true no matter where you go and no matter how people felt at the time.

Lots of great things were going on: The moon landing, which took place that very weekend; the Chicago Cubs' surge to first place in the National League, which captivated lots of folks until the Miracle Mets took over and won the whole thing; Woodstock, which happened that August (and I was in North Adams, Massachusetts, where members of our class had had a student exchange that year; I heard a couple of refugees from that idyllic ordeal complain about water, which came in small quantities, being spiked with 'brown' acid, whatever that was but about which I would gratefully be forever clueless).

What also took place, though, were two moratoriums on the Vietnam War in Washington, DC that fall. By then, I had matriculated into college, and my views on things were starting to change. The war had begun its long, tragic descent through withdrawal into defeat. Nixon's "Vietnamization" strategy--de-emphasize the ground war and cover our tracks with massive bombing--had begun to take hold. It didn't matter; those against the war didn't trust or believe in the new president, and the moratoriums were there to tell him so.

But those Americans still getting drafted and those who had volunteered for Vietnam were still there and still getting killed or wounded or thoroughly messed up with something people could finally label, something so many soldiers had suffered from but we had placed that into our endless category of denial: post-traumatic stress disorder. I wonder if anyone returned the same.

One of the leaders of the reunion's organizing group (one of the most popular people in my class, a bright fellow that nearly everyone would call a great guy) got up and gave a talk about the fact that it had been, indeed, fifty years since we'd been to high school in Grafton, Wisconsin. Lots of things had changed, of course. But he felt he needed to point out that three of our classmates had gone to Vietnam and returned, though only one, who had served in the Air Force, was present at the reunion. We stood and saluted him (ignoring, for the moment, a career Marine who had distinguished himself in more than one 'side theater') with applause.

All well and good. But the presenter felt he also had to add that we had come around to the idea that we could hate the war but appreciate the warrior. Unquestionably, that attitude surrounded us fifty years ago; there were stories galore about how Vietnam vets had been verbally abused, even spit upon in airports when they returned. There were no parades celebrating that, of course, because the war went on and dissolved into near meaninglessness as the people we had given blood to help collapsed beneath the relentless onslaught of their northern fellows. Nixon's "peace with honor" became empty rhetoric that salved no wounds.

Gradually, our society grew out of pointless mockery and moved on. I haven't read anything about belittling or diminishing those who serve our country for quite some time now. After all, one of the most meaningful consequences of the Vietnam War was the development of the all-volunteer military. Now, there would be no more draftees being sent to die elsewhere; they would make their choices and a grateful public would give them their parades and Super Bowl flyovers--that is, if they made it back from wherever we would send them.

But our fundamental support of them has also fizzled into a vanilla lukewarmness. There are no updates on troop successes. There are no reports on advances. The only things we know are when people return for good--not as easy as it once was to determine exactly that, since many go back for two, three or more tours of duty--or when they are killed. And we shake our heads and mourn for their loved ones, but not for ourselves because in the end, there remains little real connection between us and the purpose of their duties, just like Vietnam. We are told that they're fighting for us, but where's the proof? We are fighting for someone, but who are they? People keep getting killed, but get serious now: Do you feel that we're losing, or winning, anything?

But we don't make fun of any of them anymore, so it's all okay. Is that a net gain for us? Or are we missing the point--that the policies of successive administrations have led us into yet more quagmires that, just like Vietnam, we know lack chances of measurable success but someone can't do the sensible thing and withdraw because of political blowback?

Or maybe, just maybe, if we continue to justifiably love the warriors, we by implication have to appreciate the wars and keep from demonstrating and screaming about the uselessness of what they're doing, just like we did about Vietnam. The country becomes split into the terrorism-obsessed and the opposition that has acquiesced into a sleepwalk. So we pile war vets onto the backseats of convertibles as they wave at the throngs gathered on the sidewalks, make sure that we all stand for the national anthem--whatever that has to do with it--and spend incredible billions of dollars to supply corporations with the people power and resources to keep getting the troops their endless hardware, utilized to overwhelm the enemy except when they don't or can't. The excess is now shoved along to police departments, which have re-armed and display it like invading armies themselves.

So it's all good, right? We now really, really love the warriors, so discussion about what they're doing and where and why they're doing it goes awry, somehow gets too old, and is jettisoned like plastic into the ocean--a waste that keeps washing onto our shores, not unnoticeably but something that someone out there somewhere needs to deal with. Never mind that there's now an island about a third the size of Texas floating out there in the Pacific, proving that like everything else, whatever you put off not only doesn't go away, but builds inexorably. We put it there, but nobody knows what to do with it so we just keep piling it up. And now, to oppose or object to our military excursions is not only unpopular but somehow disloyal, even though what a person's trying to do is make things better.

For some reason, the stock phrase dictates the priority due to the positioning of the clauses: Hate the war but love the warrior. It isn't usually said the other way around, Love the warrior but hate the war. Done the latter way, it sounds like the point is to give them a reason not to continue to be warriors but to stop being warriors as soon as they can, to get their asses home. I prefer the latter.

There's a middle ground here. We can support the military, and speak well of it, without giving them what amounts to endless but token attention at public gatherings. We need to have the deeper conversation about post-modern America: Namely, that we are wearing out our welcome as the saviors of civilization as we know and prefer it--and that Vietnam was the place where that image began its descent.

We all would love to avoid it. Just last year, Ken Burns made an outstanding mini-series on the Vietnam War. But almost no one debriefed it. The networks made little fanfare. We were already too focused on the gaffes and abuses extended by 45 and his cronies. Vietnam is the illegitimate child that was taken 'up north' to be born, that we hope is all right but nobody is going to ask about it.

Vietnam is fine. If there were any POWs left behind, they are most likely gone now. The government is still communist, a captive society in which dissent is punished far beyond a tweetstorm. We recognized it, though, nearly a quarter-century ago. I went to a symposium on it at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee back then. A presenter was someone who sold VCRs (remember those?) to Vietnamese businesses. The two he said were most asked for were--get ready--"Little House on the Prairie" and "The Waltons". The language of business, he said, was English.

We have come some way from fifty years ago in our appreciation of those who serve in our military. But the glossy, mini-observances that have taken over our culture now miss the point and constitute the easy way out of that deeper conversation. All of it together makes it look like we prefer war. Well, do we? Half a century on, there's reason to make that assumption, so let's start there. And if that newfound love for the soldiers is working so well, if those temporary celebrations have their lasting impact, why are 22 of them committing suicide (on the average) every single day?

They went off to fight a war 50 years ago, came back all messed up, and we ignored them at best. Now they go off to fight wars, we do everything we can to salute and honor them, but they still come back messed up. Has it occurred to anyone that it's the decision to go to war that puts these things into motion regardless of what happens afterwards? That it isn't about us and our collective guilt, but still and always about them?

