PLAYING FOR HISTORY

PLAYING FOR HISTORY

So, here's a question.

When is something so obvious that denying it becomes . . .

Impossible?

Some think the answer, at least theoretically, may be . . .

 Never.

There are whole schools of psychology founded on the notion that our perceptions are flawed. They hold that people routinely come to incorrect judgments about reality given a host of tricks our brain plays on us.

Confirmation bias. Present bias. Hindsight bias. Adversity bias. The endowment effect. The clustering illusion. The Texas sharpshooter fallacy.

The list is endless.

We routinely deem true what we expect is true and false what we do not expect is true.  We undervalue the future in relation to the present.  We assume that what occurred was predictable all along. We think people are happier elsewhere if the weather is better there.  We overvalue what we already have.  We ignore differences but overemphasize similarities in data.  We make the data fit our conclusions rather than have the conclusions follow from the data.

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut.  We infer reality from memory, from what we can recall.  But recall, especially recent recall,  is not necessarily reality.

So we can  get it wrong.

And it gets even worse.

Attach an irrelevant  pejorative to someone and your assessment on what is relevant declines before you even  know anything else about the person.  It works in the opposite direction too, which is why people often think handsome men or beautiful women are ipso facto smart.

That bit about "sticks and stones" your mother taught you?

 It ain't true.

Names matter. 

The only way to combat these biases, effects and fallacies, to check our heuristics so that they enable accuracy rather than distort reality, is through . . .

Evidence.

Which leads -- regular readers knew we'd get there -- to the current impeachment of Donald John Trump.

The trial of Trump started yesterday in the Senate.  He was impeached a month ago by the House of Representatives, which voted out two counts. The first accuses Trump of abusing the office of the Presidency by, in effect, bribing Ukraine's president into announcing a phony investigation of Joe Biden in exchange for a White House meeting with Trump and unlocking the military assistance money previously appropriated by Congress.  The second accuses him of obstructing Congress's investigation of his wrongdoing.  

There is a already a mountain of evidence establishing both counts -- witnesses (e.g., Lt. Col. Vindman) who recount Trump asking Ukraine's Zelensky in a July phone call to investigate Biden; the actual read out of the call produced by the White House; contemporaneous accounts from Ambassadors Sondland, Volker and Yovanovitch confirming that Trump held up aid to get his demanded "investigations"; other witnesses confirming that Ukraine knew it was being held hostage; and complete stonewalling by the White House in response to subpoenas for documents and witnesses.  No documents were provided. No witnesses were given permission to testify.  Those who did simply defied the White House.

So far, and in the face of this onslaught, not a single Republican member of Congress has broken ranks and come out against the President. Instead, there have been ludicrous claims that no "direct" evidence establishes any of the charges against Trump (false; Vindman and Sondland are as "direct" as it gets), or that the so-called call "transcript" actually exonerates him (false; "I would like you to do us a favor, though"), or that what he did was not an impeachable offense (or a crime) even if it actually happened (false; bribery is a crime; so is wire fraud; and stopping Presidents from using foreigners to obtain power was pretty much the Founders' principal reason for the impeachment clause in the first place).  

At the same time, in a turn that embraces Orwell  and Alice in equal measure, Trump's Congressional enablers have both refused calls  to hear from other witnesses who have relevant knowledge -- Secretary of State Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Bolton (who has said he can provide relevant evidence), and OMB Associate Director of National Security Programs Michael Duffy (whose email states that "POTUS" put the hold on aid to Ukraine)-- and lambasted the House for not having obtained the evidence they now refuse to demand. 

And, of course, between the time the House voted its articles in December and the Senate started its proceedings this week, even more evidence has come to light -- emails and other documents and media interviews with Giuliani's hatchet man, Lev Furman, who now tells us that "everyone" -- Trump, Pence, Giuliani, Barr, Pompeo, Bolton -- either knew or had to have known exactly what was going down.  Like David Holmes (the counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Ukraine), Furman even overheard Trump yelling about it in a phone call.

