Trump And The Briar Patch Of Impeachment

Br'er Donald in his briar patch.  Art © Jim Moore

As impolitic as the stories are today, the Uncle Remus books, written in the late 1800s by Joel Chandler Harris, provided many generations of kids like me—who grew up not knowing what was or was not politically correct—a Reconstruction era brand of Aesop’s Fables that featured a trickster we rooted for. He was Br’er Rabbit, and he managed, story by story, to get the best of his antagonists—Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear. Br’er Rabbit was not always the winner in those battles (see The Tar Baby), but he won more than he lost.

Today, there is a new Br’er Rabbit, still a trickster, but hardly one we should ever be rooting for. He is Br’er Donald, and he is dangerous. His antagonists are not folksy woodland creatures like Br’er Fox or Br’er Bear; they are, instead, Democrats in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, and members of the mainstream media—for the most part—who are bent on catching and dispatching the trickster. They face enormous odds in their quest to banish the rabid rabbit.

Br’er Donald’s champions have erected a defensive bulwark around themselves and their delusionally-created country. It is a fortress constructed of stones of ignorance loosely bound with a thin mortar of supremely white nationalistic rhetoric. Surrounding this bastion of braggadocio and false bravado is a tangled and nearly impenetrable briar patch of lies and denial, planted and nurtured by the likes of Mitch McConnell and his lock-step acolytes in the House. Atop the ramparts of this ignoble redoubt, Br’er Donald’s supporters stand, megaphones in hand, praising and mimicking his divisive, hateful, and bullying rants. Their messaging is clear and frightening: Br’er Donald, an evil doppelganger of Br’er Rabbit of old, is a new trickster who is still winning (“hugely”) more than he is losing. And for that we should be concerned.

The ongoing drama that is the impeachment of a president, along with the bitter divisiveness that has overtaken political and social discourse in every quarter of the country, have as their common root cause one man bent on personal gain above all else; a mean and venal trickster who will stop at nothing to win, in part, because he believes—perhaps he knows—nothing will stop him.

I cannot adequately explain this through the clarity of logic or the recitation of facts, nor, despite their best efforts, can many of the country’s most astute chroniclers of the political scene. We all have our theories, which run the gamut from ascribing Br’er Donald’s behavior to a mental illness, to dredging up his twisted tutor, Br’er Roy Cohn, to his inability to read anything with understanding, to his total lack of interest in the flow and lessons of history. Perhaps there are elements of all those theories at work here, or perhaps Br’er Donald is just an insatiable devourer of other people’s treasure and humanity. Perhaps he just gets off on greed, gold, boorishness, cruelty, and power, in no particular order.

Whatever he is, Br’er Donald is most certainly a danger to the nation—a clear and present danger that so far has evaded accountability in great part due to the bizarre machinations of his devout adherents and enablers in Congress and among his voting base, both forces abetted and energized by certain media’s criminally irresponsible streaming forums.

What can Democrats and the bulk of concerned Americans do to put a halt to the destructive machinations of this hoodlum trickster? Impeachment? No, I think not.

In the Uncle Remus story of Br’er Fox and Br’er Rabbit and the briar patch, Br’er Rabbit has been trapped on a sticky tar baby built by Br’er Fox, who is ready to barbeque the rabbit. Ever the trickster, Br’er Rabbit plays counter-argument:

So Br’er Fox had caught Br’er Rabbit and this time Br’er Fox said he was going to cook Br’er Rabbit and eat him up for good! Br’er Rabbit was mighty scared. He begged, “Oh, Br’er Fox, I don’t care what you do with me, so long as you just don’t throw me in that briar patch over there. Go on and barbecue me up, Br’er Fox, but please don’t throw me in that briar patch.”

Br’er Fox said he was going to roast him anyhow, but when he went to hang Br’er Rabbit up over the fire, he found he didn’t have any string to tie him up with. “Well, I guess I can’t roast you,” Br’er Fox said. “I guess I’ll have to drown you instead.” Br’er Rabbit pleaded, “Oh, Br’er Fox, go ahead and drown me then, just so long as you don’t throw me into that briar patch!”

“Well,” said Br’er Fox, “it looks like there’s no water around here to drown you in. I guess I’ll skin you instead.” “Okay, Br’er Fox, no problem,” chattered Br’er Rabbit, “Go ahead and skin me, cut out my eyes, cut off my legs, just don’t throw me into that briar patch!”

By this time, Br’er Fox had gotten the idea that Br’er Rabbit really, really didn’t want to get anywhere near that briar patch. Br’er Fox wanted to hurt Br’er Rabbit as bad as he could, so he took Br’er Rabbit by the legs and threw him right smack into the middle of that briar patch. He heard a lot of rustling and crackling when Br’er Rabbit landed, and he waited around to see what terrible thing was going to happen.

But a few minutes later, he hears somebody calling, “Oh, yoo-hoo, Br’er Fox! Over here!” and he looks – and he sees Br’er Rabbit, sitting on a rock, combing the tar out of his fur with a stick. “Didn’t you know, Br’er Fox,” called Br’er Rabbit. “I was bred and born in the briar patch! Bred and born!” And he hopped away.

Now, let’s retell the story, but this time, substitute Br’er Democrat for Br’er Fox, Br’er Donald for Br’er Rabbit, and the impeachment for the briar patch. The role of the tar baby is played by the Constitution.

There is no doubt in my mind that president Trump and his Congressional flock want nothing more than for the Democrats to fling Trump into the briar patch of impeachment. As in the Uncle Remus tale, Trump will emerge from the thorns of a Senate trial completely unscathed and happy to once again having outwitted his pursuers. Trump and McConnell see clearly what the Democrats seem not to see at all: the president thrives amidst the stickers and brambles of his lies and treachery—he has debauched the Constitution and the Department of Justice, and his followers love him all the more for his misdeeds. 

There is a good chance that once Br’er Donald is proclaimed innocent by the cowards of the Senate, he will redouble his trickster ways to help the Republican Party destroy an enfeebled Democratic majority in the House, and add Republicans to the Senate (“so much winning!”).

As for Br’er Trump after he is reelected in 2020, he will stand atop his briar-surrounded rock and say, “Didn’t you know, Br’er Democrats. I was bred and born in the briar patch! Bred and born!”

It's Time To Apply The Sesame Street Solution

Let the record reflect that I have been 36-year fan of “Sesame Street,” which turns 50 this year, and was recently feted at the Kennedy Center Honors. My affection and high regard for “Sesame Street” goes back to 1983, the birth year of our first child, and continued on through the births and growings up of two more children. The program, and I say this with no shame at all, lingers on in our house even today—years after our kids moved out—when I catch “Sesame Street” as a guilty pleasure. It is a bright and thought-provoking pool of light in the otherwise dreary shadows of today’s news cycles and political Strum und Drang.