I'm glad I attended my 50th reunion. All of us have learned a great deal since the more formal learning ended back then. Since true learning is demonstrated by a change of behavior, how much, as a nation, have we really learned?

The American Legion hall (ironic, huh) wasn't the place to be philosophical last Saturday night. There were plenty of good memories and hugs and laughs. But the main speaker brought up a point that we have never really settled, and it lingers there, waiting. If we don't, we leave it as an albatross of our legacy as a generation. Sure hope we can deal with it, even at this late date. We had too much fun besides that to leave that stain behind.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Freedom: The Battle for Definition

Freedom. Ask any American. They'll tell you that that's what we're all about. And they'll be proud of it. It's hard-wired into our identity.

But if you keep asking, you'll get all kinds of different answers. And you'll tap into much of what the fears of both sides of our ferocious debate are about.

To me, the golden gate of freedom is the First Amendment: more directly, my freedom to do this. I agree with Jefferson, to paraphrase: Without it, no other freedoms expressed in the Bill of Rights are possible--which is to say, one-by-one, they'd be taken away.

For some, it's an absolute phrase, where any regulation by government is a threat and a waste of time and money. For others, it's relative to situations and the maintenance of a society that works, a necessity of liberty under law. The two pull on each other, as they always have. Now they threaten to tear us apart.

Where 45 most wishes to make his own definition of freedom to his advantage is in the economic realm. His seeking of profit has no boundaries of morality, ethics or decency. Just a little while ago today I was watching the Golf Channel's presentation of the first round of the British Open championship (or The Open to those better versed in the world of golf). Suddenly, an ad came on for 45's golf courses that he owns in the British Isles.

Great for him. He gets free advertising for his politics. His name gets on TV, even though, ostensibly, it's without political import. But he's the president, and every single time his name is mentioned (which is why I don't do it here; '45' is as close as I get), he gains from its branding, politically or otherwise. This is entirely inappropriate. It's also a weasel way of reminding everyone watching that he exists and stands for something they might like should they wish to partake of it. (Reminder: There are plenty of other great golf courses in the UK not named after a horrible human being like him.)

He might say that all he's doing is participating in the free market, which people of his type swear by with quasi-religious reverence. Anything that operates within the realm of an attempt to make money is not only fine by him, but is worth trying to do exactly that. Nobody, but nobody, should prevent that, because society as a whole gains from a bunch of people trying to do things and make things that gain profit for them. More importantly, he can make money for himself, which is all he's ever been about.

But this is a clear conflict of interest. Putting his business interests in front of me and wishing to gain profit from it in a foreign country might just make him beholding to that country, which could be contrary to my country's interests. The fact that it's in the United Kingdom and at least on paper it wouldn't seem to be contrary is irrelevant, because later developments in foreign affairs might put our relations at risk. Better to keep things out of that realm altogether. Besides, it's in the Constitution: The 'Emoluments' Clause.

He can deny it and ridicule me if he wants, but it's nonetheless true. I deserve to be left alone to enjoy golf on television without the president seeking yet another underhanded way to put his name out there in front of me--as if by now that would affect my vote. Part of my freedom is the freedom to be left alone. Watching golf on TV should not expose me to surrender it to a president who wishes to personally profit in a foreign country.

I used my freedom of speech. I looked up the Golf Channel's advertising e-mail address and told them to knock it off. I wonder if anybody else did. I also wonder if NBC, which will take over the Open telecasts during the weekend, will also run that ad (and perhaps others; I have no doubt that 45's folks made more than one). Imagine the screaming if the Clinton Foundation followed up (after all, Bill plays golf, too) and put an ad on the telecast as well--and nobody in that family's running for office. It would certainly have as much right, as a non-profit, to call the public's attention to it.

So adherence to the free market, the morality of which should not be questioned, causes conflict and robs people of lots of things. If antitrust laws are voted down, monopolies spring up and the lack of competition hurts the public. If the public can shoot animals, species may be endangered, which would disturb the ecosystem. Creating wildcat sales of sub-prime mortgages, bundled together to create an appearance of monetary stability, can strain banks into collapse and cause an economic crisis. If opioid antidotes cost too much or aren't covered by insurance, people go on being addicted and die. Making as much money as one can, can't be the sole or prime measuring device concerning what is best in a society.

The free market has no morality. It doesn't shake things out so that we're all okay. The winners win and the losers--some of them, anyhow--sleep on the street. One of my most lasting memories of my days of meetings with National Education Association officers on various levels, mostly in large cities, is literally stepping around homeless people in places like DC, Seattle, Portland, San Diego (where an airport etching is specifically dedicated to certain well-known homeless people who everyone knows by now), and Philadelphia. I wasn't going out of my way to find them, either; they knew where to find people with money. Please, sir, moaned someone who was literally lying on a Portland sidewalk, I won't drink too much. And this was mostly before the recession hit.

Conservatives, real conservatives, are mindful of such tragedy, but they caution not to give in to the inclination to remove individual motivation, which has its value of self-esteem and accomplishment, and just create a welfare state where people take from the trough. Okay, granted: Nobody wants that, and immigration creates the potentiality of a permanent under-class where we must perpetually deal with that (A guy on Facebook I recently 'friended' put up one of those dumb posters that said that immigrants were like sperm--a million go out but only one works. Ha, ha. I realized my mistake and blocked him. I don't need anybody who trashes defenseless people.). But throngs on the street don't help anybody, either, and they represent a clear failing of the so-called free market. Besides, immigrants did not make up very many of those begging for my financial assistance on crowded city streets.

Otherwise, would every single one of them be there? Can you be so callous as to pretend that none of them want work? That immigrants just drifted into this country to have someone feed and clothe them? That they think differently than us because we've never seen them before?

That isn't conservatism. That's being reactionary. That's pretending that you're so superior to someone else that only you have the values necessary to be a real American. That you deserve freedom, but they don't. That's the gateway to fascism, which is based first and foremost upon racial superiority.

The "magic" of the free market allows conservatives to detach from the messiness of handling this situation. It gives them the justification, too, to build a wall to keep people out, somehow justifying shutting off one part of humanity so that another can enjoy its freedom (which also means, by the way, that we can trade with the countries from which we refuse refugees, an interesting bit of irony). But they know as well as we do that these people won't be stopped. They want their own freedom from gangs, from paying tribute, from violence, from poverty. They want to try again.

And so they get told: We're all filled up? Go back where you came from? All right, if you insist: We have some nice cages here. It's Texas. You won't freeze.

If this is the ultimate result of absolute freedom, is absolute freedom all it's propped up to be? How's that working for us? Is anybody willing to make freedom a relative term, the degree to which it can be achieved and earned under rules designed to prevent abuse of it?

Believing in that doesn't make one a socialist. It makes one understand that no system works perfectly and that it is damagingly naive to pretend that it does or will. But then, the term 'socialist' is being prepared by one party to make the other look like it's un-American. Is that just politics? Or is it part of the continuing assault on truth?

