Politics and Religion Do Not--Or, Should Not--Mix

The intent was genuine but came up short.

My church--I will not tell you where--sponsored what came to be a three-part lecture from a known author about, well, I'm not sure. I think it was about being a citizen and professing one's faith. She's a well-known writer on gratitude, which of course we should all have. But I'm not sure she should have been called in to discuss the impact of politics.

The presentation rambled and wandered and did not reach a significant conclusion. The pastor thanked her for sharing her wisdom. I did not feel wiser. The pastor, I think, wants to dabble in politics without going real deep. You can't have it both ways, though.

It was a nice try, but all I really now know is that the author used to be a well-known young Republican in Arizona. Now she's seen the light, I guess. She certainly voted for Joe Biden.

She tried to equate, I think, being a good churchgoer with community, which according to her blended into political participation. I think. Except the vitality of democracy depends on voting, not belonging to a church, too. The two are not the same. They will never be.

I belong to a church because of spiritual choice, not to enhance my citizen chops. Yes, I think that a majority of the members share my political beliefs, or close to it, and that makes me more comfortable, so perhaps my tribalism is showing. I do know that if the opposite was true, I would go looking for another church. I don't have to tolerate people, at least a majority of them, who live in a world they have concocted, one they prefer, one that doesn't exist except in their own minds.

Within gatherings I prefer to attend, I would rather talk to others who believe facts and science and progress and what the Constitution really means--that within it, once again I say this, the original document (Article VI) notes that no religious test is necessary to hold public office. It was put there for a reason: That our religiosity is diverse and can't be centered on any one faith. Neither should it, though a disturbing number want it to be so.

Sorry, but we live in a secular state. Nobody's bible dictates how the government functions. The Constitution does, and should.

I know that an attitude like mine violates what Christianity is supposed to be--tolerating others with differing viewpoints. But politics crosses a territory, and then I get to discriminate if I want. Those on the other side of the fence can be obnoxiously condescending and cling to a belief that includes rigidity and answers already provided. I don't think that way and don't have to. I don't have to listen to it, either. I think it does damage to our political life and culture. And it annoys me.

I can go to church all the time, feel good about belonging to it, and never vote. I can vote every time and be an atheist. If one influences the other, so be it. But the influence isn't solid, directly connected, or implicit.

The author said that her former church in Alexandria, Virginia, used to be flag-waving and conservative as any other church could be. She said that there was a pro-Reagan sign put up amidst the three typically symbolic crosses on a church lawn in the 1980s. That should never have happened, but she did not discuss rise of the Moral Majority that provided an excuse for it, that has to a large extent led us to someone who now openly manipulates the attachment of beliefs to personal loyalty, who held a bible upside down (great, inadvertent symbolism) to somehow try to counteract protestors against black people being murdered by police. That so many people were taken with it simply says that, as we have seen so much recently, people can attach religious devotion to any other pursuit and justify it. There is enough in the Christian bible to find something there out of context.

Then the same people changed their minds, she said, and began to promote liberal causes some ten years later. She suggested, therefore, that we don't give up on people who think differently than us, that someday they will come around. Thing is, it was a congregation with the same name but were they the same people? I wonder. And isn't that what some of them are thinking?

That it happened to her in Alexandria, Virginia, means that, as we have seen, Virginia has turned on itself and is now remarkably blue. There has been no discussion during the campaign that it is even close to carrying for 45. He's not campaigning there.

What happened in Alexandria happened in many areas within the state, and the city itself has gone from a nearly rural exurb to a genuine suburb of Washington, DC, with lots of old and new money combining. Ironically, the District is the safest, most idyllic place for liberals to function. No doubt they spilled over into Alexandria, a short Metro stop away. I'm more confident that's what happened to that congregation.

Then take Wisconsin. It is the poster child for Republican gerrymandering, both federal and state. It protects itself against a blue majority. The Republican-held legislature hasn't met since April. April. No discussion. No proposals, No legislation. Nothing.

The attitude of the Wisconsin Republican Party toward the pandemic has become filled with despair and complete acceptance of helplessness, connected with religion: "God is in control." Don't give up? That's what giving up means to them: Connect it with religion, and you can excuse not wearing masks or following a governor's executive order. You can justify the utter irresponsibility. Now, Wisconsin's percentage of positive testing has hit an all-time high. God's in charge here. We can't help it.

 

We must be really bad people, I guess. Or there are too many stupid, stubborn people who won't wear masks. Either way, Wisconsin's infection rate is at an all-time high.

There is a guy running for the state legislature in the Minocqua area--"up north" as the locals put it--who has simply decided not to waste his time trying to convince those who oppose him; they aren't worth the effort (saw this on Facebook). The author we heard should talk to him. He has concluded, as I have, that it is useless to talk to people with such a conjured sense of reality. To be persuaded, one must agree non a basic set of facts that are undeniable. They don't.

The author believes that politics comes from community. I disagree. Community, in its essence, emerges from consensus--unarguable conclusions about the state of things, from which all can move together in harmony. We are not at that moment. Politics, in its purest form, is a competition for access to power. If one side doesn't think it can achieve that, it is forced to compromise to get part of what it wants. 

The Constitutional Convention, if one reads about it, is a perfect example of that. The splitting of legislative power between the states and the people, the Senate and the House, was a workmanlike conclusion made after days of deadlock. No consensus could be reached. It had to be addressed. The legislature was a white elephant, completely useless. The nation could not move forward without major adjustments.

Nobody wanted to compromise. They had to. It is not preferable; consensus is. But when there's no general agreement, politics takes over. Deals are made. People exhale and move on.

I don't want my church to be that kind of place. I want to think about spiritual things there, things nobody needs to argue about. I want them to be separate from political matters of state and locality. Jefferson was right about that "wall of separation": it serves the polity correctly and prevents the state from establishing religion--any religion. They saw the problem back then. It was simpler to wall religion off, lest it infect political thinking.

But 45 milks religion to appeal to emotion and personal loyalty, even though he's clearly not religious. Michael Cohen said as much in his book: 45 plays along with the faith healers to get their vote and those of their adherents. He has appointed a handmaiden to the Supreme Court for exactly that reason. He doesn't mean or follow any of it. Too many people are too easily taken in by it.

We should be smarter than that. Joe Biden is a practicing Catholic, but he can separate political issues from beliefs. So could just about every other president we've ever had.

It's another way Joe Biden is simply normal and 45 isn't. Your vote should be obvious. Please do so if you haven't already.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Government, and the People Within It, Are To Be Appreciated, Not Condemned

How many people work in government in this country? Do you have any idea?

I mean all levels of government: Local, county, state, federal. No, neither do I.

But there have to be a lot of them: Millions. The number of people who work for the Department of Energy alone is about 110,000.

Bet you never knew that. You don't run up against them in everyday life, not even without the pandemic.

And what do they do? Among other things, they insure that nuclear materials don't get into the hands of those with nefarious intent. And they close off places in which nuclear fission has taken place so people don't get radiation sickness, from which you can die. Pretty important stuff, huh? 

Nope, I never knew that, either. And of course I never taught it in any of my social studies classes. I feel a little sheepish about that, but then, there couldn't have been time because you then have to cover all the other Cabinet positions, too. It took enough time to go over the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The DOE employees, many of which have been there for a generation or more, do important, crucial work. If nobody else did it or we left it to private investors, it wouldn't get done and we'd be in much, much deeper trouble than we already are, which is plenty if you haven't noticed.

How do I know this? I read "The Fifth Risk," by Michael Lewis, as important a work than has been published during this forlorn, awful era in our history. It's so important to understand just how incompetent 45's administration has been, starting with naming particularly unqualified people to fill positions that take, normally, people of exquisite training and expertise to do.

The book is, actually, a quick read. Much of it, the part discussing the DOE, already appeared in Vanity Fair before it hit the stands in book form. It scared me when I read it. Then I read the rest of the book. It was printed two years ago. 

To think that we've gone through four years of this nonsense and not completely fallen apart must mean first, that enough people caring about this country stayed at their posts instead of running for the exits screaming, which is remarkable enough; and second, that the so-called Deep State, the bureaucrats who apparently plot endlessly against a paranoid president, have in fact saved the country to this point--but whose grip on the levers of real, genuine power can't hold on forever.

But they're people. They have lives and families. They're not faceless robots. They need to make a living, and they make it serving us. We should kiss the ground that they're still willing to do so. Instead, many of us want their jobs to end without thinking about who else would do it.

I ran into this in Texas, where I tried to lead retirees. The Republican-led legislature tried again and again to limit access to a decent pension, which of course would discourage anyone from going into public service for a career. Who or what would replace those people? Good question. Nobody discussed that. I guess nobody needed to. The few Democrats in the legislature kept saying: These are people. They're no one's enemy. They want to help us. They like helping us.

Teachers are but one example. I taught in a public school. That made me a government worker. I liked it when kids learned stuff. It was fun. Yeah, I made them do assignments. Yeah, the tests I gave were hard. But I thought learning what I taught was important. It gave my work integrity--like many other government workers who aren't teachers.

And I made sure to try to give both sides of an issue. Otherwise, there would be a decided political edge to what I did, and that wouldn't be fair. No one can be purely objective about anything, but one can be sure to check on his bias before handing it out.

I allowed myself to be politically attacked at one point in my career. But all that it appeared to be was on the surface. All anyone had to do was visit my classroom for one or two days to see that I put politics into my history teaching only as informational context, not doctrine. That would be wrong. And there's a big difference.

Besides, being a teacher shouldn't be a political appointment. That isn't good for the polity. 45, though, wants to write an executive order making civil service subject to political whims, bringing us back to the days of Andrew Jackson. See above: Much of what government service now entails is just too complicated. We have to have skilled people, not politically-minded people, in place to perform governmental roles efficiently and give taxpayers their best value for their dollars.

And they do it without fanfare. They are so taken for granted that their successes are downplayed, if not ignored. Others take advantage sometimes. The next time you hear an AccuWeather report, know that it's just a jazzed up version of what the National Weather Service does. AccuWeather makes money selling its forecasts to stations, but it takes the base information right from the NWS. Without the NWS, it couldn't function. Not quite a ripoff, but not quite genuine, either.

45 wants you to think it's easy to be a government employee, that anybody could do it, to look the other way while it's being politicized. That way you won't mind if government jobs are populated entirely by sycophants and toadies. Then the information you get is tainted, unreliable, and unprofessional.

The trust in government would then plummet. But 45 would be able to control it all. That's a subtle way of expanding authoritarianism that would hurt us daily, just not everyone at once so it would be easier to hide it. Just another price to be paid about putting the wrong person, a plotting, devious person, in the top job.

If you haven't voted yet, you must now take your mailed ballot to a dropbox, because it's too late to guarantee that it will reach its destination by Election Day. Or, go vote yourself. If so, wear a mask. But please go vote and free us from this horrible monster, maintaining the credibility of the people who wish to honestly serve you. It counts as never before.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. Please vote. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Was It Really Avoidable? If Not, Now What? What Does That Mean?

Remember "Cultural Literacy"? It was a trend in the 1980s. A guy named E. D. Hirsch gathered a whole bunch of facts--recall "Trivial Pursuit" was also a hit in that time--and said that to be culturally relevant and to be considered "knowledgeable," you needed to know these things: Kind of a "fill in the blank and be prepared to use it in a functional sentence" kind of thing. Its subheading was "What Every American Needs to Know."

Of course, you had to look them up. It wasn't done for you, you silly. You may have learned, or were supposed to have learned, them in school, but in the rush and clamor of daily life as a real adult, probably forgot them because they didn't appear in something you need to read for your job, if you needed to read anything at all. Hirsch was trying to tweak the public into re-examining the meaning of learning, which isn't a bad thing.

Billy Joel did something of the same in a song, "We Didn't Start the Fire," in which he traced events and names connected with them, some of which people knew automatically and some didn't, from World War II to the 1990s. I once had some of my students look those items up. Some actually did, some copied from each other. I would like to think that some of them thought about it.

It sparked many conversations, all by itself, never mind the items listed. And in the educational realm, its knowledge--or, in fact, the quest to know the list--partly defined what was known as being "gifted," especially if you were under 16 years old and knew a considerable number of them. Being interested in it at all meant that you were young but liked to talk about adult stuff, in which case you could see beyond the edge of your nose and perhaps had some intellectual maturity.

The trend eventually burned itself out, for no other reason than needing to be conversant in some topics faded and others emerged. Today, it all happens so fast that trying to keep track of it all makes you a horrible nerd, which is the curse of the gifted.

Was that conservative or liberal? Good question. I suppose if you insisted that people know it to be considered smart, you were conservative because you figure that no matter how old, there are some things worth knowing and keeping in the back of your head, like the meaning of July 4, 1776 (and Pearl Harbor, which our president didn't seem to know about when taken there). If you already knew them, you were liberal because you were already too sophisticated for most of us and probably claimed to know more details about it, such that July 2, 1776 is technically the real date of American independence (and that Pearl Harbor was actually a missed opportunity for the Japanese). But who's to quibble?

I have a book called "The Intellectual Devotional". Printed in the 1990s, it has one topic described per page, per day, through the entire year. The premise is that if you are conversant on such topics, you will be a hit at parties and considered an intellectual--hey, I'd like to actually go to a party without fear of getting sick enough to die right now; I'll just stand and listen, thank you very much--even though what you know about the topic may be confined to that page.

But at least you know something about 365 things that most others don't, or forgot, which beats most people who know nothing. Not only that, but it's divided categorically, so you can look like an expert about different kinds of stuff. It kind of extended the Cultural Literacy list and allowed you one source to look these things up, taking away that necessity, too. 

It made you smart on some things but lazy in the desire to truly know it. But in a sense, don't we all do that since it's impossible to know everything about everything?

So I decided, with the pandemic as a backdrop and plenty of time, to reread these items one day at a time. This morning it came up with the word "modality." Okay, it's not a word most people discuss at cocktail parties, at least not the ones I've attended.

Modality means the determination of whether or not something that happened was necessary or contingent. If it was contingent, it could have been stopped by someone, at some time, somewhere, if someone had gone to the trouble.

Modality, to be sure, isn't a black-and-white thing. Some of climate change really is inevitable. We are part of a universe that chooses on its own. But some of it, a considerable part of it, is man-made. That much we can address, divert, and get a handle on.

So? Was the pandemic contingent? Was the degree to which it has been a scourge in this country necessary? Or was it inevitable?

45 doesn't think it matters. "We're learning to live with it," he said the other night at the debate. That summarizes his attitude: It doesn't matter anyhow, because it's here. He, of course, wants you to disregard how it actually got here, because he'll be the first to tell you that it was China's fault, as if it plotted the pandemic to kill so many of us.

That's ridiculous, of course, since it killed a whole bunch of them before it got here. What he wants you to do is say, well, a number of us would have died anyhow, so after a while, the numbers are just numbers, and don't need to be considered in any other way.

That would leave him off the hook, because he did try, you know. Nobody can say he didn't.

But he did such a token, horseshit job: 

• He stopped the planes but made exceptions.
• He said really stupid things, like cutting back on the testing would reduce the numbers--a really anti-cultural literacy comment since it leads to the inevitability of ignorance being bliss.
• He suggested that injecting bleach would be a good idea, then tried to dismiss it as sarcasm, as if sarcasm in such a situation would be at all appropriate, or at least inappropriate. 
• He insulted scientists who tried to help and muted them from coming forward. 
• He held daily press briefings to spew generalities designed to mollify us into believing that we were getting close to a cure. That began in the spring, remember?
• Instead of making an effort for everyone to mask up, he left that to the states and suggested that those that vote blue had a bigger problem. If they once had, now they don't.

But this is the emperor of impropriety, and he wants you to accept that without accountability. His response still is: It would have come here anyhow. Besides, as he also tried to say, we're turning the corner.

Yes, we are: Straight into hell. Cases are higher now than they've been since July. He's been in charge since the first minute we knew. He doesn't know anything more than he did back then.

No, said Joe Biden, we're learning to die with it. Heading toward a quarter-million, a total we'll get to by just after the election. It was 45's responsibility to limit the numbers of the sick and the dead. By all measurements, he hasn't done that nearly as well as he could have.

He's a loser in the game that everyone else is playing. He got sick himself, and because he was privileged, got the very best care at the quickest possible time--unlike so many who are sick, got sick, and died.

At no time do I want anyone like this in a leadership position of any kind, not to mention the most important in the country. At no time do I want anyone this craven near me, speaking to me, assigned to pretend that he cares about me when he clearly doesn't. He makes me sick.

So no, the disease wasn't avoidable. It's absurd, too, to pretend that. Commerce allows what oceans can stop. 

He didn't start that fire. But its resistance could have been organized and coordinated nationally, and it's now clear through journalism that he knew how serious it was far before he said so. He actually thought, hoped really, that it would go away on its own. He didn't think about its possibilities, didn't consider them, didn't plan for them. He is complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands.

It would have been so easy for him to be the whole country's hero. All he might have done was tell everyone to lock down for one month and just see what happens to the virus. It might have all but disappeared. But no, he probably figured that one of his investments had a chance of diminishing, so he tried to play both ends against the middle. He, and we, paid the price and are still paying.

For that reason alone--there are so many others; naked influence peddling is another--he should not be returned to office. He is a genuine menace to the nation. He has reduced the enjoyment of my life, for the time it will continue, and yours, too. I cannot go everywhere I want to go. I cannot do everything I want to do. The country cannot open back up until and unless this is dealt with successfully.

Go and please vote him out (and vote early to avoid potentially plague-ridden lines) if you haven't already done so. Do not pass this opportunity to express yourself.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

In Baseball, You Don't Know Nothin'

It's all so improbable that you almost have to laugh if you cared enough.

People don't care nearly as much about baseball as before, and a glance at the sport indicates why. It's all done with algorithms now, and adjustments which make a mockery of the way players are supposed to be distributed on a baseball field.

Players walk around with scouting reports inside their caps to remind them of where they're supposed to be standing. No more do coaches and managers take out a towel and wave it at them to move to the left, right, farther or closer. Usually, three infielders are perched on one side of the diamond or another, a blasphemy of how they should normally be standing.

If you like numbers and statistics and odds and tendencies, this might have an attraction. But it ruins the romance of the sport. It does serve a purpose, though: Batting averages are lower than they've been in quite some time. Not only do hitters fail more often, they fail more easily. They try just as hard and sometimes hit the ball just as well, but not only are they still out, it looks like it was planned that way all along. Defenders often do not have to move. The ball looks magnetic.

The pitchers are far more skillful. They throw harder than ever. They change speeds smoothly and usually without detection. The hitters are incredibly challenged. They strike out far more often.

It gets boring, quite honestly, and as an old guy who was raised near a major league ballpark and occasionally got to see these incredible players, you tend to lose appreciation--and interest. It takes a guy like me, who played catcher, still the hub of the game, to keep watching games in which the home team isn't involved because it's the World Series--which is, you know, the World Series.

The Series is fading in significance not quite an anachronism but falling in importance from what it used to be, like battleships and toaster ovens. If you appreciate it foremost, you have to be a certain age.

Even then, the Series is now an accumulation of four series of games, which when you finally get to it after the preliminary series, there's an exhaustion that tends to set in. You want the thing to be over sooner, not later, like other romances that fade. It used to be that the World Series put just enough tension into the season; now, there's too much.

So when a game takes place that defies all that has gone before it, that despite the plans and algorithms of the opponents ends up quite unlike anything you've ever seen before, you have to stop and marvel. Such a game, such an ending within a game, happened Saturday night. 

The Tampa Bay Rays, a team few have heard of, beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team nearly everyone has heard of, in a way that most everybody is still trying to figure out but in a way that shows that the game is still marvelous and that, as the late, great Yogi Berra pointed out: In baseball, you don't know nothin'.

The final drama had a deserving buildup. The Dodgers took early leads but the Rays wouldn't let them get away. It was 2-0, then 2-1, then 3-1, then 3-2, then 4-2. Then Brandon Lowe, normally a superb hitter but stuck on trying to pull the ball, which is what the Dodgers have so pleasantly allowed him to do so he can be retired and not bother them, has learned that to help his team, he has to adjust and hit the ball to the opposite field, which is left. He has hit three home runs in this Series, and all have been to the left of center field. He hit another one last night, a three-run blast, which put Tampa Bay in front 5-4 in the sixth.

But the Dodgers came back and immediately regained a 6-5 lead on Joc Peterson's two-run single in the seventh. That lasted exactly one-half inning, when Kevin Kiermaier, who can look just awful missing the ball, homered too and tied it up.

But Dodger shortstop Corey Seager, who has been destroying Ray pitching, hitting rockets even when making out, hit a flare to left to drive in yet another lead run in the eighth. That may have been caused by an error that won't show up in the books, something connoisseurs of the game notice. Tampa Bay shortstop Willy Adames kept faking toward the Dodgers' Chris Taylor, who was on second base that inning, trying to keep him from gaining too much of a lead and perhaps making him hold up at third base upon a single. 

But he kept trying to do it with two outs, which is more or less a fool's errand because a runner on second will be leaving with the crack of the bat, gain four or five steps head start, and probably score from second on a single regardless of how it's hit. In staying too close to the bag, Adames potentially missed making a remarkable play on Seager's Texas Leaguer. The ball fell, and Taylor scored anyhow. 

Such a subtle mistake, and potentially such a big price. If Tampa Bay were to lose, they would be down 3-1 in a best-of-seven Series, with the Dodgers' ace Clayton Kershaw, who has been pitching great this post-season, ready to retake the mound tomorrow and close things out.

It got to the bottom of the ninth with LA in front, 7-6. Right-hander Kenley Jansen came in for the Dodgers to mop up, he with the cutter that saws off bats and leaves hitters grasping. A cutter is a nasty, wicked pitch, thrown at fastball speed and, thrown by a right-handed pitcher, moving into the inside edge of the plate for a left-handed hitter, away from a right-handed hitter. Batters often hit the ball, but because the cutter moves at the last possible split-second, the batter's estimate of hitting the ball on the sweet part of the bat, the one designed to propel it far, is distorted and the ball goes a much shorter distance instead. It's a recipe for easy outs, which is why Jansen has lasted as long as he has: He has one of the most efficient cutters in the sport, and doesn't have to work nearly has hard as other pitchers do to gain the same results. It's how Mariano Rivera lasted so long with the New York Yankees, and entered the Hall of Fame unanimously.

But even then things don't always work out. Jansen struck out the first Rays hitter. Kiermaier came up and completely shattered his bat, exactly what Jansen would have wanted, but the ball got to short center field and managed to clear a diving Dodger second baseman Kiki Hernandez, who had a chance because he was, indeed, backed up into short right field by algorithms, by two inches. Kiermaier was on with a single.

Still no big deal. The Dodgers still led by a run, there was already one out, and a double play would settle matters. Jansen got a second out when Joey Wendle, hitting the ball much harder this time, nonetheless found left fielder Peterson's glove after he had been made to run backwards a few steps. One out to go.

Coming up now was Randy Azozarena, with the improbable name--how many guys named Randy do you know who can't speak English?--and the improbable post-season, in which he has been tearing up pitching staffs by hitting nine home runs in 18 games and batting north of .350. It was enough by now that the Dodgers gathered at a team meeting on the mound, with the pitching coach huddling to go over, once again, how they would be pitching to him. That's respect.

They nearly got what they wanted. The count reached 1 and 2: Down to the last strike. But Azozarena kept fouling off Jansen's pitches, which is usually a hitter's warning: I may have you timed. The Dodgers have already paid for that, which is why Jansen eventually walked him. The tying run got pushed to second. A hit would score him.

But the next hitter was a fellow named Brett Phillips, a hanger-on. Playing for two teams this year, he has hit less than .200 with each. He has been put in the game because, with adjustments, he's pretty much all Manager Kevin Cash has left. Not only that, but Phillips hadn't faced live pitching in 17 games. It looked like a mismatch. But.

The count reached 1 and 2 again; one strike still to go. Jansen was giving Phillips nothing good to hit. The strikes were called, and on borderline pitches that were masterfully thrown. The end drew near.

The next cutter didn't do as much as Jansen wanted. It stayed out over the plate two or three inches farther. That's the difference between hitting the ball very weakly and making sufficient contact. Phillips swung and the ball fell beyond Hernandez's now much more futile reach into center field. It wasn't much of a hit, reminiscent of Luis Gonzalez's flare that won the 2001 World Series for Arizona off Rivera. But said Mercutio as he lay dying: 'Tis enough. 'Twill serve.

The game would be tied for sure. Kiermaier would score easily. And then it happened: Three well-trained, veteran Dodger players, on a team which to that point had made several terrific fielding plays, would be asked to make easy plays you can bet they knew how to do since they were nine years old, in some sandlot little league. But they didn't make them.

Chris Taylor came up to field Phillips' hit in center field. The ball didn't do anything like spin strangely; sometimes it does, but this time wasn't it. But he took his eye off the ball.

Why did he do that? Because Randy Azozorena is fast. Taylor was thinking, in probability, faster than he should have been thinking but that's what the other team's speed does, that Azozarena would be trying to get to third base, and that he would have to return the ball quickly to prevent that or even try to throw him out. But that made little sense. It was only a single to center. Azozarena would still be 90 feet away, and the game would still be tied.

That's what speed does if you aren't careful; it makes you play faster inside your head and you think you have to do something a little faster than you would normally do. That's how mistakes are made. Taylor failed to field the ball immediately.

In fact, the ball rolled away from him a good ten feet. Azozarena saw that and kicked his considerable speed into another gear. He was thinking that maybe he could score from first on the play.

So did third base coach Rodney Linares, who is there to decide whether to hold up runners who might easily be thrown out at the plate and give them a chance to score if someone else should reach base. But there was never a doubt; this was the moment. You do it by feel, Linares later said, which is how some decisions are made in sports: Carpe diem.

So he waved Azozarena home and home he flew. Except for one thing: He got so excited that he lost himself in that very crucial moment. He fell halfway there. He would be a dead duck. It was a terrible mistake.

You would think. But two more Dodger mistakes were left.

Taylor, now knowing his team was in trouble, fired the ball home. Maybe he saw Azozarena lighting out for the plate. In any event, the ball came in to the right of the plate. But teams have contingencies for wayward outfield throws; there is the cutoff man.

On a hit to the right of second base, the cutoff man is the first baseman. That's basic baseball. Everybody knows that. And first baseman Max Muncy was where he was supposed to be, about 60 feet from the plate.

He's done this plenty of times before: to catch the throw and, in one move, spin and throw it with some speed to the catcher, who would make the play. And Muncy did so, but his throw, too, came in on the right side of the plate as catcher Will Smith saw it. 

Muncy has made that play before, dozens and dozens of times in pre-game infield and in games themselves. The speed of the relay is also a consideration: once intercepted, you must make up the time. He did, but it was inaccurate. At this moment in this game, that mattered a lot.

Smith, reaching for the ball, would have to make a tough play, as he saw it: catch and spin with the ball to make the tag on a sliding Azozarena, in one move. But he's made that play before, too.

Muncy's throw needed to be on the other side of the plate. If it had been there, if Smith could have been facing in another direction, he would have known that Azozarena had fallen--in which case the play would be easy, the inning would end, and we would all go to the tenth inning and maybe beyond.

But Smith tried the catch-and-tag move that he thought was necessary. And he took his eye off the ball, which had not been thrown in a good spot. He failed to secure it. The ball spun away.

Azozarena, caught in No Man's Land, ready to get into a pickle which, in the big leagues, is nearly always futile, got up and had accepted his fate. Then he saw the ball hit the umpire and dart toward the backstop. He slid in head first and pounded his hands in joy on the plate. Game over: Rays win, 8-7.

It was crazy. But can we expect anything else in this year of utter craziness?

One of the most important Major League games of anybody's life was decided because three well-trained, experienced, professional fielders couldn't make simple plays. Maybe none of this will matter: Kershaw is pitching light's-out right now and maybe he will calm things down, put the Dodgers back in front, and Walker Buehler, probably the game's best starter, will put the Rays away in Game Six.

Maybe. I wouldn't bet on it. In baseball, you don't know nothin'. Thanks for reading.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Lincoln Project: A True Measure of Patriotism

Rick Wilson. Steve Schmidt. Stuart Stevens.

If you're a progressive, or at least not a follower of 45, you might know those names by now. They are traitors to their cause. But they are also patriots.

They are two of the founders of The Lincoln Project, designed to draw actual Republicans back into the fold of rationality. At least, not the irrational, reactionary firepit into which 45 demands his followers submit. They are not Democrats; Schmidt was the director of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, for example.

But McCain, gone but not forgotten, also knew where to draw the line between partisanship and racist, obnoxious division. Recall the moment when he had to draw that line when a supporter tried to say that Barack Obama was an Arab, capitalizing no doubt on some misinformation she'd been fed by some source. "No, Ma'm, no," he said. "He's an American."

That's where our democracy should be: Clawing at each other, perhaps. but knowing where the guardrails are. 45, as we know, has strayed far from them. Democrats, at least most of them, see this. Republicans choose not to because he is tied to policy alternatives they prefer.

But this time, the problem is existential. 45 poses a threat to our system itself. The Lincoln Project has chosen to expose this by using tactics better designed to defeat Democrats, with devastating TV ads and relentless opposition.

Schmidt admit that these strategies are aimed right at getting 45 out of office, a one-off out of desperation about what would hold forth if he is not defeated. He understands that, in many Republican offices, he is now persona non grata, a seasoned pol without anywhere to land.

They will, I suppose, deal with that later. I don't know their thinking past November 3, because they haven't shared it much. But I'm guessing that, instead of joining the Democrats, they can lead Republicans back into the fairer land of the loyal opposition, instead of the frightening stances of QAnon and armed militias. There be dragons.

Will they disappear from the scene? Maybe. I think they'll lay low for a while and check the atmosphere. It's difficult to believe that Republicans will completely disavow having anything to do with 45, but they could repay him the same way he might repay them if he wins anyhow. Remember, we still have about a week and a half to go. But maneuvering for 'proper' position seems to be on the agenda.

Tougher for Wilson, though. His tweets have been ferocious for quite some time. He will have to play a part in separating Republicanism from 45-ism--which is part of his objection: that support for 45 is a personal bond of some sort and Republicans can no longer tell the difference.

That may be a heavy lift. Congresspeople will have to convince their followers that it is okay to throw themselves in for a near-blood loyalty, as long as you can withdraw it when it's clear that it's not working. They'll try to have to both ways. Some will get away with it. Some won't.

The Senate races will tell. The drama of the evening of November 3 may extend beyond it, especially if Senate races are close. We could revert to what we now have, with the House in Democratic hands but nothing else; we could have the Senate alone in Republican hands; we could watch the Democrats get a grand slam. 

Four years ago, I thought that the Senate was the most crucial part of government to control; I still so stand. We have seen what has happened to the Supreme Court. The spillover into more than once branch of government is most obvious, what with impeachment now being rendered irrelevant.

That's why The Lincoln Project is so crucial. It may just tip the scales in the White House race. The ads continue to be devastating, and watch for a new set of them as we hit the stretch next week. 

We have a small group of willful men to thank for that. They are rare. They believe in the sustenance of the Republic first. Let us hope they are effective.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

"Disloyal": And A Confessional, Too--Of A Reforming Rat

Michael Cohen is a rat. He has ratted out his boss--or, Boss, as he refers to him, still preferring to capitalize the word--about his lies, cheating, innuendoes, double-dealing, media manipulation and all the rest in his book "Disloyal."

To be sure, it is also a confessional. Cohen admits his driving ambition that brought him into 45's orbit, addictively, ignoring transgressions and double-dealings that would have driven calmer thinking people away at first glance. But he also hung around with mobsters as a kid, so he understood the need for protection of the otherwise seedy.

And Cohen's life before 45 was a successful one: He had a posh Manhattan apartment with a gorgeous wife and two great kids, to whom he was deeply devoted--and which, it appears, saved what sanity he could maintain after everything else happened. That they stayed with him through all this attests to their devotion to him, which other people happily together might not endure. To his credit, 45 gave him plenty of opportunity to ruin his marriage, but he stood it off. Having savaged other people's reputations and lives, he still enjoyed coming home at night.

To be with 45 and represent him, you must become him, at least attitudinally. No one can get the best of you. You must be willing to humiliate people and bend them to your will. You must define words and phrases in terms of your boss and no one else. And you must bend the law so that it looks nothing like it was intended to be. Already a well-off attorney, he did work for 45 gratis before being paid less than what he was making.

But he didn't mind. He was the moth edging toward the flame. Eventually, it would consume him.

In the fast-moving world of New York real estate, it was no easy task to keep up with big money dealings. But 45's personality, at least to Cohen, was more than attractive: It had a kind of magic. There are some people like that, with charisma that expands beyond them; you may know a few. Indeed, it alone--certainly not political experience, not integrity, not knowledge of anything vital to the position--got him into the White House. There couldn't have been anything else.

Cohen already was marginally knowledgeable when he began to work for 45; 45, Junior was a friend of his. Cohen already knew how angry he'd been when his father openly cheated on his first wife and Junior's mother, Ivana, with Marla Maples. This didn't stop his interest, though.

Cohen's reaction upon first watching 45 weave his way through an admiring crowd (This was during the run of "The Apprentice") provides some insight into this:

To an outsider, my attraction to [45]--or, as I described it, my "obsession"--seemed to have its roots in money and power and my lust to possess these attributes...But I knew the real answer, for me and others in [his] world, and eventually for a significant percentage of the citizens of the United States....[It] included something deeper than the obvious lures of money and power, though those were crucial factors. It was physical, emotional, not quite spiritual, but a deep longing and need that [45] filled for me. Around [him] I felt alive, like he possessed the urgent and only truth, the chance for my salvation and success in life.

Remember, Cohen is a well-educated man who'd been around the block and was financially independent. He didn't need anyone. But he wanted more, and he would get it, regardless of the price he would have to make himself and others pay. He would get there just before his fall. 45 completely abandoned him. And yet he also says, "I care for [45], even to this day, and I had and still have a lot of affection for him."

He fell prey to about the same appeal that some German people felt for Hitler--that kind of mesmerizing pull that was indescribable but undeniable: the personification of charisma. And which, even if 45 should lose this election, will go on. His following has been described as a cult. With the above description, I would have to call that accurate. Don't expect his followers to disband. They might regroup even stronger than before. We will have to deal with this for decades.

It's also a big reason why 45 was able to attract the religious right, due partly to their own desires to become more than they were, too, and invent any justification for continuing to support him. Being close to God wasn't enough; they had to be famous, too, and some of them are terrible hypocrites. Indeed, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and wife's recent fall from grace is highly predictable after reading this book. Paula White comes off as a thrill-seeker, ready to embrace any religiously-based invention for supporting 45. It's a very short step from religiosity to psychological addiction. After reading about it, it's enough to create atheists.

45 plays right along with it, too, pretending piety when he has absolutely none. He doesn't believe in gun rights or is anti-abortion any more than he believes in the Easter Bunny. But it's his way into building a political base, so that's the way it would have to be. That's what's coming on the Supreme Court: nothing more and nothing less than the fulfillment of a mass deception. Amy Barrett, innocent as she looks, is a handmaiden pawn in a game, put there in case a decision about the election needs to get there. If she turns on him, he will invent an excuse for putting her there that has nothing to do with him.

45 says wacky things again and again so often that he begins to believe them himself. But he believes in nothing but himself, and that must be serviced insatiably.

When you try to do business with him, these things are likely:

• He already thinks you're a turkey and easy pickings--in any event, you should be lucky he's dealing with you at all;
• It is likely that you will be stiffed for your work for him, or at a considerable discount from what you've been promised;
• You cannot outwit him because he knows all the angles;
• You cannot go at him financially because he'll take you to court;
• He already has enough money to make you pay too much to defeat him; and
• Even if you do, he is a master media manipulator and can plant stories of innuendoes that you might spend years refuting--unless you play ball and do things his way.

When you are connected to 45, these things are also sure:

• Loyalty is demanded, but goes just one way--toward him.
• Anything that isn't done to glorify him can easily be interpreted as hostile, requiring revenge;
• He cannot be trusted about anything;
• His 'jokes' are never really jokes, but can be taken any way he wishes at any time;
• Stopping the loss of his temper becomes Job One;
• He will never say anything directly, thus permanently establishing "plausible deniability" (check the Mueller Report, in which he's clearly guilty of obstruction of justice and goes right up to the edge of it but never expressly goes over);
• If you get into trouble that somehow implicates him, he will immediately distance himself from you, denying he had much to do with you, even denying that he knows you, and he will watch you be destroyed, with any previous relationship ignored; (Not hard to recall this behavior) and
• If that doesn't happen, he'll be happy to do it himself.

It all came crashing down on Cohen when the feds learned that he had given the silencing payment to Stormy Daniels (Remember her?) out of his own funds, largely because 45 didn't want to do it and everyone else who had been solicited knew that, having known 45 well enough, they'd never see the money again or might get the law crashing down on their heads, too. Somehow the Southern District of New York also wanted to put his wife Laura on trial even though she had no knowledge of any of this whatsoever. Instead, to save her the humiliation, he submitted to confession and jail. 

He gave evidence--as opposed to Roger Stone (and Cohen has some pretty dicey information on him), who resisted, got sent to jail but got his sentence commuted--getting him thrown into white-collar federal prison. With Covid-19 about, though, he was about to be sent home with an ankle bracelet. But he had already let it be known that he was writing a book about his time with 45, so the government then made an attempt to prevent him from doing so, making it a condition of his adjustment, First Amendment be damned. 

He was negotiating that in his street clothes when authorities handcuffed and shackled him, put him back into prison garb, and shipped him back to prison, which by March, 2020 had turned into a Covid-19 Petri dish (which could have been a real problem as he had respiratory issues), as had so many prisons all over the country. Cohen managed to get an attorney who procured his return to home. The judge made it plain that he considered that retaliation from 45 for writing his book, which started in longhand on a yellow legal pad.

The book doesn't come off as literature; Cohen was obviously in a hurry to get it into print. The last sentence of the pre-epilogue text says it all: "You now have all the information you need to decide for yourself in November." It does add new information but deals in some gossipy trash and a bit of speculation. That doesn't mean it lacks value, though.

It also does some fact-rearranging: the so-called Steele Dossier is wrong, for instance, about his going to Prague to plot collusion with the Russians. He says he's never been there. And he's the second source I've read to hint that a coordinated effort to disrupt the 2016 election couldn't have happened, anyhow--not because of the lack of nefarious notions, but because it would have taken far better organizational and logistic skill than 45's 2016 campaign ever had (which doesn't mean, again, that obstruction of justice didn't happen). Working with 45, who never looks farther than an inch in front of his nose, usually leaves his staff like Keystone Kops, mopping up after the next surprise, unable to anticipate anything.

Remember that Cohen is a convicted criminal with his back up for being double-crossed by a morally vacant person. But remember, too, that payback is pure hell sometimes. The reasons for going into print need not always be pure and unfettered. They just need to be real and, as far as they go, honest. As a close-up look at a cruel, conniving sociopath in the wrong place at the wrong time, it is important work.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. For heaven's sake, vote. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Have You Noticed This, Too? TV Ads Without Masks

I've noticed something that's bothering me. Wonder if you have, too.

On entrance doors of most businesses now, there are signs informing people that if they don't enter with a mask on, they won't be served. Sadly, this isn't universal, but most businesses in my neighborhood have them--and enforced them (Not the taverns, which is going to be played out--again--in court, and soon, at least in Wisconsin.).

Not so much on television, though. There, the indications that anything's wrong have been spotty.

It's been a good eight months now since the pandemic has been something that has disrupted our lifestyles. Few, if any, have dodged involvement, from direct unemployment to having out favorite shops close to fleeing to the Hamptons.

Why isn't that reflected in our TV advertisements? Why aren't people wearing masks in some, if not all of them?

One of the best examples for the stubborn to follow is always displayed on television. We tend, either consciously or unconsciously, to follow them because if it's displayed on TV, we assume it's either good to do or should be done.

It's also a good cover for the once-stubborn to adapt to the new trend. If/when their friends point out that they're falling into a habit that others have copied, a common response might be (and has been used): I see it all over on TV. And that can have an effect on others to remind them that that is so, and mimic that behavior.

TV ads, in other words, can be a powerful suggestion for people to fall into line and start or continue wearing masks. We're missing a clear and obvious opportunity.

In the meantime, I see dodging of the obvious everywhere. I suppose this can be attributed to belief in the so-called 'free market,' which isn't as free as available to be advertised on TV or on the 'net. Yesterday, while watching CNN, I saw an ad for a business chair. Very briefly, maybe less than a second but long enough so that it could be noticed, was a demonstration of a whole table of those chairs.

People, of course, were sitting on them: Six in all. They weren't any farther away from each other than they normally would be if there had been no pandemic. That is, 18 inches or so.

Why would they be displayed this way? Are these kinds of meetings still going on? Has Zoomed been zoomed away, all of a sudden?

Farmers' Insurance has another ad with the aging advisor talking to someone about her rates falling if she's gone without an accident for three years. Nice advantage, but not if they're standing less than three feet from each other. Are we to automatically assume that neither has Covid-19?

AT & T's "Lily" has run an ad recently with her and someone else wearing masks. Recently, they came back with one where she and some fellow were standing maybe (?) six feet away, maybe less, without them. Is this a good example? is AT & T crawling up to a back-to-normal stance that's simply not been achieved--and, by authoritative estimates, is about to get much worse?

Is this fear that non-mask requiring state residents won't buy the merchandise advertised with masks on? Will boycotting of these items take place? I've heard of more absurd things.

We are all getting very tired of this, of course. But there is no leadership to guide us out of it, and won't be any, at best, until late January and none for four years if the wrong people win. "Hang on for just a few weeks," says the clueless Secretary of Health and Human Services. Ironically, he may be right, but not because the disease will disappear on its own or because he can do anything about it.

So we need some exemplary TV ads that, even by implication, include masking up as a common practice. We need them across the board. People don't sell themselves, anyhow. They sell items or services. We are likely to see past the masks, but the reminder would help.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Scott Fitzgerald's Going to Skate to Congress. That's Sad.

In a perfect example of the corruption of gerrymandering. Scott Fitzgerald, majority leader of the Wisconsin Senate, is most likely going to skate his way to succeeding James Sensenbrenner in Wisconsin's 5th Congressional District. Fitzgerald has opposition, a fellow named Tom Palzewicz, but he's obviously poorly funded, since we haven't seen much of him on television and here we sit with less than three weeks to go before the election.

Fitzgerald needs to be called out, and loudly. He and his fellow conspirator, Robin Vos in the Assembly, haven't convened the legislature since the spring. When Governor Tony Evers wants it to convene, they do so with the shallowest of tokenism. Think there's possibly some things to do? Me, too.

The pandemic, for example. But all they want to do is file suits to get in the way of Evers. And all Evers wants to do is get people to wear masks and limit public gatherings in places like bars and restaurants so the incidence of Covid-19 is cut down.

But Fitzgerald and Vos filed suit back in the spring, and the badly biased Wisconsin Supreme Court went along with it. The result? Well, it took a while, but Wisconsin is now the poster child for the spread of the pandemic. It set a record of individual cases six days ago, and yesterday, surpassed it.

Seventy percent of Wisconsin's voters think Evers' executive order requiring people to wear masks was a good idea. Doesn't faze Fitzgerald and Vos a bit. They have power, and by golly, they're going to hang onto it.

Have they met with Evers to try to work things out? Of course not. Have they asked to do that? Of course not. That would dilute the power they have. Allowing a legislative discussion might do the same thing, so they won't allow that, either.

Does Fitzgerald want to help that? Obviously not. Has he commented? Not that I've seen.

Where is his opponent? Underfunded because with gerrymandering about, people tend to give up on competitive elections. It's not as if the Democrats aren't trying. But they've brought a spoon to a knifefight.

Palzewicz should have enough resources to be up on television, decrying this horrible irresponsibility. He should be saying something like, Think he's going to legislate for you? He hasn't when it's been most badly needed--right now. Think he'll be anything but someone's bus boy? Think again. He wants to represent you by doing what he's doing right now: nothing.

Palzewicz should be ripping Fitzgerald to shreds. He should be connecting him to 45, whose support in Wisconsin is slowly ebbing. What does he have to lose?

Instead, Fitzgerald's token, dog whistle radio ads chirp about how he'll protect Wisconsin businesses. Of course he will, to the detriment of nearly everyone else, who are fooled into believing that that's in their best interests. Neither he nor 45 give a tinker's damn about them.

Fitzgerald has been waiting for this opportunity for years. Like Glenn Grothman, another terrible mistake in the 6th District, the path has been cleared through gerrymandering.

There's been no dust dredged up about this. There's been nothing, or next to nothing, on the internet. He's going to skate into the back door, and once there, it's difficult to get people out.

This is the legacy of gerrymandering: People give up on democracy. Wisconsin is the prototype for it now. Fortunately, I live in the 4th District, where Gwen Moore is practically guaranteed re-election, too. But I would give that up if I knew someone had a chance to beat Grothman and Fitzgerald. I would take that chance. 

I would rather have competitive races everywhere than this sham. I would get out and campaign for someone. But this is practically useless.

Wisconsin tried to loosen this up in the Supreme Court two years ago, but the Court punted and threw it back to the states. That solved nothing. It froze everything in place.

Does it matter? You bet it does. Beyond the basic lawmaking, there's a showdown a-brewing. The majority of members of the House of Representatives on a state-by-state basis, although in aggregate they're quite far behind, are now Republican. And that might matter in just a few weeks if 45 manages to hold up the presidential election, prevent the determination of the Electoral College vote and throw it into the House, where a majority of state representatives would determine each state's single vote, with a majority of states, 26, determining the winner.

The single member of the House in states like Wyoming, North and South Dakota, and Alaska will make up four of the Republican votes. They will count the same as California and New York, which favor Democrats in the aggregate but that means nothing in a vote like this. We may have careened into the rocky shores of minority rule. We certainly have in Wisconsin, where an easy majority of voters have gone Democratic in the last two elections but have barely made a dent in an overwhelming Republican Assembly majority.

Right now, the Republicans have control of exactly 26 states, even though they're far behind in absolute numbers. That could change November 3, of course, but it will be as close as the determination of the U.S. Senate will.

This is undemocratic, with a small 'd'. It is yet another indication that Republicans know--they know--that, if put to a total vote anywhere in any fair way, their positions on a number of topics, indeed their philosophy and manner of governance, constitute the minority position. The only way to guarantee a spot for them at the table is to fix the results so they never lose power. They can only do that so much, but they can do it enough to gum up the works.

It's why Scott Fitzgerald is going to slip into the back door of Congress with barely a peep. He will not be a leader; he will be someone's follower without a genuine voice, as opposed to the person he's replacing, who at least once in a while took on internal power and called it out. He will sound like the other Republican sirens--boring, repetitive, simple-minded, pretentious. And he will not be best for those he represents.

To me, it is the number one problem we face. It is a battle we must engage.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

More Than Sixty Years Later, the Fulfillment of the Kochs--Ironically, by 45

I'm not sure I would have given the book Democracy in Chains that exact title. I might have called it The Strangulation of Democracy. Something like that.

Either way, it's telling. The movement to put power in the hands of the very rich really began about 65 years ago. The turning point, interestingly, was Brown v. Board.

That 1954 Supreme Court ruling did more than just try to eliminate racial discrimination in public education, as critics saw it, though that was devastating enough. It introduced, at least in their minds--as if it hadn't happened before--the idea that the Supreme Court could tell states what to do, that it had that kind of power. It had diminished in influence since the Civil War, but the Warren Court changed all that.

Whether or not that was already true--and it depended on whose ox was being gored--it began an attempt to limit the ability of national government to do anything more than defend the soil and police the polity. Its goal, then and now, is to do even more than what Grover Norqust has said about it: "To make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub." It wants to put power in the hands of the very few, very rich, very powerful, for the perpetuation of having as much money as they can possibly have--regardless of the cost to others, financially or socially. Anything in their way was a violation of their fundamental right to be as rich as they could possibly be, a right which should supersede all others.

The concept is called "public choice," says Nancy MacLean, the author of Democracy in Chains, who fell into the papers of James McGill Buchanan, the father of this massive intellectual and economic movement. It means, basically, that every single economic decision made by every individual should be made individually, without government intervention. If you have lots of money to begin with, this shouldn't be much of a problem. If you don't, well--your goal is to get more money. If you make bad decisions, you will be shunted to the side, as you should be.

If this sounds cruel, it is. Of course, if you have a lot of money to start with, life's not so cruel, is it? But that's the way it goes. If you were a "taker," not a "maker," someone who lived off the government trough, you got what you deserved.

Paul Ryan used those phrases because he's a doctrinaire advocate of public choice. That's why he thinks of the 2017 tax bill as a major victory--because the rich got richer and taxes on them were dropped to post-New Deal lows. That, some would say, was long in coming.

Buchanan emerged out of Virginia in 1956. Starting at Virginia Tech, then going to the University of Virginia, he eventually migrated to George Mason University and founded an economic/legal institute there. Typical of the culture, he was rigid, stubborn, right about everything, and went into paroxysms of temper whenever he didn't get what he wanted. (Sound familiar?)

He wrote, in 1962, with Gordon Tullock, a treatise called The Calculus of Consent, and extremely cynical book about what he believed to be the true motivations of collective action. Politicians are rational people who, they said, operate in their own self interests. Once they get power, their efforts are directed at keeping it. When government no longer needed the "pump priming" that it needed during the New Deal, why didn't politicians stop giving it more money? Because, the duo said, they needed to please "pressure groups" who did what was called "rent seeking" from government programs. 

It informed all other governmental growth, because the more these groups demanded, the larger bureaucracies grew. And who paid for it? The rich, of course. Feeling victimized, the goal was to privatize the main sources of government money, such as Social Security and public schools.

A recent Biden ad reminds us that 45 wants to defund Social Security by 2023. That would fit right in with the plan. And why is Betsy DuVos the Secretary of Education? Because she and her husband, Dick, have led the attack on public schools and toward vouchers for decades--another crucial part of the plan.

But how to do that if the public wasn't behind it? Create a disingenuous process of propaganda and word massage that discredited public programs and reduced the support for them. This, of course, couldn't be done in a day. So they played the long game. The emergence of social issues--guns, gays, God--didn't hurt.

Settling in with university support behind him, Buchanan and others formed a group called the Mount Pelerin Society, after a site in the Alps, where they began in the '50s and invited others of like ilk (such as big names in capitalist thinking, such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman) for conversations and action plans.

The Koch brothers were looking for a champion to intellectually support their libertarianism; they found it in Buchanan, with whom they formed an uneasy but very effective alliance, starting in the early '70s. Today, the Kochs have a network of organizations, centrally funded by them (David is now deceased, but Charles is still around), that spread this malarkey through state governments, which they came to realize are the soft underbelly of government funding: ALEC, Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, the State Policy Network. If you've heard of any of them, they're bellweathers of the Kochs. They organize messaging and, of course, fund politicians who echo them. 

ALEC's "policy discussions," are held at posh resorts on long weekends, thus buying off the Republicans they wish to influence, Thus is the victory of Citizens United: They now can throw whatever money they want at anybody they want, and need not admit it to anyone.

With control of the Republican Party, the Kochs could control much of state governmental mechanisms so that their power could be solidified, like voter suppression; right-to-work laws; gerrymandering; vouchers to reduce funding to public schools; and attacks on public employee unions. 45 is trying to scare people into not voting? Right out of the libertarian playbook. Wisconsin's Republican majorities aren't meeting in the legislature, right? Do they have to, since they're gerrymandered into control?

Believe this, though: They don't want to reduce Social Security. They want to eliminate it. And Medicare. You are supposed to save up for that yourself, so they don't have to help pay for it. That's what 45 wants to do by 2023: Take away the payroll tax so businesses have the absolute maximum amount of money to keep. 

And public, "government" schools? Forget them. They're hostages to the teachers' unions. 

And anything else government supports, no matter how good it is for people, except national defense and the police to hold back protesters. Whatever else is out there, they want to control it. They believe they can with that much money, and they believe they deserve to.

Really. They want this. And they won't stop until they get it. They believe they will wear you out with their constant parade of lies and deceptions. Sound like 45? Of course. With him, it's not working because he's been too obnoxious. They'll reload with someone who looks more acceptable.

Koch's demeanor is deceptive. He comes off as a friendly, reserved type, content to stay in the shadows. But his ego is enormous, and when Buchanan got in his way, he made sure to crush him. If and when Koch Industries come back with TV ads (as they do, every so often) and you see one, keep that in mind. It's all about stealth, about hiding what's really going on until it's too late to change it.

"Is this the country we want to live in and bequeath to our children and future generations?" asks MacLean. The rush to oligarchy seems inevitable at times. The income inequality is immense; NPR said just the other day that the richest 50 people in America make as much money as the lowest 50 percent--165 million people. That's one of the biggest reasons we can't allow 45 to continue. But they will be back. They're close now. They can see it on the horizon.

The mistake they made, this time, was allowing this buffoon to represent their positions too obviously. But Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court is a big stride for them--45 didn't do this, the Federalist Society did (penetrated by Buchanan and the Kochs, by the way). Next time, their presidential candidate will be smoother and less likely to offend--Pence, perhaps, or Mr. F. Gow (most recent former governor of Wisconsin, for those of you who've just tuned in). Watch for that. But whoever it is will be a purist, well-versed in buzzwords and dog whistles.

It's their methodology: Shock and awe, to do outrageous things and see what they can get away with, says MacLean. Some of it will stick, allowing them to advance. That's why Mr. F. Gow has to be in the mix for 2024; what he did to Wisconsin unions is a classic.

But first, if they possibly can, they will hold up the election in order to steal it. They did so in 2000--Remember?--and they'll have no hesitation to do it again.

Democracy in Chains is an important book, and this is an important time to read it. Keep your finger on the endnotes, too--they're important to provide context, and the bibliography is enormous. Meanwhile, get out there and vote. They don't want you to. Depend on it. 

Think about Texas: One voting mailbox for each county, no matter how large or how populated? Absurd. But the courts there, obviously politically co-opted, have allowed the Republican governor to get away with it.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

There Is A Time to Tinker with the Constitution. This Isn't It.

I find myself disagreeing with Nancy Pelosi. That doesn't make me a Republican. (No, I think wearing masks is a good idea.) But she's tinkering with the Constitution, and while that merits consideration, this stretch of time isn't the best.

Pelosi wants to get Congress involved in the enforcement of the 25th Amendment, which was passed in 1967 to make sure we have a Vice-President in case something happens to the President and he/she has to be suddenly replaced. That's been a good idea since its passage.

The last paragraph of it, though, has and is sparking controversy, especially now that the current president seems to be either obstreperously ornery, angry and defiant--which he simply could be--or unhinged in a way that normality just doesn't fit. That's the part in which the vice-president might consider stepping in as Acting President if the president is deemed unable to perform his duties.

It could mean a whole bunch of things, including mental instability. 45's behavior since his diagnosis of Covid-19 suggests to some that he has gone simply wacky, or that his wackiness is now revealed beyond all discussion. Nobody can be sure.

But the Vice-President sure won't be the one pulling the constitutional trigger. He ran with 45, after all, and the evidence would have to be so incontrovertible that decisions would have to be made that genuinely endangered the nation. Those haven't been made. Yet.

Pelosi, to her credit, says that the Congressional committee she's forming will deal with this matter, which has nothing to do with the present president. That one's tough to buy. 

C'mon, Nancy: Think back. You were also Speaker of the House when Bush-43 was president, and while a number of people didn't think much of his intellect (either), nobody suggested that a special committee be formed to go to the trouble of trying to find a place to enter the process of replacing a possibly crazy president, or at least create a process to figure out if he's actually crazy.

As it is, I want to see what she can make of such an idea (which outside of a recommendation for an amendment to the amendment, I'm not sure she can accomplish). But not now, less than a month to go before the election. The new Congress will be sworn in January 3. It may have an unusual task on its hands right away, with a contested election possible. But nobody's predicting that the House will fall into Republican hands, so she'll still be in charge. 

If this really has nothing to do with the present president, it can wait until then to approach, analyze, and make recommendations. Besides, she says she's stepping down, but only in 2022. She's still got two years to make this part of her legacy.

And, well--if the polling is reasonably accurate this time, Biden holds on to win and the challenges to his election either never actually materialize or are turned back, maybe--just maybe--some Republicans can be persuaded that the 25th Amendment really does need a kickstart from Congress to invoke, or at least establish some mechanism to do so. 

You know he was off his rocker, Democrats could say, with the additional padding of hindsight, personal attack having been swept off the table by defeat. All we're saying is: What if it happens again? With that logic, it's entirely possible that she can pull off a 2/3 majority to pass an amendment along to the Senate, objections by Gohmert, Massie, King, Gaetz and the like notwithstanding.

The 25th Amendment does say that the Vice-President and the "principal officers" of the executive departments would make the decision. But it jumps to conclusions that, at least beforehand, people generally assumed were true. But lawyers can see (and if I can, they sure can) plenty of holes in the wording. Such as:

• Does the Vice-President have to call the meeting to decide if it's time to invoke the 25th Amendment? If not, who can--any Cabinet member? Wouldn't they risk being fired? But could they call it anyhow? If such a meeting were held and all Cabinet members were fired by a president whose competency they're questioning, would they have to honor that firing, which by definition describes the incompetency? What if they challenged it? Could it end up in court? Wouldn't the time delay involved in resolving it defeat the purpose?
• Could such a meeting take place by conference call or a well-written e-mail? Nobody says they actually have to be in the same room. It might add legitimacy, though. And what's a quorum of such a meeting if someone can't make it? Does that have to be assumed?
• Does the phrase "principal officer" include Cabinet members but exclude anyone else close to the president, such as the Chief of Staff, who might throw a big monkey wrench into the whole process? What about the Press Secretary? The CIA Director? The NSA Director? Nobody's ever had such a meeting before. Could that be taken to court? Wouldn't 45, who's trying to work the system to his advantage, manipulate that process?
• It says that the Vice-President has to tell both houses of Congress that the 25th Amendment is being invoked. But would he/she have to do so immediately? There's no listing of the time period between which the decision is being made and the delivery of the decision. Ostensibly, the Vice-President could have the decision in his desk drawer and sit on it until the next time the President shows off incompetence--and then he would deliver it, giving him veto power over whatever the President would do. Maybe, considering the situation, that would be a good thing. But it's situational at best; the Vice-President's not supposed to have that kind of power. The 25th Amendment's not meant to do that. But it could happen.

In other words, there's no hurry. Whatever Pelosi thinks Congress' power might be in kick-starting the process that's at least ostensibly supposed to be in the executive branch's hands might in fact be an attempt to amend the Constitution. Nothing at all wrong with that, but that takes, first of all, a 2/3 majority of both houses. Republicans in the Senate have already firewalled that kind of decision when it became their choice to convict 45 of impeachment charges, of which he was clearly guilty (not "just a phone call" as Pence repeated with empty gravitas during his debate with Kamala Harris, as if the substance of the call apparently didn't matter), so they would find this matter much more easily dismissed. 

Of course, now that the pandemic has killed over two hundred thousand, Republicans must wear this goo all over them--they had their chance to act responsibly--and they might go from doubling down on their hold on the Senate to a genuine threat of losing it, and all kinds of control if Biden is elected, too. We can only hope and be sure to go vote.

Is it worth the conversation? And moving paper around within the halls of Congress tends to extend it. But if we actually managed to kick out this monster and his hapless helpers in a few days, a lot of this might go away.

That would be okay, too. The decision to rid ourselves of this prolonged nonsense should belong to us, not  to a potentially unwieldy mechanism that someone invented out of another exercise in problem-solving nearly 60 years ago now (JFK's assassination and the fact that the two closest successors to Lyndon Johnson, House Speaker and the President Pro-Tem of the Senate, were 73 and 86 years old, respectively). The ultimate legitimacy in a democracy still belongs to the voters. Let's hope we can pull this off.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road. 

Mister Mark

Would I Refuse A Visit to the Rose Garden? It Depends.

The Rose Garden. I remember it well.

I got there twice. Both times, it was because as a member of the NEA Executive Committee appointed to it by then-President Reg Weaver, I was part of the committee to select the National Teacher of the Year.

That was a fun assignment. I got to know people I never knew were involved in education. The workload was intense; we had to do a lot in a short time. But the process told. The people we selected were good to their title. And there were an awful lot of deserving individuals who, sadly, we couldn't promote. But we had great conversations and got to respect and enjoy each other.

The award was made at the White House Rose Garden, usually in late April or early May. The first time, in 2008, I was there alone as a representative of NEA--I think begrudgingly so, since the Bush-43 Administration had little to do with us otherwise, at least intentionally. The second time, a president we had supported, Barack Obama, spoke at the gathering, and so the entire Executive Committee and Vice-President had been invited. That, of course, was a lot more fun.

The chairs were displayed pretty much as they were displayed the other day, when Republicans of note celebrated the nomination of Amy Comey Barrett, prototypical handmaiden supreme, to the Supreme Court. People were seated that close together.

Films show them all smiling. They were certainly enjoying themselves, having gained the ultimate Supreme Court advantage which is likely to put women back into the status of token incubators. They believe that Roe v. Wade will probably be reversed, though in law but not in fact for those with enough mobility and money to have abortions anyhow. Having stonewalled that reality, were they also denying the reality of the possibility of infection? Of course they were. That didn't seem to matter. Either.

There was an enormous difference, though, in my visit. Covid-19 had not penetrated the nation nor the group. Unless someone had a bad cold, no one could have gotten sick either one of those days.

So it wasn't really a choice. It would be neat and a privilege to be invited. Of course I went.

But what about now? What if I knew that the president had gotten sick, was still probably sick, and most people there wouldn't be wearing masks? Would I go anyhow, that being probably the only opportunity I might have to do so?

Would it mean so much to me that I would risk getting sick, with a disease that might kill me? Would I literally risk my life to say I'd been to the Rose Garden?

Hard to say. But I'd like to think that I'd let science take over and make my decision. I'd either stay home, or wear a mask. But with that many people without masks and a president too irresponsible not to wear one, I would be fighting logic and common sense.

I might be poised outside the entrance and watch how many people entered without masks, hedging my bets. But it's a long walkway into the Rose Garden, security being tight back then, too, and withdrawing while that close would feel pretty sheepish.

If I entered, I could always stand in a corner, some steps from the crowd. But avoiding conversations would betray the purpose, which always goes beyond just showing up. It was supposed to be a happy occasion, with all the state teachers of the year (and Puerto Rico, Guam, and other U.S. territories, too), so refusing to participate in all but a token way would be a leaky way to celebrate that.

If everyone did have a mask, that would be different. But the very aspect of the gathering would beg to create opportunities to mingle and network, because one never knew what opportunities lurked there. Masks, above all, hide identities. You could always exchange business cards, but again, that would risk infection.

It certainly would rob me of a feather in my cap for me not to go. On the other hand, I'd have to tell someone I actually went there to impress them. This is the first time I've told anyone about it outside of NEA--12 and 11 years later. So though it felt like a big deal at the time, as most things do, the prestige didn't last long and never does.

Thing is, no Democrat I know advocates for big meetings of people stacked on top of each other, so I would guess that, at least the second time I went, Obama would give out that award online. 

I would have to check on Bush-43, but he pushed hard for HIV prevention in Africa, so at least he was aware of what communicable diseases could do. I didn't agree with very much of what he did and advocated, but I did admire him for his Africa work, and it seems like he would go along with whatever science would say. So maybe he would do make the award online, too, and relieve others from the angst of having to decide whether to join the risky crowd.

I'm considering every option here. But risking my own health is something I've rarely done, regardless of the circumstances. So I doubt whether the prestige of a Rose Garden visit would be worth it.

All those people did think that, though. It's difficult not to conclude that Republicans, even high-ranking Republicans, are more than a little goofy when it comes to the virus. They have to be pretending it isn't there, or they won't get it. Maybe someday someone will explain this to me.

As it is, 45 probably already had the virus when he held the gathering for Judge Barrett. He chose to deny reality, and with his scheduled campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Florida today, still does. His staff is getting sick. Secret Service agents have been getting sick for some time now. He doesn't seem to care.

Can anyone deny that he's all about himself? I wouldn't honor that. I got sick exactly once before an NEA Executive Committee meeting, and I stayed in the hotel until I felt better. What right did I have to make other people sick, even those I didn't particularly like? How incredibly self-centered.

Four more years of this would give me plenty to write about, but not preferably so. There are other things to say about other topics.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark