A Murderer's Row of Nonsense

Not too long ago, I read a book entitled Money, Lies and God, about the Christian nationalist movement to destroy democracy. Very well cited, Katherine Stewart names names on the road to destroying what America used to be about: Living with opposition, living and let living.

She started out by naming self-appointed groups bent on straightening out all that sinning going on out there and fencing it all in. The number of them were amazing, so I decided to write them all down. Note that this is not, in all likelihood, an exhaustive list: These are just the ones she found. You may have heard of some of them, but I'm betting far and away not all of them:

Alliance Defending Freedom

Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

American Center for Law and Justice

Bible Literacy Project

Biblical Voter

Bradley Foundation

Child Evangelism Fellowship

Council for National Policy

Concerned Citizens for Education

Conservative Action Project

DonorsTrust

Essentials in Education

Eternal Word Television Network

Exodus Mandate

Extinction Rebellion

Faith Wins

Family Research Council

Family Watch International

Fellowship Foundation

Federalist Society

40 Days for Life

Good News Club

Heritage Action for America

Heritage Foundation

Home School Legal Defense Association

Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty

Liberty Council

Life Challenge Church

Manhattan Institute

Moms for Liberty

National Christian Foundation

New Apostolic Reformation/Fivefold Ministry Pentacostals

Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic

Parents Defending Education

Patriot Mobile Leadership Institute

Political Network for Values

Priests for Life

Protect Our Kids

Public School Exit

QAnon

Rachel's Vineyard

Reawaken America

Reform Prayer Network

Religious Freedom Institute

Salt and Light Council

School Board Leaders

Servant Foundation

Seven Mountains Dominions

The Signatory

State Policy Network

Truth and Liberty Coalition

U.S. Coalition of Apostolic Leaders

Wall Builders

Watchman Decree

Word of Faith Fellowship

World Congress of Families

Ziklag Group

I'm not even sure I got all of those listed in the book, but you can see likenesses within several names; many of them concern themselves with 'godless' public education and striving for a remedy to it. Others are catch-all names for a number of people within a number of groups: the Ziklag Group, for instance, another of an exhaustive supply of Biblical references, is named for "A secretive organization for 'high new-worth families' that vacuums in funding for the [Alliance Defending Freedom, which gains quite a bit of attention from Stewart as a central organizing entity] and its allies."

You've heard of some of these: the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, and most recently, Moms for Liberty and QAnon. The rest seem upon first glance as sliver organizations, but Stewart assures us that their dollar contributions are funneled toward the most beleaguered and best-known groups, which all have focused their attacks on some aspect of liberalism.

Undoubtedly, they are better organized than liberal groups, which tend to stay in silos, says an editor of Inside Philanthropy, a digital media site, and miss the concept of building a broad political movement. "Liberal donors can be a bit technocratic and think you make social change by coming up with solutions that are evidence-based. And that's not really how politics works," he said. "People are less rational than a lot of liberal funders would like to believe."

They still can't believe it. I must admit thinking this way for most of my political life--that victory belongs to those who can sell the most logical approach, and represent people's best interests. But the past three presidential elections, along with the coattails that have accompanied it, have clearly demonstrated otherwise. It is said that people don't vote with their minds, they vote with their guts. I think it could more easily be said that voting with one's guts create the reactionary base from which this chaos can function successfully.

Along with that, there is the implication that Democrats can't appeal to the people whose votes are vital to keeping them in power--so they keep losing the close ones. It seems counterintuitive that Democrats have to find something more emotional to pull in those on the fence, and campaign with harsh, one-way-or-the-highway rhetoric--but they may be in a position where they now have to. The results of ignoring those approaches are above: Religiously-directed campaigning breeds autocracy and authoritarianism, just the feeding ground that Christian nationalism craves. 

Do Democrats have to sell religiosity, then? I'm not sure. I don't think they want to. But something decisive with which to strike back at the lies, exaggerations and innuendoes has to be out there. It's clearly missing. Without it, Democrats will fade into the distance, and what used to represent democracy will fade with them. But this murderer's row of nonsense has plenty of momentum now. It makes no sense to say what must take place "or else," because "or else" is here. It is growing out of control or rationality.

And the facts aren't working. There's too much of all the other stuff. It drowns information and logic out. It fills our heads whether we want it to or not. And if a genuine attempt is made to clarify things, others come out and say so, lying through their teeth, sowing confusion and discontent. It encourages us to shut down access to those facts--the worst possible scenario.

Constitutional protection isn't working, either. Ask Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. There is no protection if corporate powers won't defend what late-night shows are supposed to represent--decent, creative satire. Instead of considering these shows to be examples of decent commentary, corporate executives at ABC and CBS don't want anyone, especially 47, to mess with their playthings. So the show has been taken away from Kimmel. Although he has been allowed to return, it's an abject warning that it may happen again--and not necessarily to only late night shows. Stephen Colbert has also been removed permanently, and although cost issues were listed as the number one reason, his relentless parodies of 47 cannot be discounted.

The First Amendment only matters if you have the resources necessary to take ogres into court--and then, you have to win. 47 understands that if you get into people's money bags, they aren't as high-minded as they thought they were.

Note, also, that education seems to be the leading basis upon attacks on liberals. Reactionaries are trying to depict children as helpless waifs who are victimized by naughtiness. They're getting away with acting on behalf of God in removing sinfulness from curricula. This is nonsense, of course, but the grinding away at the position of the freedom of minds to think as they please has that residual effect.

Does that mean that Christian nationalism is winning? You could say that. You could also say that it's a wall upon which to nail the pelts of those who would dare to challenge the anti-truths that 47 and minions mouth. Either way, it serves a purpose for those with grievances and complaints with newly-found governmental power to interrupt them.

And with the above noted groups supporting these awful actions, they carve out places in the body politic to spread their poppycock, overlapping where they will. I highly doubt that the liberals have this many groups to represent their interests; if so, I'd like to read a book that lists them. If not, they'd better hurry up. They're getting run over with this pretentious bulwark. The meaning of America will disappear.

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

Mister Mark

The Normality of Brutality

I belong to a book group, and this month's reading is the work The Other Slavery, by Andres Renendez. It describes a world that I, as a once American history teacher, never really knew.

The Spanish, who took over the Southwest part of what is now the United States, and Mexico, back in the 16th Century were brutal to the Native peoples they conquered. That much I knew and imparted to my students. But what followed that, all the way into the 20th Century, is something that I and I'm betting a whole bunch of my fellow history teachers missed: the pervasive slavery of Native Americans.

The Spanish found caches of silver and gold in America, and enslaved indigenous peoples to mine them. the descriptions of the kinds of workdays these peoples had are terrifying and disgusting. They make the horrible cotton picking of the South by black peoples relatively easier by comparison.

But there were also guilty consciences. The Spanish crown came to try to ban slavery by the New Laws of 1542, which, of course, appalled the Spanish viceroys who were making enormous profits by the mining. The crown ran into a problem that the British crown did 200 years later: How do you enforce something that unpopular that's some 4000 miles away? They couldn't, and they didn't. The New Laws, gradually, were ignored. Slavery continued.

But it was practiced, too, by some Native peoples. When they conquered other tribes and/or defeated them in battle, they took prisoners and either put them to work themselves or utilized them as trading pieces for other things they believed they needed. This was practiced throughout the Americas. Thousands, even millions, of people lived deprived, short lives of subsistence.

Some of that was interrupted by a Native rebellion in 1680, which to a great extent succeeded in chasing the Spaniards out of New Mexico. But within a generation, they returned. By then, Native peoples had re-established conquered areas of their own, forcing the Spaniards to find newly profitable places--which they did, this time utilizing presidios and missions to launch their conquests from.

Renendez has done massive, tremendous research, so much so that this is the kind of book that almost writes itself. It must have taken him years to do it, and it won the Bancroft Prize in 2017. But his thoroughness in reporting is, upon reflection, staggering. It points the finger at many of what we might call "civilized" peoples, Native or European, and exposes them being quite the opposite.

Even Natives attacked and enslaved other Natives. Comanches were particularly active and adept at doing this. They raided settlements over an enormous acreage, considering it was done only with horses. 

All this was done in Mexico, in New Mexico, in Arizona, and in California. It went as far north as present-day Nebraska and Utah. People who needed extra labor to accomplish their tasks went on the road and rounded up those who were not themselves. There were hundreds of thousands of them, all told. And those who write the history textbooks missed nearly all of it.

What the captors must have thought--like the Europeans in Africa and the Americas, like the Muslims in the Near East--is that if they happened upon or heard about other peoples in lands they were visiting or exploring, they must by nature be inferior beings. No matter where or when, if you make that assumption, it makes it easier for you to attack, carry off, and subjugate them to doing your will.

That fundamental assumption has saturated humankind, probably from its beginnings. We mourn the unnecessary activities of those, like 47 and his ICE, who are still going out of their ways not to understand and assimilate newcomers who aren't European in ancestry. We reel in shock at this backwards, even barbarous treatment. 

But the sad fact is that it is merely continuing what part of humankind has always done to those it has brought under their control, based on some kind of supremacy. The one that is practiced inside the U.S. is ginned-up white supremacy; the one practiced in the hope of acquiring gold was based on the Christian religion. Over time, the two never drifted far apart.

It isn't necessarily hate that drove this, though plenty of it existed. It was condescension, too. For some reason, Homo sapiens has a need to consider themselves above someone else--and not just recognize and dote on it, but make captives out of those they judge inferior so they can stay that way. Our slavery, which debuted in 1619,  came along right in the middle of a great deal of it worldwide. 

Ironically, The Other Slavery notes that mandates that were called the New Laws, created by the Spanish crown and its king, who grew a conscience about it all after more than twenty years of it in North and South America, were supposed to end all new slavery there. But of course, enforceability proved difficult, with an entire ocean between the orders and the disagreeing ordered, not to mention settlements in this massive new land that were hundreds of miles apart at times. After a while, the New Laws were ignored.

As silver and gold mines grew, thousands were needed to pry the ores out of them. Superior Spanish war technology left the Natives helpless to resist.

Resist they did, though. Today, we think of the Navajos as a peaceful, gentle people. When they were captives of the Spanish in the 17th Century, though, they turned pretty nasty. 

In 1680, the Navajos somehow concocted a civil war which killed hundreds of Spaniards in New Mexico, and allowed them to gain a semblance of independence. The Spanish had tried to intimidate them by telling them that the Spanish god would be displeased with them if they resisted their new lifestyles, and that, if they obeyed like good little boys and girls, they would someday find a heavenly reward. But that meant that they had to be worked to death, and realizing that turned them sour toward Catholicism. The Spaniards made sure to remove all vestiges of the Navajos' former religious attentions. This they resented deeply, and made revolution easier to consider and attempt.

The more you read about Native slavery, the more it looks just like the brand we're used to considering more deeply in the American South. The sharecropping and tenant farming that created economic conditions that created a trap for many of the so-called free blacks during Reconstruction found an imitator in the encomiendas and the repartimiendos of the Spanish, as well as debt peonage, which held Natives in debt forever.

Slavery is still practiced worldwide. It has other names: Sex trafficking, for instance, or the smuggling of children for adoption. It all has the same basis: taking the lives of other peoples right out of their hands and forcing them to work in terrible conditions for a ripe and endless profit motive. Attempts to stem the human slaughters emerged with time: Mexico's independence movement, for instance, and U.S. Congressmen tried, but with only mixed results.

It's a shame: a shame that it happened at all, and a shame that a book exposing it took until 2017 to be written. But it's yet another indication that history needs cultivation. The deeper people dig, the more they find. The normality of brutality is again upon us--indeed, it never really went away--and we must continue to find its base. 

We must conclude, too, that it takes effort beyond the norm to continue to be good to ourselves and others. There continues to be too much dragging us in the other direction.

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

Mister Mark

Win for the First Amendment? Not So Fast

As usual, the 'victory' for the First Amendment wasn't restorative. Instead, it was predictive. And limited.

Jimmy Kimmel came back onto his after-hours show last night, filled with some remorse, some emotion, and a great deal of posturing about free speech. All of which was fine, and somewhat restorative.

Aha, but not so fast. Two things have stood out in the detritus afterwards:

• Not all affiliates are showing Kimmel anymore. To be noted is the Washington, DC area, where the Sinclair network is making sure 47 doesn't see it; and
• A new, especially notorious, prevention of free speech, potentially far more contentious and far more devastating, is presently taking place within the Pentagon.

To the first: A reminder that, to paraphrase A. J. Liebling, that the only way to guarantee a free press is to buy one. Kimmel is back on about 80% of the stations he once was, but as he himself pointed out, in significantly large population areas such as Portland, OR; St. Louis; and Louisville, he continues to be blacked out. Which means that free speech continues to have a price, whatever that price continues to be. Yes, of course I'm glad he's back, and bemoan the temporary banishment of him from the airways because, as he so aptly put it, "The president can't take a joke." 

What he should have added was, on him. I sincerely hope that Kimmel will get right back on his sarcastic horse, because 47 just made a horrible, incredibly embarrassing (if you're paying any attention and are mindful of his ego problem), speech to the United Nations that will go deep into the annals of complete nonsense. 

And--I might add--his talk at a dinner given him by King Charles of England, in which he looked like a 3rd grader trying to read for the second or third time, is another poorly reported (I found it on You Tube) moment that should make everyone pause about just what we've done to ourselves. The richness of those pathetic performances should give Kimmel and Stephen Colbert plenty of fodder to load their cannons.

To the second: This is The Pentagon Papers writ large. The Pentagon is now demanding that, to report any information inside it, reporters must run it past them first. This is a repeat of what happened more than 50 years ago, when the New York Times and Washington Post discovered, and at first ran, what became known as the Pentagon Papers--a secret, running account of the decisions and strategy encircling our participation in the Vietnam War. They revealed that the government had, in effect, conspired on an ongoing lie as to how it looked upon the fighting that ensued. Predictably, the Nixon administration sued to have these and other papers (including the Milwaukee Journal), in effect, muzzle themselves for reasons of National Security, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

Looks like this situation will have to go to court as well; some media moguls will have to go after it. This is "prior restraint," as it's called: The effort to keep information from the public by creating a self-sustaining barrier. It's exactly what The Pentagon Papers case sought to bar, and--at least back then--exactly what the newspapers sought to overcome. 

But if the president thinks he's king and isn't to be challenged, this is what you get: a firewall that, in case we should be preparing for war--note that 47 wants the Department of Defense's name switched to the Department of War--we would never know until it was imminent.

That doesn't prevent what happened to Jimmy Kimmel from amounting to a big deal: It sure was. But the  Pentagon deal is far, far more important to sustaining the kind of conversation that should happen in a democracy: whether or not to put our young people's lives at risk, or whether to expand the use of the military to take over cities. I wonder whether that has, or will, become common anti-press policy in the other Cabinet departments--State and Treasury Departments come to mind--and if it will soon become accepted practice.

47 and minions are always 'trying stuff' to see if they can get away with it. Jimmy Kimmel's firing and resulting hubbub were perfectly timed to distract us from what might have been surreptitiously planned for weeks, perhaps months. Remember--Project 2025 was in the works, enough to entertain plausible deniability, for quite some time before the last election. All the administration may be doing is continuing to follow the pre-planned script. 

Also note this: along with the reporters' ban comes the story that generals and admirals are being called to the Pentagon for some kind of meeting with Secretary (I hate to capitalize that) Hegseth. Nobody knows why. Could we be going to war without anybody knowing, including Congress? Inquiring minds need to know.

Democracy remains at risk, now more than ever.

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

Mister Mark

You Can Feel Both Ways About Charlie Kirk

One of the most ironic things about extremists is their absolute anathema of feeling ambivalent about anything. To them, all the answers are simple. You just have to sit down and figure it out.

It was so with Charlie Kirk, too. He thought--and this has been re-published several times now--that the unwanted deaths of some Americans was worth the maintenance of what he believed to be viable and deserved gun rights, that that was the price that needed to be paid for his concept of 'freedom.'

Thus are the machinations of those who believe that they, too, will live forever, and that nobody would dare mess with their lives and their very existence. He, instead, became a sought target, and a recipient of the very philosophy that he espoused.

Will I miss Charlie Kirk? No, but I'm sad for his family. His ideas, though, are still out of the mainstream of American thought, though follow-up articles will suggest otherwise. I'm sure he became quite rich because of the intensity of his presentations of them. With that comes some semblance of deservedness and lack of perspective as to what exactly his worth really is in the bigger picture of things. His potential to do far more harm to our public discourse, largely because of the lack of effective resistance to his absolutist notions, stood to propel him to what some may have called future greatness.

Is he a tribute to our First Amendment freedom of expression? Only if you accept it as a gateway to his insistence that his way is the only right way. Did he want to take people on? Yes, we know he did. But only in surging to prove his point, not to accept anyone else's. He didn't flourish in the exchange of ideas. He wanted to bury and destroy others' adequacy. That didn't feed his intellect. It fed his ego.

But did he deserve to be attacked and killed? No. See? I can feel both ways about him. That he became a recipient of his own twisted values shouldn't be surprising, though, the way that political violence has never drifted far from our consciousness--and that goes back quite some way, at least to Lincoln's assassination if not farther. Our very nation, in fact, was borne out of the inability to compromise and willingness to shoot it out with the British rather than sit around and wait for them to recognize Americans as equals.

Few people alive remember the shooting of Huey Long, he also of a certain form of craziness and deception disguised as sincerity, and also known for his sweat-drenched, hyper-emotional populism. In 1935, at the height of the attention being paid to him, someone planted a bullet in him and he died from its complications. Being a U.S. Senator and what appeared to be an intraparty presidential candidate who was about to challenge FDR for nomination to a second term, he was a far greater threat to democracy than Kirk, though we will never know what kind of threat Kirk would have been now.

But he understood it. Kirk understood what kind of influence he could be. Because he did what everybody agrees one has the right to do, but few actually do it: He contrived a style of thinking and never relented about informing others of it. We all say we have that right, but only those of us most daring ever afford ourselves of it.

Why? Because few of us are ever as hard-baked as we need to make ourselves to absorb the impact of it and the feedback that will inevitably ensue. But Charlie Kirk likely figured out that, if he hung in there, he would gain a following that would make the naysayers irrelevant. It would take work, and it did. It would take time, and it did, though far less than most people thought. 

He must have also seen, and in a sense copied, the effects of someone else who had made the decision to go national with his irrationalisms and--surprise!--he found that people were hungering for it, hungering for the simple, force-filled, pseudo-religious, absolutist ideas. Suddenly, he found that his demagoguery took hold, and we have had to endure ten years of it--and running, finding its way to the White House and its dangerous power.

That's what happens when someone decides to utilize the freedom they have and twist it out of recognition. That is what happens when nobody takes it upon themselves and calls out the nonsense of it, or at least doesn't do it enough. That is what happens when the fierce undertones of the lies and innuendoes aren't responded to with facts laden with equivalent, fierce undertones: Nonsense becomes truth, and truth disappears.

Someone stopped Charlie Kirk from rising to the top of the culture with his piles and piles of illogical conclusions. But there will be another like him, soon enough. Kirk may be made into a martyr of nonsense: someone who, in death, may become larger than the life he was leading. His legacy will be reflective of our inertia and neglect, which also continue.

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

Mister Mark

He Thinks Everything Belongs to Him Now

The National Guard has distributed itself throughout our nation's capital with one crucial task: Picking up the garbage.

There's too much crime there, we've been told. Well, yes, there always has been. If there's been some crime, there's been too much. As elsewhere. 

We need to go back a few years. Back, as it were, to Term One of Awfulness, when 47 was 45 and connected to DC but not vice versa. He dealt with it and the environs of the White House kind of like a new plaything. I wonder if he wanted to stay away from it more than Mar-A-Lago, if for no other reason than a fuzzy declaration that he didn't need it to be president. At any rate, he didn't change the atmosphere all that much, though something kept telling you that he wanted to.

Before we begin, a reminder: Whatever he does is going to be dreamt up by him alone, the credit for which is always completely all his. Regardless, the effects are his, for himself and himself alone. This, I hope, makes it easier to understand, never mind any connection to decent purpose or ethics or sound thinking.

It's unquestionably true, though, that the above attitude has now pivoted. He hangs around the capitol much more than he used to for anyone of the following reasons: He's simply older and lacks as much energy than he used to have; as the size of his government has gone down, his control of it has gone up; and he wants to leave his mark on everything people can actually see so people remember him, supposedly (but certainly not universally) for good reasons, just ask him. 

Thus, he has seized the Kennedy Center and will alter the selections to honor people altogether; he has demanded that the Rose Garden, once a place of peaceful gatherings, be flattened by concrete; and (although this has not worked to the best of my knowledge) the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to something designed to transfer ownership somehow, like the Gulf of America.

Hence, it becomes (to him) not too big to seize control of the entire federal territory and make it into his possession, replete with designation and faux significance that's genuinely his. This wouldn't necessitate overwhelming it with National Guard units, but something happened as he oozed his way back into town. I can only guess, but I'll bet it was something like this:

Remember when the Rodney Strong demonstrations rocked DC? Not only were the cops called out to stop riots that never really started (yeah, there were a few busted windows, but still not exactly Detroit in '67; now that was a riot), but 45 decided he had to make a public showing of strength by waltzing across Lafayette Park, hard by the White House grounds, stand in front of St. John's Episcopal Church, where many presidents (but not him) attended services, and wave an upside down copy of the Bible at the cameras, reassuring the MAGA faithful that he, and God (just about in that order) were still in control here. And that was that.

Onward beyond two elections, one of which he actually lost and then cajoled his minions to try to overthrow the government's token efforts to rubber stamp the Electoral College. Filled with lyrics of "the boys are back in town," he now needs to hang around longer and thus make the surroundings those of which he's comfortable--thus, for instance, $200M to redo a ballroom that he'll use, maybe, three times in four years, I'm betting. But there came forward something else.

He's just learned it, I'll speculate, because he had four years to point that out last time, and either the knowledge or the realization of it escaped him: The specter of the homeless on DC streets. Someone has recently, and I mean within the last month or so, told him although he's seen little of it, the streets of our sacred capitol are fairly crawling with ragged, destitute people who ought to be somewhere else, anywhere else, just out of his sight.

Some have been raised in DC. Some have not and have traveled probably from the Midwest or Northeast, where the weather's far more disagreeable. There are grates on some of the downtown sidewalks, out of which warm air emerges at times. They can be found sleeping there inside those workout sleeping bags.

They can also be spotted sleeping on benches in the many public parks of the city. One of them,  McPherson Square, is steps from a Metro stop and just a few blocks from Lafayette Park. Down a little way to the east is Franklin Square. Late at night, there are homeless with or without sleeping bags, trying to get a little shuteye. They seem to mean no harm. I never saw one even solicit money or food. But there they are. The homeless shelters are full. They have nowhere else to go.

I have no doubt that this bothers 47 no end, he of the overdone opulence about which he demands. Crime is down in DC by all measurements, but that doesn't stop him in the least. If he knows about disheveled existences messing up what has now become his city, he will deal with it as dealing with a cold with a blowtorch. There will be nothing left of it, no reminders, and certainly no compassion. But a better look.

Characteristically, the National Guard is focusing on the mostly black parts of the Northwest part of the district, the more prestigious and certainly the part with the most money. An MSNBC film shot was made near the corner of 14th and U Streets, NW, the area where the black businesses are best established. His claim of going to extreme measures to stop extreme crime waves will probably be met with partial caring, but overall, delayed neglect that white liberals often exhibit toward blacks--caring, but diminishing as it becomes part of a larger effort that people need to get serious about. What is not mentioned is the blackest part of the city, the part that lies east of the Anaconda River. But he is not threatened by that. He doesn't see it, so it's not there.

Brown-nosing to the max, three state governors--South Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio--have pledged to send some of their National Guardsmen to the scene of pseudo-chaos. Looks like they'll be visiting DC soon. I mean, why else would they do that? Are they worried about being in danger? Don't they have their own states to protect? Or are they overenrolled?

No matter. 47 is there, so he cares more than he would normally do, which is not at all. He can't possibly be identified with anything bad, not that it matters all that much if he stops it, but if it's attached to him in some way that only he can determine.

Besides, it's his city, his national buildings once belonging to the national government. So he takes over the Kennedy Center because he's otherwise afraid of getting booed if he goes to anything there. It's an open signal for those on the right to attend and pay extravagant fees for doing so. (I went a couple of times while I lived there, and while it wasn't cheap, neither was it exclusively for the excessively opulent.)

He threatens the governors of California, Illinois, and New York with National Guard takeovers of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City as well. At some point, there will be a showdown. Someone has to take this monster to court and slow him up. But at what point will he stop heeding a negative ruling? Will checks and balances endure? Will federalism slow down his train to nowhere?

That moment is imminent. He thinks everything belongs to him now; consider the opulent, gaudy remake of the Oval Office, unreflective of anything except what he wants, at this very moment. This is the detritus of neglect, apathy and sycophants. Consider, also, next steps.

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

Mister Mark

Portraits of Great, and Other, Americans

Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College, entered the pantheon of people who have been privileged (as I'm sure she saw it, too) to read the lines from Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" at Tanglewood last night. She joined an impressive review of personalities who have also performed it: Gregory Peck, Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Osgood, Coretta Scott King, Danny Glover, Henry Fonda, Barack Obama, Gen. Normal Schwartzkopf, even Margaret Thatcher, to name just a few.

That above group includes me, who certainly doesn't belong in the same category of prestige. I was asked by Brian O'Keefe, director of the Cedarburg High Orchestra, to perform it in concert our fairly new entertainment center back in 2001, probably because I had gained membership on the NEA Board of Directors and carried sufficient weight to do so. It was fun to do, and I appreciated the opportunity.

I considered it a privilege, too, and an honor. I practiced my fanny off. I wanted the words to be impressive more than any performance I could add. As usual, Lincoln's words, taken from various speeches, carried the day.

The piece's origins are noted in a biography of Copland written by a University of Houston music professor, Howard Pollack. It was composed in 1942, when the country looked around for something to hang onto as the Axis seemed ready to pounce on the U.S. and the rest of the world and enslave it. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, the conductor Andre' Kostelanetz, in preparing for a summer tour, commissioned the playwright Jerome Kern, the composer Virgil Thomson, and Copland to write works that would present a "musical portrait gallery of great Americans." 

Kern and Thomson opted for literary figures, but Kostelanetz suggested to Copland that he should try a statesman like Lincoln. Copland, said Pollack's book, was astonished that "Lincoln Portrait" became one of this best-known compositions. He said it was written to address an emergency; I wonder if he would express that sentiment now as well. If you've ever heard it, you know its powerful impact.

The thing about Lincoln's words is that they endure. Drop them into place today, and you stare at a prophet way-way beyond comprehension. "Fellow citizens," Copland quotes him at the start of the piece, "We cannot escape history." That was taken from his State of the Union (what was left of it) Address in 1862, at a point at which it appeared that the Confederacy would in fact win its battle for independence--and the perpetuity of slavery on the continent. 

He goes on: "We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation." Just as true today as then. There's plenty of dishonor to go around, too: Not only from those who abandoned democracy and shunted it into the ditch, but those who also let them get away with it: the major networks, the Supreme Court, nearly everyone significantly connected with the Republican Party, for instance. They know they're on the wrong side of our history, but they believe, as others believed likewise throughout history, that this time they'll get it right and they'll run the show forever. But forever is a long time, and their dishonor will cloak them instead.

We have been here before, but there are important differences: some seventy-odd years ago, it was fear of communism and the rise of demogoguery, led by Joe McCarthy (from my home state, sadly); he had the power of Congressional investigation, a spinoff of the House Un-American Activities Committee, that he manipulated to gain the pulpit and humiliate others. That was bad enough, but one embarrassing moment for him brought him down, and with that momentum, the Senate censured him and he faded into the maelstrom of alcoholism. 

Copland also fell prey to anti-communist investigations. He was a kind of textbook example, having been a "fellow traveler" in the 1930s with other artists and performers who idealistically sided with the Soviet revolution in desiring the nation to get itself through the Great Depression. He sided with actors who called themselves The Group, made up of such later stars as Karl Malden, John Garfield, and Franchot Tone. They were unabashed communists at one point; Copland went to meetings but never declared himself as such. He was also a member of what was called The Composers Collective; while there, "he puzzled over the question of finding a musical style appropriate to the Marxist Revolution,"wrote Pollack. 

McCarthy worked Copland over for two hours in his Un-American Activities quest. It was futile, as many of his inquiries were; they had little more effect than to ruin lives with negative publicity. That Copland not only survived the attacks but thrived afterwards was remarkable, but was the man who also went out of his way to compose pieces that glorified the American plains and the simple people who lived on them: "Rodeo," "Fanfare for the Common Man," and "Appalachian Spring," among others. A more genuine American musician could not be found, and maybe still can't. HUAC tried to pin subversiveness on him with their lies and innuendoes, with trying to brand him as "subversive," and they couldn't do it. Copland remains one of our best composers despite attempts to cast him into shadows.

Today's demogoguery is far worse, for it is led by a person with ultimate, overriding (Thanks to the Supreme Court) power, which allows 47 to do what he pleases without accountability. Reference to a president's "core duties" made by John Roberts in the fateful decision is a gossamer thin covering allowing the monster to roam as he pleases, with no logic or precedent applied, to satisfy only him in vengeance against real or pretended political foes. He has the pulpit, too, and we know how much he is manipulating it with lies. His words will be remembered, too, as signposts to others to be aware of how, if you don't do your homework, you can be taken in by all this nonsense.

There will be no relent of this, either. The right wing doesn't stop until their goals are met to their satisfaction, not anyone else's. They will stop at nothing. The Congressional Republicans use the deity to justify their support, too, though no deity would possibly support this. This, I believe, will take much longer to overcome because the attitudes that formed it will not disappear when 47 does. An appreciation of democracy, when it diminishes, does not spring back up like someone does out of bed after the flu passes. This national illness will linger.

I am waiting for Heather Cox Richardson, who writes and nationally publishes a history-based blog almost daily, done with impeccable research, to come into 47's crosshairs. She is one of the few unfettered foes of 47 left who has not been attacked with utter abandon. But 47 has all the time he needs now, and plenty of advisors who will pick her out the rest of the crowd for ugly attention. He will accuse her of treason, mock her findings, and make up lies and innuendoes that will be impossible to refute. He will mount the pulpit and try to humiliate her, in response to facts she has included in her writings that he cannot deny--though as we know, he doubtless will.

We should anticipate this. Copland and Richardson are great Americans; McCarthy and 47 are not. We need to keep them in proper channels. We will need to remember Richardson as one of those still brave, still determined, still believing enough in the promise of America rather than the cynicism of those who ply it only for their own gain. 

She will defend herself, I'm sure, but a public outcry will be necessary. She has done so much for us to clarify the impact of the past. We should be the wind at her back when these awful people come after her. He will try to smear a great American; he must not succeed. Let me continue Lincoln's comments above featured in "Lincoln Portrait": "We, we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility."

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

Mister Mark

Of Thee I Sing

My country 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the Pilgrims' pride,

From every mountain side,

Let freedom ring.

If you found yourself singing the above lines, congratulations. You have remembered the melody of a song that I haven't heard since, well, grade school--but I recall it like it was yesterday. It's there in our annals, there in our memories, there in the honorific legacy of songs of patriotism that many of you reading this might have been taught at one point.

It's probably not true that nobody sings it anymore, but neither would it be a stretch to say that that song has faded in importance. As opposed to: "God Bless America," at least in Milwaukee. In a certain place in town, not only is that song repetitively sung, thousands are also inclined to stand up to receive it.

That's because instead of the time-honored tradition we also call the 7th Inning Stretch, people who come to Milwaukee Brewers games are also treated, as it were, to a rendition of "God Bless America," sung by the same person over the sound system every single time it is done. If he's not there, the stretch features the two lively, carefree tunes that people are used to singing at that point in the evening, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and "Roll Out the Barrel," like they did the other night I was there.

I wonder how many people missed "God Bless America." If so, they didn't boo. Everyone seemed to celebrate. Nobody seemed to mind much.

So--why is "God Bless America" sung/performed/even noted? That's occurred to me. Who is that for, anyhow? Do enough people care, and does that matter in the greater scheme of things?

Maybe something else is working here. When the fellow--of Polish or Slavic descent because his name is Bob Kozlowski, Director of Guest Relations for the Brewers--finishes singing, he adds notes rising instead of the way it's supposed to be sung, with two falling final notes. Maybe it's a reminder that this country is, after all, our "home," and it's essential to his deliverance. And perhaps it's an ode to our troops, because he stands at attention and gives a snappy salute when he's finished. Maybe it's his necessity to remind us of the sacrifices people have made for our freedoms.

Except for this: around the 4th inning, some former military person has been plucked out the crowd and shown on the in-house camera--and people give him or her a big thank-you applause. Never fails. So that commemoration has been already demonstrated by the time our friend gets around to singing, in the 7th inning. Isn't that laying it on a little thick?

Consider, also this: When he's not there, it's not played or sung. So is this guy a patriot, or more of a pest? Did he somehow get under someone's skin and insist that we're not sufficiently patriotic and someone has to go out of his way to remind us of that, so it might as well be him? Does he necessarily have to 'own' this performance? Even Broadway has stand-ins. It would astonish me if someone else wasn't standing in line to do it in his place. I would think there would be a queue all the way downtown. But if he doesn't sing it, it won't be sung. Otherwise, we dance in the aisles.

People stand for the song, too. Just about everyone. The last time I was at AmFam Stadium, though, I didn't stand. Am I an unappreciative schmoe?

I doubt that sincerely. My Dad, now 98, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. I have honored that many times, but not in a baseball stadium by blindly responding to someone's need to show off his voice; he sings a cappella. When I came into the stadium the other day, too, the national anthem was being played. Everyone, whether going to the bathroom, ordering a beer, or just trying to find their seats, stopped and observed that. I did, too. I didn't have to do that, but I did. The national anthem does, and should, mean more.

Note, too, that "God" is part of the title "God Bless America," unlike the one I quoted above, the name of which isn't included in its main verse (but which is at the start of the 3rd of its four verses. I'll buy you a beer if you know the words without taking out your iPhone). That, I suspect, is attached to his singing of it: that God smiles on our undertakings, and someone should note that, too. I wonder if atheists go along with all this. If not, does this constitute a scold of sorts? Like, get with it already?

That has always made me uneasy. One of things about America that seems incongruous is that many of us are very willing to write off our success and world dominance to almighty intervention, referring to it at the beginning and end of relevant discussions. But that isn't what did it, not even close.

It was the good fortune of being in a part of the world with tremendous natural resources. It was the dedication and subsequent adjustment to the rule of law and respect for a necessarily evolving Constitution to try to keep up with enormous technological and cultural changes that are only natural with the passage of time. And it was the acceptance of millions of immigrants whose presence signified and demonstrated that which has been obvious for decades: That America is, or supposed to be, the beacon of democracy and endlessly a work in progress, which only fools deny.

None of those things can now be guaranteed because of one man's frightening acts of intimidation and evocation of someone's God to be actually blessing such undertakings. I do not believe that they represent any of the great things for which America has always been noted. God will not bring back our prestige, which is being undone on a daily basis now; only responsible, active and determined people will. Their absence will make America pathetic, not great again. And I won't stand for it.

The Part Everyone Missed

Bombing Iran and making big holes in their nuclear weapons development program was probably the most rational act that 47 has done so far. Except for a couple of things: First, he refused to continue negotiations on a deal to limit Iran's program so that it would pull back on nuclear weapons peaceably and unilaterally. He didn't want to pay any prices for that. 

But in fact he did: He bombed the nuclear facilities that he refused to negotiate to originally prevent. So we all paid for it, in a sense. And because the job's not finished, it didn't work the way he intended. We may keep paying.

The old Jimmy Carter philosophy of showing respect for other nations, prestigious or not, has disappeared with Barack Obama, whose bargaining ostensibly delayed Iran's nuclear program for 15 years (before the monster took over and wiped it out). But something he and his clueless Defense Secretary, Pete (Tattoo) Hegseth said afterwards that caught my attention, but no other commentators, amazingly.

47 did to Iran what Israel did to Iraq in 1981: it bombed its nuclear research and development facility. After the hand-wringing of several too-little-too-late Democrats (and one Republican, Thomas Massie, who's been written off as somewhere off the wall long ago),  and conveniently ignoring the authority Congress gave Joe Biden to use his powers to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the dust has settled on 47's decision: Probably necessary. Military and/or commando repercussions? We will see. Those attacked, if not completely obliterated, play long games and have elephantitis of the memory.

All this for something that was deemed necessary, but ineffectively addressed. The fact-finders that enter the fray after bluster has been obligatorily spewed have concluded that Iran's nuclear development has been taken for a step backwards, all right, but for a few months only. Iran built the facility way the hell underground to prevent a 'bunker buster' such as 47 had planned. 

That's not the only thing that's bothering me, though. Congress sounds like the wee little piggy far too often now, the Republicans having jettisoned any vestige of investigatory or oversight powers after pledging, one at a time and one event at a time, undying fealty to this monster in exchange for not having to run in primaries. (Yes. He's still a monster. One decision which might actually have a good outcome does not make him prescient or wise. It just makes him lucky. Don't forget his disgusting overreach concerning the border.)

What bothers me is what he and his also quite twisted Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, had to say in announcing the attack on Iran. Both, in effect, prayed out loud, calling on their god to justify their actions.

They beseeched their almighty, and quite openly at that. No commentator has made a point of noting that.

Mentioning god? Yes. Presidents have all done it. Franklin Roosevelt prayed aloud over the radio in urging the D-Day soldiers and sailors forward, so 47 can always get a briefing by one of his sycophants who'll likely tell him about it. But as in nearly all things he's ever said, 47 is being, once again, disingenuous.

In all likelihood, he's calling out to his base, many of whom honestly believe that their god arranged, somehow (never mind elections), to rule their country in this, their time of greatest need (again nonsense). He is, also, probably trying to bond with Israelis in saying, in effect, that their 'promised land' has been saved for another day and other attacks.

No greater, or worse, depiction of Christian nationalism has yet existed. An action of government has been directly connected to divine intervention, and that of war besides. It will be utilized again, I'm guessing, when he attacks someone else for some other reason.

Lots of books have now been written about this complete nonsense; not nearly enough on how too much of the public has been taken for a ride by it. The only thing left for 47 (and Hegseth, a true believer) to do is keep reinforcing it whenever conflict either happens or is imminent. Count on it: 47 will call on his semblance of the almighty to get the minions to pray for him or an expected outcome.

Nobody that I've read in the New York Times, Washington Post, or any other periodical have called him out on this. It's the same mentality that liberals have used from when hints of this dangerous phenomenon began, perhaps 50 years ago: Don't challenge it and maybe it will go away. How's that strategy working?

And has it been evoked so often so that it doesn't deserve special mention anymore? Not if it's been thoroughly discussed to this point. Which it hasn't.

Ignoring the camel's nose in the tent, inserted long ago with the Christian Coalition's support of Ronald Reagan, has allowed it to enter and crap all over the rest of us. It is all around us, oozing its way into our thinking despite our efforts to ignore and dismiss it.

An author whom I've read recently, Katharine Stewart, has put it quite well: "The separation of church and state is a good idea--and we should try it."

Christian nationalism is more than a fad which will rise and fall with the market or the public's cultural tastes. It's more like an attachable mania, a frenzy or delirium that chases logic down the road. It underwrites why Republicans in Congress can't budge without invoking Daddy 47 anymore. It is why they don't even make public statements unless asked by reporters, whom they dodge endlessly before ducking into private elevators (at the Capitol). The fear is here and it has taken hold. It is no longer discussed in trepidation that someone important, someone vital, will awaken out of their stupor. The reason is someone's god.

This will not make things better. It will make things worse and far more dangerous. If 47 can get away with evoking someone's idea (certainly not his; he's faking this, too) of a deity that goes along with destroying some other country, based on their own idea of religious fundamentalism, he will take that to its ultimate realization. It will justify a nuclear attack.

He has made the unthinkable thinkable on other things that people have relied on: Why not shatter our belief that the United States would never stage a nuclear attack on someone else without direct provocation, without even a direct or obvious threat? Why not justify it by saying that a god told 47 to attack Iran?

By Thanksgiving--they said a few months, so I'll take the license--Iran is likely to have recovered, say the analysts. What then? The token missile attack that followed the 'bunker buster' was, it says here, a ruse. It will divert our public's attention, as if the outrageous 'big, beautiful bill' currently being discussed didn't go a good enough job of it. Trust this: They are planning something we have never seen before in retribution, be it cyber or an alliance with another unfriendly power or something else.

We have that ahead of us. Do not give up on demonstrating, on protesting, on taking on those whose minds have been bent out of proportion by a sinister huckster with aims at world domination--only for himself. It's too dangerous of a world now. We can no longer walk away from it.

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

Mister Mark

Just A Gull

Hot and sticky already at 9:45 a.m: I cringed at what was in front of us that day. It was, and would be, the kind of day in which you could be sitting in an air conditioned room and barely notice the difference.

It would be brutal and unforgiving. Nobody's fault, of course, but the world around me would be better off if it ended sooner. Meanwhile, I had an appointment in 15 minutes. I hate being late to anything.

I had plenty of quarters with which to put into the parking meter. I'd had a run-in with some company that ran a cement ceilinged parking garage just two blocks away. Apparently, I thought I had sent them the necessary money to cover expenses, but apparently not. I heard from them a month later, some outfit out of Colorado. I no longer owed them $13.50; the price had now gone up to $55.00.

Miffed, I wrote them a letter. I explained--of course, without proof--that I had been having a difficult time taking the needed photograph to record my presence. A young lady had come to the rescue and had done it for me. From reading the sign, I knew what I had owed them. Without any other sign of having paid it off, I sent them what I believed to be another payment, this one by check for $13.50. As politely as I could, I had added that I would not be utilizing their facility for any reason at any future time.

That wasn't enough. Their rather terse response was that I hadn't proven my good will to their satisfaction. They returned my check and the cost of that lack of proof was still $55. If they were going to send a collection agency for it, they didn't say. Maybe I was supposed to take their return of the check as evidence that they meant business.

It was kind of a pain to come up with the requisite number of quarters to park on the streets of Milwaukee,  especially now in this growing cashless society. But with the reminder that things could be worse, I didn't mind the obeisance all that much.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the change. Suddenly, coming out from between two other parked cars was a gull that obviously had landed from Lake Michigan nearby. It walked oddly in two ways: It had a slight limp in its left leg; and it seemed to casually wander into the middle of the street with no hurry at all concerning getting out of traffic.

I wondered whether it had been hit on the head by something, or it had stunned itself by flying into a business building with windows top to bottom. But two seconds went by that changed everything: During the first, I believed that it needed to get the hell out of the road as soon as possible, and that it would start flying any second now, after being confronted with certain doom by an onrushing car. During the second, that's exactly what happened. Except it didn't fly.

I'd like to give the driver the benefit of the doubt. I wonder if they were glancing toward some building and simply didn't see the gull, or they were conversing with someone either on the phone--look, I know people shouldn't do that, but it's like obeying speed limits; you only stop if you see a cop--with the same result.

What I don't want to think is that, having clearly seen the wayward gull, the driver of that unfortunate (for the gull) next vehicle just simply ran it down on purpose, without stopping or braking or anything. I'd hate to think that someone could be that cruel.

But we're not in that time anymore. We're in a moment when tough luck can easily be tough beans. We don't need to care about that kind of stuff anymore--or, maybe, no one will hold us to account if we don't. We have a whole government like that now. The leader of that government doesn't have to worry about what will happen to him if he breaks the law recklessly or cruelly, whether he cheats us all and hoards money, or whether he hunts people down under flimsy excuses. Nothing, now, will happen to him at all.

So, yes, the gull was run down, not 20 feet from me, as I watched. Get ready for the worst part: It didn't die then. It managed to survive someone's vehicle bearing down on it at 15 or 20 miles an hour.

I have no idea what kind of pain that causes, and of course neither do you, but it tried, through sheer survival instinct I suppose, to absorb it. And, amazingly, it could still walk--but not far. It got to the inner part of that traffic lane, just about on the line, now limping far more noticeably, and put up the kind of defense mechanism that signified either desperation or futile protection or acquiescence to its fate.

There was beauty in it, the kind that birds give off while simply living, which this bird was only trying to do. Maybe it knew it was at its end when it limped closer to the center of the lane and put its left wing over the rest of itself, shielding against its certain end. There was a quiet splendor in that, a graceful acceptance. A defiance, even.

Perhaps I had been too sensitized, or maybe re-sensitized, to the graceful, placid beauty of birds. Just the day before, I had descended back into the big city from the Rhinelander area, where I had shared a week at a cabin with my family. From the shoreline of one of those thousands of inland lakes, we had viewed, for instance, loons piercing the evening quiescence with their haunting calls, and a mother duck which took seven babies past the small dock at just about the same time every night. For no other reason, birds add serenity to our lives if we take but a few moments to enjoy them.

Gulls, understandably, are a bit more annoying. Living maybe a mile from Lake Michigan and renting a parking spot outside my apartment, I suffer the occasional indignity of gulls (I've never actually seen it, but it's a strong guess) dive bombing my car with splats or, nicely aimed, long white streaks on the doors. They are, as I assume you've noticed, hard to get off, too. With the label of aggravation attached, it's difficult to view them as a helpful addition to Mother Nature. Maybe this one was wandering the street after having helped himself picking on someone's garbage; they're known for that, too. Not exactly majestic.

So maybe that was on the mind of whomever chose to run this particular gull down that morning: It's just a gull. There are plenty more around. They don't do much good. And that one won't crap on anybody's hood anymore. 

And yet, and yet: It was a one-way street. It could have been dodged. There was plenty of room on the left. The car didn't even need to stop. Would it have stopped for the mama duck and her seven babies? Nobody would have stood for that first degree murder.

So do we have a phylum of Birds We Can Kill Without Guilt? Consider chickens, which we eat by the millions each day, or fish. It's sometimes easy to forget that we are part animal, part not. The difference is supposed to be that we can show compassion and sensitivity, and that it should come first before all other actions and emotions. But the animal instinct within us fights it, wants to dominate. We have seen the results too often and too frequently. 

Is that also why we feel a twinge of regret even though we need to trap a mouse that's inside our kitchens, but we hate rats so deeply? Is that why there are solicited mails sent to me several times a month trying to save dogs and cats, elephants, even donkeys?

I wanted to run after the offending car and yell at the driver: Do you know what you just did? But if he did, it no longer mattered. If he didn't, it no longer mattered.

I briefly considered lifting the gull out of the street and carrying it to the adjacent park to perish in peace. But, I surmised, that might take hours of torturous pain. Better to leave it where I knew there was a decent chance for some other driver to finish it off. Besides, I hate being late to anything.

I turned to walk to my appointment, in resignation. Having witnessed its injury, I couldn't possibly watch the gull's ultimate demise. When I returned, my wish for it had been granted. It had been completely smashed against the pavement. Maybe someone saw this as a mercy killing; maybe someone saw it like a bug. Maybe it had already died. I was glad and sad.

I pulled out of my parking space and noticed that I could either run over the carcass again, or gently squeeze between it and a pick-up whose fender stuck out a bit too much. I chose the latter.

I couldn't make myself participate in what was then, and especially now, a pointless act. I made one meaningful only to me. Only I had watched it get run over. Only I had witnessed its purposeless execution. Only I had given the creature and its fate more substance than there would have been. Somehow, it mattered.

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

Mister Mark

Not After 75. Period.

When last we spoke, I had read the first reviews of Jake Tapper and Alex Rosenberg's book Original Sin, which detailed the sad, and in some ways infuriating, story of how Joe Biden's inside team tried, but failed, to hide Biden's infirmities, both physical and mental, sufficiently for him to run for, and possibly win, a second term as president.

If you read the book, you'll see that it was a disaster slowly building. It finally exploded in front of the whole nation with Biden's abysmal performance at his debate with then 45, now 47--partly because Biden got out of the race far after he should have to give Kamala Harris, his vice-president and de facto successor because there wasn't time to vet another one, enough slack to build a successful campaign (which she might have won anyhow had she been willing to step up and address the shouting nonsense that her opponent's campaign was making over trans- issues). 

Tapper and Rosenberg are right: Trying to describe the damage it was causing in words held no advantage over watching it and seeing a good man dissolve in front of one's very eyes. It simply couldn't be stopped. Everyone around him knew it. Nobody wanted to be the bearer of bad tidings, so the Mad Hatter's Tea Party went on far too long into the night.

Had Biden been even ten years younger when he ran, he might have maintained the energy and quick thinking it takes to win a second term. 71 is not too old in a political career, and several presidents and many members of Congress and the Supreme Court have proven that. But he wasn't. He was 81, and the strains and pressures of the toughest job in the world had taken their predictable toll.

The present president, as awful as he is, will (if he hasn't already) fall prey to the same, wearing, inevitable forces that time grinds in overtaking even the best of us--and he's certainly not that. By the time he's done with his term, whether he tries to skirt the Constitutional safeguards against another term or not, he will be 82 years old, older than Biden. His mental abilities have already been seriously questioned: They won't improve over the next three and a half years.

So it's time to consider an age limit for the presidency, Congress, and the federal courts. The Constitution was written, debated and (don't forget) compromised on in days when, if someone lived past 70, that was quite an accomplishment; vaccines (despite the idiot we have for Secretary of Health and Human Services) had not been derived at that point, and people fell prey to all kinds of diseases for which all we need today are either a prescription or a shot. Despite a temporary drop caused by COVID, we're still over 75 in the average life span. I think that's a good pivot point.

I propose a Constitutional amendment: No one past their 75th birthday can hold federal office unless they are finishing an elected term. That will make members of the House of Representatives no older than 76, ever; no member of the Senate past 80, ever; no president older than 79, ever; and no member of the Supreme Court older than 75, ever.

It's not term limits I seek; it's age limits. If you're elected to the House at the earliest point, age, 25, you can still serve for 25 terms, which are quite a few. In the Senate, if you start at 30, you can still serve eight terms. If you're president, you have to start at an age of 74, at the very most, and then you get one term and one term only. If you're on the Supreme Court or any other federal court, you stop at your 75th birthday, and that's that--but then, you've probably been there a while anyhow.

There are no guarantees about any of this, but it's a surer bet that any federal officeholder won't succumb to senility or a decided lack of energy while in office. We won't have the specter of Strom Thurmond of South Carolina being towed to the Senate floor, whenever he was able to be so mobilized, at age 100. Yes, we lose Nancy Pelosi, who in her early 80s, remained an excellent House Speaker. But that adjustment, once it is seen, can be made to give even a slightly younger person a leadership position, while maintaining the experience it takes to do it effectively.

I say this advisedly, because I'm going on 74 in a few months. But I gave up on higher office when my time at the National Education Association ended--and I was 57 when that happened. I'm not making anyone over 75 in government quit immediately; they can remain in office. I'm not reaching into state government, either, though perhaps some might copy an established federal example. States can function as they wish--but the same inclinations remain. Perhaps states might pass laws that create such barriers ahead of federal amendments, too; it's happened before like it did with women's suffrage, and there's nothing preventing them from doing it here.

It's time we consider this seriously. We are going through a time when people are supposed to be living longer but lose the substance of what they need to govern before they pass away. Safeguards, though imperfect, need to be constructed. I think this is one of them.

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

Mister Mark

It's Not Nice, But--

I know. It isn't nice to get on the case of someone you've just discovered has cancer. But.

Having read the introductory galleys of the book "Original Sin", by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, I'm inclined to make generalized conclusions that really aren't anything new, as stricken as we are by 47's undermining of our system and revanche against his purported enemies.

Take a step back for a minute and I'll reintroduce you to a little history, history that has in fact been mentioned in this space but it doesn't hurt to repeat. It's something that nobody has brought up in the hubbub over Biden's obvious, sad and tragically devastating decline while in office.

I bring this back up because there's a good chance this has happened before, and not that long ago. The argument was never fully vetted, because an untrusted source got it right, but a trusted source responded with indignant shock and got it wrong.

I hosted a gathering in Washington, DC, when I lived there some 12 years ago. I was introduced to a gentleman, now deceased, who had been in the Reagan administration--in fact, had been in the Situation Room, as its called, the place where foreign and military policy is carried out and redefined during crises. His connection with the president wasn't close, but he got to know those that were.

And he told me, without prompting: He had it in good confidence that Reagan didn't have all his mental faculties for at least the last year and a half of his second term.

That comment didn't surprise me. The signs were obvious: Keeping him away from the press; minimizing his public appearances; quickly glossing over and getting him to back away from comments that indicated he couldn't remember one country from another (as in Beirut as opposed to Israel). There was no doubt that, at 77, he was slowing up. What nobody knew--in fact we still don't know and we may never know-- how much his decision-making was taken over by others as he became little more than a figurehead.

Or not. Bill O'Reilly's research led him to hidden places. He wrote the book "Killing Reagan" as part of his "Killing" series, and discovered that James Cannon, a White House aide, wrote a memo to Chief of Staff Howard Baker in 1987--just about when my acquaintance worked in the Situation Room--that suggested "the possibility that relieving the president of his duties (i.e. invoking the 25th Amendment) might be in order." But Cannon also recanted that memo, or so said Reagan's Attorney General, Edward Meese. Both are deceased now.

But what caused Cannon to recant? Was he honestly mistaken, incorrectly analyzing some obvious mistake Reagan made for senility? Or was he leaned on by less objective sources who wanted to protect Reagan's legacy? If so, who leaned on him? Could that source have been Reagan's wife, Nancy, who brooked no criticism of her husband, ever, and was one person who people never crossed if they could help it?

George Will, conservative columnist and one with far more credibility with the mainstream press, because he belonged to it and still does, writing occasionally for The Washington Post, spoke out against O'Reilly almost immediately after the latter's research became public. Will's wife, after all, was a member of the Reagan administration's communications team, so he took her support to heart, as husbands tend to do. If you add Will's stature, O'Reilly's findings were quickly quashed and we all went on with this nagging question being left in our minds. 

Of course O'Reilly objected to people who never wished to conduct further scrutiny: "It is preposterous that there wasn't an intense concern about the president's mental state shortly after the Iran-Contra scandal broke," he later said, about ten years ago. "That is a fact, and it is disturbing that Reagan loyalists have attacked us for pointing it out."

It's possible that it's both. Reagan died of Alzheimer's disease, that awful diminishment of the mind. Could it have begun while he was in the White House? Yes, indeed it could have. His moments of lucidity, though, might have outnumbered his moments of vacating memory, at least for that time; Alzheimer's doesn't attack all at once.

But it's clear, from O'Reilly's standpoint, that Iran-Contra brought Reagan's infirmity into clarity, or should have. I have little doubt that Cannon's memo was nothing less than a vetting of conversations that he either had been privy to or had had himself; White House memos are rarely justified by mere brainstorms. And O'Reilly found it, or discovered its existence. Such is what happens when someone wants someone else to remember something.

That, too, is a cover-up, one that continues. History is robbed by it. Someone should unearth it for the sake of clarity and future considerations.

We are left with the malady that afflicts White House insiders under these circumstances: that if you try hard enough, you can fool yourself into thinking that your boss still has all his marbles, or at least enough to continue in the job without attacks on that basis. There's an enormous difference, though, between Reagan's situation and that of Joe Biden: Reagan was well into his second term. I'm sure those that knew about his mental faculties had an unspoken--maybe spoken but maybe not recorded anywhere; an assumption with a wink and a nod--agreement to take him in for what's called a 'soft landing', where no great national crisis takes place and other people take over decisions for him.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, wanted desperately to defeat 47 and continue his policies--who wouldn't--so his aides were in a far more impossible position: try to fake his lucidity through the grinding of another nationwide campaign and on through another four years. But the debate tore the curtain back from that Wizard of Oz; there was nowhere else to hide, no spinning that would suffice.

Who was his most ferocious defender? Once again--Jill, his wife, who people didn't want to cross. As you might figure. Biden did, finally, accede to logic and polling, and stepped aside. But it's now clear that the smoothing over and covering up of his infirmities began far before last July. It's just that, as the public and its media keep doing, as wishful thinking drives us to accept, we refused to confirm what our eyes clearly saw--the halting stride, the garbled speaking, the forgetting of details.

Could we have been saved from this present effort to erode democracy? Maybe. We'll never know because Democrats, in their shared desire to smooth over challenges, because no one wanted to be the first to cry wolf. They took Biden's endorsement, didn't outwardly question the mentality behind it, and nominated Kamala Harris, who became one of the great disappointments in presidential campaign history, right up there with Michael Dukakis, who also somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And now we (again) have a corrupt, terrible president who is not only amoral, but may in fact be also losing his marbles, little by little, and who will certainly resist any future soothsayer who suggests that he should step down.

Granted, the 25th Amendment is there for such a situation. But as has been noted in this space, a president's Cabinet isn't likely to be the first to acknowledge such a potentially damaging dilemma; it's likely to be the last. So we need another Constitutional amendment putting a ceiling on, perhaps, the age at which someone can be elected president--allowing for someone to cross that line if already in office. We have a basement age, 35, already in the Constitution; why not a ceiling? Let's call it 70, so if someone happens to begin his first term at 69, he won't be older than 77 when he leaves office.

It would have take Joe Biden out of the running in 2020, true. But look what happened. Look where we are. Look where we could be. He could have also won, for one thing, and now he's been diagnosed with metastasizing, prostate cancer. But someone else could have won, too, someone who would have inspired more confidence than a decent but failing leader.  It's worth more than a passing thought.

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

Mister Mark