LEO XIV

The Holy Spirit has spoken.

The most important American in the world is not the President.

It is . . .

The Pope.

YESTERDAY

In 1992, I ran for Congress.

For the better part of that year, I travelled the highways and by-ways of what was then New York's 19th Congressional District.

It covered the northern half of Westchester County and then ran north through Putnam, four towns in Orange, and large parts of Dutchess. 

It was the Hudson Valley seat. 

Or at least so much of that valley as ran from its southern end half way to Albany.

At the time, the district was represented by a Republican whose pedigree went back to the nation's founding.  

That Republican was Hamilton Fish IV. 

He himself had held the seat since first winning it in 1968. 

His namesake father had been a Congressman in the Hudson Valley from 1920 to 1945. That Fish -- the third of the same-named direct descendants -- was famous for having led a company of black soldiers in World War I but later became infamous as an enemy of Franklin Roosevelt and a defeated isolationist in 1944.  

His namesake great grandfather had been a Representative, Senator and Governor of New York and the Secretary of State in the Grant and early Hayes Administration.  Had Nobel Prizes existed then, he might have won one for negotiating the arbitration agreement with Great Britain that resolved dispute arising out of the Civil War. 

Finally, and to start it all, there was his great great grandfather, Nicholas. He had been second in command to Alexander Hamilton at the Battle of Yorktown, for whom he named his son, the later Representative , Senator, Governor and cabinet Secretary, and the first of what would ultimately be five direct Hamilton Fish descendants.

To say I was running against history would be an understatement.

But I did not see it that way.

And neither, I think, did Congressman Fish.

Ours was a spirited campaign. 

He was running in support of the legacy and policies of President Reagan and the first President Bush. I questioned that legacy and opposed those policies. He was Right to Life. I was Pro--Choice. He supported NAFTA, the emerging but not yet final North American Free Trade Agreement. I opposed it. I was for pay or play, the Democratic Party's latest attempt at national health insurance; he wasn't. I wanted to build more infrastructure and create an industrial policy that turbocharged new technologies and, I hoped, new industries; he already had with electrification of the Metro North railroad into northern Westchester. In the first of many cycles where Congressional membership for life was wearing thin with the public, I teased him for having been elected when I was twelve; he levelled the charge by citing the experience that came with his long service.

Which included his bipartisan work (and vote) to impeach a president . . . 

When I was sixteen.

When the campaign was over, I had won more votes and a higher percentage than any Democrat who had ever run against him.

But he had won.

By a lot.

The night he won, I sent a congratulatory letter and also phoned him with good wishes. 

He thanked me for the call . . . 

And invited me to his election night party.  

We, however, were having our own. 

Bill Clinton had been elected president ending twelve years of GOP rule in the White House and that,  combined my own respectable vote total against two centuries of history, was more than sufficient cause for celebration in our own right.  

And, as it turned out, that showing had also gotten the attention of the Congressman's staffers.

When the partying was over on election night, a friend and I ducked into a bar for a nightcap.  In the back, a retinue of Fish campaign and office staffers were drinking and began heckling me to join them. I told my friend I'd buy them a pitcher of beer and say hello. When we did, his legislative director came over and told me she "really liked her boss" but "hoped" I'd win one day. "You'd be better," she said, "than 99% of them." Later, she confessed to having been a little concerned that afternoon when the McDonald's check out lady in her boss's Dutchess stronghold told her she was voting for me.

In the winter of 1995, two and a half years after the '92 campaign, I had lunch with a by then former Congressman Fish. 

His former legislative director, the same woman who had come over on election night, invited me.

The three of us talked about politics, the district, the future and the past.  Congressman Fish himself had retired in 1994 and his son (also a Hamilton) had run unsuccessfully as a Democrat that year to replace him. The father did not think the son should run again. "He'd lose," said the man who had won thirteen times.

It was clear to me he missed Congress.  

He was working as a lawyer for a large firm but the thing he seemed to most enjoy about that job was meeting his old friends on The Hill.

As I drove him back to his DC home that afternoon, I asked a final question:

Had he been criticized by other Republicans for voting as a member of the House Judiciary Committee to impeach President Nixon in 1974? 

"Only," he said, "by my father."

I doubt this kind of story will ever be told about today's Republican and Democratic opponents. 

Trump is a hater and has made hating a prerequisite in GOP candidates and MAGA fellow-travelers. His first and often only response to criticism by anyone or from any source is insult. His lying is pathological, his ignorance often astounding, and his assault on the rule of law potentially fatal. 

He has no friends on the other side of the aisle.

And doesn't really respect anyone who does.

Today, what passes for government is a blizzard of executive orders -- many if not most of them illegal, ill-advised or irrelevant -- because a narrow GOP Congress will not restrain an out-of-control President and dares not work with the other side to actually make law.

In his time, Congressman Fish was known for his ability to work across the aisle, especially on civil rights, and was always a gentleman. In 1992, without giving quarter, we fought but respected each other.  In 1995 we talked over lunch for a couple of hours. 

In 1996, Congressmen Fish died. He is buried with all the other Hamilton Fishes in a small Episcopal Church graveyard in Garrison NY. After the graveside service , his wife gave me a hug.

Four years later, I went back to that graveside to ask that former legislative director to marry me.

We had met because of him.

And fallen in love . . .

Despite our politics.

Which is another thing not likely to happen today.

For us, politics is a contest, not a cage-fight. Working for the boss she liked never made it impossible for her to love the Democrat she married.  And for me . . .

Well . . . 

1992 turned out to be a victory after all.

READING LINCOLN'S LYCEUM ADDRESS TODAY

On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln was a twenty-eight year old lawyer and member of the Illinois House of Representatives.  That night, he spoke before the Young Men's Lyceum in the state capital of Springfield. 

Lincoln titled his speech "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions."  

He began optimistically, explaining that "In the great journal of things happening under the sun," his America was in great shape. It stood, he said, "on the fairest portion of the earth . . . under . . . a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us." 

He admitted that he and his fellow citizens had not produced these "fundamental blessings". 

"We toiled not," he said, "in the acquirement or establishment of them." 

Rather, he continued, they were a "legacy . . . bequeathed . . . by a once hardy . . . and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors."

The passing of those ancestors worried him.

For two reasons.

One based on the passions of the ambitious.

The other based on the passions of the people.

As a student of history, Lincoln recognized that the half-century survival of "our political institutions"  would, for many, create a presumption they must continue.  "Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years," they would ask, "And why may we not for  fifty times as long?" But Lincoln was also a student of human nature and a thinker -- like Madison before him -- with an acute understanding of human psychology. 

So, he thought . . .

"That our government should have been maintained in the original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which are now decayed and crumbled away."

The first was the Revolution itself.

Which drove the ambitious to fulfill its aims and make it a success.

"Through that period," he explained,  "it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment". As a consequence, he continued, "all that sought celebrity and fame, and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment. Their all was staked upon it."

"Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world a practical demonstration of the truth of the proposition which had hitherto been considered at best no better than problematical; namely, the capability of people to govern themselves."

"If they succeeded, they were to be immortalized."

They did.

And they were.

"But," he warned, "the game is caught".  

The Revolution's "field of glory" had been "harvested . . . [T]he crop  . . . already appropriated."

And he knew the ambitious among them, himself included, would not stand still

"[N]ew reapers will arise," he explained, "and they, too, will seek a field."

"And when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have done before them."

"The question then is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others?"

 "Most certainly," he thought,  "it cannot."

As Lincoln looked at his fellow political travelers, he noticed "Many great and good men . . . whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or presidential chair".

But he also noticed an underside.  

Those who belonged  "to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle."

"[T]hink you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?" he asked

And then answered in one word:

"Never!"

"Towering genius," he concluded, "disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story upon the monuments to fame erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen."

And so . . . 

In the second half of the American republic's first century . . .

This was Lincoln's first fear:

The destructive passions of the ambitious man who . . . 

With "nothing left to be done in the way of building up . . .

Would set boldly to the task of pulling down."

His second fear was the passion of the people themselves.

Because they too were no longer moored to the Revolution.

As Lincoln put it to the Lyceum:

"Another reason which once was, but . . .  is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far." This was "the powerful influence which the . . . the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment."

"By this influence," he explained, "the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature . . . were, for a time . . .  smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature were either made to lie dormant or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause -- that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty."

"This state of feeling," he realized, had "faded with the circumstances that produced it."

"At the close of the struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of the scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family . . . But those histories are gone . . . They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbed away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason."

"Passion has helped us," Lincoln concluded, "but can do so no more."

"It will in the future be our enemy."

In the years that followed, Lincoln's fears proved prescient.  The passionately ambitious sought to extend the south's slavocracy to the west, preserving it forever in the form of additional slave states that would make it impossible for the nation as a whole to ever end slavery constitutionally through an amendment, and the Supreme Court in 1858 strengthened their hand by making citizenship solely a function of state law and by turning slaves into property even in places where they could not be slaves. Shortly thereafter, and unwilling to run the risk that Lincoln's presidency would thwart their ambitions, the southern plantation aristocracy embraced and excited the racist passions of its poor whites to fight and die for those aristocrats in the Civil War.

In neither case did law or reason prevail.

And today we seem to be on the same path.

Among the many emerging disasters in these nascent days of the second Trump administration, the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is the worst.  

On March 15, 2025, the Trump administration's ICE agents illegally seized Garcia and sent him to a terrorist prison in El Salvador.  At the time, he was here legally, a federal immigration judge having held that he could not be sent to El Salvador because he might be tortured there if he was. After his seizure, which the administration immediately conceded was erroneous, a federal court ordered the government to "facilitate and effectuate" his return to the United States by "11:59 pm on April 7". On the morning of April 7, the Supreme Court stayed that order, but on April 10 it affirmed it. Since then, Trump has refused to honor it. 

On Friday in Court, when the judge asked what the government had done to return Garcia to the United States, the DOJ attorney said he had no knowledge . On Saturday, Garcia's lawyers asked the Court to compel the administration to "ensure [Garcia's] safe passage to the aircraft that will return him to the United States" and suggested the Court order the government's lawyers to show cause why they should not be held in contempt.  On Saturday, in a statement that would have made the Soviet politburo proud, the administration said Garcia was "alive and secure" in the El Salvadoran prison to which he had been sent and was "detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador". On Sunday in a filing, DOJ argued "The Court should . . . reject [Garcia's] request for further intrusive supervision of the Executive's facilitation process beyond the daily status reports already ordered," to which in any case Trump's lawyers also objected.

So . . .

Here is where we are:

Trump is claiming he can seize anyone for good reason, no reason or even a mistaken reason; send them to a foreign prison without any due process whatsoever; and then assert (i) the courts cannot tell him otherwise without interfering with his conduct of foreign policy and (ii) even if they could, the prisoner is now subject to a "sovereign, domestic authority" over which neither they nor Trump have any control.

This follows his extortion of big law firms forced to pay tribute to remain in business; his attack on academic freedom as he arbitrarily withholds federal grants from Ivy League and other elite universities he dislikes; his illegal invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 against individuals from a nation with which we are not at war; his incoherent and chaotic on-again, off-again tariff policy against allies and enemies alike that has roiled markets, imperiled America's status as a safe haven, gutted 401k's and made business planning impossible; the investigation at his urging of Christopher Krebs because Krebs told the truth in 2020 that Trump had actually lost the presidential election that year; his summary firing by DOGE of thousands of federal employees; an incipient measles epidemic his HHS secretary cannot contain and whose advice has actually made worse; the almost complete abandonment of Ukraine; and his continued devotion to Vladimir Putin.

In his Lyceum Address, Lincoln asked:

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?"

"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?"

 "Never," he responded.

"All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years."  

The question therefore remained:

"At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?"

He then looked in the mirror.

And told the truth.

"If it ever reaches us," Lincoln said, "it must spring up amongst us.  It cannot come from abroad.  If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher."

"As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide."

In case you're wondering . . .

We're there.

BY THE NUMBERS

Dow Close on January 20, 2021 -- 30.930.52.

Dow Close on January 20, 2025 -- 43,487.83.

Dow Close on April 4, 2025 -- 38,314.84.

COREY BOOKER

He came.

He spoke.

He conquered.

MARCH MADNESS

March 1 -- Trump signs an Executive Order to make English the official language of the US, reversing President Clinton's order requiring assistance for non-English speakers. 

March 2 -- Trump creates a US crypto reserve.

On the same day, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. Jr. writes in an opinion piece that studies showed Vitamin A "dramatically reduces measles mortality" and that the use of the steroid budesonide, the antibiotic clarithromycin and cod live oil also produces "good results".

March 3 -- The Senate confirms Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education. She claims her mission is to end the Department of Education (DOE)

March 4 -- Trump delivers joint address to Congress. He speaks for one hour and forty minutes.

March 5 -- Trump postpones auto tariffs for 30 days.

On the same day, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announces plans to cut its workforce by 80,000.

March 6 -- Trump delays imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico until April 2. 

On the same day, he issues an Executive Order against the law firm Perkins Coie restricting its access to government buildings and federal contracting work on the grounds that the firm had previously worked for Democrats and clients that opposed the administration; he had previously issued a similar order against Covington Burling based on the fact that it represented Jack Smith, the Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney who prosecuted Trump in connection with the J6 insurrection and the separate classified documents case. 

Also on March 6, Trump demands federal courts impose costs and damages on those who seek injunctions against the federal government that are later reversed.

March 7 -- Trump signs an Executive Order that revokes Public Service Loan Forgiveness to organizations that advance "public disruptions".

On the same day, the administration -- through the Department of Education (DOE), the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) -- informs Columbia University that it would be pausing or terminating over $400 million in federal funding.

Also on the same day, the Department of Defense tags tens of thousands of on-line photos and posts for removal in order to comply with Trump's demand to eliminate DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs. One of the photos is of the "Enola Gay", the aircraft from which the first atom bomb was dropped on Japan. It appears to have been tagged because it contains the word "Gay".

March 11 -- The House of Representatives passes -- in a 217-215 vote -- an entirely partisan Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government through September 30.  The House CR proposes $2 trillion in spending cuts and allows for $4.5 trillion in additional spending to pass Trump's proposed tax cuts.

March 12 -- Trump meets Irish Taoiseach Michael Martin and repeats the claim that the European Union (EU) was designed to take advantage of the US.  

March 13 --  In a follow-up to its March 7 letter to Columbia, the DOE, GSA and HHS send a second letter setting forth the demands Columbia University must meet to avoid losing federal funding. Among the demands are that Columbia place its department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies under academic receivership for five years.  On March 25, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming the administration's "threats and coercion" against Columbia "are part of a huge authoritarian playbook meant to crush academic freedom and critical research in American higher education."

March 14 -- The  Senate passes the House CR to fund the government through September 30. Ten Democrats vote with fifty-two Republicans to avoid a filibuster.  

On the same day, Trump gives a speech to attorneys at the Department of Justice in which he says those who oppose him in court "are horrible people. They are scum."  

Also on the same day, he issues an Executive Order against the law firm Paul Weiss restricting its access to government buildings and federal contracting work. The basis for this order is that a former Paul Weiss partner assisted the NY County DA in its prosecution of Trump in connection with his creation of fraudulent business records to hide his affair with Stormy Daniels.

And also on the same day, Trump issues an Executive Order shutting down Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Marti. The federal courts block the order later in the month

March 15 -- Trump uses the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to unilaterally arrest and deport 261 individuals he claims are members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. US District Judge James Boasberg issues a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the action.  In a later opinion denying the Government's motion to vacate that TRO, Judge Boasberg explained that plaintiffs had a right to contest any claim they were members of the gang and the right to contest their removal to El Salvador given evidence that it would subject incarcerated plaintiffs to torture.

March 16 -- Trump violates Judge Boasberg's order and deports the 261 individuals anyway, sending them to a prison in El Salvador. None had the opportunity to contest the claim they were gang members.  For many, there is evidence they were not.

March 18 -- Trump calls for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg. Chief Justice Roberts says impeachment is not the proper response to disagreement with judicial rulings.

On the same day, Trump removes two commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission. The removed commissioners -- Alvara Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter -- were Democratic appointees.  The law forbids their removal other than for cause. This follows equally partisan removals from the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. On March 27, Bedoya and Slaughter filed a law suit challenging their removals.

March 20 -- Trump signs an Executive Order calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education (DOE). On March 11, in anticipation of this plan, DOE issued a reduction-in-force directive to place 50% of its employees on administrative leave.

On the same day, the law firm Paul Weiss cuts a deal with President Trump agreeing to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services in exchange for Trump rescinding his March 14 Executive order against the firm.

March 21 -- Trump revokes the security clearances of President Biden, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and  seven others.

On the same date, and pursuant to the DOE's March 11 reduction-in-force directive, 50% of its employees are put on administrative leave.

Also on the same day, Reuters reports that the “FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations”, both of which, it reports, “are an indication that . . . investigations . . . involv[ing] violence fueled by right-wing ideologies” may be “less a priority”.

March 24 -- Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Vice President Vance participate in a group chat on Signal, a commercial app, that includes journalist Jeffrey Goldberg and includes and discusses imminent plans to bomb Houthi rebels. In addition to being absolutely forbidden in communications involving classified documents and information, Signal allows chats and shared documents to be later destroyed and can be used to violate the Federal Records Act.

March 25 -- Trump signs an Executive Order demanding that, in federal elections, all votes be received by election day and all voters provide proof of US citizenship.

On the same day, the Washington Post reports that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has hired a long-standing vaccine skeptic, David Geier, to conduct its study on whether vaccines cause autism.

Also on the same day, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrest Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright Scholar and Tufts University graduate student legally here on an F-1 student visa since 2018. When asked about her case, Secretary of State Rubio claimed her activities "would compromise a compelling US policy interest" and that “if you apply for a visa . . . and tell us that the reason why . . .  is not just . . .  to write op-eds, but . . . to participate in . . . vandalizing universities, harassing students, [and] taking over buildings, . . . we're not going to give you a visa." In fact, however, the only thing Ozturk did, according to her lawyers, was write an op-ed. Although a Massachusetts federal judge ordered that she not be removed from the state, ICE claims it had already flown her to a detention facility in Louisiana  before the order was issued. She has not been charged with any crime.   

March 26 -- Trump imposes 25% tariffs on all automobile imports, effective April 2. Automobile stocks plummet.  

On the same day, he also issues an Executive Order against the law firm Jenner & Block restricting its access to  government buildings and federal contracting work.  The basis for this order is that Andrew Weisman had worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team in connection with the investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016 and was later hired by the firm after that investigation ended.  The investigation concluded there was not sufficient evidence to find the Trump campaign had conspired under federal law with Russia but also specifically concluded that it could not exonerate Trump from claims he had obstructed justice in connection with the investigation.

March 27 -- Trump issues an Executive Order against the law firm Wilmer Hale restricting its access to  government buildings and federal contracting work. The basis for this order is that Special Counsel Mueller was allowed to return to the firm as a partner after his investigation of Trump ended. A federal court issues a TRO blocking that order; another issues a similar order blocking the March 26 order against Jenner & Block.

On the same day, RFK Jr. announces that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will cut 10,000 employees and blames the department's 82,000 workers for the decline in the nation's health.

Also on the same day, NBC News reports that "the State Department has revoked 300 or more student visas, as the White House increasingly targets foreign-born students whose main transgression seems to be activism."

March 28 --  Vice President Vance and his wife visit Greenland. The trip was originally planned as a visit by Vance’s wife to Greenland’s capital. That was changed when it was made clear she would be met by streams of protesters who oppose Trump’s designs on the island. So instead the pair visited a US Air Base  in the north.  At the base, the Vice President said Denmark is not protecting Greenland. The only threat Greenland faces, however, is from Russia, a threat NATO protects it against but Trump continually weakens. As for Denmark, in the wake of 9/11, the only time NATO’s mutual defense obligation was ever invoked, Denmark lost more soldiers per capita than the US in the Afghan war.

On the same day, Trump announces that the law firm Skadden Arps has agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services to avoid the adverse orders he has issued against other firms.

Also on the same day, Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the official who spearheaded the Warp Speed drive that led to the Covid vaccine, resigns. In his resignation letter, Dr. Marks states “The ongoing multistate measles outbreak . . . reminds  us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined.” As to RFK Jr., his letter states “I was willing to work to address the Secretary’s concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency . . . However, it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.” 

Also on the same day, the stock market caps three days of losses in response to Trump’s imminent tariffs and declining consumer confidence. The Dow was down another 1.69%, the S&P 1.97% and Nasdaq 2.7%.

March 29 — As of this day, there are 483 cases of measles spread over twenty states.  The largest number is in Texas with 400 cases. It spread there in the largely unvaccinated Mennonite community.

March 30 — In an interview on NBC, Trump refuses to rule out running for a third term.

CENTURIES

Centuries, it turns out, are weird things.

In the strictest sense they are numbers, one-hundred year increments. They start at a certain point and end at an equally certain point. The 20th began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000. And for the entire common era, you can count nineteen more of them.

And twenty-four plus years in a 21st.

Pretty simple stuff.

Not so fast, however, say the historians.

For them centuries are not mere slices of time. 

Instead, they define changing epochs. 

They can be longer or shorter than ten arithmetic decades. 

And they can begin or end in years other than the first or the hundredth. 

According to British historian Eric Hobsbawm, the "long nineteenth century" lasted 125 years. It "began",  he says, with the French Revolution in 1789 and "ended" with the start of World War I in 1914. Its defining trait appears to have been the Treaty of Paris in 1815 that set Europe upon a century-long period of balance of power politics.  In that regard, therefore, claiming the beginning as the French Revolution looks out of place.  Not to worry, however, because others argue that before it -- the long nineteenth, that is --  there was a "long eighteenth".  It began, they say, in 1688 with England's Glorious Revolution and ended in 1815 with the Napoleonic Wars, thus nicely book ending that 127-year century as a revolutionary one, are own included. This, of course, complicates Hobsbawm's long nineteenth. If it only ran from the end of Napoleon to the start of the First World War, it now becomes a slightly shorter (but still erratic --1815 to 1914) one. Shorter, however, seems to be his trend. Because Hobsbawm insists that his (not that) long nineteenth century was followed by a "short twentieth". He starts the latter with World War I and ends it with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

My own view is the 20th century was not that short. 

In fact, it was a bit long.

In my mind, it started in 1917 when the United States entered and then changed the outcome of World War I from a stalemate to an Allied victory. It continued through the interwar years, World War II, the post-war rules-based international order, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the follow-on neo-liberal period of globalism. 

It was a period of American hegemony.

Economic and political hegemony to be sure.

But also and most importantly . . .

Moral hegemony. 

Alone among history's hegemons, the United States in the wake of World War II chose to share both its power and its wealth. It created the United Nations as a forum for discussion and (it hoped) a peace preserved on the basis of a rules-based order and the development and respect for universal human rights. It drew red-lines that could not be crossed by authoritarian communists in a Cold War President Reagan correctly predicted it would (and did) win.  Some of those lines were well considered (in Berlin in 1948-49 and Korea in 1950, for example); others, not so much (in Vietnam in the '60s and in Chile in 1973). With its victor's purse, it funded the Marshall  Plan that re-built war-torn Europe. With its rule of law, it globally turbocharged capitalism. With its idealism, it launched  President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress and USAID and W's PEPFAR. 

Always imperfect but never truly (or perhaps only rarely) imperious, its ultimate aim was a free world.

The freedom it sought, however, was freedom in the fullest (and therefore truest) sense of the word. 

It was a "freedom from" the fascists and communists and assorted authoritarians who would otherwise enslave their victims or subjects.  

But it was also, in the words of Yale Prof. Timothy Snyder, a much larger "freedom to". The positive freedom to choose, to adapt, to move, to understand. The "five forms of freedom'', as he puts it, that recognize our "sovereignty, or the learned capacity to make choices; unpredictability, the power to adapt physical regularities to personal purposes; mobility, the capacity to move through space and time following values; factuality, the grip on the world that allows us to change it; and solidarity, the recognition that freedom is for everyone."

That century -- the American century -- ended last week.

It did not have to.

Indeed, because the work of freedom -- and especially the work of positive freedom or "freedom to" -- is a lived project, it was supposed to be an on-going one.

But it ended anyway.

Donald Trump killed it.

I am at this point guilty of some overstatement.  

It is not the case that Donald Trump killed the American century all in the last week.  

In fact, he has been working on the execution for the now almost ten years of his political life and for most of his personal life.  

He does not believe in freedom.  He certainly does not understand that it comes as a positive manner in the five forms outlined by Prof. Snyder.  His pathological lying and aversion to any notion of factuality leaves him without any grip on the real world, enthralled as he is to the created and false reality he manufactures and then acts upon on a daily basis. A slave to lying is not free. Nor does he recognize that freedom includes "the capacity to move through space and time". To the contrary, he has harvested thousands of votes demeaning the freedom of migrants for whom mobility is a matter of life and death, and now wants to issue a Gold Card that makes entry to and citizenship for immigrants available to those willing to pay $5 million.  Freedom, however, is not a product for the rich; it is a right of all. 

I chose last week, however, because his conduct in that period capsulized in such a complete way how he has so thoroughly orchestrated the killing over the life of his presidencies and over the course of his personal  life.

On Ukraine, he has decided to surrender to Vladimir Putin.  

Even before last Friday's disgusting ambush of Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, Trump told the world that Ukraine would have to give up all or most of the land Putin illegally seized in 2014 (Crimea) and after Russia started the war in 2022 (large parts of the eastern Donbas). He has also said America would provide no security guarantees of any peace deal and that Ukraine would never be admitted to NATO.  He has falsely claimed that Ukraine started the war and falsely characterized Zelensky as a dictator. 

In last Friday's meeting, after Zelensky asked Vice President Vance what sort of diplomacy Vance was advocating given that Russia has violated every agreement struck on past ceasefires, Vance accused him of being "disrespectful" (ostensibly for "litigating" in front of the media) and not sufficiently thankful (although Zelensky has literally thanked America more times than anyone can count, Vance -- in full asskissing mode -- was claiming Zelensky had not personally thanked Trump at the meeting). Accusing him of "gambling with World War III", having "no cards" to play, and demanding that he either "make a deal or we're out", Trump then kicked Zelensky out of the White House. 

In the days since, Trump has suspended the continued provision of military equipment and critical intelligence to Ukraine.

Trump and the entire GOP are pretending this is all part of an effort to get Putin to the negotiating table and are claiming there can be no peace if there is no parley.  In truth, however, all Trump is doing is telling Putin he can have everything he has already seized, along with the promise that Ukraine will not be in NATO and America will not guarantee that he, Putin, adheres to any deal. Waiting, therefore, has been a great deal for Putin.  

Every day that passes, Trump gives him something else.  

Before last week, it was the concession that Ukraine could never expect the return of its illegally seized land. Last Friday it was the dressing down of Zelensky (loved by the Russians, whose lickspittle President Medvedev praised Trump for "slap[ping] down" the "insolent pig" Zelensky). Over the weekend and on Monday and Wednesday it was the cessation of military and intel support. Not surprisingly, Russia's response to those moves was to say it intended to inflict "maximum damage" on Ukraine and to call Zelensky a "parasitic" and "flea-ridden dog".

Europe's reaction to all of this has been sheer disgust.  The Germans are now revisiting fiscal policies they have followed for decades in an effort to fund the military and France is saying it will utilize its nukes to protect Europe.  The entire continent is backing Ukraine and praying some form of American support remains.  They are also rapidly planning for a free world which they -- and not the United States -- lead.  

The notion that Russia intends to stop with Ukraine or part of it is fantasy. Putin has been clear that his plan is to reconstitute the old Soviet Union under the Russian flag.  That means he intends to control or dominate at least the old Soviet Republics in Europe, the Balkans, and southeastern Europe and Poland,  and wants to checkmate France , Germany and the rest of western Europe. It is basically the reverse of what Hitler intended in the 1940s.  Trump is fine with all of this. He owes the continuing financial viability of the Trump Organization to Russian money and thinks fascist or authoritarian rulers are fine. 

In fact, he aspires to be one.

Which was the second thing made clear in this death-of-the-American-century week.

On Tuesday, Trump gave a joint address to Congress.

It was a combination of lies, smug arrogance, contempt and wishful thinking. 

He lied about who is getting Social Security, the amount the US has spent in Ukraine, the number of illegals who entered the country the past four years,  the state of the economy both now and prior to January 20, the ostensibly huge and unfair gap between foreign tariffs and ours, the rise in military recruitment, and -- almost comically --  mice supposedly being transgendered. 

The arrogance was evident in his pretense that "America is back" (when he is actually authoring its decline); in his demand that we "enhanc[e] protections for America's police officers" (whose "protections" he absolutely destroyed in pardoning the J6 insurrectionists); in the assertion that he will get Greenland "sooner or later" or is now "taking back" the Panama Canal (neither will happen); or in the renaming ("Gulf of America") no one takes seriously.

Then, of course, there was the contempt (in particular for the infinitesimally small number of transgendered Americans, or for anyone who actually believes diversity, equity and inclusion are good things, or for the laws he violated and the indictments only his election suspended), and, finally, the wishful thinking. Those tariffs, he said,  will cause only "a little disturbance", a prediction he keeps abandoning as the deadlines for them approach, the stock market tanks, and a magical "pause" is announced. 

Apparently, his own portfolio cannot suffer "a little disturbance".

The speech lasted an hour and forty minutes -- the longest ever in the history of joint addresses. It followed six weeks of near constant televised comments from Trump.  He thinks he is flooding the zone and in fact he is. 

In doing so, however, he is imitating the conduct of history's authoritarians on that score as well. 

Fidel Castro routinely spoke for three and four hours at a time. Venezuela's Madura spoke for four hours at his second inauguration. China's Xi went on for three and a half hours at a recent communist party congress speech. 

Stalin and Khrushchev were also long winded. 

As were Hitler and Mussolini.

The idea is to talk so much, so often, and so dishonestly . . .

That either no one else can . . . 

Or no one else is heard.

Since taking office on January 20, Trump has done all in his power to insure Russian victory in Ukraine and its later dominance of Europe in a non-NATO balance of power world where might makes right. He has also continued his assault on truth and structured the executive branch to guarantee its loyalty to himself alone and not the Constitution.  His political party stands mute in the face of this assault.  Indeed, to the contrary, and as was evident last Tuesday, his party applauds it.

None of this is consistent with the world FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon created and then managed in the American Century 

Nor is it consistent with the Cold War victory Reagan predicted and then helped orchestrate in that same period. 

Or the vision of Constitutional government without monarchy the Founders created years ago.

Trump has repudiated all of that.

Epochs can end.

The American Century just did.