TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I have been thinking about Christmas this week.

Actually, I have been thinking about Christmas Eve, which is today. And which, it seems to me, captures more of the essence of Christmas than even the day itself.

Christmas is about anticipation. About what will happen, not what has occurred. It's about the future, whether that future is mere hours in the offing or a millenia away. And it unites, in perhaps a way that no other holiday can or does, the pedestrian with the profound. In fact, it makes the pedestrian profound.

Kids will go crazy tonight. Most won't be able to sleep. Those not afraid of some cosmic retribution will sneak a peak out the window or down the stairs in search of Santa Claus. Others will become inveterate Holmes-es (Sherlock, that is), carefully processing every errant sound from a squeaky baseboard to determine if he has come down the chimney, with care or otherwise, along with a satchel of goodies. A few years ago, a friend told me his son had come into his bedroom in the middle of the night, swearing to his father that "Rudolph was in the driveway."

Two thousand years ago, it was all about anticipation too. We have encrusted that day with layers of theological speculation, so much so that we are now almost in need of theo-archaeologists to carefully remove the layers without destroying the initial insight. It was, after all, about the future, about hope -- cosmic and otherwise. Lots of us call it salvation, and tonight or tomorrow, when many of us cross the church threshold (some for our biennial visit, others for the second time this week), we will hear the ancient story of the incarnate One and be told it was the day we were saved.

Which has, of late, got me to wondering.

What for?

And the best answer I can come up with is . . .

Tomorrow.

And so that's what Christmas is about for me. Tomorrow. All the endless tomorrows. With their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Their risings and fallings. And tears and laughter. Even on the day I die, when tomorrow will be unpredictably exciting. In fact, especially then.

A friend recommended a book earlier this year by a theologian named John Haught. In it, Haught talked about the need to square Christian theology with the fact of evolution. One point he made is that theology should never compete with science, that the truths of the latter are not to be denied by the former, and vice versa. So the earth and all its inhabitants weren't created in six days, the universe (or multi-verse, we really do not know) is billions of years old, the human story represents hardly a nanosecond in this evolutionary time line, and the possibility of intelligent life in spheres beyond our third rock from the sun is hardly remote. The one thing certain is that, whoever and whatever we and our world are, it will not be the same tomorrow.

In fact, in the deep time of our evolutionary tomorrow, it's gonna be very different.

Which brings me back to Christmas. Or more precisely Christmas Eve. The one day when we think about nothing but tomorrow. And really look forward to it.

I am ready this year. All the presents are wrapped. The house is clean (I vacuum). Charles Darwin and Jesus Christ have become bosom buddies in my mind, the former telling me that nothing is forever as the world and its inhabitants constantly morph into newer forms, the latter teaching me that this in itself is a good thing and that somewhere over this evolutionary rainbow there is still a tomorrow that embraces us all.

And I have a shovel ready.

In case Rudolph leaves something in the driveway besides a missing sleigh bell.

Merry Christmas.

(This post was first published on Christmas Eve 2008.  A lot has changed since then. But not my view of Christmas.)

THANKSGIVING 2018 -- REMEMBERING LINCOLN

THANKSGIVING 2018 -- REMEMBERING LINCOLN

In October 1863, Abraham Lincoln thought Americans had much to be thankful for. 

"In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and provoke their aggression," he explained, "peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict".  In spite of that conflict, he noted, "Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defence . . . have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship . . . [A]nd the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom."

These contrasting realities  -- between war and peace, deprivation and plenty, freedom and slavery -- flummoxed Lincoln.  "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things," he admitted.  In fact, they rarely co-exist.  Large scale depravity overwhelms decency.  Death ends life.  Slavery suffocates freedom.

But they hadn't in mid-19th century America.

Even in the midst of a war that had produced greater carnage than any other.

This created a problem for Lincoln.  Though a deist, he was not particularly religious.  As an adult, he was not a member of any particular church, and as a politician he was at best circumspect in his confessions of faith -- unwilling to alienate Christian revivalists who reined supreme in the mid-west of his time but equally unwilling to embrace their excesses. He was also a child of the enlightenment and believed in reason and human agency.

Reason and agency, however, could not explain the country he observed in 1863.

And so, like many who cannot find a why in the sheer irrationality of what is, he was reduced to . . .

Prayer.

The ploughs, the shuttles, the ships, the neutrality of foreign adveraries and the sheer survival of the republican project that together made a "large increase of freedom" possible,  were, he offered  "the gracious gifts of the Most High God".  And they required that we "set apart and observe the last Thursday next . . . as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."  

The proclamation did not end there.  Along with thanks, Lincoln also demanded a national  prayer for forgiveness.  "I recommend," said the President, "that while offering up the ascriptions justly due Him for such singular deliverances and blessings," Americans "do . . . humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience."  That "perverseness" had created innumerable "widows, orphans, mourners [and] sufferers".

In the months and years that followed, Lincoln poured content into that first Thanksgiving prayer.  A little more than a month later, at Gettysburg, the "large increase of freedom" he perceived as dimly possible on Thanksgiving became the "unfinished work" of  "a new birth of freedom" incumbent upon "us, the living". And a year and a half later, in the Second Inaugural, he sought to "bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan".

For awhile this year, I was not sure we'd have much to be thankful for come tomorrow's fourth Thursday in November.  

And then I remembered Lincoln and the first Thanksgiving.

Trump is still President.  And he is still Trump.  His lies continue, as does his neo-fascist assault on courts, competitors, the free press and anyone who opposes him.  It is now reported that, last Spring, he was set to order the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey.  Last week, he pulled the press credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta, who he hates, and appointed an Acting Attorney General whose only obvious credential is consistent condemnation of the Mueller investigation.  This week, he is again shilling for Saudi Arabia, buying -- or at least not rejecting -- the kingdom's false claim that its heir in waiting had nothing to do with the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  And today, he is lamenting, as the product of an "Obama judge",  a federal district court ruling in San Francisco that requires asylum proceedings for any aliens who enter the country, whether or not they come in at a port of entry. 

But none of this has been accepted or taken lying down.

The White House counsel told Trump he'd be impeached if he ordered Justice to go after Clinton or Comey.  The courts ordered him to restore Acosta's credentials, and are now hearing motions as to the constitutionality of the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General.  No one is accepting Trump's defense of Saudi Arabia and prominent Senators are now set to investigate the President's gross servility, an obsequiousness that only faintly disguises the hatred he has for the free press.  Trump's asylum order has been enjoined, and Chief Justice John Roberts just upbraided him.  "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges", said Roberts. "What we have," he added, is an "independent judiciary [for which] we should all be thankful".

In a little more than a month, we'll have a House of Representatives controlled by the Democrats.  This is the product of a blue wave that overcame the most gerrymandered set of district lines the country has ever seen, a gerrymandering specifically designed to preserve Republican control of the House.  

It failed.  

To date, Congress has been transparently inept in holding  Trump accountable and investigating his and his Administration's lies, authoritarianism, conflicts, emoluments and incompetence -- the in utero fascism that scares us all.  

That ends on January 1.

Sometimes, as Yeats lamented, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/ . . . The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." 

This is not one of those times.

So . . .

Happy Thanksgiving.

Or, as Lincoln might say . . .

Thank God.

We'll apologize for Trump later.

NEXT WEEK WE'LL KNOW

NEXT WEEK WE'LL KNOW

So, the President of the United States basically announces a target list of opponents he views as despicable and a deranged man decides to send pipe bombs to fourteen people on the list.  Later in the week, an anti-semite walks into a Pittsburgh synagogue with an AR-15, kills eleven congregants, and then avows his anti-semitism in the ambulance on the way to the hospital to be treated for his wounds.

Immediately, the administration and its various and sundry lapdogs go into overdrive, vigorously disputing any notion that the President is responsible in any way for either tragedy.  

Their claims ran the gamut from the idiotic -- Kellyanne Conway blaming general "anti-religiosity" for quite particularized anti-semitism -- to the merely banal -- the chorus of conservative and GOP enablers trotting out a false "both-sidism", ostensibly on the grounds that last year's shooting at the GOP baseball practice was by a supporter of Bernie Sanders, even though Sen. Sanders has never advocated any form of violence against his opponents but Trump emphatically, and on more than one occasion, clearly has.

Do they really think Americans are that stupid?

The answer is . . .

Yes, they do!

It is difficult if not impossible these days to logically defend the GOP playbook in all its particularized horror.  It supported a tax cut and a strong lurch to the judicial right that Americans did not want and the repeal of a health care plan that they did want.  Everything else has been babel, principally from Trump himself but often as not from his enablers and seconds either in Congress or on his staff.  

Before last week's domestic terrorism -- that is what sending pipe bombs to politicians you abhor is -- Trump waltzed around the Saudi government's killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, first wondering whether it happened, then repeating Saudi denials, then basically admitting billion dollar arm sales were more important than a Saudi hit on a journalist, and then announcing that the Saudis were engaged in the "worst cover up ever."  At the end of the day, his tone deaf stream of consciousness came across more as a lament for the ineptness of a corrupt regime.  The fact that a dissident journalist was targeted and killed was beside the point, which is what you'd expect from someone who has labelled the press an "enemy of the people."

Amidst the horror of pipe bombs and Pittsburgh, America's would-be President has also been campaigning for Republican candidates in the mid-terms, which are next week.  Here, of course, it is difficult to say that Trump is campaigning for Republican candidates.  That is the ostensible purpose of his rallies, but they are never really about the candidate on the ballot and always devolve into the President's favorite subject . . . 

Which is himself.

The essence of that "self" is to do anything to win.  Truth, facts, leadership, America's standing in the world, all are beside the point.  In the 1930's, FDR told Americans mired in a depression that the only thing they had to fear "was fear itself".  In Trump's world, the only way he can win is to generate fear itself.  So, a rag-tag (and always shrinking) group of impoverished and threatened Central Americans slowly making their way north is now a George Soros-funded "caravan" with some "Middle Easterners" so set on invading the US that it must be met by the army at the border and an executive order ending birthright citizenship at the White House.

Never mind that the army -- which is legally barred from doing anything under the Posse Comitatus Act  -- will be pointless, and the order -- barred by the express terms of the 14th Amendment -- unconstitutional.

Never mind also that George Soros has had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

Or that, by the time it arrives, the "caravan" will likely have diminished to nothing more than a long line.

Trump doesn't care.  

His purpose is not to educate or argue of even engage at any intellectual level.  It's just to instill fear.  The same kind of fear FDR derided in the '30s -- "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror".  FDR thought that type of fear would "paralyze needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."  Trump, however, is counting on it to do exactly that.  

Retreat is his game plan.  

It's the by-product of the fact-free, rage-fueled and neo-fascist partisanship he has raised to new, unseen heights, a partisanship whose ineluctable ends include retreats to pipe bombs and Pittsburgh.  It's also a partisanship where either nothing gets done, or what gets done is unwanted, and politicians -- taking the President's lead -- then lie about it.  

The mid-terms were supposed to be about health care because everyone wants those with pre-existing conditions protected; it's the one provision in Obamacare that no one opposes.  Of course, to get there, the pool of insured had to be increased dramatically (hence, the mandate) so that the insurance companies could cover those with such conditions without making premiums unaffordable.  Though the GOP has ended the mandate and sued to end the ban on pre-existing conditions, this has not stopped any GOP candidate from claiming that he or she is in fact for preserving the ban.

If the President can do it (lie, that is), so can they.

They think the lies won't matter and that some of those lies, in particular those about the caravan and birthright citizenship, will actually increase GOP turnout and allow them to retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

As I said, they really do think we are stupid.

They only question left is the obvious one . . .

Are we?

Next week we'll know.

TODAY'S GOP -- TWELVE WAYS OF LOOKING AT HYPOCRISY

TODAY'S GOP -- TWELVE WAYS OF LOOKING AT HYPOCRISY

If you are male, blue suited and testifying before a panel of like-minded men in the Senate, your anger is appropriate.

But if you are female, dungareed or tank-topped and protesting in the halls of Congress or on the steps of the Capitol, your anger amounts to mob rule.

If you are McConnell, ignoring the Constitution by icing a President's nomination to the Supreme Court during his last year in office, you are strategic.

But if you are Feinstein, holding a letter from a victim of sexual assault because she does not want it made public, and then only  disclosing the letter once it has become public through no fault of your own, you have perpetrated "the most unethical sham . . . in politics."

If you are Graham, sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's ok for the FBI to ignore scores of witnesses who might have corroborated the claims of two victims of sexual assault.

But if you are Graham, sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a complete investigation of the leak of one victim's letter to an opposing Senator is needed to preserve the integrity of the Senate.

If you are a male Republican Senator sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's appropriate to silence yourself while the  victim of sexual assault is in the room, ostensibly out of respect and sympathy for the victim,  and allow a female prosecutor to question the victim.

But if you are that same male Republican Senator sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's appropriate to reclaim the podium as soon as the victim has departed, pretend her accused assailant is the real victim, and believe him but not her.

If you are Trump, Jr., it's now a scary time for men who can be accused decades later of sexual assault.

But if you are the millions of women who have been assaulted, the fact that you said nothing at the time  because you would have been told you "asked for it", or attacked as delusional, means it really didn't happen.

If you are a Republican member of Congress, voting for tax cuts that enrich the already-wealthy and balloon the deficit, you are a creating economic growth and jobs.

But if you are  Democrat, voting to provide health care to those who do not have it or for a stimulus to recover from a a near Depression, you are mindlessly enlarging the deficit and providing a windfall to "takers" at the expense of "makers".

If you are Canada, saving American diplomats from the Ayatollah in 1979 by hiding them in your embassy and helping the CIA secret them out of the country, you are our ally.

But if you are Canada, obeying international agreements on trade and tariffs in 2018, you are a threat to our "national security" sufficient to enable the President to unilaterally impose tariffs on your aluminum and steel.

If you are the European Union, preserving the peace for over seventy years on a continent that had previously been the site of two world wars and the fascist-sponsored Holocaust, you are the solution to an historic problem.

But if you are the European Union, some (but not all) of whom do not spend 2% of their GDP on defense, you are a deadbeat taking advantage of  NATO and ripping off America's taxpayers.

If you are Russia, you declared cyber-war on America in 2016, hacked the Democratic Party's computers, tried to hack voter registration files in a number of states,  and created thousands of fake accounts on social media to help elect Donald Trump President.

But if you are Mueller, the investigation into that Russian interference is a "witch hunt" and a "hoax."

If you are Anonymous, secretly "thwarting" the President's "misguided impulses" and "preserving our democratic institutions until after he is out of office," you are a  patriot.

But if you are the New York Times, disclosing those "impulses" so that voters can vote the President and his enablers "out of office," and thus preserve our democratic institutions the old-fashioned way, you are "fake news."

If you are Trump, climbing to the top of America's greasy economic pole on the back of tax evasion and corporate bankruptcies, insulting any and all who get in your way, and pathologically lying, you are an authentic, self-made man.

But if you are Hillary, using (as did her predecessors) a private email server, you belong in jail.

If you are John McCain, you are turning over in your grave.

But if you are Lindsey Graham . . .

You don't care.

LISTEN TO THE KIDS

LISTEN TO THE KIDS

At 9:11 last night, I talked to an expert witness on the veracity of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's testimony yesterday.

The expert was my 27 year old daughter, Courtney.

For the entire day, she was live streaming the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on charges by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, sexually assaulted her thirty-six years ago.

Every so often, a text message alert on my phone sounded . . .

And my daughter sounded off. 

At 2:27, it was "How are some of these crack pots Senators?"  A moment later, the"greatest deliberative body" "sound[ed] like idiots" to her.  Later on, she noticed that a bunch of "grandpa[s]" were making "serious decisions about people my age."  "No offense," she added, just to assure me she had nothing against grandfathers. By 5:15, as Brett Kavanaugh was in full battle-mode,  blaming even the Clintons for his current troubles, an all caps text showed up --  "THIS IS CRAZY," she said.  The hearing was a "train wreck."

Then she had dinner . . . 

Thought about what had been said  from the stand by the Judge . . .

And shared thoughts with one of her best friends, Angela.

At 9:11, my phone rang.

Kavanaugh, she said,  reminded her and her friends of all the entitled and over-inebriated frat boys they met in high school and college.  Their partying was non-stop and their behavior often unhinged.  Alcohol fueled a "hook up" culture where saying "No" wasn't always taken as no, and even worse, a culture where it sometimes became impossible even to utter the word.   The notion that Brett never forgot what happened during a night of hard partying, or that Kavanaugh himself wasn't such a creature, were in her mind preposterous. Too many of his friends and associates from the time were telling a different story, all of them couldn't be wrong, and nothing about this dark side was at all surprising.

To my daughter, it was reality.

I asked her if the fact that the assault had taken place in high school should create some sort of defense. 

No, she said.

Why?

Because Christine Blasey was assaulted.  She wasn't "hooking up"or fooling around.  And when she yelled, her assailant covered her mouth.

Kavanaugh went all-Trump in his defense. 

Instead of answering questions, he attacked his inquisitors.  When Sen. Klobuchar -- with some experience as a daughter of an alcoholic -- asked Kavanaugh if he had ever blacked out from drinking, he retorted "Have you?"  When Sen. Whitehouse asked about yearbook references implying that a drunken Brett had, as they say, ridden the porcelain bus, the Judge said he "liked beer" and asked what Whitehouse "liked to drink." 

As Sen. Feinstein was explaining the need for an independent FBI investigation, he repeatedly interrupted her, claiming the hearing itself -- with a mere two witnesses, and no subpoena to bring in Mark Judge, the other guy Dr. Ford put in the room with  Kavanaugh on the night of the assault  -- was some sort of appropriate substitute.  In a stunning exchange with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, he sat in dumbfounded silence for seconds after Durbin asked if Kavanaugh -- an appellate judge and former special prosecutor who has routinely worked with the FBI -- would support such an investigation.

As with all liars, it's not the big stuff, the main lie, that trips them up.

Other than Trump, who lies about the big and the small and most of what is in between, "smart" liars have the big stuff down.

Instead, it's the small stuff that gets them.

About mid-way through his questioning, Sen. Whitehouse asked Kavanaugh about references in his high school yearbook  to "boofing" and a "Devil's triangle."  The first, said Kavanaugh, was teenage talk about "flatulence."  "I'm game" to talk about that, a cocky Kavanaugh retorted, basically inviting Whitehouse to play the fool who would keep someone off the Supreme Court for joking about farting in high school.

The second, he claimed, referred to a "drinking game." 

The sub-text here was unmistakable.  We've reached a new low when Supreme Court nominees can be questioned about innocent high jinks stupidly memorialized in their high school year books.  Indeed, Sen. Hatch practically had a coronary as he lamented a standard of review that ostensibly turns an "immature high schooler" who said "stupid things" in a yearbook into a "sexual predator."

Courtney got off the phone a 9:45.

Just before, she let her ancient father know that a "Devil's triangle" is not a drinking game. It's a "two boy on girl threesome."  

In other words,what Kavanaugh and Judge were attempting to do to Christine Blasey.

At 10:10, another text from my daughter.  This one said ""FYI, boofing means putting alcohol up your butt." 

Yuk!

Kavanaugh is a liar.

How do I know?

He lies about the small stuff.

The stuff he thinks Sheldon Whitehouse is too old to understand or too embarrassed to contest.

The stuff I now know he lied about only because I . . .

Listened to my  kid.

THE BIGGEST THREAT

THE BIGGEST THREAT

Maybe the biggest threat to democracy in America is not Donald Trump.

In the space of the last month, the country has seen his former lawyer plead guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud and orchestrating illegal donations to his 2016 campaign at his behest in order to cover up his affairs with a porn star and a Playmate. His erstwhile campaign manager has been found guilty of tax evasion arising out of work for Ukraine's former leader, and Putin ally, Viktor Yanukovitch.  His White House turns out to have been deemed "crazytown" -- and he,  an "idiot" --  by his own chief of staff. And, according to "Anonymous", there is -- and has been since day one -- some undefined group in the White House and executive branch preserving "our democratic institutions while thwarting [the President's] more misguided impulses until he is out of office."

The common thread here is Donald Trump's narcissism, dishonesty and paranoia.

But there's another, perhaps more important, common thread.

For, in each of the above examples, someone -- other than Trump --  is either getting ahead . . .

Or burying their head.

Start with Cohen and Manafort, the lawyer and operative, respectively.

Cohen became rich taking bullets for Donald Trump.  When approached by attorneys for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, he could have done nothing.  Their tales would presumably have then seen the light of day and either would have been sufficient to kill Trump's presidential campaign or ignored by a loyal cadre that had already priced in and devalued Trump's degradations.  Instead of doing nothing, however, Cohen channeled six figure pay-offs for silence, with Trump's knowledge and assistance and in violation of federal law.  His probable expectation was that Trump would never be elected anyway (even Trump thought so) and the payments would never become public. Meanwhile, his image as Trump's protector would be burnished, and with it, his opulent life style.

Manafort became rich shilling for crypto-fascists.  That is what Yanukovitch, his political acolytes and his supporters in Russia (including a number of oligarchs) were and are.  When the Euromaidan Revolution ousted him in 2014, Manaforte's balance sheet took a beating.  For not only had he shilled for them, he was also in debt to them . . .

To the tune  of  $17 million to the oligarchs.

Over the years, this creates a lot of turmoil, especially when the gravy train goes dry.

So Manafort had to cope

To do so he (i) evaded taxes, (ii) committed bank fraud on loan applications to generate cash, and (iii) volunteered his services for free as Donald Trump's campaign manager.

This third tack was not motivated by generosity. 

Instead, Manafort thought he could later monetize the campaign job by advising Yanukovitch's Eurasian protector and Trump's "new best friend", Vladimir Putin.  No doubt Manafort also did not expect Trump to win or his finances to attract the attention of the Justice Department. 

Cohen and Manafort were trying to get ahead.

John Kelly and Anonymous, however, are burying theirs.

To begin, the notion that an American President actually requires a secret cabal of "adults in the room" in order simply to save the republic from its Commander in Chief is . . .

Scary.

This is not the 19th century.  Or even the early 20th. It's true that we have had bad presidents before, even very bad ones.  But they never had nukes or twitter and they could not cause a holocaust in minutes.  James Buchanan argued himself into paralysis and watched as the nation undid itself into a Civil War.  James Polk sent the Army to Texas to start a war with Mexico.  Warren Harding's brief administration was so riddled with incompetence and corruption that two went to jail, one committed suicide, and another -- his Attorney General -- resigned in disgrace.  And with Woodrow Wilson, the lights were on but no one was home following his stroke, and his wife became -- more or less -- the acting President.

These events, however, occurred over months, in some cases even years.  There was time to prepare and adapt.

And time to get our minds around some of the disasters that ensued.

Now is different. 

The country can afford an idiot president.  It can afford a lazy one.  It can even afford a self-absorbed Fox News addict who treats every day as a reality-TV episode where he has to win and Fox assures him he has.

What it cannot afford, however, is a lazy, narcissistic idiot who acts on his neuroses.

Which is what we now have.

Kelly and Anonymous tell us they are the "adults in the room".  They ostensibly are shielding the country from Trump's worst instincts.  They steal paper off his desk (Gary Cohn, erstwhile chief economic adviser, avoiding rupture of our trade agreement with South Korea),  or refuse to follow orders (General Mattis at the Defense Department, refusing to assassinate Assad), or slow walk demanded changes (Mattis again, this time delaying any ban on transgender troops), or do end-arounds that establish policy before the President can undermine or kill it (which is what National Security Adviser John Bolton accomplished by getting the recent NATO communique written and agreed to before Trump even showed up for the meeting).

The argument for remaining anonymous (or, in Kelly's case, now denying he said what Bob Woodward says he said) is that these people need to be on the inside, working their subterfuge in the interests of preserving the republic before our nutcase-in-chief kicks them out and installs a team of only true believers and complete enablers.  In other words, they're not just protecting us from Trump.  They're protecting us from . . .

Steve Bannon . . .

Or Corey Lewandowski . . .

Or Stephen Miller.

So far so good.

But what disaster awaits if they fail?

We came close to finding out earlier this year.  According to Woodward, Trump planned to tweet that the US was going to pull its dependents out of South Korea.  The Pentagon went into overdrive. It had reliable information, again according to Woodward,  that North Korea would have read that tweet as an announcement that war was imminent and would have taken preemptive action. Fortunately for us, the Pentagon was able to stop the tweet.

But what if the tweet had been sent from Trump's bedroom, the "devil's workshop" according to former chief of staff Reince Priebus, or at 5 am  or on a Sunday evening, Trump's "witching hours", as Priebus also has proclaimed?  

Would anyone have been there to stop it?

The problem here is not that Trump is a megalomaniac or dim, though he appears to be both.

The problem is that he is impetuous . . .

With not an ounce of self-doubt.

And Anonymous and the other "adults in the room" cannot save us from that.

In the Bush II Administration, the war on terror was governed by Dick Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine".  Under it, a 1% chance of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack against us was to be met with a full on response.  The theory was that the infinitesimal likelihood of the occurrence was overcome by the catastrophic nature of the consequences were the remote event actually to occur. 

Maybe we're now in a "One Percent Presidency".

Because, while Buchanan never had nukes . . .

Trump does.

And, even more importantly, so do our adveraries.

What should be done?

Here's my view.

The adults should resign.  

En masse.  

Following that, Republicans in Congress -- the Speaker, the Senate Majority Leader, and all the committee chairs -- should go to Trump with a list of acceptable replacements, some of whom could even be the resigned adults themselves, and one big ultimatum -- if Trump does not agree to the replacements and to stop tweeting, they will impeach him.  If enough of the anonymous adults also happen to be in the Cabinet, the GOP could even threaten Trump with a call for his ouster under the 25th Amendment.

Will this be done?

Not a chance.

Why?

Because Anonymous and his or her confreres are not just protecting the country.  

They are protecting themselves. 

These so-called "adults in the room" are all GOP appointees and operatives. They presumably want jobs, and therefore a preserved Republican Party, long after Trump is gone. And as for GOP members of Congress, they long ago put their courage in a blind trust in exchange for tax cuts, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.  Public denials from the press podium and spin aside, everyone knows the danger inherent in this President and this Presidency.  It's the one opinion now held in Washington, D.C. on a completely bi-partisan basis.

The "adults" know it too.

And they want to be forgiven -- indeed, praised as our saviors -- once the age of Trump passes.

Let's pray we get there.

If we don't, the biggest threat to democracy will not have been Donald Trump.

It will have been . . .

Careerism.

WEIGHT WATCHER

WEIGHT WATCHER

I'm on a diet.

It's not the usual kind --  cutting carbs, avoiding sugar, portion control.

My diet is cultural and political.  

It tries to avoid ingesting . . . 

Anything Trump.

This is not easy and may not even be possible.  Every time I turn on a news program or flip through a newspaper, I am confronted with all things Trump -- his latest lie or mean tweet or juvenile tantrum or just plain stupid claim.  

Some are quite serious, like his statements in Helsinki last month more or less denying the Russians interfered in the 2016 Presidential election.  They enable both an enemy and a domestic fifth column of support for that enemy's fascist regime.  

There really is no difference these days between Russia and the old Soviet Union.  In both, the governmental norm is/was  Orwellian double speak, the arbitrary arrest and/or killing of dissenters, and a kleptocratic corruption at the top.  As Timothy Snyder has made clear in his recently published "The Road to Unfreedom", the old USSR and the new Russia differ only in the ostensible ends to which their authoritarianism was/is directed -- a world wide communist revolution in the case of the former , a fascist Eurasianism in the case of the latter.  In both, oblvious to history, the dictatorial regime asserts the inevitability of its ends and rigorously subverts competing systems -- capitalism in the case of the USSR and rule of law liberalism in the case of the new Russia.  The subversion is accomplished by any available and effective means -- military support for other communist regimes and the subjugation of the whole of eastern Europe in the case of the USSR; poisoning adversaries, cyber warfare, old fashion spy craft (e.g., Maria Butina) and phony elections in the case of the new Russia. 

That the head of today's new Russia was a committed KGB spy in yester-years' old Soviet Union is no accident; to the contrary, it is perfect symmetry.

And, because he is President, Donald Trump's toadyism -- his unwillingness to confront Vladimir Putin, and his practiced habit of pulling punches or suggesting false alternative explanations for Russia's blatant interference in elections both here and in Europe -- is at best dangerous and at worst treasonous.

But then . . .

There is everything else.

Like the latest Omarosa contretemps.

That episode ranks somewhere between utterly predictable and side-splittingly comical.  

Omarosa is, as we all know, a one-time and thrice-fired contestant on Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" reality television show.  With no qualifications other than having said "great" things about the Donald, she became a White House adviser once he became President.  He then fired her a fourth time, with Chief of Staff John Kelly this time doing the dirty work.  On the day she was fired, the grounds appeared to be her misuse of a car service; over time, however, her general obnoxiousness and divisiveness has worked its way into the story in a White House where there is no room for either inasmuch as this space is fully occupied at the top.

Over the course of the last week, we learned that Omarosa had tape recordings (how many is still unknown) of her days in the President's employ, and last Sunday she began slow walking them to the public.  First she broadcast the tape of Kelly firing (and threatening) her in the Situation Room where her forced removal was announced.  Later she released a tape of her and three campaign aides discussing Trump's apparent use of the n-word.  In response, the White House accused her of imperiling national security and Trump tweeted that she is a "dog".  Trump also tweeted that the n-word is not "in [his] vocabulary", limited as that may be in any case.

OK, so in pot calling kettle black territory, this is up there for a number of reasons. 

One is that Trump imperils national security more or less on a daily basis. So much so that, before he talked to European leaders at last month's NATO summit, his national security adviser, John Bolton, made sure the NATO communique had been signed and agreed to by all members just so the President could not screw it up.  Alongside denials about Russian cyber crimes, a trade war with Canada, inept tariffs, and friends across the world more irate than allied,  Omarosa's violation of the sacred Situation Room is small bore.

Another is that Omarosa and the Donald deserve each other. Both are back stabbing narcissists. Nothing Manigault-Newman is telling us now (e.g., Donald is a racist) was not known to her quite some time ago.  Between birtherism, Mexicans as rapists, Maxine Waters' "extraordinarily low I.Q", "shithole" African countries, and his own history in NYC (condemning five black youths to death for a rape they did not commit and racially profiling would be tenants for his family's apartment buildings), there is no news here.  

Donald Trump is a racist . . .

And has been for a long time . . . 

Regardless of whether he ever uttered the n-word.

In one respect, however, Omarosa hit the nail on the head.  "There's only one way to shut Donald Trump down," she said in an interview on Wednesday, "and that is just don't give him the oxygen.  And the oxygen comes from the clicks, the likes, the shock, the discussion."

She's right.

We all need to  . . .

Go on my diet.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ -- SAVING THE REPUBLIC ONE ELECTION AT A TIME

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ -- SAVING THE REPUBLIC ONE ELECTION AT A TIME

Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez is a 28 year old woman from the Bronx.  In 2011 she graduated from Boston University with a degree in economics and international relations.  In the seven years that followed she held four jobs -- waitress, bartender, teacher and entrepreneur.

As best I can tell, the first three actually paid her.

A week ago, in a shot heard round the world only a short distance from the Coogans Bluff site of the original, her employment history changed dramatically.  She unseated a  ten-term incumbent and became the Democratic Party's nominee for Congress in New York's 14th Congressional District.  Absent some earthquake-like change in voting patterns in that district this fall, she will become the youngest member of Congress next January.

This is good news for the Democratic Party and even better news for the country.

Ocacio-Cortez is for single-payer health care and free public college, thinks housing should be a right, wants to abolish ICE and would have the federal government guarantee jobs.  When asked to explain what she means when she says she is a Democratic socialist, she is crisp -- "In a modern, wealthy and moral society, no American should be too poor to live."  Echoing that sentiment, she recently noted that "in the last three years or so, the median price of a two bedroom apartment" in her district "has gone up 80%. Our incomes certainly aren't going up 80% to compensate for that."  The result has been "a wave of aggressive economic displacement", a "New York . . . changing to be a temporary playground rather than a place for people to actually raise families and transform their own economic opportunities and their own lives."

Were that all there is, Ocacio-Cortez could easily be silo-ed as just another New York lefty.

But there is a lot more.

She got into politics by organizing.  She is not a wonk spouting position papers or a focus-grouped candidate carefully playing to a select crowd.  In fact, when told by political pros to focus on those who actually voted in primaries, she rejected the advice and enlarged her effort to attract those who hadn't.

She is also young.

And that is good news for the country.

In the past month, the gratuitous cruelty of Donald Trump and his enablers has been on full display.  Migrant children have been caged and separated from their asylum-seeking parents, and even after reversing course, the government has not reunited the families.  The Supreme Court -- Trump's court with Neil Gorsuch's appointment last year and Mitch McConnell's theft of the seat from Obama the year before -- gutted unions financially by refusing to allow assessments against non-members who nevertheless receive the benefit of union wages and bargaining agreements, more or less eliminated the ability of employees to sue employers by sanctioning adhesionary arbitration-only agreements as conditions of corporate employment, and endorsed Trump's racism by refusing to recognize the travel ban for what it was -- a Muslim ban.  Meanwhile, North Korea is re-nuking after Trump told us the problem was solved, Canada and Europe are engaging in a trade war in response to Trump's asinine tariffs (faux justified on national security grounds), Robert Mueller continues to indict, and Trump's acolytes continue to embrace hate at his regular rallies.

All this has put the country on outrage overload and the Democrats -- especially after the announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Court and the almost certain fact that his replacement will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate any campaign financing regulation -- on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

But then came Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez.

She is not the magic wand we can wave to rid ourselves of this seminal moment of discontent.

But she is telling us what that wand looks like.

First, the wand has a message.  Whether you are for single payer, Obamacare that is funded and enforced, free college, any of the myriad solutions to the housing crisis or any of the myriad programs designed to create good middle class jobs, she has a message --  "in a modern, wealthy and moral society, no American should be too poor to live."  Say it loud and often.  It take less than five seconds.  It is the antidote to Trump's narcissism . . . and racism . . .  and wannabe fascism.

And it fits on a bumper-sticker.

Second, the wand is young. I have no problem with Hillary and Nancy Pelosi and Nita Lowey and Joe Crowley and Chuck Schumer and all the other Congressional Democrats that have been fighting the good fight for most of my adult life. I've met many of them and admired lots of them.  But they have been there too long, and fair or not (and I think largely the latter), they have become the face of a Democratic Party that voters think of as tired and worn out.  They have also frozen out a whole generation of new leaders by virtue of occupying their positions for what seems like . . . forever.  

Third, the wand is electoral.  If we count on op-ed columnists and impeachment Congresses to rid ourselves of Trump, we are likely to be very disappointed.  The first will never do it, and unless Mueller finds evidence of Trump's treason (which he might), the second is likely to fail as well. In fact, the second might fail even with evidence of treason.   Republicans like Trump and Republican office holders have turned enabling into an art form.  There is no Trump outrage too great to ignite their opposition.  Consequently, there really is only one answer.

Democrats have to win elections.

At the local, state and national level.

Something Ocacio-Cortez just did.

Against enormous odds.

Finally, because you have to win elections in the age of Trump, the wand is also psychological.  And this may be Alexandria Ocacio-Cortezes greatest lesson.  Trump doesn't throw her.  To be honest, Trump doesn't throw a lot of women; it's the guys who go postal, not the girls.  Why?  My own view is that women have always dealt with the type that is Trump -- the blowhard with bucks, the sexist who wants to get laid, the man-child caught in a perpetual mid-life crisis because he never was forced to . . . grow up.  

For them, Trump is so much more than a source of outrage, a decadent who assigns them numbers based on bust size.  He is pathetic, an empty vessel easy to ignore.

They refuse to engage him and enable him.

They move on.

And in doing so, a number of them are winning elections.

Which, on the eve of America's 242nd birthday, is a gift that . . . 

May well save the republic.

FINDING GOD -- A BOOK REVIEW (OR SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN THIS SPACE)

FINDING GOD -- A BOOK REVIEW (OR SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN THIS SPACE)

In Stop Blaming Adam and Eve,  John  Foley  unveils  the truth buried in Biblical myth.  In so doing, he rescues Christianity from fundamentalism and destroys the false choice between Darwin (science) and Jesus (religion).  And though he accepts the former, he is absolutely in love with the latter.

And wants us all to be as well.

Foley is no itinerant preacher.  A Jesuit  high school and college religion teacher and philosophy professor (full disclosure – I was one of his high school students forty-five years ago), he’s what the McCourt bothers, Frank and Malachy, would have become had the Jesuits and Vatican II  gotten hold of them rather than the dysfunction that was mid-century Catholicism in Ireland.  There’s a lot of humanity in Angela’s Ashes.   But the endless tragedies that plagued the clan Mc Court make it hard to see the pony of God’s gift in what was otherwise the manure of endless poverty, alcoholism, early death and churchly neglect in Frank McCourt's Limerick. 

God’s gift of humanity, however, is Foley’s central point.

His other is that it doesn’t come gift-wrapped.  

You have to look . . . 

And care-fully, which is Foley’s  take on  that ancient Socratic maxim -- the unexamined life is not worth living. 

The examination, we discover in this "religion" book, should not be restricted to the Bible.  Foley was a student of Hannah Arendt’s at NYC’s New School for Social Research before quitting a business career (much to the chagrin of his extended family,  but with the full -- albeit singular -- support of his wife, who quite clearly is Foley’s most important muse) in favor of what became a decades long mission in teaching high school and college students at two Jesuit institutions, Xavier High School in NYC  and St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, NJ.  So, as is made plain in well-constructed asides sprinkled throughout the book, part of the reason we need not blame Adam and Eve is that we can call upon a host of thinkers – Socrates, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Husserl, Nietzsche, Sartre – along with those theologians who left us the Bible’s myths and histories pregnant with truth,  in an effort to chart our own personal relationship with God.

And that is Foley’ central point.  The human challenge of Christianity in general and Catholicism is particular is to create that personal relationship.

For Foley, the watchword of the relationship is love, essentially because that is what God is and that is what we can become.  It is the glue that makes Kantian morality possible, the reward one gets for that examined Socratic life, and cures existential despair.

Wow!

Sign me up.

If only it were that easy . . .

Because Foley's other point is that all of this is possible only if we try hard.

Which means that, at the end of the day, this short but dense book (it took me weeks to get through because I had to keep going back to re-read portions) is as much a work out manual as it is an exegesis on Biblical truth.

We are instructed in the need to recognize our own Garden of Eden (and to admit that we too have often squandered the inheritance; hence, stop blaming the original sinners); the ability and need to see the God of love in everyday life (especially in those parts of our everyday life where we confront suffering; hence, don’t blow by the homeless on the street and don’t assume, as Foley puts it, that you have to “discover Narnia or climb Mount Everest” to find God; He or She is everywhere); the redemptive power of love (without which,  Foley makes quite clear, his own life would have been a mere chimera of the rich middle class (that is not an oxymoron), Brooklyn and neighborhood based , family, extended family and friends it has become); our duties as citizens (because we are social, politics is not optional, and none of us can claim to be neutral even as all of us are required to be thoughtful); and the meaning of Biblical truths (those shepherds in the New Testament’s infancy narratives were outcasts (dirty, smelly, unsanitary and -- generally speaking -- univited in polite society), not some quaint boys who show up in the seasonal Christmas creche, and that is why they are featured in Luke's Gospel; those prophets in the Old Testament were courageous -- and often ostracized -- truth tellers, not wizened old men sililoquizing in the Bible’s version of a middle eastern Athenian agora; they condemned injustice (Amos) and immorality (the Noah story), hypocrisy (Isaiah) and paralyzing despair).

You won’t agree with everything Foley says.  I didn’t.  On politics, he appears captured a bit by the au courrant false equivalence that blames liberals and conservatives equally for the sorry state of today’s polity; my own view is that, while the America left has often been thoughtless in the past, the American right is thoughtless today.   And on the Catholic Church he loves,  he is uncharacteristically quiet on some of the hot button issues (e.g., the all-male priesthood, gay marriage), even as he spares no church hierarchs (or anyone else who is culpable) on the abuse of children.

None of that, however, detracts from the overall worth of this fine volume.

Because Foley, like the Jesus he loves and worships, is a bit of “nudge.” 

He makes you think.

About western philosophy, the Bible, its authors, context, history and message . .  .

But mostly about ourselves and how to relate to that person . . .

We call God.

STOP BLAMING ADAM AND EVE

JOHN P. FOLEY

WEST BOW PRESS, 2018

MEGHAN AND HARRY -- HOW THE OLD WORLD CAN SAVE THE NEW

MEGHAN AND HARRY -- HOW THE OLD WORLD CAN SAVE THE NEW

Winston Churchill  never admitted defeat beforehand.

He did, however, contemplate it.

"We shall go on to the end," said Churchill to Parliament on June 4, 1940, as the last of the   British Expeditionary Force retreated back to England from Dunkirk. "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . ."

But . . .

"[I]f," he warned, "this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

Churchill did not have to suffer the subjugation.  

The Japanese and Germans helped him out. The former attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941;  the latter declared war on the United States four days later.

And the New World sallied forth "to the rescue and liberation of the old."

Something of the opposite, less martial but perhaps no less significant given the sorry state of the present day American polity, may have happened a little west of London today . . .

Where the Old World was rescuing the new.

Americans and the British have many things in common.  The structure of their respective heads of state, however, is not one of them. 

Great Britain is a constitutional monarchy.  The head of state is the Queen.  She is apolitical but not by any means uninformed or uninterested.  For sixty-six years, she has represented the United Kingdom and the British commonwealth of nations.  If she faltered, she never did so meanly or rudely, nor was she ever vulgar or dishonest. And when she faltered, perhaps most notably in her initial reactions to the death of her former daughter in law, the late Princess of Whales, she recovered with grace and even an uncommon-in-royals touch of humility.  She never chose to be Queen.  She did, however,  choose the dignified manner in which she has exercised her royal warrant.

The United States is a constitutional republic.  The head of state is the President, who is also the executive officer in the government.  We have had forty-four of them and are now on our forty-fifth.  Unlike the Queen, he is not apolitical, and while that may explain in his mind the rest of his character, it by no means justifies it.  

For he is mean, vulgar, graceless, dishonest, undignified and uninformed . . .

More or less on a daily basis and as a matter of committed habit.

Some subset of American public opinion has applauded this exercise in boorishness.  They view it as authentic. 

Meghan Markle is not one of them.  She is a mixed race American actress, was born in Los Angeles, was baptized Catholic and is divorced. She graduated from Northwestern University with a double major in theatre and international studies.  She is a feminist.

Today she married His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales.

The Prince -- Harry to the world -- is Diana's second son.  Though sixth in line to the British throne, he is grounded.  He served with the British military in Afghanistan and founded the Invictus Games for wounded, sick or injured armed services personnel when he returned.  He is also quite obviously crazy about his wife.    

The wedding was broadcast to the world. The couple held hands throughout.  The Kingdom Gospel Choir sang "Stand By Me". Later,  nineteen year old cellist and wunderkind Sheku Kanneh-Mason played "Ave Maria" while the newlyweds signed their registry. 

The Most  Rev. Michael Curry, Chicago's Episcopalian bishop, preached.  His thunderous sermon on the "fire of love" quoted Dr. King and the French Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin.   In it, the black preacher unveiled the power of agape to conquer the world's most pressing crises, and brought wry smiles to a host of sitting royals unaccustomed to exuberance in, of all places, a church.  "When love is the way," he said, "poverty will become history [and] the earth will become sanctuary." 

Shortly after the ceremony, the  American Jesuit James Martin remarked that, when an "African-American bishop quotes a French Jesuit priest at a British royal wedding, who says the world cannot change."  

Quite so.  

But this time, the change was the Old rescuing the New.

The message of love that Bishop Curry preached, and that Meghan and Harry unabashedly exhibited for all the world to see, came from the staid precincts of Windsor Castle's St. Georges Chapel. The Old World of Europe gave us respite from the new world of Trump.  For a day, we were without tweets and insults.  No one bragged about their wealth  or gilded real estate.  There were no faux castles, only a real one, and not much new money but plenty of old.  Thanks to Harry and Meghan, what could have been a mere fairy tale became a  message. 

Or, as the Bishop put it, quoting the French Jesuit, "If humanity ever captures the energy of love, it will be the second time in history that we will have discovered fire."

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Meghan Markle, now Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex, called America's current head of state  "divisive"  and a "misogynist".  Correct on both counts.  Prior to his election, she half-jokingly threatened to move to Canada -- where her TV show was filmed --  if he won.

She now gets to move much farther away. 

And can call Britain's head of state . . .

 Mom.

MR. MATTIS'S WAR

MR. MATTIS'S WAR

James Mattis, America's Secretary of Defense, attacked Syria last night.  

As part of a coordinated attack with the British and the French,the retired Marine Corps general and current cabinet member in the Trump Administration launched about 100 missiles at three targets.  The targets were thought to be research and storage facilities used by Syria to produce chemical weapons. Most of the missiles were aimed at the Barsah research center in Damascus.  The rest targeted two storage facilities west of Homs, a city 100 miles north of Damascus.

The attacks were a response to last weekend's chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government on a rebel held area in the town of Douma.  That was the second time during the Trump Administration and the third time overall that Syria's President, Basha al Assad, had used chemical weapons, which are banned by the Geneva Convention to which Syria is a signatory.  

After the first attack, the Obama Administration backed a Russian plan to remove chemical weapons from Syria and more than 1300 tons of chemical agents were in fact removed. This did not eliminate the entire stockpile, essentially because some chemical agents (e.g., chlorine) were legitimately used (e.g., for water treatment) and could not be listed and removed.  Back home, of course, this led to thunderous outcries of partisan condemnation inasmuch as Obama had announced a red line which the Syrians had then crossed, all without sufficient consequence in the minds (and lungs) of the partisans.

Enter Donald Trump.

The putative antidote to all things Obama.

Throughout his campaign and his still young but exhausting presidency, Trump has reflexively condemned and opposed anything Obama did or supported.  Exhibit A on the domestic front is Obamacare, which Trump wanted to repeal without having anything to replace it and regardless of the consequences.  Meanwhile, on the foreign policy side, his love affair with Putin and tough talk on North Korea and Syria are all meant to contrast with Obama's supposedly feckless and ineffective policies on these fronts, as is his embrace of Brexit and constant criticism of the European Union.

In the end, however, all of this turns out to be mere rhetoric.  

Trump is about to sit down with North Korea's Kim Jong-un.  He is doing so without preconditions and without having received anything in exchange for Kim having obtained a long sought seat at the table with the United States.  No administration in the past has been willing to give up that leverage, but Trump did it unasked.

He  hasn't enforced the legislated sanctions against Russia that were Congress's response to the cyber-attacks on our 2016 election.  Instead, he has criticized the investigation into Russian meddling as a partisan hoax and "witch hunt" and defamed all the investigators, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors.

And then -- or now -- there is Syria.

He has no policy on Syria per se or on the conflict itself.  He is not willing to use American leverage to help oust Assad, a war criminal, and his cat and mouse game with Putin in any case makes that impossible.  One day Putin is up with Trump, the next he is down.  A small contingent of US forces is deployed in the eastern part of the country  to clean up the remnants of ISIS. Otherwise, however, Syria has been left to the Russians and Iranians, neither of whom are willing to see Assad go.  

In truth, his policy on Syria, to the extent he has one, is no different from Obama's.  Both have been reluctant to get involved, principally because there appears to be no strategy that can oust Assad and replace him with a stable government that is not allied with Iran.

Nevertheless,  Jim Mattis attacked Syria last night.

Oh, I know, Trump, not Mattis, authorized the attack.

But that was only the show.

The strategy was Mattis's.

Principally because Trump doesn't have one.  

Instead, he has tweets and bombast.   He got into a school yard brawl with Putin this week, warning the ex-KGBer -- in response to Russia's vow to shoot down any missiles fired on Syria -- that Putin should "get ready . . . because they will be coming, nice and new and 'smart!'"  While, however, the kid President was playing in his twitter sand box, promising to punch the Russian bully, the adults were busy at the Pentagon fashioning a very limited response to the Syrian chemical attack that did not in any way bloody Russia.  In fact, the reports this afternoon are that Russians actually evacuated from the areas that were attacked, which suggests they were tipped off to the attack in the first place.

Will this strategy work?

Count me dubious.

As part of a coordinated response with Britain and France, it has the advantage of sending at least some message that the west is still allied against any use of chemical weapons and is willing to enforce that prohibition at some level.  The alternative is dulce et decorum est in the middle east, and that did not work out so well in Flanders a hundred years ago.  At the same time , however, last year's attack in response to the use of chemical weapons did not stop Syria from using them last week, and last night's attack is being correctly perceived as a pinprick.

We'll see if last night results in any progress.

In the meantime, we can count ourselves lucky that, for now at least, this is . . .  

Mr. Mattis's war.