Abused by Trump? Sorry, No Tears for You

Over the past four years, we have watched more than just a presidency implode; we have watched an almost endless stream of men and women bend over, exposing their moral and ethical backsides to Trump, and take his abuse over and over and over, with nary an expression of discomfort at the assault on their humanity (or whatever shreds of it remain).

I remain totally baffled by the eagerness with which those men and women—many of them once-respected members of university faculty, corporate leaders, long-time public servants—refuse to walk away from such untenable positions having, in my opinion, made the terrible error to take their appointed shovels with the sole duty of mucking out the Trumpian stables.

What we witnessed in four years is unfathomable degrees of willing desire to take on such abuse as would, in any domestic situation, ring alarm bells triggered by inhumane emotional destruction and torment. I truly believe that. And yet, time after time, Tweet after Tweet, Trump assaults his appointees, his political party faithful, his judges, his country and our Constitution with the vilest of lies, the darkest of innuendoes, the wickedest of gaslight, and the heaviest of greasy conspiratorial chains. And he keeps on with his Torquemada reign of terror despite (or perhaps because of) the dwindling time left to him to extract the last ounce of vengeance against his known and unknown enemies.

And yet…and yet…no hand of reason or justice has yet to reach out to him and stay his irrational, destructive, insane behavior. Not one hand among all those who have had the power to do so. Not one. Instead, those who might have had any chance of turning Trump’s headlong rush toward national impalement on spears of lies, deceit, and calumny have done nothing. No…they have done worse than nothing: they have taking up his fiery rakes of racist rhetoric and political division and spread his Augean manure over every social norm they could find.

What I don’t get in all of this is how…is why…any man or woman who once stood outside the system in their otherwise normal roles as citizens dealing with all the day-to--day routines that occupy most of us would, for a moment, allow themselves to become slavering, servile, sycophants to a clearly deranged, totally unhinged man like Trump?

Is holding on to a Senate seat that important? No. Is a White House title more impressive than any other form of meaningful work? No. Is Washington DC the be-all-end-all? No. It’s just a placeholder, a lovely town when you’re not beholden to any one ideal or any one abuser.

So what if Trump throws a tantrum, or threatens, or blackmails? So what? Take a walk and let the chips fall where they may in your life.

Speaking only for myself (though I hope many of my friends and colleagues are with me on this), if any employer, no matter how elevated in title, verbally abused me, socially embarrassed me, or otherwise hung me out to dry in full public view, I would be out of that building as soon as I could collect my thoughts and take my family photos off my desk. I also like to think I never would have taken a job for such a boss in the first place.

I know that last paragraph to be true because I left government service for just such a reason—under similar circumstances. In all my 35 years as a federal employee—on the Hill and in the Executive Branch—I had only three employers who either openly mistreated their staff or privately sought to undermine certain employees.

One was a U.S Representative from Florida whose insensitivity to the personal crises of his staff made my choice to leave a very easy and sensible one.

The second was a Cabinet secretary whose personal desire to embarrass me in public was so effective I had to be hospitalized.

The third was a special assistant to a Cabinet secretary who, by dint of his need to prove his superior position, not only caused me substantial legal debts in order to fend off his attacks, but, in the end, with a single insult spread across the office email, caused me to stop what I was doing and type out my resignation from that Department and the federal government. I never looked back, and never felt I’d made the wrong decision.

Abuse is abuse is abuse. And if you stand for it once, you will stand for it over and over and over. Until your moral and ethical bones are picked clean by your tormentors. And the skeletal remains that were once you will find it most difficult to re-flesh yourself in any sort of skin of pride or dignity.

So it will be for those below ground creatures who chose to stick with Trump until the bitter end. From Mitch McConnell to Lindsey Graham to Kayleigh McEnany to the 126 Members of Congress who chose a despot over democracy, they will eventually discover that their choices to endure abuse and wreak abuse upon others will consign them to the boneyard of lost souls. Many were the times they were shown the exit signs but chose to stay; many were the times they went home scalded by their dear leader, but rose again the next morning, ready to put their hands in the boiling pot once more; many were the times they faced their demons and decided to live with them…consort with them…rather than cast them out.

The push broom of history will soon sweep away their names and the motes of dust that remain will settle underfoot of the ceaseless and unblinking parade of time.

A Mighty Force For Peace--A Veterans Day Must-Read

In 2000, when I was 51, Rob Branting, a young man from Lincoln, Nebraska, had just turned 15. The flip of the numbers of our ages 20 years ago is more than just an idle curiosity...it signifies the spread of years between us and a place we both love--one of us loving it for having lived in that place when it represented one of the front lines of the Cold War, and one of us discovering that place--uncovering that place, really--out of the mists of a bygone era and making it live again, if only on paper and in the hearts of the remaining few of us who lived in that halcyon time.

The place I loved, the place Rob resurrected for my memory and for the memories of so many other men and women who are now, ourselves, fading in the grass, was Lincoln Air Force Base, a living, breathing, beautiful bastion of Cold War power placed deep in the heart of our country. The remains of the base which sparked Rob's imagination and caused him to embark on a 20-year journey to capture every historical and human interest detail about the base, were not remains to me when I was 15...it was alive then, it was a part of me and I of it.

It is no secret to my family and lifelong friends that I have had an ongoing love affair with the Lincoln AFB I knew as a teenager, the air base that was washed blue-white under the vast Nebraska skies, the base where grasshoppers the size of your hand would cling to the window screens on hot summer days, the base where towering lines of thunderstorms a hundred miles to the west could be seen marching toward the state capitol with its golden dome and sower statue visible from the back yard of my house.

But it was also a base where B-47 flight crews waited on around-the-clock alert for the first signs of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was a base that supported the men who waited deep underground at the missile sites scattered across the Nebraska plains...knowing that when the order came to insert their keys and launch their Atlas missiles, there would be no base to come home to, nor any family left to mourn them.

It was a base where everyday family life tried hard to be normal, but which we all knew was still a base capable of visiting great destruction on our counterpart families half-way around the world. Conversely, we also knew that once the klaxons blared a true warning, and the planes took off, and the missiles departed their hiding holes, no duck-and-cover drill would save us from the pure white flashes sure to come in about 20 minutes. 

So many memories; so many images; so much love for a place that has been transformed and moved on. 

Yesterday, I received two copies of Rob's wonderful book, "A Mighty Force for Peace: A History of the Former Lincoln Air Force Base." 

In one of the books, Rob wrote, "Jim, It has been an honor to help preserve the history that your father contributed so much to. Thank you."  No, Rob...Thank you.

I cannot praise Rob enough for this thorough, insightful book. He honors thousands of men and women whom he never knew--was not alive to know at the peak of our journey--and as Veterans Day approaches, I can't think of a better volume of military history to read than this one. Rob dedicates the book to his late father, a Vietnam veteran who encouraged Rob to take this trip into Lincoln's history.

On the cover of the book is a photograph of a B-47 Stratojet lifting off from Lincoln's 12,000' runway, on its last flight in the service of peace. There is a man in uniform saluting that B-47. He is my dad, Colonel Clifford James Moore, Jr, at the time the commander of the 98th Strategic Aerospace Wing, an arm of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). 

SAC had sent Pop to Lincoln once before, in 1961, when he became the base commander. We left for a tour of duty at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, and then returned to Lincoln in 1965 when my dad took command of the 98th SAW, with the orders to close the base by 1966. It was a bittersweet tour, that one. 

As we celebrate Veterans Day tomorrow, let us give thanks once again to the men and women who preserved our freedoms in the heat of combat, or in the loneliness of a missile silo, or beneath the waves in submarines. I will be giving special thanks to the Cold War warriors who stood the lonely night watch around the country at bases like Lincoln and on US bases around the world so that the rest of us could sleep in peace.

I will give Rob Branting the final word, from his book:

"The veterans of Lincoln Air Force Base around me were not as historically celebrated in books and magazines as the veterans of World War II. It seemed funny considering that their work during the Cold War, in my mind, deserved a great deal of respect and understanding than what seemed to exist at the time. Such movies as The Battle of the Bulge, Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, among the others that celebrated the heroism of World War II. Any movie pertaining to World War III, like the Terminator series, On the Beach, and The Day After, portrays a nuclear exchange in nightmarish terms, and rightfully so. To many veterans of the Cold War, the whole point was to avoid a new world war, and some credit should be given to them."

Rob Branting has done just that, and A Mighty Force for Peace is a gift to all of us who will never forget the service, sacrifice, and honor of those who have worn the nation's uniform.

Trump and the Transition, a Drama Straight from Macbeth

 I think it’s fair to say that most Americans—and, frankly, most citizens of the world with access to some degree of news and information—are glad the 2020 election is, for the most part, all over but for the sore-loser shouting “Stolen election!” 

As I write this, on the Monday after the election was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Trump administration (really, mostly Trump himself) is doing its best to throw a wrench in the works and prevent the Biden transition team from getting underway with what has, until now, been a very orderly changing of the guard. I have been a part of transition teams, and I’ve been a part of planning presidential inaugurations, so I know very well what must be done in the two short months between now and Noon, January 20, 2021.