Through it all, Trump has performed to type.  He does not typically  do formal addresses, and when he does (e.g., in connection with the killing of Iran's Soleimani), he has to surround himself with generals and the Joint Chiefs to create an appearance of credibility he can't remotely pull off on his own.   His go to forum is the "rally", one of the ubiquitous venues where red-hatters and MAGA enthusiasts swoon to a President who prefers cursing to thinking while regularly channeling his inner school yard bully to the delight of assembled worshippers.  There, Speaker Pelosi is "crazy",  House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff is "pencil neck", and the 73 year-old whose real day job is tweeting pretends he is mature . . .

Or sane.

Whether all this is actually working for Trump depends . . . 

And grudge holding GOPers will love this . . .

On what the meaning of "working" is.

If it means retaining approximately 40-42% approval ratings and requiring 53 (the number of GOP) Senators to place their courage and honesty in blind trusts as they dutifully find him not guilty in the upcoming impeachment trial, then the answer is most certainly "Yes".

But if it means playing for history, for the respect or approval of all those unborn Americans who will someday read about this era and weep, for coming through this, as Jon Meacham puts it, more "Margaret Chase Smith than Joe McCarthy", the answer is . . . 

Not even close.

Remember all those biases, fallacies, effects, and  misleading heuristics.  

We have lots of ways to fool ourselves and today's GOP is using them all.  

But, at the end of the day . . .

Truth outs.

That's why they are called fallacies.

Just ask Mandela . . .

Or King . . .

Or Lincoln.

On impeachment, even John Dean will do.

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 2019 -- ENNUI AND AMDG

THANKSGIVING 2019 -- ENNUI AND AMDG

Let's face it.

It's a tough year for thank yous.

It's not that there aren't things . . .  or events . . . for which we should be grateful.  God has not taken a holiday and His ever inscrutable ways still leave us bounty and beauty in considerable measure.  One of my best friends, a Jesuit priest teaching at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, routinely posts photos on Facebook in his Ignatian search for God in the everyday.  

And he finds Her . . .

In the flowers, fauna, pristine snowfalls, gritty urban walls and antique gargoyles he happens upon in his jaunts through the New York (City and State) he has called home for seventy plus years and the New England his brother has called home for more than forty. At one point last year, I commented that he was the Gerard Manley Hopkins of photographers. "Nature is never spent," wrote Hopkins in God's Grandeur, and this 21st century Jesuit's photos prove what that 19th century Jesuit's poem recounted.

So, thank you God.

Now, could the rest of us step it up a bit.

As we approach the end of 2019, it strikes me as somewhat odd . . . or sad . . . or at least puzzling . . . that approximately 40% of my fellow citizens still approve of our President and do not want him removed.  There is no point in rehearsing the grounds for why he must go -- soliciting a bribe from Ukraine's president, obstructing Mueller's investigation, the thousands of lies, the recourse to the gutter whenever criticized.  "Facts are a stubborn thing," said John Adams.

But why do so many fail to see it?

I do not think it's ignorance. 

Either mine . . .

Or theirs.

As to the absence of mine, on the latest contretemps, there is no real dispute that Trump demanded political dirt on the Bidens and held up military and other assistance to the Ukraine in an effort to get it.  Anyone who watched those House Intelligence Committee hearings last week could not miss that reality.  Even his own guy -- the hotelier cum million dollar donor and (later) Ambassador to the EU-- was explicit: "I know that members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a 'quid pro quo'? . . . [T]he answer is yes."  

Sondland would not take a dive for Trump.  

And in refusing to do so, he merely confirmed what the half dozen erstwhile deep staters -- Taylor, Kent, Yovanovitch, Vindman, Hill and Holmes -- more than suspected.

Trump's errand boy -- Rudy Giuliani -- was hijacking foreign policy for his boss's (illegal) benefit.

This is impeachable.  It is a form of bribery, which the impeachment clause explicitly lists as a ground. It goes to the core problem for which the Founders fashioned impeachment as the remedy -- their fear that the country's chief executive might tie his interests to those of a foreign state and in so doing repudiate ours.  And even if it is not impeachable, it is seriously wrong and counts as yet another minus in Trump's extraordinarily long column of demerits.

So I am not wrong here.

But the 40% who still stand with Trump can't all be stupid, and the vast (and I mean vast) majority aren't.  Like me, they go to work, raise families, pay bills, maintain relationships, generally distinguish right from wrong, know that the earth revolves around the sun, will concede it is raining out if someone comes in with a dripping umbrella, and agree that 2 + 2 = 4.  

They're not inherently mean, nor do they confuse authenticity with dishonesty or vulgarity. 

And they aren't blind.

Which, perhaps, creates the greatest conundrum.  

Because, say what you will about Trump, he does not hide his malfeasance. 

So, what gives?

Why are 40% of my neighbors always giving Trump a pass?

I think it's ennui.

I get there mostly by process of elimination.  Having discounted ignorance, the next available candidates are the Fox network and self-interested politicians.  

According to surveys, about 2.8 million tune into Fox every day.  There are, however, 153 million registered voters.  As a matter of simple arithmetic, 40% of them are not watching Fox.  This doesn't mean Fox's bias has no influence.  It has a lot, just not enough to explain the views of 61.2 million people. And as for the politicians, the reality is that pols follow voters.  It's rarely the other way around. If the voters change, the politicians will change . . .

Or they'll lose.

Ennui is defined as weariness, dissatisfaction.  It manifests as boredom.  We all have experienced it.  If you've ever had a bad job (check) . . . or a bad marriage (check) . . . there comes a point in time when you are just tired of it all.  My ex-wife told a friend of hers that she knew our marriage was over when I stopped fighting.  No kidding.  And in that sad interregnum between the knowledge that things are bad and the energy to enact the solution that might be good . . . 

One gets weary.

According to polls, a sizable group of Trumpers only support him "somewhat." Those who "strongly approve" of him account for no more than 25% of the electorate, and in September a poll found that 69% actually dislike him personally.  With Trump, therefore, and in particular with his supporters, I suspect we are in that interregnum, somewhere between the bad and the not-by-any-means-inevitable possibilities of either removal by impeachment or removal by defeat. In other words, we are in a period of . . .

Ennui. 

Which can become permanent.

Just ask Camus. 

Life for my Jesuit friend in Syracuse is not all roses.  The city and region are economically depressed.  There's more than enough grounds for ennui.  

That, however, is not the Ignatian way, the Jesuit way.  

To the contrary, their encounter with weariness seems to spur them on.  

The Jesuit motto is AMDG.  It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam".  I translate that as "toward the greater glory of God". That's "toward", not "for".  It conveys that faith is active, not passive; that we have to work at it, not wait for it.

In Syracuse, the Jesuits have created Le Moyne College, the little engine that could.  Founded in 1946, it ranks second in New York and sixth nationally for value in its class, colleges with 2,500 to 10,000 students. Thirty per cent of its undergraduates are first-generation college students.  

It's president is Dr. Linda LeMura, a Syracuse native, child of immigrants, and first ever lay female president of any Jesuit educational institution in the western hemisphere.  Reflecting "what the Jesuits have refined in 500 years of scholarship and reflection," she explains that "my story, and the story of my family, is also the story of Le Moyne College.  Whether from humble origins or great wealth, immigrant or native born, we are united in our belief that education is an act of faith, an expression of confidence and calm in the face of the unknown."

"An act of faith, an expression of confidence and calm in the face of the unknown."

It sounds an awful lot like what was produced in 1776 and 1787 . . .

By the Founders.

They looked ennui in the eye . . .

And beat it.

So can we.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

MARATHON (WO)MAN

MARATHON (WO)MAN

I am not a runner.

In fact, it hurts.

Large parts of me, the whole of which is itself getting larger as I age, are located between my knees and stomach.

The result is that, while some are designed to run, I am not.

I have, however, a lot of admiration for runners.

And an especial admiration for those who complete marathons.

America today is in desperate shape.  We are being run by a mad man narcissist accurately described by insiders working for him as self-absorbed, uninformed, inattentive, incoherent and cruel.  He governs by whim if he governs at all. He abhors truth.  He will not or cannot read and routinely violates the law or tells others to do so. Says Anonymous, the senior insider who penned the famous 2018 op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" and has now written the about to be published "A Warning": "He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity."

How did this happen?

The answer is that 62 million Americans, strategically located, voted for him and 40% of the country still supports him.  The sexist pussy-grabbing and transparent racism?  Ignored.   The nod to so-called "fine people" among the Nazis in Charlottesville? Forgotten by those who heard it, fake news to those who saw it reported. The unconstitutional emoluments rolling in from foreigners? Elitist nonsense. Impeachment for trying to enlist Ukraine to get dirt on the Bidens? A coup. And the repeated, pathological lying? Actually believed.

And if not believed, then at least forgiven.

Trump world is not stupid.

The most ardent Trumpers think people like me think people like them are stupid.

But I don't.

I think they are angry.

All. The. Time.

The anger is on display most clearly at his rallies.  They routinely dissolve into vitriolic threats against opponents in general and any reporters covering the event in particular.  The anger is also on display in the hatred his supporters visit upon the government.  Even when the government is helping them. How else to explain the otherwise insanity of the "keep your government hands off my Medicare" types abhorring the very hand that created Medicare in the first place.  Or the banana-republic chants of "lock her up."

I may be wrong . . .

But I do not think there are many marathoners in Trump world.

Marathoners are individualists but not narcissists.  Narcissists expect recognition without achievement.  They exaggerate their talents. They fantasize about their success, their power, their brilliance, their beauty.  They lack empathy.

Marathoners are recognized after they achieve.  They do not exaggerate, they demonstrate.  They endure but do not insult.  If there is fantasized brilliance or beauty or power in them, it's impossible to find in the sweat stained pain you can observe close up on their faces at mile 20.

The work is hard.

And they do it.

All of it.

They do not delegate it or avoid it.

The 26.2 miles on the actual day is preceded by months of training, managed increments of longer distances.   By the time they run the actual marathon, they've pretty much  run a few in practice beforehand.

Sometimes you can spot them early in the morning.

Solitary figures training for the big day, pounding the pavement in search of . . .

What?

I think it's themselves.

Or their selfs, those inner beings that give us the courage to recognize our limits while trying to exceed them.

Which is exactly what our country needs now.

In the millions.

I have known a number of marathoners and have admired four of them.  One I married.  Two I raised.  The last is my soon-to-be daughter-in-law, who ran the New York City Marathon last week.

She grew up in Florida where she was raised and educated. When she graduated from college, she moved alone to Pittsburgh and thereafter, and again alone, to New York. She embraces difference and has no fear.  I thinks she got that from her parents and family.  And from her inner self.  The one on display last Sunday.  The one that ran to raise money for a children's charity.

She has three Dads, two of whom made the trip to New York to watch in awe as she ran last Sunday, the third cheering from Tampa; one Mom, who tracked her daughter mile by mile on Facebook;  a sister, who now thinks her sibling a "badass";  a brother-in-law, whose job qualifies him as one; a  nephew marathoner-in-waiting (if his speed crawling last summer was any indication); and  . . .

A very lucky boyfriend.

The boyfriend's Dad thinks she's pretty cool too.

WAY TO GO, DONNIE BOY

WAY TO GO, DONNIE BOY

The number of pejoratives that accurately describe Donald Trump has always been large.

Racist, sexist, narcissist, egotist.  Con-man, cheat, megalomaniac, bully. Unprepared, temperamental, lazy, rude.  Nasty, mean, foul-mouthed, conceited. And of course . . .

Pathologically dishonest.

One would think so large a list more or less exhausts the possibilities.

One, however, would be wrong. 

Because this past week we learned that Donald Trump is also . . .

Preternaturally stupid.

Until a week ago Monday, there were about a thousand American soldiers bivouacked in a portion of northern Syria then under Kurdish control.  The Kurds are an ethnic group spread over at least four countries -- Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.  They played a central role in freeing northern Syria  from ISIS, an al-Qaeda terrorist spin off and wannabe caliphate, losing 11,000 of their own troops in a five year war. 

Throughout that period, the United States led a coalition of thirty countries that supported first the Kurdish People's Protection Units (PPUs) and then the more heterogeneous Syrian Defense Force (SDF). At American insistence, 40% of the latter is comprised of indigenous non-Kurdish Arab fighters.  The coalition supplied SDF with training, special forces operations, artillery and spotting, and over 45,000 air strikes. 

As ISIS was defeated, SDF took over governance of the area.

The border of northern Syria is with Turkey and for years Turkey has viewed the PPU as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (KWP). For its part, as the The New York Times  has reported,  the KWP is considered a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the United States and "has waged a decades long insurgency inside Turkey." 

Turkey has long considered Kurdish control of the northern Syrian border to be a national security threat, albeit a somewhat inchoate one.  As the Turks saw it, the success of the PPU in Syria emboldened the KWP in Turkey . . .

 Even though the former never attacked it.

When intelligence resided in the White House, America squared this circle of conflict between its NATO ally (Turkey) and its only effective ISIS-fighting ally (the Kurds) with astute diplomacy. It forced the PPU to enlist non-Kurds and become the SDF, and it made the Kurds withdraw from the border.  Under these arrangements, there were no border incidents and no PPU sponsored incursions into Turkey. 

On October 6, Trump and Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, spoke on the phone.

In that call, Erdogan asked Trump to withdraw American troops from the Turkish-Syrian border.

Trump agreed.  

None of this was planned in advance.  Nor was acceding to (or even discussing) withdrawal  part of the talking points given to Trump in advance of the call.  

The Pentagon opposed any withdrawal, as it has for months, and so did Congress (on a bi-partisan basis).  The fear in both was that withdrawal would give the Turks a green light to invade northern Syria, that millions of Kurds would either be killed or made homeless in the process, that ISIS prisoners held in northern Syria would escape and re-constitute, and that the Kurds would have nowhere to look for help other than Bashar al Assad and Vladimir Putin.  

The fear was also that America would thereafter be viewed as a dishonest broker and worthless ally.

All these fears have now come to pass.

On Wednesday, the Turks invaded northern Syria and by the weekend they controlled 75 square miles of previously held Kurdish territory.  Along the way, they executed Kurdish POWs and bombed civilians, creating 160,000  refugees.  

On Sunday, the Kurds cut a deal with Assad to allow Syrian government troops (backed by Russia) to return to the northern territory. These are the same government troops that last year, along with their Russian mercenaries, had stopped attacking the Kurds once American bombers let loose.  They are also the same government troops that petrify locals in northern Syria, many of whom opposed Assad. "If the regime returns," said one, it will be a "bloodbath".

As predicted, ISIS detainees are escaping.  The US reported that it could not transfer 60 "high-value" ISIS detainees out of the country before we left, and ISIS has already claimed responsibility for two attacks.  Meanwhile, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the pull out made ISIS's return "absolutely a given".

The Kurds themselves . . .

Now hate us. 

And with good reason.

An American Army officer who fought with the Kurds said "They trusted us and we broke that trust. It's a stain on the American conscience." Another said he was "ashamed."  A Kurdish official was more exact. "The worst thing in military logic and comrades in the tenches," he said, "is betrayal."

None of this was necessary. 

In the immediate aftermath, as Congress exploded with anger and even his usual political allies eviscerated him, Trump and his seconds careened from one idiotic excuse to another.  

On Wednesday,  the President justified abandoning  the Kurds by tweeting that they "didn't help" at Normandy.  On Sunday, his Treasury Secretary implied that Turkey was going to invade northern Syria regardless of our presence; if so, of course, there had been no need for Erdogan to ask Trump to step aside. 

On Monday, Trump went all 18th century on the issue, saying  "anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China or Napoleon Bonaparte.  I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away."

The Twin Towers were 7,000 miles away too.

But that didn't stop 9/11.

Earlier in the week, Trump justified the pull out as consistent with his campaign pledge to get us out of "endless wars".  This, however,  wasn't one of them.  It was the Kurds' war.  At minimal cost, and with enormous gain, we were just helping them out.

All that has now been lost.

In 2014, six years into his presidency,  an angry Barack Obama walked to the back of Air Force One and had it out with critics of his foreign policy.  They thought his policy disjointed, ineffective and a large come down from his soaring rhetoric about human rights and democratic possibilities.  He thought their criticism unfair.  In the wake of Bush II's Iraqui debacle, non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and the humbling of his own "red line" crossed without consequence, he told reporters that his foreign policy was simple . . .

"Don't do  stupid shit."

So that year, we allied with the Kurds, formed an international coalition, and began the process of eliminating ISIS and its self-proclaimed caliphate with locals doing the work on the ground as the coalition provided intelligence and air cover. 

By this year, that policy had succeeded.  

Last week, for no good reason, without any thought, and on the whim of a man who neither reads nor listens, that success was reversed.

Or . . .

To make it simple . . .

Trump just stepped in it.

WHO THE HELL WAS WILLIAM LOEB . . . AND WHY DOES HE MATTER TODAY

WHO THE HELL WAS WILLIAM LOEB . . .
AND WHY DOES HE MATTER TODAY

It was 1976, a Presidential year.

Indeed, it was the first Presidential year since Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation of the Presidency in 1974.

I was a sophomore at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

All the candidates -- Carter, Udall, Harris, Shriver, Church, Bayh, Sanford, Benson, Reagan and Ford -- traipsed through the snows of New Hampshire,  knockin' on doors and drinking coffee in more living rooms than they could count, each in search of votes in that state's  first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

All of them also had to deal with William Loeb.

And his front page editorials.

In 1976, William Loeb was the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader.  Unlike most newspaper publishers at that time, he told his readers what he thought above the fold and just below the front-page headlines, pretty much the sweet spot in any newspaper.  

He was also mean. 

In 1972, he published a forged letter claiming presidential candidate Edmund Muskie had referred to French-Canadians as "Canucks".  This was bad for Muskie, principally because  there were many French-Canadians in New Hampshire at that time.  It became worse for him, however, a little later, when falling snow created the appearance of tears on Muskie's face as he stood outside the  Leader's offices angrily denouncing Loeb as a liar.

Long story short, Muskie's campaign cratered as anger and tears were falsely turned into emotional instability.

Emotional instability was something we did not  tolerate in our Presidents back then.

In 1976, the Manchester Union Leader was the only statewide newspaper in New Hampshire.  In fact, given the mountains, which limited over the air radio and TV signals, and Boston's sense of itself, which limited its curiosity to Massachusetts, the Leader was pretty much the only statewide source of news at that time.

Loeb never apologized for the "Canuck" letter, not even after its genesis as part of Nixon's "dirty tricks" operation became known.  Instead, he continued to use the Leader to pursue his vendettas and libel his detractors.  

He once wrote that President Eisenhower, the architect of D-Day and victory in World War II,  had "done more to destroy the respect, honor and power of the United States than any President in his history." Later, in the '70s, he attacked the teenage daughter of a Governor for allegedly advocating the use of marijuana. The girl suffered a nervous breakdown.

Loeb also routinely lied about his past . 

He claimed to have been a reporter for eight years at the old New York World.  The paper's publisher denied the claim, and in any case the paper did not even exist during the years Loeb said he worked for it.  After his own mother disinherited him, Loeb sued her estate on her death for a 75% share, claiming they had reconciled,  and then settled for a small percentage of very little, his scorched earth litigation tactics having exhausted the estate (and, not coincidentally,  his siblings' shares).

Many of his journalistic ventures either died . . .

Or became exhibits to his transparent nastiness.

His Haverhill Journal went belly up in eight years, the Connecticut Sunday Herald in five (though incomplete records make its date of death uncertain). In 1949, he purchased a group of Vermont papers and founded the Vermont Sunday News.  That same year, he fired the printers of those papers when they tried to unionize.

Loeb was also a hypocrite.

Though married to three different women himself, he attacked Nelson Rockefeller during the  1964 Presidential primary.  Rockefeller had divorced his first wife in 1962 and married his second in 1963.  In 1964, however, he was running against Loeb's favorite conservative, Barry Goldwater . . .

So,  thrice married Loeb vilified twice married Rockefeller as a "wife swapper".

Even Loeb's patriotism was suspect.

He  avoided the draft in World War II on the ground of ulcers. But he reportedly helped his case by drinking a lot and causing the ulcers to flare up just before his medical examination. 

In 1975, Kevin Cash wrote a book entitled "Who the Hell is William Loeb".  In it, Cash recounted the lies, libels and licentiousness of his subject.  In response, Loeb threatened legal action in an effort  to stop Cash from publishing the book.  As a result, four New Hampshire publishers would not touch it and Cash himself had to set up his own publishing company to get the book printed.  The company was incorporated in Delaware (out of Loeb's reach) and the book was printed in Vermont.

Loeb died in 1981 and in the years that followed no one was able to replicate his unique ability to unite dishonesty, hypocrisy and malice in a suit of shameless promotion.

No one, that is, until Donald Trump.

Earlier this week, we  learned that, in a phone call last July, Trump asked Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky,  to do him a "favor" and investigate former Vice President Biden and Biden's son, Hunter.  The request violated the law, which prohibits the solicitation of foreign help in our elections, and otherwise had all the trappings of Trump-brand sleaze.  

Shortly before the call, Trump had frozen $391 million in aid to Ukraine, and during it, he reminded Zelensky of all the United States had done for his country as he asked for dirt on the Bidens.  Afterward, Trump ordered the electronic transcript of the call deep-sixed in a super-classified computer file meant to protect the nation's most important secrets (but not the President's mob-like shakedowns).

Later in the week, more shoes dropped.  

On Thursday, America's former special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, handed over text messages confirming that Trump was in fact holding up aid until Zelensky played ball.  Among the texts was one from our Ambassador to the Ukraine, William B. Taylor.  He wrote:  "I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign." 

This is . . .

Game Over.

Trump will be impeached.

Though he claims the call was "perfect", the administration's own rough transcript of it renders that claim ludicrous . . .  

As will  the actual electronic transcript of the call, once freed from the super-classified imprisonment to which it was sent to die.

Trump is in full meltdown.

Yesterday,  he decided to violate the law in plain sight, asking China and Australia to investigate the Bidens as well.  This morning,  he repeated that Ukraine should do so.  

Earlier in the week, he was wildly tweeting to his base, imploring them -- with a word salad of lies -- that he was being "harassed"; that the whistle blower and listeners who outed him are "spies"; that Congressman Schiff, the Chair of the House Committee investigating the matter, should be "arrested" for "treason"; and that those following Constitutional processes were nevertheless staging a "coup". Meanwhile, his seconds -- who include a deranged former Mayor named Giuliani -- were reduced to screaming (in Rudy's case) or just plain ducking (in the case of most everyone else).

Expect our Commander in Chief to become more unhinged . . .

And our politics to become more fetid.

Trump is not Nixon.  

The latter respected our institutions.  

Trump is trolling them.  

He vilifies  any reporters, whistle blowers, legislators, judges or civil servants who oppose him. He lives in the gutter, his word repository and the reputed source of an authenticity that supposedly confuses none who take him seriously but all who take him literally.  In 1974, senior Republican Senators went to Nixon and told him the gig was up.  Nixon respected them and quit.  Trump, however, respects no one (and in any case fears prosecution once he leave the Oval  Office).  He will not go quietly into the night.

Trump is also not Clinton, our other most recently impeached chief executive.  

Clinton compartmentalized, walling off his official duties and policy-making from the continuing storm of subpoenas, media reports, and the drama inherent in an on-going impeachment saga.  Put simply, he got the work of the Presidency done.  

Trump is paralyzed.  

He cannot hold a press conference with a foreign leader, or walk by a gaggle of reporters on the south lawn, without it turning into a profanity-laced tirade against his enemies, real and imagined. 

He is all tweets, all the time.

And nothing else.

With Nixon and Clinton, impeachment was serious, sad and tragic.

With Trump, it will be all that . . .

And something more.

During the 1976 Presidential campaign,  Kevin Cash visited  Dartmouth College to talk about Willian Loeb.  I met him outside the studios of Dartmouth's radio station, WDCR.  I asked him how he felt in the wake all the fights to get his book published and the attacks from Loeb.  In response, he repeated what he had posted in his book's epigraph . . .

Something his father had told him years ago.

"When you fight with a skunk, you wind up stinking even if you win."

SUNDAY DINNER

SUNDAY DINNER

I had dinner last night . . .

With Jen and Pete Salinetti.  

On their farm . . .

In Tyringham, Massachusetts.

With 171 of their soon to be best friends.

The Salinettis are a dying breed. They are actually family farmers making a living on their family's farm.  In an age of giant agri-businesses, tariffs and irrational love-affairs with he-who-will-not-be- named, their brethren in the fly-over states are taking it on the chin.  The Salinettis, however, have figured a way out.

They go small.

And they spend a lot of time getting their hands dirty.

The Salinettis' farm is called Woven Roots.  It is a linguistic testament to their agri-committments. On their web site, they sound like hippies from an age past.  "We recognize," they say,  "the interconnectedness of all life: soil, plants, microbes, insects and animals." 

Don't be fooled. 

They generate an unheard of annual average of $100,000 in crop value per acre (the big guys are at 5-7k per acre). And they make enough money to raise their two children, Diego and Noelia.  

They've perfected the art of permanent bed, no-till farming. In permanent beds, the soil is never compacted and rarely disturbed.  Woven Roots' crops are grown in 30 inch rows, separated by 12 inch aisles. "Once these spaces are defined," the Salinettis explain, " they remain that way." The beds are carefully aerated with a u-bar (no tractors and no tilling) and local compost, cover crops and mulches feed the soil and literally build it up over time. 

The compost and mulch is carried in five gallon buckets and then spread and lightly raked. No chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides are used, and Jen and Pete harvest by hand, leaving the root structure in the ground.  As a consequence, the top inch of soil is minimally disturbed but "the structure below is not disturbed" at all.  And, as they note, "[w]hen the soil is aerated, but not disturbed, water and nutrients percolate through with ease, creating a perfect environment for nutrient dense crops."

The results are impressive.

Woven Roots grows more than 75 crops and harvests almost year round.  More than 80 households are enrolled in its CSA ("Community Supported Agriculture ") program, which allows locals to purchase a share of the Salinettis' annual produce.  For those members, farm-to-table isn't a night out at a restaurant. It's a near daily event.

The farm is set in the rolling hills of the Berkshires.  Its fields slope gently into a narrow valley that lies against a small, wooded rise too large to be a hill, too small to be a mountain, but undoubtedly breathtaking when colors explode in fall foliage.  

Though yesterday's panorama was still late-summer green, the cultivated fields told a different story.  Before dinner, we walked by lush rows of celery, lettuces, growing carrots, red peppers, eggplants and the occasional grape vine (Pete plans to add vintner to his resume).  Every so often we stopped and the two farmers became our professors, explaining the yin and yang of their small but prosperous enterprise.

Some things I learned . . . 

Weeds -- or more precisely -- their seeds do not grow the deeper they lie beneath the soil.  This means that building up layers of soil naturally inhibits weed growth because the seeds are too far below the surface to thrive.

Here's another . . . 

If you harvest by hand and cut just slightly below the soil line, the remaining root structure is a natural source of nutrient for the soil.

And a third . . .

No till is a climate change no brainer.  

When you either do not -- or only minimally -- disturb the soil, the carbon from organic content remains below the surface, is not exposed to oxygen, and thus does not become carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Some experts believe that if all farming were no till, you would reverse climate change, and while this has not been statistically proven, one thing is certain -- tilling contributes significantly to the earth's carbon footprint and no tilling more or less  reverses that.

Back at Woven Root . . .

Dinner was delicious.  

The four courses included an eggplant, grilled squash and fire-roasted red pepper combination; wild coho salmon in the farm's own succotash salad and cherry tomato-herb relish;  bison short rib with cheddar polenta and green popcorn shoots; and an abenaki corn pudding with whipped cream and the farm's own peach compote.

All of us sat at a long table out in the field.  (The meal itself was prepared by a locally renowned chef.   And all of the logistics -- field kitchen, table prep, serving and clean-up -- were handled by "Outstanding in the Field" (OITF), which has been running these year round "farm to table" events nationwide for the past twenty years.)

The meal was served family style to each section of  the table.

You met and talked to the people seated alongside and in front of you as each section passed around its platters. No phones, no televisions, no Internet. But lots of back and forth.  And lots of laughs.

It reminded me of Sunday dinner at my grandmother's back in Brooklyn.

Earlier in the day, Jen Salinetti had reminded us that no till farming was nothing novel.  It's how Native Americans farmed.

As I left, nourished in more ways than one, I was thinking about . . .

Nana and Native Americans. 

You can learn a lot from your ancestors.