Truth: That's for next time. Unraveling that is a real maze of spaghetti.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Pluralism and Its Retreat: 45 Has Just Confirmed It--No More, No Less

A professor of intellectual history from UW-Madison came to Boswell Books last night. She was promoting her new book, The Ideas That Shaped America. It's dense reading. She has managed to pack a significant volume of ideas that drove American history into 180 pages.

I've just started it, and it's very intriguing. She conducted herself much like a college teacher, lecturing mostly in generalities, trying to catch the high points of a book that does exactly that anyhow.

In doing so, she brought up a very compelling idea (which, since I'm only 25 pages into it, I don't know if she's actually included it within the text). To wit: What has composed the American conversation boils down to three major concepts: Pluralism, freedom, and truth. Everything we have ever been about, and everything we will be, revolves around those three things.

Hmmm. What an interesting time to bring that up. We didn't discuss it, and neither did she; her thrust is to explain where we've gone, not to critique it. As she purveys in ideas, I hope she wouldn't be offended by my suggesting that this grouping represents significant discussion topics apiece, not to mention altogether. As such, they are excellent places to discuss this fundamental question, right or wrong, good or bad: Who the heck are we now?

Let's begin with pluralism, the idea that we are a diverse society. Yes, that's certainly what we are. But how many of us like it? How many prefer it? How many of us give it lip service but would really not deal with it? Are we a melting pot, or a tossed salad? What do we want to be, as opposed to or as a goal toward what we should be?

It's none of our faults that the Native Americans were in the way of our expanding the white frontiers of America, that they were hornswoggled out of treaty agreements and sometimes mercilessly slaughtered en route to being corralled onto reservations and then made to "assimilate" into white society. But we are left with the results. To tell them to "go back where you came from" is to relegate them to lands now considered private property for millions of other Americans. But they have places to go if they please, so that issue has spent itself. Hey, some say, at least they have the casinos.

Same, too, with African Americans. Nobody alive is responsible for forcibly carting them over to this continent to engage in chattel slavery for two and a half centuries, being freed either due to the sheer luck of a benevolent owner, the successful fleeing with assistance of white friends, or visits from Generals Grant, Sherman and their friends. Yet, Lincoln considered a plan to ship slaves back to Africa, and there was a significant "Back to Africa" movement engaged in the 1920s. That movement's leader, Marcus Garvey, was black. Jim Crow was well underway; the post-World War I Great Migration had stirred up racist attitudes long buried in the North. Headlong vigilantism in which groups of blacks were simply lynched en masse had erupted in Oklahoma, in Florida, in Arkansas, in North Carolina. Deadly rioting took place in Detroit. The Ku Klux Klan revived during the '20s, and although a well-publicized trial helped quell the swelling of membership, it merely went underground as it did after President Grant put down the first uprising in the 1870s.

The two have an underlying question lingering throughout: Shouldn't we just live in one place, and you go live in another place? Wouldn't we be better off if we all did? No hassles, no conflict, no angst, nothing to compromise or fight about. We wish you all the best. We promise to leave you alone. Now, get the hell out of here. Go back where you came from.

See how it works? If you allow the first question, you must allow the next several. Then the final statement, the one which found such intensity in the House of Representatives yesterday because 45 had the unmitigated gall to utter it about four young, female Members of Congress he wished to intimidate and isolate, becomes no more than a logical conclusion.

But the detachment provided by history ends there. The Hispanic experience is different; so is Asian (and let's not forget them). In theory as well as in fact, they really can return where they far more recently came from. But they won't. They don't want to. They want to live here.

And so many do. The white folks, the far more established descendants of our own immigrant forebears, have three ways to deal with this endless influx, like it or not, walls or no walls, because those who want to be in a place find a way (and remember how we cheered on those who risked it all to vault the Berlin Wall):

• Tolerance: Yeah, okay, I get it. But NIMBY--Not In My Back Yard. I'm uncomfortable, you know? Do I have to be uncomfortable every single day? Who says? This is America, damn it. I'm supposed to be free (See where the second Big Concept comes in? Rather naturally, right?).
• Acceptance: Yes, yes: Land of the free, home of the brave. Statue of Liberty and all that. They can even live across the street. That means they have money. That means they have American attitudes and values (as opposed to some other attitudes and values from somewhere else, the difference between which are usually pencil-thin). Dating my daughter? We'll see. Then I get grandkids that don't look like me. Give me a minute, okay?
• Advocacy: Welcome. We're glad you're here. This is a great place, and you'll make it even better. If there are barriers, please let us know. We'll do whatever we need to do--socially, politically, legally--to pave the way for your success. The rest is on your own, of course, but we can get you started. We want to. We're Americans.

The first two almost belong together. They're at least partially protective, suspicious, guarded. The third belongs in a category by itself. It's joyous, confident, and feels like a big smile. It also means that to get to that mentality is a significant leap of faith, like playing in the U.S. Open after winning your club championship.

Seriously now: Has this country, as a country, ever been there? Our geographic positioning has allowed us to flourish economically and politically like few nations ever have--but it has also allowed us to shield ourselves from the realities of belonging to the rest of humanity and pretend that we're better than everyone else just because we live here. It's far easier for us to retreat from pluralism in our own minds, even though, in fact, we are actually becoming by numbers an inevitably pluralist society.

Oh, yes. The New York Times reports today that more than half of our nation's pre-18-year-old youth, right this very minute, are not 100% white. That is the reality. That will reveal itself in less than ten years in our professions, in our workforce, in our scholars.

Will they all react to this attempted withdrawal from pluralism the same way? Will they deny their heritage? And will they vote with the political party that wants them to do so--Republican? Will they forget this awful development of clear and unadulterated anti-Americanism that claims to be the exact opposite?

Others have tried to advance the promise: Brown V. Board, affirmative action, busing for public schools, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. All have been quietly and consistently reduced by grinding, laborious legal attacks. The other side has managed to manipulate the system at both ends to gain the advantage, creating a fait accompli once they manage to make it to the Supreme Court. (Abortion is coming up--a whole new can of worms) It has taken six decades, but they are there. I wonder how the new majority of non-white Americans will deal with that failure: whether they will begin to reverse that reversal, or whether they will simply take over and leave the whites behind--a karmic bit of universal justice.

Meanwhile, suffice it to say that 45 is leading us away from pluralism and toward a whites-only world that, like the other things he says we are, has passed us by. It's an attempt to retreat not only from the pluralism that has long since been evident, but from reality itself: no more, no less. It is a truly frightening scenario.

Even Grafton, North Dakota, not 50 miles from the Canadian border, has a significant presence of Hispanic seasonal workers. Border to border, north to south, we must deal with race and its underlying impacts. The president is suggesting that that doesn't matter. Too many are giving up thinking deeply and going along with him.