In Sunday morning’s “Washington Post’s” “Pop Culture” column, “A Friend to Everyone,” Hank Stuever offered a masterful and touching review of “Sesame Street’s” half-century of education and personal revelation. I recommend the column to anyone who has had even a tangential connection to what is far more than just a children’s puppet show. It is must reading for everyone who watched the program, because Stuever reminds us of just what it was that connected all of us—young and old—to that unique neighborhood where learning numbers and letters was fun, and where humans, characters, and emotions of every description were welcome.

Stuever interviewed Sesame Workshop President and CEO Jeffrey D. Dunn, who said:

“[We] have stayed relentlessly true to the mission of helping kids grow stronger, smarter and kinder,” Dunn says. “I’m a huge believer in the idea that society is the result of kids growing up. We’re playing a very long game here, looking 30 years ahead at any point in time. . . . Your kids are going to grow up and be the adults of tomorrow.”

“Sesame Street” can feel deeply personal to just about anyone under the age of 55. It taught us to read and count, but it also taught us about kindness and acceptance. It was jazzy and groovy; it had a loose and wild feeling, even with all that PhD scrutiny on every frame.

Today the show is brighter, faster and somehow zippier, set on a cleaner, spiffier Sesame Street (shot on a set in Astoria, Queens) with a community garden and a recycling bin next to Oscar the Grouch’s trash can. Hooper’s Store serves birdseed smoothies and has bistro seating.

Yet the sense of belonging remains. “Sesame Street” was inclusive before anyone really knew what that meant, the first safe space. It is a friend to everyone

“When people talk to us [about ‘Sesame Street’], frequently it is about the literacy. They’ll say, ‘I learned to read because of it,’ ” Dunn says.

“But the second thing is that everyone sees themselves as somewhat unique, and what they saw was some friend that spoke to them, that let them know, ‘I’m a good person, I’m okay,’ and that there are people who are different, and that’s okay, too. The idea that everybody is deserving of respect.”

You can sense where this is going.

Look around, America. Have you forgotten how to get to “Sesame Street?”

“We’ve never been needed more,” Dunn says.”

I, for one, am in complete agreement. When Dunn says, “I’m a huge believer in the idea that society is the result of kids growing up. We’re playing a very long game here, looking 30 years ahead at any point in time. . . . Your kids are going to grow up and be the adults of tomorrow,” he is echoing my own sense of compounding revelation.

That compounding revelation began with the realization each time I watched “Sesame Street” with (or without) my children that as an adult I should, and could, try to practice being a better person, a more in-touch and in-tune person, a more cognizant person, a person open to the possibility that embracing our differences will make us a better neighborhood of human beings. After all, isn’t that what parents in “Sesame Street” households were trying to instill in our own children?

Why wouldn’t we, as adults, want to be more empathetic, sympathetic, kind, loving, caring, sharing, understanding, tolerant, patient, gracious, supportive, and selfless? We don’t have to dig very deep into our hearts to know that the short-term pleasures, the surface appearances, the superficial achievements…the money, the fleeting acclaim, the momentary highs that come from our daily efforts to “win” or to climb the ladder to a corner office with walls covered in ego photos…are not all they are cracked up to be. We know that. We. Know. That. 

And yet, too often we persist along the arc of “getting” because we have lost the thread of “Sesame Street’s” fundamental fabric of life-lessons taught for a half-century by a cadre of puppeteers and their human partners.

At a time when “gotcha” normalization is the notion du jour—a warped social and political model that licenses crude public behavior, the assassination of comity, selfish ends justifying immoral and unethical means, weaponized intransigence, duplicity, outright lying, and that most popular meme, “throwing someone under the bus”—“Sesame Street” celebrates a more child- and adult-friendly normalization: inclusiveness that is openhearted, open-handed, and non-judgmental.

“Sesame Street” is all about growth—the growth of young minds and the growth of adult understanding. As Jeffrey Dunn noted, the program is a very long-game program, like planting a tree not for shade today, but for shade tomorrow; not for fruit today, but for fruit tomorrow (as corny as that may be, it’s nonetheless apt). It is also, if approached correctly, a truly interactive program, one that encourages children and parents or other caregivers to share “Sesame Street’s” lessons, images, and situations.

For many children, “Sesame Street” was and still is, a gateway to what will later be complex adult experiences like insecurity, loneliness, feeling sad or “different,” pent-up anger, even death (notably, Mr. Hooper’s death—following the death of actor Will Lee in 1982). As “Sesame Street” actress Sonia Manzano (Maria) explains, once the decision was made to use Hooper’s/Lee’s death as a teachable moment, the show’s producers reached out to numerous specialists to develop a child-suitable script in which Big Bird, played by the late Carroll Spinney, wants to know why Mr. Hooper died. 

Big Bird’s questions are a child’s questions: Will he come back? If not, who will take care of me? Why can’t he come back? But then, who among us has not voiced versions, maybe more nuanced, of those same questions as adults facing the loss of someone who was important to us? 

I was 48 when my mother died; I was there, kneeling by her bed, holding her hand, feeling her life’s tide ebb beyond the mortal horizon, never to flow back. I would be lying if I did not admit that as much as I was relieved her years-long suffering had ended, I still wanted her back, still needed the child-soothing comfort of her presence, still questioned the meaning of her death. When my father died at his house in the country in 2003, separated from me by a terrible blizzard that kept me from being at his side, and all I could do was whisper “I love you” through the phone held to his ear by his nurse, I was crushed by the frustration and anger and hopelessness and sadness that enveloped me. It was my own “Sesame Street” moment inasmuch as the adult me was, for those hours that followed Pop’s death, lost and adrift like a child with more questions than answers.

The larger point to the Mr. Hooper episode, and all the episodes before and after, is that while life throws us all kinds of curve balls we never see coming, we are rarely alone in experiencing those unbidden surprises. Happiness, sadness; courage, fears; sunny days, stormy nights; kind people, grouches; strangers, friends; questions, answers; people with my skin color, people with your skin color; people who talk like me, people who talk like you; people who can run, people who need assistance; babies, the elderly; people who are hurting, people who are helping; life and death. When all of these emotions, circumstances, and differences can be discussed in terms children can understand, in a safe place, we are witnessing an anodyne to the often confusing and unsettling world our children (and we adults) inhabit.

For 50 years, “Sesame Street” has been that safe place where learning happens by example, where children can see the positive effects of giving and sharing and caring and participating in life in all its colors, sounds, and forms. Those lessons weren’t lost on me as a parent watching my children process “Sesame Street’s” tutorials on inclusivity, acceptance, tolerance, and patience. 

We should look at what “Sesame Street” stands for, what it elevates, what it illuminates, and what it celebrates. It stands for kindness. It elevates understanding. It illuminates our common bonds. And most of all, it celebrates our global humanity. The lessons children the world over learn from “Sesame Street” are replicable among the world’s adult culture, if we only allow those lessons into our chambers of government, halls of justice, media newsrooms, and corporate workplaces. That is not to condemn all those who work in those places--but we know we can do better.

We’ve seen it work. From Mahatma Ghandi to Jane Goodall, from Greta Thunberg to Jimmy Carter, from the White Helmets to Doctors Without Borders…the list of kind, giving, sharing men and women and organizations is wonderfully long, and they embrace “Sesame Street’s” model of compassion, understanding, respect, and continual wonder. 

Echoing Sesame Workshop's Jeffrey Dunn: “We’ve never been needed more.” Mr. Dunn, you will get no argument from me.

In memory of Caroll Spinney

Caroll Spinney with Big Bird and Oscar

Syzygy: Queen’s Brian May, A NASA Scientist, And Me, On The Topic Of Space

My wife and I had a wonderful dinner the other night with our neighbors, Dave and Cynthia Draper, and Dave’s sister, Juli. Dave and Cynthia recently moved here from Houston, and we like to think they are enjoying the variety of seasons we have here in Northern Virginia. Our dinner conversation did not include the usual Washington-Inside-The-Beltway recitations of whatever the hell is going on with you-know-who. That is not what friends speak of when gathered for a post-Thanksgiving meal of Dave’s marvelous New Mexico-based carne adovada enchiladas, guacamole, chips, and copious quantities of wines—red and white.

Instead, the table talk turned to a much higher plane of discourse—so high, in fact, Dave was the only one at the table really qualified to hold forth on the subject: NASA and the Artemis Moon mission (among other above-this-world topics). You see, Dave Draper is Deputy Chief Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. His job is to help NASA plan to develop a sustainable presence on the Moon and take what is learned to send astronauts to Mars. According to NASA’s Chief Scientist, Jim Green, “[Dave’s] lunar and planetary exploration expertise will be instrumental in helping to achieve NASA’s goal of returning to the Moon to stay and bridging the gap from science to the future human exploration of the Moon and Mars.”

Dave is also the most unabashed cheerleader for NASA I’ve ever met—and I’ve met two NASA administrators, quite a few NASA employees, and a handful of astronauts whose enthusiasm for NASA and its many missions are the stuff of recruitment posters. On a passion scale of 1-10, Dave’s affection for his employer, mission, and colleagues easily tops 1,000. And here’s a really wonderful part of his pep-rally excitement: it’s genuine and it’s infectious. Most importantly, Dave excels at sharing his enthusiasm with the rest of the world, believing that the more we know about NASA—probably the most respected brand on Earth—the more we will understand about ourselves, our origins, our present conditions, and our place in the universe as the decades, centuries, and millennia spread out before us.

Readers of this blog will know that I share Dave’s vision, although I am hardly qualified to speak to the science of extraterrestrial geology or even the geology of my back yard. What he and I do have in common is the belief that no matter what earth-bound trials consume the media’s and public’s attention, we must not take our eyes off the long-term value of space exploration. Further, we must illuminate the topic of space exploration and spaceflight—human and robotic—with the bright beams of education and public information. In this mutual agreement, Dave and I share a most unlikely syzygy with Brian May, widely known as Queen’s lead guitarist, singer, and composer of “We Will Rock You,” among many other soaring hits.

Dr. Brian May

May (Dr. May, to be precise) is heralded in the science community for his PhD in astrophysics and for his many scholarly and popular astronomy-related texts and presentations as well as for his significant contributions to the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. I would need several more blog posts to list all of Dr. May’s scientific accomplishments and contributions to the public’s understanding of astronomy. 

Sir Isaac Newton doing his best Brian May impression

Over dinner, Dave recounted his meeting with May, who, while performing with Queen in Texas, stopped by the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston for a tour of the facility. May’s doctoral thesis, “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” concerns the reflected light from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the Solar System. Although Dr. May earned his doctorate on the subject of “space dust,” he had never seen an actual particle about which he wrote. Dave and his colleagues at JSC were delighted to show May just such a particle, collected during a NASA stratospheric aircraft flight, and placed in a high-resolution electron imaging system, from which it could be viewed on a screen in one of the Center's analytical labs. Much to May’s delight, what he theorized, he finally realized, thanks to NASA.

Dr. David Draper and Dr. Brian May at the
Johnson Space Center
in Houston

Dave Draper and Brian May at the
Johnson Space Center
May is wearing his "clean room" booties
after a tour of the JSC labs

Dr. Brian May in his day job with Queen, wearing a NASA ballcap
after his tour of the Johnson Space Center in Houston

Suffice to say, Brian May, Dave Draper, and I are all in agreement on this point: As a nation, as a global community, we must bend the curve of our understanding of space and its myriad treasures—known and unknown—toward an ever-steeper and accelerating path.

There is a beautiful, 100’ tall, gold-colored stainless-steel spire on the Mall side of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The spire pierces a constellation of stars. The title of the sculpture by Richard Lippold is Ad Astra, meaning “To the Stars.” While this title is most apt for the sculpture, and the sculpture itself is inspiring, I prefer the longer Latin phrase, Per aspera ad astra, or, “Through hardships to the stars,” because no journey of such significance can be begun without great effort supported by education at every level.

Ad Astra, by Richard Lippold

Like millions of kids who grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s, space exploration—from Sputnik to Apollo—was an integral part of the national narrative. Not just a science narrative, but an overall conversation about the value of setting and meeting difficult goals here on Earth and far beyond our planet.

I was a kid in Germany when Sputnik was launched in 1957, and we all listened through the static to its beeping signal as it circumnavigated the globe with its not so subtle message of Soviet space accomplishment. That same year, I took part in school activities inspired by the International Geophysical Year (IGY), 1957-58, and even as an eight-year-old, I was drinking deeply from the firehose of science that was pouring out of the IGY’s discoveries.

I remember watching Alan Shepard’s flight in Freedom 7, first of the Mercury series, boosted into a suborbital arc on my 12th birthday, May 5, 1961. My wife lived across the street from John Glenn’s family, and she saw the gaggle of television trucks parked outside the Glenn residence during Glenn’s three-orbit flight in Friendship 7, February 20, 1962. LIFE magazine secured the rights to publish nearly everything knowable about the Mercury 7 astronauts and it seemed as if every week there was something new and interesting to read about their lives and their missions.

I did all the geeky things a science nerd of that time would do: learned the Greek alphabet (crucial in understanding star charts); hand-built several reflector telescopes (even grinding my own mirrors); volunteered to help build a large public-access telescope near Shreveport, Louisiana; camped out almost every weekend under the vast dome of the University of Nebraska’s Mueller planetarium in Lincoln; and subscribed to the Edmund Scientific Catalog, spending untold hours perusing its pages and spending even more untold dollars purchasing many of its products, including a humungous chemistry set and my first “real” space-observation binoculars. 

Other than English, my best subjects in high school were chemistry, biology, algebra, trig, and introduction to physics. In college at the University of Colorado, I fell in love with anthropology and geology. Were it not for the inexorable pull of journalism—which, like the Great Attractor in interstellar space, grabbed me and held me in its thrall for the rest of my working days—I might well have become one of Dave’s older colleagues.

All of which is to illustrate the neuron-wiring power of science-made-accessible-and-understandable within the inquisitive sponge-like brain of a young person. And that brings me back to our winter-night dinner-table conversation about NASA’s 2024 Artemis mission to the Moon and then to Mars. At 70, my brain’s neurons may not be firing as fast or growing exponentially as they did 60 years ago, but they still got jazzed and lit up by Dave’s passionate telling of NASA’s near-term plans and the scope of the agency’s vision for the future of spaceflight—whether crewed or robotic. 

NASA's Woman on the Moon patch, a tribute to Artemis

Now, I can already hear the distant grumblings about precious resources, and NASA budgets that could be better spent in the darker, sadder sectors of our own country or around the world. To be frank, I’m not going there in this missive. A simple review of NASA’s budget as it compares to the outrageous spending habits of this administration, the farm-crippling tariffs, and the massive debt our country is burdened with, will reveal a relatively lean science budget dedicated in an almost miserly fashion to the pursuit of knowledge that time and time again has paid back benefits to almost every segment of our society.

What the grumblers don’t understand, or don’t bother to understand (or reject entirely), is that NASA, through the efforts of all the men and women who work hard every day to move us closer to the stars, is one of the few gateways we have left that opens upon scenes of a better tomorrow for everybody on the planet.

I often talk about the difference between tactical planning and strategic planning, between playing a short game, or playing the long game, between the pitfalls of short-sightedness versus the rewards for patience. From an historical perspective, among nations, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans (both North and South), and their cultural allies around the Pacific Rim, are all strategic, patient, long-game players.

Unlike the United States with its Constitutional constraints limiting political cycles to four and six years, and budget planning that never seems to be nailed in place, many of our geopolitical competitors operate on game plans that can be played out over generations and millennia. To the casual observer and caustic skeptic, it seems Americans are not particularly patient when it comes to looking down the road. But a close examination of U.S. history reveals some evidence to the contrary.

Although there are more examples, I like to cite five long-game plays the U.S. has executed—in which almost every state had a stake and/or role.

· The building of the transcontinental railroad (at huge fiscal and tragic social costs);

· The Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 which established our system of state universities;

· The Homestead Act of 1862, which opened up tens of millions of acres of the west;

· The planning and construction of the Interstate Highway System (See Earl Swift’s “The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways”);

· And, of course, America’s space program, which achieved almost impossible goals from its early beginnings in Hampton, Virginia in 1917, to Alan Shepard’s 1961 suborbital leap, to Neil Armstrong’s step on the Moon in 1969, to the Space Shuttle, to the Hubble Space Telescope, the establishment of Mars rovers and orbiting surveyors, the deep planetary missions like Huygens, Juno, and Cassini that have revealed mind-boggling images and exciting chemical and biological discoveries, and to the venerable Voyager I and Voyager II missions that are now sending data to Earth from beyond the boundaries of our solar system. (For extra credit, read or listen to, “Apollo”, by Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox, et al., and watch “Apollo 11” a film by Todd Douglas Miller). One only needs to go to NASA’s missions pages covering more than 250 robotic and human-crewed programs launched since 1958 to appreciate the broad sweep of the space agency’s mandate to explore, discover, and teach.

So, tonight over dinner, or maybe tomorrow during lunch, or perhaps next weekend in between games, put aside the usual topics of conversation—forego the political fisticuffs and impeachment imbroglios—and devote a few minutes to discussing the marvels of spaceflight, the beauty of planets, the swirls of distant galaxies, and how your appreciation for Queen has been realigned with the help of a guitar-wielding astrophysicist with an out-of-this-world interest in star dust.

Fiona Hill And Thomas Paine Spoke Truth To Power

A few days ago, following the closing impeachment hearing testimonies of Dr. Fiona Hill and David Holmes, I reflected on the power of lies, often blared from the loudest megaphones and bleated from the highest pulpits, to shape the domestic and foreign perceptions of our nation’s putative leaders, their duties, and their motives. I reflected also on the concept of “narrative” in America—what does the word mean today vs. what it meant, say, 30 years ago?

With respect to the loud and unabashedly vile lies that emanate from the White House, the Senate majority, the House minority, and Fox News et al., they are hard for me, as a moderate liberal, to disentangle from the concept of corrupt intent. Having worked on Capitol Hill, close to leadership, and then in the Executive Branch, again, close to leadership, it would be fair to say I’ve heard lies roll off the lips of men and women of power sometimes defensively, sometimes to divert attention from, or disassociate themselves from, inconvenient truths related to personal behavior, inappropriate practices, or poorly executed federal policies.

I’ve seen press secretaries, their thin-lipped smiles set in stone, coldly dissemble in attempts to shield their bosses from media or Congressional scrutiny. And we’ve all heard presidents of both parties spin yarns and outright lie either out of vanity or purposeful evasion to cover up wrongdoings large and small. Even if you think your favorite Chief Executive led a lie-free public life, just wait for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s or David McCullough’s or Douglas Brinkley’s definitive biography of your hero to discover his or her deceptions. History and the truth always will out. That is a lesson the current family-based administration and its enablers will learn sooner or later. Sooner would be better—for them and the country—in my humble opinion.

Having gotten the matter of eye-rolling prevarication out of the way, let’s look at the matter of lies coupled with corrupt intent. Did Nixon lie with corrupt intent. Yes. Did Ronald Reagan, in the quicksand of Iran-Contra, lie with corrupt intent? Alleged, but, ultimately, no (what his staff did is another matter). Did George H.W. Bush lie with corrupt intent with respect to “Read my lips, no new taxes?” It was, in the end, a lie. But corrupt? No. Did Bill Clinton lie with corrupt intent? Yes. Did George W. Bush lie with corrupt intent with respect to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq? In my opinion, Yes, and my opinion is supported, in part, by an analysis of the WMD issue as reported in the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column of March 22, 2019. That column concluded with:

“The intelligence community’s assessments on Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and programs turned out to be woefully wrong, largely because analysts believed that Iraq had kept on a path of building its programs rather than largely abandoning them after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Thus the stockpiles theoretically got larger as time went on.

But at the same time, the Senate report shows Bush administration officials often hyped the intelligence that supported their policy goals — while ignoring or playing down dissents or caveats from within the intelligence community. The intelligence was used for political purposes, to build public support [italics mine] for a war that might have been launched no matter what intelligence analysts had said about the prospect of finding WMDs in Iraq.”

Note the italicized portion-- The intelligence was used for political purposes, to build public support. This has the ring of familiarity, the kind of familiarity that breeds corrupt contempt, the kind of contemptuous familiarity with which we are now dealing. It is a pig-in-a-blanket kind of contempt with the pig wrapped in protective layers of nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, implausible deniability, and nose-thumbing disrespect for the institution of a government of laws.

It is that institution of a government of laws that Dr. Fiona Hill was urging the members of the House Intelligence Committee to defend in her opening statement, a portion of which I quote [All italics are mine]:

“I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and a moral obligation to provide it. I take great pride in the fact that I’m a nonpartisan foreign policy expert who was served under three Republican and Democratic presidents. I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction except toward the truth. I will not provide a long narrative statement because I believe that the interest of Congress and the American people is best served by allowing you to ask me your questions. I’m happy to expand upon my October 14th deposition testimony and respond to your questions today.

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its Security Services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian Security Services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies confirmed in bipartisan congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.

“The impacts of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being turned apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career Foreign Service is being undermined. US support for Ukraine, which continues to face armed Russian aggression has been politicized. The Russian government’s goal is to weaken our country, to diminish America’s global role and to neutralize a perceived US threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian Security Services aim to counter US foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political economic dominance.

“I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we come to their efforts to harm us. Right now, Russia’s Security Services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We’re running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interest.

“As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States. It plays an important role in our national security. As I told the committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary and that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful even if they’re deployed for purely domestic political purposes.”

Dr. Hill’s assertion that “These fictions are harmful even if they’re deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” closely tracks with the Post’s Fact Checker statement regarding the rationale for the Iraq War: “The intelligence was used for political purposes, to build public support.”

Again, to reprise Dr. Hill’s opening paragraph: “I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and a moral obligation to provide it. I take great pride in the fact that I’m a nonpartisan foreign policy expert who was served under three Republican and Democratic presidents. I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction except toward the truth.”

Which brings me to the matter of “narrative” as it applies to the ideal state of open and fair conversations between and among all Americans with respect to our current social and political crises. I do not look back with narrow-angled longing for some halcyon days where all Americans got along in an imagined care-free world. Those days never were, and to suggest, as some history-denying leaders do, that if only we returned to the fantasized America First of yesteryear, all would be peachy keen, is to hang a veil of deception between what we once were and what we are today. We are a work in progress, constantly carving out a path toward a better future, a more perfect future.

Consider the Preamble to the Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

It is right there—“…to form a more perfect Union....” The drafters of the Constitution knew they lived in an imperfect world, that they themselves were imperfect people. But they believed that if the citizens of the new nation accepted the challenges of maintaining the Republic, over time the Union would become more perfect with every new generation.

The narrative of those 18th century Americans was bent toward success for all; maybe not immediately, maybe it would be fraught with inequities to be addressed by a better-informed citizenry. 

The only way to maintain progress toward that distant horizon is by dedicating ourselves to keeping the lines of honest communication open, when to shut them down seems the easier action. It is hard sometimes to speak truth to power when all you want is to turn away and put distance between yourself and the problem, to turn away from your neighbor at disagreeable moments. That is when the national narrative becomes toxic and divisive, and that is what the abusers of power hope for. That is what the current administration sees as its crowning achievement—a nation so divided that absolute power will have a chance to corrupt absolutely.

We cannot afford to accept that corrupting narrative. We must strive for a constructive narrative, an open and fair narrative. In terms that legislators understand, an open and fair narrative is created by simply listening to those voices on the other side of the aisle and responding thoughtfully, reasonably, constructively, and without rancor or hidden agendas.

In all places, a positive narrative is achieved when neighbors discuss their differences without prejudging outcomes and shutting down social debate. It is recognizing and respecting the passions that motivate us to vote for one person over another, but not stifling those opposing passions with sneers or cold shoulders or dismissive, divisive personal attacks.

If Fiona Hill's testimony, and the testimony of her foreign service colleagues and other professionals who spoke truth to corruption, cannot move the political dialogue away from Trump and toward a more balanced national conversation--at the dinner table, over the backyard fence, in the communities, in the districts, in the states--we are at a hopeless stalemate, and that is just what the Trump machine wants.

Trump and his proxies are going to be relentless drum-beaters in their effort to misdirect the public's attention from the core issues the Democrats must push if they have any chance in 2020. Trump doesn't care about facts, the truth, or the impeachment process, doesn't care a whit about what the Senate will or won't do (and it most assuredly won't vote to remove him). He certainly doesn't care about the rule of law, the United States as a force for good, or our Constitution. All he cares about...all he has ever cared about...is revenge and punishment for real and imagined insults. And Trump's behavior has already infected the rest of his party right down to its very marrow. They will follow his course of action up and down every ballot in every district, state, and national polling booth.

I believe we can find our way out of this thicket of abusive brambles and barbs that obscures the path we have been on since 1776. I believe we can reestablish a national conversation noted for its comity, passion, bold ideas, and a willingness to compromise. I do not believe impeachment will provide the light we need to see our way forward, though it may be sufficient to illuminate the treachery that has entangled us in our current predicament. What we need more than impeachment is confidence in the fundamental levers of our democracy—the levers we pull, or the buttons we push when we enter the voting booth.

We need to turn away from the pollsters and pundits who tell us what we are, what we think, and what we want, and reacquaint ourselves with our own moral and ethical compasses—each one a check on the other, but both pointing inexorably to a Pole Star of reason.

I leave you with this passage from Thomas Paine’s The Crisis, written on December 23, 1776, and I suggest you replace the description of the tyrannical monarch of whom Paine wrote in the 18th century with the name of a present leader who represents an existential threat--a new crisis--to our domestic tranquility 243 years later:

“The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?

What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other.

Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.”

Why I Stopped Narrating Audiobooks

The Dungeon as an audiobook recording studio

There are a lot of very kind folks out there…friends and acquaintances who have asked me how my audiobook narration business is doing. Although I tell them I don’t narrate audiobooks anymore, there’s never enough time to explain why, so I thought I’d use the blog to put it out there. In the end, it’s about knowing, and accepting, one’s limitations. 

[note: Since this blog was first published, I have added material relating to my experiences with ACX after a gentle nudge from one of my mentors who reminded me of those experiences and urged me to include them in this narrative. I thank her for that nudge]

In mid-2013, through the encouragement and connections of a former colleague at the Department of Veterans Affairs here in Washington, I reached out to the owner of a major audiobook production house [note: the company does not wish its name to be used, and I have been rebuked for using it on social media in the past, so it will remain anonymous even though it is well-known in the industry].

Our initial conversation was upbeat but the owner was frank about the path I would have to take to become one of his company’s narrators. There were technical aspects to the profession I’d have to learn, equipment requirements to be considered for my home studio, and auditions I’d need to perform. All of which I’d assumed from the beginning, having done voice over (VO) work in the government for several years. It was a good first step.

Throughout the fall of 2013 I modified my basement studio (the Dungeon), and purchased the best equipment I could afford—industry-quality microphones ($500), audio interfaces ($300), software and licenses ($400+), upgraded monitors ($200), booms, cables, sound-absorbing treatment for the walls, floor, door, and ceiling of the Dungeon ($1,000). All in all, I probably invested $3,000 or more in the basic materials necessary to achieve the proper sound qualities and electronics of a recording studio. I was helped in all of this by technical experts from the audiobook production company, Sweetwater Electronics, and hired sound engineers.

And, in order to hew to the world of social media, I created an LLC, Audio by Moore, a website (www.audiobymoore, which has been deleted), and the requisite Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Eventually I would join a couple of professional groups, including the Audio Publishers Association (APA) and one of the largest author-to-narrator audition sites ACX (the Audiobook Creation Exchange, owned by Amazon/Audible). More on my ACX experience is noted a bit later on.

With the Dungeon and my social media presence thus prepared, I began my audition path, guided by the technical team of the audiobook company, and investing in their audiobook narration and production course (several hundred more dollars). It was not a wasted expense, I must add. I learned a lot, made some very good friends who would be my assignment producers, proofreaders, and sound engineers for the next couple of years.

On Christmas Eve, 2013, a little more than four months after that first phone call to the audiobook company, I received a call from their assignment editor: Would I like to narrate “Faiths of the Founding Fathers,” by David C. Holmes, a professor at William and Mary? The circumstances of that call could not have been more appropriate and propitious: I was, at the moment of the call, walking down the main street of Williamsburg, Virginia, the very place where many of the characters of Dr. Holmes’s book lived and played their roles in America’s colonial history—in fact, I was probably standing not more than 1,000 yards from the author’s house! But that was unknown to the assignment editor; she was just letting me know I was getting a chance to narrate my first audiobook. Merry Christmas. The audiobook was released by Audible on January 20, 2014, less than a month after the assignment. Over time, it has received generally favorable ratings (4.3 stars out of five, over 40 ratings). These are not, however, big numbers for an audiobook, and I have no idea how well the audiobook has actually sold.

For the next two years, working closely with the audiobook publishing company, I narrated seven more audiobooks, including “Madam Speaker,” a Nancy Pelosi biography, “Great Powers and Geopolitical Change,” ‘Step Up,” and “The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising.” In addition, for a few months at the beginning of 2015, I was the voice of “The New Republic” magazine. 

I also ventured into the ACX realm in the spring of 2015 by auditioning for "Virginia's Ring," a lovely book about the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) written by my now-friend Lynn Seldon. The story required male and female roles, and I was fortunate to be paired with one of the best audiobook narrators in the business, Andi Arndt. 

I think Andi and I produced a nice audiobook for Lynn, and it was a wonderful experience working with Andi and being responsible for the audiobook's technical production. Without belaboring the details of per-finished-hour (PFH) rates vs. royalty fees that factor into an author/narrator contract on ACX, it is sufficient to say that, "Virginia's Ring" not withstanding, my experience with ACX, was fraught with failure after failure of my audition samples--about 50 attempts over four years. It takes a thick skin and persistence to overcome rejection and break into the ACX realm. As a narrator who steadfastly refused to lower my per-finished-hour rate or work for a royalty, I was stymied by the fee floor I'd set for myself. Many narrators thrive on ACX audiobook deals, so my experience has to be viewed as just one data point. 

The pace of recording for the audiobook producer was not enough for me to rely on its assignments alone for audiobook work, so I began looking at public domain (PD) book—books published before 1923, and thus free of copyright restrictions. Through the support of what was then Listen-2-a-Book, now Spoken Realms, I began some of the most fun narrating of my six-year venture, starting out with the nearly 15-hour western, “The Virginian” by Owen Wister. With “The Virginian” I began true long-form voice-acting, taking on more than 20 voices, ranging from a handsome cowboy to an aging Vermont aunt to a pretty schoolmarm, to a mean and nasty gunslinger. 

My work through Spoken Realms was incredibly rewarding—not so much financially (though the royalty checks still come in and are welcome reminders of a very good time), as creatively. The whole process of selecting a book to narrate, prepping the book for recording, researching the character voices, hiring and working with really top-draw proofreaders, editors, and audio engineers, and then sitting down in front of the mic for hours of story-telling was pure delight. Perhaps the most fun was “The Reluctant Dragon,” by Kenneth Grahame. Upon completion of each of my PD audiobooks, I designed the cover art suitable for Audible.com (the “Reluctant Dragon’s cover was designed by my daughter, Charlotte). My art and photography backgrounds came in very handy during this stage of the audiobook production.

With one exception—mentioned momentarily—the productions of three F. Scott Fitzgerald audiobooks “The Beautiful and Damned,” “This Side of Paradise,” and “Tales of the Jazz Age” were the most enjoyable work I’d ever done in voice acting. That they have yet to be rated or reviewed is disappointing, but the sales are consistent, and so I’m pleased with the effort.

The reality of self-producing public domain audiobooks is that there are inescapable back-end financial responsibilities—payments to proofreaders and engineers—that have to be factored into the profit/loss columns of a self-employed narrator’s bank accounts. In addition, as was the case in more than one of my PD audiobooks, I hired voice coaches to train me on accents I needed to voice, and that voice coaching, over time, cost me in excess of $2,000. Expenses for proofers and engineers exceeded $3,000 over the time I was narrating public domain audiobooks. In 2018, I signed up with a voice/business coach for a 12-month series of lessons in audiobook narration and the business of audiobook narration. The bottom-line cost of that was $1,400.

I began to feel the effects of a new breeze blowing from the audiobook publishing side of my work as the company I began with began to swell with dozens and dozens of narrators—many of them well-know voice and theater actors—and that assignments no longer were coming from the company’s staff, but, instead, were dependent on clients choosing from the company’s roster of narrators. 

I did open lines of communication with several other well-known and well-respected audiobook publishers, placing my biography and audio samples on their websites. But, as with my original publishing house, I realized I was going to have to up my game in order to rise to the level of being seriously considered for my narration. 

Without a solid track record of a hundred or more audiobooks, or name recognition, or a robust media presence, I was suddenly on the outside of the “most selected” box, and I was struggling to compete for any work at all from my publishing house. When that happens to any actor or creative person, the first feelings to crop up are feelings of inadequacy, of failure, of rejection and marginalization. 

I know those feelings all too well, having competed as a news photographer and writer for decades. My own grandfather, Charles Brackett, holder of four Academy Awards—two of them for “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Lost Weekend”—was stricken with self-doubt throughout his otherwise stellar film writing and producing career. How often he muttered to himself that he was a failure and wondered about his talents is recorded throughout his own diaries.

When those feelings, irrational as they may be, hit you in the face, they can sap every atom of confidence, spirit, and energy. I don’t know a serious artist in any field who has not faced those demons of doubt. Nonetheless, they can be debilitating, and the only cure is to drive on and look for new avenues that will take you to the next success.

At the beginning of this year, I signed up for the APA conference in New York City, a two-day networking and workshop event which set me back well over $1,000, including transportation, hotel, food, and conference fees. I viewed this expense, at the time, as a necessary investment in what was becoming a difficult and stressful career.

In 2018, I’d made a commitment to narrate “The 480,” by Eugene Burdick. “The 480” is a sweeping political novel published in 1965, that, to me, foreshadowed the political world of the Trump years and the 2020 election to come. I’d worked hard to secure the narration rights, connecting with the Burdick family (the rights holders), and various agents, to do justice to Mr. Burdick’s important work.

Sales banner for "The 480"

 It is not a particularly long audiobook (about 14 hours), but the characters ranges from Indians and Pakistanis to Filipinos and a variety of American from several parts of the country. Narrating male and female voices, in at least a dozen accents foreign and domestic was a huge challenge for me, and I did hire two very well-known voice coaches to see me through. I am grateful to Spoken Realms and Blackstone Publishing for agreeing to shepherd the project through to publication on Audible and many other audiobook outlets. 

By the time “The 480” was released on Audible in May of this year, I was exhausted and hoping that my attendance at the APA conference in New York would re-ignite my creative engine and crack open a door or two to other publishers or at least audiobook professionals whose experience and support would help guide me back to the Dungeon with a renewed sense of purpose. Regrettably, that was not to be.

The folks in New York were all very nice, energetic, and mutually supportive—of that there is no doubt. But the driving tone of the conference was decidedly market-oriented, that is, the emphasis was on how best to market oneself in order to meet the increasing demands of the audiobook marketplace. The more people I met, the more workshops I attended, the more material that was presented, the more I realized I was not in any way, shape, or form, made from the same cloth as those narrators who were consistently successful. 

Putting aside my own self-protection blinders, I saw that the paths most of these successful narrators were taking were paved with marketing skills, the ability to self-promote in many venues, intense focus on industry trends, networking and relationship building, and outreach via social media platforms. Within hours of leaving the conference—while sitting on the train back to Washington—I knew I did not have, nor would ever have, those paving stones leading to success in the audiobook industry.

For virtually all my professional life, going back to the late 1960s, I’ve been in jobs where maintaining a low profile was the key to success. News reporter and photojournalist, campaign consultant, Congressional aide, press secretary, defense advisor, government investigator, and, for the last 15 years of my career, cabinet-level speechwriter. All these jobs are best accomplished by keeping out of the spotlight—letting your client shine while you stay in the shadows. Without a doubt, a speechwriter at the highest levels (with a few notable exceptions) must consider his or her work to be a “silent profession” just as submariners are part of the “silent service.” We are not trained to toot our own horns, to herald our own work, to outshine our clients or even stand on the same stage with them. We are the unheard voices of others.

That “under the radar” personal perception of one’s work process is not conducive to success in an industry like audiobook narration when the goal is to be in the spotlight, to raise your hand at every possible moment, to say “Here I am, take me!” I know many fine audiobook narrators of all ages who are terrific self-promoters in their businesses as narrators without being overbearing or pains-in-the-ass in their personal lives, and I’d love to be one of them, but I realized on the train from NY to DC that I am simply not cut from that cloth, and, at 70, I have to come to terms with that.

Give me an assignment to narrate a book and I’ll do it and do it well—and that was the case in the first couple of years. But, if I have to promote myself, maintain a competitive website, hand out cards, knock on doors, put myself out there for inspection, sing my own praises (few as they are), and network like hell at conferences and workshops, well, I don’t have those tools ready at hand. Realizing that, after six years of working to be the best narrator I could be, will keep me from remaining a mediocre voice actor, and my head will be the better for it because I’ll stop banging it on so many walls.

Now the Dungeon has been returned to its original function—to be my art studio and writing den where watercolor still challenges me, where more than one book awaits my attention, and where being an artist and writer is pleasantly quiet and the solitude is welcome. 

Clouds after the storm. Watercolor

Mr. Trump, You Can't Handle The Truth

WASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters on Tuesday he does not plan to read the newly released transcripts of testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, calling the entire process an illegitimate "sham."

"I've written the whole process off," Graham said, according to CBS News and The Associated Press. "I think this is a bunch of B.S."

On top of that, Graham insists on outing the whistleblower who is, by law, protected from the kind of outing Graham envisions, an exposure that would certainly endanger the whistleblower’s career, if not his/her person and family. In his own weird version of quid pro quo, Graham says the impeachment hearings cannot continue unless the whistleblower is identified. Remarkable, consistently convoluted, thinking when when matched to the president’s insistence that military aid wouldn’t flow to Ukraine unless dirt on the Bidens was offered in return. I’ll give the Rs this much: they are remarkably consistent and convoluted when it comes to threats and thuggery.

The Republican strategy is clear: bully, obfuscate, deny, misdirect, vilify, shame, impugn, and call into question patriotic motives. They wrap themselves in the flag--as if it was a cloak woven with threads of self-righteous, self-styled manifest Conservative destiny. When all other arguments fail, or when no legitimate argument is to be had in the first place, such an ignoble embrace of patriotism is the latest desperate act for Republican scoundrels.

In the climactic courtroom scene in the 1992 movie, “A Few Good Men,” Tom Cruise, as Navy JAG lawyer Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, is defending two enlisted Marines charged with the murder of their Guantanamo Bay colleague, Corporal Santiago. Kaffee calls to the witness stand Marine Colonel Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson). Kaffee believes Jessup ordered a “Code Red” disciplinary action against Santiago—Code Red being a harsh form of hazing as punishment for poor conduct. Santiago died from a too-heavy-handed Code Red treatment by the two Marines who were carrying out the Colonel’s order, and Jessup and his subordinate officers attempted to cover up the order.

Jessup’s disdain for Kaffee is palpable throughout the film. Kaffee is a smart-mouth Harvard law grad with no combat experience, and little inclination (at the beginning of the movie) to take his military service as a JAG lawyer seriously. Jessup has no patience for Kaffee. In the courtroom, Jessup is a seething mass of self-anointed justice. In one of film-history’s most notable confrontations—and the uttering of a meme that will live forever—Kaffee presses Jessup about the Code Red order.

[Nicholson] Jessup: You want answers?!

[Cruise] Kaffee: I want the truth!

Jessup: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like "honor", "code", "loyalty". We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "thank you", and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to! 

Kaffee: Did you order the Code Red?

Jessup: I did the job that—-

Kaffee: Did you order the Code Red?!!

Jessup: YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!!

Now, I’ve often attached the word “hubris’ to the attitudes of leaders and others in power who step over the line between confidence and arrogance. To the Greeks, hubris was the fatal flaw of a tragic hero, a character whose cockiness turns reckless, offending the gods with his or her “I’m better than mere mortals” stage center self-importance. The gods invariably smack down the hero with a stark and painful reminder that mortality is the lot of all humans, no matter their station in life.

As I watched the first day of the impeachment hearings, concurrently considering the past three years of inane, but perfidious actions of the president and his band of enablers, the word hubris came to mind. I mean, how almost god-like do these people think they are? But then I flashed back to Colonel Jessup’s courtroom outbursts:

“You can't handle the truth!”

“Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!”

And then I listened to Lindsey Graham’s outburst,

"I've written the whole process off…I think this is a bunch of B.S.!"

Those aren’t words prompted by hubris, because Jessup’s and Graham’s characters lack one crucial attribute: they are not heroic—tragic or otherwise.

Jessup’s lines, like those bleatings of the House Republicans on the Intelligence Committee and across the building in the Senate, and down Pennsylvania Avenue in the White House, are not spoken by a hero. They come from the mouth of a failed mortal, a character who presumes that his judgment over life and death overrides his oath as a soldier—the same oath all of us in federal service take. The same oath Senator Graham took; the same oath Ambassador Taylor took—and yet how perverted did one oath become in comparison to the purity of the other?

Jack Nicholson’s character, Colonel Jessup, almost gets it right when he speaks of the need for men and women of quiet valor and ultimate patience who keep the watch over our democracy. 

“I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom…You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like "honor", "code", "loyalty". We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.”

It is true that we need our men and women in uniform to keep us safe, even when what they must sometimes do—and what can happen to them—is beyond our comprehension. That their commander-in-chief, and so many of his apologists in Congress cannot understand such service and sacrifice is appalling. Which brings me to Ambassador William Taylor.

As the son of a West Point graduate, I grew up watching “Duty, Honor, Country” inform every aspect of my father’s life—personal and professional. He and Ambassador Taylor—also a West Point graduate and combat veteran—were and are heroes. When I served on Capitol Hill and in the Executive Branch, I was privileged to meet and work alongside Medal of Honor recipients and men and women whose service in uniform resulted in terrible wounds. 

There were no Colonel Jessups among them; not one of them would have assumed a godlike role in the performance of their duties. It was their appreciation of their own mortality and the mortality of those they served that defined them. I saw much the same in Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, sitting patiently next to Ambassador Taylor, ready to take the arrows fired from the Committee’s Republicans.

Which brings me to the sorry motives and methods of the Republicans on the Committee and elsewhere throughout the Capitol and Capital CIty. As if infected by the madness of would-be-King Donald, they are prostrating themselves at his feet, bowing and scraping, as he calls for nothing less than the heads of those innocent federal employees who dare call out Trumpus-Tyrannus for his overt and divisive profligacy.

For three years, Americans have endured the cold, mean-spirited, rudderless reign of Trump. For three years, the Republican party has marched in lock-step to Trump’s disgraceful drumbeat of dastardly disingenuity.

Now the court of public opinion is in session, and through the impeachment process, we will see a truth emerge and prevail. It will be an inescapable truth, one that already has Trump squirming away from the witness seat. 

Mr. Trump, you may try to deceive others into believing that some self-twisted version of the truth will see you through this trial, but let me assure you: a very different truth is rising around you. You are no hubris-driven tragic hero who will be cut down by the gods. You are just a tragic figure, a small mortal sadly unaware of the smallness of his mortality and the bleakness of his soul. You will not be able to handle this truth.

That One Word Uttered By Trump, So Horrible, Calls For Bravery

“So yeah, this is a lynching in every sense,” Graham said at the Capitol. “This is un-American.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a black Democrat currently seeking his party’s presidential nomination, said on Twitter, “Lynching is an act of terror used to uphold white supremacy. Try again.”

And the list of those who were horrified, sickened, and outraged by the president’s “lynching” comment--and Lindsey Graham’s head-nodding and Jim Jordan’s dismissal--goes on and on. And it should.

My own reaction when I heard the president was to consider drawing a picture of the president, in a white hood, holding a rope with a noose around the Constitution. But then the coffee and reason kicked in, and I realized that it would probably be a very, very bad idea for a cartoon.

To be clear though, I, like many of my generation, grew up with the words “lynching” or “lynched” bandied about with either glee or snarls by certain members of our communities (my community at the time was northern Louisiana, not far from the scene of multiple crimes involving whippings, shootings, bombings, and lynchings).

The very word lynching brings an ache to my heart and a troubling vibration in my brain—a vertigo caused by the locked file cabinets of my memories being pried open by Trump and Graham and seeing, once again, the terrible photographs and graphic news stories of white-on-black atrocities spilling out.

Trump used that awful word less than a week after the death of Representative Elijah Cummings—a sharecropper’s son who rose from poverty and dedicated his life and congressional standing to heal and help the nation rise above the ever-present brutalities of racism in America.

What troubles me even more than the president’s use of the word lynching is the continued spinelessness of the men and women of the Republican party in the United States Senate—the “deliberative” body—of Congress. What in god’s name can a sad, sick, bitter, uneducated, dangerous failure of a human being like the president have that he can hold it over the heads of his party’s members and cow them all into silence?

Is the need to be re-elected so great, so personally empowering, such a Faustian bargain that not one Senator of leadership standing can say out loud, “This is wrong!”? I worked on the Hill for 14 years—in the House and the Senate, and I saw weakness in many offices, but I saw a lot of courage, too. That, clearly, was a time now lost in the coal-black mists of another age. Shame does not describe the feelings the silent lambs of Capitol Hill should be feeling. Shame is not enough.

As my always more thoughtful wife suggested, what is needed now are loudspeakers positioned in every corner of the Capitol building, and in the Congressional office buildings, and from those speakers, at maximum volume, should come the words of songwriters Jack Antonoff and singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles, from “Brave”:

“Innocence, your history of silence

Won't do you any good

Did you think it would?

Let your words be anything but empty

Why don't you tell them the truth?

Say what you wanna say

And let the words fall out

Honestly I wanna see you be brave

With what you want to say

And let the words fall out

Honestly I wanna see you be brave”

Be especially brave when you hear the word lynching…be brave and rid us of our foul-mouthed national nightmare.