gracchusdixit

Consumed as Americans have been by the ongoing tumult emanating from the Trump White House, few have paid much attention to recent events on the other side of the Atlantic that are, in some ways, more significant.  Two months ago, the citizens of Italy went to the polls in a national election, voting out their country’s “centrist” government.  Not only that, but a large majority voted for populist and explicitly anti-establishment parties.

To most Americans, this may seem trivial, even quaint, since the chaotic nature of Italian politics has long been something of a cliché bordering on a joke, either sad or funny, depending upon one’s point of view.  The results of this election, however, are neither trivial nor quaint, and they certainly don’t qualify as funny.

After last year’s French and Dutch elections, in which right-wing parties and their demagogic leaders were solidly trounced, many Europeans breathed a collective sigh of relief loud enough to be heard on both sides of the Atlantic.  The hope was that a tidal wave of populist anger, culminating in Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union and the shocking election of Donald Trump in the United States, had spent itself.  

Thanks to the Italian election, we now know that this hope, however comforting it may have been at the time, was a pipe dream.  The big winners were Cinque Stelle (the “Five Star Movement”) and Lega Nord (the “Northern League”).  Both are relative newcomers to the Italian political scene, and their philosophies are too eclectic to be readily pigeonholed.  But they have one thing in common:  a profound skepticism of the European Union, neoliberal economics, and global capitalism.  

In voting for these parties, Italians proclaimed, in effect, that they have had enough of the current system—a system that prioritizes banks and bondholders over human beings; a system designed to benefit corporations rather than citizens; a system that, under the rubrics of “free trade” and “open borders,” allows cheap labor to migrate effortlessly from one country to another and capital to move wherever it chooses in pursuit of profit. 

Italy’s president, a card-carrying member of Europe’s political and economic elite, has refused to confirm the formation of a new coalition government, judging the views of the proposed finance minister in that government to be “anti-European”.   The panjandrums of the European Union are hoping this temporary reprieve will give Italians time “to come to their senses” before another election is held.  They are deceiving themselves.  It is all but certain that this blatantly undemocratic sleight of hand will produce the opposite result.

Something similar happened in Greece in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis.  Facing bankruptcy, the Greeks voted in an avowedly left-wing government that asked the EU for relief.  The poor Greeks got exactly nowhere, because their country and their economy were simply too small to matter.  In the end, the all-powerful “troika” that runs Europe—the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund—bullied the Greeks into submission.

Italy is a different kettle of fish.  Its economy is the third largest in the EU, ten times larger than that of Greece and larger than Russia’s.  As a practical matter, the EU cannot ignore the Italians, as it so contemptuously ignored the hat-in-hand Greeks.  To do so would run the risk of fueling a political and economic firestorm that is spreading throughout Southern and Eastern Europe, and even to France, where Emanuel Macron’s embrace of the EU’s neoliberal theology is facing massive resistance from the trade unions and ordinary French voters.

All this is happening for two reasons.

First, it is no longer possible to explain away the reality that global capitalism has betrayed countless millions, destroying jobs, uprooting communities, and upending traditional ways of life.  The billionaires, oligarchs, and financial institutions that have gained the most from this system have spent decades trying to obscure these inconvenient facts, by conflating the “free market” with personal and political freedom.  This rhetorical house of cards is collapsing.  

Those who have borne the brunt of the system’s failures feel lied to and left behind, exploited and hopeless.  Whatever one may think of the often blinkered prejudices of such people—their animosity toward immigrants, their racism, and their embrace of demagogues and would-be dictators—it is impossible to deny the profound social and human disruption they are suffering.  It is not in the least surprising that they are turning their backs on traditional politicians and political parties, which persist in defending an increasingly unsustainable status quo.  

Second, the neoliberal political and economic establishment that, for the moment at least, governs the world, appears to be tone-deaf and utterly clueless.  Either its members are delusional, or they lack the imagination to conceive of any alternative to the system that enriches them but fails so many others.  Like the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, they appear to be unable to distinguish between shadows and the glaring light of reality.  

This shouldn’t surprise us.  The first wave of global capitalism, ignited by the Industrial Revolution in 19th century Britain, produced a string of global economic depressions, spanning generations and leading directly to the rise of fascism and two catastrophic world wars.  All along the way, the beneficiaries of the system tut-tutted, wagged their fingers at the improvidence of the “lower classes,” and assured themselves that all would be right in the end, because their privileged vision of the world was both inevitable and just.  Like the elites of today, like Plato’s prisoners, they failed to see Armageddon coming. 

If we are to survive the awfulness embodied by demagogues and would-be fascists like Donald Trump, if western democracy itself hopes to survive, we have to wake up.  We must  shed the shadows and shake off the myths of a social and economic system that no longer works.  The “free market” is incapable of saving us, and pretending otherwise is suicidal.  We need another answer.

Many of those who get paid to opine on television or in print have wondered how it is that Evangelical Christians, whom poll after poll show to be Donald Trump’s most steadfast followers, can justify their support of a man twice divorced, who has cheated on all his wives, is an unrepentant sexual predator, and indulges in language and behavior that are routinely vulgar, spiteful and “unchristian”.  Surely, the pundits argue, Evangelicals must recognize that Trump contradicts everything they profess to believe in:  family values, the sanctity of traditional marriage, the so-called “word of god” embodied in the Bible, and the rest.   How, then, can they reconcile their religious faith with their political fidelity to Donald J. Trump?

Two possible explanations for this apparent contradiction are routinely advanced.   One is that Evangelicals are hypocrites, which is to say, they support Trump for reasons having nothing to do with their faith, because their faith is a sham, a mask for more practical and political interests.  

The other is that Evangelicals have made a deliberate but grudging bargain with the devil to accomplish some greater, purportedly moral purpose:  to abolish abortion, to protect what they imagine to be their “religious freedom,” or to uphold “choice” when it comes to deciding whether to send their children to public or religious schools.

There may be a dollop of truth in such explanations—though I very much doubt it.  In any event, they miss a deeper point.  

The deeper point is that the beliefs of Donald Trump and of Evangelical Christians are, not only not at odds with one another, but one and the same.  In supporting Trump, Evangelicals haven’t struck an instrumental bargain with a devil they otherwise abhor; they have struck a bargain with a man who embodies their most basic beliefs.  For the truth of the matter is that the belief system of Evangelical Christians is at root authoritarian and oppressive, sexist and racist.   In Donald Trump, they have therefore found their perfect avatar.

Trump’s thinly veiled racism—his attack on Mexican immigrants as “rapists;” his defense of white neo-Nazis; his bullying condemnation of black football players for exercising their First Amendment rights by kneeling during the national anthem—is perfectly aligned with the racist history of Evangelical Christianity.  The Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant denomination in the land, was formed in 1845 specifically to support the institution of slavery.  A Baptist sermon from that era proclaimed:

Both Christianity and Slavery are from Heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time; and therefore both have been protected and defended by God’s omnipotent arm from the assaults, oppositions and persecutions through which they have passed.

To imagine that slave-owners were objects of “persecution,” deserving to be “protected and defended by God’s omnipotent arm,” says something profoundly sinister about the Evangelical mind. 

Some will say all that was a very long time ago.  But it took the Southern Baptist Convention more than a century to disavow its support of slavery and its successor institution, Jim Crow.  And despite that official disavowal, it is abundantly clear that many Southern Baptists, along with other Evangelicals, still cling to their unrepentant racial prejudices.  That is one of the reasons they cling so steadfastly to Donald Trump.

But racial prejudice is not the only reason.  The constant invocation of “family values” by Evangelicals is code for another deep-seated prejudice—a vision of society in which men are in charge and women are submissive, subservient, and compliant.  To Evangelicals, it matters comparatively little if a man commits adultery, sleeps with porn stars, or pays them off to secure their silence.  That is his privilege.  He is a man.  He can do as he chooses.  A woman, on the other hand, must do as she is told.  

Evangelicals would deny this dichotomy, of course, but their denials are belied by their behavior.  Time after time, we have seen their pastors and their favored politicians ensnared in one sordid sexual scandal after another.  These men always disingenuously “confess” their sins; they invariably sidestep the consequences; they are routinely “forgiven”.

That is because Evangelicals believe that the sexual and reproductive behavior of women must be subordinated to the desires of men and to the dictates of the patriarchal and domineering god of the Old Testament.  A woman’s freedom to make her own choices nowhere enters the picture.  Thus it is that a man may be forgiven, but a woman must be forced to bear a child she did not intend or does not want, no matter the circumstances or the consequences.

Evangelicals justify all this in the name of “life”.   This justification is moral and logical rubbish.  If they truly cared about “life,” the Evangelicals who worship Trump would care, not only about protecting unborn fetuses, but also about protecting living children and the living women who gave birth to them.  They would care that childbirth is ten times more dangerous than abortion.  They would care that, when the options of contraception and abortion are denied, the morality rates caused by childbirth skyrocket.  They would care that our country, almost alone in the advanced world, refuses to provide maternity leave, childcare, and adequate nutrition.   

But Evangelicals care about none of these things.  All they care about is controlling women, subordinating their lives and their choices to the commandments of the thoroughly revolting Old Testament god Trump personifies. 

To quote the Book of Exodus:

For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children until the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

These could be the words of Donald Trump, if he had the capacity and eloquence to utter them.  That he lacks both capacity and eloquence does not change the fact that he is the “jealous God” Evangelicals now worship.  He is a god who holds grudges, a god who takes pleasure in “visiting iniquity” on those who refuse to love him, and a god whose spiteful jealousies should be rejected for the abominations they are.

The unending train wreck that is the Trump administration is piling up casualties by the carload.   In the 15 months since Donald Trump took the oath of office, an unprecedented number of cabinet members, agency officials, and political appointees have been fired or forced to resign, either because of their own scandalous behavior or to avoid scandals yet to come.  None of those who have already or will soon depart this administration is walking away unscathed, with his or her reputation intact.  Each and every one has been, or inevitably will be, tarnished, diminished, and humiliated.  

The casualties include Gary Cohn, the one-time head of Goldman-Sachs, who will never rid himself of the shame that he chose to remain silent when Donald Trump called torch-carrying Neo-Nazis “good people;” Rex Tillerson, once the CEO of the largest corporation in the world, who will be remembered, if he is remembered at all, as one of the worst Secretaries of State in our history; and H. R. McMaster, long judged to be among the most honorable and intellectually distinguished military officers in the land, who was dismissed and discarded via Twitter, like week-old garbage.  One of the few remaining hold-outs, Chief of Staff John Kelly, is all but certain to meet a similar fate, having revealed himself to be no less a bigot than the bigot he serves.  All those who serve Donald Trump, however creditably they begin, inevitably end up as maggots in a dunghill.

There have been other casualties that go beyond the personal.  One is the Republican Party itself.  Any pretense that the Grand Old Party stands for principles that can even remotely be called conservative is gone.  Fiscal prudence, balanced budgets, and free trade no longer matter to Republicans.  Like slavish courtiers serving an Oriental potentate, they have prostrated themselves before the despot who now sits in the Oval Office.  One by one, they have dropped to their knees, pressed their faces to the floor, and complied.  There is no longer even a whiff of doubt that the party of Lincoln now belongs to Donald Trump, lock, stock, and barrel.   If he goes down, it will go down with him.

An even greater casualty of the Trump presidency are the ethical “norms” that have made our democracy possible for the better part of two centuries.  Formal constitutional and legal arrangements can accomplish only so much.  They depend, for their efficacy, on implicit but universally accepted ethical standards.  These include the principles that private financial gain and the conduct of the public’s business should not commingle, that nepotism should not guide the appointment of public officials, that self-dealing and self-interest should not influence public policy.  These norms, and many others, have gone up in smoke.  The ruination began when Trump refused to release his tax returns, claiming—falsely—that he was being audited by the IRS.  This was a charade, and he got away with it.  Thus it is that the  American people have no idea what his conflicts of interest may be or by what shady means he has enriched himself and his family.

Still another casualty of the Trump era is the rule of law itself, which is the most fundamental underpinning of democracy.  By this, I do not mean law for the law’s sake—every tyrannical regime on the planet exploits the law to rationalize or enforce its oppressions.  I mean law as the embodiment of justice.  

When Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, said of immigrants, “They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills; they’re not bad people; they’re coming here for a reason, and I sympathize with the reason; but the laws are the law,” he was not invoking law as the embodiment of justice.  He was invoking the law as an instrument of exclusion and coercion.  This echoes Trump’s own view of the justice system, which he believes to exist for the sole purpose of protecting him.  For months, he has been attacking his own appointees at the FBI and the Department of Justice, precisely because they have, thus far at least, failed to close ranks to protect “the boss” from the consequences of his financial and political crimes.  Since Trump is nothing if not relentless, he may ultimately get his way, and if he does, we can kiss our democracy goodbye.

Perhaps the worst casualty of the Trump presidency is our conception of what it means to be an American.  There was a time, not that very long ago, when we could disagree with one another, however vehemently, and still find ways of coming together as one people, citizens of an American republic in which our political differences were secondary to our common ideals.  That time is gone.

For my part, I will never be able to understand, let alone excuse, the 60 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump.  Their bigotry, their willful ignorance, their irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, their eager embrace of a man, who is a little more than a common criminal and incontestably immoral, is beyond the pale.  I shall forever hold these people in utter contempt, and I am quite sure their disdain for people like me is no less complete.

Thus, we find ourselves at a familiar historical impasse.  Our country is once again irreconcilably divided, as it was on the eve of the Civil War.  Like it or not, it is now “us versus them,” and it is time to pick sides.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put this union back together again.    

Little more than 48 hours ago, Donald Trump announced that he is unilaterally pulling the plug on American participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, a seven-nation agreement negotiated by the Obama administration to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  This, despite the fact that Iran has, by all accounts, been abiding by its terms.  Which, of course, didn’t matter to Trump, whose reflexive reaction to everything touched by Barack Obama is jealous, irrational, and sometimes sputtering rage.  

In this, Trump was egged on by the current prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently trotted out a Powerpoint presentation, in which he claimed that Iran’s adherence to the JCPOA is “based on lies”.  Although this presentation was a mishmash of obsolete facts and outright fabrications, Trump, for whom it was concocted, appears to have swallowed every word.  In fact, he quoted some of its fabrications in his speech announcing the pull-out.

All of this exposes the stupidity and utter fecklessness of American political, diplomatic, and military policy in the Middle East.  After almost a century of poking our nose into a part of the world we clearly do not understand, we have little to show for it, beyond two of the longest wars in our history, the waste of three trillion dollars, and the ruination of millions of lives.  Trump’s decision marks a new low point in this lamentable record.

The fundamental reason for this folly is that, from day one, the United States has never had even the foggiest idea of what it was doing in the Middle East.  Viewing the region through the astigmatic lens of our historical ignorance and narrow prejudices, we have consistently chosen the wrong friends, picked the wrong enemies, and made the wrong decisions.  

The worst of those decisions is the demonization of Iran, which began in 1979, when, in the tumult of the Iranian Revolution, American diplomatic personnel were seized and held hostage for 444 days.  One can (and should) deplore that event, but still be able to recognize that American skullduggery played a major role in sparking the Iranian revolution in the first place.  In 1953, the CIA, abetted by the British Secret Service, toppled Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, replacing him with Reza “Shah” Pahlavi.  For the next two decades, this puppet “Shah” did our bidding, until the Iranian people decided they had had enough and kicked him out.  If the Iranians are suspicious of us today, they have good reason.

They also have good reason to think that they are entitled to play a significant role in deciding the political fortunes of the Middle East.  Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Persian Empire held sway from the Black Sea to the Red Sea.  Its successor empires—the Parthians, the Sassanids, the Safavids—were preeminent powers. Iran is not only one of the most populous nations in the region, it has a rich and sophisticated culture, and its people are skillful and well-educated.  For the United States to ignore this history and dismiss the Iranians for asserting their traditional interests is an act of colossal arrogance.

We justify our animus toward Iran by smearing it as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.  The problem is that definitions of terrorism are notoriously slippery.  When Menachem Begin, who went on to become Israel’s 6th prime minister, authorized the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, which killed 91 people and wounded 46 others, was he acting as a freedom fighter or a terrorist?  When the man who became Israel’s 11th prime minister, Ariel Sharon, orchestrated an attack on the Palestinian village of Qibya in 1953, in which 69 people, mostly women and children, were massacred, was he acting as a military hero or a terrorist?  The answers depend on who you ask.  It wasn’t Iranians, after all, who brought down the World Trade Center.  All but one of the 19 hijackers who perpetrated that horror came from countries we now embrace as “friends and allies”. 

It is not my intention to suggest that Iran is blameless, benign, or harmless.  Far from it.  The Iranians have much to answer for.  But so do we. 

Our demonization of Iran is the result of two other decisions, one bad, the other blind. 

The first of those decisions is our continuing embrace of oppressive, anti-democratic Arab regimes.  We call the current military dictator of Egypt an “ally;” we laud the despots who rule the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf states as “friends”.  Yet these so-called “friends and allies” violate every principle we claim to stand for.  They oppress their peoples with an iron hand; they suppress free speech and the media; and they lock up, torture, or exterminate those who dare to challenge them.  What’s more, they pour millions of dollars into funding the most backward, extreme, and violent versions of Islam.  There is no longer any excuse for turning a blind eye to such behavior in the name of realpolitik.  Once upon a time, we may have needed Middle Eastern oil, but that time has passed. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that any longer justifies our support of these corrupt regimes.

The second of those decisions is our unconditional and blinkered support of the State of Israel.  This is a tricky subject, a “third rail” in American political discourse that for decades could not be touched without the risk of being electrocuted.  There are those who charge that any criticism of Israel qualifies as anti-Semitism. I reject that contention. It is demeaning, not only to Israel, but to the Jewish people as a whole.  If we cannot criticize our friends, when criticism is called for, what kind of friendship is that?

The United States played a major role in the creation of the Israeli state, and we should forever be proud of that fact. The Jewish people, having suffered unprecedented horrors, deserved a refuge and a homeland, and today, they have every right to live securely in that homeland.  Our commitment to ensuring that security should never waver.