The Trump people know as well that a systematic review and exchange of bureaucratic protocols between now and the inauguration is critical to the incoming president’s administration’s ability to take the reins the moment Joe Biden completes his oath of office. The simple fact of the matter is that Trump just doesn’t want Joe to ride that horse…ever. And he cannot stand knowing that he will, in the end, lose out to the forces of power in Washington that will assure Mr. Biden’s place behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

I can promise Mr. Trump right now that even his Republican party stalwarts in the Senate will ultimately come down on the side of transition—they have no choice. The Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC), the Military District of Washington (MDW), the Senate and House leadership, and the House and Senate press galleries will press down harder and harder every day in order to get the show on the road, and if Trump stands in the way much longer, he will be trampled by destiny and a lot of pissed off people.

If there is any one in leadership who has the ability to shake Trump free of his hatred for Biden (and, really, let’s be clear, Obama), I commend them to read Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 7, in which Macbeth, contemplating the assassination of Duncan, says,

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips.

What Shakespeare is saying here is that the evil you wish on others will become the evil you will one day visit upon yourself. 

As Macbeth continues his inspection of the plot to kill Duncan, he admits that as much as he wants to do the terrible deed and do it quickly, justice will find him out, and his end will come as a result of his own plot to advance his ambition:

Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on the other.

If there is any difference between Trump and Macbeth, it is that Macbeth at least recognized Duncan (Biden) as a good and capable man (which impressed Macbeth as much as Biden’s character galls Trump), and it is Duncan’s goodness of heart which tears at Macbeth in his soliloquy. Ah, but ambition hath its peril, eh, Trump?

Through his intense hatred of all things related to Obama, now transmogrified by election into Biden, Trump is desperate to do the worst he can to Biden—which, while thankfully is not assassination (though other, rougher actors spurred on by Trump, do imagine that device), still consists of a half-baked plan to hinder Biden’s lawful succession by whatever means available to him, including withholding orders (and money) for the transition, and by firing key players in the Trump administration, making the transition even more difficult.

In the end, even if there was someone who could impart the meaning of Macbeth to Trump, there is still Trump…who cares nothing of Shakespeare and would refuse to believe parallels to Trump and his family so often found in the Bard’s works.

Trump will fight the forces arrayed against him for as long as he can (beware Act 5, Scene 8, Don…and be glad there is no Macduff in this fight you are going to lose), and Biden’s folks will eventually get on with the transition and prepare for January 20 with or without the Trump administration’s help.

Exeunt Trump.

We Will Turn You Off on November 3

To the Stage Crew of Trump’s latest performance:

There will be no glory in saying, “I worked in Donald Trump’s administration.” There will be no civic adulation, no honorary degrees awarded, no thanks from a grateful nation, no corner offices earned through the honest labors of one’s work or as a reward for making the world a better place. No. Those gifts of appreciation will not automatically attach to the futures of the majority of men and women who, quite wittingly, continue to enable the 45th president of the United States to flimflam, bamboozle, and hoodwink his way to the top of the greasy pole of his bizarre Faustian ambition. 

To be complicit in Donald Trump’s selfish aims (I am also speaking to you fearful physicians) is to be fully aware that one’s participation in his madness is contributing to the national and global perception that the United States has fallen on exceedingly hard times. Thanks to you who are Trump’s suckups and “yes” bleating sheep, America is the ragged, wine-soaked, stained-pants, misbegotten bum in the gutter of the world.

We would be the laughingstock of our allies if we weren’t so pathetically compliant in being led toward moral oblivion by a reckless, inhumane bully and crook, a ruthless villain for whom the deaths of 210,000 Americans means absolutely nothing. We are beyond the comedy club stage. To the rest of the world, we are approaching the doors of the asylum reserved the certifiably insane for whom there is no redemptive treatment. 

Last week, when Marine One touched down on the South Lawn in response to the alleged Covid-inspired cri de coeur from Mr. Trump’s staff to the physicians at Walter Reed Medical Center, American’s paused to watch for the rush of personnel hustling the president on board in order that he be whisked away with all possible dispatch.

I didn’t. I took a look at the time, which was approaching the prime news cycle; I noticed that the helicopter’s rotors had slowed to a halt and Marine One simply became an idling set-piece against a Potemkin White House; I noticed that there were no signs of urgency attending the moment. And I turned to my wife and said, “This is a setup.”

Sure enough, as the minutes ticked by, we were eventually rewarded with a video message from the allegedly sick president, assuring us all that he was on his way to Walter Reed out of an abundance of caution.

Then, and only then, did Marine One’s rotors begin churning and we were granted a glimpse of the scoundrel in chief trudging toward the awaiting helicopter, our brave obese hero, saluting the Marine guard, bravely entering the cabin while the evening’s optics proved nearly perfect for a shot of the helicopter lifting off and winging our suffering leader toward Bethesda. Give. Me. A. Break.

In only got worse from there. One of the greatest examples of medical malpractice I have ever witnessed—and was so angered to watch—were the “briefings” by the phalanx of doctors who were trotted out on the Medical Center’s plaza to attest to Trump’s wonderful health, his upbeat attitude, his desire to keep on working, his treatment of a triple round of medicines so unavailable to the average Covid patient as to be statistical decimal dust when compared to the normal regimen of care for anyone else…anywhere! If “liar, liar pants on fire” were ever to come true, Walter Reed’s presidential suite would be ashes by now. 

How dare they? How dare any physician worthy of his or her Hippocratic oath stand in front of the world press and vomit the bile of mistruths and misdirections when they knew all along they were being played right from the start by an insane president? How can any one doctor—much less a team of doctors—be corralled into cowering compliance with the perverted wishes of a man who cares nothing—zero, zip, zed, nada—about anyone else?

Did not even one of those physicians think for a moment about all the victims of the coronavirus who have no comparable access to the kind of “care” the president was insisting on? Did not one of the physicians consider the immorality, the lack of ethics, the deficit of humanity that Trump was displaying during his “drive by” for his adoring fans arrayed along Rockville Pike with their bullhorns and flags? Did anyone say “No, Mr. President?” Of. Course. Not. Nobody ever says no to Donald Trump.

So it was no surprise to this writer that Monday’s top-of-the-news-cycle homecoming flight and walk up the steps and the flag-flanked waving from the White House balcony (sans mask) signaled the renewed onslaught of Trump as savior of his flock and enemy of the State. 

And therein lies one of the greatest mysteries in American politics. How so many people who work in the White House and its many agencies and who sit in the Congress have had their personal morality dials tuned to the cowardice setting.

Do they really think there is a reward so great awaiting them in the post-Trump years of their lives that they willingly sell their souls for this charlatan? Do they honestly believe that all the damage they are doing domestically and internationally at Trump’s irrational behest, has long-term value to the good of the world? Do they have no sense of decency? 

There is no glory in working to tear down the pillars of humanity; there is no reward offered to those who follow tyrants into the abyss; there is no redemption for those who give up whatever virtue they might have had in order to advance the madness of a strutting 21st Century Il Duce. 

On November 3 those of us who believe in rescuing an idea that is greater than our own ambitions will choose to turn away from the madness and those who fuel it. We will turn you out. We will turn you off.

Ginsburg's Death, Donald's Gain

 

An already imperiled nation is on Trump’s chopping block

Master of the Universe (Illustration by William Rotsaert)

Trump wins

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the final veil between president Trump and his adoring public has been lifted; he no longer needs to even pretend to woo them as their savior.

Now he gets what he’s always wanted

Before Justice Ginsburg’s body has cooled and the celebrations of her vast contributions begin, Trump turned away from her dying plea, and readied his troops for the fight he has longed to wage — the battle to dismantle all that is left of an already Trump-tattered Republic. Now he can, in full, proud, and unrepentant voice, claim the summit of his darkest ambitions: a raw, soulless peak from which he can view the wreckage of an America he has long hated.

Now he can openly revel in the coarse attributes of which he is most proud:

• his oafishness;
• his dishonesty;
• his misogyny;
• his brutishness;
• his inarticulateness;
• his ignorance;
• his racism;
• his disrespect for intellect, rank, forthrightness and courage;
• his dismissal of heroes and the nation’s fallen warriors
• his predilection toward immorality and familial creepiness;
• his total lack of empathy for the downtrodden, disabled, different, poor, damaged, and lost;
• his fondness for fictitious narratives and absurd plots and myths
• his inability to comprehend the possibility that there is suffering in the world;
• his wont to place his family in high government seats of power while they continue to reap the benefits of the Trump Organization;
• his insane consistency in handing out key Cabinet and agency roles to crooks, shysters, scammers, schemers, and idiots;
• his disdain, disparagement, and death wishes for the national media.

And that is just the short list.

No time to mourn RGB without Trump’s distractions

The nation will have no time to mourn the passing of one of the mightiest role models our children could ever have because Trump will find ways to swirl the already turbid waters of his administration with new outrageous claims, new lies, new denouncements, new false Great this and new false Great that.

He now has an open field upon which to array his followers as a hypnotized army of “Trump the God Who Leads Us Into the Valley of the Shadow of Donald,” from which there are no still waters, nothing to restore their souls, no paths of righteousness. Only Donald’s cup runneth over, you misbegotten army of Kool-Aid drinkers, only you don’t know it yet.

An October surprise is on the horizon

Do not be surprised, then, when, before election day, Trump, in league with Mitch McConnell, has managed to wrangle a successful nomination and Senate vote of a far right justice to tarnish the seat occupied by the irreplaceable Ruth Bader Ginsburg…to Trump, there is no glory in being kind of heart, pure of motive, beloved, revered, and caring.

For Trump, Ginsburg’s death is only a portal through the looking glass into a land of soulless aspirations.

What a Small Pile of Receipts Told Me About a Father-Son Trip to Aspen

 

What Our Late Parents Leave Behind Can Tell Us Just How Much They Enjoyed Our Company

Jim Moore

A receipt from a ski shop in Boulder

An unearthed paper trail tells a tale

A father-son trip more memorable to him than I knew

Parents can find ways to surprise you even when they are gone…have been gone for many years.

Case in point: In the process of going through family records and various documents to support a book I’m writing, I found a small stack of receipts and lined note paper with accounting notes that my father organized after a trip he and I took to Aspen, Colorado, in late March into early April 1969. He’d flown out to see me at school in Boulder, where we rented skis, boots, poles, and a roof rack for the rental car he’d picked up at the Denver airport.

My father’s rental car receipt for the Aspen trip. Remember, these are 1969 prices

A former World War II fighter pilot and then a Strategic Air Command (SAC) bomber pilot, Pop was still on active duty in the Air Force, working at the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) across from the Pentagon. I was beginning my sophomore year at the University of Colorado, and, according to the receipts, I was living in the Baker Hall dorm on campus (room 181). The dates of the trip’s receipts fall just before my 20th birthday (May 5), and though I’d forgotten the timing of his visit, it appears to have been an early birthday present in the form of a father-son ski trip.

Why did he keep these particular records?

What I find fascinating and, frankly, quite emotionally tinged 17 years after his death in February, 2003, is that he kept these particular records for so many years. The trip was special to both of us for several reasons — more extensive than I’ll go into here — but it closed a loop of father-son trips he and I took.

Our road history began with a life-altering (for me) cross-country driving trip he and I took from Lincoln, Nebraska to Colorado Springs in May of 1963 (shortly after my 14th birthday) to compete in the Air Force skeet championships (we both won in our respective classes, and I still keep the little trophy I picked up from that journey).

Lessons from the driver’s seat

On that trip, my father kept the conversation going by describing the geology we were passing over and through as we made our way across the Great Plains and crossed into Colorado. He told me about the inland sea that covered much of the mid-North American continent, and pointed out the layers of rock exposed by the Interstate Highway builders as they cut through the rolling hills of western Nebraska.

After we slipped across the Colorado border, he pointed out the gentle rise of the terrain, and had me on the lookout for rocky outcrops jutting out of the ground paralleling the highway — they were the sentinels of the Front Range of the Rockies soon to appear as a soft white smudge on the horizon.

That first father-son road trip was part exploration, part education, part wonder, and part sharing; a long-distance drive that was all a fourteen-year-old kid could ever want.

Times and circumstances changed

Plans and adventures get shelved despite our best intentions

Jump forward six years from 1963 — turbulent years for the family as we left SAC in 1965 and moved back here to Virginia and tried to settle into a less peripatetic life that had been common to flight-status Air Force families. Among the routines that were set aside were our father-son trips which Pop’s Pentagon and IDA jobs — too classified for him to discuss, or for me to understand until I was much older.

I headed to Boulder in June of ’68 to get an early start at the University. I took up skiing again when the winter came. I say again, because during Pop’s tour of duty in Europe in the 1950s, the whole family did the skiing bit down in Switzerland and Austria. Once we came back to the U.S. in 1960, SAC had Pop stationed in non-mountainous states, so the family skiing came to a halt. Until pop flew to Colorado in the spring of ’69 ($47.25 from Baltimore to Denver. It seems he was able to use a military discount).

A bittersweet discovery in a small pile of papers

My father’s final accounting for the Aspen trip

The receipts of the Aspen trip brought back the details I’d forgotten. We rented skis — K2s for me, Heads for him ($47.77 combined). We stayed at the Smuggler Lodge in Aspen (I remember going into the heated pool at night, with the outside temps still in the 30s and mist rising off the pool and our bodies as we swam)…and more memories unfolded as I went through each onion-skin-thin credit card receipt.

View from one of the Aspen Mountain lifts. (photo by author)

The spring snow conditions were wonderful — Pop had never skied deep powder or basins — and we must have skied everything but the double diamonds ($140 lift tickets for two for the week). We ate at the Copper Kettle ($21.74), at the Chalet ($10.29), and at the Toklat restaurant on Main Street ($15.34).

The Toklat restaurant in Aspen as it looked in 1962, seven years before my dad and I ate there (Aspen Historical Society photo)

Our trip was cut short after Pop took a fall on the upper slopes of Ajax Mountain, twisting his knees, and refusing (typically, maddeningly stoic) help from the Ski Patrol. The morning after the fall he was in pain and his knees were a mess, so I got him into the car and we drove back to Boulder. On his last night there, we had dinner at the Greenbriar Inn ($26.70).

The Greenbriar Inn, Boulder, CO. (Photo from Greenbriar Inn)

The next morning, I drove him to Denver where he got the first plane back to DC ($47.25, Denver to Baltimore, according to the airline receipt). A bittersweet ending to a lovely, happy father-son trip.

My point, and I have one…

Anyway…the point of this little missive is to note that while it may seem like parents don’t always treasure every moment of their children’s lives, they can leave behind small treasures they held dear — albeit quietly — that reminded them of the good times they had. For me, it’s not just the Boulder-Aspen trip receipts that are examples of a father’s treasures.

A scrapbook recording a son’s early career

It wasn’t until after he died that I found a scrapbook he’d kept of all my early newspaper photos and stories. I never knew — he didn’t say a thing, just collected them and affixed them to the pages of the leather-bound album.

I’m sure my encounters with my dad’s collections of his son’s life and the times he and I shared are not unique — I’d be willing to bet that many of you have discovered similar personal treasures uncovered too late to talk about, but not too late to embrace and relive so many years later. Yep. They can still surprise you. Gotta love that.

My dad and me on my wedding day in 1971, two years after the Aspen trip

Comforting the Afflicted While Afflicting the Comfortable

Afflicting the Comfortable is This Writer’s Duty

Shutterstock

Introducing Mr. Martin Dooley

In October, 1893, Chicago Evening Post journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne created a newspaper column written by the fictitious Irish bartender, Mr. Martin Dooley, a Dunne avatar whose jabs and barbs, witticisms and knife-edged humor skewered the political elite, and discomfited the socially well-to-do.

I first began reading Mr. Dooley’s 750-word columns when I was a teenager in high school here in Virginia in the late 1960s. As a kid raised by a mother whose biting editorial lashings took deadly aim at local politicians she accused of malpractice when it came to county politics, budgets, road maintenance, health care facilities, and various restrictive land-use ordinances, I appreciated to no end Mr. Dooley’s rotten-apple-coring observations written half-a-century before my birth.

Perhaps the most famous Dooleyism is this one, pulled from a larger paragraph, but nonetheless getting to the heart of what we as journalists see as our founding principle:

“The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

A bit of cheek and the sting of skepticism

Now, in all fairness to accuracy of context, Dooley — and by inference, Dunne — was not exactly championing the news media of his day. The complete paragraph is this:

“Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.”

If you think about it, if you give it a bit of a cynical 21st century spin, you could almost infer that Dooley/Dunne was speaking of the newspaper as Donald Trump might…as Steven Miller might…as Kayleigh McEneny might, as any number of high-profile conservative politicians and right-wing media heads might.

The media as the lie-spouting enemy

To the single-minded, one track, red-hat-wearing subculture of our society, Dooley had it right. In their minds, the newspapers — the mainstream news media in general — have taken control of the public’s right to think for themselves, to measure facts against hearsay, to judge right from wrong.

And if you were to interpret the whole of Dooley’s paragraph that way, you are likely falling for the gaslighting propaganda flowing out of the White House, the Senate, and the conservative media and right-wing MAGAphones that want you to think that way.

But that was not Dunne/Dooley’s point at all. Dooley was taking direct aim at just those people who believed that the media was corrupt, that newspapers lie, that editors were in cahoots with the Robber Barons and the power mongers.

Earning the public trust is hard but necessary

It is the job of journalists to get it right

What Dooley was getting at is that newspapers must earn the public trust by standing with the public against the winds of conceit and money and self-aggrandizing behavior and shameful politics.

Dooley’s satirical take on the media was nothing less than a reminder to reporters and editors that the true meaning of their work was to raise public awareness of the ills and lies being foisted on society by elected officials, the monied elite, the holier-than-thou preachers of eugenics, America First, the rape of the land, and corrupt government as in loco parentis.

In this time of an escalating pandemic, anemic Congressional diddling, unfathomably dangerous and unhinged presidential blather, race baiting, unwelcome and camouflaged federal police, science denying, intellect-shaming, environment gutting, and society-splitting behavior, the last hope Americans have to understand the full scope of the disasters facing us is a free and rigorously questioning news media.

One is never too old to write

Although I am no longer an active member of the credentialed media, I still consider myself a member of that profession as blogger, a writer for Medium, and a frequent poster (some would say, not incorrectly, a scold) on social media.

In this role as a writer on the periphery, a writer — a common citizen — I am no less attentive to the principles of journalistic comportment than I was when I was an active writer and photojournalist. I have watched with increasing alarm and profound sadness at the decline of political and social comity, which present, as physicians would say, with symptoms verging on systemic collapse.

America is in the ICU

The last thing we need is to be intubated for our failings

America is in an ICU, and we are not far from an intubation from which we may never recover.

Wanton ignorance of Covid-19’s merciless march across America (and the world); reckless regard for the heath of the young, the sick, the elderly, the immunocompromised, teachers, grandparents; and the economically squeezed single mothers and fathers (and grandparents acting as parents) who have little or no margins for personal distancing and no health care to speak of…the list of the vulnerable is long, and the list of the stupid and uncaring seems longer still.

Three diseases are infecting us

Statues of division

Statues representing a war and way of life some still see as a personal or generational loss of plantation entitlement are being torn down. And that is a good thing. But in that act of removal, those bronze icons of bellicose distinction and elevated reminders of enslavement are being replaced by extrajudicial posses of armed men and women whose irrighteous indignation at being marginalized by history has not been assuaged by the passage of time and the rise of a society that does not see things their way.

They wrap themselves in flags of irrelevance and sling bandoleers of bullets across their pride-swollen and pretend soldier chests. To what end? To intimidate? To protect us from ourselves? To remind Black America that the South could rise again? To work the will of an administration that is itself quite ready to deputize these roving bands of lost-cause misfits? I suspect some of all of the above applies.

The planet is warming.

I don’t need to cite statistics that are readily available to all who fear for Earth’s ability to sustain human activity. Most of us know that we have only the narrowest of windows in which to act to at least slow the oncoming heat storm and rising tides that threatens my grandchildren and their children…your children, your grandchildren. And yet, while the Earth burns and the waters flood our urban shores, our leaders dither and doubt, ignore or refute the science, and in their maddening reluctance to act, condemn us and our future kin to a hellish and desolate landscape surrounded by plundered and dying oceans.

The Congress

That collection of self-serving, tit-of-the-public-sucking alleged representatives of the people…is so engaged in partisan sneering, name-calling, and internecine warfare, that they are willing to settle for a Pyrrhic outcome rather than tend unselfishly to the needs of citizens for whom $600 per week means food on the table and some modicum of dignity when facing debt collectors. I worked on Capitol Hill long enough to see just how the pork is ground up and distributed to those with the loudest voices, and how the pigs’ snouts, tails, and entrails wind up on the plates of the most needy.

And so I wrote

With that point of view, exacerbated by the uptick in Trumpian tweets about ballot fraud, election delay, and doubt about the legitimacy of the election that will be held November 3, I penned a Facebook note in the late night hours of July 31, three short months before voters either head to the polls or mail in their ballots.

I wrote, “I’m not a violent man…but if I had but one wish, should tonight be my last night, I would wish for a mass die-off of all Trump supporters and all who don’t believe in masks. They are invasive weeds of ignorance, sycophancy, racism, and xenophobia, nothing more than kudzu-like species of the worst plants of mankind. No rational thought occupies their vacuous brains, no reasonable consideration for the mortality of their vulnerable neighbors — young and old — can move them off their ancient statues to lost causes. Their leader is a buffoon, a less than pitiable minor character in a play about fools and idiots. Be gone with them. Vote in November. In person if you can, but vote, vote, vote.

Swift reaction

To which several of my FB friends — surprised at the vehemence of my post — replied:

• I’m sorry — I simply will not wish death on the people who attended the funeral of John Lewis and didn’t practice social distancing or wear a mask.
• Jim — I have great respect for you, but in saying what you just posted, aren’t you becoming like them? Sorry to see.
• I really wish people would stop saying this. They put other people in harm’s way too. Those people don’t deserve to die because of Trumpers ignorance.
• I wish No One ill.

A measured response

Given these and some on-the-side messages questioning my moral center, I penned an explanatory note just to relieve my friends of the notion that I would countenance real harm to anyone.

If anything, my intent was to resurrect the spirit of Mr. Dooley and afflict those who are comfortable with the deterioration of life in American, and comfort those who still believe there is hope for us if we do the right thing…which begins with voting.

My Facebook post had nothing to do with John Lewis or his advocates — of which I am one. I watched every minute of his funeral, and most of the congregation did wear masks. For those who did not, I can only hope they will not test positive. But I hold no animus toward them.

My statement…my visceral reaction…is directed at those Trump followers and misguided people who cannot, will not, see what damage to the underlying fabric of basic social decency and democratic ideals writ large.

Not a death wish

Of course I don’t wish actual death on any person; I do however refuse to mourn for the selfish crowds who gather, maskless, in defiance of science, or for the individuals who have no conscience about exposing children, the elderly, the most vulnerable simply because they reject the medical evidence and adhere blindly to the childlike tantrums tweeted out from Trump.

Your right to vote for Trump does not entitle you to threaten my right to vote against him

There are millions of voters who support Trump, support to which they are completely entitled. I don’t quarrel with any American’s informed and measured political choice, and I won’t be drawn into an argument in which micro-distinctions are posited to prove the error of my initial observation. Of course there are Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, gays, deeply religious people, well-educated people, etc., who voted for Trump and who will vote for him again. Fine. That is their right.

Again, my anger, frustration, and dismay are focused on those Trump followers whose belief system is not self-informed and logically measured by fact, comparative analysis, and reason. Just because Trump or Steven Miller, or Hannity, or Carlson espouses some whackadoodle course of action, or demeans or casts doubt on scientists and physicians, does not mean their words are sacred.

Just because they continue to hold grudges against Hillary and Obama, or they simply dont like Joe Biden, is no excuse for putting people around them in jeopardy, or for espousing unsubstantiated medical treatments, or for pressing for schools to reopen in those communities where the risk of Covid-19 is still real.

The truth is not a shield against entrenched ignorance

I could go on with more examples of what I alone may believe are clear and present dangers to the country’s political foundation and operations But in doing so, I know that for every point I make, no matter how well founded in statistics, direct quotes, recorded actions, there will be a refutation thrown at me. There will be suggestions that I am simply a left wing, hyper progressive, sour-grapes advocate for Trump’s defeat. That is a sign that Trump is winning the battle for the hearts and minds of those who care nothing for facts and everything for a return to a Neolithic age of tribalism.

We are all frustrated and unsettled

My hyperbolic statement was rooted in a frustration and deep-seated fear that a portion of Trump followers, science deniers, far-right advocates of government overthrow, and irrational followers of fact-twisting conservative media darlings will find a way to supress or taint the 2020 election and tear asunder the already fragile fabric of our democracy.

An object lesson in the penalties for speaking truth

A school project meets administrative resistance

In 1967–68 at Wakefield high school here in Northern Virginia, I wrote and produced an 8mm film for English seminar titled A Whiter Shade of Black. It was about interracial dating, and it featured a few of our white and African American classmates. The film was my way of calling out the hatred and distrust and malign attitudes about the beauty of loving one another regardless of race.

In one particularly offensive (to the school’s administrators) scene, I had a white girl walk across the student quadrangle, holding hands with an African American male. I shot their walk from several angles, showing the faces of groups of students who were watching the couple. In one shot, the students who were watching, saw just the couple — a boy and a girl holding hands, looking happy. In another shot, the students saw the girl walking a black poodle on a long leash, and I’d directed those students to sneer and mouth profanities.

A dose of reality

I was called into the office shortly before the film was to be shown at an assembly and told it was not suitable for screening…it was too volatile. I was allowed to keep the A for my work, but the film itself never saw the light of day.

It was an admittedly heavy-handed way of bringing out the racial animosities that existed in the 1960s, and it succeeded inasmuch as it was banned by the administration. And this was at a school known for its liberal makeup and progressive curriculum.

Dooley is still right

My history as an advocate for civil and human and animal rights spans more than half a century. Over that time I have worked for House and Senate members of both parties, have worked for presidents and cabinet secretaries of both parties, voted for Rs and Ds and Independents.

I don’t take my right to vote for granted, any more than I took my multiple oaths as a civil servant for granted. I care deeply for the republic and for the vote, and when I see any movement that willfully, with malign intent, seeks to cast seeds of doubt among an already anxious electorate, I will call out those who are doing the gaslighting and trolling.

Martin Dooley’s advice to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable holds as true for me today as it did for Finley Peter Dunne in the 19th century. In my opinion, informed if by nothing other than my conscience, my job as an observer and chronicler of the 21st century scene is to speak the inconvenient truths, to turn over the slimy stones of politics, to call out the liars and charlatans who inhabit high offices or the back alleys of nonsensical farces, of which there are far too many in our country today.

Every person can do something, even if no one person can do everything. My something is speaking out and voting. And come November 3, I am confident that I will be joined by millions of my fellow Americans who will not be dissuaded from exercising the most important right we have.

Just because you are insignificant does not mean you don’t have a voice

I am an inconsequential person…I reach so few people as to be nothing more than decimal dust statistically speaking. I have always been an inconsequential person, fortunate enough to have worked for people who tried to make a difference — but they did not really need me for that; I was just a handy choice, a conveniently skilled tool.

Most of my friends are far better educated, far more articulate and talented, far better acquainted with the goings on of our society. I just happen to be a writer, influenced by a family of writers and writers who were really good at passing along their passion to me.

So, yes, I am hard on myself because what I have to offer is of little use, but I offer it anyway because I want to live William Faulkner’s dream for humanity, put this way in his 1950 Nobel Prize speech:

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”.