Clarence Thomas: Originalism Stupidized, Santa Notwithstanding

Clarence Thomas is to the Supreme Court what 47 is to the presidency: the wrong person for the wrong time, in fact for any time at all. He just doesn't get it. He never has.

The other day, he moved to declare part of the Constitution, an amendment that we have utilized to give rights to millions, to be in fact unconstitutional (a neat trick) and should lose the meaning which it's inherited over the last 150 years. That's kind of like saying that Santa Claus  shouldn't have anything to do with Christmas anymore.

Work with me here: Santa Claus was added to Christmas because he's part of the spirit of Christmas and part of the joy that Christmas is supposed to bring. But I could say, if I were someone's stooge, that because Santa Claus was added to Christmas hundreds of years after Christmas first happened, it shouldn't be included as a celebration of Christmas any longer.

I could say that. And you could dismiss me as dizzy-headed, incredibly backwards, and beyond fuddy-duddyness. 

And you'd be right. Because to suddenly declare Santa Claus null and void would be ridiculous. Santa's not only not hurting anyone, but makes Christmas far more enjoyable. It allows parents to work with Christmas, turning it into something larger than it is, modernizing it and allowing it to be adaptable in whatever time you're living. 

So, too, with the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Supreme Court was asked to rule, or perhaps, re-rule, upon the other day. The plain wording of that amendment allows any person, indeed every single person, born on American soil to be a citizen of the United States, and of the state in which they reside, for life.

That's what the words say. Period, end of story. But the racists within the 47 regime want to reverse that, as if they actually could because, they say, there are too many non-citizen, non-white mothers who are infiltrating across national lines in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona, who dare to either get pregnant or conclude their pregnancies the natural way, with childbirth (and who don't prefer, can't afford, or get in too late to have an abortion, in a part of the discussion that's never brought up). That way, they fulfill a promise they've obviously made to themselves: to start families with the kinds of opportunities they either never had or are lunging to realize in the best place to do it, the good old USA. If not that, now, since they're hunted like animals by ICE, at least to leave their children in the land of, uh, milk and honey.

Instead of a joyous victory, this has been a growing disaster for 47's tribe. They can't stop the flow at the border, hard as they may try, so they round up whoever looks like they'd potentially be vagrants and/or fugitives from another government's inadequacies and shove them into barbed-wired hog pens en route to, well, somewhere else.

Not that that matters much to them. They promised to be complete bastards to those straining to start new lives, and complete bastards they are.

Suffice it to say that this is one bad look. Three would-be protectors of migrants have been murdered so far, and heaven knows how many more will take place. Worse, ICE and 47 have figured out that their best work be done surreptitiously to skip organizing meant to stop, delay or otherwise deter it.

So Clarence Thomas wants to interrupt that social justice movement by declaring that babies born of non-citizens on American soil are not, in fact, citizens and, I suppose, go through the paperwork, the classes, and the angst of trying to naturalize themselves. So he's not saying that they can't be citizens: he's saying that they have to get in a new kind of line--one that will take at least 18 years to find the front of. So, you know, why bother?

The other irony in his reasoning is that, since the original (huge word there) purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to grant the freed slaves their citizenship, that amendment should be obsolete, since its purpose has been fulfilled. There are no more freed slaves alive, so that amendment should be relegated to the ranks of the Three-Fifths Clause and the Twenty-One Years Clause, both relating to the status of slaves. Simple as that, with a swipe of the hands to clean it up. Done.

But that denies the jurisprudence that has resulted in the Fourteenth Amendment's expansion: extensive and flexible utilization of the "equal protection" clause; the "privileges and immunities" clause; and what is called the incorporation of the amendment to cover all protection of the Bill of Rights to every person (not only citizens) who needs it in the U.S. Though the realization of incorporation didn't demonstrably take place until the Warren Court brought it assertively forward in the '50s and '60s, the concept was being worked on in the Supreme Court by the likes of such jurists as Louis Brandeis and Hugo Black, starting in the 1930s. Brandeis, a Jew from Boston, started the tag-team and passed it on to Black, from Alabama and briefly a member of the Ku Klux Klan before FDR snuck him in the back door of nomination during a Senate break one year.

That incorporation is how we have the need for all those accused to get a lawyer (Gideon v. Wainwright); and the idea of being told you can have one, entering a new word into the dictionary: 'mirandized' and its ultimate meaning of having your rights read to you upon arrest (Miranda v. Arizona, in which Miranda was re-tried and found guilty anyhow). And those rights are for everyone, new and old alike.

If those two giants of legal history, from entirely different backgrounds, can agree on that concept, it would take a complete damn fool to try to undo it. It was nearly done on a 5-4 decision though. Clarence Thomas tried, but his opinion is so narrow as to almost pre-empt utilization. Brett Kavanaugh, though, suggested that Congress--nudge, nudge; hint-hint--could pass laws to get around the Fourteenth Amendment. 

I suppose it could. It wasn't too long after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted that the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed (1883), which forbade the emigration of that ethnic group in one of the more blatantly racist acts of Congressional history. 

Thanks, Brett, for that encouragement. You'll be remembered. Too.

In the end, incorporation ran into stupidized originalism, and survived. Barely. It is another comment upon the twisted status of this Supreme Court majority's march back into an abandoned past. Sam Alito, it is said, will now bow out and retire just in time for someone of like silliness to replace him--the ultimate MAGA team player ascendant (as opposed to Breyer and Ginsberg, who had the temerity to retire when they damn well pleased, the former's retirement setting up Mitch McConnell's underhanded ruse in 2016).  This way, 47 can nominate someone even worse to replace him. Oh, joy. Onward we stumble, lying in wait for November. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

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

Mister Mark

Patriotism? How Now? Go to the Museum

Our quarter-millennium as a nation is fast approaching. The state of this republic is repugnant. The wrong people have control and, lacking confidence in the future as they should, are trying to once again game the system so they maintain it ad infinitum.

It's safe to say, lacking other evidence, that, though supportive, no one with any legal leverage to prevent another perversion of democracy reads this. Thus, I offer the following question: With 250 years passing and being unsure about how many years of this famed arrangement remain, how best to celebrate it?

One could simply sigh in relief, but that is normally reserved for having accomplished something that has drained lots of energy, like your kids graduating from high school without being held back or arrested for something, or from college without needling to file for bankruptcy. I'm not sure if that reaction's appropriate any longer. The republic, tattered and battered as it has been these past ten awful years, moves on--maybe not forward, but it is moving. Somewhere. 

Exhaling implies a goal being reached. There ain't time for that any longer. Nor may it be for the rest of our lives. The present regime is bound and determined to see through all the reforms it says the country needs. From what I've seen, this is akin to an adolescent being grounded until age 18 for cutting the lawn the wrong way. It has coached its Supreme Court nominees to lie to cover up their absolute resolve to end abortion forever and ever, except mail-order drugs and driving across state lines can't be stopped (but watch them try). They also pretend that stopping minorities from voting was a creation of the Jim Crow years which, to them, have passed and no longer need monitoring.

All this implies that someone has decided to turn back the clock on America, as if that could be done. Not all the way back to 1776, but to the era when people didn't seem to worry much about inequalities that have been existent in America ever since then. Or, maybe, not as many people. Or, maybe, not as many people with access to media.

Which brings me to CBS and its abduction by various forces with massive money. Paramount has already cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, trying to cover its tracks by claiming that it was losing too much money, as if the ultimate powers that be were also having a tough time getting dinner on the table.

There is also the rape and pillage of "60 Minutes" by reducing it to the hard-hitting impact of wet laundry against your basement wall. It will either land as an annex to "CBS Sunday Morning," a continuation of news so soft it rivals fresh bread dough, or "Fox News, Jr," which will look right past whatever mistakes the current regime has made or will make while attacking something, anything, that liberals have done or want to do. If it's anything different, let me know. I won't be watching.

Lesley Stahl, veteran, hard-nosed journalist that she is, is not above being as naive as Snow White. Someone got to her and convinced her that, Scott Pelley having been ejected like being in a burning jet fighter, she could go on without the show "dying" right in her lap. 

Leslie: You missed the memo: The show has already been dying, not from what it has included, but what it has already excluded. Think back if you've been a fan these many years: When was the last time anything critical of either 47 or his wayward, awful, incompetent administration ever made air-time on that show?

Uh-uh. Bari Weiss buried that. And it will stay like "Saturday Night Live" declared Francisco Franco: Still dead.

CNN, having been purchased through the same hostile merger, will probably follow suit. Anderson Cooper might have thought that he would make a sideways switch by focusing his time exclusively to his show on that network, instead of doubling up and, with his "60 Minutes" reports, become at least the most watched, if not the best (though very good) TV journalist around. The day will come when we will also  be absent from his reportage, along with Erin Burnett (who's also very good) and a few others. Will MS NOW need more than 24 hours in a day to absorb these stars? Stay tuned.

Really. Stay tuned, and see where all this ends up.  Follow your favorites. Don't cave and become addicted to Tony Dokoupil or other insipid stand-ins. Am I asking for a total boycott of CBS? Hey, there are some Packer road games you might want to think about (home games are on Fox, and I don't stick around for the latest swill from Sean Hannity. Like, everrrrrr.). But maybe Amazon Prime will snap that up, too.

So take your pick. But if you want to be patriotic on this, our sestercentennial (yeah, I had to look that one up. Nobody'll use it ever again.), I have a suggestion to do the really cool, American things that people tend to overlook: 

• Spend a day at a museum. Milwaukee has a pretty neat art museum, certainly one of the most uniquely designed in the world. If you don't live here, go to the one (like Chicago: outstanding) that's nearest;
• Go to the library. Avail yourself of their services. Ask about crazies that insist that libraries carry bad things for people who have no idea how to judge things for themselves (which are very, very few and far in-between), and of course read something it has (like, maybe, Fahrenheit 451) that might cause eyebrows to rise;
• Go to the theater, the nearest one to you. Immerse yourself in the grand manner of storytelling;
• Go to a concert by someone, anyone. If you know the words, sing along. Sing loud. Sing like you're free--because, of course, you are; and
• Watch public television. Continue your education that way. They have magnificent presentations and in-depth news analysis. Stay current, and keep your pocketbooks handy because they're going to run out of money in the not too distant future because the people in government power are paranoid morons.

Why all or any of this stuff? Because if you partake, you are participating in the culture. You are engaging in free speech because you are the absorber of that speech. All plays, films, books. essays, architecture, painting, sculpture and the like are statements of their creators. 

Those statements are supposed to be protected speech--that is, no penalty can or should (probably the more important word) be assigned to it. And if you believe in it enough to absorb it and even comment to a friend or family member who might also be accompanying you, you are being an American because in essence, that's what America still is and still should be--a place where you can say whatever you want whether someone likes it or not.

One of the most brutal and repressive acts of the Nazis was the confiscation of important and brilliant artwork from whatever countries they conquered--not to destroy it, but to keep it for themselves in another act of condescension and pretension that they were the only ones who deserved to see it. And, of course, the muting of speech to protest those heinous acts. The 47-Republican efforts to hamper the development of public television, and its unnecessary domination of CBS--the network of Murrow, Shirer, Cronkite, Kuralt, Reasoner, and Pelley--is a slap at the idea of letting ideas free to settle as they please. 

The purveyors of pseudo-freedom would like nothing better than to have the rest of network television under their thumbs. That may be out of our control, but doing the kinds of things I've mentioned above is also a comment--a comment that freedom to comment is more American than anything they may support in its stead.

Bari Weiss may not be taking her orders surreptitiously from 47, but I no longer trust that she's not. I will therefore steer clear of CBS as much as I possibly can; it provides no essential programming--not even the Packers; I can listen to the game on radio.

The best citizenry is still an active one: independent, creative, and sustaining. It is the best way to celebrate who we really are and the benefits thereof. What's more, you don't have to wait until the next election to take part. 

Happy 250th. Carry on. See you at the museum.

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

Mister Mark

Mom: 1924-2026

Lynn Cebulski, 1924-2026 

Eleanor Roosevelt, someone who Mom admired, once said, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." That moment is here. I don't want to write this. But I must.

We lost our Mom last Friday. At 101, she was still reading books as late as Wednesday and sharing whatever commentary she had about anything you'd care to discuss. But Thursday, she took a clear turn for the worse when the malady that the medical folk had already predicted as her ultimate demise finally crept too deeply into her. By Friday she was uncommunicative, and the end came rapidly and mercifully.

What does one say, though, when the major force in your life has been extinguished? How does one get your head around it? With an admission, first of all, of utter emptiness, of a sense of wandering around as if in the dark. Nothing seems to matter much anymore. The way to get your head around it, I suppose, is in the facing of the simple fact that you can't. Its momentousness, while ultimately predictable--memento mori, say the Stoics, remember that you must die--is yet to be absorbed, the impact yet to be fully understood. But I can still see it, not far from the horizon, like a storm approaching.

Mom lived a brave and steadfast life. Again, Eleanor Roosevelt: "Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn [their] back on life." Mom went through far more than anyone should have while still quite young, suffering major setbacks. The picture below is Mom as a girl, when she could have turned her back on life without anyone blaming her.

She lost her Dad, James Foreman, to a car accident when she was 6, in 1930. She was the oldest of three, at a time when the country plunged deeper into the Depression, felt in no small way on a rural Wisconsin farm. Somehow, Grandma pulled the remainder of the family through. Think you're pretty tough? Try that.

But Mom paid an even bigger price she couldn't have foreseen, either. Upon graduation from Bonduel High School (about 40 miles or so west of Green Bay), this very active, very studious young lady had been offered an assistantship to Northland College in Ashland, on the shores of Lake Superior. But in spring 1942, after World War II had begun but before the job market had caught up, Grandma told Mom that she needed to make money for the family. College, a terrific accomplishment for a small-town female in those days, would have to be set aside. It broke her heart. Again.

Her fondest hopes dashed, Mom, then known as Lurlyn Foreman, eventually moved to Milwaukee to get a job with Cutler-Hammer, known for its electrical equipment. She joined a bowling league, and there she met a wise-cracking former sailor, Eugene "Cy" Cebulski, who'd lost his own dream of post-war plans for extending his navy hitch on an aircraft carrier. That sank when his father caught pneumonia and, as the family's only son, he was needed back home. He gave her a little lip, she gave it right back, and that's pretty much how it went for the next 77 years. Mom's name changed to Lynn Cebulski.

In between all that, they had four sons--Jeff (married to Barb), Mark, Gary (Amy), and Eugene (Jane), of which I am second. Mom went to work in the Grafton public school system, ostensibly to make the needed money to send her sons off to college; in the meantime, she rose to the position of an elementary principal's secretary, meaning that she had a large role in running that school. 

Meanwhile, she was living the experience of college through her boys. At least, that's what we thought.

But she had never given up on her dream of college, and when an opportunity arose for her to get an associate degree from Concordia University in nearby Mequon, she jumped at it. Her curiosity still strong and alive, she had to know whether she could handle the rigors of higher education--not that anyone who knew her had much doubt; she remains the best read person I ever knew. In 1991, at 66, she finally had the college diploma she'd waited her whole adult life for.

Her immediate family, Grandma (Clara), her stepfather Clarence Peterson, brother James, and sister Marion Teckam, have passed before her, as well as two grandchildren, Sarah and Allyssa Cebulski. Beyond that, there are 10 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, and loving nieces and nephews. Her wish was to have a small, private, immediate family service.

On Mother's Day, the Milwaukee Brewers completed the sweep of a three-game series from the New York Yankees. Everyone who knew Mom, a die-hard Brewers fan, knew how much she would have loved that. We would have celebrated her again much as we did before, too, with flowers and cards and hugs.

Hugs: Just one more would have been so nice. Just one. I will wander aimlessly now, missing that and so much else: the presence of an incomparable life force, a well of gentle strength to draw from. Instead of turning her back on life, she doubled down and got on with things, much of what made her a thriving part of the Greatest Generation. She found fulfillment where she never expected it, inspiring a family that widened and surrounded her with their love, after she had surrounded it with hers.

The family wants to extend their sincerest and deepest appreciation to the staff of the skilled care unit at Cedar Lake Health and Rehabilitation Center in West Bend. Mom loved to read and could never have enough books, so in lieu of flowers, a donation may be made to the Grafton and West Bend Public Libraries in her name. We love you, Mom.

The Reg I Remember

Reg Weaver, former NEA president, has passed away at 86. They took a couple of hours to memorialize him a couple of weeks ago on Chicago's south side, where he was best known, but by the time he passed, that was a close competition; he made you feel as if you knew him, you were close, by his very presence. More than one person at the mike noted: Everybody's got a 'Reg' story. He was a man of radiant charisma and fairly glowed with emotions and feelings he wanted to share on behalf of a union that he loved so dearly. Let me tell you the story by which I remember him the most. (P.S. I couldn't make it to the ceremony; had a dizzy spell in recovery from my latest malady.)

My familiarity with Reg Weaver was acquired over time. I served on the NEA Executive Committee for six years, five of which came while he was president. That meant that at all meetings in the NEA building in Washington, DC, both planned and unplanned, he was the chair.

That's not where you get to know someone. A chair of a meeting rarely has a chance to show you who he-she is. They have to keep track of Robert's Rules of Order, make sure people get heard within limits of propriety, and generally move the agenda. That takes work, energy, and careful attention. Those who are good at it get respected, sometimes grudgingly so. 

One of the raps on Reg was that he didn't run small meetings well. Small, as in 15 to 20 people there, of which there were no end at the NEA. I never found this to be so. He did fine at running meetings of the NEA Board of Directors, I thought. Passive? Yes. But the importance of the matters being discussed, as well as the egos at the table (sometimes enormous, and not falsely earned; all Executive Committee members, for instance, have to win their positions by campaigning nationally), dictated to him that he would rather people get a chance to express themselves with the process's 'rules' being bent a little.

Just a little, though. He had understood, far before I did, that less was more. When he would say that enough was enough, his voice, which had many tones and could get impressively powerful, dictated that in no uncertain terms. He was charismatic, to be sure; many still say how inspirational he could be, and you don't get to a high-ranking position in the NEA unless you can speak publicly, fairly leap at the chance, and are at least pretty good at it. But there is the business of conducting business, and at that for him anyhow, less expressed control tended to work its own way out.

No, it was elsewhere that I saw it. It was the spring of 2008, the last one in which Reg would be serving as president. NEA officers get invited all over the place to speak to members, so it was no surprise when I learned that he was to speak in the great Wisconsin "up north" to a group of Native Americans. When the NEA president shows up in your home state, and you're on the Executive Committee in a supportive role, you do not hesitate; you try to make it whether you're asked to do so or not. It was a long drive for me from the Milwaukee area, over three hours. 

Didn't mind that a bit. He was the same old Reg: a simple message, simply put--you have more power than you ever thought. Don't give up on yourself. He was fond of reciting a poem that had as its central core the phrase, "Don't you quit." He was dressed in what we have come to know as a leisure suit, this time a brown one, but with additional, Native bling around his neck: a bolo and with matching cufflinks, all in turquoise, all in respect for the tribes to which he spoke. The colors stood out in contrast but somehow worked. His speech was, as always, a smash hit.

I thought it was really nice of him to ask me to drive him to the Rhinelander airport to catch his connecting flight back to DC. We chatted partly about my future, which had been thrown to the wolves in a sense by my school district, which hadn't wanted me back from my skein as a member of the Executive Committee.

Then we saw it: a pub advertising food. Reg, as solidly rounded as he was as a former wrestler, looking far more like a block of black granite than the Pillsbury Dough Boy, didn't miss too many meals. He was hungry and said so. We pulled in.

It was about 2:30 or so on a Friday afternoon, so I didn't think much of what we were going to see because I didn't think it would be much. It was, after all, northern Wisconsin, largely a rural area, where small-town folks did small-town things. I figured the place to be largely vacant, being about an hour or so before the 3:30 crowd would head in for a weekend nosh, perhaps, and brewski or two before embarking on their weekends of fishing or something similar.

That supposition was quite inaccurate. The place was teeming with country boys, yowling and laughing and cussin' out somebody or other. We had walked into something akin to an unofficial clubhouse, the kind that's stronger than the ones that have names, the kind where you can puff up for a moment and discard the world around you.

It was sufficiently odd that someone with a tie on, like me, would walk into a joint where the most formal thing people could imagine was a flannel shirt. Taking one look around, the last time someone had looked like me was probably about the time Eisenhower was president. That made it uncomfortable enough.

But with Reg, a black dude from Chicago? That may have been unprecedented. It suddenly turned stone quiet: the foreboding silence of those just waiting for trouble to begin.

I thought momentarily about the scene in "48 Hours" where Eddie Murphy, playing a criminal on temporary parole, is looking for a thug and he and Nick Nolte, playing a cop, saunter into a nightclub filled with good old boys. The same brooding silence, the same odd looks: what the hell are you doing in here? Murphy eventually jives his way out of the situation, taking firm control of it but busting a few jaws and breaking a few glasses en route.

There was a moment, a fleeting moment, when I thought we would be bombarded with insults in an attempt to pick a fight. But that moment passed. "We're looking for something to eat," I said rather loudly, faking a natural panache. I tried to make the implication clear: and that's all we're doin'. Reg hadn't yet said a word. You could cut the tension with a bar coaster. While everybody acted politely, we weren't there to campaign for Democrats and they weren't there to listen.

With my next breath, though, I also thought: Reg has been through a few of these, too. His home state of Illinois, especially the southern three-fourths, has its share of similar clientele. Now that we had seated ourselves at the bar, we sure as hell couldn't walk out: that might bring about the very thing that had edged toward trepidation . At the very least, it would demonstrate fear, which Reg, I'm sure, could not have abided.

We both ordered chili, which I tend to eat when it's on the menu to compare it with my own. It was damn good, actually. Probably didn't hurt to say so, which I did.

The sounds gradually returned, Everyone decided to mind their own business, which is still what America's supposed to be about: Live and let live. They would move on with the rest of their days, probably noting a unique story upon returning home: You'll never guess who waltzed into the bar today.

But on the way out, Reg showed his effectiveness as a leader. I've never returned to that bar, and undoubtedly neither did he; we would never see those fellows (they were all male) again. Yet, he went out of his way to introduce himself, shake hands, and engage in brief small talk. 

To read their faces, he had caught them off-guard. It was his friendliness, not applied union power, that had touched them. I hope it occurred to them what had happened: A very special, very black person had shown up, had chosen this locale, and sought to make new acquaintances.

He could have made them feel very intimidated. He did not. He chose the opposite: You attract more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. I watched that in awe. Neither one of us knew what was inside those walls, but he made the best of it.

He chuckled as we pulled away; his familiar, earthy chuckle. I had been a one-person audience to something I didn't see before and haven't seen since. It sure wasn't the south side of Chicago. In cordiality, you show respect. Then you move on.

The deeper you get into the union experience, the more you tend to descend into a kind of bubble, one in which the reality of the outside tends to blur, while all that happens in the inside, the micro-events, tend to take unbalanced dominance. Reg had never lost that balance; that was clear. An NEA president, no doubt, has to keep that in mind.

It wasn't always roses between us, either; some thorns got in the way, too. Reg openly rebuked me during a public Executive Committee meeting once, for something for which I meant no harm. Later, privately, he apologized.

I was moved by that, too; it takes a big person, sometimes, to say you're sorry and mean it. And NEA presidents don't have to apologize to anybody about anything; the job is incredibly demanding, and decisions have to be made that nobody else can or wants to make. I knew, though, that he felt all right about me by the simple amount by which I came to be asked to speak in his absences at various places, sometimes at the drop of a hat. As highly regarded as he was, an NEA president also can't be everywhere at once.

Anyone who rubbed up against him will carry part of his soul with them until they join him in the hereafter. They are glad, as am I, that they got close to him--great speaker, great advocate; he made you feel warm if you gave him half a chance--while he walked the earth. I hope someone still thinks that in Rhinelander, too.

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

Mister Mark

Back from the Edge Again: Missing Time

There is a concept that can be verified only by people who believe they have been kidnapped by aliens. It's called missing time, and it means just that. Instantly, it becomes a number of days later, and you have no idea how it happened. You lay down and take a nap; you wake up in the same place, but instead of the Tuesday you were experiencing, it's actually Saturday. Or later.

Really. I've read about it. Then they can tell, slowly as the situation reveals itself in their memories, about the experiences they had with some pretty weird beings who, I guess, needed them for their research. Meanwhile, some people experience being dismissed from the world for a few days, then being dropped right back into it.

I've recently spent the better part of three days back in the hospital. It was about as much fun as my other visits was, which is to say, not one bit. And, again, it was either that or the end. I went to the edge one more time and peeked over. A bunch of people prevented me from falling.

That Sunday dawned with me in obvious distress. But a church obligation got in the way. I knew I had to go. That saved my life.

I couldn't take 20 steps without having to sit down and gather myself. By that time, I knew things had gone south far more than being 'out of shape,' which I knew I was, too. 

I knew it when the congregation stood for singing, which it normally does three times each service. The first of those times, I had to sit down. I've been going to Immanuel Presbyterian for about thirty years now, and that was the first time I couldn't last the whole song, couldn't stay standing.

I got scared. But I soldiered on. Or tried to.

After the service, I managed to help shepherd the flowers that someone had paid to display near the altar, which usually someone (I did that last year, celebrating the ages of my parents by announcing their 77th wedding anniversary) pays to do and that then two deacons are assigned delivery of some of them to people that the co-pastor has picked out bereavement, celebration, or other causes. But again, I had to pause to catch my breath. Rich, my partner that day, couldn't help but notice. He pointed out, perhaps in empathy, that one of those selected for delivery lived in a home exactly one block from my apartment.

Even that seemed too far. "I don't even think I could do that," I said, and went to sit down in the hallway adjacent to the church nave. I would have to do that, too, in order to even get up, get my jacket on, and walk all the way back to the car, which seemed like quite a chore now, even though it's all of two blocks. I knew I'd have to lay down when I got back; beyond that, I had no idea.

But Rich, having seen me in obvious distress, had gone to consult with two people who would quickly change my day and, ultimately, save my life: his wife, Karen, who is a nurse practitioner; and the director of the deacons, Kathleen, who is a semi-retired, licensed physician. 

They found me and sat flanking me on the bench. They asked me how I was feeling, and I told them. They looked askance at each other. "You'd better go to the hospital now," they said, practically in unison.

For roughly the last 35 years or so, I've made up my mind to first, go to the doctor instead of toughing things out; and second, do what they say. This was not an official visit, but when two say the symptoms sound pretty bad, they're probably not guessing.

The last time I had had a hospital stay, though, was one of those times I had gone in for one thing (colonoscopy) and someone had found something else (my heartbeat slowing beyond what they felt was comfortable). The result was--instead of outpatient treatment--six days of a stay, during which I'd had a pacemaker installed. Nothing seemed to be wrong with my heart, at least no pain felt nor shortness of breath while sitting, so I knew that wasn't the issue.

Whatever it was, I needed to know. But I wasn't going to be fooled this time. Instead of going right to the hospital, I made two stops; one at a gas station to make sure my tank was filled--a silly notion, that--and back home to pick up things for a prolonged stay. That was the better move. My hunch turned out right.

And not one minute too soon. I pulled into the parking lot of Ascension St. Mary's emergency room, got out my bag, and walked, or tried to walk, to the automatic door. I got halfway and once again, had to rest, leaning against the building. I'd gotten halfway there. Finally, I more or less stumbled onto the front desk.

The staffers saw that I was in distress. I was admitted, given the universal ID wristband, and ducked into the closest room available.

My luck was holding. It was a little after noon on Sunday, and the emergency room was decidedly vacant of customers. I got immediate attention, which, looking back, I had desperately needed. About ten questions later, the staff knew I was in some kind of serious trouble. Of course, they gave me blood tests.

What they had found was something a hematologist told me about three weeks later. It would have freaked me out had I known. They did tell me that I had blood clots that had spread to my lungs; that was bad enough and of course would need immediate medical attention. What I didn't know until much later was how bad the situation was.

There is a scale, said the hematologist, that shows how well or badly your blood can clot. Some clotting is good, of course; if you cut yourself, that's how it heals. But too little means you can be challenged about that, and a scratch might mean a hospital run. Too much, and, well, the blood doesn't get where it's supposed to go, and that's an entirely different, equally serious, problem.

The average score on this scale, I was told, was 740. Wait for it: My score was nineteen thousand. I was, literally, off the charts. "I've never seen that before," said the hematologist. I'm guessing that the treatment staff hadn't, either. No one said the second part of that sentence: with someone who survived.

Suffice it to say: I was near death. My lungs were practically filled with clots. Should I have just gone home, said the hematologist, I would probably have just keeled over and that would have been that.

By 4:30 or so, I'd been taken to the hospital's ICU and prepped for surgery. Hospitals don't do anything that fast unless they have to. The physician on call that afternoon was someone for whom I'd briefly been his heart patient, though he didn't remember me (a bit recycled, wouldn't you say). It made me feel better, though. After by-pass surgery a few years back, I'd had a moment when I thought something was terribly wrong and had reported to that very same hospital to be checked out. He was the responding surgeon, who had found nothing. In reporting that to me, though, he had gone out of his way to draw a sketch of a heart and its attentive arteries and veins.

That had been a comforting moment. I knew I was in good hands this day. He didn't remember. That was okay. I did.

In I went for what they called a 'vacuuming' process, in which the clots--well, most of them; the one in my leg from which the bunch in my lungs had apparently developed is still there--would be cleaned out. I was kept awake but feeling nothing. Good thing. After he was finished, the doctor showed me how thoroughly I'd been afflicted. My lungs looked as if they'd been coated with black magic marker. There was no room left. I had no idea how I could have taken another breath. Maybe they didn't, either.

Recovery would take at least overnight, I was told, and perhaps the day after that. I'd been right about taking my phone charger and a book with me. Sitting there with nothing to keep me busy, as I had for most of the six days previous, would have driven me crazy.

After a couple of hours back in the ICU, I got a new assignment: They needed the room for someone (in worse shape?), so up to the regular hospital I would go. I tried to meekly protest, but to no avail. In came the wheel chair, out went Mark to Floor 4.

I met the nurse assigned to me. Unlike all the others, this one was dressed covering head to toe, and wore a brightly decorated babushka. The lines in her face indicated that she could not have been younger than 65. Her English was broken. She looked Southeastern European or Middle Eastern of some lineage; perhaps Muslim, hence the head cover. She reminded me of my Polish grandmother, who we affectionately used to call Bacia. 

I don't recall her name, but meeting me caused her eyes to get quite a bit bigger. I quickly surmised the situation: I was her first patient, or perhaps, her first heart patient. Her first job would be to hook me up to my monitoring machine, or rehook, as it were. It meant she was supposed to know how to do it immediately, without help.

She didn't. She laid a piece of paper with what I could tell were lines with wires to connect to their proper ports. She was nervous; her hands were moving quickly as if to finish before I knew she was a neophyte. Didn't work.

Neither did the connections. Within 20 minutes, Bacia was back on my falsely-wired chest, reconnecting me properly this time. She moved at least three wires to where they finally belonged. I watched the machine: bingo. Okay, if there was an emergency with me, it would be detected. I exhaled.

Within an hour, a new nurse reported to my bedside. Bacia was there, too, to let me know that she would be replaced. I exhaled again. I was confident that I'd live through the night.

But first I had to sleep. It got near one a.m., and they could see I was struggling. Someone, not the nurse on call, gave me a medication which she predicted would make me sweat. I awoke some three hours later, perspiration fairly running down the sides of my head. But I had slept, and I knew I would continue.

The next morning, I heard the best words a patient could hear: You're going home today. I thought I was supposed to wait for a doctor to see me, but a nurse practitioner got my papers ready (maybe they needed that bed, too) and plopped them in my lap. I must say I didn't feel "all together" when I left. It would take some days before that feeling returned.

That's probably because I'd gone through the second 'invasive' surgery in eight years. The last time that happened was in another moment in extremis: my triple by-pass. Your body reacts in an odd way. You've been invaded internally, and it kind of goes, "What just happened?" for a while. The last time, it took some months, more than six I'll wager, before that faded. This time, said my hematologist upon a follow-up appointment some three weeks later, it would take three months.

I'm in the middle of that now. I have good days and some not so good. But the former now outnumber the latter, so I know recovery is happening. The hematologist gave me two directives she wanted to stick: "Take your blood thinners (Like, I wouldn't? They stave off more clots.)," "Get some compression socks (Ditto: thanks, Amazon)," and "Don't push it." That last one was vague, but trial-and-error are taking care of it. As in the by-pass, I need to listen to my body carefully.

Home I came. Then I experienced "missing time." It was as if I'd gone somewhere for just a moment. I was back just half an hour when I remembered that the church deacons had a Zoom meeting. I was asked to report on my hospital stay. Strangely, perhaps looking back not so strangely, I felt myself breaking down as I said thanks. The shock of sudden death, once again turned back at the last minute, had arrived.

Ernie Pyle was a World War II journalist who reported mostly behind the front. He focused on not the generals or admirals, but the 'dog' soldiers who carried the real burden of fighting the battles day after day. Rick Atkinson, in his book The Guns at Last Light, about the final months of the European war after D-Day, quotes Pyle as writing that after the fierce campaign to free Cherbourg, an important French seaport, he felt like someone using up "your own small quota of chances for survival." I can't help but feel the same way.

I joke about using up "three of my nine lives"--count four, in the last eight years, if you include the continual possibility of a cache of bacteria, caused supposedly by routine surgery on my hip, overcoming amoxicillin, disengaging and hitting something more vital--but the reality stares me in the face every day. I wonder why my luck hasn't yet run out.

Pyle himself was prescient: jumping to the Pacific war after the German surrender, he was sniped by a Japanese soldier. His 'small quota' had run out. Mine will, too. Now I know. I feel it. I now wake up with genuine gratitude. Every time now feels like the time my heart surgery was delayed, for some strange reason, a day. I went to sleep not knowing whether it would be my last.

It feels, too, like I ought to go do something I haven't yet done, something I keep thinking about doing. That is, when I can "push it" again. A month and a half to go. We'll see what the world looks like then. 

Meanwhile, I won't stop going to church. Not that I would have, but the hematologist said something that I'd already thought several times: Good that you went to church, for more than one reason.

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

Mister Mark

Real Courage Is What We Need: Anyone?

Say what you want. Getting out, or through, this mess is going to take courage, the real thing, by more than one person.

Regardless in what particular position a politician is in, defiance of 47 carries with it profound risks. By defiance, I mean a Republican taking a position opposite that of 47 in anything.

Someone who does that can count on (1) a severe bashing by 47; (2) probably a phone call or two promising, if that person got there by election, to be very sure that the next term won't be won unless they face a primary opponent that 47 backs; and (3) other, far more palpable threats, such as death to themselves or loved ones.

All of those things have happened. People watch and they learn. They know they no longer have any real choice in how they vote, but they're helpless to change this rockslide of attitudes. So they submit in advance: they keep their mouths shut, avoid the press like the plague, and continue to vote the 47 party line.

So when we roll our eyes when we read someone take a position that we feel is ridiculous--most likely it is--we can count on that person weighing opposition against all the trouble that it would bring.

We know that they in fact may not personally feel good about supporting 47. From the point at which 47 gained his first Republican nomination, though, opposition was dangerous and particularly futile. My book club managed to get commentator Charlie Sykes at one of our meetings recently (we discussed his book, How the Right Lost Its Mind), and since he's a conservative (a real one, not reactionaries who have utilized that fake title), he has spoken to enough Republicans to know that most of them don't think much of 47. They can't stand him.

But that has left them with a choice: Hide behind his suit coat, or come out with their real feelings and attitudes--which deeply risks giving up their day jobs. Or there is the other option, announce that you won't run anymore, then run out the clock telling the 'truth.' But not risking one's position cheapens the objections taken. Easy for you to say, people tell themselves quietly.

It's been done by some notable folks. The latest is North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who strenuously objected to the ongoing intervention in Venezuela. "Amateur Hour is over!" He shouted from the Senate floor, and how we wish it was. But he's the one who's over, and there was no response from 47. There didn't have to be. Nothing was diminished, nothing halted. Another voice shouting, cast into the wilderness, fading as fast as it erupted.

We haven't heard from him since. It's not likely that we will, either. And whatever he does say, it will be reported along with the moniker, "....who is not running for re-election...."

Remember John F. Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage, stories of Senators who courageously took difficult stances, even though they knew the probable consequences? He only found 12 of them. Granted, the book was written in 1956, but I dare you to find someone after that. It's not a long work.

The point exactly. Courage in politics, as in just about everything else, is a rarity, because there is enormous risk without knowing what comes next. Thom Tillis isn't likely to be noted for his courage, at least not from here on out, because he's not taking the ultimate risk after he ripped the party leader, however appropriate it may have been. So, too, Bob Corker from Tennessee or Jeff Flake from Arizona, two other Senators who did the same in 47's first term.

I'm not condemning them. It's a lot to ask of anyone. It took work and sweat and usually more than a little luck for people to make it to Congress, usually years of preparation and positioning, so to gamble and perhaps throw it away wouldn't be glanced upon with a great deal of wisdom, either. For one's entire career to be placed on a single vote doesn't seem very fair. But the people elected him or her to make the kinds of decisions that nobody else wants. Bad luck arrives for them, too, but they're supposed to rise above it and shrug it off. Instead, so many have remained hidden in the weeds.

Leadership, or the lack of it, is defined in those moments. And we need leadership now, badly, this minute, as the very republic itself teeters on the edge of being swamped by authoritarianism.

Corker or Flake or Tillis couldn't meet that test, couldn't burn the ships in the harbor, as Hernando Cortez did before he took his men inland in Mexico to take on the Aztecs. Someone else will have to. I see few candidates. Nobody knew that we would need someone bigger than others have been to manage this, to stare 47 in the eye and say 'no more,' but that's what it's going to take. I thought it would be Kamala Harris, but she played it safe instead of going in for the kill, and her chances got killed off.

A switch in political attitudes will no doubt put this to a stop, at least temporarily. But that will take leadership to organize and gather and sustain. Milling around, muttering to each other, waiting in the lobby for an announcement by either Republicans or Democrats won't do it. It will have to take someone to be the greatest stand-up person while it still can be done, while 47 doesn't run away, having jettisoned blood so he can take treasure.

Said Ferris Bueller's teacher: Anyone? Anyone?

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

Mister Mark

The Whale Outweighs This Minnow

On the cover of The Atlantic's magazine this month, the cover article is entitled, "[47] Wants You to Forget This Happened." With it, a photo displaying the chaos the of Jan. 6 uprising, now five years past.

A court case concerning an inscriber in Muskego makes that shout with irony. He was a full year ahead of this national magazine, but without access to glossy pages. He chose another medium and surface to pronounce the same sentiment: in chalk, on a sidewalk. He wrote, on Jan, 6, 2025, "Remember Jan. 6."

The reaction to it was quick and predictable. After some investigation and a positive ID from video cameras (see below), the writer was arrested for disorderly conduct.

The sidewalk on which he wrote was right outside the Muskego Post Office. The writer, a fellow named Jim Brownlow, is a person who might know a thing or two about controversial speech. He is 77 years old, and God bless him, still an active librarian. (this story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) I don't know whether the Muskego library system has been assailed by the likes of Moms for Liberty, but considering the situation, I wouldn't be surprised.

"Remember Jan. 6" is, at it stands alone, a politically neutral comment, crying out for context. So why did Brownlow feel so compelled to proclaim such a sentiment on a public sidewalk, or what he probably believed to be public, since it's actually privately owned (a strip mall located nearby) by Muskego Partners, LLC, which received numerous complaints from those who either don't want to hear about Jan. 6 anymore, or who want to hear it only from people with whose political affiliations they're more confident? For himself, police believe that Brownlaw also wrote close by, "We almost lost our democracy," which pretty much clarifies that (he denies the latter). "If we're going to improve our democracy, we've got to remember what happened on that day," Brownlow said in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.

He's right, but now I'd like to ask him: How's that working for you, or perhaps--for us?

Originally, Brownlow, who was recorded on camera, was charged with criminal damage to property, a low-level criminal offense. But because he was potentially a criminal (!), he was handcuffed and taken to the police station for booking.

Handcuffed. For writing an unobscene message. A real threat to public peace there, right? What's he likely to do, wield more chalky weapons? Does he play hopscotch, too?

The charges were reduced to disorderly conduct, with a potential fine of $565. I don't know of Brownlaw's financial background, but for most of us, $565 isn't chump change. He chose to fight the charges--himself, lawyerless, the cost of which could easily have run rings around his potential fine.

The court system, of course, has stretched out what should be a simple matter. More than a year later, the case is still tied up without resolution. The decision was supposed to be made this past Monday, but the judge, Lisa Warwick, has ordered new briefs to be filed by next Monday, with a final decision made to either dismiss the case or proceed with final arguments within a month.

So it's back to the internet for Brownlow, who's already spent lots of time, he says, on research. How much sleep this has cost him from nights awakening at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling, wondering what in blue blazes kind of country this has become to make this big of a deal over something this minor to string it out more than a year, is unknown.

But he has a case, and I think it's a damn good one. There are limitations on speech in our society, and there should be; intentional speech meant to do damage is wrong and should be prosecuted. But it has also been a watchword of our political and social culture that the benefit of the doubt should go to the speaker because the response can be both immediate and expose a disingenuous or lying speaker (such as the one who cause the insurrection features on The Atlantic cover) to be exactly that by doing what the respondents, too, are supposed to have every right to do: speak out in corrective, even defiant, opposition. Such rights are, at present, being smothered by ICE agents in Minnesota as you are reading this.

Where such a situation is unclear, it's been a rule of law that the relative damage done by the speech, or its threat to public safety, should be weighed against the intent of the speaker. Such challenges have, you might have surmised, gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and started doing so long ago. A few come to mind--my master's degree in journalism working here--which you might want to google:

• Near vs. Minnesota
• Gitlow vs. New York
• Whitney vs. California
• Brandenburg vs. Ohio
• Johnson vs. Texas

All these cases, decided back in the last century, featured ferocious attacks that simply overwhelm what happened in Muskego. It pales in comparison. Our jumpy, post-9-l1 attitudes are probably the only thing that's keeping this case, simple and obvious, from a quick, summary dismissal.

The litigants claim that it's damage to property that should measure cost. By chalk? Let's return to hopscotch. Is there such a thing as indelible chalk? You mean a sharply streamed water hose can't wash it off--at a cost of what?

Will a dismissal of the charges lead someone else to write something else on that same sidewalk? Will Muskego develop a kind of "sidewalk debate"? Funny: Nobody had before. Mr. Brownlow is left to measure his act against the trouble he's had to go to. But he got the attention he sought. The message got through. The price he's paid for that is plenty--and far too great.

This shouldn't be close. We have more serious issues to contend with, such as whether or not fascism, recently introduced in America, will make other efforts to achieve justice moot and, as Mr. Brownlow may or may not have also written, dispose with our democracy. Such matters outweigh those sidewalk scribblings like a whale outweighs a minnow.

But then, we've just learned that part of the reason why 47 is obsessed over Greenland is that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize--until he did, from the vice-president of Venezuela, whose country he has seized. A temper tantrum addressed? A booby prize delivered? A world gone crazy?

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

Mister Mark

All You Have to Do Is Look

The blogs and newspapers are filled with hope nowadays. The awful treatment of the immigrants, the Epstein files, the terrible attacks on other countries--all of it--suggests that enough of the country won't possibly put up with this nonsense for the Republicans to survive keeping their majorities in Congress in the upcoming elections next November.

But all you have to do is look at one thing, one other thing that suggests that people will overlook all the other nonsense and rationalize voting for the Republicans again.

You see it nearly every day, too: The price of gas. All you have to do is look.

The price in the Milwaukee area has dropped to $2.37 a gallon, by no means the lowest in the nation. This is the lowest it's been for months. You can rationalize about the prices of other consumer goods rising, and well they may be. You can grouse about the job numbers slowing down, and well they may also be. But those are hidden in newspaper reports, explained in more than one sentence, filled with economic gobblygook. Won't matter.

As long as that number stays low, stays even beneath $3 a gallon, the Republicans are not in trouble. That's the number they will point to, the number that the Democrats are helpless to change if they even wanted to.

Plenty of articles have run for years now that says that the president has nothing to do with the price of gasoline, one way or another. But 47 will brag about it, lie about it, during the next campaign. They'll take the credit as evidence that their policies are working for America.

Remember, too: Many of his supporters will rationalize anything so it doesn't get in the way of doubting their support for him. Cults work like that. So if they have something noticeable, something right out in the open, which indicates anything positive, they'll rush right at it.

I'm not saying it can't be overcome. I'm saying that if Democrats think that the latest disasters will work decisively against the Republicans later next year and they don't need to work very hard, they will get hung on yet another tree of naïveté.

People keep forgetting, or at least ignoring it: Elections are close. The country is split so closely you can't get a toothpick in there. Democrats just won't believe it. They refuse. And yes, it's difficult to accept that those 'over there' who believe the other side's propaganda and lies continue to do so. But they do. They accept the packaging that 47 and his minions concoct.

What that means, sadly, is that the betraying facts alone won't do. It's the packaging that will turn people  away from the nonsense and towards the light. And Democrats have traditionally been bad at that.

Republicans have been working on it, been donating money to it, been honing it to a fine edge for about 60 years now. They failed miserably in 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran for president against Lyndon Johnson, the incumbent. The Democrats had a built-in advantage with the hangover of the Kennedy Assassination, so they won in a walk. But the Republicans knew they were on to something, so they continued with the research, the largesse, and the results.

The late George Lakoff, a linguist from U-Cal Berkeley, wrote about this about 20 or 25 years ago, and not nearly enough people were listening. He noted the think-tanks that Republicans were forming and how they were twisting our language to fit their needs. His predictions have become all too clear. The Republicans have become too good at packaging their phraseology.

Project 2025, for instance, has done horrible damage to our governmental system, with doubtless more to come. But that has been buttressed with major social research money over the last six decades. No question that they've thrown some of that money away. But behind it came much more.

Example: The Democrats have tried to capsulate their new appeals under the heading of "affordability." But gas prices are diving too fast for them to keep up: That is the most obvious indication of dropping prices, even though they have nothing to do with what's going on inside grocery stores. They will lose on that word. Unless gas prices will spike somewhere down the road, they will have to come up with something else. Gas prices will counteract "affordability."

Besides, "affordability" is an awkward, made-up phrase that's clumsy to use. Republicans are masters at drawing people's attention away from issues that make them uncomfortable, pay for advance polling, and coming up with something that sticks better in people's heads.

How much does this matter? Think about the 2024 election campaign ads. You knew the Republicans would use their massive moneys to scare you about trans-people eating up sports awards in high schools. That ridiculous notion was a contrived chimera. But it had its effects on minority males. They broke for 47. In a close election, that made the decisive difference. We are living in a deepening dystopia because of it.

So ignore what the pundits are saying now. Wait until later. If gas prices remain low, we'll all feel better about that, the Republicans will try to attach it to the imperial presidency, and things will tighten up again. If prices go up significantly, say over $3 a gallon again, enough of those who remain on the margins will more likely dash to the other side. 

Only prices on groceries can fog over gas prices. Yes, that may make more of a difference. But 47 will keep making promises, keep blaming Biden, and keep the count close. And there is the matter of seizure of ballot boxes, too, if it's obvious that Republicans will get clobbered, drawing on some bogus legal remedy.

Irrational? But how is 47 in there again at all if not irrationally?

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

Mister Mark

Your Country Is Doing This

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if we had just seen the final installment of "60 Minutes."

Canada ran the "60 Minutes" excerpt on the prison dungeons (that's what they should be called) in El Salvador for those people picked up by ICE and transferred there. An overwhelming percentage of them don't deserve to be in any kind of custody. The conditions there, as they are described, are nothing less than abuse.

If you recall, Bari Weiss spiked the report in this country. Of course she made up excuses:

• She didn't have enough opportunity to review it. That's a lie.
• Alfonsi said that she had attempted to contact the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department for comments.r lie.Weiss said that she had contact numbers that Alfonsi didn't have, implying that had Alfonsi had them, she would have gotten through. Another lie. "Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story," wrote Alfonsi in a comment she published. "If the standard for airing a story becomes 'the government must agree to be interviewed,' then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes board cast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state."
• It will be aired later. Yet another lie, or at the very least, a dismissal into irrelevance. "Later" might mean 2029, when 47 is through (maybe) with his second term.

Weiss didn't allow a discussion on the matter requested by Alfonsi, either. That silence is complicitness in the coverup.

But the internet world is too transparent. It's on You Tube now. I saw it. I know what's in it. Go and find it.

The report, made by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, is devastating, like those arrested are being treated. Remember: Our country is doing this. These are human rights violations unlike any other suffered by anyone prosecuted or held captive by us, which frankly is saying a lot. 

The evidence, if that's what you want to call it, that got them into that hellhole is flimsy at best, at worst non-existent. They were released after 242 days of pure hell, yes, but because of an exchange for American prisoners in Venezuela. Needless to say, that probably won't be happening again.

The pretext for these arrests is that these men are "the worst of the worst," except most of them are far from that. One of the inmates interviewed after release was merely waiting for his asylum case to be adjudicated. "I never even had a traffic violation," he said.

Stephen Miller, that snake behind most of this, lashed out at the management of "60 Minutes" and condemned the perpetrators for being murderers and rapists. If any of them are, they deserve to be treated humanely while they are being held--which they're not--and arraigned like any other person within these borders as they await trial on charges brought against them.

I have no doubt that the 47ers are assuming that the Supreme Court, or at least a deceitful majority of it, will spin the 14th Amendment, which is coming under review, enough to justify harsh and disgusting treatment of non-U.S. citizens. They're just getting out in front of it a bit, you know.

What that means, too, is the unthinkable, at least to this point in our history: That people who speak out about these outrages will be labeled "enemies of the state," and imprisoned--a cancellation of the First Amendment and the descent of our society into that of a police state. We are all but there, folks. Count on it. 

It's okay if you aren't that scared right now. You'll have plenty of time for that when it all hits you.

In the meantime, what is the rest of the reportorial staff of "60 Minutes" going to do--Scott Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Anderson Cooper, and the rest? They are compromised, too. If they quit, will "60 Minutes" disappear, or be re-staffed with marginal, if any, credibility? Scott Pelley has been quoted recently as saying that "60 Minutes" hasn't lost its integrity, and that all their stories are being broadcast. He'll likely be adjusting that viewpoint now.

In any event, a fellow named Jeff Newton, a producer of "60 Minutes" for 15 years (and "Vice" on HBO, another outstanding piece of journalism), got up on Facebook to comment on this usurpation of journalism (which I'd recommend if you can spare 15 minutes): " '60 Minutes' is fucked," he said, more than once. I'd be surprised if it wasn't. "Democracy really does die in darkness," he said in quoting the statement from the masthead of The Washington Post, "and it's getting darker by the day."

Lots of lights have just been turned off, in fact. The bootlickers are winning. And we, we the people, are watching whatever power we've had slip away in real time. Watch for the next attack, which will be aimed at the Post and the New York Times. They're whatever national journalistic credibility we have left. By this time next year, we may have nothing at all except independent bloggers without funding, if that.

Once again, please understand: Your country is doing this. The "news" will be manipulated and adjusted to make the state look great, even if it steals others' rights right out from under them. The authorities are violating hundreds of people's civil rights, and sycophants within the news community are trying to keep us from knowing it.

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

Mister Mark

Let's Compare, Shall We?

47 has offended so many of us in so many ways that I seriously doubt that anyone's keeping track any longer. His latest is a classic: Putting himself on an equal basis with someone whose sneakers he couldn't possibly lace.

I'm talking about John F. Kennedy, whose name 47 has deigned to supersede on the face of what used to be the Kennedy Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC. I went there more than once when I had an office there and also lived there a while back. It is a tribute to a president who, representing the best of us, had an attraction to and a deep appreciation for the performing arts.

All 47 has a deep appreciation for is basking in the glow of a bunch of very rich people so he can be identified with them, being rich himself. But that richness only consists of how many dollars he can possibly be connected with, not rich in things that truly matter: Style, eloquence, tact. In those, he has consistently displayed himself, and continues to do so daily, as a national embarrassment.

Yes, I am embarrassed to have him as my elected leader. I take nothing from him as an example except for how not to act, what not to say. It is a slap in the face of our political life that he was allowed to get anywhere near this otherwise cherished position, where he is allowed to represent anything good about my country. As big and, yes, as diverse as it is, it still flows from the same roots and same actions that identified it as undeniably American. He only wants to enhance not its prestige, but his. But the harder he tries, the less he does so.

Instead, he seizes upon opportunity after opportunity to name things and buildings after himself, in a ridiculously desperate attempt to become 'famous' and to name his own legacy. But in his utter stupidity, he fails to understand that he succeed in that attempt. Only the populations that follow him will, and he must surely understand that to a certain extent, many will strive to forget nearly everything about him.

Not so John F. Kennedy. To be sure, his name became connected with many things that could have been named after other famous or noteworthy Americans; his assassination, dramatic as it was and so deeply mourned, reflected excessive admiration and lionization, tarnished in later years by the discovery of a rather jaded personal life. But to name a performing arts center after him has never seemed inappropriate. He enjoyed, rather at times basked in, the performing arts, having noted musicians perform at the White House--Pablo Casals, Igor Stravinsky, Ella Fitzgerald, even Chubby Checker, for instance--and people got dressed in gowns and tuxedos for the concerts. This was a direct influence of Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline, who saw the White House as a place of elegance and enduring class.

Not so 47. He has, instead, destroyed the East Wing of the White House, which used to contain the offices of the First Lady, just because he didn't like it. That wing was exactly where the Kennedy sponsored concerts were held. For him to destroy it represents that much more of an abomination, a curse upon what was an excellent addition to the building's history. 

Not ironically, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued 47's administration for that destruction. Kennedy addressed a meeting of the Trust's delegates in 1963, a little more than a month before he was murdered. He said, in part: "What you are attempting to do and what interests me, of course, is trying to maintain and keep alive in this country a very lively sense of our past....with all that sense of motion and progress and looking to the future, we have a good many things in our country that are worth retaining. One of these, of course, the most important, the White House...."

47, I guess, wouldn't agree. He wants to make the East Wing one big ballroom, to hold dinners and raise money for, I suppose, himself. This ghastly ruination of a significant part of our history wrenches us from our moorings. I was lucky enough to take a tour of the White House about 25 years ago. No way I would subject myself to that now. I deny belonging to anyone or anything that would ruin that history for me. I am not responsible for it. I cannot attach myself to it in any way.

Consider, also, the crassness with which 47 makes public statements. He put himself on awful display again Wednesday night, when he tried, I suppose, to rally his supporters into further denial of what's right in front of them: A country and society that he's leading right down into the sewer. 

I have a copy of Kennedy's official papers and speeches during his presidency: It is refreshing to read them again with a yearning for something, anything, meaningful to come out of our present leader's mouth. 47 said, almost to make an excuse, that his Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, who herself had found herself embarrassed by her own comments to Vanity Fair, rather made him get up there and once again make a complete fool of himself. Effective staff assistance would rather try increasingly to get him to shut up.

To combine the names of both these presidents on the facade of one building, any building but particularly one devoted to the performing arts, as 47 has just done, is to combine silver with mud. It signifies the affliction under which we presently suffer: a tribute to phoniness, to contrivances, to fakery and fabrication. 

47's name will go down in tribute, sure. Now that it has ruined two very honorable buildings in our nation's capital, it will descend in dishonor for generations to come. The mistake the country has made, twice, in electing him will only now multiply in scars he casts upon our national landscape.

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

Mister Mark

Now You Can Feel It

The post office does you what's supposed to be a favor by telling you when parcels sent through the mail are supposed to arrive. It does that through its own website.

The other day, it said that something was to arrive last Friday. It didn't come. That's happened before. It usually arrives the next day.

Then it said it would come Saturday. It didn't arrive, either.

Then it said it would come Monday. Nope.

Then it said it would come Tuesday. I didn't believe that. I was right.

At this point, I sincerely believed that it had been lost. There were things I had sent for that would be genuinely helpful with battling a case of arthritis that has suddenly sprung up. I thought about sending for it again. But why pay double?

It finally arrived Wednesday, five days after the original notice. I did not sigh with relief. I simmered. More like seethed.

This is annoying and builds up tension that you can fairly feel. It is also, I have learned, something I--we-- should probably get used to.

There's been an adjustment, I've been told, where cost-cutting is at the center of postal services. What's the best way to do that? Why, slow things down, of course.

Mail is now being routed through regional centers, a process called "consolidation." As a result, there are delayed postmarks, at least a day later. This is being called Delivering for America, which makes you think that somehow, the government is more on your side than ever. But it's not. Surprised?

The advice? Adjust by sending what you need to send earlier. That especially means bills. Meaning: If you don't want your payments to skyrocket, or pay the extra adjustment bill at the end of the pay period, you'd better get cracking.

That irritates, doesn't it? It's a way of artificially making you displeased with government. If that's some kind of experiment, it's working very well.

It's a way that someone has to make your security feel that much more tenuous. The other effect is to find something more efficient. Like: a private entity. If you can.

In a big city like mine, Milwaukee, that's not too tough. But what about if I live somewhere rural, say west of Wausau or north of Eau Claire? I'm familiar with those areas. Trying to find something out there is like finding a geographical marker. Best of luck. Guess you'll just have to wait.

Privatization is the government's deepest threat. It's an ongoing test: Can a private business deliver on its promises better and more efficiently than government?

It's one thing to try that on your own. It's quite another to get driven into that choice by forces beyond your control. But there's a disingenuous backdrop: Relying on government to deliver for you either gets to cost too much or doesn't meet your brand of efficiency or quality. That's arranged for by lack of funding, just like this shenanigan. So you're forced to conclude that government is against you instead of for you, and you turn elsewhere.

If you've spent a career in education, you aren't surprised in the least. That's where it began and still thrives. Milwaukee, in fact, is something akin to the founder of that attitude, seeing as how it went to the state Supreme Court to have its voucher program approved. That was 35 years ago, and the result has been staggering, if not unpredicted:

• a two-tiered system
• overcrowded classrooms
• dilapidated buildings
• shrinking classroom supplies
• the steadily dropping morale of teachers

All of which is a patented effort to look askance at the public school system as inadequate, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy meant for parents to siphon their kids into privatization. The fact that the public continues to fund these privatized schools has continued to be beside the point. The draining of funding toward public schools makes them look bad, which is only appropriate because increasingly, they can't help it.

Most of the time, though, it is only those within that system that notice that things are slowly but inevitably unraveling. With the mails, though, it's universal. We all notice. And it's not going to take years: It will take only months to see that backing away from a pursuit of increased quality belongs only to the administration that's responsible for it.

The next time something you were anticipating coming through the mail gets there two and three days late, think of those responsible. Think of the neglect it will take for that to additionally fall apart within a relatively short time. Then think of what's happened to education--not because of those who are practicing it, but because of those who are supposed to be caring for it, but don't.

Think about that when you get notice that, in case whatever you sent someone in the mail for Christmas got there a little late. Everybody will apologize, but there will be no oversight involved. You can read that last clause any way you wish.

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

Mister Mark