This does not, however, oblige us to support any and all actions by every Israeli government, no matter how illiberal and demagogic that government may be; nor does it require that we turn a blind eye to the bad behavior of a corrupt, outright liar like “Bibi” Netanyahu.  If for no other reason than the security of Israel itself, we should withhold our support until Netanyahu mends his ways.  If this does not happen, and happen soon, Israel will end up as an apartheid state, in which, not only displaced Palestinians, but its own Arab citizens, will be browbeaten into submission by fear, force, and intimidation—a state of affairs that would be not only a violation of the best things Israel stands for but a sure recipe for disaster.

Netanyahu wants the world to believe that Iran is an “existential threat” to Israel’s security.  To the extent that this may be true, Israel has every right to protect itself.  But that is not the only reason “Bibi’s” fear and hatred of Iran is so venomous. 

Since its foundation 70 years ago, Israel has fought half a dozen wars against Arab armies, all of which it trounced without breaking a sweat.  This made Israel the de facto military superpower in the Middle East, a power made even greater by one of the worst-kept military secrets on the planet—that Israel has an arsenal, never admitted to, of several hundred nuclear warheads.  As long as Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, its neighbors dare not challenge its behavior, knowing that they run the risk of being incinerated.  

Because of this military and nuclear hegemony, the worst of Israel’s political actors have been free to act with impunity, building and expanding illegal settlements on the West Bank, stonewalling the desire of Palestinians for their own state, and thumbing their noses at the protestations of the United Nations, knowing that such protestations are empty gestures so long as they lack commensurate military force.

Israel’s generals, who are no fools, realize that Iran is the only nation that has even the slightest chance of threatening their country’s military choke-hold on the Middle East.  Iran’s army is currently twice the size of Israel’s, but it has enough military-age manpower to field an army 10 times larger.  Israel’s generals also know that Iran once fought a 10-year war against a technologically superior foe, grinding that foe to a standstill through sheer numbers and force of will.   Standing alone, Israel’s well-trained and supremely well-equipped armed forces might well prevail in a conflict with Iran, but its military and intelligence leaders aren’t willing to venture the chance.

That is why Benjamin Netanyahu has been so desperate to draw the United States into a showdown with Iran, a showdown designed to topple Iran’s government.  And that is why Donald Trump, dunce that he is, just stepped into Netanyahu’s trap.  

Although it is tempting to blame this misstep solely on Trump himself, that would be too easy.   It is merely the latest in a long series of ignorant and arrogant blunders.  We will never get things right in the Middle East until we shed our illusions—about our friends, our enemies, and our own bad decisions.  

Donald Trump spent much of his presidential campaign assailing “political correctness,” the social taboo that shuns deliberately offensive language or behavior, particularly when the targets are minorities, women, or persons whose sexual orientation doesn’t fit neatly into traditional categories.  We heard time and again from his fired-up followers that what they most admired about their man was his willingness to “tell it like it is”.  When the victims of Trump’s attacks complained, they were dismissed as whingeing weaklings.  Within hours of Trump’s unexpected victory, much of rural and small-town America was festooned with banners, improvised bumper stickers, and spray-painted graffiti, proclaiming:  “Get over it, snowflakes.  He won!”

Now, it would seem, the tables have turned. 

Seventy-two hours ago, the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was held in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton.  This event, originally designed to honor practicing and prospective journalists, has become a high-profile social occasion, during which journalists mingle and preen with politicians, power-brokers, and celebrities.  For years, many both inside and outside the news business have questioned the propriety of this, insofar as it smacks of cozy and symbiotic self-interest, blurring the line that is supposed to separate the powerful from those whose job it is to keep them honest.  After this year’s dinner, these simmering questions have exploded into a full-scale culture war.

For decades, one of the main features of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner has been a monologue by an established or aspiring comedian, designed to poke fun at the sitting president and his entourage.  The long list of those who have played this part includes Milton Berle, Peter Sellers, Richard Pryor, Bob Hope, Chevy Chase, Rich Little, Jay Leno, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and so on—a veritable honor role of the funniest people in the land.  

This year’s pick was Michelle Wolf, who appears regularly on the cable television network, Comedy Central, but was by no means a household name—that is, until she took the stage at the Washington Hilton. Wolf is caustic and not infrequently vulgar, fearlessly withering in her criticism of those she deems to be hypocritical or mendacious, and wickedly funny.  All of these qualities were on full display at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.  

Wolf tore into Trump for his misogyny and racism.  She skewered the innumerable lies and evasions of Kellyanne Conway, his most slippery spokesperson.  Most of all, she eviscerated Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, all the while Sanders was seated just a few feet away on the dais.  None of this should have come as a surprise to the organizers of the event.  Michelle Wolf is unwavering, and her humor is stiletto-sharp.

Nevertheless, the backlash to her performance was explosive.  Conservatives huffed and puffed, complaining that Wolf’s monologue proved, yet again, that the “fake news media” harbor a bias against Donald Trump and conservatism in general.  Liberals, for their part, cringed and whined, worrying out loud that Wolf had handed Trump a victory in the unending culture war that divides the country.  Countless pundits who opine in print or on television declared, too late to do any good, that journalism must rise above such down-and-dirty mockery.

All of which is utter rubbish.

Whether it was appropriate, prudent, or useful for the White House Correspondent’s Association to pick Michelle Wolf as this year’s headliner is not for me to judge.  What I do know is that her comedic critique was spot on.  In particular, her take-down of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, though undoubtedly humiliating, was no less undoubtedly deserved.  Wolf’s critics and Sander’s defenders assert that the latter is a decent person in private and that personal attacks should be out of bounds.  These are dubious propositions at best.  

The more important point is that Sarah Huckabee Sanders has consistently lied to the American people, defending a president who is little more than a common criminal, and betraying the most basic obligations of someone who engages in public service.  Instead of feeling sorry for Sanders, we should be asking why she is still employed.  The same question, of course, should also be asked about Donald Trump and the coterie of sycophants that surrounds him.

The ultimate irony in this episode is what it says about the intellectual and emotional fragility of those on the political right.  They are ready at the drop of a hat to attack their political opponents in the most vicious and personal ways.  Yet the moment they themselves are attacked, their only recourse is to cry foul, shout their grievances, and impugn the motives of their critics.  

To cite merely one example, a prominent conservative lobbyist named Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes (who works for Trump) stalked out of the correspondent’s dinner in a fury of sanctimonious dudgeon.  “Enough of elites mocking all of us,” he tweeted.  “It’s why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite.”  The hypocrisy of such people is thicker than treacle.   

Schlapp and his spouse are, in fact, card-carrying members of what amounts to an out of touch right-wing elite, people who have made millions by stoking the fires of phony class resentment. He heads a right-wing organization that routinely welcomes racists, Islamophobes, and neo-fascists to speak at its annual convention.  For such a person to be offended by the likes of Michelle Wolf is ludicrous on its face.

It would therefore appear that the real “snowflakes” in our country aren’t politically correct liberals but politically insecure conservatives.  They simply cannot abide the thought that they are themselves out of touch with the sentiments of an overwhelmingly majority of the American people or that they and their so-called “ideas” should be subjected to the mockery they deserve.

The “snowflakes” on the right would be wise to follow the advice of Harry Truman, the 33rd President of the United States:  “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”   The temperature in the kitchen isn’t going to cool down anytime soon.  

Get over it, snowflakes!

Less than 24 hours ago, the three-ring circus that is the presidency of Donald J. Trump stumbled into what may be its most absurd and hilarious episode thus far.  The scene was a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, presided over Kimba Wood, a distinguished and widely respected judge, who was appointed three decades ago by the chief god in the Republican political pantheon, Ronald Reagan.  

At issue was the fate of a trove of documents swept up in a recent FBI raid on the home,  hotel room, and office of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney and self-proclaimed “fixer”.  The feds obtained a search warrant to conduct this raid, having convinced a court that “probable cause” existed to think that Cohen is involved in a series of crimes, including bank and wire fraud as well as violations of federal election law.

Cohen’s attorneys, joined by a brand new lawyer for Trump, argued that the raid violated “attorney-client privilege”.  They asked that the documents be turned over to them, so that they could decide which do, or do not, violate attorney-client privilege.  It scarcely needs saying that Judge Wood didn’t buy this argument, since it would be tantamount to handing over the keys to your home to an admitted arsonist.

In advancing this ridiculous argument, Cohen and his lawyers stepped into a logical and legal trap.  The claim to attorney-client privilege could only be made if Cohen was indeed acting as an attorney and had the clients to prove it.  The judge accordingly demanded that he produce a list of his clients.  After much dilatory huffing and puffing, Cohen’s lawyers were forced to comply.

They revealed that, in the last two years, Michael has had only three clients.  One is Donald Trump.  Another is the former head of the Republican Party’s national fund-raising operation, who was forced to resign in disgrace, after paying $1.6 million to a woman he had impregnated during an extra-marital affair, a payment arranged by Michael Cohen.  At first, Cohen’s lawyers declined to reveal the name of his third client, on the grounds that said client is a public figure and would be embarrassed by the revelation.  Once again, Judge Wood was having none of it.  She insisted.  And that’s when the bomb went off.

Michael Cohen’s lawyers revealed his third client to be none other that Sean Hannity, the right-wing radio talk show host who became, after the forced departure of Bill O’Reilly, the reigning superstar on Fox News Channel.  He has also become Donald Trump’s most ardent and vociferous defender, leading the charge to smear the motives of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and the possible complicity of the Trump campaign in that attack.  Just days ago, Hannity decried the raid on Michael Cohen as an “off the rails” conspiracy to impeach and bring down the president. 

You can imagine the reaction in the courtroom when it was revealed that Hannity and the President of the United States share the same attorney.  Those who were there say that the room, packed with journalists, exploded in a cacophony of gasps, groans, and barely suppressed laughter.  

In the hours that followed, Hannity served up a mulligan’s stew of excuses:  that Cohen was never his attorney in a “traditional” sense, that their legal discussions never involved a “third party,” that he never received or paid any bills for Cohen’s legal services, and so on.  None of this, coming as it does from a congenital liar like Hannity, has even a shred of credibility, except to the Luddites in his audience, who would believe the man if he declared that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

What is abundantly clear is that both Sean Hannity and Michael Cohen were desperate to keep their relationship a secret.  Indeed, it has been reported that Hannity wanted Cohen’s attorneys to file an immediate appeal if the judge demanded his name to be made public.  The only logical conclusion is that Hannity was afraid, and the likely reason for that fear is naked self-interest.  

On Fox News Channel, Hannity plays the part of a disinterested journalist, outraged by what he deems to be the unfair and conspiratorial persecution of a duly elected President of the United States.  Playing this fictional part has made him enormously rich and has endowed him with outsized influence.   Hannity has become Donald Trump’s favorite confidant and lap dog, and he has mined this new-found status for everything it’s worth.

There are those in the so-called “mainstream media” who proclaim themselves to be shocked and offended by Hannity’s hypocrisy, lack of transparency, and conflicts of interest. They ask why Fox News Channel isn’t doing more to hold him accountable.  

To these critics, all I can say is:  where have you been for the last 20 years?  There are, to be sure, some real journalists at Fox News Channel, but Sean Hannity is not, and never has been, one of them.  To criticize him for failing to abide by the standards of journalism therefore misses the point.  The point is that he is, and always has been, a self-interested huckster, and the same can be said for the company he works for.  Why would anyone expect Fox News Channel to demand any sort of accountability from a man who is, in the end, nothing more than a right-wing money machine? 

Now, thanks to a Reagan-appointed federal judge in the Southern District of New York, Sean Hannity, Michael Cohen, and Donald J. Trump have been revealed to be the corrupt and self-dealing hucksters they are.   Whether any of this will make a difference is anyone’s guess.  But somehow I doubt it.  As the saying goes:  you can’t make this stuff up.  

In the wake of the mass murder of 17 people—students, teachers, and athletic coaches—at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was rash enough to propose that it is time for the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution to be repealed.  When Breyer was still on the court, he was consistently skeptical about the ways in which the 2nd Amendment was being manipulated and distorted by special interests.  It was Breyer who wrote the dissenting opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, a narrow five-to-four decision that, for the first time in our history, declared gun ownership to be an individual right rather than a contingent and collective right, the purpose of which is ensure the security of the community as a whole.  

Breyer’s dissent in Heller was by no means eccentric or quixotic.  On the contrary, he was giving voice to more than a century of settled 2nd Amendment law.  Nor was he alone.  Many years before, former Chief Justice Warren Burger declared:  “The 2nd Amendment has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”  Let it be noted that Burger was appointed as Chief Justice by none other than Richard Nixon.  When he made that declaration, you would have been hard-pressed to find a more staunchly conservative jurist in the land.

Despite all that, Justice Breyer’s recent pronouncement was immediately and roundly attacked by voices at both ends of the political spectrum.  The attacks from the right followed a predictable course, proclaiming, as they always do, that the 2nd Amendment is the equivalent of biblical writ, a notion that is absurd on its face. The Constitution of the United States deserves respect, not reverence.  It is a document that was written by men, not gods; and like all acts of mortal men, it can be revised, rewritten, or reimagined.

The attacks from the left have been more surprising and contorted.   One criticism is that the very idea of repealing the 2nd Amendment is so unrealistic as to be ridiculous.  Those who advance this critique suggest that Breyer is living in some sort of cloud-cuckoo-land, indulging in a delusional fantasy.  Another criticism is that Breyer’s proposal is a distraction—raw meat for the rabid right—that risks complicating the prospects for securing what are usually called “common-sense” gun laws.   

Breyer’s critics are wrong. 

To begin with, it is by no means delusional to contemplate changing the Constitution.  The process is a difficult one, to be sure, but far from being impossible.  After all, the Constitution is an 18th century document.  Much of what it contains, particularly those provisions that concern fundamental ideals and aspirations, continues to be relevant today.  But that has never been the case with all of its provisions, and we as a nation have repeatedly been willing to discard, revise, or overturn those of its provisions that proved to be irrelevant.  The Constitution, in its original state, did not allow women the right to vote; we changed that.  It countenanced slavery and denied basic human and citizenship rights to African-Americans; we changed that.   It allowed the states to use poll taxes to suppress the votes of minorities and poor persons in general; we changed that, too.  None of these changes was easy, and yet all were accomplished.

It is time to acknowledge that the 2nd Amendment is one of the provisions in our Constitution that has outlived its usefulness, is no longer relevant, and now does more harm than good.  Whether the 2nd Amendment is interpreted as an individual or a collective right is neither here nor there.  It is quite simply an outmoded and dangerous anachronism that has no place in a modern society.  There is no longer any “frontier” to be conquered; there are no “savages” to be subdued; there are no foreign “tyrants” to be repulsed.  We haven’t needed “a well-regulated militia” for generations, and we certainly don’t need a bunch of gun-toting, self-proclaimed Minutemen roaming the streets of our cities or the backroads of the countryside.  If such people want to play soldier, let them watch video games.  To put weapons of death in their hands is utter madness.

Those who criticize Justice Breyer’s proposal as an extreme and risky distraction are just as wrong-headed as those who think changing the Constitution is impossible.  The truth of the matter is that the oh-so-practical proponents of “common sense” gun control have for decades accomplished precisely nothing.  And why is that?  It is because the National Rifle Association has never stooped to being accommodating or practical.  It has consistently taken the extreme position that any and all gun control is a “slippery slope,” one that will lead inevitably to the total abolition of firearms.  By taking this position, the NRA and its backers in firearms industry have succeeded in neutering every proposal for “common sense” gun control.

It’s about time that those who oppose our country’s cancerous gun culture take an equally strong stand.  If we ever hope to defeat the NRA and the gun lobby, if we truly want to end the slaughter in our schools and on our streets, it’s time to fight fire with fire.  Justice Stephen Breyer has shown us the way.  We should hear his call.

It is frequently proclaimed by pundits and politicians, by lawyers and historians, that our country will face a “constitutional crisis” if Donald Trump moves to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election.  The truth of the matter is that we already face such a crisis.  We are simply loath to admit it—because such an admission would expose one of the most fundamental and perilous flaws in our system of government.

The crisis I am referring to concerns the legitimacy of the 2016 election itself.

Whatever Robert Mueller ultimately discovers, we already have more than enough evidence to conclude that the “election” of Donald Trump as President of the United States was unlawful:

• To begin with, we know that the voting records of at least seven states—and probably many more—were, to quote the Federal Bureau of Investigation, “compromised” by the Russians.  The Trump White House and complicit Republicans in Congress continue to insist that no evidence exists proving that actual votes were tampered with.  That is only because neither the federal government nor any of the states affected have thus far conducted a true forensic investigation of voting records.  Instead, they prefer to avert their eyes from the unspeakable reality that is staring them in the face.

• We know that 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities, at least one of which is funded by the Kremlin, have been indicted for interfering in the election, with the specific purpose of benefitting Donald Trump.

• We know that the FBI is investigating a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, who funneled millions of dollars to the National Rifle Association, which in turn poured millions more into the Trump campaign.  The NRA is attempting to stonewall the investigation but, tellingly, has not dared to deny the allegations.

• We know that the personal profiles of more than 50 million Facebook users were stolen by a political consulting firm working for Trump and then used illegally to manipulate the attitudes and votes of those users.  That this occurred is no longer in dispute.  After months of trying to cover it up, Facebook itself has finally fessed up.

• We know that the same firm which stole Facebook user data, Cambridge Analytica, sent dozens of foreign nationals into the United States to help the Trump campaign, against the explicit warning of its own attorneys that to do so would be a crime.  The crime was committed, nonetheless, and it was approved by Trump’s one-time senior adviser, Steve Bannon, who not only worked for Trump but was a senior executive and board member at Cambridge Analytica.

• We know that the Attorney General of the United States lied to Congress—more than once—when he denied under oath having met with Russian officials while he was actively working on the Trump campaign.  We know that he lied again when he claimed that had “pushed back” against proposals to initiate additional and even more consequential contacts between Russian officials and the campaign.

• And we know that other members of the Trump campaign, including the president’s own son and son-in-law, were eager to cooperate with Russians who promised to provide damaging information regarding Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.  That sort of cooperation is illegal.  It might even be treasonous.

None of these facts is in dispute, and they are merely a few of the indisputable facts that will undoubtedly appear on a much longer writ of future indictments.  Taken together, they lead to one conclusion and one conclusion only:  the 2016 presidential election was stolen, either by Donald Trump himself or by those striving to advance his candidacy.  By any sensible standard, that election should be nullified, and a new election should be held.

There is, of course, a problem.

The problem is that the framers of our constitution, as wise and far-sighted as they undoubtedly were, did not see this sort of thing coming.  Although the framers were thoroughly suspicious of the potential for foreign influence to corrupt our domestic politics (that’s why our constitution includes a clause prohibiting “emoluments”), they never contemplated the possibility that an entire national election might someday be stolen and therefore delegitimized.  As a result, they made no provisions to prevent such a possibility or to remedy the situation if it occurred.

Thus it is that we find ourselves at the bottom of a constitutional rabbit hole, with no obvious means of escape.  If the Mueller investigation concludes that the Trump campaign actively conspired with the Russians to rig the 2016 election, Trump himself could, in theory, be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors”.  He might even be indicted.   But even if Mueller does not reach such a conclusion, the fact will remain that the election was rigged.  Whether or not Trump personally committed a crime is therefore, in a certain sense, irrelevant.

The question of Donald Trump’s personal guilt or innocence will not change the fact that the 2016 election was unlawful.  It will not change the fact that the present occupant of the Oval Office is not the legitimately elected President of the United States.  And it will not change the fact that there is nothing our deeply flawed constitution can do about it.  That is the crisis.  That is the crisis that is already upon us.

As Donald Trump seems hell bent on distorting the truth and destroying our democracy, I don’t know about you, but I feel exhausted and crave for a break.  So, let me turn from the depressing antics of our Idiot-in-Chief to one of the few beneficial, albeit unintended, results of the Trump presidency:  the remarkable fact that Americans are paying more attention to the news—on television, on the internet, in print—than at any time in recent memory.

Since Trump’s election, news consumption has grown by leaps and bounds.  The cable news channel MSNBC, for instance, has doubled its audience, to the point that it now regularly beats Fox News Channel, an event once thought to be as likely as the earth reversing its spin.  Digital subscriptions to the nation’s leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have increased several-fold, as these hoary journalistic institutions, recently thought to be on their last legs, have led the way in exposing the innumerable scandals and travails of the Trump White House.  This is indisputably good news.  We Americans are a notoriously ignorant people, and the more we watch and read, the less ignorant we may someday become.

There is, alas, a flaw in the otherwise cheery pattern of this carpet.

Like so many others, I have gobbled up more news coverage in the last year than in the previous ten.  This has caused me to pay more attention, not only to the content of what is being said, but to the words themselves, many of which are sloppy, unclear, or just plain wrong.  Newspapers are less often guilty than television, but both commit their share of mistakes and malapropisms. What is worse, the same blunders recur time after time, which suggests that they are not inadvertent but, rather, the result of ingrained ignorance.

Since the challenges we now confront are as serious as any in our history, it is all the more important that those in the news media speak, write, and think clearly.  That is the reason for the nits I am about to pick—an exercise that might otherwise seem to be pedantic.    Pedantic or not, here are the howlers that drive me particularly crazy:

Data is, isn’t.   Data is not a collective noun, like herd, fleet or gaggle, and cannot properly be followed by a singular verb.  It is the plural of the Latin word datum, which means “given,” as in “a given fact”.  One cannot say “the data says,” any more than one could correctly say “the statistics says”.  The same is true for other commonly used Latin and Greek plurals.  Media is the plural of medium; phenomena is the plural of phenomenon; criteria is the plural of criterion.  To follow any of these plurals with a singular verb like says or is, is simply wrong.  One venerable American dictionary claims otherwise, pronouncing that the word data now “has a life of its own”.  This is poppycock and a mere concession to sloppiness.

Percent is, isn’t—except when it’s one.  A related mistake is a statement like:  “Sixty percent of the American people disapproves of the president.”  The word percent describes a ratio between 100 and another number.  Except when that other number is one, as in one percent, the verb that follows percent must be plural, as in:  “Sixty percent of the American people disapprove of the president.”

Staunch, stanch, stench.  Confusion between the words staunch and stanch is pervasive, and the confusion seems to go only one way:  staunch is used when stanch is meant.  How this confusion began, or why it so stubbornly persists, is anyone’s guess.  Once upon a time, these words were interconnected and to some extent interchangeable; staunch, stanch, and even stench meant the same sort of thing.  But that changed a very long time ago, whereupon these words sorted themselves into separate and distinct meanings.  Staunch means “strong, loyal, or stalwart”.  Stanch means “to stop the flow of blood produced by a wound”.  And stench means, well, you know.

If I was you, I wouldn’t be me.  The clause, “if I was you,” pollutes the linguistic landscape like a malodorous bird dropping.  “I was” is what grammarians call the “indicative mood”—a verb form used to make a factual statement, express an opinion, or ask a question.  The instant you put the word “if” in front of “I was,” everything changes.  The expression, “if I was you,” is nonsensical, since I can never be you, and you can never be me.  To make such wishful, imaginary, or hypothetical statements requires a different “mood,” called the “subjunctive”.  The only proper expression is:  If I were you.

Homogenous, homogeneous, homogenized.  The words homogenous and homogeneous have become so blurred in colloquial speech, so homogenized, that even some dictionaries, which should be ashamed of themselves, now declare them to be synonymous.  That is wrong.  Homogenous is a biological and medical term that has a strict meaning; it describes organisms with similar characteristics that derive from a common genetic origin.  Homogeneous describes commonality in a broader and more general sense, and can be applied to any group of persons, things, or concepts that are much alike.  As with staunch and stanch, when these words are conflated, the conflation almost always go in one direction:  journalists say homogenous when they mean homogeneous.  It is possible that such people are not, in fact, confusing the two words but simply cannot spell.  That does not lessen the gravity of the sin.

When less isn’t less.  Less may be used correctly less often than any other word in the English language.  When used as an adjective, it applies solely to singular nouns:  “less food,” “less water,” “less money,” and so on.  It cannot properly be applied to plural or collective nouns:  “less votes,” “less people,” “less taxes”.  In such cases, the proper adjective is fewer, as in “fewer votes,” “fewer people,” “fewer taxes”.

Alright, already.  One of the most persistent and infuriating errors in print journalism is the substitution of the non-word, alright, for the proper words, all right.  How this abomination snuck into the language is anybody’s guess.  Whatever the cause, alright isn’t all right—it is all wrong.

None are, is nonsense.  The word none has the same meaning as no one or not one.  The important bit is one.  Any word that describes one person or thing should be followed by a singular verb.  Therefore, the statement, “None were surprised,” is nonsensical.  It should read: None was surprised.

Ad hominem, ad absurdum.  Every time a public figure lashes out at some real or imagined foe, journalists label it an ad hominem—by which they mean, a personal—attack.  The phrase ad hominem describes, not a personal attack, but a rhetorical argument designed to persuade an audience.  It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle who first described how such arguments work:

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word, there are three kinds.  The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

The first two of Aristotle’s three “modes of persuasion” are ad hominem arguments, emotional tricks designed to distract attention from the third mode, which relies on “the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself”.  Ad hominem arguments are not “personal attacks” on an opponent.  Rather, they are attacks on the emotional feebleness of the audience.

I will bore you no further, except to say this: words matter no less than actions; we cannot save our democracy without regard for the truth, and we cannot know the truth without regard for clear thinking and clear language.  The one depends upon the other—now, more than ever.

As every depressing day goes by, it becomes depressingly more obvious that only four kinds of people are welcome to work in the administration of Donald J. Trump: crooks, creeps, cretins or crackpots. The coterie of people surrounding Trump is unprecedented in our history for their corruption, stupidity, and downright scariness.

Trump’s one-time campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been indicted for a host of crimes and is under house arrest, with two tracking bracelets strapped to his ankles.  He is  likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.  Far more consequentially, however, the president’s own daughter and son-in-law—“Javanka,” for short—have shamelessly exploited their status as “senior advisers” to extract money and favors from foreign governments, banks, and private equity firms.  Their behavior is worse than unethical.  In any other time, in any other administration, they would already be in handcuffs.

During his time as Trump’s “senior policy adviser,” Steve Bannon was indisputably the creepiest of Trump’s minions.  Lumbering around the West Wing like a prehistoric sloth—unkempt, unshaven and to all appearances unwashed—Bannon cast himself as a latter-day Oswald Spengler, prophesying the doom of Western Civilization, railing against the evils of the “deep state”.  His delusional behavior continues.  Haranguing a recent gathering of the right-wing French political party, Front National, he exhorted the attendees to embrace their racism and xenophobia with pride.  It doesn’t get much creepier than that.

That is, until you consider the case of Stephen Miller, the Joseph Goebbels look-alike who writes Trump’s speeches.  Miller, if you will pardon the expression, is a whack job.   Miller would like to purge our country of those he considers to be insufficiently American, a long list that includes anyone who is black or brown or somewhere in between.  It is Miller who proclaimed that the powers of the president to detain, deport, and demonize immigrants “are very substantial and will not be questioned”.  The irony in this would be farcical if it weren’t so terrifying. Miller is descended from Ashkenazi Jews who fled Eastern Europe to escape virulent anti-Semitism, and yet, by some twisted and creepy logic, he seems to believe that other victims of persecution should now be denied the asylum that was granted to his forebears.

Which brings us to another, truly farcical, irony—that the most cretinous member of the Trump administration is the Secretary of Education.  Betsy Devos has never attended a public school, nor have her children.  She has never taught in any school, either public or private.  She has no professional experience or training in education, let alone a degree.  She can’t recite even the most basic facts regarding the challenges faced by public schools and universities in our country, and every time she is questioned about these issues, she embarrasses herself.  Her plan for revamping public education is to privatize it, a scheme driven entirely by her evangelical religious prejudices.  If it were not for her vast wealth, and her no less vast contributions to Republican politicians, she would have been laughed off the stage long ago.

Betsy Devos is not the only cretin in charge these days.  Let us not forget our Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, who, when he isn’t wading in his own verbal manure, busies himself square-dancing on television.  It was Perry who once called for the abolition of the very department he now runs, though, to be fair, he couldn’t remember the name of that department at the time.

I will tell you.  It’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone:  Commerce, Education, and the…  What’s the third one there?  The third one, I can’t.  Sorry.  Oops. 

Next to Devos, “Oops” Perry may be the dumbest cabinet officer in the history of the country.

More dangerous than the cretins are the crackpots, because they are not unintelligent or ineffectual. They are simply crazy.  Topping that list is Scott Pruitt, who runs the Environmental Protection Agency.  Pruitt has spent much of his public life denying the reality of climate change and ignoring the scientific evidence that proves it.  Using that denial as a cover, he is now systematically eviscerating the environmental regulations and protections we have spent decades putting in place.

Not far behind Pruitt is the Attorney General of the United States, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, than whom no greater crackpot exists in the Trump administration.  Sessions is hellbent on “restoring the rule of law,” all the while he does everything possible to undermine it. He has declared war on a crime wave that does not exist.  He has targeted innocent immigrants and their families for deportation.  He has turned the wrath of the federal government against states that try to protect those immigrants, despite a long history defending “states’ rights”.

These categories—crooks and creeps, cretins and crackpots—are by no means mutually exclusive.  Scott Pruitt is both a crackpot and a crook, having accepted bucketloads of money from the fossil fuel industry that he is now supposed to be regulating.  Creeps like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller are also crackpots, since their views regarding immigration and just about everything else are loony.  The same goes for our cretinous Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, who is simultaneously dumb and nuts.

It is easy to poke fun at these people and to mock their failings, because they themselves do so much to invite mockery.  But something more serious is at stake.  There is a pattern in all this madness.

Several months ago, I dedicated one of these essays to a book called The Origins of Totalitarianism, written by the political philosopher and journalist Hannah Arendt in 1951.  That book remains to this day the most penetrating and incisive analysis of totalitarian regimes ever published.  In it, Arendt made the following observation:

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

That the Trump administration is laden with crooks and creeps, cretins and crackpots, that Trump is systematically expunging people of competence and integrity, is no accident.  It is not the result of Trump’s eccentric personality or chaotic management style.  It is an ominous step on the road toward something far worse.