Nancy Versus the Last of the Angry White Men

It's happening with so much subtlety that one has to stop and think about it. And they're doing it in a female way: Not with a stranglehold, but with a gradual but clear foothold.

The momentum in our politics belongs to women: Four of them who are pretty far along now. Yet, it all points to a quiet but clear revolution.

45 represents the last of the loud, angry old men, shouting at the rain, as Michael Douglas says in The American President. They want "the old way" preserved and maintained, but it isn't happening despite 45's rants.

A changeover, a new era, is at hand. A scary, permanent trench in our politics may just become an unfortunate but not unexpected interlude. A new byway of positivism looks to be here. It began with one woman, and may very well thrive through the last of them, fragile though it may be. The movement began in 2015:

• Hillary Clinton was the pioneer, the one out in front, the first genuine threat to the angry, old white men, the first woman to win a presidential election plurality. She was beaten up badly, but her tragedy paved the way for a rebound. She lost, but on a technicality. It's where it all bottomed out.
• Male counterpart: 45. He has practically ruined the presidency both for us and for the free world. Just. Plain. Awful.
• Ruth Bader Ginsberg, though sickly, is still alive and has a vital vote on the Supreme Court. A career feminist, she has challenged the male establishment and defied it. By simply remaining in a position that 45 craves, she's defying them still. She has stopped the establishment cold in its tracks, making it unable to grab the legal high ground.
• Male counterpart: Brett Kavanaugh. His performance during the confirmation hearings was disappointing, bracingly immature, and exposed him as a sycophant. Even if he wants to maintain judicial independence, most will be cynical about anything he does now.
• Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, has had to deal with male challenges within her own caucus, never mind the taunts of 45. She stared that down first, then turned to tell the president off inside the Oval Office in her own polite but firm way. Her judgment about waiting for impeachment until this moment, absorbing the frustration of many, is becoming a masterstroke of politics. She is turning the momentum of the country around and throwing it right back at him. It re-legitimizes the Legislative Branch and the Constitution itself. (When asked about the political risks of having it all backfire, her response was the most responsible one: "It doesn't matter. He has given us no choice.") When we look back at this time, there will be more than a few who will insist that she has saved the republic.
• Male counterparts: Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip, for one. Hoyer's a pol who's also been down the road, but his gravitas has never equalled Pelosi's. Her challengers for the Speakership early this year, Tim Ryan and Seth Moulton--who, granted, had the guts to run for president, too--are good, solid members and will do well as party leaders when Pelosi retires in 2022. But they can't carry her purse.
• Elizabeth Warren, 2020 candidate for president. She's currently in the lead. Difficult to determine the final result, but if she wins, she will carry the momentum forward. She is a positive counterpose, and wants to know what we can do as a nation, not what we need to return to.
• Male counterpart: Joe Biden. He may yet gain the nomination, but he isn't the Democrats' best. She may not be, either. But she's better than he is.

If the Democrats manage to overcome themselves as much as the Republican angry white males (not a sure thing; remember '16), look for a few of these names to re-emerge: Sally Yates, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Mimi Rocah, and even people like Nicolle Wallace, who may just cross over to assist with the transition back to rationality.

We're just getting started here, so this could be a vastly incorrect prediction. And it won't be a complete flipping of the political pancake. But that's the way it's starting to turn. The country could still throw up on itself and cast itself into a cauldron the likes of which we just thought we'd seen. We are at the cutting edge of it now. Hold your breath. Don't walk away just yet. We may yet right this ship.

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

Mister Mark

A Man and A Mouse at War

I saw it scurry over the rug in front of my front door. It sped across the living room floor and darted behind the credenza on which my TV set stood.

Maybe it thought it had violated my space at the best possible time. It was late. Sometimes I fall asleep in the easy chair from which I watched it scoot.

This was new. My apartment isn't in the best condition; I'd had two leaking ceilings worked on only days before. But a mouse?

We've been taught to think that mice are cute. They are depicted as such--friendly but mischievous--in artwork and cartoons.

It keeps one from confronting the damage they can wreak, though. Sooner or later, they have to eat something. They can make one hell of a mess.

Removal awaited, but the trouble to which we must go is a nag. After all, mice can't and don't hurt us. They have no intent to do so. After the moment of eek! usually comes a chuckle. "It's only a mouse," someone will say, if only to oneself.

The angst is about its eventual fate. It must be dealt with. Let things go and the issue becomes the devastation of neglect. Little things unaddressed and tolerated become a shameful, slippery slope. We keep assuring ourselves that everything's okay when it isn't.

I used to have a little country place mid-state that, because I got jobs at the end of my career that were as far away as Texas, I was forced to stay away long enough to invite a rodent invasion. Oh, I got outside help and it worked for a while. We learned it in Vietnam: When the enemy comes from places you know are there but can't see, the only thing you can do is prevent being overrun. You take over during the day, but they own the night.

For the time being, then, it was just a mouse. I saw not a cute little visitor, but an eventual horde.

Albert Schweitzer I'm not. Live-and-let-live with rodents is an assignation to gradual undermining and destruction. This kind of diversity was against my law. So sue me.

Calling for maintenance to deal with it felt inadequate. Besides, what else was there to do but get a trap? Having sold the other place, I'd thrown out my other traps from the previous invasion. I hadn't planned for more. The hardware store was but a block away, though.

There are styles of traps. One can basically behead the critter. Ugh. It would not be a far, far better thing to do than I had ever done. I wasn't Robespierre, either. I didn't want to deal with blood. I passed on that option.

I settled for the good old set-the-trigger kind, the one where you smear the front with something tasty and the end comes fast and relatively unmessy. I had just the bait: some ground almond butter from Whole Foods. Hell, I thought it was pretty good, too.

It seems simple: smear the bait near the catch, make the rodent stick its unfortunate little nose in the wrong place so the trigger's sprung, and the end happens in the best interests of mercy-killings. One shouldn't put the bait at the non-triggered end, though, for a mistake there might cause clamping down on the tail, causing a slow, painful, tortured death.

It's why, after hearing a news-magazine report some time ago, I've decided not to pursue fishing in my retirement. Nobody thinks about this, but fish have feelings. If someone stuck a hook into you--and maybe you've had such an experience in a boat with inexperienced anglers--you wouldn't react well, either. I know salmon and trout are good for you, and someone like me who's had by-pass surgery has been advised to eat a lot of it. I try not to think about that, but it's helped me understand vegans.

So I was careful. I smeared the almond butter well enough and slid the trap just behind the rear corner of the credenza, close to the wall. I wasn't too eager to actually hear the execution, so I set the trap just before I went to bed. After all, it could smell the food, but it could smell me, too. Keeping the lights on, I guessed, kept it from approaching long enough for me to get ready for bed. I figured I was safe from knowing the deadly moment.

Next morning, I winced. I had to make myself look. How nice: No mouse. No food left, either. The trap was still there, trigger still cocked. Crafty little bastard had dodged the ambush. I was being treated to another version of Catch Me If You Can.

You're laughing at me, I thought. My mind raced with possibilities, none of which were pleasant. If it had enjoyed its unexpected meal, it might have had to make a post-meal deposit, too. That was probably back there. But of course, I couldn't afford to slide the credenza away from the wall just yet. The mouse would motor somewhere else, if it hadn't already, and I'd have more problems. Since I figured that it would figure that its new food source would soon return, I let it huddle back there the rest of the day.

