Wanting Answers, Finding Pain

The Great Unraveling

Nobody likes a looter. Or those who torch local businesses, destroying livelihoods and lifetime efforts. Except where the reaction to that such destruction serves a useful purpose in the minds of those who have disruption as an end unto itself. “As unrest [over the George Floyd blue on black killing] has spread, the Trump administration has insisted that outsiders using protests as cover for acts of violence were left-wing anarchists, not right-wing extremists, such as white nationalist groups that have been cited as a threat by the Department of Homeland Security… Atty. Gen. William Barr, at a news conference on Saturday [5/30], blamed ‘anarchic and left extremist groups’ who traveled across state lines to take part in protests, without specifying how that conclusion was reached.” Tribune News Service, May 31st.

Indeed, after the street violence continued, Trump tweeted that he would label as a “terrorist organization” the extreme domestic far-left anarchist “anti-fascist” movement (unstructured, not a single entity) – loosely called “antifa.” While this designation would prevent Americans from joining if it were a foreign entity (like ISIS), the “‘United States of America has no legal authority to designate any domestic entities as ‘terrorist organizations,’ ’ said Steve Vladeck, a national security law expert at University of Texas.” Tribune News Service. As will be noted in greater detail later, it seems, however, as if the players on the extreme right represent the largest faction stirring up the violence. Leftists? A distraction from the pandemic? Perfect for the President.

Time for Trump to get tough. At least with the leftists. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” said Donald Trump, threatening to call up the regular military to deal with the threat. Even though there is a legal prohibition against using our regular military (vs the National Guard) to function as a civilian police force. Violence in reaction to the police killing of George Floyd may have started in Minneapolis but it rapidly spread across the country, and even to US Embassies overseas.

Asked by a reporter on May 30th if his statements might be stoking racial violence, President Trump responded (suggesting a MAGA rally in front of the White House): “No not at all ... I have no idea if they’re going to be here. By the way, they love African Americans, they love black people. MAGA loves the black people.” If nothing else, his statement underscores how even he sees MAGA followers as clearly distinct from African Americans. I am reminded of the Trump description of the torch-bearing white supremacists in Charlottesville in August of 2017, where a peaceful anti-racism protester was run over and killed: “…you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” Now about those right-wing agitators all over the United States.

I watched some of the footage of some particularly interesting protesters, lurking in the background. One intrepid camera crew zoomed in on a group of men wearing Hawaiian shirts, carrying assault rifles, in the shadows behind those in the open decrying the police killing. A signature look for a right wing militia known as the Boogaloo Boys. Plants? The real thing? At a press conference, state and city officials confirmed that a significant portion of those protesters arrested weren’t local. Additionally, there was clear evidence that much of the violence was supported by right wing militia. Funny, that wasn’t mentioned in any Justice Department or White House statements. Just that “radical leftist” thing. Also interesting: even those protesters wearing masks, and many were not, were hardly engaged in social distancing.

What is obvious is that the widespread civil unrest has shifted the national consciousness away from the pandemic, despite the rising and even record-breaking infection and mortality rates in California, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas, Puerto Rico, Maine, West Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana and Alaska… or where those rates are pretty much staying level: Texas, Florida, Maryland, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Colorado, Minnesota, Tennessee, Washington, Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Idaho, Guam and Hawaii. Statistics gathered and reported in the May 30th New York Times. A whole lot of states in primarily rural areas and states where significant “reopening” has begun. Interesting. Signs of building into a second wave? It would seem so. Nobody seems to care.

Americans are not a patient lot. Drawn out pain evokes anger and defiance… even when the villain is a virus that also doesn’t seem to care. So, we have succumbed to, “it’s the economy stupid,” even if tens if not hundreds of thousands must die or face permanent disability. Denial is easier. And then there’s “Operation Warp Speed,” a pedal to the metal effort to deliver a viable COVID-19 vaccine and release it (somehow) in a widespread inoculation campaign as soon as possible… even though normal testing for such vaccine usually takes years.

Michael Hiltzig, writing for the May 31st Los Angeles Times, writes: “If anything is known for sure about the scientific battle against the novel coronavirus, it’s that the quest for a vaccine has been unprecedentedly intense, with rapid development and speedy production the paramount goals.

“But some experts are raising a yellow flag. Given the stakes — the virus has caused more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S., among more than 350,000 worldwide — they’re cautioning that the process of developing a vaccine should be slowed down, not sped up.

“‘History tells us that speed kills,’ says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU Langone Medical Center and a co-author of an article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. warning that missteps under Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine development initiative in the Trump White House, could undermine public confidence in vaccines broadly… There’s strong historical precedent for concern about shortcuts.

“The key lesson about the hazards of rushing a vaccine into production comes to us from Berkeley, where a small pharmaceutical company named Cutter Laboratories was chosen by the government in 1955 as one of five private manufacturers of the Salk polio vaccine.

“The Salk vaccine incorporated a dead polio virus, potent enough in its active guise to produce a strong antibody reaction in humans but inactivated through treatment with formaldehyde so it wouldn’t cause disease… Because of a series of manufacturing errors and poor government oversight, however, some of Cutter’s vaccine lots were contaminated with the live virus. An estimated 40,000 children contracted polio from Cutter’s vaccine. About 200 victims were permanently paralyzed, and 10 died.

“The so-called Cutter incident was ‘one of the worst biological disasters in American history, exploded the myth of the invulnerability of science and destroyed faith in the vaccine enterprise,’ observed Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania whose 2005 book is the definitive account of the episode.” But this administration is all about shortcuts, unkeepable promises, fake statistics and diving headlong into untested medical solutions… like the President’s misplaced advocacy of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial with severe (and possible fatal) side effects.

Federal policies even foster the spread of the virus. “In the past several months, while most Americans have been ordered to shelter at home, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shuffled hundreds of people in its custody around the country. Immigrants have been transferred from California to Florida, Florida to New Mexico, Arizona to Washington State, Pennsylvania to Texas.

“These transfers, which ICE says were sometimes done to curb the spread of coronavirus, have led to outbreaks in facilities in Texas, Ohio, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to attorneys, news reports and ICE declarations filed in federal courts… The immigrants began to show symptoms in late April, about a week after arriving at the Rolling Plains Detention Center in Haskell, Texas [pictured above].

“They had been held in dorms with other recent transfers, according to a county official. First three detainees tested positive for COVID-19. Then 20 more. As of Friday [5/29], 41 immigrants detained at Rolling Plains had been infected. Just three county residents have tested positive.

“In Pearsall, Texas, 350 miles south, transfers turned another detention center into a virus hotspot. Frio County had just a single confirmed case of COVID-19 in early April. Then two detainees who had recently been moved to Pearsall's South Texas ICE Processing Facility tested positive, ICE told county officials. Thirty-two immigrants have now been diagnosed, almost 90 percent of the state's official COVID-19 tally in Frio County.” NBC News, May 31st.

But distractions were increasingly valuable to the beleaguered Trump administration. They don’t want us to dwell on CV-19 outbreaks in ICE facilities. They need us to focus on other issues where they can look as if they are in control. Like the Trump-Twitter-social media battle, where the President seeks to rein in an increasingly Web/mobile-driven spreader of “fake news,” oddly enough, with increasing animosity from both sides of the aisle. “Republicans claim Twitter and the other platforms are deliberately targeting conservatives and unfairly applying rules against hate speech, incitement and harassment.

“Democrats have the opposite complaint: They charge that the platforms don’t enforce the rules often enough. They complain that Trump and others have been allowed to get away with flagrant falsehoods and calumnies — which is true.

“Last week’s crisis focused on Twitter, which enforced its internal rules on Trump for the first time. First the company attached warnings, labeled ‘get the facts,’ to two presidential tweets that had called mail-in ballots ‘fraudulent’ and predicted a ‘rigged election’ in November.

“Then Twitter added an anti-violence warning to a Trump tweet about riot-torn Minneapolis… Trump and his allies said those disclaimers amounted to censorship. They didn’t. Twitter still published all the president’s words; now his readers will see the warnings as well.” Doyle McManus for the May 31st Los Angeles Times.

Distractions? We know that Donald Trump cannot appear to be conciliatory to protesters challenging police departments, however justified. That just would not sit well with his base. Building on his “get tough” against the radical left (generally referring to Democrats), he seems to welcome the civil unrest to draw attention away from his abysmal failures to contain the pandemic.

He obviously also relishes the opportunity to assail the press, now even his own platform of choice (Twitter), as yet another way to show his right-wing, populist constituency that he remains the tough, no nonsense problem solver they elected in 2016. Guess what? The public consciousness is indeed distracted. Except the country is actually more polarized, fewer solutions are likely and, as the above numbers suggest, the pandemic is far, far from over. But at least the President can look tough again.

I’m Peter Dekom, and too many Americans are looking for silver bullets and easy buttons to end a seemingly endless and devasting period in American history… one that just might portend the end of a great nation.





Nobody likes a looter. Or those who torch local businesses, destroying livelihoods and lifetime efforts. Except where the reaction to that such destruction serves a useful purpose in the minds of those who have disruption as an end unto itself. “As unrest [over the George Floyd blue on black killing] has spread, the Trump administration has insisted that outsiders using protests as cover for acts of violence were left-wing anarchists, not right-wing extremists, such as white nationalist groups that have been cited as a threat by the Department of Homeland Security… Atty. Gen. William Barr, at a news conference on Saturday [5/30], blamed ‘anarchic and left extremist groups’ who traveled across state lines to take part in protests, without specifying how that conclusion was reached.” Tribune News Service, May 31st.

Indeed, after the street violence continued, Trump tweeted that he would label as a “terrorist organization” the extreme domestic far-left anarchist “anti-fascist” movement (unstructured, not a single entity) – loosely called “antifa.” While this designation would prevent Americans from joining if it were a foreign entity (like ISIS), the “‘United States of America has no legal authority to designate any domestic entities as ‘terrorist organizations,’ ’ said Steve Vladeck, a national security law expert at University of Texas.” Tribune News Service. As will be noted in greater detail later, it seems, however, as if the players on the extreme right represent the largest faction stirring up the violence. Leftists? A distraction from the pandemic? Perfect for the President.

Time for Trump to get tough. At least with the leftists. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” said Donald Trump, threatening to call up the regular military to deal with the threat. Even though there is a legal prohibition against using our regular military (vs the National Guard) to function as a civilian police force. Violence in reaction to the police killing of George Floyd may have started in Minneapolis but it rapidly spread across the country, and even to US Embassies overseas.

Asked by a reporter on May 30th if his statements might be stoking racial violence, President Trump responded (suggesting a MAGA rally in front of the White House): “No not at all ... I have no idea if they’re going to be here. By the way, they love African Americans, they love black people. MAGA loves the black people.” If nothing else, his statement underscores how even he sees MAGA followers as clearly distinct from African Americans. I am reminded of the Trump description of the torch-bearing white supremacists in Charlottesville in August of 2017, where a peaceful anti-racism protester was run over and killed: “…you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” Now about those right-wing agitators all over the United States.

I watched some of the footage of some particularly interesting protesters, lurking in the background. One intrepid camera crew zoomed in on a group of men wearing Hawaiian shirts, carrying assault rifles, in the shadows behind those in the open decrying the police killing. A signature look for a right wing militia known as the Boogaloo Boys. Plants? The real thing? At a press conference, state and city officials confirmed that a significant portion of those protesters arrested weren’t local. Additionally, there was clear evidence that much of the violence was supported by right wing militia. Funny, that wasn’t mentioned in any Justice Department or White House statements. Just that “radical leftist” thing. Also interesting: even those protesters wearing masks, and many were not, were hardly engaged in social distancing.

What is obvious is that the widespread civil unrest has shifted the national consciousness away from the pandemic, despite the rising and even record-breaking infection and mortality rates in California, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas, Puerto Rico, Maine, West Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana and Alaska… or where those rates are pretty much staying level: Texas, Florida, Maryland, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Colorado, Minnesota, Tennessee, Washington, Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Idaho, Guam and Hawaii. Statistics gathered and reported in the May 30th New York Times. A whole lot of states in primarily rural areas and states where significant “reopening” has begun. Interesting. Signs of building into a second wave? It would seem so. Nobody seems to care.

Americans are not a patient lot. Drawn out pain evokes anger and defiance… even when the villain is a virus that also doesn’t seem to care. So, we have succumbed to, “it’s the economy stupid,” even if tens if not hundreds of thousands must die or face permanent disability. Denial is easier. And then there’s “Operation Warp Speed,” a pedal to the metal effort to deliver a viable COVID-19 vaccine and release it (somehow) in a widespread inoculation campaign as soon as possible… even though normal testing for such vaccine usually takes years.

Michael Hiltzig, writing for the May 31st Los Angeles Times, writes: “If anything is known for sure about the scientific battle against the novel coronavirus, it’s that the quest for a vaccine has been unprecedentedly intense, with rapid development and speedy production the paramount goals.

“But some experts are raising a yellow flag. Given the stakes — the virus has caused more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S., among more than 350,000 worldwide — they’re cautioning that the process of developing a vaccine should be slowed down, not sped up.

“‘History tells us that speed kills,’ says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU Langone Medical Center and a co-author of an article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. warning that missteps under Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine development initiative in the Trump White House, could undermine public confidence in vaccines broadly… There’s strong historical precedent for concern about shortcuts.

“The key lesson about the hazards of rushing a vaccine into production comes to us from Berkeley, where a small pharmaceutical company named Cutter Laboratories was chosen by the government in 1955 as one of five private manufacturers of the Salk polio vaccine.

“The Salk vaccine incorporated a dead polio virus, potent enough in its active guise to produce a strong antibody reaction in humans but inactivated through treatment with formaldehyde so it wouldn’t cause disease… Because of a series of manufacturing errors and poor government oversight, however, some of Cutter’s vaccine lots were contaminated with the live virus. An estimated 40,000 children contracted polio from Cutter’s vaccine. About 200 victims were permanently paralyzed, and 10 died.

“The so-called Cutter incident was ‘one of the worst biological disasters in American history, exploded the myth of the invulnerability of science and destroyed faith in the vaccine enterprise,’ observed Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania whose 2005 book is the definitive account of the episode.” But this administration is all about shortcuts, unkeepable promises, fake statistics and diving headlong into untested medical solutions… like the President’s misplaced advocacy of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial with severe (and possible fatal) side effects.

Federal policies even foster the spread of the virus. “In the past several months, while most Americans have been ordered to shelter at home, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shuffled hundreds of people in its custody around the country. Immigrants have been transferred from California to Florida, Florida to New Mexico, Arizona to Washington State, Pennsylvania to Texas.

“These transfers, which ICE says were sometimes done to curb the spread of coronavirus, have led to outbreaks in facilities in Texas, Ohio, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to attorneys, news reports and ICE declarations filed in federal courts… The immigrants began to show symptoms in late April, about a week after arriving at the Rolling Plains Detention Center in Haskell, Texas [pictured above].

“They had been held in dorms with other recent transfers, according to a county official. First three detainees tested positive for COVID-19. Then 20 more. As of Friday [5/29], 41 immigrants detained at Rolling Plains had been infected. Just three county residents have tested positive.

“In Pearsall, Texas, 350 miles south, transfers turned another detention center into a virus hotspot. Frio County had just a single confirmed case of COVID-19 in early April. Then two detainees who had recently been moved to Pearsall's South Texas ICE Processing Facility tested positive, ICE told county officials. Thirty-two immigrants have now been diagnosed, almost 90 percent of the state's official COVID-19 tally in Frio County.” NBC News, May 31st.

But distractions were increasingly valuable to the beleaguered Trump administration. They don’t want us to dwell on CV-19 outbreaks in ICE facilities. They need us to focus on other issues where they can look as if they are in control. Like the Trump-Twitter-social media battle, where the President seeks to rein in an increasingly Web/mobile-driven spreader of “fake news,” oddly enough, with increasing animosity from both sides of the aisle. “Republicans claim Twitter and the other platforms are deliberately targeting conservatives and unfairly applying rules against hate speech, incitement and harassment.

“Democrats have the opposite complaint: They charge that the platforms don’t enforce the rules often enough. They complain that Trump and others have been allowed to get away with flagrant falsehoods and calumnies — which is true.

“Last week’s crisis focused on Twitter, which enforced its internal rules on Trump for the first time. First the company attached warnings, labeled ‘get the facts,’ to two presidential tweets that had called mail-in ballots ‘fraudulent’ and predicted a ‘rigged election’ in November.

“Then Twitter added an anti-violence warning to a Trump tweet about riot-torn Minneapolis… Trump and his allies said those disclaimers amounted to censorship. They didn’t. Twitter still published all the president’s words; now his readers will see the warnings as well.” Doyle McManus for the May 31st Los Angeles Times.

Distractions? We know that Donald Trump cannot appear to be conciliatory to protesters challenging police departments, however justified. That just would not sit well with his base. Building on his “get tough” against the radical left (generally referring to Democrats), he seems to welcome the civil unrest to draw attention away from his abysmal failures to contain the pandemic.

He obviously also relishes the opportunity to assail the press, now even his own platform of choice (Twitter), as yet another way to show his right-wing, populist constituency that he remains the tough, no nonsense problem solver they elected in 2016. Guess what? The public consciousness is indeed distracted. Except the country is actually more polarized, fewer solutions are likely and, as the above numbers suggest, the pandemic is far, far from over. But at least the President can look tough again.

I’m Peter Dekom, and too many Americans are looking for silver bullets and easy buttons to end a seemingly endless and devastating period in American history… one that just might portend the end of a great nation.

Transitions

This is a long blog but hang in there with me. As Americans, we are scared, confused and conflicted on so many levels. There were issues that antedated this pandemic – climate change, income inequality and a rising plutocracy, a contracting middle class, worse challenges for those at the bottom of the economy, environmental degradation, rising student debt coupled with the dying gasps of the American dream/upward mobility, discrimination vs diversity, job displacement from a combination of globalization and AI-driven automation, housing affordability, immigration reform, political manipulation and severe red vs blue polarization. I am sure I missed a lot of salient issues. But whether you are a Trump populist or a social progressive, there seems to be a general “let’s really not talk about it” consensus that the American system of governance no longer works for the vast majority of Americans. Violent protests are now forcing the conversation, however.

What is intellectually fascinating yet terrifying is the radical rise of “self-help” justified violence and the threat of violence from those who believe that government no longer represents their interests. Whether they march with torches or are those carrying AR-15s to their state capitol buildings to demand that their representatives immediately lift all COVID-19 restrictions and totally reopen the economy, enabling individuals to move freely without masks or social distancing. Or African Americans protecting, believing that they live in a police state (where cops have free rein) that is incapable of protecting them and their rights, incapable of respecting them as citizens as worthy as white traditionalists. No system available anymore to offer them any hope justice and prevention. Voting didn’t work. Resort to the courts failed. Inner city schools got worse. A black president didn’t really change anything. No choices left?

Protests that have escalated to looting and burning down a police station in Minneapolis (pictured above) in response to yet another blue on black killing (George Floyd, noting that one of his arresting officers has been charged with third [??] degree murder). Anger. Helplessness. Frustration. Nowhere to turn. Nothing left to lose. No other recourse. Them vs us. Cities burning everywhere. Even in front of the White House. And there are agitators from out-of-state. Q-anon? White power? Militia? Is someone paying to provoke, then to justify? Paying troublemakers to make African Americans look bad to foment racial hatred? Is there any foreign money in the mix? What are the solutions?

Racism has never been more openly condoned, from the top. Evidence is mounting that a sizeable proportion of violent protestors against the Floyd murder are not local. Encouraged and recruited by distant extremists? People who actually believe in the potential of sparking a civil war. We have credible reports (including from former senior FBI officers) that these outside extreme aiders and abettors purportedly include right-wing militia like the Boogaloo Boys and other comparable groups as well as anarchists on the left. The Trump administration conveniently deleted mention of the right-wing groups, putting the entire blame on leftist extremists. What the Trump’s base wants to believe. As the nation burns, as the White House calls for an equally violent governmental response against the protestors, COVID-19 continues to infect. America is torn apart. Yet we have to deal with all of these issues at the same time.

The government could provide financial support for all Americans during this pandemic. But that is a very unpopular alternative among conservatives and the rather large segment of Americans who literally do not care if hundreds of thousands might die in a second or third CV-19 wave as long as they can make a living. Understandable, even if there is an irony in the potential greater economic loss from such second or third wave. They see 42 million unemployed Americans. Not sick people.

There are many Americans who live in communities barely impacted (so far) by the pandemic. They have not lost friends, relatives or fellow workers… so their natural response is “why do I have to give up my livelihood for a bunch of strangers living in those big cities I hate anyway?” Polarization amplified. Supported by the President of the United States every day. Disputed by the experienced medical (doctors, scientists and epidemiologists) every day. Rural communities are watching CV-19 entering their world now. Wisconsin, Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, etc. all are hot spots.

When this pandemic is over, will blue citizens ever forgive the red citizens who did not care if they lived or died? Will red citizens ever forgive the blue citizens for the economic costs of the lockdowns? Will white versa black (and vice-versa) animosity subside? Can justice evolve?

We live in an era of Trump-inspired blame. There is no forgiveness and little acceptance of individual responsibility. Donald Trump even castigated former Republican President George W Bush’s message towards the reunification of America, getting us all on the same page. Blame was an easier path. “Divide and conquer” has been an essential and most effective part of Trump’s political rise. The Floyd protests, the denial of the dangers from COVID-19, represent potential for even greater polarization. Donald Trump seems to have jumped all over this growing schism. Has America, once defined as a land of opportunity, just become a land of selfish opportunists?

The United States is clearly failing, by our own standards. Even before the pandemic, as the wealth of the top 1% exploded, 70% of Americans had not seen an increase in real buying power in four decades. We stopped investing in ourselves – particularly in the real value of governmental investments in infrastructure, education, and research. Instead we chose to fight interminable and expensive wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq) while lowering taxes. Comparative global testing showed a plunge of American primary and secondary educational quality from first to nineteenth in math, science and reading comprehension, beginning with the Vietnam War era and steadily declining into the present. The pandemic could have brought us together to fight a common threat. Instead, it exacerbated an already intolerable great divide.

Will there be a lingering post-pandemic hatred, amplifying severe and perhaps irreconcilable red-blue polarization? Can racism finally be extinguished or at least diminished? An equally devastating polarization of the rich vs everyone else? We are living off of investments from past generations. And those prior values are finally facing the depreciation and erosion from decades or inattention, a lack reinvesting in ourselves. Massive costs of natural disasters (drought, fires, floods and invasive migrating diseases and species, increase storm severity, etc.) have recently exploded from climate change. Massive political realignment as the United States has extracted itself from a century of rising global influence has eroded our trading power.

The Civil War was fought over rural vs urban priorities. Slavery was seen as an agricultural necessity to the south, which did not have big urban centers, and as repugnant inhumanity to northern states. The vestiges of slavery still linger under an underclass treatment of African Americans that just never seems to dissipate well over a century and a half after the North won that war and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery). Injustice-riot-lull-injustice. Barriers to escaping urban poverty stiffening. African Americans are facing some of the harshest conditions in decades, and with racism being legitimized, either we are sliding backwards or just seeing what has always set just beneath the surface for a very long time.

Are there simply too many continuing “irreconcilable differences” for the United States to come together again to function as a viable democracy? Will the youngest voters, those who must live with that list of issues noted above, get so angry at their “elders” that they simply shove us out of the way and unite the United States their way? Or will we try and limp along with incompatibility, Congressional gridlock, seething resentment… and attempt to return to the same-old/same-old? It didn’t work then… and it probably cannot work in the future.

Do such deep-seated irreconcilable differences suggest that, in a land with well over 300 million civilian firearms (including over 15 million semiautomatic AR-15s), the schism will be decided by another civil war? And if the country elects to break apart, voluntarily or otherwise, what might that look like? What will the currency be? Will there still be “property rights”? Will rent still be payable, pension funds released, Social Security continued, and mortgages have legal validity? What happens to our armed forces? Nuclear weapons? What happens to the federal deficit? What will the redefined borders look like? Two nations? Several? Two “blocs,” each a combination looking like the European Union? Which laws will apply? Who will enforce them? What happens to the federal judicial system? Prisons? Who gets to determine and collect taxes? The new jurisdictions would each have to create their own constitutions and bodies of laws. What happens to judicial precedents? Would there need to be treaties and protected borders determining the new boundaries? Could people travel freely across those boundaries?

Complicated, but during the transition, if that’s where we are headed, the legal systems and assumptions we have made will need to be redefined to have any continuing validity. When Germany lost WWI, a lot of private property was simply confiscated by the victors. There were no rules, laws lapsed. Could that happen here? Total chaos? Armed groups protecting turf, expanding turf. Gangs, militia, no rules, no laws? Property “rights”?

Although there was a nascent vision of private property within the Soviet Union in its final years, systems of property ownership lacked the infrastructure found in Western states. For many, ownership or even occupancy of homes and business venues was not recorded anywhere. No place to verify real estate transfers, no way to legitimize who owned what for so many. Soldiers were prone to simply seizing military weapons and selling them to the highest bidder. Highly placed former Soviet bureaucrats, particularly from the KGB and senior military officers, simply took over major factories, oil fields and processing facilities, shipping, and just kept them. And lots of folks just kept rental or governmental residential units and declared themselves “owners,” unable to produce proof ownership… because there was none. Still people bought and sold what they did not own; it just didn’t matter.

“When the Soviet Union dissolved in late December 1991, Russian President Boris Yeltsin moved decisively to reaffirm his commitment to private land ownership, which had already been legalized during the Soviet period. In late December 1991, Yeltsin issued government resolutions and presidential decrees ordering large farms to reorganize and distribute land shares to all farm members and allocate actual land plots to those who wanted to leave the parent farm. He also restated the right to private ownership of land and encouraged the rise of a new class of private farmers based on private ownership of land. Despite these steps, during the 1990s the issue of private land ownership and the right to buy and sell land were heavily contested and were key aspects of the policy conflict between reformers and conservatives.” Land Tenure, Soviet and Post-Soviet, Encyclopedia.com, April 30th. But the land really belonged to those who just took it.

What I find puzzling is the lack of concern here in the U.S., the raw selfishness and assumption that “my way is the only way” that underlies the fracturing of America today. We don’t look for commonality, for areas where we can compromise; these factions look for blame and the ability to impose precisely what that faction wants on everyone else. How is this even good for those who embrace recalcitrance, emboldened by conspiracy theories and mythology? Has the violent civil war already begun?

What I do not see in so many is the remotest appreciation of what continuing that intransigence, increasing every day, inevitably leads to. George Santayana reminded us that those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. Are we better off just breaking apart? Some say Abraham Lincoln is to blame for not letting the South simply secede. Really? Individuals, preaching violence and demanding “my way or the highway” as core political values, may be unaware of the possible drastic consequences. Or are they? Including untold death and destruction as each side attempts to impose its will on the other. Though the numbers are not precise, our own Civil War killed an estimated 640-700,000 people. How many American hardliners (in any faction) really understand that it really can happen here… again? And that they just might be on the losing side? Maybe too many know… and want that result anyway. Now?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and until those hardliners (from all sides), who are unwilling to compromise, relent to find unity, we may just continue marching towards our own inevitable destruction.

Flying Past 18,000 Lies and 100,000 Deaths

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

May 26

There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.....

Get the facts about mail-in ballots



May 26

....living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!

Get the facts about mail-in ballots

I think our nation began its love affair with exceptional legal complexity with the Industrial Revolution, ramping up in the early 20^th century with the complexities of a rising federal income tax code and exploding in reaction to the Great Depression beginning in 1929. Though presidents are sworn to protect the Constitution and the laws of the United States, the vast body of statutes and regulations would fill stacks of books in a substantial library – even without the court cases filed that interpret it all. It is impossible to know even a fraction of that collection of rules.

I used to believe that a president didn’t need to be a lawyer to hold that job, but unless a non-lawyer were willing to take some time to learn more than a few basics, I am beginning to believe that legal training is a prerequisite for anyone running for the highest office in the land. Of our 45 US presidents, 26 have been attorneys. Taking the Great Depression as a line of demarcation into modern legal complexity, the presidents who were not lawyers from FDR (a lawyer) on were: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and Donald Trump. The non-lawyers prior to W all had substantial familiarity with governance and statutory compliance, even if they were not lawyers.

What should delineate a lawyer from a layman, based on legal education and bar admission, is a commitment to and an admiration for the legal system that elected them and the constitutional guarantees that support the democracy. I have often criticized an almost-impossible-to-amend constitution, written in an era when 94% of the nation were farmers and available weapons ranged from flintlocks to crude canons, but at the core of my criticisms is a firm belief that democracy crumbles and dies without a strong and impervious constitutional structure dedicated to protect individual and society’s rights. In our case, it is a mixture of majority rule with a strong body of protections for individual and minorities against total domination by the majority.

One of the most interesting features of the US Presidency is the leeway accorded the President, both under the Constitution and through Congressional mandates, to issue executive orders. While some carry the weight of law, they cannot overrule either the Constitution or statutes to the contrary, and they are always subject to judicial scrutiny. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the longest serving president before term limits were imposed; 1933-1945) had to cope with the double whammy of recovering from the Great Depression and World War II. His 3,721 executive orders, the most of any president, carried failed attempts to stack the US Supreme Court and dilute its powers to review his actions, particularly as the Court repeatedly limited significant portions of this New Deal recovery efforts.

Despite Trump administration claims to the contrary, at 277 executive orders, Barack Obama issued fewer executive orders than any two-term president since Grover Cleveland. But the issue isn’t the number of executive orders; it’s their scope and intent. Both FDR and Donald Trump tended to tilt against constitutional and statutory precedents, FDR because he faced a massive hemorrhage of the economy and a horrific global conflict and Donald Trump because he was dedicated to reshaping the entire system of governance (“drain the swamp”) and undoing virtually the entirety of the Obama legacy.

So what happens when an individual with no legal training and zero prior experience in any elected or official governmental capacity, particularly one with a checkered past vis-à-vis the law (tax and bankruptcy failings, thousands of law suits, and numerous run-ins with local ordinances and financial regulations), a CEO of a privately-held series of companies who never faced the legal restraints imposed on publicly-traded companies, is elected president? One with passionate anti-government followers and one who believes that any interference with his policies is both unpatriotic (perhaps even treasonous) and illegal? Add that an impeachment attempt, to rein in his wanton use of presidential power, was squashed without even a trial by a Senate dominated by his lock-step GOP supporters. You get a president who believes he has unlimited power.

Notions of a “loyal opposition” or the checks and balances of a free press under the First Amendment do not fit within the Trumpian vision of governance. Most of the mainstream “press” is vilified as an “enemy” of the people, even as Trump’s attempt to exclude certain members of the press from White House access have been repeatedly reversed by the courts. Statutes on immigration, Congressional limits on how appropriations must be spent, whistleblower laws, as well as statutes on financial and environmental mandates and absolute constitutional prohibitions are viewed as unconscionable blocks to what Donald Trump has sworn to do.

Just listening to the President detail his objections and introduce his intentions to issue orders in defiance of those statutes and constitutional provisions, with the full support of his fully politicized Attorney General, you come to the irretrievable conclusion that (a) Trump (and most of his appointees) either do not know what those provisions are, or if they do know, they have no respect for their mandates, constitutional or otherwise and (b) will act in contravention of that body of law anyway, forcing courts into a rolling and exceptionally wasteful pattern of review and rejection. Simply, private CEO Donald Trump, never ever having had any check or balances imposed on his corporate leadership, believes that the mere fact that he was elected gives him the right not just to be above the law, but to be the law.

Even more extreme is the President’s position, now before the Supreme Court, that he cannot even be investigated while in office, even if he were to commit murder in front of many witnesses: “[The] president's lawyers argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Trump v. Vance, the thesis that a sitting president cannot be investigated would mean that Trump could literally shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and police and federal investigators would be powerless to do anything about it.

“That is not just a metaphor. As the president's lawyers made clear in their arguments in the 2nd Circuit, the theory of ‘temporary absolute immunity’ means that for the four or eight years Trump is president, ordinary law enforcement measures against him would be entirely suspended. There could be 50 witnesses to the shooting, and not only would the police be barred from arresting or even stopping the president from his murderous spree. They could not even call the eyewitnesses in for questioning, as the president would have the right to block any such subpoena and insist that the witness not appear. According to Jay Sekulow, one of the president's lawyers, even requiring witnesses to testify would constitute "presidential harassment" that would interfere with the ability of Trump to do his job…

“The nub of the president's argument is that Article II of the Constitution gives him ‘temporary absolute immunity’ until he leaves office. Worse, Trump thinks it extends immunity to anyone who holds his private records, even third parties who did not take part in the potential wrongdoing under investigation. His argument is that Article II temporarily places a sitting president personally beyond the reach of ordinary judicial processes, whether civil or criminal, and that it does this in order to protect the president's ability to govern without harassment.” Newsweek, May 15^th.

Trump’s utter disdain for the free speech and free press provisions of the First Amendment is anything but subtle. As social media is flooded with deep fake videos, utterly unproven conspiracy theories, Russian bots spreading pro-Trump falsehoods, Trump has reveled in his ability to say absolutely anything without the slightest regard for the facts (part of his 18,000 presidential fact-checked lies to date and counting) and accuse anyone who opposes him with blatantly false narratives. His social media tool of choice, Twitter, has until recently published his factually fabricated tweets without comment or objection. Until May 26^th.

Twitter added a little  message to Trump’s May 26^th tweets (reproduced above), suggesting that readers follow that information icon to a more truthful and contradictory body of proof that there is little or no basis to believe that vote-by-mail has any meaningful level of fraud. Trump was outraged. At first, he threatened to take the entirety of Twitter down. Forget the First Amendment, Emperor Donald. Then, based on some obvious legal advice that still is unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny, he opted for a different tact: “President Donald Trump, triggered after Twitter applied fact-checking labels to two of his inaccurate tweets, will order U.S. regulators to reexamine a law that shields social-media companies from liability for content posted on their services, according to media reports.

“The White House’s proposal would seek to curb protections afforded to internet companies under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. According to the law, ‘No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.’ That lets companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate content on their services as they see fit, while protecting them from lawsuits over content shared on them.

“Trump’s order seeks to empower federal regulators to reinterpret Section 230, to examine whether content moderation policies of companies like Facebook and Twitter engage in ‘selective censoring’ that would be grounds to remove their legal protections…” Variety.com, May 28^th. Trump signed that executive order on May 28^th.

The next day, in response to the violent protests in Minnesota against the death of an African American who suffocated while being arrested, Donald Trump release the bottom tweet above, to which Twitter added the above admonition against Twitter’s policy against “glorifying violence.” War had been declared between the President’s favorite platform to reach his base… and the President. Aside from the serious constitutional questions, many asked if the President could even live with the very rules he proposed.

In the end, we have a rogue president with a substantial and probably well-armed constituency that is locked in support of virtually everything Trump chooses to do (with rather dramatic support from Republicans in Congress)… assaulting the Constitution, flaunting total disregard for statutes he dislikes – all during a pandemic that fosters consolidated power – threatening to decimate the very democracy that elected him.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and while some erroneously believe that our system of government is strong enough to endure this assault on its bedrock principles, history is replete with the ashes of nations that also made that assumption.

Looks Like a Funeral Home, But It’s the Clubhouse Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia

100,000 COVID-19 U.S. Deaths and Rising

“When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going

to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” 

Donald Trump (February 26^th)

Saturday morning, May 23^rd, was a perfect late spring day for golf. Memorial weekend. The President, never wearing a mask, headed out to one of his many golf properties, in Sterling, Virginia, not that far from the White House. Was this an appropriate time to play golf? No matter how many Americans have died – more than double the fatalities of any other nation on earth – Donald Trump touts success. Seriously? Massive death tolls are a measure of success? Almost nothing that Donald Trump has said about the pandemic, from predictions and suggested medical treatments to recommendations to reopen the economy without restrictions has been correct.

Minimizing the reality of the threat, Trump’s false CV-19 messaging delayed a concerted federally led response by two months, a delay that a Columbia University assessment tells us that cost us 36,000 American lives. So many other nations reacted immediately, severely limiting the CV-19 infection and death tolls in their countries (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, etc.). Trump’s malfeasance killed people. Trump has just continued to minimize the risk, seeking to blame others and not promulgating meaningful solutions.

Shortages of essential medical supplies, amplified by a federal policy that supports pandemic profiteers, have underscored the ineptness and lack of preparedness of this presidency, one that has actively cut and defunded some of the federal government’s traditionally most effective anti-pandemic response programs. Trump has withdrawn US involvement internationally, from cutting budgetary allocations to federal bureaucrats charged with coordinating international identification of pandemic hot spots and controlling cross-border risks to threatening permanently to pull US support for an admittedly less-than-perfect United Nations World Health Organization… but is fixing and working. It’s all part of the Trump’s administration’s battle against globalism. No one seems to be able to explain how a global pandemic, one that crosses national borders wantonly, can be addressed other than by a globally coordinated response.

The highest levels of the federal government knew that a pandemic was brewing back in late 2019, and Trump’s senior advisors sent the President memos to this effect in January of this year. As we cross a staggering 100,000 American COVID-19 deaths, more than double the number of any other country on earth, it seems appropriate to look back at Donald Trump’s leadership, his false assurances, misstatements and dramatically incorrect recommendations.

“On Wednesday [February 26^th], in front of a packed White House briefing room, President Trump told the country there were only 15 cases of coronavirus in the US, and ‘within a couple days [it is] going to be down to close to zero.’ This contradicted both the CDC’s Anne Schuchat, who’d said minutes earlier from the very same stage that ‘we do expect more cases,’ and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who’d said ‘we can expect to see more cases in the United States.’

“The next day, on the White House lawn, Trump told reporters that Democrats were trying to weaponize the situation to hurt him and said the media was ‘doing everything they can to instill fear in people, and I think it’s ridiculous.’ The people who weren’t giving him credit for his handling of the situation ‘don’t mean it. It’s political.’” Mother Jones, February 29^th.

“During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying ‘this is their new hoax.’ During the speech he also seemed to downplay the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu.” Snopes.com, March 2^nd.

On April 20^th, as FEMA ordered 100,000 body bags, President Trump suggested that the US CV-19 death toll might rise to 60,000. Less than two weeks later, having already suggested that the entire country could reopen by Easter,  “President Trump… radically revised upward his estimate of how many Americans would die from the novel coronavirus, saying that anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 people could die—after he cited a death toll of 50,000 to 60,000 roughly two weeks ago. ‘That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80 or 90 thousand people successful,’ Trump said in a Fox News town hall at the Lincoln Memorial [on May 5^th].

“‘I used to say 65,000,’ the president added, ‘and now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly, but it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the lower end of the plane if we did the shutdown.’ He later added: ‘We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing.’” Daily Beast, May 3^rd, updated.

“As the virus spread, Trump began to redefine success. ‘You’re talking about 2.2 million deaths,’ he has said several times, referring to a projected toll if he’d done nothing to mitigate the epidemic. ‘If we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000 — that’s a horrible number — maybe even less, but to 100,000; so we have between 100- and 200,000 — we all, together, have done a very good job,’ he said on March 29. While one early model included the figure as the upper limit of a potential death toll, most models had half that amount as an upper limit. It makes anything less than 100,000 deaths look good by comparison.” Washington Post, May 1^st. When Trump made those statements, the US CV-19 death toll had passed 60,000.

As the country responds to CV-19 fatigue, as every single state begins to reopen at one level or another, as death tolls seem to be entering what is a traditionally a “between the waves” lull, experts are warning that until there is a cure or a vaccine, opening up too soon could easily transition the pandemic, with a parallel secondary shock to the economy, into a more virulent second and potentially third wave that could double or even triple the number of American CV-19 casualties to date.  As businesses come back, Americans are not wearing masks or honoring self-distancing practices in sufficient numbers to continue the containment of the virus.

“I fear the worst is yet to come… There is a very real chance there will be a catastrophe.” WHO Assistant Director-General Stewart Simonson on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS, CNN, May 24^th. Indeed, evidence is mounting that daily death tolls in some aggressive “reopening states” are reaching their highest rates (e.g., North Carolina) or rising to near record rates (e.g., Arkansas). Has that dreaded second wave already begun?

Meanwhile, Mr. Blame Others (Donald Trump) meets Mr. I’m Tougher than You Are (China’s Xi Jinping). Aside from blaming the Obama administration, the Democrats and escalating restoring the economy to full strength before the election (measured by stock prices) at all costs (regardless of medical risks), Donald Trump has laid blame for the entire pandemic on China. China clearly covered up the earliest evidence of the outbreak, not too much different from the early denials from the White House.

But what’s in that policy of blame that will benefit the American people… that will make this situation better? China will never accept responsibility or write checks to the United States as “reparations” for their “malfeasance” any more than Mexico wrote checks to cover a border wall. Why is a feud between two major powers, together accounting for over one fifth of the world’s entire population, going to accelerate an end to the current pandemic and coordinate a response to future outbreaks of diseases yet unknown? And exactly why are the Democrats buying into this destructive global conflict of national egos?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the coronavirus seems dramatically unmoved by the desires and intentions of masses of people and political leaders unwilling to accept scientific facts.

Unshred Yourself. A Reflection on Our Past as A Nation And Where We Are Today

Guest Blog by Fayr Barkley, Ph.D., Living in Gulfport, Mississippi

When I was a little girl, my grandfather had a cousin named Annie Smythe. Annie lived alone in a grand southern home and had many interesting artefacts, including a Victrola, which I found fascinating. One day as I was walking down the stairs from the second to the first floor, I saw a framed certificate on the wall, and I asked Annie about it. She told me she was a DAR, a Daughter of the American Revolution. She explained that several of our ancestors helped finance the war that led to our freedom from England and about the letters General George Washington and our ancestor Henry Hollingsworth wrote to each other during the war, that were in the Smithsonian Library.

Washington asked Henry for money, grain, meat, fabric to feed and clothe his soldiers and Henry graciously obliged as he and Washington were dear friends. Henry also led a battalion. Other ancestors stepped up: James Hollingsworth manufactured rifles, wagons and ammunition for the cause. Zebulon led a battalion. They were all descendants of my original ancestor to the United States Valentine Hollingsworth, Sr., a Quaker, who came over with William Penn and settled Delaware.

I was so fascinated by my heritage and years later when I was older, a working journalist and living in Jackson, MS, I applied for membership in the national DAR. I had to prove my lineage in order to be accepted, but it was easy because I had the family book DIRECT DESCENDANTS OF VALENTINE HOLLINGSWORTH, SR., that mama had given me when I was 9 years old. I was its proud, young custodian and still am, though not so young anymore. I was able to easily trace back my line straight to Valentine, who came over in 1682.

On this Memorial Day, I honor those who fought and died for our freedom. Political bias aside, we should stand united as a country and stop the infighting. When you look at our history as a country and how we had to fight for our freedom from another country and then continue fighting to preserve our freedom, and how so many young men and women literally lost life, limb and stability to protect us, it seems puerile to argue over ideology when we should pull together, especially during times of crisis.

My ancestors did a lot of heavy lifting to make sure our country could be free. We came here to escape religious persecution. I know many people who don't know their family history past a great grandparent, but if they did, I am sure they would discover and embrace the honorable things their ancestors did, the reasons they came to this country, how they suffered along the way, in order to establish a form of legacy for those who came after.

As a retired journalist, I am not political. The reason is because I have seen behind the curtain of politics. I know it is not about We the People. It's about power, control, money, and calculated party and self-serving lies. It sickens me to see our current national tragedy politicized while people suffer and die. If you look at the bank accounts of politicians, you can't help but wonder how public servants become millionaires, and why they fight each other so much instead of serving We the People.

I covered local, state and national politics. The same issues that people were concerned about in 1977 are the same talking points we have today. In all those years, the issues facing people have not improved; in fact, for seniors, it has become worse in regard to medical reimbursement, social security that does not keep up with the cost of living, and other issues. You would be hard pressed today to listen to a political debate and hear the candidates address issues that concern our seniors. The tapestry of our country has changed and with it, the refocusing on issues such as same sex marriage, unisex bathrooms, flatulent bovine, who has control over women’s bodies, and name calling. Lots of name calling.

But no one lays out the strategy for fixing anything. No one seems to have a salient plan of action to make the lives of We the People better; yet, the politicians never miss a paycheck nor an opportunity to flaunt their hypocrisy while the populace suffer. They have the best health insurance our tax dollars can buy. Our public servants vote themselves pay raises when the rest of us must work harder to earn more or beg our bosses for an increase. As my father said, “we get the government we deserve.” And we deserve them because we buy into whatever it is they think we want to hear and we vote for them without taking the responsibility to do our own due diligence.

Sheeple truckle* with the ignorance of the masses. Drill down to truth and don't truckle. Develop critical thinking skills instead of binding your behavior to emotions, party beliefs, fear. "Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men.'" --Walt Whitman

When our founding fathers signed The Declaration of Independence, I am sure their wish for our country was that it would be and remain united. We have allowed biased media on both sides of the political fence to turn us against each other...and that breaks my heart. The vitriolic comments I read from friends on social media from believers from both sides break my heart. As a journalist, it is my endeavor to seek truth, listen to both sides, understand various opinions, sift through facts, and use the critical thinking skills I developed to gain perspective.

What I see through the lens of perspective frightens me. We have become a country so divided; we actually hate someone who doesn't believe as we do. It has become an "us" vs "them" society and both sides are guilty.

Henry, James, Zebulon and all those who financed and fought for our freedom didn't have such rancor in mind. They sacrificed so we could gain freedom from a country that oppressed us. Many soldiers died and since, many more have died, and in the future even more so shall die defending the honor of our country.

America is being shredded; shredded by its own populace. Fear, ignorance, hatred, prejudice, political and religious bias, greed, and sloth are the culprits. And the media, I am ashamed to say, perpetuates this divide. A house divided cannot stand, nor so a country. And if we are not pulling together, we shall soon fall apart.

Today is Memorial Day. For many, it's more than just a 3-day weekend. It's a time to reflect upon where we started as a nation once controlled by another, subservient and resentful until we could wrench ourselves away to freedom; a freedom that used to be sacrosanct but now has become bastardized.

Perhaps by taking personal responsibility and action to better relationships on our own streets, neighborhoods, communities, and calming our individual hysteria surrounding what we believe based upon what we see on television presented by agenda-driven talking heads and spin doctors, we may finally connect with our critical thinking skills, drill down to truth, detach from the emotional manipulation and see that if we pull together regardless of politics, religion, etc. we may make our country better and safer without depending upon the government to do it for us; which, of course, they will not.

Whining, name calling, bullying and other childish tactics are not what is called for at this time in our history. Those are the very behaviors that will do us in.  Instead of allowing the pathologies of politicians, the manipulations of the media, the fear and powerlessness that have arisen from a global pandemic to control us, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves individually and collectively, "What can I do to unshred America?" And then---do it.

            She’s Fayr Barkley, and she’s also worried about the great divide that has ripped this nation into shreds, but are these really irreconcilable differences?

*”Sheeple” – docile sheep-like people who follow blindly. “Truckle” – fawning bootlicking.