To get where we now are, the meanings of words have been twisted to create alternative realities, both inside and outside of our courts. One of them is freedom. The battle among us is for that operative definition, too. That's for next time.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

We Cannot Be Speechless While We Wait

I've been trying to figure out what to say that would be unique here. Not sure that I can.

45's rhetoric has found the place it has always been: Racist. Vapid. Condescending. Elusive. Go back where you came from. This, to four young female (please note) Members of Congress.

We can't throw him out; too politically risky, or so they say. (Would you rather have yet another two years of complete Republican control? But it also might flip everything the other way.) We can't ignore him, though we might try that once and see what happens. So we deal with him, one outrage at a time.

While we wait, we must endure. That there is no sense of progress is distressing; that occasionally Democrats actually must make deals with this phony (hat-tip to Bernie Sanders, who finally said that to a national audience) is discouraging.

Investigations seem as if they've taken a back seat. This is the product of time and endless attention-seeking by the insecurity-in-chief, who also knows the effects of his nonsensical outpourings. There is no stability because there can't be any, any longer. He cannot rest for fear that the country will focus on his crimes--and, having finally done so, will dispense with them, and him.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks for both investigators and the investigated. We must wait another week for Mueller to approach, it is said, for both sides to spend more time with him. Republicans will do their best to destroy him, but his findings have been public for three months now. Democrats will ask: Do you have anything to add? His stock response has been no, but a public airing will change that answer whether or not he wishes it. Then the Republicans will have at him. Regardless of the intelligence of their questions, or otherwise, 45 will unleash vitriol before to set the stage, and claim justification afterwards to get the last word.

It is all so predictable. It's the waiting that's driving us crazy. We are defenseless. He has everything right where he wants it. There are no insults that will top his, and there are no responses that will sufficiently satisfy. Media reveals, but also enables, all the awfulness.

Emotionality causes lapses in memory. Endless violations of propriety seem too great to recall. That's what he wants--a short memory, so he can focus for a few days on delivering his message, making people forget all that he's done so that they don't balance it against whatever success he's had in advancing the wrong, damaging agenda of a party that, like him, has lost its way.

That's the trick. We must not only recall all the terrible things he's done and said, but also to connect them to whatever terrible things he's doing at present--to create a sense of continuity of incompetence and cruelty. Whomever gets the presidential nomination must, and I do mean must, have at his/her disposal all that's been messed up by this monster, to be able to draw upon it and put him on the defensive, instead of the other way around, which is probably the only thing he's good at.

But to do that, we must also continue the conversations. We can't be speechless while we wait, understandably exasperated and becoming, potentially, more numbed each day.

Let's not do that. That is the way to acquiescence. He is a racist, incompetent, lazy, lying, lecherous slob. There can be no worse person who could possibly be president at this point in our history. He proves it every day. We need to recall how, clearly and sharply, inserting ourselves into discussions. If the energy isn't utilized, it will dissipate and won't be there when we need it. And we are going to need it.

After all, this is, in fact, one heck of an opportunity. A vast vacuum exists, created by the other side, which refuses to stand up to him. We can advance our values and superior policy options because nobody's doing anything across the table, Lindsay Graham's rantings notwithstanding.

Besides, the immigrants--the unwashed, poorly fed, crowded, helpless immigrants--are still there. Their children are, well, somewhere else. We still haven't accounted for all of them. Someone's trying to make you forget about that, too.

See? Some reminders are necessary. We need to remember.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

For Those Trailing in the Polls: Remember "War Games"

You're Marianne Williamson. Or Andrew Yang. Or Tom Steyer. Or even Tim Ryan or Kirsten Gillibrand.

You're trying to muscle in on a mentality that is already established. You face funding goals to get your campaign in a position to even make it to the debate.

The debates are about issues, or they're supposed to be. But they aren't about getting your message out. You have maybe six or seven minutes to do that. That isn't enough.

Your goal is supposed to gain in national polling. Except for one thing: As of this moment, national polling is about as vital as MVP voting is in the National League--which is to say, not a bit. The season has nearly three months left. Players will get hot. They will get cold. They will put up their numbers and someone will decide.

Just like the campaign.

Comparatively speaking, you look like a minor leaguer next to The Show, as baseball people call the major leagues. You might have the talent, but you don't have the time to get to the plate. You only get so many swings. You can't score enough runs.

But the point of all this is to win Iowa, or at least to make a good showing that gives you momentum in New Hampshire and South Carolina. The Iowa caucuses meet next February. Nothing else matters.

Heck, go there, too. Rotate between the three. If you don't get traction there, it won't matter anyhow.

If I'm the campaign director for any of the above folks, here's what I say: Skip the debates. You can't join a club to which you haven't really been invited in the first place. You're an underdog. Stop playing in their ballpark, dammit.

Go to Iowa. Start campaigning full-time right now. Announce you won't bother with debating. You'll be talking to the people whose votes you actually want. Who cares if Rachel Maddow or Chuck Todd are impressed or not? Say exactly that.

The only person who will give you enough trips to the plate is you. And you have to play in the only ballpark that's necessary: Iowa.

Hang on: What if they gave debates and nobody came? Impossible. There will be debates. You call them. You make everybody else debate with you. If they refuse, fine. You're already there. You'll get your trips to the plate.

Right now, all you have is a number of All-Star Games. They are impressive. They display lots of talent. They take place in pre-arranged places.

But they count for zip. Zero. Nothing. Not where things will be decided, anyhow. That comes later, when the playoffs (primaries?) begin. The rest is positioning.

So you change the game. And don't play theirs any longer. Remember the film "War Games"? What was the phrase that the computer 'Joshua' used? "This is a strange game. The only way to win is not to play."

I doubt very much that anyone mentioned at the top of this will be president, and I'm not sure that it would be a good idea, either; with the exception of Gillibrand, they are very short on the kind of political experience I'm comfortable with. But if I were them, I would seriously consider breaking out of the mold in which the Democratic Party insists I belong, and flat out go for it.

Who already has that figured out? 45, that's who. He understands, as so we should all, that it isn't necessarily the overall numbers that matter in our system, it's where they matter and when. With the primaries echoing the general election far more than they did a few decades ago, strategic attention will gain advantages that overall impressions might not.

If that circumvents the national media, too, then so be it. Maybe they still need a learning curve as well. Will that spread a bit of disorder? Maybe. Who won with that strategy?

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Ross Perot, Tom Steyer: The Rich Man As Avenging Angel

Ross Perot has just left us. Tom Steyer has just entered the fray.

They are cut from the same cloth: the rich man as avenging angel, out to fix our politics because someone has to do it, by golly. This place, Washington, is just too screwed up. It's too corrupt. Or it's too wishy-washy. Or it's standing still.

Didn't John F. Kennedy want to "get America moving again" in 1960? Yup. Bankrolled by his dad, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Millions and millions.