I planned again. I had tried my best to be dainty and as antiseptic as possible about ridding myself of this little thing. Now, though, it was murder on my mind, cold-blooded and premeditated.

I looked again at the trap, being careful not to add the actual pain of catching a finger in it as an additional humiliation. Turns out I had set the trigger too well, not allowing it to be freed with anything but a reversal of gravity. The mouse would have had to seek suicide that night. It felt silly to give it that much credit, but I was the dolt that got it wrong.

All kinds of apocalyptic thoughts developed. Whatever granola I'd dropped on floors while shoveling it into my mouth--I eat a lot of it--might be inhaled by the sneaky critter. That might lead it to the back room off the kitchen, where I had a large wicker basket filled with my recyclables. Unquestionably, some of them had bits of food left in them. I could see myself fighting this battle protractively, like in Afghanistan.

I paid better attention this time. I smeared even more almond butter on wood and metal. I set the trigger on a small jutting edge of the apparatus instead of hanging teeth that would be secure for me but possibly fail to get the job done. Get out of this one, I thought, and I'll sign over the lease.

It was not a sanguine moment the next morning. The trap had been flipped. That could only mean one thing: There was a dead mouse on the other side. The ferocity of the trap's killing snap often pulls it and its victim on top of itself. I saw the back end sticking out of the side.

Turning it over, I saw that it had died by a broken neck. It had perished in a quick, painless way, since the trap had not left its original space. Then I noticed that the food had disappeared this time, too. The condemned had had its last meal and, in sating itself, had nearly dodged another execution date. I felt like Robert Mitchum and Kurt Jurgens in the World War II film The Enemy Below, when, near the end of their sea battle, the warriors salute each other from their respective decks out of a grudging but genuine respect.

It deserved a good Christian burial, but I don't own the property. Better, I thought, to dispose of it like the Muslims, within 24 hours of its passing. Into the garbage it went with the other non-recyclables.

It had taken a lot of bother, so I'm considering a cat. At least they enjoy the chase, and torture doesn't bother them.

With some amusement, I read later that Peter Alexander of NBC News tweeted that a mouse fell through the ceiling right above him and into his lap at his desk, at the White House. No report on casualties. No conspiracy theories forwarded.

As the human race seems determined to wipe itself off the face of the earth either by war or unwillingness to attack climate change, I wonder if the mice will have the last laugh. Will the last of us know?

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


Mister Mark

No, Mitch. It's Not Us Who Can't Get Over 2016. It's YOU.

Mitch McConnell's bromide is getting tired and old, much like he is: They can't get over the 2016 election.

Which is to say: The Democrats can't accept, and will never be able to accept, 45 as their president.

I have several responses to that sentiment:

You should talk. It was exactly that attitude that brought on the ad hominem attacks on Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. Republicans were indignant that Bill had beaten the hero of the Gulf War, Bush-41, by pounding away at an economy that was running off the rails. Wrapped in their religiously=afflicted pseudo-morality, they found a way to slip a prurient sidecar into their investigations by ginning up Slick Willie's personal life, which had no bearing on anything, and contriving impeachment out of it. It got them nowhere except to bring into office Bush-43, who drove us into Iraq, something that more than 60% of Americans (according to a recent poll) now believe was unnecessary (and they're right). Their attacks on Hillary as she tried to introduce a genuine national health care plan, too, were disappointing in the least.

You didn't want him, either. Until the very last days of the campaign, the never-45ers were either aghast (and said so) or quiet as mice, as they still are. They denied the bandwagon until it became clear that their kin on the ground were either shrugging with embarrassed acceptance, or snarky with wise-acre arrogance. Either way, they didn't have much to celebrate, either. The inaugural response was highly indicative of that.

You're scared to death of your own shadow. This okay-he's-a-jerk-but-he's-our-jerk posture is getting shopworn now. The pretense of holding yourselves parallel from him, weakly tethered but maintaining a semblance of proper image isn't holding. Any defense of him is as slippery as he is, and you own it.

You're scared to death of him. Talk about ad hominem attacks; it's just about the only thing he can do that gets decent attention. Nobody, not one of you, with anything to lose has stood up against him, not even Justin Amash, who has left his party (but whose integrity I still admire; at least he hasn't decided to leave the House). Bill Weld and Mark Sanford, who are running for president under the Republican banner, have chosen to take him on, and they're not presently in office. Even John Bolton, another kind of crazy, walked away from this monster. Your party has responded by doing what 45 has been doing all along--shutting down democracy's true intent, this time by threatening to cancel primaries. Last August, somebody supposedly inside this horrible White House chose to lay out 45's true awfulness, but that person remains unknown. It's time to take the Groucho Marx position of not belonging to any group who would have you as a member. Trust me, this is not a good look. It isn't leadership, either. It's clinging to power with an increasingly fraying string of posturing.

You're just as big a bully as he is. Yup, Mitch. You are never, ever going to live down what you did to Obama, stonewalling everything and anything he tried to do (Talk about not getting over an election--try two of them!), and Merrick Garland, nominated for the Supreme Court with an excellent record. That represented a turning point in how the parties deal with each other. You subverted the Constitution by interrupting a proper process and pretending it didn't matter nearly as much as getting your own way was, finally, in a decisive and incredibly petty piece of revenge. And you got upset about Kavanaugh, who did a great job of mimicking 45's most despicable aspects: Just keep lying and, if it looks like that isn't working, start shouting until it does. Right. Why are you the least bit surprised that you're standing behind someone who knows no rules and couldn't care less about them?

You'll have to make more excuses for him as he becomes even more unhinged. It's already happening. He's trying to lash out at the yet-unnamed whistleblower (granted, we'll get weary of that word soon), yearning for yet another dreamy time when 'traitors' were dealt with by shooting them. This is still your guy, Mitch. Tell us about his brilliance. We're listening. But I'd advise you to hurry up.

As this gets deeper, and it will, as Republicans plot to counter-accuse with conjured nonsense (led, apparently, by another purveyor of twisted baloney who happens to be one of my Senators, Ron Johnson), remember that they will try to get us to forget all that they have cultivated beforehand, including their utter fecklessness in displaying any meaningful gestures of debate and resistance against 45. Jeff Flake, another of those who bailed out before 'doing the right thing,' has been quoted as saying that probably 35 of the present 53 Republican Senators would, if they could do it in secret, vote to convict 45 of impeachment charges. Well, woopee ding. Way to stand up and be counted.

It is the Republicans, not Democrats, who can't get over the enormous mistake too much of the country made in getting 45 selected president (not elected, since he didn't win a plurality of the popular vote). And it is they who now find themselves trapped by the other process they hijacked--that of Congressional representation, which is gerrymandered so badly that only radical alternatives will dislodge almost any member in states into which it has been successfully instituted--Texas being one, Wisconsin another. This obsession with control has gone out of control, and too many districts are intentionally subjected to this fealty to demagoguery run amuck.

It's not up the Democrats to repair this breach of constitutional propriety; it's up to the Republican leadership, or all that once posed as such. That used to be the all-important task of "gatekeeping," as Seven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt say in their book How Democracies Die:

Had Republican leaders publicly opposed [45], the tightly contested,

red-versus-blue dynamics of the previous four elections would have been disrupted.

The Republican electorate would have split--some heeding the warnings

of the party leadership and others sticking with [45]. Still, [45]'s defeat

would have required the defection of only a tiny fraction of Republican voters.

Instead, the election was normalized. The race narrowed. And [45] won. (p. 71)

Making the Democrats out as the only rational actors may be a stretch, but in impeachment, they're doing the only other thing anybody can do to stop this autocratic crank and crook. The Republican leadership must step up, deny Ron Johnson's subterfuge, and cut a deal to rid us of this existential threat. The republic exists in large part only because entrenched opponents found a way through to see the larger picture. That moment may be upon us once again.

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

Mister Mark

Here's Why He's in Trouble Now

There are indications that 45's in trouble already--not just with Democrats, but with Republicans, too. There are certain things that can't be denied, even now.

First: Nobody had to make up new laws or new rulings for a president to break so they could get rid of him. In the case of Andrew Johnson, the Radical Republicans not only overrode several of his vetoes, but created (again, over his veto) the Tenure of Office Act, making all a president's Cabinet firings--not just hirings, but firings, too--subject to Senate approval. Johnson, in a typical fit, tried it anyhow with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, one of the late and revered Abraham Lincoln's top advisors. Equipped with that, the Republicans fell full force on Johnson with everything else he'd done, and came within one vote of removing him.

Second: The Republican-based investigatory team, led by Kenneth Starr, finagled a Supreme Court ruling that a sitting president can't keep from facing court proceedings while he's still president. Starr then went back to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and demanded that he could expand his investigation beyond Hillary Clinton's Whitewater land matter and look at Bill Clinton's personal life. From there, he got a grand jury formed, Clinton lied to try to cover up the Monica Lewinsky affair, and Starr had his indictment free and clear, whatever that had to do with Bill's conduct as president (The essence of which was completely transparent: If you cheat on your wife, you shouldn't be president. We now have a Republican president at least as guilty of that, and Republicans are sailing right past it.). As we know, Clinton survived impeachment charges of both perjury and obstruction of justice, as the Senate votes fell far short of the two-thirds required and didn't even gain a majority (though the obstruction vote fell 50-50).

Nope, the Democrats made nothing up. They didn't take 45 to court for any other reason than what anybody else has ever been subjected to, such as looking at his back taxes. Still no witch hunt.

Third: The momentum created had little or nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi. As much as she could have turned this into a personal vendetta, she did nothing of the sort. Nope--it was seven Democratic freshman members, from swing districts but with military backgrounds, to write a letter to the Washington Post demonstrating their concerns about 45's complete lack of caring about national security, as demonstrated in the Ukrainian phone call. You can follow her thinking pretty clearly: Well, if they have the guts to put it on the line....

Fourth: 45 screwed up all on his own and while he was actually president. He asked the leader of another country to contact the Attorney General to help him smear the son of a potential election opponent. Nothing--nothing--has to this point been discovered by anyone, including the government of Ukraine, which investigated it independently--to indicate that wrongdoing has taken place.

Fifth: Nixon's screwup--his being taped, not getting rid of the tapes, and his suggestion that the Watergate break-in be covered up, nicely preserved and access to which resulting because of Alexander Butterfield's Senate testimony--was also his own, and also involved no new legislation by Democrats to avoid or blame. That taped conversation was the 'smoking gun' that created the final downhill slide which would have most likely led to his impeachment and removal had he not resigned.

Sixth: Today, someone sent the 45 anti-impeachment talking points to Pelosi's office. To her office. That won't remove any doubt about his staff's utter incompetence, not to mention his own. That can't be unseen, either.

With the gaffes of him and others, the Mueller report can return front and center as additional evidence of incompetence and malfeasance. Impeachment inquiries find what they find, and there's no reason to believe that the Democrats won't weave that into their quilts--or that additional evidence will open up the Mueller report to new scrutiny. If 45's attorneys have a problem with that, they'll have to take it up with Chief Justice John Roberts, who would serve as the lead judge in an impeachment trial.

We have a way to go to get to that point, but much of the potential evidence is already in plain sight, enough so that it might take some doing to keep the Democrats from looking like they're railroading 45 out of town. Here will be my response: Just like the Ukraine phone call, he's done all this himself. Nobody tricked him into it. It isn't like he didn't get any advice. He didn't listen, he won't listen, and he's paying the price.

And watch this: the Senate has just voted 54-41 to stop the Pentagon from moving money toward building the border wall. That has to mean that, if the Democrats voted in a bloc, at least seven Republican Senators crossed over. Seven crossovers won't gain a conviction for impeachment charges: The number for that is 67, and that may never happen anyhow. But it's an indication that the intimidation factor that 45 may have had is already wearing thin. The wall was his baby, every bit as much as health care was for Obama. That the unified support for it is now clearly diminished is an additional shot fired across his bow.

Speaking of numbers: Last week, the number of Democratic House members supporting an impeachment inquiry was all of 134, as it had been for weeks. This morning, according to MSNBC, it's 201--a 50% increase. As Malcolm Gladwell would put it, a tipping point seems to have been reached. The committee hearings tangential to this matter will either quickly accelerate that number, or stall it in place--in which case, the Democrats will fail. But they have fewer than 20 members yet to convince before the number gets to a simple House majority of 218, enough to file and pass a discharge petition to hold an impeachment vote. Again, Pelosi will probably have to advise her Democratic members to hold off on that until the best moment, and make sure the committee chairs--major players now--will do their due diligence to turn over every shred of evidence and conduct their hearings in ways that, despite Republican efforts to delay and distract that undoubtedly will be coming, can still be reinforced as fair and thorough.

But increasingly, that best moment appears to be nearing. It will still be weeks before this is played out, and Republicans will strategize to get new talking points to try to wear down the Democratic momentum, shore up the base, and run out the clock until next November. We will see how far that gets. The battle, though, is now joined. And 45 is in serious trouble. This time, it seems real.

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


Mister Mark

The Scenario As It Will Play Out: Watch the Committee Chairs

Already, the scenario's becoming clear.

Upon Speaker Nancy Pelosi's announcement that an actual, real, bona fide impeachment inquiry will soon begin in the House, Republicans will do their best to muddy the waters by:

• making it unclear as to what's really gone wrong;
• focus on the transcript of the 45-Ukranian president Zelensky phone conversation;
• pretending that it was just a phone call between foreign leaders and nothing more consequential than that, thus attempting to normalize the issue;
• saying that because there was no actual quid pro quo stated by 45 at that particular moment, that none existed;
• saying that the suspension of foreign aid to Ukraine to help it fight the Russians was a matter of bureaucratic confusion or straightening out that had to be done, and was thus an unavoidable delay made at an uncomfortable time;
• remaining focused on Hunter Biden, his marital issues, his business transactions, and any implication that something might be awry;
• saying that this will help 45 rally the base and win him another term.

I'm sure I've missed a few, or more will develop as more things are stripped away. Joe Biden, Hunter's dad and presidential candidate, will be pressed endlessly about his son and will, here and there, most likely slip up. It may or may not cost him the nomination.

It might be better if it does. Republicans, and especially 45, will come girded for battle and throw all kinds of distracting innuendoes at Biden, putting him on the defensive. Time will be wasted between doing that and focusing on 45's massive disrespect for everyone and everything, the rule of law being just one of them.

On the other hand, something has shifted. You will see that shift not necessarily in what Pelosi will be saying in the coming weeks, but the directors of the forces she has now unleashed--namely, the chairs of the Congressional committees that will be charged with bringing charges that will surely emerge. These people are:

• Jerry Nadler, Judiciary;
• Adam Schiff, Intelligence;
• Elijah Cummings, Oversight;
• Maxine Waters, Financial Services;
• Richard Neal, Ways and Means; and
• Eliot Engel, Foreign Affairs.

Seeing as how 45 has gone out of his way to insult three of them--Waters for her "low IQ," "Liddle (sic) Adam Schitt (also sic)," and Cummings for the "rodent-infested mess" of his Baltimore district--it would be difficult to imagine those three, at least, already musing upon their personal furies at him.

As you watch, you might wonder how they can conduct themselves without reference to that. They can. In fact, it's partly how they got where they are, the way many people in public life do. They don't overlook personal insults, oh, no. They put them where no one can see them, and then play the card burning with cold fires. All the while, they act cordially, if sparely, with the insulter. But when given the opportunity, they perform their duties with a certain willfulness.

Watch for this. The best of them will never overplay the moment. (Cummings, an emotional sort, nearly did. He'll get another chance at it.) But they will see it through. They have waited a long time, and they won't blow the chance to even the scales.

In one store or another, you may have seen the close-up poster of a bald eagle facing toward you. With its beak turned down, it looks perpetually angry. But it says up in the corner: "I Am Smiling."

So they will perform their duties with a certain cold-hearted detachment. They understand their responsibilities. But a small part of them will be enjoying this very, very much--even the attacks upon them, which are likely to continue and perhaps accelerate. They'll put up with a lot to see this monster brought down, if it is at all possible to do it.

Above all, they will not forget. Never. It is the essence of one's personal power. One must beware, lest they allow others to trample them. While power is never the best way to do things--I have commented on this before, and I still believe that influence is better and far more positive--there is a time when nothing else will have the kind of impact it needs, most notably when one is dealing with people who understand nothing else. They won't repeat the insults, but they don't have to. We all know. And they may forgive, but only after the most appropriate response has been made and the impact has been registered.

They will give the appearances of striding above the ditch of fierce battle, but they're going to wade into it, right up to their necks. They've done it before, and they have to be good at it. After all, there they are, in a place few of us ever imagine to be.

To 45, feelings are anathema outside of his sacred self, which can never be satisfied and stretches himself to be aware of anything poorly said about himself. Trust me: These folks understand that by now. If that is how he acts and these are the effects of the words he uses, people can barely wait to reverse that momentum toward him. They don't like it--Pelosi has already been quoted as saying that she hates the politics connected with impeachment, and that's exactly what she's referring to (which is probably one reason she hasn't been fond of pursuing this)--but they'll take a certain pleasure in it.

If this doesn't sound attractive, I can't blame you. That's the unattractive part of the territory. But those who don't get that don't last. In the name of what you believe is the right path for your country to follow, you become a different person. If you don't, it all goes right past you. Once you understand that it has, you step aside. That's why so many Congressional Republicans are doing so.

That's what's happened to 45 and his minions, too. Above all, they won't and can't adjust to what the country has become. Instead of a lovable old grouch, 45 has remained a prickly, obnoxious, sneaky (maybe only to himself and certainly no longer), nihilistic anarchist, who believes in nothing but his talent of trying to fool someone else into believing in him. They dream of a world he cannot guarantee or even wants, outside of following him everywhere.

He will get back out on the road and ramp that sentiment up. That's why Congressional Republicans can't possibly cross over and do what they know in their hearts is the best thing for the country--to get another president as soon as we can, sooner than January 2021, even with his warts and all. But it's also why there will be a showdown coming that will make the Kavanaugh nomination pale in comparison.

Get ready. Here it comes.

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


Mister Mark

If the Constitution Doesn't Matter, What Does? And Who Should Say So?

45 is endlessly trying to tell the opposition that the Constitution doesn't matter.

Call someone to testify about his actions in front of Congress? Nope. Executive privilege. Does it apply? Who cares? Take us to court. That'll take too long. We'll be re-elected by then. Hopefully.

So the Constitution doesn't matter there. And any inside information that would jeopardize the very presidency that 45 is making a mockery of can't be accessed, because the president is, well, the president. Nobody's made the claims that this president has made about whether or not the law applies to him. That doesn't matter, either. He does, he's stopping people, and the evidence goes wanting.

So now his lawyers say that he can't even be investigated. Or, maybe, that his office doesn't have to turn over any information concerning anything he's done that might be construed as illegal. He is, then, untouchable for the duration of his term.

Nobody else has ever claimed that, but only one other president, Nixon, has ever been in a position to do so. He passed on it in 1974, perhaps because, in a moment of remorse, he decided not to tie up the machinery of government. 45 has no such problem. He was never involved in governing anyhow. And, really, he doesn't want to be. All he wants to do is rant. He has quite the rostrum he needs.

Impeachment is problematic. Take 45 to trial in the Senate, and the Senate majority leader will refuse to hold it. Turns out he doesn't care, either. Run out the clock, have another election, tell all kinds of new lies designed to scare the hell out of enough of us, and hold your breath: Maybe there will be at least another two years of a complete lack of accountability, too. Maybe four. Maybe more.

Hey, worked before. Why mess with success?

We have a king on our hands, exactly the kind of situation the framers feared, and against which good men and women fought and bled. He has managed to shield himself against legal attacks. He is presently building, with only Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fragile existence in the way, a bulwark against any interpretation of the Constitution that would leave him in an exposed and litigious condition.

The clock ticks for all of us. The closer we get to the start of the next presidential term, the more likely we are nearing an autocracy of oligarchs, led by a complete fraud. He utilizes the very media he says he can't stand--the ultimate disingenuousness--to spew forth his messages, tweets notwithstanding. Republicans continue to stand with him, to accomplish the major goals they have striven for: mainly, the end of abortion rights, or at least their significant reduction. The more the Supreme Court backs him, the less its legitimacy in the minds of many.

The country is divided, and he thrives on it. Even if someone on the other side begins apologizing for the scores of insults unleashed, that apology will have two problems: first, believability; and second, acceptance. Appealing to people's magnaminity is never bad, but it must be backed with actions that are at least tangential with the Constitution as we have understood its development. There will have to be plenty of magnanimous action on that side, first, for it to be swallowed.

They will have to admit that electing 45 was a mistake that jeopardized democracy, and that they won't be likely to nominate anyone like him again. But who will say that? And what influence will he or she have to by-pass the right-winged blowhards who, for far longer than 45 has been on the scene, have seized their adherents by the throat with wickedly slung half-truths, weaponizing the First Amendment?

There is no one on that other side, my side, who has that kind of effect. By definition, progressives tend to approach issues with cordiality and thoughtfulness for others, not the latest methodology of bluffing or twisting logic or history. Among the myriad presidential candidates, there are few able to be firmly assertive enough to bring enough points home to reverse the conversation from someone who has no regard for the truth, both in actual words and actual meaning.

That will have to be the test that we will have to hold our breaths for--to see if that certain someone can clarify all that is at stake this time around. Congress, tied in knots without veto override power, can't do it. The Supreme Court seems to be denying it. It's left to whomever that is. Those moments will arrive. However it falls, we can't walk away from it.

The fall from decency is presently slow, but will accelerate if it isn't halted and a floor put to it. 45's adherents certainly won't go away, but it is vital that their collective influence is diminished. Half the House of Representatives helps, but isn't enough. 45 is starting to pull the levers on those who will not submit to him. Now that's he used to knowing where they are, that effort will just get more precipitous. He must be stopped.

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


Mister Mark

Did I Save A Life? Or Was I Taken? Does It Matter?

Down the street I went with long strides. I've learned to do so when out on my power walk, the one designed to ramp up my cardio as much as it can be while not running, which with my bad knees would be more than challenging. It was a gorgeous afternoon. My back, which had been killing me for two weeks, was finally feeling better after four trips to the chiropractor. Two kids were selling lemonade and I'd bought a raspberry combo. Seventy-five cents. Such a deal. But great fun.

I passed her the second block down. We acknowledged each other with a quick hello. Within three more steps, she turned and said, "I was wondering if you could help me."

She was a person of color. I have expected such things, though I'm not sure why I am often solicited. I must have a friendly face. It's certainly tolerant, liberal, or to be more cynical about it, gullible, naive and all too aware of white privilege and the inherent guilt attached to it. In terms of either, I was in exactly the right place at the right time.

She continued. "I've just been to St. Mary's Hospital," she said. "I've been thinking about committing suicide."

That'll bring you up short. My first reaction was, indeed a reaction. "Well, you don't want to do that," I said.

But there's always a reason. Robin Williams had one, and nobody judged him about it since he was about to slide down the long road of unavoidable dementia and, before it took too much control, decided to take matters into his own hands. Ronald Reagan knew, too, and made an announcement to that effect, then settled in. It took quite some time for it to claim him. (Did it matter that he was once president and conservative icon, euthanasia was out of the question? Your guess is as good as mine.)

She went right to the heart of her existential, Hamletesque conundrum. "My daughter's at Taycheetah," she said, naming the girls' reformatory about three hours' drive to the northwest. "She killed her baby."

Yikes. "I started to go in[to the hospital], and then I had second thoughts," she said. "I thought about my family." She mentioned three grandchildren as well as a nephew.

I searched my mind for a Rolodex of reasonable response options. "Well, the most important thing you've done is admitted that you need help," I said. "If you go back there, they'll help you work through this." Looking back, I realized that she might have gone to St. Mary's to get drugs to kill herself. I had suggested that the opposite road might have the same origin. Did I confuse her more?

Forelorn, she looked at me and said, "Do I forgive her?" It wasn't the kind of tone that indicated a hypothetical kind of question. It looked like she really wanted to know.

That was worth a session with a psychiatrist, which she obviously couldn't afford. Or a conversation with a husband or partner, of which I figured there was none. I was the only male around. I was already giving her advice. I was already drawn in.

"Yes, you should," I said. "She needs you now more than ever. She's going to love you for the rest of your life. And those grandchildren are going to need their grandma all the time now. You have to be there for them."

Then I said something I have never said to anybody. It just came out. But it's been true for a while now. "Actually, I'm jealous of you," I said. "You have children and grandchildren. I don't."

She stared at me. "That's really great," she said, as a reaction to my support and application of perspective.

Katie took a moment to introduce herself. She showed me the stamped envelope that she had with her daughter's reformatory address and that of her own: North 34th Street, not the best area. She was a long way from home if she'd had to walk it. And maybe, just maybe, during that long walk (or bus ride) she had had a sufficiently long talk  with herself that, combined with the endorphins stirred by the activity, got her mind in the right place, at least for that moment.

The very fact that she was engaging with me felt like she was willing to try living again. It's the quiet ones that lash out in violence applied either toward someone else or themselves. Those who attempt any method of reaching beyond themselves, if they aren't completely rejected, tend to try again. Back up the stairs they might just go.

I thought it was an indication of that, anyhow. If not, it was one hell of an act, one that she could only try once. But it didn't ring like a genuine fraud otherwise would, if I may make an oxymoron.

But in the end, it had to be about money, too. She needed to catch a bus home and get something to eat. I got out some money and give her a five. She asked for five more. I gave it to her.

There was something a bit too casual about that second request, a presumption of a bottomless pocket, that brought me up a bit short, too. But I decided to file that feeling. What if all this was true? What if her last few bucks had been spent taking a bus to the East Side? She had mentioned that her disability check was coming on Friday. I could understand that with two days left, she'd run a bit short. Again, it sounded too genuine.

She asked me where a mailbox was. "Just keep walking," I said. "You'll see the sign for Pizza Man. The mailbox is just across from there, right on the corner. You can't miss it."

I suppose I could have watched her traverse the two blocks to make sure she mailed it, but I didn't. I chose to apply my best instincts and trust her.

I have been approached by several people of color in my neighborhood and the one immediately to the south of me, both considered East Side, both considered places of relative wealth. As a retired teacher who has had to lurch through nine years of financial struggles, I didn't qualify. But my residence location says something different, as well as my inclination to connect with people who seemingly mean no harm. They just want a couple of bucks. And, of course, I could have said that I didn't have a dime on me, the kind of lie that will always get you out of it, the kind that's never believed but since the panhandler isn't a thief, will release the situation without insulting implications.

Was I taken? The contrived story, if that's what it was, was unique in approaches by panhandlers, which date back to Washington, DC and other places where the NEA met ten or more years ago, such as Seattle, Portland, NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many others. Not all were people of color. A quite attractive, middle-class-looking, white couple hailed me near Dupont Circle one night and asked for 17 dollars so they could catch a cab back to their hotel, which was, well, 17 dollars or more away. They said they were out of everything, including credit cards. We lined up a place for them to send the re-payment. Can you guess whether I got the money back?

But then, does it matter? If out of the goodness of one's heart small charity gets betrayed as petty theft, and the giver feels better for having given, should the giver feel like less of a person, or more? This is a far different question, of course, concerning scammers who prey on seniors to trust them with everything they've invested and then abscond with the big bucks. Those people disgust me and deserve all the prison time they're given.

I've been in situations where I felt it wasn't in my best interests to trust anyone about anything. So I didn't. Maybe I had a chance to make a friend, but the odds were against it. At what point do you take a step back from Mother Teresa's utter altruism and preserve a semblance of oneself? If you're made to be a sap, whose thought is it that counts: Yours, or those bearing judgment?

If Katie was to be believed, I hope she's still alive and that she got help at St. Mary's or wherever she could (and I sure hope someone told her about the suicide hotline, which, in the shock of the moment, I'd forgotten to suggest). If not, well--she got her one chance with me. It's a hell of a way to make a living. That she has to, or feels she has to, is a topic for another time.

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


Mister Mark

In This Debacle, The Only Way Out Is Through

Julian Castro tried to make Joe Biden look too feeble to be an acceptable candidate for president at the Democratic debate last Thursday night. He seems to have failed. It seems to have backfired on him, as an important supporter in Congress from his home state of Texas has bailed out on him. Others have jumped on that bandwagon.

This is big trouble--for the Democrats. They are reverting to the same mentality that gave us 45--a yearning for a past that can't be replicated. The front-runner is now someone who, at times, goes off on tangents that release non sequiturs that imply he's not connected with reality any longer. He says things that apologists scramble to cover with the excuse of it's not what he exactly says, it's what he means, and what he means, is, you know, basically good.

Just like 45. True, Biden insults, or means to insult, no one. He isn't angry 150% of the time. He has some sense of style and loads of basic likability. He's not a racist and doesn't inspire others who are. He has a decent, cordial, meaningful relationship with important allies abroad. And he's had experiences of being inside the Oval Office, at the cutting edge of major decisions during Obama's presidency, which had solid, overall, consistent national support.

Granted, that feels a bit better. If that were all that needed consideration, that would be enough. Some have already decided that.

But like 45, he's losing the grasp a presidential candidate must have at a moment's notice. While no one can agree on everything Biden says, his answers must make sense for that present moment. And increasingly, they don't. It's all coming at him too fast now; his reactions under fire suggest that. His once-soothing voice catches. It ain't good.

Now we have a Hispanic upstart who calls him out for it, and he's the one who gets ripped to shreds. Why? Because a pity party's starting to form for Old Joe. Doing that might very well get him the nomination--and lose the election.

How could he possibly do that? Because 45 will apply immediate, powerful pressure on him with his unending innuendoes, lies, exaggerations, and accusations that have the veneer of truth but can't get close to it--the effects of which smearing will be the truth to matter enough, because we already know 45 doesn't have to make much sense to obtain irrational backing. Either way, it will be the endless grinding of being put on the defensive that may easily prove Biden to be insufficiently responsive to knock a sitting, if horrible president out of his perch with responses that will stand up to the otherwise meaningless challenge of a cad, mountebank, and fool, albeit a very persuasive one. 45 will do his best to make his challenger look weak, including repeating that word about him or her endlessly, as if repeating it will make it so (kind of like calling himself a "genius" once again, which he did the other day).

The bottom line will be if Biden or any other Democratic nominee can remain attractive enough to get people out to vote; a 'meh' attitude toward Biden, or a pity party extended toward him, won't work. Too many people will stay home. That's what beat Hillary Clinton.

On MSNBC's post-debate discussion last Thursday night, Nicolle Wallace (my opinion of whom has receded a bit; she's long on brains but short on wisdom) scolded Castro for potentially giving 45 fodder for anti-Biden spots, should he gain the nomination. First of all: Wallace had no call to pre-suppose that, even if Biden's barely leading the Democratic polling at this time; it seemed that she's already anointed him as the nominee. Second--and most telling--the very comment seems to suggest that Democrats need to very delicately sneak around 45 somehow and not make him too angry, as if someone would be sneaked into the back door to be elected. If nobody makes too big of a commotion, we'll all wake up that Wednesday morning having disposed of this menace.

I have news: Ain't gonna work that way. 45 is angry and will stay that way. He will unleash every kind of insult and prevarication possible, both on the debate stage and in massive tweeting. He will manipulate the voting process in ways we haven't imagined yet, including (I believe) turning a blind eye to another round of Russian meddling. And if he loses, he will mess with our Constitution in truly shocking ways, even more shocking than now. He could, by executive order, suspend the counting. He could, with his slimey lawyers, hold up decisive state tallies which had close votes by recounts. He could, by throwing count totals into court, resist right up to the next inauguration date and perhaps try to hold that up, too.

The amazing thing about our reaction to him is that, even at this point, even after all he has done, too many of us still refuse to consider all the more that could be done. And will, if he feels he has to.

Think of the nonsense that this round of TV ads for his campaign will bring. Think of the scare tactics that will bring out loyalists. They will be vicious. They will need responses. No Democratic nominee will be able to ignore or hide from them.

He refuses to let anyone take the high road. It's a fool's errand to try anyhow. It would amount to ignoring him, and he won't allow that. He will utilize media that can't stand him to create message boxes that must be addressed because, though untrue, they will be tuned to humiliate and create an image of weakness and incompetence--exactly how Democrats need to make him look, because that's exactly who he is.

Beyond that: Attempting to revert to an Obama-based time plays in the Republican ballpark, harkening back to some dreamy circumstance that didn't take place. Obama barely held the country together, trying to compromise and avoid extreme stances, but the Congressional Republicans forced him into too many executive orders and bullied him out of a Supreme Court nominee. That this indication of severe disruption in the system is upon us is nothing less than an extension to what was already going on. Think of the ridiculous, insipid things Republicans have said in recent years: They had begun from at least 2010, if not beforehand. And they will continue past 2020. You can count on that.

What needs to be fixed is not merely a return to cordiality and civility. That's the easy part. If someone else wins, that will come later. So it isn't going to be about being nice. Nice and a channel changer turns on the TV set. Many think that playing nice is the antidote to this incessant anger and bitter nihilism. It isn't.

It's about overcoming the denial of reality. Here's one part of it: 45 has set the rules of the game. He has already entered the realm of non-reality, allowed it to overwhelm him, and made it work for him, forcing his hated media to report the fact of his 13,000 (and counting) lies and give them the air time he wants, the result of which is happily (for him) not diminishing his devoted base but reinforcing it. His stated enemies are winning his battles for him, and all he has to do is think of something else fairly twisted to say every single day, even multiple times.

Within that reality of the extension of non-reality is an attitude which Republicans, sadly, have adapted far before he went down that escalator: Winning is the point. Jawboning is for fools. So they believe the lies. The lies are winning, so lying is just fine with us. The borders of our districts, borders that we have so neatly arranged, are such that our clientele have drilled down into comfortably mindless devotion. So if you think we're going to throw him under the bus, you have another think coming. Meanwhile, we are going to shut up.

That must be confronted with determination. The person who gets the Democratic nomination must be lucid enough to detect the nuances of the lying, quick enough to call it out, and the deftness of the language to show that an attitude of defiance of this rottenness can and should be combined with not mere cordiality, but a bluntness that demonstrates that we need not tolerate this nonsense for another minute. That's the essence that Democrats need to address: Not just policy, though policy is always in question; not just impeachment, though impeachment, in a more rational world, would have happened by now. The readjustment of and assumptions of the basis of governance itself is the issue here, and it will take a remarkable person to overcome the totality of what has taken place to this hazardous point and lead the nation forward, not back, to a new and hopeful place.

It may have been Joe Biden at one point, but it isn't now. It's beyond him. It may not be Julian Castro, for he may have deep-sixed his own candidacy (though I, for one, hope not) with his recognition of this new reality. But it will have to be someone who measures up in a way we may not have anticipated was previously necessary--but very clearly now is.

Parker Palmer, a great educator, philosopher and author, has written about his battles with depression. He says that confronting it takes enormous effort and constant attention. But the phrase he used to conquer it, or at least to hold it at bay, struck me as most cogent: The only way out is through. It's the same way we must now consider our damaged, sold-out, severely depressed democracy; not to revert to an earlier day, but to embrace a new one, in which possibilities can flourish and problems can be addressed not with hard lines, but with fluid, adjustable guidelines where all are quite sure that government acts in a humane and purposeful manner.

Whoever gets the Democratic nomination must fulfill that very high demand. But as Michael Douglas, playing a president, said in the film The American President: "America isn't easy. You've got to want it bad."

In this debacle, the only way out of it is through to the other side, where it's very unpredictable but filled with thoughtful options. The battle cannot be led by someone who's first thought is being nice and safe within comfortable reminiscences. It must be led by a new person committed to the best that this democracy can accomplish. We will see how bad we want it now.

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


Mister Mark

It Isn't Even Funny Anymore

We've run out of jokes. We've run out of the need to tell them.

It's because it isn't funny anymore. This guy isn't even worth the trouble to find humor in him.

He's his own running joke. That's why he's wearing us down.

I recall, not long ago, seeing a performance of The Capitol Steps. If you've never done so, I'd recommend it. They really are good. They began as Congressional staffers in DC, mocking the politicians they worked for. Their shows are incredibly clever, what with lyrics made up from classic songs that fit into the present-day, ongoing debacles. At times, you're laughing too loudly at one musical comment while others go right by you because you can't hear them. Nobody gets a break, either. It may be the last, hilarious holdout of the Fairness Doctrine.

After all, we might as well laugh about the problems while we're flailing away at them. To that extent, The Capitol Steps fulfill an endless need.

But I kept thinking as I watched this time--I have gone to see them on weekend nights in DC, where they play incessantly, five times, as well as elsewhere--during the first, increasingly embarrassing time of 45's stumbling, fumbling, sandpaper-coarse term, that the jokes were already wearing thin and falling flat. It's too easy, I kept saying to myself. He's too awful. So are his assistants. This isn't funny. This is awful. Tragic. Ridiculous.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Kellyanne Conway? Sean Spicer? Steve Mnuchin? Wilbur Ross? Mick Mulvaney, who can say that storms go wherever he wants them to? Dismissive. Arrogant. Incompetent. Sycophantic. Purveyors of a twisted reality only they understand.

And, especially, angry. Just. Like. Him.

With forerunners--this show dates back to Reagan--the troupe needed exaggeration and some sense of conjuring to come up with effective parody. Not this crew, though. All they have to do is show up and the embarrassment begins anew. They don't need to be parodied. They merely need to be described.

So 45 fires John Bolton as National Security Director and he promises to reply "in due course." Bolton's going to tell him off? Uh-huh. And he considers himself an authority worth listening to, who hasn't already scared the hell out of us as a warmongering icon?

But no. It isn't me who's crazy, he's likely to say and/or imply. This guy is crazy. He's the one who has it all wrong. He's the one leading us down the primrose path. He should be trusting me, not Pompeo, the new pomposity now in charge, the religiously afflicted Secretary of State without personality. 45's going to give him two jobs now, as if they're basically the same: Diplomacy and aggression, all rolled up into one fun gig.

I can feel you starting to laugh. See? You don't have to pay 35 bucks to see the humor in all this anymore. It's right there in front of you. The comedy is on. The tragedy perseveres. The remedy still seems too far off.

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


Mister Mark

Of Course We Should Remember. But How?

9-11 once again. Unquestionably, it will remain to haunt our memories the same way December 7 and November 22 have: As a moment when all our lives changed forever, when we looked at the world in new and unsatisfying ways.

Like the other two, 9-11 has created a distortion of our history and how we should consider the terrible event against the backdrop of the rest of it. The reaction to it has marred the meaning of our nation--to the rest of the world and to ourselves. Consider, though we are 18 years separated from that day:

• The extraordinary rendition, a.k.a. torture, that we have justified to gain information from prisoners, contrary to anything we previously helped to put into place, such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention;
• The blurring of the definitions of crime and war so that we can claim either or both when it fits our purposes;
• What should be an embarrassing fact that defendants, or accused war criminals (See above--your choice), have not had a trial date scheduled for themselves until last month--18 years after the event--and will have to wait yet another year for the trials to begin, heaven knowing how long all those will take, being held without bond in the meantime;
• A continued, knee-jerk reaction against Muslims living in this country, nearly all of them wanting only to be left alone to gain from citizenship;
• An increasingly irrational position on Israel and the West Bank, serving only to aggravate tensions between it and its enemies, far and wide;
• The reduction in civil liberties and fear of utilizing the right of free speech on both ends of the political spectrum;
• The ridiculous, self-aggrandizing, completely unjustifiable, lie-based war in Iraq which served only to unleash instability in the Middle East that survives to this day;
• An explosion in presidential power relative to that of Congress, justified by re-definition of security issues by Bush-43 which is now being expanded by the incredibly irresponsible and reckless 45 (but also expanded by Obama, which cannot be overlooked); and, of course,
• The endless, quicksanded war in Afghanistan that seems to be necessary regardless of the opaque and gray results relative to its proposed purpose--to reduce the possibilities of foreign terrorism on our soil, itself a rather ridiculous notion since terrorists can hide anywhere they wish to, making the sublimation of any particular nation moot and nearly pointless, unless we wish to sublimate all of them.

This list is probably a short one, but I think it'll do for now. Against the backdrop of the horror and drama of that day, as we head deeper into the post 9-11 future, we must ask ourselves: Has all of this worked to our satisfaction? Have all these adjustments made us feel better? Look better? Be better? Are such questions, themselves, hopelessly moot so that we can only conclude that crap happens and we have to lurch on in spite of it, having no other choice?

In other words: Has 9-11 ruined us permanently? Have the terrorists won? Or can we still create the kind of future in which we stare this in the face and say: It will never be the same, true. Yet, it can be better than it was beforehand, when we were still basking in the glow of the end of the Cold War as the pride of our universe--never freer, never stronger, never less challengeable.

Then one tragedy, however enormous, has managed to undo us. Granted, the day featured incredible acts of heroism amidst the slaughter, led by the victims of Flight 93, who acted in a way that can only be described as supra-human, and the first responders at One and Two World Trade Center. In their honor, though, we cannot continue to

• unnecessarily divide ourselves; 
• unnecessarily ban immigrants from the freedom that we claim we still have; 
• continue to be held hostage by automatic weapons and their abusers;
• keep pretending that racism doesn't exist or isn't very serious;
• continue to drain and diminish our educational system; 
• backtrack over the gains we have made to make our environment safer for today and tomorrow; or to 
• act like other countries and peoples simply don't matter in policy decisions.

In other words, abandon the leadership that the world has always relied upon us to display and practice. It has been a temptation, true, to which we have succumbed far too often. But this inclination to withdraw and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist is kind of like the elephant in the room that thinks it's hiding in the corner. The corner's not large enough to envelop it and even if it were, its tracks are unmistakeable.

Let's see if we can return to our former position. Let's see if, while commemorating those who perished, we can pivot upon their sacrifice and dedicate ourselves to creating the kind of country they'd miss if they knew about it. At the moment, it isn't. It's our fault and our opportunity.

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

Mister Mark

The Top Ten Magazines in the U.S.: A Geriatric Review

I'm not sure where I found it, but I double-checked its accuracy: The ten most read magazines in the U.S. I guess I shouldn't have been astonished:

• AARP
• AARP Bulletin
• Game Informer
• Better Homes and Gardens
• Reader's Digest
• Good Housekeeping
• Family Circle
• National Geographic
• People
• Woman's Day

Mark Twain, I believe, was the one who said that people who don't read have no advantage over those who can't. Let's go one deeper: People who don't read about anything outside of what directly matters to them personally have no advantage and have largely wasted their talents.

Females reading this might take umbrage. And I don't want to sound hypocritical: I have read many of these publications at one point or another. In fact, I subscribe to three of them, if the top two are to be taken separately, except if you get #1 you also get #2. (The other is National Geographic, the one part of this list that I'd call commendable, and the change in approach in which is something I've recently written about very positively.) Of the rest, with the exception of #3, which I've never seen and have to desire to do so now that I've gained my 26th birthday, I manage to open in various offices of people looking after various parts of my body.

If you think that this list merely scrapes off a certain clientele, consider that #12 is Taste of Home and #13 is Ladies Home Journal. Only Time, at #11, constitutes what would be a decent review of current events in the more serious matters of public affairs. Sports Illustrated, a totally guy-mag, comes in at 14. We don't even get to dating, sex and glamour until 15 with Cosmopolitan. We haven't stopped thinking about sex, but it has to wait until the furniture is rearranged.

What does this say about us? Quite a bit. For instance:

• Males intensely driven about pointless things, read magazines. Most of the rest don't bother. Those that know my background might consider that, once upon a time, I was a sports columnist. But my philosophy about sports and games was, and will always be, that they have achieved an importance to Americans that far outweighs or betrays their true value. After 18 years of writing about them, I gave up. I don't even watch exhibition football anymore.
• Taking care of one's home must be endlessly challenging, since so many women read about it so often. On the other hand, they might be trying not to bore themselves half to death and read about new ideas concerning the same old thing. Good for them, I guess.
• Too many people still don't know the difference between a Reader's Digest version of an article and the real thing, and they still don't care. RD had by far the first leg up on sanitized information, a.k.a. fake news, and still leads the league. We prefer what we read, we read what we prefer, and we prefer to believe it. The alternatives to RD would probably be in the category of elementary school readings.
• With one exception, these are tried-and-true brands that go back at least half a century if not more. Baby boomers, in other words, love magazines. We don't necessarily dig online stuff. We might turn to our androids to read all kinds of things, too, but we love these in the mail on schedule. It might mean that getting something at our doorsteps daily, like newspapers, isn't what we need anymore (contributing to the gradual, sad snuffing out of that medium). But those of us over 50 still like to have something to look at and hold in our hands every so often. We don't have to wait for it to boot up. All we have to do is turn a page. It doesn't take nearly as much thumb manipulation, which is good for those of us with arthritis.
• Television and other media still provide us with the most preferred information on current affairs. Journals all along the political spectrum are still legion, and some are quite good. We don't like taking all that much time to reading them, either. Some, like the New Yorker, have reduced the enormous length of the main stories of their issues. Anything longer than 12 or 14 pages, now, is surprising. 30 years ago, stories sometimes ran 30 or 35 pages. Despite those adjustments, we still lean on TV to deliver news and with the proliferation of cable news, I don't see that doing anything but increasing. It's packaged into repeatable schedules of our days, it has a predictable start and ending, and it's delivered by (mostly) pleasant-looking people who fill our needs for information that's (mostly) accurate and (mostly) very fast. When it's up-to-the-minute, it provides the same kinds of drama that TV drama is supposed to provide--except it's real, it's happening to someone else so we remain detached, and it captivates despite (mostly) the lack of happy endings. All of which means that...
• We still appreciate news, but we don't like to think about it very much. Magazines make you do both. That bothers us because we don't like being bothered, never mind what it is that is actually bothering us. That gets delivered by political entities, which compete to see which phraseology, however briefly stated, gets under our skin and remains. Who needs a magazine for that? Hell, that would take hours to read. Forget it: Reruns of Friends are on. But within that scenario is how we are captured by political consultants even though we are in the most accessible media arena the world has yet seen. They package, we absorb (Does that sound kind of like "We report, you decide?" Packaging of the packaging?). Screw the analysis.

The above-mentioned study didn't mention the numbers that each magazine distributes each month, and whether those numbers are growing or not and at what pace. Demographic information was also lacking, but it wouldn't be a stretch to conclude that these represent mostly white subscribers with a bit of extra money on their hands.

Does this make us well-informed? Well, yes. And no, at least not in terms of the kind of citizenry that Jefferson and others foresaw. The First Amendment is still there. It is ripe for the taking. Maybe the next generation's reading tastes will be more eclectic, and they will utilize their opportunities better.

In the meantime, did you know or recognize that Starbucks doesn't carry newspapers any longer? Makes for an odd and sad kind of place, with nothing but people staring at their iPods. mostly by themselves. If you're up for watching loneliness happen, stop by and order a latte soon.

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


Mister Mark 

Let's Change the Qualifications for Being President

I'll bet that, if you've read this blog before, you took one look at the title before clicking and said to yourself: This is going to be dripping with sarcasm.

Nope. (Okay, not much) I thought of this the other day. I think it could work very well.

I was reading a review of a book written by Samantha Power, former UN ambassador for the Obama Administration. (It was somewhat critical.) She was born in Ireland. That makes her ineligible for the presidency.

In my view, that's too bad. Here's someone with considerable governmental experience, very articulate and intelligent (what a concept!), certainly well-regarded amongst international colleagues, and of course a Democrat--and she can't run. (Not that there's any room this year.) But in 2024 or 2028? It might be just the right time for her. I mean, it isn't as if she doesn't know anything about living here.

Turns out she came to America at a young age. That means she's been a citizen here for at least 35 years.

Hmmmm. 35 years. That's the age that the Constitution says a person serving as president has to be.

So? Let's combine the two concepts. I propose to amend the Constitution thus: Any person can be president who has been a citizen of the United States for no less than 35 years. You can drop the age requirement: This takes care of that. And residency within the country for 14 years, as it also says? No problem.

How does that sound? If you come here as a kid, you get to be a citizen right away. The clock starts. If you were 6 and remained living here, you can run for president at age 41. If you were 15, you can run at age 50. Lots of people run for president between those two ages.

What if you come here at age 25? Well, get in the queue for citizenship. It'll take a while, maybe three or four years. All right: You take the oath at age 29. You get to run for president at age 64. That's younger than knucklehead president 45, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. It's younger than Hillary Clinton and Ronald Reagan were when they ran for the first time.

Why should we do this? Samantha Power would be just one reason. Arnold Schwartzenegger might be another. He was governor of California and a Republican, unfortunately, but--he's also woke on climate change. (He also divorced his wife, a Kennedy descendant, because he had a love child with his family's maid. But at this point, with 45 as the latest example, would it not be more forgivable?)

Beyond that: Henry Kissinger. Albert Einstein. More recently, Jennifer Granholm, Democratic former governor of Michigan, born in Canada (I mean, how foreign is that?). All born elsewhere, all brilliant people. All could have been possible candidates.

Lots of foreign-born people have been governors, too. You can look that up on Google.

Why should we do this? Because we're wasting enormous amounts of talent and enormous amounts of opportunity. Someone who might be one of our five greatest presidents might never get that chance. That hurts that person. That hurts the country.

It is also a nod toward what we've known for a very long time: That people who truly want to come here are very, very interested in improving their lives. They see this country as the place to do so. The very people who might look at this nation with fresh eyes, who might see something we don't see, are blocked from applying their thinking to advance us.

That advancement is exactly what we want. Right?

If you see this as a way to push back against the trashing that 45 has done against migrants, so be it. There are worse ways to wreak vengeance against someone that awful. There are few better ways to extend a new hand toward those who want in--to guarantee that, should they stick around long enough and advance themselves enough to become politically viable, they too can extend their hope to the ultimate goal.

If they come here for freedom, they come here, too, for opportunity--not without a price, but with the possibility that someone born here can also have. Native-born Americans will still have a head start on them, as they should. But after 35 years, if you're paying attention, you can be every bit the citizen, if not more, than anyone else.

America has always been known for its possibility. I don't see any reason to limit that, even about being president of it.

Yes, I know: Politically, it's DOA in the present Congress, 2/3 agreement of both houses of which would be the first step needed to pass an amendment. But adjustments have been made before. Political turmoil has been endured, and decent things have come from it. We can get through this time not just because we need to, but because new promise may be ahead (difficult to consider that as it is).

Let's do that. Let's look forward and commit ourselves to be better and to give that betterment some substance. Let's start here.

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


Mister Mark