Smith's Slap Shattered A Well-Regarded Image: Free Speech Suffers

I wonder who Will Smith voted for president in 2020. Because what he did at the Oscars last night was a demonstration of a bully, not a righteous knight in shining armor wreaking his revenge at his lady being sullied.

Granted, the joke Chris Rock told on Smith's wife was tasteless and rude, focusing on her lack of hair caused by disease, which she has not hidden from the public. And, if you were watching, she didn't think it was funny in the least; it felt like humiliating someone in a wheel chair. Rock is good at those cheap shots, supposedly safely delivered to another person of color--whose husband didn't appreciate it.

So Smith simply walked up to Rock on live TV, right there on the stage, and slapped him very hard. I must admit I have never seen that, ever, though Maury Povich and Jerry Springer have hosted a few of those confrontations, from what I understand. But those shows are practically designed to promote such rowdiness--not the Oscars, which are supposed to emote the best in style and decorum.

At first, it looked as if it was a slick fake. Rock didn't go down, but he swerved with the blow. The next 15 seconds or so revealed the intent, because ABC, with its tape delay, managed to blip out whatever Rock said in response, which obviously wasn't for a broad national audience.

Then, as if it were an imprimatur of the act, not 15 minutes later, Smith was awarded the Best Actor award for his role as Venus and Serena Williams' father in "King Richard." It was as if, as he admitted in his strained acceptance speech, he had reverted to the protective father that he had espoused in the film. He spoke of "protecting his family," among other things as he offered what I thought to be hurried and token apologies.

But the damage is done. The example is set. Will Smith showed the nation, better than our ex-president had by merely suggesting it many times in his campaign speeches, that the best way to settle a score is to deliver an actual cheap shot, without warning, to someone engaging in a verbal cheap shot. I wonder how many viewing said to themselves, There. Now shut your mouth, without realizing what that blow had justified.

Because it has justified the same thing taking place in any venue. If you can smack someone in the face at the Oscars, you might justify the same kind of blow, even worse, in other public meetings, especially political ones. Watch for this election cycle to feature invasions by bullies, especially onto stages in which Democrats criticize Republicans, who will now justify defending their "honor" by what Will Smith did, particularly because he, as a black man, delivered it to another black man. If I were a candidate for office bent on making public speeches, I would immediately sign up for martial arts training.

Beyond that, though, it's another reduction in the status of free speech. Smith could have, and in hindsight should have, taken Rock to task either after the ceremony backstage, or, more notably, when he came forward to accept his award. To point out Rock's tastelessness to a national audience would have made Rock look really bad and would no doubt have lowered his status in the minds of many--because some of what he managed to say through tears was measured and needed to be said. 

Now, Rock is a victim, in some minds deserving some empathy. He gets paid to tell jokes, and he's known for leaping over barriers. He went too far, which might be lost in this fervor. But more speech was needed, not the ruin of a physical attack.

Smith has apologized, a day later. Wonder if his lawyer recommended it. But it hasn't stopped the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Oscars, from launching an investigation, which it certainly should. It says here that it should publicly scold Rock for his coarseness,  not invite him to help host the event ever again, and suspend Smith's attendance at the ceremony for at least one year, whether he happens to be nominated for an award or not.

And it should say so very loudly. This is far worse than mixing up who gets the award for Best Picture, a gaffe which happened not so far ago. This is a serious broach of protocol and an invitation for others to sully other celebrations similarly (the comedian invited to the White House Correspondents' Dinner, for instance, had better double check his script). The Oscars have suffered from a distinct lack of following in recent years; this won't help that trend. Instead, the slap shattered a well-regarded image of prestige and honor.

The status of civilizations rise through the efforts of many; it falls through demonstrations of a few. The Capitol is invaded by a mob ginned-up by lies; the Oscars are diminished by an uncalled-for vengeful slap by a corked-off husband of a recipient. If people who are supposed to be in control can't maintain it, there's little point in bringing them together to celebrate, to honor, and to recognize the good things that people do. Then we all lose.

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

Mister Mark

Why Putin, with Madness Like This, Can't Possibly Win

Lots and lots of overestimation in Ukraine, wouldn't you say?

Overestimation of how the Ukrainians would just roll right over and capitulate to an obviously overwhelming Russian onslaught. They gave Russia, and the rest of the world--which had written them off before it all started; face it, you did, didn't you?--for that matter, a big fuck you.

Overestimation, too, of the superiority of Russian ground forces, which have come up woefully short of expectations. Communications sneaked from Russian radio messages indicate that they are undersupplied and undertrained. Low morale can't be far away, if it already hasn't arrived. Somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have already been killed. At the low end of the estimate, with just one calendar month elapsed, the Russians have lost over 200 killed per day. There's no reason why that rate won't at least remain the same.

Some domination. Some overwhelming superiority. Russia has a problem, and it grows by the day.

Vastly superior hardware is making the big difference now, in that the Ukrainians are strapped for defenses against Russian planes, tanks, and missile launchers. But it isn't likely that they, alone, will result in a Russian victory. Why not? Because with each destructive strike, the Ukrainians are getting angrier and angrier, more and more fierce in their defensive posture, and less and less likely to settle on anything but the independence with which they peaceably existed on February 23.

One of the few comparable situations I can think of is the Hungarian Revolution, which lasted only for 11 days in 1956. The Hungarians resisted the Soviet Union's communist rule, brought in a government of their own, and tried to fight off Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails. Meanwhile, the United States and NATO sat there with their thumbs up their backsides, afraid that the Soviets would begin a nuclear war if they entered the fray. That threat, of course, hasn't disappeared in Ukraine, and has reared its head for the first time in quite a while.

But NATO, after an understandably slow start, has rallied to support Ukraine with weapons, logistics, and other supplies. Maybe Vladimir Putin thought of this situation as another Hungary. But some nations and some alliances, as opposed to him, have learned from the past. They're involved without getting involved, and Putin is stuck with their assistance.

Beyond that, though, how can any leader posit his country into a positive place after initiating devastation like this? Yes, other European nations purchase energy supplies from Russia, but after the meeting among NATO nations that's just happened, they'll be reducing their reliance on Russia very soon. But beyond that: How can any international cooperation in any other area--science, sports, scholarship--be anything but tainted by the specter of this premeditated viciousness? How can someone from, say, Austria feel good about blending efforts with someone from Russia, as innocent of their country's viciousness as they may be?

Putin has created a vehicle to shut off the people in his country from the people in others'. The world stands to lose a valuable resource. Everything will not just calm down and 'be okay' after this villainy. Someone will have to answer.

To the extent that he will remain in power, the Russian people will have to answer. Information about the source of this evil will be slow in arriving, but it will arrive. Putin, with madness like this, can't possibly win what he wants: a united, expanded, loyal nation.

That the Ukrainians are not only holding out but apparently, in some areas, actually regaining ground they lost is a tribute to the human spirit that will endure regardless of the eventual outcome, as obscured as it now is. Putin forgot his own country's ferocious response to Nazis in World War II; calling out the Ukrainians for adapting similar political stances is a futile and ridiculous effort to smear them. Notice that no one, not even independent organizations, are investigating the veracity of such accusations; they are being dismissed out of hand.

This won't end well, regardless. Either the Ukrainians will somehow outlast Russia and hold onto a significant part of their land, or they will be gradually crushed beneath the overwhelming amount of Russian hardware. Either way, what remains won't be a lot of fun for either side to embrace. 

But the world knows the Russians are to blame. Its attitude toward them will be fascinating to watch. Justice is sometimes served spoonful by spoonful; this may be one of those times.

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

Mister Mark

In Cedarburg? Of Course. A Prime Location for 'Discomfort.'

I knew it was going to happen in Cedarburg. They picked a perfect time for it.

Someone's challenging the inclusion of the book The Kite Runner in the Cedarburg High (where I used to teach) curriculum. They say they think it's a good book, but not for 10th graders.

They say they want some alternatives. The book does focus on some nasty stuff: child sex trafficking, drugs, and homosexuality. But this is Afghanistan we're talking about--not the United States, of course.

Except for one thing: The three aforementioned vices are ever-present in the United States, and in large numbers. Child sex trafficking is so prevalent, for instance, that there's an enormous notice to contact police pasted onto the kiosk of the bus stop just one block from my apartment, in a relatively well-to-do part of Milwaukee.

And, while researching a novel I'm writing, I asked someone in the know about transsexuality at Cedarburg High. I was told that it's been there for quite some time now. I stopped teaching in a classroom there in 2003, and I must admit that I never actually saw an example of homosexuality that I knew of. But Cedarburg being what it is, there's no doubt that it was there. The pressure applied to remain in the mainstream of student life must have been enormous.

This request that The Kite Runner be somehow hidden until later in the high school experience dismisses the exposure that 10th graders have already had to the more controversial themes in the book. They've already seen it on TV and movies. To pretend that they haven't dodges what prime media has already done. 

I know they're trying to protect these young minds from unnecessary corruption far too soon in their lives. For that they can't be overly criticized, but they're already too late. Nobody has to like it, but that's what's happened.

I've got another book to recommend to anyone who's concerned about this, in fact. It's called The Disappearance of Childhood, by Neil Postman, written in the early 1980s. Postman has been one of the more acerbic commentators on the development of our culture in the latter half of the last century. This thin offering struck me as being especially perceptive.

Postman paralleled the development of succeedingly more sophisticated media platforms with the reduction of the innocence of childhood. He begins with the telegraph and concludes with television, and you can see it clearly. He not only points it out, he bemoans it. Kids, he continuously states, have been made to grow up, or be exposed to more adult issues, far too quickly, before they've had a chance to properly mature and deal with them competently.

Anyone who's been in education for a significant part of their lives, like I have, can do little else but nod their heads. The world comes on very fast nowadays. It's getting harder and harder to connect the dots. But someone has to try. What better place than in the schools, where discussions can be structured by an adult?

But to keep an important and excellent book (one of two that had me in tears at the end) away from 10th graders just because you think they should be exposed, what, one or two years later? That begs incredulity. As a teacher said, they're going to be voters in two years. There's no reason to hold back.

Alongside of that comes the realization that, until last year's debacle, we were very involved in Afghanistan's society, unsuccessfully trying to hold back the Taliban to which the population eventually succumbed (for more on that, try The Afghanistan Papers, previously reviewed in this space). That's the same Taliban that committed horrible rites of public execution, that has suppressed the development of women, that has dissolved any separation of church and state, that has approved of childhood marriages. A significant majority of 10th grade girls would be married in Afghanistan by now--something that should be driven home sooner rather than later.

There's no better way to expose those realities than by a well-written book. It's a novel, yes, but it brings to light many parts of Taliban culture that we here do not and will never realize personally. It's an excellent way to sustain perspective: That life here may have its problems but at least girls get a chance to have as much education as they can; that they can marry whomever they wish whenever they wish; that being unmarried does not keep them from pursuing professional dreams. Yes, there's a way to go, but the point remains that significant parts of our society are bearing down on those improvements and won't rest until they're realized.

The sooner girls can get that message, the better. This isn't bullying; this is enlightenment, just at the point at which high school students should be exposed to it. The word is that the decision now rests with the superintendent; let's hope he is similarly enlightened. The Kite Runner isn't a book that needs restriction in its exposure; it needs expansion. We will see if the school district retreats under a canvas of fear, rather than remain open to effective learning.

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

Mister Mark

They Once Got Food. Now They Get Bullets.

Sometimes there are obvious ways in which one can measure that times have changed. A very sad one reared its ugly head the other day.

When I was on the NEA Board of Directors, some twenty years ago, we usually had dinner at a restaurant nearby the NEA building, which was in Washington, DC. In all likelihood, there were some leftovers. Those who had ordered too much asked for a bag to take back with them.

But some of them didn't bring the bags back to their rooms. Instead, they would take the food to the small park at McArthur Square, either directly in the path of, or fairly close to, the route back to our hotel. They would give the food away to the homeless, most of the time just leaving the bag next to the park bench on which they would be laying. Whether they were actually trying to sleep wasn't always clear.

Whether they accepted the food and actually ate it wasn't always evident, either. Maybe they waited for us to leave before digging in. Maybe they had too much pride to partake and quietly resisted the handouts. I honestly never knew.

But I thought it was a nice gesture. It sought not to humiliate, but to help, if only for a moment. Who knew where they would get their next meal, if indeed you could call it that at all? If you're homeless, there's no way to know where your next square would be coming from.

And it certainly wasn't the only place homeless people would hang out on a Friday night. On other streets, there were gratings from which warm air streamed. The ones who hustled best were the ones sleeping on those grates, right there on the sidewalk, making you walk around them. Some of the other places were churches, especially those with overhangs to guard against the rain. Remember when ex- displayed his upside down bible during the George Floyd protests in 2020? That church, right behind him, was (and may still be) one of the prime places where sleeping bags would be seen on most any night.

That was bad enough, and an ongoing eyesore on the capital city. Now, though, a new disgust has taken hold.

In both Washington, DC and New York City, apparently, someone didn't stop by the homeless strewn every which way on park benches and gratings to deliver food or even just a word of hope. He took a handgun and shot them.

Same guy. Two different cities, hours apart by car or train. He's killed two and wounded three others.

They found him this morning. They took him alive. Great. I want to hear him try to explain himself. I want him to tell all of us why he--he--designated himself to be the deliverer of vengeance to those he has never met, wouldn't otherwise care about, and otherwise wouldn't disturb the functioning of his everyday life.

I want him to explain to all of us why those people were better off dead to the rest of us. Were they too big a display of poverty? Was he too uncomfortable in their presence? Did he assume that they never worked a day in their lives and were thus wasting his tax dollars?

The mayors of both cities urged the homeless to find city-supported shelters while authorities conducted their manhunt (Because DC is federal property, it now includes ATF and FBI agents, so it didn't take long to catch him.). I suppose they can keep right on sleeping on the air ducts now. Why they don't find shelters has always been an oddity to me.

Based on what I saw in many large cities while I was on both the NEA Board and the Executive Committee, I would be amazed if there were fewer homeless people than 15 years ago. It may sound ridiculous, but I'm glad just one person's out there trying to kill the homeless. The general, overall lack of caring about the destitute needs only to drop one level to justify an effort to get rid of them altogether. 

We are perilously close to an abandonment of humanity. The homeless need not be in the parks and sleeping under church hangings forever. As income inequality widens, though, this problem will become more and more noticeable. As that happens, it will become less and less someone else's problem, after-dinner food bags notwithstanding.

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

Mister Mark

Censorship? Yes, Let's Discuss It--Right Here in Our Classrooms

We rail at the clear and unaltered censorship with which the Russian government is hiding its depraved perpetrating of a war in Ukraine. And it's working. We have seen, in broadcast interviews, how control over media outlets allows Putin to prosecute the war while his own people wander about uninformed.

The only difference between there, and here, is that state and local governments are doing exactly the same thing, only piecemeal. But censorship it is.

Any local school board, or state legislature, that prevents the teaching of critical race theory, or limits discussion of LGBTQ issues (as Florida's bill is due to be signed by Gov. DeSantis very soon now), does the same thing: A government prohibits the airing of things that people are thinking about and talking about.

I don't see how that makes the states of Florida, Tennessee and 39 others that are trying to extend prohibitions, any different than Russia at the present time. Freedom of thought is being intercepted. Plain and simple.

After having read an article about it in USA Today recently, it's pretty clear, too, that the prohibitions are not trying to stop anything that's false, obscene, or irresponsible, though the prohibitioners may claim such. They're trying to stop the truth, the uncomfortable, sometimes ugly truth, from disturbing someone's image of the country as a beacon of liberty.

Well: For some people, it will always remain that way. But just about all of those people were, and are, white. People of color can't possibly see the United States of America as the fulfillment of all of their dreams; too many of them have been blocked.

If you think for a moment, though, that the Republican Party is behind all this--well, you'd be exactly right.

None of the state legislatures that are planning, or have already, limited discussion of critical race theory in public school classrooms are controlled by Democrats (granted, not very many of those). There must be something wrong with them, I guess.

Nope. The Republican Party is now branded with, and is standing for, the same political correctness that conservatives used to brand Democrats with. This kind of it is stultifying, ridiculous, and in a strong sense, is itself unpatriotic.

It's unpatriotic because it flies in the face of what Republicans have always said they favor above all else: Freedom. This just isn't the kind of freedom they prefer to discuss, evaluate, or accept.

Somehow, they are threatened by people who wish to discuss our history responsibly, accurately, and fully. They must be living in caves and assume that the rest of us are, too. How else can they possibly think that they can manipulate children's minds so that they won't pick up the racism that's already out there?

They want them to ignore it, I suppose. To ignore the delays that Jim Crow caused to give minorities opportunities that they've deserved for decades. But then, a thoroughly Republican-controlled Supreme Court will, apparently, do so by cancelling affirmative action, which has lasted about sixty years or so.

This go-backwards-and-start-over habit has strangled any decent Republican thinking. It has taken it hostage. It wouldn't be a bad definition of the intimidating cult which has emerged.

The pretense simply won't work. But if you take a decent approach to teaching about racism out of schools, you will further humiliate and anger those of other races. You will cause resistance to it inside those schools. You will restart what is unnecessary there. All will know it. The response will be staccato and inadequate because all will also know that regardless of how people feel, there isn't much they can do about it.

Just another way in which, despite its contrary rhetoric, the Republican Party is trying to ruin America. Ronald Reagan started it by defiantly kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, a clear slap in the face of that movement. He fooled, and is still fooling, lots of people.

Teachers need to unite so that the children cannot be fooled by this latest stunt. It is another ploy by a desperate party that is losing the clash of ideas, and that wishes that the other side is instructing kids in unAmerican, unpatriotic, sneaky ways. But it is the Republicans who are doing exactly that. The difference is that their propaganda attempts to make white out of black and reality into vague, meaningless fibs that, once uttered, will become paeans to tokenism and remove the meaning of the whole business.

That's exactly what Vladimir Putin is trying to do to his invasion of Ukraine--twist the meaning behind opaque references, in the hopes that he will be able to operate without significant public protest. To do that, he must enforce rigid censorship. There must be no discussion, no exchange of ideas.

The rest of the world has wised up, though. We must also do so about the censorship of racism here, resisting its willy-nilly imposition within state legislatures spooked by twisted meanings and intimidation by a real, live boogeyman who, for the present time, has only the power of influence--which is real power indeed.

Be well. Be careful. Get a good flashlight in case the grid is attacked. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Information Firewalling, a.k.a. Censorship: A Necessity for Dictators

To bring you up-to-date: CNN reported that on one day--one day--4,357 Russians--Russians--were arrested in 56 cities for protesting the war. In Moscow, they're now picked up just as they leave the Metro, without even being given a chance to say anything. The authorities know why they're coming, so probable cause is assumed.

The protests have to be based on information being distributed guerrilla-style. The Russian government is making a no-holds-barred effort to reduce the spreading of information to itself, and only itself.

Facebook has been cancelled. Anyone who reports something the government doesn't like can be arrested and convicted for 15 years in prison. Bloomberg News and BBC have been forced to suspend their efforts in war coverage. So has the New York Times. The Washington Post will remove by-lines to protect sources.

It will serve the Russians well. They get to spread nothing but their propaganda and lies without challenge. They get to sustain a news blackout--a real news blackout--for the duration of the war, and probably afterwards. You really think they'll return to an open society after this carnage? This embarrassment?

It is complete nonsense. It pretends that the blame for the war goes on the U.S. It continues to rely on the notion that the invasion, bloody and completely unleashed as it is, with civilian casualties mounting by the minute, is nothing more than peacekeeping.

There will be peace, all right. When Ukraine is completely destroyed.

Meanwhile, the whole effort is one big war crime. 200,000 people were to be evacuated from Mariopol, on the Black Sea. Russian shelling prevented that. 

We know that Russians are leaving the country, but we'll now have no idea how many. Censorship solders things shut, leaving us to forage for anecdotes for things like casualties. We have to be patient now; our lust for fast news can't be satisfied. But the well-filmed destruction of major Ukrainian cities isn't being done antiseptically; we have also seen the bodies pile up.

Knowing what we know, though, and what the Russian government won't let us know, will leave us with one, sure conclusion: What whatever that government puts out on the airwaves is either only half-true or contrived fantasy, not just to be taken with a grain of salt, but to be discarded out of hand. As we go, it will only be further and further divorced from reality, like Putin himself.

The only thing that will be sure and verifiable is the carnage that it so willingly foists upon Ukraine, against which its citizens are so bravely resisting. Nobody in Russia, not Putin, not his henchmen, not its censors, can stop that publication. War needs no puffing, no exaggeration. It is formed out of hate and it engenders hate.

The aftermath of this violence cannot bode well for Putin, nor for Europe. He will have to double down on his new imperial plans, or find a way to conclude Ukraine is all he needs and wants. But who will believe him? And who will come out of this with anything good a respectful for Russia?

With the censorship, Russia will most likely become a new blockade of information, like North Korea, which also has its citizens scared to death. It will, in all likelihood, cause a new arms race, justified by ginned-up anticipation of invasion by the West, which is not in the plans. Putin will have to take away everyone's laptops and androids; receiving information from the West will have to become as dangerous as putting something else out there. I wouldn't put it past him to try.

The only thing that can stop this absurd surge, outside of a horribly destructive, expansive war, is an overthrow of Putin. But if information is so difficult to get inside there, how can its population understand the absurdity of what's already happened?

It can't. But Russia is a big place, spanning eleven time zones, and something will leak in--and leak out. The Internet, maddening as it has sometimes been here, can't be stopped forever. No censorship, necessary as it always is for dictators, has ever been proven impenetrable. Cracks will form. Said Leonard Cohen: It's where the sun gets in.

Be well. Be careful. Support the Ukrainians. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

An Opportunity, If Only Someone Would Take It

The sad, tragic, depraved Russian invasion of Ukraine can have only one result: a claimed victory by Russia. It is hard to see something otherwise. The Russian advantage in hardware is overwhelming. Their talks are just that. Along with the attempt at deception with the 'withdrawal' of their troops, they want to create the impression that peace is important to them. It is, but just the way they want it.

If the goal is to take over Ukrainian government buildings in Kyiv and replace Vladimir Zelenskyy, alive or not, with a puppet ruler, that will get accomplished. The only question is how bad Russia will look when it's all over. So far, it's pretty bad. Russia's getting shunned on a worldwide scale, at the U.N., in athletic competitions, in international banking, by banning flights from it. Even the Swiss, who stay the heck out of everything, are now in on the back turning. There will be no safe haven for Russian money there. Either.

Vladimir Putin, one of the all-time great villains of history now, expected in his fairly vacant mind that the Ukrainians either wouldn't put up much resistance or it would be token and inconsequential. As self-indulged as he is, he apparently couldn't surmise that nationalism holds true for all who live under their own flags, most of whom have ancestors who shared the same soil.

That the Ukrainians are fairly outgunned by an awful lot, and not likely to get nearly enough to provide lasting resistance, is irrelevant. The Russians will pay a significant price for the invasion on which they have embarked. They have been branded as outlaws, and that brand will not easily be washed away.

Putin is a disgusting bag of garbage who has vastly underestimated both his conjured enemy's willingness to fight back and also, it would seem, the willingness of at least some of his own troops to engage in a clear and unmistakeable international crime mission. But someone else called him a genius.

That someone is also a disgusting bag of garbage, and has a cultish following here. Like Putin, he respects the display of strength, not real strength itself, which would take effort and consistency. All he can do is talk, which is all he did while he was our ridiculous, incompetent president.

Not only isn't there a damn thing he would do, not a finger he would lift, to assist the Ukrainians, but he's also called Putin a "genius." As things get messier there, Democrats would be well-advised to keep that comment in the front of people's minds, as in: What kind of a genius does he look like now?

It's becoming clearer to a slowly developing group of honest-to-goodness thinkers in the Republican Party that this pestilence, worse in its way than Covid, is leading them down the road to self-destruction. Meanwhile, some of the evangelicals honestly believe that Putin is developing the backdrop to End Times, in which we all perish and meet our maker all at once. Never mind climate change; let's do this right now and move up the meeting date.

That is beyond crazy. That is mental illness masquerading as devotion. It's the same thinking which postulates that ex-'s power is dictated by the almighty in the Bible. It's salve for those who don't wish to think critically.

Republicans of decent rationality know, they know, that faced with this sham, they have to (as we say in Wisconsin) 'go up' with the bar dice cup. These poor folk would never win in liars' dice.

But they keep shaking the cup, hoping for a better result. It isn't there. Putin has no redeeming values. He is a megalomaniac bent on gobbling up everything in his way. So is ex-.

We are slowly emerging from a Covid nightmare. Yes, inflation is a problem, and President Biden addressed that in his State of the Union address last night. When supply lines are freed up, things get to market faster and prices stabilize (gas is another issue, since everybody's shut down Russia's supply). He still believes this is temporary. He'd better be right.

Without that issue, all the Republicans have to go on is the concoction of weakness from a weak man. Someone must use decent logic and reject the rantings of the idiot they once supported for four years. The simple repetition of the nonsense begins to make less and less sense as we go. Despite his insistence, the world moves forward.

This is a terrific opportunity for someone in the Republican Party to mount a counter-organizing effort. Nobody's saying they have to become Democrats. But someone must be seeing that, with time crawling forward, the kind of world that ex- insists upon isn't happening, indeed can't happen. It's ridiculous to believe that some of them aren't thinking that. But they must have a place to land. It must be sound, and it must be re-electable.

They can look at the present day in two ways: The last gasp of faulty, paranoid thinking, and the last chance to establish an authoritarian regime, or a chance to push away from it and conduct business the way it should be conducted--with sometimes ferocious verbal combat, but with no deals that are non-starters from the word go.

If no one steps forward, we might get a repeat of the nightmare starting in January 2017. Mere nodding in the direction of democracy won't do it; that's why several states have already tried to fix the next election. That's the catch-all of people who know their ideas will fail. They don't wish to preserve democracy. They know democracy will turn on them. Their ideas are dying, but they'll grab the side of the rowboat and tip the rest of us into the water if they have to.

The door is closing on any notion that the Republican Party can separate itself from its incompetent monster. Someone with organizational courage must step forward, come what may. I'm not sure anybody will, but anyone who's looking can see that we are at that inflection point.

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

Mister Mark