Same deal. That one worked, barely. Can you buy your way into the White House? You can say that 45 also did, barely.

In the end, the searchlight of politics finds you. You can't control everything. That much you learn almost right away. The only thing you can control is your own messaging. Even then, you need help and someone messes up. You have to cover for them and fire them if the damage makes things sufficiently uncomfortable. But you're used to that. You're fired. You do it or someone else does.

Ross Perot had the cute phrases ready: If you see a snake, just kill it. Don't appoint a committee on snakes....We need deeds, not words, in this city....

But this one, too, which became ultimately ironic: Most people give up when they're just about to achieve success. They give up on the one-yard line.

It's exactly what he did. He was running neck-and-neck with the nominees of the two major parties in 1992: an incumbent president, George H.W. Bush, and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Unquestionably, he was going to take at least six states in the Electoral College. It was starting to look as if while he wouldn't win the presidency, he might hold the cards in a House of Representatives run-off.

Then he quit. Momentarily, but he did quit. He got mad at the media for mis-reporting something about a wedding that he thought no one should stick their noses into, but he had been in denial. Gary Hart could have told him that, having been bounced from the '88 campaign by press coverage of personal behavior.

Perot got angry with what he saw as Republican "dirty trick" efforts to create, well, conjured photographs of his daughter's wedding. Fed up with it all and ornery at the press from the start, he backed away. He jumped back in, but the momentum was lost. Too many had returned to the mainstream. Evangelicals were still behind him, but as of then were under-organized.

As it was, he carried 19 percent of the popular vote--enough to lose every state, but also enough (as later analysis proved) to deny Bush a second term, because far more Republicans voted for Perot's third party movement than Democrats.

But all that money didn't thicken his skin against real or imagined attacks. He was blunt like 45 and his view of the world was all his own, like 45's--simple, fresh in their own way, and politically naive. But he had also performed charitable and brave works in places like Vietnam and Iran, so his heart was not in a bad place, like 45's is.

There was no Twitter, no Facebook, no surge of social media in 1992, though. There you go: He was ahead of his time.

Is Tom Steyer ahead of his time, too? Or behind?

In any event, his announcement of his candidacy for president, online today, suggests that he believes that only he can bring the country where it needs to be--first and foremost, getting rid of 45. It has to be his sole focus, since he's been trying to lead a national movement to impeach the president that's about two years old now. He's a believer in social justice, had already created his own interest group called NextGen Climate, and sufficiently liberal so the Dems won't see him as an outlier. He can't be called someone who rushes in to take advantage of a situation, either, since with his entry, it renews as 24 the number of candidates in the race.

So what's behind this? It can only be that during the first debate, not nearly enough of the 20 candidates who made it to the stage discussed, or brought into the discussion, the point of it all as Steyer sees it: We can't do a thing with this clownish crook in the White House. They didn't say so nearly often enough, so he will. He's a billionaire like Perot was, too, so he'll have plenty of self-created opportunities.

He's obviously forgotten, or discounted, that the MSNBC hosts didn't ask any of the candidates this question because they didn't think it should be asked right now, amazingly: Why are you running against him? Tell us in two minutes, please. But nearly all the candidates responded to exactly what they were asked, which were policy-based questions. They were very nice to answer exactly those questions that were asked. Some jumped the shark by interrupting others' answers, but very few, like Jay Inslee, Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson, used a question to insert an attack on 45. In a sense, the hosts committed the cardinal sin of journalism: They buried the lead.

That doesn't mean that no debate host will ever get around to asking such a question. Undoubtedly, that's being discussed right now. But Tom Steyer wants to make very, very sure where Democratic attention should be--and that maybe he'll be the one to whom people will turn to get it done.

He has no legislative experience; neither did 45, he could say. His odds appear to be quite long; so were 45's, he could say. What makes him think he can overcome all these seasoned politicians; 45 had a whole bunch against him four years ago, too, he could say.

TV ads? Old hat by now. You've seen them: Sincere, specific, speaking to what so many of us already know--this is a breathing, throbbing disaster that must be intercepted now. As impeachment has predictably stalled due to Democratic divides, time grinds on and it looks as if the next election will get in the way. This, too, may be a casualty of anxiety and impatience, since chairpersons Cummings, Nadler and Schiff are still busy accumulating information that could be utilized as evidence against 45 if Speaker Pelosi gives the nod; it's just slow. Nonetheless, you'll see more ads from him.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are sharpening their knives to stab Robert Mueller when he testifies in eight days in an all-out attempt to make it meaningless. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Steyer could be saying.

He wants to skip over the meat grinder of campaigning and get to the point. Lots of others have, too. Sorry. Can't do it. You can simplify the message, but you can't simplify the process. You might even skip the debates, but it's still more than half a year to Iowa.

Maybe Tom Steyer will become the 2020 campaign's Ross Perot. Maybe he will split the opposition (again) and hand the election to the one person people can't imagine would win again. Maybe the Russians won't be needed this time.

That, too, is a possible legacy of this new, rich, avenging angel. Never has the devil been more evident, it says elsewhere (paraphrasing), than when he appears to be an angel of light.

Crazier things have happened. Too bad Ross Perot isn't around any longer to say so.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

He Can't Read. No Wonder. He Still Deserves Derision, But Also Pity; 45 As 'Crankshaft'

There's a lady on Facebook named Sondra Tucker. (As my friend Gail Sonneman discovered. Hats off to her.) She's a reading teacher. She has figured 45 out.

Leave it to a teacher to do so. She's done so clinically, methodically, and I think very accurately.

45's number one personal issue, that from which everything else flows: He can't read.

At least, he can't read the way most of the rest of us do. He processes slowly. The information keeps rushing past him, kind of the same way Lucille Ball couldn't keep up with the cream puffs in that famously funny scene from "I Love Lucy," so she just gives up after she messes all over herself. That's what happened as the teleprompter sent the lines rushing by during his July 4 speech; he missed a word or two, then tried to catch up and sounded, for a few pathetic seconds, completely incomprehensible, said Tucker. And instead of admitting it--something he simply can't do any longer--he tried to gloss it over.

Tucker figured that out. She sat down and considered him as a child with learning disabilities. Which 45 might easily have been.

That's why he's a bully, too. It's a cover-up for his enormous, crippling insecurities. Anyone who's spent significant time in classrooms knows the type.

And now he's been allowed to cripple the whole country, and perhaps the whole world, behind them. He doesn't know anything about politics, climate, race, even the economy. He knows what he feels, no more, no less, and until now has gotten away with it, the same way some kids get away with moving through schooling without that ultimate accountability. He would know plenty more, but he doesn't care to.

Because he can't read. Of course, since he can't, the time has gone by, he's in his 8th decade, and is way-way too embarrassed to admit it. His life is nearly over, so why bother, ya know?

Who remembers the newspaper comic strip "Crankshaft"? It was a spin-off of "Funky Winkerbean". Crankshaft was a bus driver and grouchy curmudgeon, who knew what he knew and needed to know nothing else. But the strip's creator chose to emphasize adult illiteracy through the strip, so he reveals that Crankshaft is frustrated and has poor self-esteem because he can't read. Embarrassing, yes, but ultimately his salvation, because Crankshaft learns to read and a whole new world opens up to him. Not only that, he finds that it's fun. (It's apparently still around, but I don't get daily papers anymore.)

To him. Not 45, because he's pre-literate Crankshaft.

So he fakes it, or tries to. Wonder if he'll respond by claiming he speed-reads. It reminds me of what Woody Allen said about that: I speed-read "War and Peace" in a day. It was about Russia.

Tucker analyzed 45's July 4 speech and why he confused George Washington with airports, a gaffe that's as sad as it is hilarious.  But now we know that it's part of 45's very sad story.

Not being able to read creeps up at a person every day. It frustrates and humiliates. It brings out a person's phony nature--phony because they have to think of something to distract people from knowing someone's ultimate secret. Why does 45 distract so often? Because he's had decades of experience.

If someone finds out, he'll be ridiculed and left as a pitiful subject of derision. Which, I'll bet, he might have been. If we found his grade school/high school classmates, they might be able to shed light on this.

Remember the campaign? "I know many big words." Uh-huh. Surrrre you do.

Every so often, I would manage to get a boy (always a boy) alone after school. He needed some kind of help because his grades were so awful and it seemed like nothing was getting through. History is the kind of subject in which, if you don't or can't read, you get behind the eight-ball pretty quickly if your memory isn't really sharp or if you don't care about the topic.

So I'd sit him down where nobody else was watching and open his textbook to, really, any old page. And I'd ask him to start reading out loud.

It didn't take 30 seconds to know: This kid can't read. Then I'd have to gently tell him that he was an okay kid (though sometimes he wasn't), but his education wouldn't be getting him anywhere without it. Staffings for kids with emotional disabilities revealed much the same, though at times I'd feel sorry for the kid because he/she was exposed in front of all their teachers--an event that had to be incredibly belittling. We were always compassionate, but also direct: You need to fix this.

Did it solve all his problems? Of course not. But though the road to self-esteem may need repairs, it's good to know where the potholes are. Then you fill them, one at a time.

Here's what someone inside the White House needs to do, especially since it's right in the middle of summer vacation: Get a reading teacher from the DC system. It doesn't even have to be the best one. Pay him/her some serious extra cash. Sneak him/her inside during the middle of the day. And teach him how to read better. One hour a day for two weeks. 

Get him away from the damn TV set and stop him from thinking how to try to make everybody else look bad. Get him to understand how bad he looks--never mind us; that won't register--making up 11,000 lies (and counting) like how Ronald Reagan said he was going to be president some day. Electronic media allows him to get by because first, it allows him to get some locus of control over messages (which explains the tweets); and second, it lets him have some other outlet for his twisted logic and reality so it appears to have legitimacy (which explains Fox News).

It's perfect. Until now, when the curtain has been pulled back.

Bernie Sanders is right: He's a phony. But in the most fundamental, pathetic way.

This is what we have, America, this where we are: The most powerful man on the planet is actually a sixth-grader who's still pouting, who's still embarrassed, whose self-esteem has no foundation: Crankshaft.

Because he can't read. He feels completely incapable. He's not grown-up, he's still a little boy under all that bluster.

And now Putin will know it. Bin Salmon will know it. Kim Jong Un will know it. And our allies. And Nancy Pelosi. And every Democrat running for president.

Thing is, if he learns how to read even at this late date, he may combine that with his enviable personal skills to get himself re-elected. But I'd be willing to take that chance. Too much is hanging in the balance on a daily basis.

If he refuses, I know what I'd do if I won the Democratic nomination: Put a history book in front of him at the first debate; no pictures. Ask him to read it out loud. Then tell him how pathetic he looks as he yells defensive comments and launches whatever insults he may have at hand. But then, just keep saying it. I'd do it gently, without raising my voice. The point would get through.

You can't read, Donald, can't you? How can you expect to lead the world if you can't even read?

It would be awful. It would create screaming from right-wingers and even mainstream Republicans. They would double down on victimization. But it would drive it all home like a tsunami. We need a president who can read. And it would be absolutely necessary.

Who knows? Everything else has been tried to de-legitimize this awful president. Nothing has worked to get him to clean up his act. But it strikes right to the heart of the true issue--his education. It stunk. He knew it, and his money allowed him to glide right through.

Yes, he deserves derision. But also pity. And it's no reason to vote for him again.

It might set off a new debate and a new trashing of our educational system: Who let this happen? But then we'd have to go deeper. That's a topic for another day.

Think of it: A common reading teacher has struck at the heart of our awful president's awfulness, the reason he needs to do everything else excessively--because he can't do what just about everybody else can do in an even average way: Read. You can rip on the educational system all you want, but for now, it has in its own way allowed us to see 45 clearly, at long last.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Is the Holocaust the Ultimate Comparison of Evil? For Our Purposes, Does It Matter?

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (known to the general public as AOC now; she's achieved her own brand, remarkably) isn't one to back off. Neither does she mask her attitudes.

AOC has said that the holding zones meant for alien peoples waiting to immigrate to this country are living in "concentration camps." Her admonishment was stated in two words: "Never again."

This has raised hackles on the backs of some necks. Those phrases have been directly connected with the Holocaust during World War II. "Concentration camps" has been stretched to mean that the inhabitants won't remain there very long, but will eventually be executed, as the Jews were by the Nazis, in systematic, barbaric fashion: the phrase "death camps" has been adapted as synonymous. "Never again" is the vow of the Zionists to make sure that no weakness be shown in the perpetual effort to keep anyone or any country from doing the same thing to Jews, ever again.

To some who think of the Holocaust as the ultimate evil, AOC's wording makes what's happening at our border to be equivalent. It isn't, of course. Though a few have died there--bad enough that that is--there are no plans for systematic slaughter. But Holocaust prevention advocates also believe that that terrible process has been diminished by AOC's wording.

The delicateness is borne out by a letter written by the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, asking people not to overuse Holocaust analogies, especially at this point, when the camps housing immigrants and their children are bursting at the seams, a tribute to the cold-shouldered abuse that 45's policies have caused. (It is printed in the June 17 online edition of the New York Review of Books.)

The advantage that the Holocaust has through the sweep of history is that it is packaged through time and place and connected with the major catastrophe of human history, the Second World War. It has a name that you can't look away from. Its numbers are so incredible that a few have devoted much time and research into questioning whether it happened at all.

But it has also been fused into a religious group's cultural and political positioning in contemporary world affairs. Jews have been given a place to call their own now: Israel, the existence of which has been challenged militarily several times during the last seven decades or so--indeed, attacks upon it have spanned nearly the entire post-WWII era--but as a direct result of the Holocaust. American foreign policy has always danced along the edge of support for Israel and the Palestinians whose national legitimacy was displaced by its establishment (Until now, when 45 and his hyper-religious Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, have made no secret of connecting deeper support for Israel to the right-wing's reliance on religiosity for backing nearly everything he does, so Old Testament references to The Promised Land never go wanting, Palestinians notwithstanding.).

So the skittishness of those who would feature the Holocaust as the world's ultimate evil is partly understandable. Minimize it in any way, and the existence and legitimacy of Israel itself falls into question. Hey, a whole bunch of people died in The Big One, ya know?

Thing is, the Holocaust isn't the ultimate slaughter. It's just the most systematic one, the one with the most pre-planning ahead of it, the one religiously connected. It wasn't driven by barbaric lust of conquering, as the butchery of the Chinese by Japanese troops was (for more on that, read The Rape of Nanking, except you probably won't get past page 100 in your non-stop disgust, nor would you need to). It was the "banality of evil," as Hannah Arendt put it. It became hum-drum, de rigeour, as all assembly lines are. And many people had to cooperate, some out of fear of their own lives, for the monstrous process to continue. It went far beyond merely looking and not seeing.

That's the stultifying, numbing aspect of it that too often avoids analysis: barbarism can be cold as well as hot. Hitler's Willing Executioners came out more than two decades ago, with fierce opposition. Until then, nobody could get their arms around how the machinery of local governments had to fall into line with the Nazi regime to create that kind of cooperative killing machine: people generally thought the Gestapo ran the whole thing. But the local authorities did, and some non-uniformed people did it quite willingly. The leading, high-profile Nazis (Hess, Krupp, Goering, et al) found accountability in an international war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, but hundreds of others not nearly as well-known did not.

But that is why AOC calls upon it as a comparison. The truly distressing border camps need a standard upon which to place the potential for inhumane treatment, now quite documented, to descend even farther. It's the thread of experience, the dot-connecting of uncaring which assembly lines evoke, that leads us down the funny stairs to the disgusting scenario with which we are now presented.

To wit: They don't care about the kids. Older children are told to take care of the younger ones, except they are advised not to hug them. That's right: Don't hug them. It isn't solitary confinement, but in some ways, it's worse.

Some three-year-olds have slept on the concrete floors. On concrete. Upon learning of that in prisoner of war camps, we would be appalled. Amnesty International would have organized letter-writing campaigns to tell the unfortunate, You are not forgotten. We've thought that kind of stuff happens in far-off jungles and deserts.

Instead, it's here. In the USA. And here, in the USA, two or three days' drive away from anywhere else in the lower 48, some enforcement officers are horrified and truly upset about having to oversee this ongoing tragedy--read the New York Times today--and some are not. Some have made terrible comments on social media, racist and dismissive in seen-one-seen-'em-all fashion. Banality: It's coming to a theater near you.

The 45 administration's common response--as he himself has put it--is that all of this would stop if the immigrants stopped being immigrants and turned around and went back home. But they don't like their homes. They want new homes. And what the hell is wrong with that?

Besides, ignoring another interesting statistic from the previous administration, there was a point at which the numbers of people who really did go back home to Mexico were greater than those who stayed. But they weren't cooped up in these overcrowded camps, either. They were allowed to discover that on their own. They weren't put on upsetting display.

The Holocaust happened in a society like this one, known for its cultural advancement: in music, art, writing, science, philosophy. But like this one might still do, it turned upon itself in nihilistic fervor which, once locked in, couldn't possibly be reversed except by invasion and devastation.

Fascism, the governmentally-blessed vengeance of renewable racism, does that to people. It is infectious and indelible. Once people think that someone officially supports the idea that they're naturally better than others, that they can get away with abuse to others, all kinds of scary things begin to happen. Totalitarianism is a simple step from there.

For an indication of the step-by-step process by which Jews were first stripped of their rights and then rounded up for extermination, please read Elie Wiesel's thin but important book Night. You might finish it in one evening. Either way, you aren't likely to forget it.

There are more devastating examples of mass slaughter during the last century; Soviet starvation and executions to force especially the Ukrainians to accept the poorly-planned collectivized farms, and Mao Zedong's killings of Chinese citizens who didn't accept the Great Leap Forward, a misnomer if there ever was one. The death toll of each, as estimated, topped twenty million. Even if you add the non-Jews who died in the Holocaust--another issue worth pointing out--both double the death toll.

But those people's records weren't painstakingly kept, like those in the Nazi death camps, so the utter emptiness of those murders are perpetual. It is to the Holocaust's advantage that we know very well the names of those butchered, maimed, perpetually damaged. It gives it a oft-repeated status of exactness that, except for right-wing fantasy makers, is rarely challenged.

Any conversation dealing with the border mess is going to evoke emotional responses and severe comparisons. That the Holocaust represents one edge of them doesn't make it the ultimate evil because we now know that, amazingly, it's been superseded by other barbarians. It is, instead, an ultimate evil and as such, something that will never become mainstream, even with inappropriate or exaggerated attempts to make connections.

It can't remain in the same box that the U.S. Holocaust Museum pretends that it is, though. The existence of the museum gives anyone (admission is still free) the opportunity to observe incarceration, deprivation and mass murder as an accumulation of crimes against humanity--an accumulation that began with lesser but egregious violations of human rights.

It is also the end product of a process toward which the U.S. border's situation is advancing. That AOC is starting to blow the whistle now, warning us of an end product that looms ahead, is neither an act of excess alarmism nor flippant insult. It's a reminder of the slippery slope that can continue if we let it--if the present administration is allowed to do so.

The Washington Post has just published the results of the latest survey: 47% approval rating for 45. If people care primarily about their pocketbooks, or the possibility, however contrived, that they will improve, and not fellow humans trying to get that same result themselves except they need to get out of the cages first, we will permit this to continue. Nothing will then stop the collapse of what we used to stand for--liberty under law, the rule of law, and what Lincoln once called us--"the last, best hope of mankind."

Every day those cages exist is a day closer to disaster. Holding pens don't keep attitudes at bay. They go in one direction or the other. Wherever you may find them, messes that aren't cleaned up are always more tolerated and always get worse. Always.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Wonder What Rick Is Thinking?

Rick Atkinson is a brilliant historian. Of this, there can be little doubt.

He has written a three-volume history of World War II that is simply terrific by all reports. I have read part of the third installation, The Guns at Last Light. His research is impeccable, and his writing is nearly flawless. (I used to teach a class that included a great deal of military history, and I've read a lot of good stuff. His ranks right at the top.)

And now he's begun another three-volume military history, this one on the American Revolution. It's called The British Are Coming, which covers the first two years of the war, 1775-77. (Please, for future reference, note the years.) The two reviews of it that I've read are both glowing.

Here I'm going to do something I rarely do, though: Discuss a book I haven't read yet. I just glanced at it the other day. It has 564 pages of text and over 180 pages of footnotes and sources. Suffice it to say that it's definitely well-researched, again.

"Well-researched" means thorough. No stones unturned. Nothing he has written has had any of his digging challenged for inaccuracy, at least nothing I've read.

Suffice it to say that as a historian, the guy has chops. Now I'm going to make a bet with you.

I'm going to bet everything I own that, even though I haven't read any of this new book, this phrase doesn't exist within it: "the Continental Army, led by George Washington, opened up the airports."

This is a reasonably accurate paraphrasing of what the president of your country said on July 4, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in front of his major supporters--that is to say, the people with the greatest dollar amount of campaign contributions. Yes. He said that.

On the most important day of our history, on a day in which history becomes the major focus, the leader of our country said something so completely ridiculous that it defies credulity--not just the statement, but the fact that anyone would feel free to say such a thing. If this is true, for instance, the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River, for a completely different reason besides the one quoted in an earlier blog, is preposterous.

It's obvious, now, that since the Continental Army took over the airports, Washington didn't bother to cross the Delaware on a dangerous rowboat, standing or seated. Instead, he took a helicopter.

That might have engendered this conversation, now considered world-famous:

Aide-de-camp: General, Washington has taken over the airports.
Cornwallis: What the hell is an airport?

There are three possible explanations that I can think of for such a statement from our president:

• He's incredibly stupid.
• He's just kidding.
• He's just saying whatever he wants and doesn't think it matters.

Let's eliminate the second one. That would take an actual sense of humor. He has none. That's actually one of the worse parts of him; he means everything he says and he's almost always angry about it. If he's not angry, he's lying. That's about it. Not pleasant to be around, but we knew that.

It could be the first one. One of his professors didn't think much of his brains. We know he doesn't like to read. That means that like some students I had, he's ignorant on purpose because somehow it's supposed to be fun, and never got over it.

In fact, adding the first two gets you to number three. The first may be always true because it takes brains to have and understand a sense of humor, and the second is never true because even though he may say so, it's a lie when he does. 

Now, in traditional logic, a true statement cannot imply a false statement, so this doesn't logically follow. However, a false statement can imply a true statement, so if you just keep going, you'll be fine, because the third has been true for a very long time.

Follow that? If you do, congratulations. If you don't, have a drink. If you don't drink, start drinking. 

For that matter, I wonder if Rick Atkinson drinks. He's just had a major work of history diminished by a jackass who snuck into the White House by a glitch in a system developed with the help of people who lost their lives for it. Now he would have a reason to drink.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Independence? How We Yearn For The Real Thing

He's going to embarrass us only if we let him.

You know what's going to happen. He's going to use our birthday to vilify critics, especially the press; attack the Democrats, especially those running for president; and brag about all he's done, especially to say what 'he alone could only fix,' to paraphrase one of dozens of ridiculous campaign slogans.

He's going to point out the 'Sherman tanks' (a common name he's brought over from the '50s, kind of like 'Xerox machine,' as if that's the only type that's ever existed but you know what he means, right? So it doesn't matter, does it? you think as you shrug, which is what he wants you to do instead of getting him to specify something he knows nothing about, nor does he have to) and tell you about the largest military budget and collection of hardware ever assembled in our history.

That, to him, is what will sell the faithful on what America means, to the world and to ourselves. He will have the financially faithful surrounding him as he does so.

Whether they agree or not, whether they need to cover their faces while he drones on (sorry for the pun), they will be there because, for this one less-than-shining moment, they'll be connected with the biggest of big shots. They will be proud. They will be crazy with prestige. Some of them will actually salute the flag instead of just putting their hands over their hearts. They believe in America soooooo much.

Except they believe in their money far more. They believe in a political system that allows them to organize into now unassailable Congressional districts, control over which will guarantee that they will be able to hoard every last dime, far beyond what anyone could ever need, because every legislative effort to make the tax system fairer will be blocked and jettisoned. Opulent luxury builds paranoia and the propaganda which even convinces themselves that they'll always be passing some of it, though never quite enough of it, down (be sure of that direction) to those who toil to keep them opulent.

The only way this will not be true would be to turn both houses of Congress and the presidency Democrat. The only way. And that will be for the federal government only.

In the meantime, this fat blowhard will say outrageous things that would be hilarious if we weren't living here to have to put up with them. He will tell how he'll finally be able to get citizenship status on the census rolls, even though the Supreme Court has rejected that notion very recently. He thinks there's a way to convince it that it needs to tell a federal judge to make an order to restart the process. This was done on July 3, so while the Court's taking the 4th off, he will have the opportunity to try to bully the Court into doing so by trying to embarrass it (not a coincidence, not a bit). Here's hoping John Roberts meant what he said when he told the government's lawyer that its position was "contrived (read: BS)."

Beyond that, he will gush with superlatives that mean nothing--a great drinking game would be to sip when he does so; you'd be smashed in half an hour--that are misleading at the least and lies at the worst, putting the fact-checkers back to work, pushing the total number of publicly uttered mistruths toward the 11,000 mark.

You could watch all this happen because I anticipate that at least Fox News will televise it live (I don't know what the other networks are planning, but they're probably as trapped into doing so because of his position). [Author's note: This was originally written before the major networks and MSNBC announced that they wouldn't be televising this. Good for them.] Or you could enjoy what the Fourth actually means, except we are now yearning for a different kind of independence.

We, the loyal majority in opposition, wish and will work to be free from this horrible distortion of reality, from policy by the seat of the pants, from the ugliness of how we now look to the rest of humanity, from the disgust of how we are treating some of its members and must watch as the doors are just as cruelly closed to those who wish to rescue them from the overt racism that brands it all as a rancher brands cattle--painfully, horribly, and finally, ignoring their cries of agony, thinking that they'll get over it as they crowd together, frightened in waiting for something they can't imagine except they know it isn't going to be good.

This, amazingly, sadly, is my America, 243 years on. It's yours, too. You don't have to like it, either. I certainly do not celebrate this. I use Independence Day to point it out.

For I want independence from this. I want to be freed from this penumbra of oppression that now envelops our land. I'm not free as long as they aren't, either. Nor you.

I'll catch up on the horrible speech later. I want to know exactly what he said. Always gives me plenty to write about, as if I needed anything new from this freewheeling windbag of garbage.

But I won't watch it live. I won't give him that pleasure. He doesn't deserve it. Neither do those who have been invited. It's their oppression, too, because they support it as much as they do him.

Their attempts to gloss over the issue with politics is getting a bit old now (I'm looking at you, Jim Sensenbrenner). They wear what has happened. They can't just shrug it off. It's up to us to keep them from doing so.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Make it a thoughtful one. May we all have independence that's meaningful, independence that really matters. The real thing.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark