I Miss Pete Axthelm. Anybody Who Read Him Does, Too.

If you were a Newsweek subscriber when newsmagazines were all the rage in the '70s and '80s, before the internet and electronics strangled most of them, you knew about Pete Axthelm. And once evoked, you miss him, too, don't you?

Newsweek was the more liberal alternative to Time, the stodgy weekly from which conservative Henry Luce dictated foreign policy, culture, and all that he believed to be American. Supported by the Washington Post, Newsweek dodged and weaved around its older sister, jabbing and jiving, being alike yet not alike, and arriving at answers, not an answer, to most social and political questions. 

I loved it. I subscribed starting in college and saw it through to its fading and demise. It is back now as a electric newsmagazine, trying to find a place, but Politico and Axios and others of that sort have gotten out in front of that horse race.

Horse race: There's something Ax, as he was known, could cover like no one else. He loved the track and the betting that fused themselves to him. His angles always caught you by surprise; there was always more than just the races themselves. 

Sports, as he always saw it, was about people and their games. Games were a way to put people together. The latter were always more interesting.

His signature book, The City Game, about New York basketball, another favorite of his, was an inspiration. Those who mingled and played in those arenas, those with the New York edge about them, were prime territory. Axthelm latched onto a New York boy, Marquette basketball coach Al McGuire, and wrote some of the deepest insights on him. McGuire was that kind of person, a street fighter, an unorthodox underdog, that Axthelm loved.

He reveled in McGuire's grudge match with the NCAA, when with a 22-3 record fifty years ago, his Marquette team was going to be sent to Lubbock, Texas, though he believed it had earned a bid in the Midwest Regional. He flipped the NCAA off, went to the NIT in New York in the days when it still had some clout, and beat Pete Maravich's LSU team on the way to taking the title. Three years after Axthelm's death, in fact, Marquette University named a sports communications scholarship for him. (I looked at a book for an old quote from McGuire, and inside was a Newsweek article on him after he had closed out his career with an NCAA title. Written, of course, by Pete Axthelm.)

Axthelm wrote up pro football from the gamblers' viewpoint more than from a fan's. Those that claimed, and worked, an edge were far more interesting than those who posed for holy pictures. He knew the Mara brothers, owners of the New York Giants, well. I can't be sure--I looked but couldn't find anything--but he must have covered the mess that Lawrence Taylor created when he agreed with Rhymes With Chump, once owner of the New Jersey Generals of the now-defunct United States Football League (failing to be allowed to buy an NFL franchise is one of the bases for RWC's rant over Colin Kaepernick's now quite benign kneel-down, which persists because Kaepernick, aged 33, still deserves a chance to play), to accept a deferred payment of $1 million to play for four years. Then changed his mind, which allowed RWC to milk the Maras for three-fourths of it as well as get the million bucks back from Taylor. (RWC went on to become a major force in driving that league into bankruptcy. Taylor led the Giants to two Super Bowl wins.)

Axthelm influenced many sportswriters who followed him, including Yours Truly. I wrote sports in college, and people liked it. I went on to be a part-time, small-town sports columnist, trying new angles that might catch more attention. Occasionally, I caught them. I dreamed of being Pete Axthelm, but nobody could be Pete Axthelm but Pete Axthelm. Nobody could catch, or create, lightning in a bottle like he did.

The bottle: He could never get past it. There was always a fresh one waiting for him to dive in. He was such a good writer that it would take about twenty years for the drinking to finally affect his pieces. It got him as it does all drunks who won't, or can't, admit they've got a problem.

L. Jon Wertheim, who can spin a sentence or two himself and further distinguishes himself by doing reports for 60 Minutes, wrote a lovely piece on Ax for Sports Illustrated this week. If Ax have lived, he'd be only 77 (Only: that's not looking very old anymore), and we would have heard much more from him by now. He died in 1991, at only 47.

Ax drank himself to death. He was awaiting a liver transplant, wrote Wertheim, having pickled the one he had, but ran out of time. I had an uncle who also fell victim, due perhaps to nightmares after having served burial detail in the South Pacific during the Big One, and I saw his unconscious semi-corpse in the hospital. The image never left me. It's an awful way to go.

He rubbed up against other big names who were proud to have rubbed up against him: a fellow Yale classmate named Bob Woodward; the superb sports announcer Bob Costas; Tony Kornheiser, once a standout at the Post sports desk and who now co-hosts Pardon the Interruption, a daily sports talk show on ESPN; Mary Carullo, who announces tennis and is a regular on Real Sports on HBO, probably the best TV sports journalism. (This is purloined from Wertheim's article.)

He outwrote them all, often with little or no time left on deadline, Canadian whiskey and signature cigar nearby. The image is of slipshod, scattered works thrown together at the last second by someone who looked like he'd slept in his clothes (drunks sometimes do). They were actually marvelous, deeply thoughtful, even slick, written by someone who'd been somewhere you had never been and wouldn't think of being, with sources from digging deep within a sport to connect the unknown with the very known. They were gumshoe and regal at once. He did not back away from racism. Other names are better attached to the concept, but his writing was creative nonfiction at its best.

He was exemplary in so many ways except clean living. Had he realized that, he might have dried himself out. But he would have had to rally in self-recovery. Great journalists are too independent to be guided by anyone else's path; finding stories that matter means carving out The Road Not Taken. He would have been stunned that someone else really good went off the road for a minute to tell the rest of us how good he really was.

Damn. I miss him, especially today, after a pure con artist, the kind of guy he came to know well, actually became president. Ax would have seen right through him early on; I'm sure he did. It might not have mattered, but he would have tried to wave the banner of hypocrisy. He might not have bet on RWC's win, but he would have bet, and made it a point to keep saying, that so many of us were being conned from the start.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

You Want to Be in Congress? Really? The Insurrectionists Are Winning. And Waiting.

You want to be in Congress right now? Really?

It's an elite group. Only 535 in the whole country. They all spent a ton of money to get there. There's a lot at stake.

Like their lives. 32 members have now approached Speaker Nancy Pelosi--no question with a target on her back, too--with requests to have additional security when they attend sessions. It's enough that their families have been threatened: They now wonder whether they'll live out their terms. 

That means that the insurrectionists are winning, whether they end up in jail or not. The fence around the Capitol, once deemed temporary, is possibly going to be permanent. Only one reason for that: the increased, in fact probable, possibility of additional attacks, whether collective or personal.

That, alone, would warn people away, rather than invite them in. Lobbying now has a clear measurement of risk.

I used to lobby members of Congress. It used to be easy to get there from NEA: Just hop in a cab. You're there in ten minutes, give or take, according to traffic. You'd walk through security, usually not very busy, ask directions if you need them (the Capitol Police are well-informed and a great source), and off you'd go. Easy. But that was during the Oughts.

I wonder what it's like now. Certainly significant legislation on bailing out the country from the ravages of the Covid virus, and significant infrastructure bills are being crafted and will be debated, if even tokenly. Thousands of people should be descending upon offices the very minute you read this.

If I had the assignment to do so, I wonder if I would hesitate. Any number of these misled jackasses could barge back into the building at any minute. They've been emboldened to do so by their successes of wreckage earlier this month, and the understandable slowness of the justice system to deal with them. After all, they came from all over the country, and that's where they've returned. Even though federal courts and federal marshals are everywhere, it takes time to identify them, time to locate them, time to arrest them and arraign them in court.

They are certainly defiant. The young woman who stole Pelosi's laptop, Riley Williams, and wanted to sell it to the Russians was released to the recognizance of her mother, whereupon she went right back to working for the forces that got her in trouble in the first place. A rioter in Texas threatened to kill his family if they told on him. When are we going to truly get it? They are out to destroy our system. Not disrupt: Destroy. They have certainly undermined it, and they will continue.

Every day the system doesn't quite yet catch up with them is another day they think they got away with it, conceptually if not actually. And thinking you got away with something is getting away with something. It is how legends are born, much like the gangsters of the 1930s, just about all of whom found ignominious ends. Nobody thinks about that, though.

None of which would, or should, make anybody feel better if they work in the Capitol, or if their work finds them needing to be in the Capitol. How can this attract the best and brightest to serve at the top of our government? Why would anybody who might otherwise be attracted to these positions bother to put themselves at unnecessary risk?

And who would want to sit and listen to either Majorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon advocate who's on record as supporting shooting Nancy Pelosi in the head; or Lauren Bobert, who lives in (wait for it) Rifle, Colorado, owns a restaurant in which the waiters carry weapons, and has a gun strapped to her side in a campaign poster? Neither thought it was a big deal to carry a weapon onto the House floor.

There has been violence there before. People's passions have erupted. But that doesn't make it normal or a good idea. Democracy is supposed to raise people's awareness, not quash it. It's not supposed to bring out the devil in us.

But it has, at least for now. Many are now scared even to take their seats. Until that isn't true, the insurrectionists are winning. And waiting for another chance.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

How Would I Teach All This? With the Facts, Ma'am

I pity, then again envy, social studies teachers (I used to be one) right about now. They are at the cutting edge of history. Wait: They are the cutting edge. They have to be purveyors of truth.

Their task is to explain, as clearly as possible, what's happened in the last month. How to do that without sounding too, well, biased?

I'm not sure it's possible. They'd have to explain the motivation behind the riots. That's simple enough: That those tearing apart the U.S. Capitol first, believe that the election was stolen; second, were worked up by the outgoing president; and third, thought they could actually overthrow the Electoral College verification and keep Rhymes With Chump president.

All those are facts, although they're based on fantasies. Owing the facts to what's already been established, the teachers would have to go over the election challenges to this point.

They'd have to say, honestly and without bias, that all 50 state elections were verified and certified by the elected officials having the power to do so. They should say, accurately, that that's been their jobs all along, going back to the point at which the state popular elections delivered that state's electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, except for Nebraska and Maine presently. That reverts to the 19th Century. Nothing new about that, even though some people want to make it sound like it's an original idea.

They should say that both Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State, people who voted for both Biden and Rhymes With Chump (I assume they'd use his real name, but I don't have to), did that job that they're supposed to do according to the law. All this is provable and factually accurate.

Then they could say that Rhymes With Chump tried, over and over again, to mount legal challenges to the vote count and get votes thrown out, giving him certain state victories and reversing the electoral vote count enough to swing the election in his direction. He tried to do that over sixty times. In only one case was a challenge deemed sufficient, and that didn't change the electoral vote count. So: He lost in the popular vote, he lost the electoral vote, and he lost in the courts.

He also tried to get the U.S. Attorney General fired so he could replace him with someone who would challenge the vote in Georgia. But the leading members of the Justice Department threatened to resign if he did that, so that would look very, very bad without any legal support, so Rhymes With Chump didn't actually do that. But he did, before that, get the Georgia Secretary of State on the phone and plead with him to "find 11,800 votes," as if they could be found somehow, and swing the election there.

The Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, did admit that there were votes that were invented by people using dead people's names. How many? Exactly two. Out of more than five million. Suffice it to say that that didn't make any difference in the final result. Raffensperger did say, though, that they would track down those two bogus votes and find out who tried to defraud the election, if only that much.

A Congressman from Texas, the incredibly crazy Louie Gohmert, said that 16,000 dead people's names were put on ballots in Michigan, the knowledge of which he never sourced. Not true. Michigan's election results were tabulated, verified, and certified. Biden won.

Rhymes With Chump tried to get Milwaukee and Dane Counties' votes recounted, where most of the black people of Wisconsin live, in order to shed light on corruption, which he claimed. Upon another try, Biden gained 87 votes. That racist move didn't work. Wisconsin's leading election official invited the public to view the counting of the votes; I heard her say it myself. Biden won by some 20,000.

Lindsay Graham, the slimy Republican Senator from South Carolina, tried to smear Philadelphia by saying that there's always something a little shady about elections there--whatever knows about that and of course, without proof. It was just nonsense. Pennsylvania's vote count was certified. There was no cheating. Biden won.

Not one significant accusation made by Rhymes With Chump's campaign or lawyers were ever verified or given the slightest credence. They were lies. They fed the Big Lie, that the election had been stolen. Who stole it? How did they do it? Nothing was ever proven, because it didn't happen. Show me the proof, I'd say, and I'll consider it. Otherwise, this is what happened.

It probably would be quite valuable to report the latest attempts as they unfolded, so as to keep the students up-to-date and actually a little bored and/or irritated. After a while, it all got that way. There was no excitement to it; it became pro forma. My mantra would be what it had been for a long time: You can always sue. You can claim unfairness all you want, but you have to bring proof. You can't always win.

With those failed legal attempts, it would, hopefully, put the outrage attaching to the attack on the Capitol out there: the futility of it all, the craven lawlessness, inaccuracy and mendacity of the claim, the ridiculousness of that attempt and the unprecedentedness of it all. But you would also have to follow up to the present day, to keep hammering home the facts of the findings, that the rioters nearly found the members of Congress and what might easily have happened had they found them.

An easy comparison to the Salem witchcraft trials could be made: What happens when mass hysteria grips people gathered together, and they have no other viewpoint with which to compare their own. Free speech is normally a good thing, but manipulative speech to inspire insurrection is a crime. Bringing up Oliver Wendell Holmes' comment about yelling fire in a crowded theater might hold sway here, in addition to his "clear and present danger" declaration, which this incident clearly indicates. "Is the danger clear? Is the danger present?" "And who caused it?" would not be a stretch for students to consider.

But you'd have to add that millions of people believed, or chose to believe, RWC's big lie about the election: that it was fraudulent and stolen, despite there being no evidence and all evidence to the contrary. Someone might ask, then: "Why did they believe it?" And there you'd wade into difficult waters.

You could frame it in terms of RWC's magnetic personality which somehow got people to buy into his vague innuendoes. You could say that if people believed most of his 30,000 lies stated over four years, they'd sure believe this one, perhaps the biggest one of all, especially if they went along with the idea that the media is "the enemy of the people" and is responsible for "fake news." Then it's easy to conclude. 

Because somewhere in every classroom, there would be kids whose parents in fact believed the lies. But in your heart, you can't accept or state the validity of that claim. You might hear from the administration. You might hear that parents would call to debate it. And there's where you might need a union to support you.

Because standing out there all by yourself might be too tough to do, regardless of whether the facts are on your side or not. We already know that people who respect the facts aren't necessarily supported by other Republicans who are too scared to take stands based on the truth.

The then Attorney General, Bill Barr, did go out of his way to tell RWC that his claim of fraud was "B.S." That, at least, is a qualified information source. That might bail you out. At the very least, it would be helpful to know that.

And you always have the Constitution, which spells out the process that Mike Pence had to go through to adhere to it and the rule of law on January 6--the process which over 160 Republican members of the House and seven members of the Senate nonetheless challenged after the riots. You might want to explain what that really means. If that process means nothing, you might want to say, then the Constitution means nothing and we have no basis for making any laws other than who has the most guns and can use them the best. Then look them in the eye and ask: Is that what you want?

But to put the Big Lie out there with false equivalency, pretending that it's as valid as the facts warrant, does nobody any good. It might get the wolves to go away for the moment, but does nothing for one's integrity. And you'd have to answer uncomfortable questions sometime later. Simple as that: Don't teach a lie. Normally, you could get fired for it. But this ain't normal. 

In some communities, I would think you could get away with a misleading moniker or two if you were excessively religiously afflicted--the derivation of many of the rioters, it turns out--and wanted to sneak in a comment or two: Not exactly say so, but put a few vague misdirections out there. A fellow in my department once told his classes that God won World War II. How patriotic. Can't prove otherwise, can you? I wonder if anybody called the principal.

I went through a tough spot in 2000, admittedly self-inflicted, when I had already made it clear, by putting up posters from the Democratic National Convention, at which I was a delegate (celebrating my real contribution to democracy, but naive about how people would take it), which candidate I supported. Parents pulled their kids out of my classes, but I survived. I didn't back off, though. I told the story straight, using the facts, whether people wanted to hear it or not.

In the middle of all this are other, sweeping, big-picture questions: What is truth? What are facts? What is verifiable proof that something happened (like, say, verified counts of the state votes)? Are all sources equal (no, of course not)? Who, and/or what, is it decent and fair and discursive to believe (Just anybody with a winning personality?)? What does it mean that you believe and accept things as fact (When do you stop reading and say to yourself, 'Okay, now I know'?)? You can drill down pretty far. Maybe this is the time to do it. It sure wouldn't hurt.

Was Cedarburg a Republican town? Remember--the first public rally held by John McCain and Sarah Palin after the national convention in 2008 was held there: Not in Milwaukee, not in Chicago, but in Cedarburg, pop. 13,000 or so. So I took on a wave of protest, rational or not. Even after I put an equal number of both sides' posters on the walls, it continued.

Lots of other teachers teach in lots of other conservative towns in Wisconsin and elsewhere. No doubt they're trying to deal with it all now. I wish them well. And I hope they are devoted to the truth and the provable facts, regardless of where they fall. 

In future years, this will have to be included in history books, too. What kind of report will be inserted? What will be left out so it would have to be additionally explained by teachers with integrity? 

It would be interesting to know. Like I said, I kind of wish I could teach it. Then again, maybe not.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

We Need Journalism. We Need It Right Now. I Think There Was A Plot.

Sit there and consider this: The Capitol Police was warned, duly warned, that the crowd on January 6 might turn violent. It also knew that the Capitol itself was in danger.

It knew. The raid still happened. The saboteurs, amateur though they were, got inside and trampled the place. It was "blind, stupid luck," said a CNN article, that more people didn't die. Six already have.

The National Guard was not ready for anything more than traffic control. That's it. That's why it just stood around for the most part when it arrived, which was far too late to do much about the insurrection anyhow.

There's something going on here. This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment event, urged on by a craven president bent on some magical turnaround. Uh-uh. This was a genuine plot.

Because nobody could tell Congressional Democrats who was in charge, who could have raised the awareness level of the National Guard. Nobody.

I don't think that's true. I think someone could have done that. But non-decisions are often suffused so that everybody, which is to say nobody, takes the blame.

And sometimes, that's done on purpose. Pearl Harbor comes to mind. It took a Congressional investigation two and a half years to finally place blame where it didn't belong: on the fleet commander, Admiral Kimmel, who was just fielding semi-directives from Washington, floating in the dark until it was too late and the fleet lay in ruins.

Congress needs to trace the chain of command and find out who didn't let someone know. It also needs to see if it can be traced to Rhymes With Chump. Does anybody think it can't?

I think this was coordinated. I think it was planned. I think someone on the inside of the Capitol Police, someone sympathetic, was told to stand down. And I think good journalism needs to get going and find out.

Granted, someone has to squeal. Someone has to have a conscience. Not a lot of that's going on right now. Everybody's still too scared of Rhymes With Chump. They must think he can still make too much happen, even if he's not in Washington anymore.

Why should we be surprised? 45 Republican Senators voted yesterday to dismiss impeachment charges against Rhymes With Chump as unconstitutional. Those 45 included Mitch McConnell, who again has it both ways by saying that RWC did impeachable things, so we need to wait a while for him to get a good lawyer to defend him so we can't do it while he's in office but hey, now that he's not, it's unconstitutional. So once again, the Lucy Republican football placeholder pulls the ball out just before Charlie Brown Democrats approach to kick it.

What's worse, Chuck Schumer getting suckered, or McConnell's ferocious deceptions? I'll leave that to you. The Republican cravenness is now on full display.

But 44 Senators agreed with McConnell. What are they scared of? There's precedent to hold an impeachment trial against a federal officeholder after he's left office. It's not unconstitutional and they know it.

Maybe they're getting nasty phone calls, too. Maybe the National Guard contingent that's supposed to be in DC until mid-March needs to stay there permanently.

And maybe they're afraid of primary challenges. But that can't affect all of them. 24 of them are up for re-election in 2022. That's a lot. So it's not as irrational as it seems. But it sure is expedient, and has nothing to do with advancing the republic.

They're covering for RWC. Why? Do they, in fact, debate the election still? Do they doubt the certifications of 50 secretaries of state? Do they buy the wild, irrational conspiracy theories? Do they reject the dozens of courts that have tried their hardest not only to turn back RWC's claims but embarrass his lawyers who bring such trash before them? "Unconstitutional" is the only off-ramp they can conjure. It's safe, it assumes the high road, and while debatable, it's sufficiently inconclusive.

Somebody knows something, though. It has to be uncovered. Yes, this is the kind of thinking that I'm protesting about--a conspiracy that I can't prove. But if such a Biden election conspiracy was true, journalism would have found it by now; heaven knows, enough people looked into it. They had two months to do so. You can ask a lot of questions, find a lot of documents, in two months. So those issues are dead, lies to the contrary notwithstanding.

This may be different. Somebody has to start asking questions. If nobody responds or there is no response, then okay; at least it's been checked out. But there are too many coincidences to brush this off as carelessness or naïveté'. The timing is too well established.

The rioters may have been cat's-paws, but some of them may have been in on it. They weren't stupid. Some of them were professionals. They were power-hungry, believing that some reward, some prestige, was waiting for them.

I can't believe what happened took place by the seat of the pants. Too many coincidences. Nothing on paper, though--too traceable to RWC. But I think that's where it goes. I hope someone digs in deep.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

I'm Going to Forgive Myself. Just This Once. But No More.

Just this once, I'm going to forgive myself. But no more.

I'm forgiving myself for not looking for a car window brush and scraper. I needed one today, and from now on, in fact. because the one I had was buried deep in the trunk of the car that got rear-ended last August. We couldn't reach back far enough to get it.

I wondered whether the one I bought was made in China. Because if it was, it probably isn't made by native Chinese. It might easily have been made by Uighurs.

Uighurs, as in people who live in very western China, in the Xijiang (used to be known as Sinkaing) Province. They aren't Chinese, at least not really. Their name for their homeland is East Turkistan.

That's because they're originally Turkic peoples from quite a distance west. Their presence dates from the days of the Silk Road, which was the major route by which Asian and European peoples could trade; something like a thousand years ago, maybe more. I saw a few members of their group on a Zoom conference today (put on by the Free Speech Project, out of Georgetown University), and they sure don't look Chinese.

Xijiang's supposed to be an autonomous region--one that makes its own decisions but gets protection from the central government; kind of having one's cake and eating it, too. But that's mostly because many of the Uighurs, who make up about half of Xinjiang's population (11 million or so out of about 23) are very secular Muslims. They worship, in other words, but they're not doctrinaire.

Nonetheless, China doesn't like that. It likes its people educated but subservient, a trick you can only pull off by shows of force (see Tiannanmen Square, 1989). So it's embarked on a one-way devastation of the entire Uighur culture, through several avenues of pure hell. The goal is to wipe out any significant vestige of Uighur presence, reduce what it calls "radicalization," and call the whole thing Chinese and be done with it.

To do that, they've done the following, at least so far, according to the Uighur Human Rights Project, which has had to find out what's happened in the same way some people pull teeth:

• Shipped thousands of people to forced labor camps, some in the eastern part of China, where they make goods to be sold everywhere else, including the United States, such as for Nike and Amazon;
• Put cameras on every significant street corner of major cities, so that nobody, I mean nobody, can do anything in public without being surveilled;
• Brought in native Chinese (about eight million so far) to replace those shipped out so that eventually, they will comprise the major percentage of people living there;
• Propagandized the schools to take out mention of Uighur successes, Uighur language, and notice of culture;
• Punishment for political and/or religious offenses, including torture and execution;
• Punishment dolled out to relatives if someone escapes to the West and describes the abuse;
• Harassment and intimidation of Uighurs within the United States;
• Sudden disappearances;
• Gang rapes and forced viewings of it; and
• Compulsory unpaid labor for infrastructure, such as work on oil and gas lines to supply for the native Chinese in the east.

The term for all this is genocide. The particulars are called crimes against humanity. So what are we doing about this? Not nearly enough. You know, of course, who ran the show until six days ago.

That monster was quoted in John Bolton's book as actually favoring the construction of more Uighur forced labor camps--concentration camps, actually. In fact, he did so twice.

Nonetheless, the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act was passed by Congress in 2018, and renewed in 2020  (Thomas Massie, the one of the flakiest members of the House, from Kentucky, was the only member of either House to oppose it.). 45 signed it into law.

What a great guy, huh? And outgoing, don't-let-the-door-hit-you Secretary of State, the obsequious, gooey and excessively religiously afflicted (but only for Christians and Israel) Mike Pompeo, said when he, on the very last day of this mistake of an administration, finally called what China was doing "genocide," added that the administration exposed Chinese atrocities against Uighurs.

No, said Georgetown professor James Millward: that was a lie (Stunned?); journalists had done that work. Why did Pompeo wait so long to say anything about this at all? I'm guessing for future political advantages, since it's been rumored that he has his eye on the White House. He can blame red tape, for instance, instead of growing a conscience about it. His last-minute declaration can answer some future reporter's question and dismiss it quickly. But he also has 45's signature on the bill, which makes the White House, through the Director of National Intelligence, submit a classified report to Congress for gross violations of human rights abuses and details the scope of detention facilities and forced labor camps.

It's supposed to do so once a year. When was the bill signed? June 2020. Sorry, ran out of time, I guess. I never saw any notice of a report, did you? Pompeo couldn't care less. He kicked that can down the road.

More is obviously at work. "A loose cannon careens to port then starboard on a rudderless ship," wrote Millward in a tweet, condemning "eleventh hour gestures they opposed for years." All part of "bluster, incoherence, petulance with absolute failure to do meaningful things." In other words: same old, same old.

So it was for appearances only, a flashy tokenism done for political points. Meanwhile, Uighurs are twisting slowly in the wind, victims of nothing more than being who they are. I like to think I'm fairly well-read, but I haven't seen the kinds of protests, organized or otherwise, by Uighurs to match that of Hong Kong lately. Because if there would have been, the Chinese sure would have let us know it, instead of hiding the suppression it's now committing. But 24-7 surveillance kind of promotes that.

In other words, the Uighurs have done next to nothing to transmit that they've become, somehow, "radicalized," when in fact the Chinese just don't like it that they're Muslim and obey some other guidelines besides the ones they put out there. Kind of like some other former leader who simply, with a stroke of his pen, shut down migrants from seven countries he believed to be terrorist sites, when in fact he's just encouraged, promoted, and justified domestic terrorism right here in the U.S. for himself. 

It's now been reversed. We have plenty of terrorist issues ourselves. Our Capitol's just been attacked by 800 idiots who believe an enormous lie.

So when I got back from a different store, I checked the car brush/scraper. "Made in the USA" it proudly boasted.

Look, I don't care if it was made in Greenland. Just not China, okay? Because if it says that, now I know who probably made it. No doubt plenty of my clothes were made by them, too, so I beg the Uighurs' forgiveness. 

I'll start over and boycott what I can. I ask you to do the same. Start looking at labels before you buy. If Amazon is that involved, it ought to be ashamed of itself. It doesn't have to do that. It can go wherever it likes and shut down whoever it likes. Nike, too. Let's wise up. In the meantime, I can order from other sources.

The new problem is this: I just read something else that says, justifiably, that any significant movement on climate change reform has to go through China. That means that we can only nudge the Chinese gently on the Uighurs. We can't make them look too much like the ogres they are. There's a bigger picture, the biggest of all. If we bake because the ozone layer's gone, so will they.

I don't want to encourage more monsters. Too many people here have, far too much, encouraged one who lives here. Sadly, dangerously, that's still happening. Autocrats are on the march. They must be resisted at every turn.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

My Forearms: A Tribute to Hammerin' Hank

A long while back, when I thought it mattered, I decided to make my forearms strong. 

I did a number of exercises to do so, most of which involved squeezing something that was pretty challenging: a rubber ball or one of those gripper things that talked back to you after 20 or 25.

I squeezed until it hurt, then waited about an hour and did it again. It became obsessive and painful, but I could see and feel the results. I never was much for pounding iron, but squeezing things worked fine. To this day, that has caused me to be sure to hold back when shaking hands, because for a long time, I didn't notice how strong my grip had become.

It helped me play quarterback in football, catcher and of course hitting in baseball, gave me range on my jump shot in basketball, and didn't hurt in golf, either. Later, when I would go out to play golf with some of my friends, they would occasionally remark about them, sticking out of short sleeves. And occasionally, I would re-strengthen them because it felt good and I had never heard of anyone else going out of his way to do so. I thought it made me unique.

It was all because of Hank Aaron, my favorite baseball player of all time. He played at Milwaukee County Stadium during my developmental years. I read once that he recommended building up your wrists, which he demonstrably utilized in his unique, quick, powerful swing that relied on them. It produced what still is the most non-juiced-up number of home runs in baseball history--755, don't get me started on Barry Bonds--and the most runs batted in.

That was it. If he said to do it, I was all in. I owe some of my modest athletic success to him, unquestionably.

He passed away yesterday at 86. When I think of being at games in Milwaukee I think of two things: watching him hit from the upper deck above home plate, lashing line drives up the middle like a bullet as only he seemingly could do; and the absolute smoothness with which he patrolled right field. He said he worked incredibly hard to figure out the angles along the right field wall, but he made it all look so easy. He ran down his share of balls hit in the gap, and if you tried to take an extra base on him, he more often than not made you pay the price. He won three Gold Gloves.

There are three all-time greats associated with the Braves' remarkable success during the 1950s and 1960s: Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Warren Spahn. Dad used to take us to games every so often, as did Ed Schumacher, the next door neighbor, along with his sons. Usually, Ed did so when Spahn pitched, because he was a left-hander, too. Those were great, memorable nights.

I personally saw one of Hammerin' Hank's last home runs, hit during his farewell tour in Milwaukee while with the Brewers in 1976. My girlfriend, later wife, was with me, during one of those afternoon, mid-week, getaway games. He hit it--I'm writing this from memory--off Frank Tanana, a pretty good left-hander from the then California Angels. He hit a curve that, as Tanana was quoted in the paper the next day, "rolled instead of broke." It was still in July, too, so he tailed off in a hurry. He was 42 by then, and the quickness of those wrists was mostly gone.

But in his prime, he was one great hitter. He had poor averages in his two years with the Brewers, but still managed to stay above .300 for his career. Sandy Koufax, one of the all-time great left-handers, called him his toughest out. Getting a fastball past Bad Henry, said Koufax, was like "getting the sun past a rooster."

He was overshadowed by two greats in New York, who gobbled up much of the media attention: Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. But he distinguished himself, eventually, by his incredible consistency, which outlasted those two. Through the early '60s (as we were reminded by ESPN's Tony Kornheiser), it was an accepted fact that the National League All-Star outfield would be comprised of three men who amassed 3,000 hits or more each: Aaron, Mays, and Roberto Clemente, whose exploits started all kinds of who's-best arguments.

He accomplished so much--an MVP award; two battling titles; four home run titles; four times leading in RBI; four times in slugging percentage; four times in doubles; twice in hits--and did it while in the shadows of racism. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1934, he knew very well the nasty reach of the Ku Klux Klan. He started in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns, a ridiculous team name. He always said he was treated well in Milwaukee, but it's still one of the, if not the, most segregated cities in America. The Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, though, and the home runs kept piling up: between 1957 and 1973, he hit between 30 and 47 each year. 

He broke Babe Ruth's home run record on an April night in 1974; I was in my first year of teaching, and was the advisor to that year's junior prom, so I wasn't in front of the TV at the moment but it was on at school while we worked. But on the way, even though he had the overwhelming majority of the country rooting for him, he also had to endure death threats and hate mail (which, remarkably, he kept) from people who, much like today, can't stand people of color outdoing anything a great white man did. Aaron said it more than once: As he rounded the bases, he believed someone was going to shoot him. 

On NPR yesterday, the announcement of his passing was accompanied by an interview in which he said, in retrospect, that he wasn't sure he would have done the same thing again--probably meaning that he would have retired first, or maybe that he wouldn't have gone for home runs as often (as he did later in his career; early on, he sprayed the ball to all fields). What a shame that it had to be stained like that.

But at the time, all the hate and jealousy just made him bear down. "I had to do it for Jackie [Robinson], for myself, for all those who called me [the n-word]," he said in an autobiography. He lived to see the first black man be president and the first black woman be vice-president, though. I bet he was proud. George W. Bush awarded him with the Medal of Freedom, as apolitical as you can get it.

I met him during my NEA days, and he was still the same, unassuming, dignified gentleman. I sat with him for five minutes. Five minutes with my hero! Whoa! Not everybody gets to do that. I'd met a lot of famous people and felt comfortable in their presence. I was kind of awed by Aaron, not sure what to say.

He was the consummate professional. He didn't brag; he didn't flip his bat after home runs. He let his performances do the talking. I followed that example, too, though I wasn't nearly as good. It still traveled well.

He died in his sleep, a fitting end for a class act. So long, Hank. Thanks for the memories. And the forearms.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some help, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

How Do I Feel Today? I'm Not Sure. Someone Has to Stop People Going to Corners.

I'm not sure how to feel today. Relief, that's the easy one. The monster is gone, for now.

He's promised to return, but if the courts catch up with him, maybe not so much. But maybe he will. He's dodged so many court dates that it boggles the mind. 

But the biggest legacy he's left behind is by far the worst: The dismantling of decent government. He appointed Cabinet members who were dead set against the purpose of the departments, and set about ruining them. Four years wasn't quite enough. But they created horrible damage.

The federal courts are now filled with far more right-leaning judges. This probably would have happened with any other Republican president and Senate, too, but the qualifications for some of them were not much better than hailing someone off the street in a decent-looking suit.

I'm not in favor of big government, either. But the country is a big place. And profit-making cannot make up for decent decision-making paid for by taxes. There should be a balance, and 45 disrupted that balance.

Too, the devastation caused by racists, even before the insurrection, leaves a nasty scar. They haven't lost their sense of entitlement. And where did Stephen Miller go? Where did that little weasel hide?

Consider, also, the closeness of the election. Biden's victory should have been a slam dunk. It was a squeaker. It encouraged the stonewalling that 45 created which led to the rioting at the Capitol.

It encouraged extremism and the cultishness to enhance QAnon, the nonsensical group that promotes ridiculous conspiracies. A significant number of them were at the Capitol on January 6. They really thought that 45 would save babies from being eaten. If they ever were. If he ever cared. 

Someone who studies extremist websites said, on MSNBC yesterday, that 56 percent of Republicans buy into QAnon to some extent. 56. More than half. "These people have, without realizing it," wrote Charles Yu in Harpers Magazine, "become immigrants. They have left America, set off for a land of make-believe. They are in the thrall of a mythical narrative. To them I want to pose two questions: Why does your new land appeal to you? And what was it about reality that made you want to escape?"

I'm probably with you: I'd like to pull away and forget all this. But they came too close to taking over the process of electing the president, the last, silly formality remaining, but necessary to seal the decision. Would it be ridiculous to legally forego with that final process?

No, but it would have to take a constitutional amendment, because that process is specifically spelled out within it, even though it has outlived its necessity. That's 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures. 

Mike Pence saved us. The insurrectionists wanted to kill him. We now need a firewall to prevent that. But if 160 House Republicans are too scared of the people they represent to get wise and halt this, we will have this problem once again. And that was too scary by half.

Meanwhile, we dangle at the precipice between restoring democracy and a fallback autocratic, oligarchic alternative. It won't be overnight that we re-establish truth and provable fact as the basis upon which to make judgments about leaders and their decision-making. Yet, science, i.e. recognition of climate change, is all about that, and we know the resistance that it has run up against. But agreement on that would mean much less reliance on fossil fuels, the support of the corporations creating which are the lifeblood of the Republican Party, so there's that.

But at least the current government isn't saying that media are making up things or that it isn't important enough anyhow--"fake news"-- that the government is allowed its own version of that, or "alternative facts," and that media are the "enemy of the people." That isn't a bad place to start again.

Biden has to redo and undo executive orders to negate the damaging ones that 45 signed. But reliance upon that was also based on the 60-rule in the U.S. Senate, where it takes 60 Senators to end debate and prevent filibusters. Without it, all legislation is potentially frozen in place. Democracy can't work if Congress renders itself helpless. The presidency has acquired far too much power since the turn of the century. Someone has just shown us that. We should accept and abide by the lesson.

Shall the Democrats do away with the Senate filibuster? It would make things easier, but only for the moment. When the tables would be turned, Republicans could hustle through all kinds of damage. But for now, Democrats can create a decent economic bailout while the administration musters all its energy toward tamping down the virus.

Whatever happens, the opposite will be eventually visited upon those who chortle now. But that encourages taking what you can when you can get it, forgetting whatever bad feelings you conjure tomorrow. Nobody wants to be anywhere there's measurable anger for a measurable time. It discourages statesmanship.

Compromise won't merely reappear now that Mr. Polarization is not on the scene. His attitudes merely accelerated what was already going on. Someone must apply the brakes. Someone has to stop people from automatically going to their respective corners. Otherwise, oblivion awaits. Joe Biden could do that, but he might also offend his base. Tough spot. Glad I'm not in his shoes.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Democracy Really Has Prevailed. So Far.

Well, I'm wrong so far. 45 didn't do the unthinkable. He didn't attack some country in his last days in office.

And the unthinkable didn't happen during the inauguration. The insurrectionists chickened out, as was likely. They have the 'courage of their convictions' only when they outnumber and/or outgun their opponents, and that wasn't going to happen today. That's what cowards do--slink away when everyone knows about them.

Yes, 45 pardoned and commuted the sentences of many who didn't deserve it. But we kind of knew that was going to happen. He took the one shot he had left, the one last trashing of democracy and took advantage of it.

Whether he descends to utter ignominy is yet to be seen. He's talking about forming some kind of new political party, but he won't be participating much in that. He'll leave that to someone else. He's too lazy to put any energy into it. He'll make the speeches and half-truths and innuendoes, because that's the only thing he's been good at. Not the sticky, challenging tasks of organizing, though. He'll just yell at someone.

He's got a problem, though. A legal and criminal problem. That's how democracy will prevail, as President Biden suggested it has, if it indeed does so. He deserves his day in court. So do those he's hurt.

He needs to be rejected from public office forever. He is poison, and its eradication won't be easy. But to begin, he must be convicted of the simple impeachment charge of insurrection. That can be done. He can be turned away.

In the meantime, some things have to come down: the additional barricades surrounding the White House; the horrible, embarrassing, unnecessary border wall; the banning of migrants from certain Arab countries; getting back on board with the Paris Climate Accords. The United States has to be a welcoming, gentler place again. Yes, the immigration situation is challenging, but even Bush-43 wanted a more humane approach, and that's three presidents ago now.

Find those kids, too: over 600 of them. What a tragedy. What a horrible legacy. Get them back to their families.

Get some money into the hands of people who are at the edge of their savings. We can discuss deficit spending later. Stop posturing. Save this economy.

Get the pandemic under control. Stop promising and make a plan. Give guidance from the top. Don't throw up your hands and say it's a state problem. Get the damn vaccines out there. Businesses will recover as soon as people know they can get out there. It'll be amazing how fast it'll go. Beyond that, we're all tired of masks.

Schools, too. Leave nothing undone. Get the kids back in there. The pandemic is injurious in more than one way, and this is one of the worst. 

The undermining of public education in the name of religiosity must also stop. We are a secular state. We need to stay that way. Religion is at its best when it is not politicized, when it's allowed to flourish in its proper place in our culture.

Stay the hell off of Twitter and Facebook. Don't even use it to say good things. Let that be the purview of the press secretary, who should lead the way out of Camp Falsehood.

Just tell the truth, said Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican whose moderation can scarcely be recognized within his realm. We can handle it. Heaven knows, at this point, any bad news can't surpass the good that will happen.

Beyond the revelations that staffers will produce in the coming days, we know too well the damage Biden's predecessor has done to our system and its effectiveness. Just turning that around will take time. We must be patient and yet insistent: This perversion of government cannot happen again.

We have an opportunity, a small window, to turn this country around. Let's go for it. Democracy has prevailed, so far. Let's make it work again.

Good luck, Mr. President. I wouldn't worry about being a great president. Just be one, not an awful facsimile.

May your healing powers be great. I have a picture of you and Dr. Biden with me on my wall from the last time you tried to get the job you now have. It's been up there, wherever I've traveled, ever since it was taken. It's good to have it there, meaning more than it ever has.

Onward. At long last.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

A Fist Pumped in the Air in Two Places, One Made Sense

I watched it and froze for a moment. It was innocent enough. But it reminded me of a similar gesture, perhaps of its own innocence, that meant far more.

Last Saturday, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Los Angeles Rams in an NFL Divisional Playoff game. For those who follow it, it was a big deal. For Aaron Rodgers, it was a celebration.

As he's said more than once, he and his teammates miss the Packer fans, held off for the most part because of the coronavirus. About six thousand were allowed to watch at Lambeau Field as their beloved Packers performed this time, and Rodgers couldn't have been happier.

"We've missed this part of the experience," he said, because if you perform, of course, you want to know someone is watching--for real, not virtually. That gets old after a while.

So after the game, and after the obligatory, almost canned remarks to the television reporter, Rodgers jogged to the locker room. But not until he raised his fist, pumping it in victory like a signal; proud, glad, inspired.

It caught my breath: The fist. The symbol of power. Yes, of course, Rodgers is allowed to do that, and justified in sharing that moment with the faithful. He should have done that. It's been a long wait. It was a happy moment, in the shrine of Packerland.

He was having fun, enjoying the moment as the tacit leader of the quest. But it was just a game, just playing, not so serious, not nearly the kind of meaning that other things are and were.

I hadn't seen anybody do that since the afternoon of January 6, when Senator Josh Hawley did the same thing to his faithful, the ones who, not long after, with imagined grievances, stormed the U.S. Capitol. It was as if he'd given a signal.

They were gathered and ready for an invasion. He inspired them. He certainly didn't discourage them. They did their worst. They trashed the place.

When a U.S. Senator does that--proud, glad, inspired--it's a signal whether he means it that way or not. In a way, Hawley was naive. He sees himself as an underdog, carrying a banner for the downtrodden. Seeing them, he egged them on.

He was having fun, enjoying the moment as the tacit leader of the quest. But it was just a game, right? Just playing, right? Not so serious, not nearly the kind of meaning that other things are and were. No reason to make that much of a big deal out of it.

But it was a big deal, one of the biggest of all deals. It was not a happy moment. It was an extremely intense and angry one. The crowd of rioters stood poised like panthers, awaiting their prey. Hawley invited them with his raised fist: Go ahead. 

They did, of course. They celebrated their racism by ripping apart a working national shrine and looking for, thank heaven not finding, legislators to harm or kill. (One wonders what they would have done if they'd found Hawley. Would they have even recognized him?)

Just the kind of inheritance to be expected from someone who got elected president by the back door, on a technicality, not taking any of it very seriously. It's all basically a joke, right? So raise your fist and get the cheers and put up a token protest that you say is meaningful but nobody in their right mind does--except lots of fools out of their right minds had destruction as their agenda, and carried it out.

You went to Stanford and you backed the rejection of the legal process by which the president is elected? What the hell did they teach you there? Is this what you think is civil disobedience? Is this the proper descendant of Thoreau's tradition? To wreck the very Capitol in which you're supposed to represent the people of Missouri? Who are you, Hawley, some snot-nosed punk?

Regardless of future results, Packer fans who feel welcome in Lambeau Field will pack up their gear at season's end and await the next kickoff. Regardless of future results, insurrectionists who tore up the one place everyone's supposed to be able to go and feel welcome will be despised and diminished. Sports have their pattern, but in the end, their cycles lend to their temporariness. Not politics. They have lasting effects on people's lives.

By the way, Aaron Rodgers gave half a million dollars out-of-pocket to support small businesses. He didn't brag about it. He didn't posture. He just did it.

The feelings that Aaron Rodgers leaves with us will last perpetually. So will the feelings, the lawlessness and the nihilism that Josh Hawley have created. Which set would you rather remember?

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

An Excellent Moment for MLK Day, Wouldn't You Say?

If there were ever a great time for Martin Luther King Day, it would be now, this day, just 48 hours before the most vocally, demonstrably racist president we have ever had will be stepping down.

For we need MLK's memory. We need his 'fierce urgency of now.' We need to remember what he stood for, right now.

Above all, and very simply, he stood for people just getting along. But to do that, we'd have to go several steps further. We'd have to admit that living amongst each other wasn't a scary or even an unusual thing.

We'd have to accept each other's humanity without anger. That's getting to be a pretty high reach right now.

No, it's not about accepting those that trashed the Capitol a few days ago. I don't accept their humanity, because their humanity was not on display then. Whatever that was, was something else. That leaned on baser, more animalistic characteristics that most of us concluded we had gotten past after diapers.

And no, it's not about accepting their grievances as valid. Because they aren't. Being white isn't a burden, and it's not sufficient excuse to feel sorry for yourself. In fact, being white is quite the advantage here in America, and still is. 

Whatever benefits minorities have received out of government programs weren't placed there so that they can get ahead of whites, but so they could be equal to whites, at least in opportunity, at least for a few moments. Then we can let achievement and talent and skills determine the rest.

That's the part they don't get, but to understand that, they'd have to read a few things and accept a few things, not the least of which is that whatever advantages they were born with are things they never grabbed when they were available. If that time has gone by, well, that's the way things go. Advantages don't stop and wait for people.

They'd have to conclude that, even after three-quarters of a million people gave their lives to settle whether black people would stop being someone's slave a century and a half ago, their economic circumstances, by and large, have still not come near what they should be. If you doubt this, read the book Evicted and get back to me.

But that would take effort, thoughtfulness and a genuine sense of common humanity. Fat chance. Above all, they have to know that they're still superior to people of color, regardless of the facts and regardless of the wreckage they've made of their own lives. Nobody laying waste to the U.S. Capitol on the 6th of January could possibly say that they've been good to the land that gave them birth and whatever opportunities they had. 

If they can say so, they weren't there. They appreciated the land of the free. It certainly can't be called the home of the brave.

Some of these people are determined to return on Inauguration Day and finish what they've started. I don't think they're going to succeed. Americans, decent Americans, are slow to respond; democracy is like that. It gives the benefit of the doubt, even if people don't have it coming. But in response, forearmed with righteous anger, it can be quite impressive, as in "island-hopping" in World War II. Osama bin Laden discovered that, too, one day in 2011, when he paid the price for toppling two buildings filled with working people in New York City.

Am I confused? Did I just make an analogy in dealing with enemies of the United States? What else would you call the gangsters who wrecked the Capitol? That they are citizens--if that's what you want to call them--is irrelevant. Anybody who would do that to the Capitol of my government, to people just trying to do their jobs, is an enemy. Some have been arrested. Others await that fate.

And if you sat at home cheering them on, you are just as complicit, just as much an enemy. So you'd better keep your head down and go back to whining at the bar on Friday nights, Covid or not. You may still be stupid, but at least you'll be harmless. I don't like masks, but I'll be wearing one. And I'm not listening.

Instead, I'll be looking for people who are reasonably disagreeable as well as people who agree with me. I'll be looking for people who can work within the system we have, which was the best in the world until its mistakenly elected leader decided that it didn't matter. And I will not be working to keep things the same, especially not for people like you.

Yes, it's a good time for Martin Luther King Day. It's a good time to sit back and reflect on what he tried to do, but hateful forces ended his life. Those forces re-emerged on January 6, just as racist as ever. We thought they had subsided. Guess not. We must work harder than ever, it turns out, so they will not win. We have, briefly, seen what transpires when they do.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Maybe He Could Do It, But It Wouldn't Be Easy

I knew I could find it, but I also knew it would take a while. I had to flip through hundreds of pages.

Henry Kissinger wrote a three-volume memoir of his years with the Nixon-Ford Administrations. This is no sketchy deal; together, they run close to four thousand pages. And he can write. He's brilliant. The details are incredible.

I have them all. I haven't read through all of them all the way, but I did remember a passage I found that describes when Kissinger told an anecdote about Nixon that was genuinely scary--as scary as the time we're in right now. It's featured in the third book, Days of Renewal, in which for a while at least, he reviews the great and not-so-great tendencies of Nixon's, being careful to include them after he had left office (which is what I think many will do with 45).

One night, a TWA plane (Remember that airline?) was hijacked and taken to Damascus airport. Kissinger, then national security adviser, reported it to Nixon.

Nixon was at his home in San Clemente, California, apparently having some cocktails with a couple of his buddies. "Obviously trying to impress his pals," Kissinger wrote, "Nixon issued a curt-sounding order: 'Bomb the airport of Damascus.' "

By the way, we didn't. And the method by which the order was belayed, delayed, and eventually countermanded might shed some light on the necessity with which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi consulted with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Malloy. 

Of course, Nixon was commander-in-chief, with full military authority, so Kissinger couldn't tell him to knock it off. He had to "carry out" the order. But he did so in a way in which enough time could go by without actually launching any planes.

First, he called the Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird. They both knew that we had aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, but out of range at the time. So they would have to be brought close enough for the order to make any sense. That bought both of them time.

Laird then told Nixon that weather conditions were making it impossible to launch the ordered strike, at least at the moment. That delayed any action until the following morning.

Kissinger reported the position of the carriers to Nixon the next morning. They were now in position, and if the order was to be carried out, it could be repeated if Nixon really meant it. But he didn't. " 'Did anything else happen?' Nixon innocently asked. When I replied in the negative, the President--without moving a facial muscle--said, 'Good.' I never heard another word about bombing Damascus."

Should 45, in his last three days in office, decide to launch an atomic attack on, say, North Korea or Iran, that would have to be carried out through channels. It might be easier, this time, since we don't actually have a Secretary of Defense, or Acting Secretary of Defense, since the one he had, Mark Esper, was fired last month. But it's also true that the people in charge of getting missiles into position would have to follow directives, and could probably delay the order to be sure there was a good reason to do it.

Pelosi has not revealed the chain of command necessary to start such an attack. Perhaps she's sworn to secrecy. But that certainly didn't give her any reason to pause or delay impeachment proceedings on 45 (again!), even though the trial won't begin until he's left office.

At some point, someone has to tell 45 "no." At some point, someone must call his bluffs. He's losing his base, he's losing his assistants, he's losing his Cabinet. People are bailing out on him faster than the sinking of the Titanic. But he still has that power, and he still has until Wednesday noon, Eastern time, to utilize it.

Obviously, he would have to convince people that, at the very last minute, an enemy was mounting the same kind of attack upon us to justify the use of atomic weapons. Such reports should be shared and traced to their "sources" and protocol brought into proper order. That might buy enough time. It also might not.

Otherwise, it would take an additional madman to report to the president that some unusual activity was taking place, such that it constituted a genuine threat to America or Americans sufficient to justify a massive attack. Or it might be a mistake. We might have to hold our breaths in such a situation.

But we've come close before. Jimmy Carter was told that the Soviets had launched a major attack one night, and they hadn't. They themselves nearly mistakenly thought that war games off their Pacific coast were in fact an attack launched by us in 1983.

Nearly everything else has happened in this crazy time. Nearly all the other guardrails have fallen away. It's not that much of a stretch anymore to suppose that this one would, too.

45 decides things by the seat of his pants, on a whim, far more than he plans to do anything. If we don't hear anything by Tuesday night, we're probably in the clear. He cares about nothing else but himself and satisfying his enormous ego, though.

Maybe he could do it, but it wouldn't be easy. He might try to scare us by announcing an attack, but verification of that would have to be made by military sources inside the Pentagon. Besides, he's lost his social media connections by which he might easily scare enough people to provide cover. Without it, a 'counterattack' would lose much of its justifiability (though he's been taping commentary from the White House). Disobedience of a direct order that's illegal is permissible under the law. Cooler heads might still prevail.

Still, there's a point at which such an order would have to be carried out. All the layers of checkpoints, at some point, have to be overrun. Someone would have to double-check to ensure reliability.

Nobody knows for sure. He's threatened North Korea with "fire and fury" if they try anything, early in his term. All that does is set up something he could try to leave the rest of the world with. It would be an act of mass murder unprecedented in history, with retaliation upon us ensured.

Layers of verification stopped Nixon, and even he had a conscience about such disastrous possibilities; at no time during the final days of his presidency were there any threats or did he voice any views about attacking anybody, as depressed and morose as he was. He wanted someone to say something good about him in the future. 45 doesn't care.

If there's anyone possibly craven enough to try such a thing, he's in the White House now, for another three days. The possibility must be faced. Let us hope and pray he has a bit of humanity left.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Nice Try, Mitch. But You're Complicit, Too.

Mitch McConnell's trying hard. He thinks he can turn this tidal wave around.

But he contributed to it mightily. Five years isn't such a long time. The thread is still pretty thick.

For back then, in 2016, he simply blocked President Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, to replace Antonin Scalia, who had suddenly passed away. He blocked it for ten months, preventing a discussion from ever getting to the Senate floor, preventing hearings from taking place. He gambled that a Republican would replace Obama and that his party could have a shot at that appointment.

Well, it worked. So to speak. Obama's constitutional powers were derailed. It's not like things happened at the last minute: Hearings would take weeks, but Garland would have been installed with plenty of time before the next presidential election. 

"Let the American people decide," McConnell said. Nonsense: He was deciding: Deciding to thwart what Obama wanted once again, as he had done for his entire first term, when, as then Minority Leader, he instructed his Republican colleagues to resist anything Obama wanted for its own sake, to resist because that was the only way they could get their own way, or at least keep the Democrats from getting theirs.

Don't cooperate, in other words. Resist, even though compromise is the lifeblood of democracy. When that ended, we all watched. And plenty of others, definitely a majority of Republicans, are still resisting.

So we got 45 in the White House, who has proceeded to destroy nearly anything decent government has ever meant. He nominated Neil Gorsuch, who hasn't exactly played along with what conservatives have always wanted. But he's not Merrick Garland, at least. He's not what Obama wanted.

And it set a precedent of attitude that has directly passed down to today: a precedent that playing nice is over, that tradition and fairness don't mean anything. That pure power matters, and only that. 45 has only continued the example of what McConnell set: Do whatever I can get away with.

McConnell seized the day. But he forgot that tomorrow was coming.

The attitudes and brazen disregard of norms led to 45's impeachment and trial. It led to the diminishment of American prestige and power internationally. It led to confusion and irresponsibility in handling of the pandemic. It led to economic depression and a possible collapse.

But it has also led to the filling of federal court appointments at a rate almost unprecedented in our history, what with a Republican majority also there. Some of these appointments are purely political and have little to do with judicial expertise. But they're filled. Competence now means nothing, but under 45, it never has. That's another part of 45's legacy. And McConnell's.

Obama figured it all out and, of course, put it quite well. Let me quote his book, p. 675:

It was clear that [45] didn't care about the consequences of spreading conspiracy theories that he almost certainly knew to be false, so long as it achieved his aims; and he'd figured out that whatever guardrails that once defined the boundaries of acceptable political discourse had long since been knocked down, In that sense, there wasn't much difference between [45] and [John] Boehner [then House Speaker] or McConnell. They, too, understood that it didn't matter whether what they said was true (bold print mine)....In fact, the only difference between [45]'s style of politics and theirs was [his] lack of inhibition. He understood instinctively what moved the conservative base most, and he offered it up in unadulterated form.

Yup. All 45 has done is perfected what McConnell began long ago: give them what they want to hear, never mind the truth. He's been simply more blatant and relentless, and of course he's still doing it and will endlessly. Look what it's led to. But he had an excellent example to follow. The blocking of Merrick Garland was a blatant seizure of power, and quite relentless. The stonewalling of any support for whatever legislative proposals Obama wanted was quite relentless.

The liberal news commentators have continued to ask, perhaps rhetorically now, whether 45 will take responsibility for what's happened. He hasn't taken responsibility for anything. Neither has McConnell. Why start now?

McConnell, late to the party, now wants to urge on the Democrats to impeach 45--not because it would be just, but because the Republican Party might repudiate him at long last. But too much water has gone under that dam. McConnell's not taking a moral or even legal stance, either. He's pushing for a successful political result so he and the rest of the Republican establishment (what's left of it) don't have to directly deal with 45 any longer. Good luck with that. Only ten Republican Congresspeople crossed over and voted to impeach 45 today; they're still that scared, and I do mean scared, of the folks on the ground.

McConnell won't easily reverse that. But he has brought much of the atmosphere to its peak. I give him credit, at least, for recognizing that 45 has to go and we need to be rid of him in a larger sense. If he really wants to mute 45's pervasive force, though, that is a task that will take much of the intervening four years.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Naivete Is Cute. Unless It Gets You Killed.

Think about the upcoming inauguration. Think hard.

Access to the podium will be limited due to the pandemic, which makes all kinds of sense. So members of Congress get just one spare ticket each, instead of a bunch of them (which they have, in the past, offered to supporters).

Being the historical event that it is, past presidents are always invited. 45 has said he's not going. Biden agrees that that's a good idea.

That's irrelevant. 45 doesn't want to get anywhere near that podium, and it isn't because he'd have to admit, at long last, that he lost. Nope. Got nothing to do with it.

That podium will be attacked by right-wing saboteurs. Count on it. And 45 knows it. It would be an act of pure vengeance.

What form could it take? A sudden automatic weapon charge like the one that eliminated Egypt's Anwar Sadat in 1981. Or an explosive device designed to go off just before 12 Noon, when Biden's supposed to be sworn in. Or a suicide bomber; yes, there are people that crazy.

Or maybe a simple wrecking of the newly constructed fence around the Capitol grounds. I don't know about you, but watching people put it up, I'm thinking that enough people applying force at a particular spot wouldn't make breaching it too challenging. 

And there will be a lot of would-be saboteurs in Washington next week. They've been spurred on by the probe performed by some of them already. They got inside the Capitol and wrecked significant parts of it. And there were no automatic weapons among them.

There will unquestionably be a showdown. 15,000 national guardsmen are supposed to be there. I'm not sure that will be enough.

They say that these people will also make armed demonstrations at each of the 50 state capitals between now and the inauguration. Within each of those collections of state troopers, there may be 45 sympathizers. This could be big trouble. Kidnappings are possible, even worse. Remember they tried to kidnap Gretchen Widmer, the governor of Michigan? Only an informer stopped them.

There is such a thing as self-proclaimed 'constitutional sheriffs,' too, who think they're the only law, the personal law, in their county jurisdictions. If they have to brush the Constitution aside to take care of what they believe to be appropriate 'justice', they do so. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to have them join the so-called law enforcement at state capitols, and be enablers for those who break the law and threaten the population.

Anybody who thinks that this can't happen in Washington, or in Madison, Wisconsin is terribly naive. Normally, being naive's cute. Unless it gets you killed. In a creepy anticipatory set, they are boarding up windows at street level in our state capitol.

If fighting breaks out, the live media will have to decide whether they will televise it. Cell phones will be alive. And if I was a member of CNN or MSNBC, I'd be pretty careful. The insurrectionists have already been ginned up by 45, who keeps condemning them. It's chilling to consider that they might be victimized as well.

The rioters were excellent forecasters: They were looking, really looking, for Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. They were in a lethal mood. They put up a scaffold and noose outside. "Hang Mike Pence!" they kept shouting. There was blood lust in those voices. They meant it.

Notice any black people among them? Hispanics? Asians? Natives? I didn't, either. This is the face of white supremacy, the mentality. The only thing that counts is force.

The courts failed them. 45 struck out 61 of 62 times. He knew he would. But he had to establish a scenario in which everybody was against him. Victims do that, especially manipulative ones.

Had not a quick-thinking Capitol Police officer been at the right place at the right moment, the mobsters might easily have raided and wrecked the Senate, after the Senators had returned. Think about that carnage. Think about the danger.

Think of who'll be at the inauguration: exactly the people 45 wants to eliminate, exactly the people who, if they suddenly died at once, would create a constitutional crisis--The Bidens; Kamala Harris and husband; the Obamas (oh, he really wants him dead); Pence, the outgoing vice-president; the Clintons (so, too, with Hillary, who he insists should have been jailed); and Pelosi.

If someone else gets in the way, well, too bad. But a guy's gotta do what he has to do, you know?

There you have it: the president, vice-president, Speaker of the House, and the ex-presidents he can't stand. If he goes, then they have to go. Somehow, in his twisted, sick mind, it might result in the country begging him to continue as president. Fat chance of that, but it might spark armed conflict--conflict that he'd be happy to take advantage of, but not participate in. He'll let someone else be brave for him.

All this because enough people honestly believe that their lives can't possibly be better without the existence of one person. That the republic can't possibly improve unless he's in power. Because power, raw power, is all they think can make them feel better, so much better that the Constitution is now meaningless.

I saw this when I taught. They were bullies, and no one wanted much to do with them. Given the chance, given what looks like empowerment, they have returned. Charlottesville, back in 2017, was a trial balloon. That momentum built. Some of them are at the point at which their very lives will be given for someone who doesn't care one bit about them. How did they lose that much self-esteem? How did they come to be so blind?

It happened to Mike Pence, too. "After all I've done for him," he was heard to mutter in the middle of this mess. Yes, that's right: You don't matter, either, Mike. All the lying you did before, all the lapdog covering up you did, matters not one bit. You must also be an absolute sycophant, obedient every single time, or you're useless, too. Even the Vice-President.

That's why it's worthless to try the 25th Amendment, which would be a quick and decisive way to remove 45 from any vestige of power. The Cabinet members are resigning--Transportation (the wife of Mitch McConnell), Education, and Homeland Security so far--so they wouldn't have to vote to enact the Amendment. Whether they're resigning in disgust or loyalty is irrelevant; they're making it more difficult for Pence to gather the Cabinet and get a majority of them to sign off on removing 45's power anyhow.

The poison is everywhere. Right now, federal authorities are checking within the FBI, National Guard, and Capitol Police for 45's sympathizers. Finally, they get it. May they be thorough and swift in their perusal.

But I wouldn't do any of this in the open. I'd do it behind closed doors with TV cameras there to film it, because you know the crazies will claim it never happened. Then deliver the Inaugural Address there and get it online. The pandemic is certainly a good enough excuse.

The insurrectionists have created protocols to capture or kill Democratic members of Congress. I'm sure they figure that, with the numbers close to a 50-50 split--especially in the Senate--taking out the right one or ones will give the balance back to the Republicans. Which means that our democracy will have become a dictatorship of force of arms: in other words, it will have ended. 

That's what's at stake here. The idea of the loyal opposition has worn out. Democrats didn't resist with weapons or riots at the Capitol when the Republicans took over in 2017. Nobody liked it, but they waited to get another crack at holding power the old fashioned way: through elections. It worked. No reason it can't work again. Always does. History has revealed it.

But 45 has convinced the minions of apocalyptic results if they don't take control this very minute. They lost, though. And much of it's his doing. There was no election fraud. He simply lost.

Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have conceded their Senate campaign losses in Georgia, so there will be no recounts. It would allow Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to come to Washington and take their new positions, and actually give the Democrats working control. It would make sense to get them sworn in ASAP, and elect a new Senate Pro-Tem quickly (who must belong to the majority party). Then hide him or her during the inauguration, because if the worst happens to Biden, Harris and Pelosi, he or she would be next in line to become president. (The present President Pro-Tem is Chuck Grassley, Republican Senator from Iowa.)  Cabinet members come next, in the order in which their positions were created (State, Treasury, and Attorney General are the first three), but none of those nominated have been approved by the Senate. And the Senate must convene to make that happen.

But the Senate isn't scheduled to meet until after the inauguration. Its arcane rules say that it takes unanimous consent to change its schedule. So that isn't going to happen: Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, the ultimate enablers of this fracas, are still there. 

That's why having the inauguration in public isn't a good idea. As of now, the complete succession to the presidency can't be arranged until after January 20, when the Cabinet positions are approved. New Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is looking into an exception established in 2004, ostensibly to at least begin an impeachment trial anticipated by House action. I hope he finds it. But time's running out.

Normally, that wouldn't be a big deal. Does this look normal?

If I'm wrong about all this, I'll gladly admit it. But the signs are too ominous. We cannot be naive any longer. We cannot assume that major opposing actors will find a conscience. Put to the test so far, they have failed.

Even if they can't penetrate the Capitol this time, the insurrectionists can find plenty of other shrines to our country nearby: the Supreme Court, literally across the street; the Lincoln Memorial; the Smithsonian Institution's several buildings; all the Cabinet departments and FBI building. Lots of stuff to wreck. The national guard can't protect everything. In frustration, in a frenzy, rioters are capable of anything.

The bullies will be back with their weapons, whether they actually use them or not in the next eight days. They will have to be dealt with. That will take much longer, because it's hard-wired in certain places in this country now. We have a long, hard road ahead, perhaps an even more bloody one.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark