Blog

When children with autism, like my son Luke, move into adulthood, they leave a world dedicated to their care and well being to face a new reality that merely attempts to tolerate them. The politics of autism before the age of 22 are all about providing resources and activities designed to meet the group’s developmental requirements. The politics of life after 22 abruptly changes to dealing with the fact that every child you wanted to help becomes an adult society is forced to accommodate—most of whom need assistance more than ever. America did alright by children with autism. The adults they became? Not so much. 

Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means there is a wide range in how the condition presents in those it affects. From fully functional to being unable to use a bathroom or even feed oneself, Autism runs the full gamut. But this much is certain: for every success story about a child with autism successfully transitioning to productive adulthood there are several who will need constant supervision their entire lives. The only thing that changes for them is the amount of community resources their caregivers receive.  That is a fact. 

Luke is considered about the middle of the spectrum. He is verbal but not conversational. That means he can speak fluently and let you know any basic need or desire he has, but he is near fully incapable of conversation or detailing anything that is bothering him. He refuses to discuss any health or emotional malady he may suffer from, instead plaintively reassuring us that “I’m fine!” Of course, this is a tremendous problem, as everything becomes a guessing game, and resolution becomes a hit or miss slog. Otherwise innocuous conditions—such as a sore throat or constipation—go unaddressed and escalate from nuisance to substantial concern. 

Despite his autism, Luke was generally a very happy child, largely because his mother is one-of-kind. Sue made certain his days were filled with structure and activity. Fairfax County schools were, for the most part, all in on making sure 8:00AM to 3:00 PM supplied a support structure Luke could rely on. His routines were his lifeblood, and everything started with a school bus showing up at his front door. 

They call what happens to kids like Luke—when they turn 22 and suddenly most things they counted on disappear— “falling off the cliff.” For Luke nothing hurt more than when that school bus stopped coming. Suddenly there was a big, empty, awful void in his life. What organized his existence and provided the meaning necessary to look forward was no longer there; and no matter how hard we struggle to replace it, moving on is very difficult for him to do. He’s still trying. 

Now 25 and preyed upon by a condition that mimics seizures and baffles neurologists past their certainty it is related to OCD and not physiological, Luke heroically plows forward. But now his days have morphed into a constant battle against anxiety and frustration. He is preoccupied with trying to replace that bus, fill that hole. Some days he can, some days he cannot.

The worst episodes can be violent, although he isn’t attempting to hurt anybody. For his entire childhood we were successful at keeping him off any psychotropic medications. While many of his peers gained weight and became sluggish, Luke matured into a physical specimen with boundless energy. But now we have no choice… it’s Ativan or crisis once he goes dark. And no matter how many good days he can string together, one bad one is devastating  and feels like we are back where we started. 

Central to our hopes that Luke will find his way is the adult occupational program Sue was finally able to enroll him in. Five days a week, 9AM to 3PM he is deployed with some of his oldest friends to different local businesses who participate. With prompting and guidance Luke is a great worker, but we are under no illusions about his limitations. Without near constant supervision he loses focus and becomes more distraction than asset. Yet and still, he now has a new routine that he can rely on. It’s not the school bus, but it offers the central organization he must have to look ahead rather than dwell on behind. Without it he would be lost… we would be lost. 

Most all programs for disabled adults work on shoestring budgets that rely heavily on Medicaid funding. During the best of times they are all out to maintain staff levels, pay rent, and cover the myriad of expenses serving a group of fully reliant individuals requires. Everything seems hand-to-mouth with near zero room for error. Now they face legislation fashioned to close their doors. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), while adding near $4 trillion to the federal debt over ten years, mostly due to tax cuts for the upper brackets, will also slash Medicaid by $1 trillion over the same period. That means, based on the federal contribution to the 2023 Medicaid Budget of $614 billion, roughly 15 percent of crucial funding will be lost. States must now either make up the difference out of their end, something that likely would require always unpopular tax increases, or force programs to be eliminated. 

It is almost impossible these days to bring up the subject of autism with a new acquaintance and not have them immediately reply back about their own experience with a family member or close friend. Indeed, It is no longer hyperbole to say autism impacts near everyone to some degree. Yet the MAGA (formerly Republican) Party is desperately trying to pass a thousand pages of gratuitous cruelty that all agree will devastate programs few in this community can do without. 

For months now, both in the House and Senate, advocates of the disabled have pleaded with lawmakers by pinpointing exactly how the neediest will suffer should the bill become law. They have been met with indifference and disdain, even arrested for their trouble. After all, MAGA cultists believe empathy is synonymous with “woke,” compassion a liberal disorder. 

Incredibly, MAGA Senators were not satisfied with the amount cut in the House version of the BBB. Florida Senator Rick Scott – who as CEO of Columbia/CHA oversaw such extensive Medicare and Medicaid impropriety that the company eventually conceded to the Department of Justice in 2002 and entered into what was then the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history – thought $1 trillion in cuts too timid, and sought another $319 billion. Scott claimed he was just trying to preserve the program for “those who truly need it.”

American democracy has from the start been based on enlightened self-interest. Understanding that some things you support or oppose don’t directly impact you, but are instead part of a balance of competing interests pluralism demands, is how America has prospered since its inception. MAGA nihilism is assaulting that proposition every hour now in both chambers of Congress and the White House. 

The certain passage of the BBB will codify American oligarchy at the expense of its neediest citizens. More than a despicably regressive redistribution of resources, it provides the clearest indication to date that MAGA Party members will endanger their own electoral futures backing what they know will be reviled in cowardly subservience to Trump and his donor class. Or perhaps it demonstrates most of them believe free and fair elections will no longer burden them. Either way, all of us without chauffeurs and security details will suffer. Whether white or black, MAGA cultist or otherwise, countless families across America are about to discover their school buses won’t be coming by anytime soon. BC

Over ten days in January of 1943, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met off the coast of Morocco in what would be known as the Casablanca Conference. Despite the absence of Russia’s Josef Stalin—now an ally after Adolf Hitler shattered the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact by launching Operation Barbarossa eastward on June 22, 1941—Roosevelt and Churchill were determined to establish the broad strokes of modern history’s most significant military collaboration. 

At the top of the decision list was whether to pursue unconditional surrender. In retrospect, the decision to insist on it appears to be a no-brainer. After all, who would trust any truce deal Hitler would sign on to? And expecting the zealots of Japan’s military to accede to half-measures now seems ludicrous.  But it was less straightforward in real time, particularly to the British who, unlike the Americans, would have to occupy the same continent as Stalinist Russia after the war ended. 

Churchill considered Roosevelt’s view of Stalin naive and shortsighted. Several Eastern European governments-in-exile—especially Poland—expected Britain to atone for Neville Chamberlain’s Munich appeasement and for Stalin’s atrocities in territories ceded to him under the Non-Aggression Pact, by championing their cause in any post-war settlement. That would become far more difficult once the Red Army was occupying vast stretches of territory.

For his part, FDR had little sympathy for Churchill’s concerns about Russia. He was far more worried about the Red Army being defeated and the Reich redirecting its full might westward once again than about post-war power struggles. When they had talked at other times, Stalin had relentlessly pressed this point, repeatedly emphasizing the disproportionate sacrifices the USSR was making. Win the war first, FDR reasoned—Churchill’s post-war concerns would be problems worth having.

Deciding on a strategy of unconditional surrender carried immense repercussions and responsibilities. Once announced, the stakes would rise dramatically—Axis leaders, now understanding that they personally faced the hangman’s noose, had nothing left to lose. It was like a prosecutor in a criminal trial seeking the death penalty: the jury, fully aware of the gravity of a guilty verdict, knew it would carry the most severe consequences imaginable.

Responding to Donald Trump’s post last week on Truth Social calling for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, posed a reasonable question: “Who would we surrender to?” Indeed, there are no boots on the ground anywhere near Tehran, and neither Israel nor the U.S. had suggested anything about actually invading the country. The demand—like most of Trump’s posts on Truth Social—appeared out of nowhere, offering yet more evidence of how unserious yet dangerously volatile the U.S. has become since January.

It has long been clear that Trump reads little, if anything. He apparently disdains the practice so much that he refuses to engage in one of the presidency’s most crucial rituals: reviewing the daily intelligence briefing. His aversion is so pronounced that even his normally unquestioning inner circle is scrambling to repackage the information in a form he might actually consume.

For example, Deputy Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has been floating the idea of creating daily video briefings—“like Fox News”—to put Trump at ease and make him more receptive to real-world developments. Even so, teaching an old dog and all that. Even if news of Iran achieving nuclear weapons status were delivered with a servile grin by Jesse Watters or Sean Hannity, there’s been no reported progress on getting Trump to pay attention to things that need to be read. After all, Trump has always insisted that flying blind is fine—because he prefers to “rely on my gut instincts.”

On Saturday, Trump reached deep into his intestinal tract and ordered a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities—something previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat (including his own first term, when adults still occupied the West Wing and led the Pentagon), had recognized as a perilous last resort. They understood such an action risked triggering a chain of events no one could control. Just how close Iran truly is to possessing a nuclear weapon remains a matter ongoing debate.

Israel justified its recent bombing campaign with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu declaring, “Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before: steps to weaponize enriched uranium.” However, as recently as March, Gabbard testified that Tehran’s weapons program remained dormant, stating, “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

Regardless, once Trump began posting about “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the point became moot. As soon as the manic social media posts began, it was clear—as always with Trump—that the rational actor model no longer applied. Facts would take a backseat to whim; we were now on Mar-a-Lago time. On Saturday, that clock struck high noon, and without notifying NATO or informing Congressional Democrats, Trump plunged America into yet another Middle Eastern quagmire. Though avoiding foreign wars was one of the few consistent messages he conveyed during the 2024 campaign, when push came to shove, his inner autocrat seemed to understand instinctively that nothing distracts and legitimizes like a well-timed bombing campaign.

Of course, Trump declared the strikes a “spectacular success”—but that’s highly doubtful. First, because nearly everything he says is a lie inversely proportional to the superlatives he uses. And second, because common sense collides with any overly optimistic scenario. It’s hard to believe that, upon learning its sovereignty was being challenged, Iran didn’t activate long-standing contingency plans to relocate and safeguard uranium and centrifuges. Moreover, even the most optimistic weapons analysts have long acknowledged that the odds are long that even “bunker buster” munitions can penetrate deeply enough to decisively cripple enrichment operations.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—whose credibility far exceeds that of Orange Pinocchio—issued blistering rebukes last week following Israel’s bombing sorties against Iran. The agency reiterated its warning that “armed attacks on nuclear facilities could result in radioactive releases with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the State which has been attacked.” Unsurprisingly, Trump has shown no concern for those ramifications and has given no indication of even briefly considering them.

Totalitarianism and outward aggression go hand in hand; one cannot exist without the other. New fears must always be stoked, new enemies always kept at the ready. Since January, Trump and the criminal MAGA Party—formerly known as the Republican Party, now dedicated to polishing his wing tips—have unleashed a torrent of fascist assaults aimed at sowing chaos, paralyzing American governance, and dismantling the rule of law. Yet all that destruction is now treated as yesterday’s news, as the normalization machine elevates a demented scoundrel to the status of statesman.

Sunday morning, The Washington Post blared the headline: “Trump promises tragedy for Tehran if it retaliates.” Dan Balz, the doddering dean of inside-the-Beltway punditry, gushed that the bombing was “both extraordinary and unprecedented… President Donald Trump has taken the United States to a place no previous president was prepared to go.” Talk about turning frozen burger patties into filet mignon.

Meanwhile, buried on page A3 was reporting on the chaotic collapse of Social Security customer service, with one employee noting that call times are “exploding.” Callers are no longer given wait time estimates, and field office operations have been severely crippled. One anonymous staffer blamed the crisis on “mismanagement driven in part by DOGE.” Just one of countless disasters deliberately set in motion by Trump—now overshadowed by a war he intentionally launched. Distract, scapegoat, and terrify: the ruinous triad of nihilist tyranny we must never surrender to. —BC

When the Nazis were elected into power in 1933, they controlled less than 3 percent of the German Press. The dominant media entity at the time was the Ullstein publishing house, created in 1877 by a prominent Jewish family. It grew to become Europe’s most successful publisher. By 1927 the firm had erected the newest and near-tallest building in Berlin as its headquarters, called the Ullsteinhaus. 

Needless to say, chief Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels had his sights set on the firm from day one of the Reich’s ascendance. Through a process that would be called “Aryanization” the Nazis first forced the Ullstein family to resign from the company’s board of directors. They then coerced the sale of the publishing empire, valued conservatively at $60 million, for less than a tenth of its market value. 

By 1937 the Ullstein Verlag had become the Deutscher Verlag (German Publishing House) and would operate as the central publishing organ of the Nazi Party for the rest of the Third Reich’s existence. Goebbels et al would enjoy the full resources built meticulously through decades by the Ullsteins, employing Europe’s most advanced information platform to ennoble and normalize a catastrophic agenda and the crimes against humanity it was created to pursue. 

History is clear about how ruthlessly the Nazis persecuted German media to conform reality to their nefarious worldview, to make lies truth. Certainly, Jewish journalists understood from day one any facts about the Reich would have to be sent out from abroad, publishing within Nazi-ruled confines was suicide. Those who courageously tempted fate in the regime’s early days were quickly made examples of, showing how merciless jackboot violence would be. 

It becomes tragically more accurate as the weeks pass to compare Nazi Germany’s descent into totalitarianism’s abyss with America’s current slide down MAGA’s nihilist slope. The previously unfathomable eagerness of US corporate media to normalize most all of Trumpworld’s stench, from the overt corruption of ridiculous Presidential pardons and Bitcoin receptions to the outright atrocity of disappearing immigrants to foreign hells, provides a vile point of comparison to Pre-WWII Nazi Germany. Nothing since last November has been more disheartening for patriots desperately in need of a daily rallying point to confront what can’t be allowed to stand.  

MAGA, like the Nazis, Soviets, Chinese Communists and every other regime who, as the great diplomat and historian George Kennan observed, share a pathological insecurity about the legitimacy of their rule and standing among other nations, fixates on validating its hatred toward an enemies list that only expands. Those who help it do so darken the future. Fox/AM created Trump, but ABC, NBC et al now sustains both him and the servile MAGA political class that works only to codify his rabid impulses. 

Every day we now witness the comfortable routine our craven press corps has fallen into: incite an unstable maniac with the latest criticisms his unhinged actions generate, roil all of his pathological insecurities like hostage negotiators daring the criminal to harm his captives, and then present the “policy” that results as normal. Meanwhile, the MAGA (formerly Republican) Party “crafts legislation” geared solely to legitimating a fascist kleptocracy. Really nothing too different from the Nazi consolidation of total power. 

Legislation gets no worse than the Tax Bill of 2025, passed last week in the dead of night by one vote in the House. Following up on its predecessor from the first Trump Administration, it needlessly extends tax  breaks while the nation is at full employment, adding trillions to the national debt. This time, however, it does so while stealing from the poorest sector of America, and harming virtually every area meant to help those without. It’s been accurately described as the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history, quite literally robbing from the poor to further enrich the upper brackets, all while adding between 4 and 6 trillion dollars to the national debt. 

What has changed radically this go-round is the press coverage of both content and process. In September of 2017, before owner Jeff Bezos decided soulless oligarchy was for him, The Washington Post editorial board did not mince words opining on the first Trump tax package: 

“This is tax reform, in other words, for dishonest political cowards. It is not a legacy that members of Congress should want to leave to their children.” 

Contrast that indictment with what the new and detested WaPo had to say last Sunday about what emerged from the House and how it passed:

“In the past week, as never before, Donald Trump showed mastery of the legislative process…The President is savvier about working the Hill today than he was eight years ago… The hard, sometimes dirty work of legislating might not be the easiest way to govern, but it is the most legitimate… This is how the legislative process is supposed to work.” 

During Memorial Day weekend Trump’s mental illness was on display wherever he went, whatever he did. He dishonored sacred West Point and military tradition by wearing a MAGA hat as he delivered an incoherent commencement address that slurred about everything from trophy wives to how he “rebuilt” the military and declaring that a less than 2-point 2024 election victory was “a great mandate… to do what we want to do.” Yet AP, who we’ve always counted on for truth in real time, cherry-picked the few innocuous stanzas of Trump’s address, telling its readers the President “lauded graduating cadets,” while mixing “praise, politics and grievances.” 

Later, Trump vomited an all-caps Memorial Day Truth Social post for the country:

“HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE, THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY.”

It feels necessary to cite the rant in full, since network news sites like ABC News relegated it to an ancillary sidebar of Trump’s Arlington Cemetery speech, yet another fully politicized self-congratulation fest. 

Around the world brave journalists are persecuted every day. Reporting the truth in an authoritarian country is one of the most dangerous professions on earth. At our current rate of descent, American jail cells likely will soon house those courageous enough to challenge MAGA’s growing ability to clamp down on dissent. 

When it happens they will be martyrs created by the cowardice of the mainstream media bosses who couldn’t bend the knee fast enough as they calculated that going along was best for shareholder well-being or increased personal wealth, or simply avoiding the unpleasantness that standing up to Trump assures. A lawsuit here, nasty post there. The promise of a lost federal contract here, an IRS investigation there, maybe the threat of FCC malevolence. It took appallingly little effort, but most all have now fallen into line and present the unimaginable with routine bylines and stifled modifiers, national ruin as “a bid to reshape government.” History will condemn them. We can never forgive or forget their betrayal. BC

Easter is the day for Christians to fully appreciate the time our Lord Jesus spent with us and the miracle of him rising after the most painful persecution imaginable. The story of his life and teachings offers all the foundation any person, indeed any society could require to create conditions ideal for the harmony and cooperation that make the constructive pursuit of happiness possible. 

Tragically, this Easter also presents the necessity to righteously condemn how far astray the rank and file of American Evangelicalism has wondered from the What Would Jesus Do (WWJD) model, despite fully co-opting his name for an agenda he was crucified opposing. What these millions of misguided souls demand in the name of Jesus bares no resemblance to the tenets our Savior roamed this Earth preaching we must adopt. 

In fact, one is hard pressed to find much in the New Testament today’s theocrats actually favor. Instead, everything they base their moral superiority on originates in the cruelest and most unhinged bowels of the Old Testament, a volume of stories that feature men in whales and floods that consume the world, except for one well-constructed ark. 

At every turn the crowd who now boast ownership of the high ground obedience to the Bible bestows ignore the second volume’s near constant entreaties  to advocate for those without and offer mercy to the prodigals. What they steer toward and demand others yield to, are the cruelest and least tolerant proclamations of the narrative imparted before Christ was born. 

Psalm 35:10
My whole being will exclaim, “Who is like you, Lord?
You rescue the poor from those too strong for them,
the poor and needy from those who rob them.” 

Such guidance from the New Testament evaporates in the wind with this bloc. They much prefer  Old Testament screeds such as: 

“…anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death. “`If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death.”

Leviticus 24

So does the President their unquestioning support, along with the craven and cowardly servility of the political party their mentality consumed, has plagued us with. 

I suppose it would be unfair to simply aver evangelicals are gratuitous with regard to the wanton cruelty this regime is fixated on inflicting. However, at the least they view abiding it as the preferred option of a binary choice. Disappearing people to El Salvador vs. open borders that invites in rapists and murderers. Devastating vital safety nets for the poorest and most disabled Americans in favor of tax gifts to billionaires that blow up our deficit vs. countenancing fraud and welfare Queen scams, not to mention freebies to “illegals” that solid god-fearing citizens foot the bill for. Tolerating diversity vs. woke privilege for trans freaks who beat up on our girls in sports and ogle at our children in bathrooms. It’s not WWJD; it’s WSJD (What Should Jesus Do.) 

To millions who now ail us, Trump is biblically provided as both the means to win the crusade for protection of the unborn, the earlier in the procreation process the better, as well as God’s wrath against sodomite leftist obsessions like the LGBT agenda and the false history secular liberals want to constantly indoctrinate Christian children with. Bring the Bible (read Old Testament) back into schools!

Late last October during an event billed as The National Faith Summit, Jack Graham, a Plano, Texas mega church pastor, joined a bunch of other mega church pastors as they all laid hands on their Orange Deliverer.  “Jesus,” Graham extolled, “we thank you that you have raised up a man, Donald J. Trump, to be a warrior for the word of God and the wisdom that comes from God.” 

Once disgraced televangelist Paula White-Cain, now the head of the Trump White House’s “Faith Office,” who a 2006 Senate Report found had lavished her husband, herself and family members with over $2 million of parishioner donations, thanked Jesus for protecting Trump and “keeping your hand of blessing on him.” The huddle then dispersed and all closed out things by shuffling to The Village People’s YMCA… that well known musical embodiment of crossover piety. 

Today their “warrior” posted his Easter message for the nation who elected him POTUS. It’s worth transcribing in full:

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing — But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34

BC

Essential to the framework for sovereign countries is the idea that each ruling government is responsible for the people within its confines. After all, without such an assumption the principle of borders, separate economies, unique cultures and languages, virtually everything necessary to define distinct nation-states breaks down along with the international order the entire exercise is meant to undergird. 

After World War II and the Holocaust it enabled, the United Nations created a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Although non-binding, the US-led proclamation, adopted in 1948, constituted the mission statement of the International Bill of Human Rights (IBHR), which would form the basis for international human rights law moving forward. 

Since so much of the Nazi regime’s pogrom against European Jewry involved the practice of murderous deportation, it’s hardly surprising that the tenets of the IBHR regarding the subject are unambiguous. Summarizing them makes clear how horribly sinister Trump and the MAGA (formerly Republican) party’s intentions are. America is now in flagrant violation of virtually every protection international law has established for people subject to deportation. 

First, international law establishes a “Prohibition of Refoulement,” which bans nations from deporting people to other countries where their freedom and safety are endangered. It’s hard to imagine a more hideous example of that than a one way trip to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, literally hell on earth. 

Trump’s ghoulish powwow this week with El Salvadoran strongman, Bayib Buekele, unfurled his unapologetic ambitions to relabel all immigrants in the US, regardless of legal status, as criminals and terrorists, fully deserving the concentration camp conditions his new stooge made clear he was happy to provide.   Humane treatment of deportees, another IBHR priority, was only fodder for sarcastic ridicule of journalists with the temerity to wonder about the condition of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, the innocent US resident ICE sent to Buekle’s abyss.

Next, there is “Respect for Family Life.” This clause stipulates that concerted attempts to break apart families is a crime against humanity. Trump was already checking off that box during his first term. Back then it proved a bridge too far for even most Republicans to cross. No more. Disgusting incidents of ICE agents being confronted at schools, not to mention parents being whisked off the streets as their children watch, lay bare that this time around no quarter will be given to keeping families intact. 

Then there is the biggie, due process. The paramount right to a fair hearing and resources to challenge government efforts to expel you is the firewall against mass round ups and chaotic mistreatment. Here the grotesque symmetry between MAGA cruelty and Fox/AM has been on full display. 

Assuming anyone rounded up is guilty of a violent crime and not worthy of a privilege such as due process is the go-to talk track. Border czar Tom Homan led the way when ABC’s infuriatingly polite Jonathon Karl asked if ICE detainees get any chance to prove their innocence “before you take them out of the country and put them into a notorious prison in a country that they’re not even from.” “Due process. What was Laklen Riley’s due process,” Homan sneered, referring to the young murder victim Trump has commandeered to become the face of his libel that immigrants are only here for our blood. 

Fox’s Brian Kilmeade fleshed out the grotesque supposition further scoffing it was “impractical” before getting to the heart of the matter. “If we are going to give every one of these guys a day in court and a lawyer, we can’t do it, they don’t deserve it. Our system doesn’t need to be double-burdened.” The fascist echo chamber now presumes only true blue US citizens deserve the luxury of due process, certainly not “illegals” gaming the system to skate from their mayhem. 

Finally, there is the practice of mass deportation itself. International law could not be more clear… mass deportation is a crime against humanity. Trump promised to make pursuing it his top priority at every campaign stop. In fact, his pledge enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support as 9 in 10 voters favored the practice. Now we are seeing exactly what it looks like in all the depraved detail Stephen Miller can conjure. 

Hundreds of thousands of human beings, a large percentage who have been our friends and neighbors, employees, colleagues and bosses, are being targeted en masse for the worst government treatment man can inflict. This is a campaign we once led the world to condemn. Now it is our national shame. We can’t allow it to continue. BC

As the human wreckage of World War II and the Holocaust was laid bare with the complete surrender of the Axis  powers, there was an innate tendency to centralize blame for the catastrophe. Particularly in Europe, where the perpetrators weren’t part of a notably rigid Far Eastern culture, who demonstrated their fanaticism time and again on the battlefield, the fallback conclusion was to lay blame from the top down, start and mostly stop at the Wolf’s Lair. After all, Hitler was from the beginning the Reich’s international face, and Allied war propaganda campaigns had always signaled his elimination as synonymous with final victory. 

How much easier it was to simply assume a diabolical aberration, now dead by his own hand, bore most all of the responsibility for modern history’s ugliest episode. Bring his inner circle to justice, let the Russians handle their business their way, and turn the page. Streamlining priorities in line with progress, rather than getting bogged down in the how and whys of the past, offered a more direct path forward into a future filled with gargantuan economic, political and military challenges. 

The major problem with that approach lay in the fact that every hour our “ally,” Uncle Joe Stalin, whose army occupied vast tracts of Eastern Europe, was acting increasingly like a principle adversary, and those who paid attention understood his type of leadership was very similar to Hitler’s, which we ignored at our peril. US Diplomat George Kennan’s “long telegram” would soon detail the origins of Soviet authority, and how incompatible its “jealous need for power” was with any Western hopes for post-war cooperation. Moreover, as the previously unimaginable number of Holocaust victims kept climbing, it began to dawn on many that such an event could never be allowed to happen again and that a field of study devoted to all of its ugly aspects might not be a bad idea. 

German historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt moved into this vacuum to become the leader of 20th century totalitarianism scholarship. Her first book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was published in 1951. It was groundbreaking work that explained in detail the unique characteristics and essential social dynamics behind total centralized control of a modern society exemplified by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. 

But her masterpiece was published in 1963 titled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Its point of departure was the trial for crimes against humanity of Nazi deportation director Adolf Eichmann in Israel. Eichmann had escaped to Argentina after the war, but was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence operatives and brought to face justice in Jerusalem. 

The clear theme prosecutors pursued during Eichmann’s trial was the incomparable evil of the Final Solution and the necessity that the world must not allow architects like Eichmann to escape accountability. However, Arendt was not at all willing to leave it at that. She proceeded from a thesis that spread responsibility for the historic number of Holocaust dead with a far wider net.  

Arendt’s principle contention was that the level of “success” the Reich achieved in wiping out European Jewry could only be possible if they were granted an extraordinary level of cooperation at every step along the way. Occupied populations and their politicians, local bureaucrats and police, even Jewish Councils (judenrate), all contributed to a symmetry essential to kill so many people so quickly. Hungary, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed within months, most while Germany was in full retreat and certain to lose the war, was used by Arendt as the epitome of how atrocity can succeed when nobody resists.

In contrast, occupied Denmark, where King Christian X committed himself to protecting the nation’s Jews, and France, which supported an extensive partisan network, were cited by Arendt to show how ineffective Nazi extermination efforts were when confronted with even modest resistance. Although her contentions were controversial, the tremendous scope of her research, which literally tallied casualty numbers down to the very last victim, proved beyond a doubt that cooperating with totalitarians only produces worst case results. 

Flash forward about 80 years and America now suffers at the nihilist whims of a MAGA GOP,  an unapologetic totalitarian entity that no longer even bothers to deny its disdain for the rule of law, or its preparedness to sanction atrocity. In less than two months this regime has worked overtime to erase any doubts about how nefarious its agenda is. This time around “promises made, promises kept” could not possess darker overtones. Trump brazenly checks off every relevant box to confirm he gratuitously committed perjury when taking the oath of office January 25th on the same Capitol steps his servile minions stormed four years early at the behest of his stochastic terrorism. 

MAGA, like the Third Reich, is the embodiment of the worst collective human impulses that exist, ennobled for 30 years by Fox/AM. It is a nihilist ideology based in large part on the validation of jealousy, greed, petty resentments, self-inadequacy and disunity. It is anathema to everything the American experiment was supposed to embody, and is devoted to reversing the full breadth of our societal progress. The Republican Party now conflates being an insufferable asshole with courageous contrarianism, icky creepiness with out-of-the-box leadership, abject cruelty with long overdue “common sense.” In short, decent individuals with any degree of empathy need not apply. 

MAGA’s principle mission is to destroy victim groups Fox/AM has scapegoated for more than three decades, starting with immigrants and political opponents. On immigration, the regime has wasted no time pursuing atrocity, enthusiastically deporting victims masked ICE thugs grab off the street to Guantanamo and El Salvador’s notorious “terrorist confinement center.” It is clear Trump’s campaign assurances that criminal aliens would be the principle priority was just another lie, horror stories are already the common denominator. America is now unapologetically committing human rights violations as a matter of policy. Trump literally sets quotas he expects ICE to meet. 

As for dissidents Trump is not mincing words, even as he approaches full cognitive failure. His recent speech at the Department of Justice was nothing less than a clampdown manifesto. Speaking to a crowd of people sworn to be apolitical, Trump received rapturous applause when he promised that “we will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred…” by predecessors who “tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third world country. But in the end the thugs failed.” 

There is no doubt the goal is to create a deportation bureaucracy Eichmann would admire, employed to detain whoever the regime targets. Since incompetence is what Trump does best, it stands to reason that, even more than its Hitlerian forebears, MAGA criminal ambitions will require cooperation and passivity from all involved. Shamefully, thus far he has no reason not to be emboldened on that score. 

Across the board, American institutions are throwing in the towel before the first round even gets started. From the corporate media headed by the big three news networks which, since our election catastrophe has eased into a complicity comfort zone, to universities like Columbia that might as well put up signs saying “extort us for government funding.” From the disgusting spectacle of major law firms such as Skadden, Arps giving Trump a blank check on pro bono work to non-profits, school districts, even Major League Baseball becoming DEI-free Pleasantvilles, going along is now the go-to.

Any hopes a leading light emerges from Democrats we have relied on in the past flickers dimmer each day, as disunity and refusal to even recognize the full severity of our plight continues to characterize the party’s response to a thousand cuts the Project 2025 play book inflicts. Bernie and AOC are not Obama and Harris, whose continued disappearing act becomes more unfathomable by the day. Hakeem Jefferies was born to seize this moment; why he refuses to do so is deeply perplexing. A national general resistance simply can’t thrive without leaders who possess gravitas and are willing to put all of their skin in the game. Trump tells us daily how ugly he is and how repressive he wants his government to be; those at the top he threatens most must look him in the eye and demand he bring it on. 

Finally, there is us, everyday people on the ground. We who are fully cognizant of the disaster at hand. What can we do? What must we do? What should grass roots resistance look like? Incredibly, most Americans remain inattentive, wedded to routines that can still be carried out until MAGA nihilism renders them the nostalgia of a time before calamity. Protest, great. Call feckless lawmakers en masse, ok. But the ruinous catastrophe of last November was a collective failure. 

More than 75 million voted for a convicted felon who spent four years promising to be a fascist pestilence. Those who don’t understand that, don’t really care, or worst of all, embraced the results, must come to understand the price they will pay. They must hear the truth before we all suffer its consequences. They must understand the choice is now clear… good or evil, madness or sanity. However unpleasant things get telling them, they must be told, again and again, by all of us, whether it ruins the picnic or not. Resistance equals clarifying the options and refusing to be ignored. That is now the price of freedom; anything less is cooperation. BC. 

On December 21, 2022 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the US Congress. Ten months into his nation’s stand against naked Russian aggression, Zelensky was humble but passionate, exceedingly grateful but determined. His words were those of a statesman wishing to reassure a principle ally that victory was not only possible but probable if it kept the faith with him, while still making sure to remind of the horrific price all the free world would pay if his nation’s heroic stand was not supported. 

Zelensky cast Ukraine’s struggle against the continuum of history, asserting it “will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren.” To any isolationists who might question America’s stake in the conflict, Zelensky was clear… “the world is too interconnected and interdependent to allow someone to stay aside and at the same time to feel safe when such a battle continues.” 

Over and over the full chamber interrupted Zelensky with standing ovations. It got to the point where Zelensky was a bit frustrated by the constant interruptions. After all, he was focused on making sure the lawmakers understood the terrible price Ukraine was paying every hour.

“Last year — last year, 70,000 people lived here in Bakhmut, in this city, and now only few civilians stay. Every inch of that land is soaked in blood; roaring guns sound every hour. Trenches in the Donbas change hands several times a day in fierce combat, and even hand fighting. But the Ukrainian Donbas stands.”

While Ukraine’s fight carries global implications to be sure, its President was clear about the price his country was paying for “the restoration of the international legal order.”  Ukrainians would do the fighting and the dying, and that was ok, so long as “America’s leadership remains solid, bicameral and bipartisan.” Again the full chamber rose, with the petty exception of a few of MAGA’s worst at the time, and delivered yet another ovation. 

Just a bit more than two years later Zelensky’s speech might as well have been in a parallel universe. Were one to have been castaway on a Pacific Island the week after his address, and returned to civilization just in time for yesterday’s wretched White House spectacle, they surely would think they had entered the twilight zone. 

There Zelensky sat in the White House, alone, proud, steady as an oak while a pack of hyenas taunted him with nothing but the continuous lies that are the foundation of their rise to power. Trump is far too weak and insecure to do man-to-man with a global hero, so he had in tow his new toady, JD Vance, who replaced the old model, last seen running for his life from the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has his own sorry history of being the target of Trump’s bullying, slouched next to Vance, staring straight ahead as he steadily sunk further into the soft sofa, trying hard to disappear.

It was as if the Ukrainian President had been rounded up in one of ICE’s immigration raids and brought in for questioning. Trump was the bad cop, but Vance wanted to prove he was worse. Cruelly patronizing and inanely paternal, the despicable duo rained ignorance on Zelensky, who calmly refused to accept their premises, giving back as good as he received. Of course, this did not sit well with fascism’s most fragile snowflake. 

After less than six weeks in office, we have already reached the point in our second MAGA Presidency where repeating verbatim the vomit Trump constantly expectorates somehow only further normalizes the corrosion he personifies. Yet and still, one exchange captured everything ruinous about the whole affair. 

Zelensky opened the session by providing the history, dating back to 2014, of the Russian campaign to annex Ukraine. Vance, who couldn’t wait to jump in and make clear the real purpose of the whole ugly charade, began to admonish Zelensky with the lie “…you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.” The Fox/AM narrative has long rested on the notion Zelensky has become just another ungrateful welfare queen, and that tripe would begin and end virtually every paragraph the American leadership whined for the remainder of the abasement. 

Over and over Trump, then Vance, then Trump again, accused Zelensky of refusing to offer enough “words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.” A MAGA jackal from the assembled press corps, now overloaded with Fox/AM stenographers, couldn’t resist jumping in on the action and berated a wartime leader for not wearing a suit. Beginning to end, the theme was the same, Trump wanted Zelensky to bend both knees and beg for unworthy indulgence, just like a refugee heading to Guantanamo or a government worker fired for no more cause than this lawless regime’s disdain for basic decency. 

And that “solid bicameral and bipartisan” US leadership? Trump poodle Sen. Lindsey Graham provided an appropriately servile epitaph to those hopes after Zelensky was literally ordered to leave the White House. Obediently repeating the Trump Doctrine – that is, every ally must be as much of a eunuch as any Republican when it comes to public interactions with the Godfather – Graham threw Zelensky under a tank and gushed how “proud I am of President Trump.” That is now the GOP position A-Z. 

The multitude of gashes MAGA fascism is inflicting on America will surely continue unabated, but no episode should better galvanize the resolve of those who refuse to accept this fate for our beloved country. Like Zelensky, we now know beyond doubt where this regime intends to go, and how enthusiastically the Republican Party, whose members now conflate nihilist servility with principle, will follow. 

In February of 2020, this platform expressed certainty that, allowed another term to  fully consolidate power, MAGA Trumpism would “leave us reviled by the world, a pariah instead of a beacon, a crisis instead of a solution…. a soulless wretch among countries of this Earth.” I hate being right. We are all Zelensky now. BC

Attn: Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President,

You have achieved so much in your life. Nobody can doubt you have taken the gifts God bequeathed and maximized them in service to your country. You never hesitated, were never paralyzed by self-doubts, never wavered in your pilgrimage to serve America at the highest level, to lead its forward progress and do everything you could to help us reach our full potential as a united country. 

Your Presidency was a clinic in executive leadership. The Obama Administration inherited an economy in crisis, rocked by the worst collapse since the Great Depression. Eight years later you left us once again prosperous, back to near full employment with inflation under control, the stock market fully rebounded, and a host of industries, imperiled when you took office, back on their feet and moving forward with relative confidence. 

Of course, as you never tired of saying, the work was far from done, but the American economy was restored on your watch. Moreover, your signature achievement, Obamacare, has stood the test of time, surviving the most extreme GOP efforts to kill it while providing millions with health services they otherwise would not have received.

But now the US calls on you once again for the full measure of your leadership. I wish to the almighty it wasn’t necessary to demand this, but becoming POTUS is like being made by the Mafia… it is for life. Your predecessor, whose own failed Presidency created most of the crises you had to confront, has completely abdicated his responsibilities. His contemptible silence has been a shocking desertion of his civic duties and permitted Trump and his MAGA minions a fully open playing field to consume the GOP he once led. His silence has been deafening. History will scowl at his refusal to engage. 

Mr. President, you on the other hand have maintained a vibrant public presence, and rolled up your sleeves in two elections to help get Democrat  candidates elected. The first campaign succeeded and likely saved the country. The second just failed and, sadly, tragically, the US has never been in more danger. Full fascism has arrived in America. Trump’s “inaugural address” confirmed what anyone already paying any attention knew, he is an enemy of constructive governance, an existential threat to national and global stability. 

To wit, within hours of refusing to place his hand on a Bible and lying he would protect the Constitution, Trump: threatened Panama with military force if it didn’t agree to let the US gratuitously abrogate a treaty that’s been in place and unquestioned for almost 50 years; usurped the 14th Amendment to deny birthright citizenship, while pledging to mobilize the military to round up millions for expedited deportation; promised to impose reckless tariffs for no other reason than his certainty the world takes advantage of us and the falsehood they will balance our books; pardoned virtually every convicted J6 insurrectionist with a sweeping edict that lays waste to the rule of law; renaming the Gulf of Mexico, scapegoating transgender rights, again exiting from the critical Paris Climate Accords, the list goes on and on, each proclamation seemingly more inane and destructive than the last. 

Mr. President, we are all in this together. Whatever you envisioned for your golden years is just as much at risk as what millions of us imagined for ourselves. No amount of wealth or privilege is going to provide a golden ticket to fully evade the cataclysm a second Trump Administration guarantees. Just like with the rest of us, there are three options for ingesting MAGA fascism: servile glee, denial and apathy, or sad but determined recognition and resistance. I’m sure you agree that routines won’t mean much when carried out under the cloud of nihilist totalitarianism. So how can you opt for anything but active opposition? Certainly your wife is more than up to that task, and provides exactly the right partner to help lead us out of this wilderness. 

The forces at your disposal are many and elite, literally the best and brightest America offers. After all, ability and expertise don’t last long within MAGA, almost immediately garnering both envy and disdain from a membership fixated on servility instead of competence. Military, medical, law, finance, technology, media and the arts, the numbers available to draft into service of this cause are as limitless as they are diverse. 

Generals Mark Milley and former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly; Never Trump Republicans like Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, Liz Cheney and Adam Kitzinger; financial heavy hitters like Warren Buffet, Mark Cuban and Bill Gates; former NASA astronauts and Conservative judges like Michael Luttig; former GOP cabinet members like William Cohen and Christine Whitman; virtually every entertainment legend not fully self-absorbed; the pool of talent and prestige is enormous. We. Just. Need. A. Leader! 

Mr. President, glory comes in all shapes and sizes. It can come from peaceful governance, it can come from a bloody battlefield. Events dictate where it is available to be achieved. And it is only available for those prepared to seize a moment in time before it spirals off to become just another lost opportunity. Perhaps better than anyone alive you understand this truism. 

History has provided just such an instance. The stunning willingness yesterday of our full media landscape to pretend America was handing over the reins to someone with an agenda guided by the national interest, or any scintilla of commitment to embody the oath of office he was promising to abide, clarifies little time is left to protect and expand the space between truth and the horrific Fox/AM narrative most commentators accepted, even as Trump enthusiastically spewed his sedition. The situation is dire. 

I understand your reticence. No doubt there are a plethora of pro and con arguments you have considered with regard to stepping forward. But if not you… then who? No matter how many times one considers our options it always circles back your way. Millions like me felt a sense of hopelessness yesterday, not so much because of the forces of ugliness we face, but because we have nobody who appears willing to face them. 

The Presidency of the United States has always been as much about symbols as policy. We’ve always taken for granted White House good faith to unite us toward higher purpose. Now we have a felon intent on dividing us in line with overt efforts to destroy this democracy.  So our hopes and expectations must turn elsewhere for guidance. We need you right now, Mr. President… all of your best, until this crisis has passed. The stakes could not be higher. Without your full participation government “of the people, by the people, for the people” may very well perish from this Earth. It’s an offer you can’t refuse. BC

A week before the 2024 US Presidential election, perhaps the most critical time ever for American governance, the Washington Post abdicated its responsibility to endorse Kamala Harris for POTUS. It was a stunning refusal to uphold one of its primary duties as a beacon of the nation’s free press. 

An “endorsement” of Harris really only necessitated a recitation of why her opponent’s campaign to install nihilist fascism was inimical to American democracy, not to mention the stability of the world it still purported to lead. So when the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, launched into Monday morning kabuki after the decision was announced, whining about returning to the purity of WaPo’s roots by no longer contributing to “a perception of bias,” he only laid bare to all that duty and civic obligation had been exorcised from its mission statement.

WaPo policy was now beholden to the fickle opportunism of the guy who paid its bills. A mighty institution of US journalism, that had once forced a corrupt President to resign, now bent the knee to the worst American politics could conjure. Not eight years after declaring “Democracy dies in the darkness” to reassure its readers after Donald Trump’s first victory, Bezos shrugged and turned out the light on any future commitments to keeping the faith and fighting the good fight.

That craven surrender turned out to be a depressing harbinger of things to come, as the full landscape of corporate media anchors and analysts treated America blowing its brains out on election night as if just any other Republican had prevailed. Turns out the Post had merely reflected the nation’s refusal to let anything subsume its pathological determination to create normalcy, its freakish adherence to the debilitating distractions of routine, even in the wake of a major party candidate primarily driven to make certain everybody knew he was, not only a fascist, but a demented sociopath as well.

On January 1, 2025, three weeks before the unapologetic seditionist will lie and swear to defend the Constitution, the same editorial board rang in the New Year by musing about the “fascinating interplay between alarmism and complacency, between catastrophizing about the future and idealizing the past.” While acknowledging the country is “entering a stretch that we assume will be chaotic and tumultuous,” the Bezos braintrust pointed to the “possibility that the next phase of history will surprise in that respect, too.” In other words, who knows; it’s likely a dark age that awaits in three weeks, a specter Winston Churchill dubbed at an analogous juncture in world history “The Gathering Storm,” but why sweat it, surprises happen… If only. 

Trump/MAGA have spent nine years making sure absolutely nobody should be surprised at the depths its nihilism can descend to. “Promises made, promises kept” is just another way of saying constructive approaches to governance only scare and confuse its servile adherents; they demand the primal simplicity of bullying and scapegoating, empty assurances that Fox/AM’s incessant revisionism validates the vile impulses that now define their world view. Progress only benefits others they detest and creates new challenges they have no interest in addressing, even less in resolving. 

Four years ago to the day our incoming President committed treason for all the world to see. Nobody who watched events unfold on January 6th can plausibly dispute that. But to make sure history would be just as certain, Congress created a committee, co-chaired by a ranking Republican, that could not have more exhaustively examined and chronicled the day’s mayhem. It’s report was as clear cut as it was thorough, placing full blame precisely where it belonged. Today Congress certified that perpetrator’s return to the White House without fanfare. 

So nothing should surprise from the moment MAGA’s anti-leader steps to the microphone on the 20th and ad-libs his way through just another of his diatribes. There is nothing too petty, or too cruel, or too hateful, or too lazy, or too corrupt, or too incompetent, or too pandering, or too inane, or perhaps most ironic to Inauguration Day, too seditious for this cabal to inflict on those they will put their hands on a Bible and lie about serving. That’s a certainty. 

On January 21st the ever-dwindling number of Washington Post subscribers will peruse a front page that will likely cover the dawn of American fascism no differently than it reported on any other Presidential inauguration. Whatever our Buzz Windrip spews after we hand him the nuclear codes, you can bet it will be disinfected and rendered simpatico with the coming year’s events calendar. The Super Bowl, the Oscars, March Madness, 4th of July celebrations, graduations, weddings, your kid’s soccer game, etc etc etc; they will all be etched in stone, sacrosanct signposts that define American life. And democracy, or even a functional government apparatus? It will die in broad daylight. Most won’t give it a second thought. After all, America hates surprises. BC

“In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath
Runs the all-time loser
Headlong to his death”

Jethro Tull

During the winter of 1982 I was home on Christmas break from my studies at University of New Hampshire, where I majored in political science and journalism. At some point my report card from the fall term arrived in the mail. Anxious to show my father his investment in my future was paying dividends, I presented him with an honor roll caliber masterpiece.

My dad was a miser with compliments, particularly ones tossed my way, so I wasn’t expecting effusive praise. Yet and still, I hoped he would at least show some satisfaction that his first born, who escaped high school with a 1.77 GPA was now making tangible progress on his journey to responsible adulthood.

He took off his glasses to study the data for a few moments and kind of muttered a “not bad” loud enough and with the necessary emphasis to impart he was pleased with my marks. But, as was his way, the gaze turned a bit quizzical… “What’s this class, 20th Century Dictatorship and Totalitarianism,” he asked with the wry smirk he reserved for anything he deemed less than serious. I explained how interesting the class was, and how George Romoser, the Professor who taught it, was renowned in the field and had studied with the famous political scientist, Hans Morganthau. “Billy, you live in the one country where that crap is the very least of your concerns,” he chuckled. “I’d get a bit more practical if I were you.”

I go through this life confirming time and again how wise and prescient my father was, but he sure stunk up the joint on that one. Nihilist fascism’s diapered rear end is perched at our doorstep and everything about our shameful national journey to this point was foretold to me 42 years ago in Thompson Hall classrooms. It is textbook.

History’s presentation of totalitarianism is largely an abstraction that’s hard for any who have not experienced the phenomenon to fully grasp. When studying Germany’s descent into Nazi hell the usual reaction within a vibrant democracy is incredulous puzzlement at how millions could become so uniformly servile to such despicableness.

The best observers could do was to document the characteristics and organize chronologies. That way, like a disease, its symptoms can be recognized when they present themselves in other situations. You can’t simulate history; whatever catastrophes it creates must be lived through to be adequately understood. Our journey through one continues.

America is perched upon a runaway train propelled by the chaos our all-time loser must constantly create to maintain his relevance and assuage his constant insecurity. His supporters no longer try to make sense of what has steadily devolved into a constant stream of personal grievance gibberish. They will follow him anywhere he goes.

It’s exhausting and futile at this point to dwell on Trump’s vileness. Of course, he isn’t just “unfit” for office, he is an unhinged criminal who if empowered will endanger everybody. Those who surround him these days are as replete of talent or any basic duty to the country or its constructive governance as the fascist braintrusts of history past; and they are as enthusiastic as any to delve into atrocity’s dark potential.

Trump has told us clearly and often about his nefarious intentions. His Capitol Hill toadies have promised their unquestioned servility. No lie will be challenged, no outrage will be resisted. Whether the trains run on time is of no concern, only the pursuit of a narrative with no rhyme or reason past the aggrandizement of dear leader, and the legitimacy of his hatred for most of our nation. Those are the promises made that his wretched core will expect to be kept.

Nothing makes sense when the country tasked with leading the free world seriously considers for POTUS a rabid fascist whose “closing argument” in Georgia this week included performing mock fellatio on a microphone he spent the previous fifteen minutes cursing, before promising that CTE-addled former football star Herschel Walker will head up US efforts to build a missile defense shield. How will future generations studying our descent possibly be able to empathize with that?

Some time back I began texting a Republican friend who has maintained my respect since 2016. He is a pastor from Pennsylvania and a thinker, but also partisan and unquestioningly supportive of GOP candidates. Trump lost him long ago, but “Jim” has stubbornly continued to wall him off from the party he now fully controls. Throughout our correspondence this election I have argued that merely refusing to vote for him is not enough. To adequately confront him one must make a clear choice and support democracy. I convinced myself that Jim was a true bellweather; if he could vote for Harris, the “Never Trumper” bloc could prove to be determinative and the rout necessary to diminish MAGA was possible, polls be damned.

This morning Jim told me he was writing in former GOP Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse’s name for President, and would vote straight Republican down ballot. Given his tone, I sensed the only thing about the Presidential race he is certain about is refusing to vote for Harris. Whether he will, within the privacy of a voting booth, decide to forgive and forget Trump seems possible.

Whatever happens today, those of us stunned and bewildered about how we could possibly be back in the exact same nightmare we lived four years ago, should take heed of my response to Jim, and perhaps let it guide their interactions with those we know who won’t oppose the nihilist fascism Trump embodies…

“What Would Jesus Do, Jim? Witnessing Trump’s vile descent into madness this campaign, I simply can’t fathom how anybody would not run to vote against him. Why you can’t do a Liz Cheney is something I don’t know that I’ll ever get my head around. But I am certain that in the aftermath of the worst that could happen, the burning ashes of a dystopian landscape his Presidency pledges to produce, you will never be able to say you did everything to stop it… at least not to me.”

Pray for your country… And for God’s sake vote Harris. BC