Knowledge, His Worst Enemy, Against the Latest Big Lie: The 'War on Thanksgiving'

So now there's a war on Thanksgiving, 45 says. No, there isn't.

But he said so, plucking it out of the corner of his addled mind. I wonder how many of the hordes that went to hear his latest pile of nonsense in Sunrise, Florida, yesterday believe so now. After all, there was a 'war on Christmas,' wasn't there?

No, there wasn't one of those, either. Nobody tried to take Christmas away from anyone. Nobody said or made any kind of rule that someone couldn't wish someone else a "Merry Christmas." It's just that government, in its wishes to keep religion outside the taxpayer realm--necessary in our secular state--sometimes has to drop the Christmas moniker to a Holiday one. That's not a 'war.' That's following the Constitution. (Disingenuously, as is his wont, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas has, with his campaign money, put a Yuletree up in the lobby of the Texas State Senate, challenging anybody to object to that. Never mind the constitutionality of it; he figures that nobody would want to get a hard time from his shaming of them.)

But now that the small-h holidays are upon us, 45 can riff about victimization all he wants, even if he needs to keep making up reasons for people to be appalled--at least those who choose to regard him as a great sage of this silliness. But it's the impressment upon their minds that continues to be scary.

As he speaks, so they think. As they think, so they think they know. And they will not question. They won't look anything up. They'll just accept it as truth when it certainly isn't.

It's a lie, a big lie: The kind of big lie that will be tried again and again. Hitler did that, too. He didn't tell them all at once, either. He built up to it. Then he shouted and harangued as his minions jeered along with him. And followed him to defeat and oblivion.

There were others who tried to ignore it at first, and then to avoid it. They were those who didn't buy into the tawdry propaganda. They read things, listened to things, thought about things, debated things. And they never let go of the idea that ideas matter.

They are here, too. In Nazi Germany, they lost out. Will that happen here?

Not an absurd notion. Though this society is far more enormous than that of Germany in the 1920s and '30s, it is held together and divided simultaneously with mass communicative techniques that are being manipulated with nonsense as we speak. Remember: 45 has Fox News. It is a highly malleable, mostly subservient (and if you debate this, consider his last 54-minute harangue on "Fox and Friends," on which he's been allowed access any time he wants it) and very effective propaganda wing of his administration. Some working there know it and protest, but some have also given up on it as a source of genuine journalism and left the network. You can bet, for instance, that it has and will spew the nonsense of a 'war on Thanksgiving' and imbed that into their viewers' heads to build their resentment against "elites."

The best opponent against this onslaught is access to knowledge and information that someone has tried to push into the public realm without excessive bias. It is the ability and willingness to seek out and absorb multiple sources of information and test it against decent standards of judgment. If people fail to do so, those multiple sources can be removed.

Here is William L. Shirer, writing in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, in the chapter describing the legal, but awful, policy of "coordination" of all aspects of German life under the Nazi banner:

No one who lived in Germany in the Thirties, and who cared about such matters, can ever forget the sickening decline of the cultural standards of a people who had had such high ones for so long a time. This was inevitable, of course, the moment the Nazi leaders decided that the arts, literature, the press, radio and the films must serve exclusively the propaganda purposes of the new regime and its outlandish philosophy.

It's exactly why 45 won't relinquish his attacks on the free press. He can't control it, so he trashes it in the name of self-pity and victimization. In any event, he re-directs the main source of information (and attitude regarding it) to himself. Information, true information, disappears to all those who feel they don't need to access it. It becomes an endless droning of sameness and dullness: Easily understandable but lacking any depth. The Nazis controlled information sources so completely, wrote Shirer, that the result "was to afflict the German people with radio programs and motion pictures as inane and boring as were the contents of their daily newspapers and periodicals."

Likewise, he repeats the same themes, the same attacks, and the same conspiracy theories every so often to remind his followers to keep thinking about the same things, not the terrible policies to which we have been subjected, and the very thin highwire on which we are now balancing matters of war and peace. He wants to get us to forget about the past--and if not, only the past things he prefers. Those who give into that shallowness will allow themselves to be bored, to tune it out, and blindly follow the next things he says. "A steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it," wrote Shirer. 

That's just what 45 wants, too, with his 17,000 lies and counting. He wants people to throw up their hands and stop fighting them.

It's why we must keep reading and accessing information sources that are independent, though subjected to, his attacks. If they're attacked, no doubt they're telling the truth. We must continue to have access to the things that are really happening, and that have happened.

Our thirst for knowledge cannot slacken. Our reliance on independent judgment and the formulation of genuine political will, based on facts, depends on it. It's 45's worst enemy, and he knows it.

Go to your library. Read a book on history. Get a magazine. Pay attention to non-Fox news programs. Get away from social media for a minute. Nobody has to shout. They just have to read.

Be well. Be careful. Happy Thanksgiving, and if you have to stand up for yourself against nonsense, please do so. Do it respectfully and matter-of-factly, but do it. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Military: Just Another Place for 45's Lawlessness and Incompetence

In 45's military, there are no war crimes. There's just war--kill or be killed, rationale be damned. Once you enter that theater, there are no rules.

That's become evident lately. 45 has interfered in several cases regarding war crimes, in which prisoners were abused and/or murdered. The Edward Gallagher case (he's the Navy SEAL) is but one.

An article in The Atlantic magazine recently explained why 45 ignores or sidesteps atrocities committed by some of our own soldiers. Mark Bowden is experienced in military writing; he is the author of two important works: Black Hawk Down and Hue: 1968. (I've read part of the latter. It has superb research.)

Bowden's goal was to talk to military people up and down the line, getting them to say how they felt about 45's attitudes toward them. It offers a revealing glimpse inside how they view his mind--and how they have, and might, work around it despite his unfortunate position as Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces: The one thing you don't want a guy like this to have.

Bowden summarizes the military's thinking about 45's thinking into five major categories, the explanation of which will accompany their individual statement:

• He disdains expertise. Considering his dealings with others inside the Beltway, this should come as no surprise. The "deep state," which he professes to despise, is in fact a vast reservoir of expertise that an inexperienced person ignores at tremendous risk. He asks only for input from Fox News. Example 1: He nearly got us into a shooting war with Iran, calling off a bombing at literally the last hour. It would have started over the shooting down of one of our drones--no casualties, mind you. Example 2: Withdrawing troops from Syria when we had the ISIS on the run and greatly reduced, though a hard core of about 10,000 were still fighting, presumably to the death. Our forces were coordinating with many others. The commander of our forces, Gen. Joseph Votel, took an enormous risk and went public with his objection. 45 backed away, though of course he admitted that he'd done nothing wrong. Some of our troops have been withdrawn, with the British and French picking up the slack. So, yes, in the end, he listened to someone, but not before scaring the bejabbers out of everybody when that wasn't necessary.
• He trusts only his own instincts. That's something like an inside-out summary of the above. When someone thinks of himself as a genius (he really does), and the sycophants around him just keep feeding him that baloney, what other advice does a guy need? Again, as an example, the near-war with Iran, with all kinds of tremulous implications even if the USA might have won a protracted conflict. Bowden suggests that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, might have been the one who stood up to 45 and told him to back away (instead of 45 saying that he considered the casualties first).

(Is a trend appearing here? As in: You have to stand up to this guy to get him to back away. Nothing subtle or back door, like the approach of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who was fired by Defense Secretary Mark Esper: You have to gain access, insist on being heard, and get in the room with him. Risky? With this high-minded, empty-headed lout, of course. But there are still people inside who are willing to do that. For now.)

• He resists coherent strategy. When you think you know enough regardless of the situation, everything can be by the seat of the pants. "Keeping an enemy off-balance can be a good thing, the generals agreed," as Bowden wrote, "so long as you are not off-balance yourself. And it's a tactic, not a strategy." Example: North Korea and 45's strange relationship with Kim Jong Un, love letters on the one hand, fire and fury on the other. One of the generals told Bowden, "That stuff is just crazy enough to work....if it can avert something it will have been worth it." But unpredictability eschews planning and arrangement for outcomes, especially if 45 insists on holding his cards so close to his chest that not even his best people know what's up. "If the president says 'fire and brimstone' and then two weeks later says 'this is my best friend,' that's not necessarily bad--but it's bad if the rest of the relevant people in the government responsible for executing the strategy aren't aware that that's the strategy," a general told Bowden. And--let Yours Truly suggest--it might create a scenario in which a military at the site of conflict acts without permission because of a loss of trust in the commander-in-chief.
• He is reflexively contrary. 45 has gone out of his way to diminish the size of, and influence of, the State Department. He has left ambassadorships unfilled in a number of important strategic locales, including Brazil, Canada, Japan, Russia and, until recently and with very deep underminings, Ukraine. H. R. McMaster, 45's national security advisor, tried to put together a statement of strategy that pulled together America First with immigration, nuclear proliferation and terrorist attacks. 45 marveled when he saw it, but it hasn't been brought out since. "Trying to shape this president's approach to the world into a cogent philosophy is a fool's errand," writes Bowden. "For those commanding America's armed forces, it's best to keep binoculars trained on his Twitter feed."
• He has a simplistic and antiquated notion of soldiering. "All of the generals agreed that interfering with the military's efforts to police itself badly undermines command and control," Bowden writes of incidents such as that of Gallagher, who had his SEAL pin taken away by the Navy, only to have it put back on by 45. "When thousands of young Americans are deployed overseas with heavy weaponry, crimes and atrocities will sometimes occur. Failing to prosecute those to who commit them invites behavior that shames everyone in uniform and the nation they serve." In a phrase, said one general, 45 doesn't understand the 'warrior ethos.' His attitude is taken from TV and movies and is badly antiquated. "It makes wars less inhumane an allows our profession to maintain our elf-respect and to be respected by others....If you treat civilians disrespectfully, you're working for the enemy [emphasis his]! [45] doesn't understand." He's never been near a battlefield, so the John Wayne stuff resonates with him. But that doesn't go very far in actual warfare, said a general. Not only that, but PTSD cases will likely increase, because being "tough" and throwing tantrums upon failure isn't the point by itself. "That is not leadership," said the general. "You don't get optimal performance being that way. You get [it] by being completely opposite of that."

I wonder what 45's reaction was, and now is, to the 1969 My Lai massacre, when over 500 Vietnamese civilians were murdered in that ugly, unsuccessful war. I wonder what he thinks of the humiliation and torture of Abu Ghraib. I wonder if he'll notice the same things happening to our troops when captured. Then I wonder if he'll care. Remember, though: Nixon gradually reduced the sentence of William Calley, tried and convicted for war crimes at My Lai. He did it in several stages so as to mute the political effects.

Again, a precedent was set and an example could be found. But again, nobody has put together the enormous bad aspects of behavior like 45. Nobody has been anywhere near as bad, incompetent or disgusting at so many things as he has.

It's all sufficient reason that we can't get into a war with him in the White House. He'll try to Hitlerize the effort--that is, take over the whole thing himself. German generals chafed at the prospect of having to deal with a mere World War I corporal in the deepest planning of World War II's multi-continental warfare; they knew he had no idea about tactics and pretty much shot from the hip, wielded with his gigantic temper. (It's a major reason they tried to kill him, too.) Unquestionably, 45 would act in a similar sense, without even the slightest notion about what serving in the military is like. Functionally, we would be guided into nowhere with someone knowing nothing.

That would get a lot of us killed. It would get us genuinely defeated. That is why we cannot possibly let this next electoral opportunity be a failure. The future of the country is genuinely at stake. Now isn't the time to let that go beyond other conversations. It's of the essence, impeachment or not.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Obnoxious and Bigoted? Sure. Let It Ride.

Who remembers a guy named Ward Churchill? Taught at the University of Colorado. He was a tenured professor in the ethnic studies department.

During the last decade, when the topic was pretty sensitive, he wrote an essay comparing some of the 9-11 victims to Adolf Eichmann ("little Eichmanns"), noting that, as the Western powers were gaining oil profits on the backs of Arab children through sanctions and then invasion, sooner or later, like would be paid for like.

The University of Colorado fired him for poor research practices, but he maintained that his controversial (to say the least) essay was the actual reason. Four years later, a jury concurred, and he gained a chance to get his job back.

I heard Churchill take on a neo-conservative commentator, David Horowitz, in a debate. His language skills were exceptional. His reasoning was obtuse, but his overall point couldn't be ignored: Freedom to share ideas had to remain paramount.

Horowitz is widely known in conservative circles for his attacks on the higher educational system. He considers it a racket where liberals have campaigned for, and gained, rights (collectively bargained, in many cases) to assist with granting tenure, and--according to him--just keep recycling professors who agree with each other on the left. When I was with NEA in D.C., I attended a conference facilitated by Horowitz. He was sure to bring in students who said they had been intimidated into silence by their conservative views. Some cried as they told their stories.

But most tended to shroud their conservatism atop what was really bothering them: That someone, probably a professor, had thwarted their needs to proselytize their religious beliefs, in effect equalizing the two. The professors, according to them, tended to stop or deflect or point out the misdirection of their comments at that point. This offended their sense of free speech rights. Horowitz did not disagree.

I did. But I was one of the very few union people in that room--some American Federation of Teachers staff members were on a panel discussion--so I did not jump into the conversation. An Education Week reporter caught me for a comment. I can't recall exactly what I said, but it didn't make the final version of the story. (I could be pretty vanilla in commentary at times; the more one hangs around politicians, the more one can easily act like one.)

I was witnessing the same thing that students at Indiana University say they have to deal with: a professor who holds controversial, and offensive to some, viewpoints. This one, though, is conservative and more progressive students are objecting.

It's not as if they don't have cause. This professor, Eric Rasmusen, is an economist in the business school who says, in views posted (note) on his website:

• that women are "the weaker sex"; 
• that gay men should not be teachers; and 
• that blacks have lower standards for getting into colleges than whites.

These step on some toes pretty hard. Rasmusen's comments were flagged by a Twitter account, according to the New York Times, and went viral. There were enough objections to require an Indiana University provost to weigh in.

The provost, Lauren Robel, took a good look at the situation and managed to insert the First Amendment in an important way. She called the comments "vile and stupid....more consistent with someone who lived in the 18th century than the 21st." But she also pointed out that Rasmusen has been careful to put his personal viewpoints in a place where the university can't touch them. "Somebody with his views--should that person be teaching students? If that was the only question we had to answer, the answer in my mind would be pretty clear," Robel said. But she had to admit: "These are things he says on his own time, in his own space. That, without more, is not enough (to remove him)."

Does Rasmusen pose a hostile environment in his classroom? Good question. The university, to its credit, took steps to release some of the pressure of the situation: First, it allowed students to transfer out of his class; second, it said that his classes would not be required for graduation; and third, assignments would be graded without him knowing whose they were. Fair enough.

So what's the problem? Just knowing how someone thinks is now fair game for going after their teaching status. A lot of this is overreaction, adopted by our hyper-sensitized higher education culture. (See my blog of 1/7/19: a review of The Coddling of the American Mind)

Rasmusen may be walking a fine line, but he's walking it well. He hasn't been accused of intimidating or driving his views down people's throats within his classroom; he hasn't been accused, either, of demonstrating bias in his grading. He had made strong comments about gay men on his blog, so IU removed it from its servers--in 2003.

That attention has been brought to his comments brings notoriety to them, which might actually enhance Rasmusen's reputation in some eyes on the same campus. But nobody has to read them. And nobody has to take his classes. True, people will be observing more closely. But if he hasn't stirred up that much attention for at least sixteen years, he knows what he's doing and can co-exist as an obnoxious bigot in a progressive atmosphere. (I'd like to see him in the same room as some gay male teachers I've met through NEA. Only one thing I could say: Good luck, dude. You're about to be taken down a few notches.)

For those a bit bothered about this, allow me to offer a bromide: Get used to it. It isn't like you're hung over the bar on a Friday night. You might even get a decent conversation out of it. It isn't everywhere that you can get a balanced reflection between people on controversial topics. Most of the time, someone will try to summarize the truth in about six words, order another round, and that will be that. You still get to walk away, though, just like the university allows them to walk away from the noted professor's class.

The First Amendment wins this one. But that's not surprising. If responsibly utilized, it wins every time. Which is the idea: Speaking responsibly will always be supported, because it sounds like someone's been thinking carefully. Under those circumstances, human beings not only tend to get along better, they even make more sense.

If that doesn't happen in that particular vicinity, decency in thought and speech usually catch up and overtake those without it. It doesn't always, though, and the cutting edge issue remains: What happens when stupidity and bigotry, its ugly cousin, take over the conversation through what they do best--intimidate and humiliate those who disagree?

It appears that Rasmusen, though pushing the edges of mainstream thinking, hasn't made someone disagreeing with him feel like mulch. As long as he can exercise that tolerance, there can't be that much amiss about his presence and approach. Cutting him off would lead to doing the same at the other end of the spectrum, igniting all kinds of indignance. Self-righteousness ignores the first axiom of free exchange: It all works both ways.

It doesn't mean we have to agree or even think of other ideas as worthy of governance. But it's the utter measurement of our democratic society to determine whether we can survive knowing that there's a large group of people out there who think in ways we find unthinkable (against which we constantly need to push back). That will be the work of an already greatly challenged Constitution. I wish it, and us, lots of luck.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

The Unsung Heroism of Being One Step Ahead

So this is what we have now: the House Democrats have exposed 45's tawdry and cynical plot not just to undermine Ukraine, but to betray it by making its new president make a choice between the ethical behavior he promised his people and the trap he unknowingly fell into by having to deal with such a monster in the White House.

45 got caught by a free and robust press, so he released the $391M that he had had held in abeyance to this extortion, which is what it is regardless of Republican efforts to simply dismiss it because, after all, there was no actual harm done. Too bad, so sad, they're saying. You really have nothing here at all.

But to hold an ally's leader hostage like this is craven, and the withholding of Congressional funding is a direct violation of the Constitution. What Politico and now the House Democrats have done is to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine, though nobody has come right out and said that. The absence of the Javelin anti-tank missiles purchased with that money would have made resistance problematic.

Okay, Obama acted with far more restraint and sent blankets and MREs to Ukraine instead, trying not to provoke the Russians. 45's increasing of military hardware assistance might actually have been a better move.

All the more reason not to play games with the money. All the more reason to act with straight-up integrity and deliver for the Ukrainians.

All the more reason to declare that our foreign policy has been strangled by a narcissistic operator who cares not about any country, including his own. All of it comes down to a single question: Can I squeeze somebody to advance my prospects? Not that of the USA, but mine?

The Republicans scoff at what was actually asked of Zelinskyy: Not necessarily to actually investigate Burisma and the Bidens, but to announce that Ukraine was doing so. That way, the Bidens get bad press, 45 can riff forever like he did with Hillary Clinton, and the endless smear takes off on its own legs regardless of any basis in fact.

So, the Republicans claim, there really was nothing involved--not an actual investigation, but the appearance of one. Republican Elise Stefanek, one of the so-called stars of this part of the impeachment proceedings, has continually harped upon the "potential appearance of a conflict of interest" of Hunter Biden's employment by Burisma, as if that was signficant at all, as a sufficient excuse to begin investigations--and, of course, normalize 45's underhanded plot to compromise our foreign policy as just international politics writ large.

That's like saying there's a ghost in my apartment. There may not be one, but I can claim the potential appearance of one, and get people, including myself if I say it often enough, mighty scared. And that's exactly what 45 wanted the nefarious Rudy Giuliani to do--gin-up an investigation with 'facts' that, stated loudly and vaguely (the way smearing is done), would excite enough Democrats to turn on Biden and refuse him the nomination. Once begun, any connection between anything Hunter Biden had done, if anything at all, and Joe Biden, is dad, would be easy with Fox News conduit quite handy.

It's happening right in front of us, with the predictability of the next sunrise. By now, anyone reading this can create the precise scenario of another rotten attempt to compromise another country. But if you aren't a fan of foreign aid and you want to stop it, all you have to do is lobby Congress. But naturally, if you can't do that--just like Reagan tried to do in Iran-Contra, for which he should have been impeached--you can try to do an end-run around Congress. But that was The Gipper. Heaven forfend that he would be called into account.

That all of this got stopped on a dime, and the House Democrats got one step ahead of 45's nonsense, at the risk of several careers, is now being not only ignored but chastised. Already, polls have this state, Wisconsin, backing away from impeachment proceedings. It all seems too nuanced, and already too normalized in terms of his general behavior, for enough people to take a failed attempt at extortion too seriously, as long as it didn't actually succeed, never mind that he'll undoubtedly try it again, this time with far fewer participants and far fewer trails left behind. He can't help himself, and now he has revenge as a motive for the demagogic heckling he calls his speeches.

Never mind that the entire Republican Party now seems too craven to seek justice, either. They keep key witnesses--Mulvaney, Giuliani, Pompeo, and Bolton, to name just a few--from testifying, hiding even more cravenness by adding their own. There is no moral high ground present among them. They are all in the rabbit hole with him. There's no way out but unanimity in illogical resistance, repeating disproven mantras of the non-facts of false narratives.

But you actually have to be paying attention to get all this. You have to be paying attention to focus. As good of a strategy that Nancy Pelosi had in narrowing the accusations for the purposes of expediting the proceedings to try to thwart the relative lack of attention of the average American voter, it couldn't even survive that effort. The tension of the hearings, strung out over two weeks, regardless of what fruit they have wrought by brave members of the same Deep State that's trying to hold the country together, has been too much. People turned them off early on.

Who the hell are we? Do we have to actually experience disaster in order to act on the attempt to create it? Does all this get wiped away with a shrug and nose-holding while we wait for the inevitable attack by the Russians--which this time will succeed, and is succeeding quite thoroughly as Republican dunces voice their sirens about phony Ukrainian meddling? Can't we stop anything before it happens?

All this must play out now. The Democrats are too far in, too committed and damn it, too right to back away from the process. It's clear, though, that even though what's been revealed is frightening and disgusting, clearly impeachable and sufficient for removal, more shocking and ridiculous actions would have to be revealed for any Republican to even consider crossing over. It's not absurd to think that, unbeknownst at the present moment, those actions might have already happened.

But remember these names, too: Hill, Vindman, Yovanovitch, Kent, Taylor, Stevens, Cooper. They put it on the line for the USA: the one we're more familiar with, the one that's supposed to be a beacon of strength and purpose for a decent, relatively orderly world. Not 45's world, the one that serves him and him alone, never mind anyone else's needs.

They have guts. They are what we're supposed to be about. Not their boss, elected by a technicality, unable and unwilling to understand the essence of his position and the good it could do so many.

Maybe 45 slipped away for a hospital check-up to get some sleep-aids. He might need that more than anything else. How else could he get through the night?

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Stephen Miller: The Patron Anti-Saint of This Abomination, a.k.a. The 3 Rs

If there is a patron anti-saint of the abomination that is this president's pompous display of incompetent viciousness, it is Stephen Miller. He personifies all that got 45 where he is and keeps him there.

That the Southern Poverty Law Center has found over 900 e-mails depicting Miller as the white nationalist racist that he is shouldn't be very surprising. What's curious is that it's taken this long to do it.

But stealth is the cornerstone of 45ers. They try to sneak in back doors and plant themselves while the rest of us watch in the typical venues. When the lights come back on, we wonder where they came from.

Get back on You Tube for a minute and watch his various interviews, especially with Jake Tapper of CNN, where he kicks Miller out of the studio. 45ers have a playbook which include:

• Changing any topic that's uncomfortable
• Deflecting the conversation elsewhere
• Talking loudly
• Rudely interrupting
• Talking over any objection or contrary viewpoint
• Disingenuousness squared: Someone inside the White House has tried to characterize attacks against Miller as anti-Semitic. Good luck with that, but see the last bullet below.
• Flat-out lies
• Self-righteousness
• Tough-guy talk and bullying
• Attacking the very media that's giving them the opportunities to speak
• Meanness and victimization, however twisted the reasoning behind it

Oh, they would be nice, you know. But these are not nice times. They want you to believe that there is actually niceness inside of them, but they're putting it on hold to, you know, take care of business and make....oh, never mind. If you act a certain way and keep saying you're putting your true self on hold, you're whistling in the dark. This is who you are. This is who you have become.

So these are not pleasant people by their very nature. They glorify their whiteness and push the panic button to warn the rest of us that whites are being outnumbered as we go through our days, as if that's something to be afraid of. Nobody who truly believes that the white race has been and always is superior can have, at their core, goodness in mind.

Again, these are not conservatives. These are the 3 Rs of the plague that presently grips us: radical racist reactionaries. They seek only to pull civilization back from its progress and into a dreamy previous world that, in reality, never existed back then either.

The absolutism of his approach is stunningly anti-American. It assumes that "American" is synonymous with "white." It isn't about being fair. It's about victimization of whites, as if they've had something taken away from them.

Little wonder that we rarely see him. Wherever he goes, he's vilified and attacked. Has it occurred to him that if he were the personification of the feelings of the majority, he'd be cheered and put on front pages of magazines?

Make no mistake: These are exactly the attitudes of those who took over Nazi Germany, utilizing a democratic, parliamentary system to get their noses inside the tent doors, then insidiously worm their ways into positions of power. Try William L. Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for an education about that. There's a lot to read. It wasn't accomplished overnight.

Conservatives might question the effectiveness of, for instance, affirmative action, concerned that it might be getting out of hand. Radical racist reactionaries condemn it and make it a goal to wipe it out under the guise of "freedom" or "liberty." Freedom only for white people is just the opposite of it.

The amazing thing, perhaps now not so amazing, is that so many people are choosing to follow these charlatans. I suppose it is their gossamer-thin image of strength and toughness. But we have plenty of examples, past and present, about that, too.

The very tolerance that best exemplifies the success of our society is being weaponized to enable these awful people to take and maintain power. Were Stephen Miller the only one, he would have been singled out, isolated and dismissed long ago.

But now he thrives while so many look the other way, wanting to think like he does but having nothing to do with the dirty work. People like Stephen Miller are basically the same way: They couldn't possibly get their hands smudged by getting anywhere near those kinds who are trying to sneak in here. They leave that to others and antiseptically make terrible policy far from its application. It's, well, beneath him as much as the people who are being detained are beneath him.

Tolerance is, for the most part, a good thing about humanity. But pure tolerance is without foundation. At some point, we have to say 'no' to something we simply can't accept. Stephen Miller and his radical racist reactionary ilk should be, must be, where the line must be drawn. Without it, I cringe at where this country might be going.

Those 3 Rs, I can do without. The next presidential campaign must go right at this and address it. It must be beaten back, and over a period of decades, not just with some clever rhetorical phraseology. Should it be allowed to fester, its bursting will get over all of us. Once done, it would be difficult to clean off.

That might sound ugly. Well, isn't it?

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Something Was Missing 30 Years Ago. It Isn't Anymore.

I don't do speed dialing as much as I have a few numbers in my mind and, lacking anything else captivating, normally remind myself to check them. C-SPAN 1, 2, and 3 fall into that category.

So it was with sudden, ohhhhh-yeah interest that I fell upon NBC's coverage of the fall (or circumventing, as it were) of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. C-SPAN 3 did it right; it walked us through the day, about half an hour at a time, when it began to become clear that the East German government meant what it said: Any East German really could go into West Berlin or West Germany any time they wanted to.

The trickle of humanity became a rush, and then a near stampede. Freedom! People stood atop the Berlin Wall, helping each other to what was once the other's side. NBC announced the announcement, then came back again and again, reporting the reaction on the ground and at the White House, where Bush-41 and his Secretary of State, James Baker, tried not to get too excited at the end of the Cold War and, in all actuality, World War II at last, staring them right in the face: What was then supposed to be the victory of democracy over totalitarianism (How sad is that, looking back?).

I marveled at that. But I also marveled, in a retro- kind of way, at the NBC fleet of reporters who were at the White House, the Pentagon (NATO, you know), and Berlin itself. Here are the ones I saw do some reporting:

• Garrick Utley (original anchor of the special report)
• Robert Hagar
• Tom Brokaw (in Berlin, covering the other vestiges of Eastern European liberation)
• Martin Fletcher (London)
• Pete Francis
• John Cochran
• Mike Boettcher (also in Berlin)
• Mary Alice Williams (taking over as anchor later in the afternoon)

Familiar names, those. But notice anything? Almost no women. It felt a little odd. Because women are all over the networks now, doing both regular network and cable work every day without doubt or question. They do regular reporting in the field, covering disasters and wars. They own their shows and they're pretty good at it. The men are now the guests. And on shows hosted by males, women are now experts every bit as much as the men are.

Women are now doing NBA and college football play-by-play, and baseball analysis. Former women golfers do commentary on major golf networks. (What I'd like to see in sports is men becoming on-field reporters for women up in the booth, instead of blondes-on-the-field, giving pro and major college football a decidedly, continually sexist look. Could Michelle Tafoya sit upstairs with Al Michaels and do Sunday Night Football with Chris Collinsworth roaming the benches? Of course. It would look awkward, too. Until halftime.)

Better yet, there are no big announcements any longer. It is no longer a 'thing' that a woman has taken the reins of major journalism coverage, like it was when Barbara Walters tried to do the ABC evening news with Harry Reasoner in the '70s. Now they just do it.

Some of those pioneers are still with us if not actually working: Walters, Diane Sawyer, and Katie Couric, to name just three. They paid their dues for people like Rachel Maddow, Erin Burnett, Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell (and it's indicative that, if I start going down the latter list, I'd have to write a whole bunch of them now). The former fought their way to the top for the latter.

It's been good to be there for it. MSNBC's coverage of the impeachment investigation hearings will be anchored by Nicolle Wallace and Brian Williams. The four journalists who will be asking the questions at MSNBC's hosting of the next debate will all be women, from places like Harvard and Stanford.

Not that that surprises me. There have been female journalists all along. Some of them have been outstanding. But we don't know very many of them. We'll know these women, though. And remember, as we should.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

The President's Major Chore in Our Government and His Clear and Present Abuse of It

The Founders gave the American president the power to conduct foreign policy. It's right there in the Constitution. Its broad empowerment has come to be the signature element in the history of the office.

The president can make treaties with foreign countries, subject to Senate approval. He is also in charge of appointing our foreign representatives, usually called ambassadors, to foreign countries, as well as accepting the same on our shores (or not). The maneuverings that take place to fulfill these powers have been much the stuff of the meaning of the office right from its beginning. The president hasn't always had a budget to present to Congress; it was often the other way around. And George Washington thoroughly disliked political parties, and would have rathered we lacked them, though they were well en route to formulation with the state decisions to ratify the constitution creating a fairly clear patchwork of arguments about the nature of popular government; the sides were drawn regardless. The role of titular party leader, too, would be one for the future. And the country itself was a relative international pipsqueak when it decided to create itself.

The president as foreign policy director has always mattered, though. George Washington had to navigate between England and France in his two terms of office, and not merely for philosophical or internally political reasons (though they existed). Those two countries were constantly at each others' throats, at war incessantly for nearly a century and a half before finally calling it quits after Napoleon's defeat. We nonetheless needed trade from each, and each excoriated us for dealing with the other. So we needed a foreign policy that was practical, reflective of the ability of the nation to defend itself (or, back then, the lack thereof), and allowing plenty of room for exchanges of goods and services while leaving the president's door open for discussion.

The people assigned to particular countries reflect that country's priorities. The first ambassador to France? Thomas Jefferson. The first to Great Britain? John Adams. Any questions?

Any way you wish to look at it, a reasonably adept diplomatic service has been essential to the USA's status amidst the international milieu. It's why the position of Secretary of State, once very much internal in focus, came to fill with prestige and vitality. Ambassadors to countries we considered strategic to our interests have become very important people. Here's why:

• Let's say some country that hadn't existed now exists, and wants to have an embassy here. It finds a suitable building (usually on Massachusetts Avenue in DC, but it could be anywhere in the distric near a Metro stop) and asks the president for permission. The president alone gets to say yes because there's no Congressional approval necessary (think about that relative to 45). His approval is called recognition. It means that then our resources are directed toward setting up meetings and making proper communications with that country through that ambassador and our own, appointed of course by the president (but that has Senate approval). Without it, that country simply doesn't exist officially. In the case of China, for instance, we didn't recognize it until 1978 because we were mad that they had turned communist 29 years before that, very much a done deal by then. Nixon had visited in 1972 and had already established relations, but didn't extend recognition because in his scheming mind, he then could play the Chinese against Russia, especially concerning Vietnam, and if he could keep the Russians guessing, so much better for us (He might have been right, player that he was. But he knew his stuff, too, and he had Henry Kissinger, one of the great diplomats of the 20th Century, like him or not, to carry out his wishes. Big difference.).
• If an ambassador is ordered out of a country, it's nearly certain that that country and the ambassador's are going to war and very soon. Why else would they be kicked out?
• If an ambassador leaves the country voluntarily, it's nearly certain that that country's government is about to change, and not peacefully, forces of which look as if they might not be very friendly to our government anyhow.

In any event, the ambassador to a particular country had better be (a) very mature and professional; (b) able to stay very calm; and (c) be perfectly comfortable with articulating our policies toward that country and toward others, especially surrounding it, at a moment's notice. Indeed, the ambassador is the USA in those crucial moments (As in South Vietnam on Nov. 1, 1963, when President Diem was about to be overthrown and called Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge concerning the USA's policy regarding it. Lodge knew that President Kennedy had, through the CIA, given a tacit approval to the overthrow (which he urged Kennedy to support) but told Diem, in a lie, that "It's three a.m. in Washington, and the U.S. government cannot possibly have a view." After which Diem, who Kennedy thought was to be allowed to go into exile, was instead taken away and shot.). And (s)he had better know what's what so as not to lead his/her assigned country astray, thereby creating headaches for the president, secretary of state, and the rest of us.

So if things go down poorly, it can have enormous consequences. On Dec. 7, 1941, two Japanese envoys (ambassadors assigned to do a specific task), who had been ostensibly sent to the U.S. to do negotiations, gave U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull a list of ultimatums that, if the U.S. was unwilling to fulfill, would mean war between the two countries, the idea being that the presentation was to take place just moments before the Japanese planes hit Pearl Harbor, so technically, the attack wouldn't be called a surprise because our government, several hours away by plane, would still have been considered to have 'received' the message. But a technical glitch had prevented the message from being translated from code, so it was given to Hull about two hours after the attack had begun. That is a big, big no-no in diplomacy, where form and observed practices are paramount: These are lies, was the message actually sent to us. All Hull could do, after roasting his two very sorry, helpless guests, was to dismiss them with a nod to the door.

Consider, then, Marie Yovanovitch, career diplomat, who used to be our ambassador to Ukraine. Hers was a country very much on the international firing line, considering its Russian invasion during Barack Obama's presidency. Her role in the USA's positioning against a Russian takeover would be considered, one would think, absolutely vital. It would be good to have such an experienced person on hand there: classy, dignified, and opposite of her bosses, very appropriate.

Consider how she might have felt when she saw that the government she was working for had changed hands and the direction of foreign policy had gone from Secretary of State John Kerry, former U.S. Senator, to Rex Tillerson, oil magnate, who at least had done some interaction, however personally based, with some oil-rich countries. Consider how she might have felt, too, when Tillerson, savaged by a clown president who has both scared the hell out of and 'fallen in love with' the ruler of North Korea all in the same month, resigned and made way for Mike Pompeo, a Jesus freak who sees foreign policy through the will of a Christian god first and foremost, as has been well-documented.

Consider how she might have felt when, in July 2018, the president extolled the virtues of Russian president Vladimir Putin after meeting behind closed doors with him, the contents of which discussion are still unknown. Could they have had anything to do with Ukraine? Would you have liked to have operated under such a cloud?

Nonetheless, Yovanovitch soldiered on until she began to hear that the shyster's shyster, Rudy Giuliani, was actually doing work for the main shyster behind her back. Then she heard the president say that she had done "some really bad things," without anyone having met with her to explain them, without the Secretary of State even mentioning it to her.  She also heard that, if she wanted to stick around, she should sell out and tell the press that the president was a really good guy.

After refusing to do that bit of diplomatic extortion, she heard that if she was smart, she should leave the country and the job she loved and did quite expertly, on the next plane. She got out while the getting was good.

So have many others. The New York Times reported Sunday that the American Foreign Service Association reported that more Foreign Service officers are leaving the profession than ever. They feel increasingly disparaged by an administration that cares little for them or their jobs. "There's pride in the dignity of those officers in these undignified times, and in how vividly their plain-spoken courage and professionalism brings to life the wider value of public service," said William J. Burns, who served as an ambassador under four presidents. They are, to be sure, good examples of good examples, hanging tough not because of incidents inside the countries to which they've been assigned, but inside the very country that sponsors them.

They are also distinctly unbiased, loyal to the idea of the United States of America and, like Yovanovitch, not to any particular individual, which I'm quite sure has rankled 45 to no end. I caught a glimpse of that when I attended that afore-mentioned education union meeting in Turkey in 2004. The NEA staffer, Jill Christiansen, set up a meeting and we went to the U.S. embassy in Ankara to discuss some issues. We ran into very professional people who cared not for the particularly opposing political positions between us and the administration (Bush-43) that they were then working for, not the least of which was that we had worked our asses off to bump it out and failed. We were Americans, this is what they knew about a Turkish teachers' union that was under fire, and they were happy to share it.

There was no quid pro quo, no declaration of loyalty to be made. We were under the same flag, seven thousand miles from home. That was enough.

Right this very minute, in fact, the embassy in Ankara is probably a pretty tense place, what with the recent deal cut by 45's gang to allow the Turks to enter Syria and take out our former friends, the Kurds. I wonder what the diplomatic corps assigned there are thinking. I wonder who, if anyone, will be hanging on when this mess back home finally clears.

There, and elsewhere. "There a deep worry about what will become of the Foreign Service when this is all over," said Molly Montgomery, who spent 14 years in the Foreign Services, as quoted in the NYT article, "about who will be left, and whether the norm of an apolitical Foreign Service trusted by the State Department's political leadership can be restored."

That clarification, among many others, will probably be revealed when William Taylor, Jr., George Kent, and Marie Yovanovitch will step up to the microphone starting tomorrow. They are the true patriots, those who toil largely unsaluted, literally around the world. Republicans will walk into that hearing room with egg already on their faces from their twisting of reality to defend the indefensible. Those three career diplomats will, by mere statement of facts, bring several dozen more cartons.

They will restate, because it somehow needs to be restated, the vitality of the USA around the world, the crucial nature of our embassies, and the way the Constitution has been abused, violated, and circumvented by a complete jackass and his fellow jackasses. Expect to be even more embarrassed when they're through.

Those people, who make us proud to be Americans, have never earned this abuse. They are, in many ways, the best we have. They don't deserve this abomination, this clear and present trashing. Neither do we.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark