Author: Bruce R. Nelson

SCORING HELSINKI: DEEP STATE 1, TRUMP 0

We now have four, not three, branches of government: legislative, judicial, executive and, last – and most assuredly least – Donald-I-Alone-Can-Fix-It-Trump. Yes, our Constitution places the president in the executive branch. The Donald, however, disregards all instruction manuals and briefing memos, preferring to roll instead as his own unattached entity, a government of himself, by himself and for himself.

This unique bifurcation had been in the works since Inauguration Day, but reached full gestation in Helsinki last week when Trump pulled away from his own administration in a nauseating, groveling embrace of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The president not only rejected his advisors’ advice against having such a meeting with Putin, but he was sharply critical of his own government’s findings that the Russian leader had ordered an attack on our country’s elections.

As a result, the “Deep State” that Trump so vigorously campaigned against moved quickly and decisively to right the sinking ship of state. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, a Trump appointee, issued a statement contradicting the president’s remarks that let Russia off the hook for its election interference. Later that week, FBI Director Christopher Wray, the guy Trump appointed after he fired James Comey, pushed back on the president’s claim that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt”, insisting that “Russia attempted to intervene with the last election, and . . . continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.”

So much happens so quickly these days, it is difficult to sit back and take measure, to process what is happening to our country. It is virtually unheard of for high level presidential appointees to publicly disagree with the president. But it gets even more bizarre than that. More than a week has passed since Trump and Putin spent two hours talking to each other with only themselves and their interpreters in the room. Russia has alluded to agreements reached in that meeting, but nobody in our intelligence agencies knows what they are because Trump hasn’t told them. As a result, both the New York Times and Politico have reported that U.S. spies are attempting to tap into Russian intelligence in order to learn what the President of the United States said in that meeting. No reputable publisher would ever accept a spy thriller manuscript with that story line. It’s beyond belief.

If there is a silver lining in this absurdity, it resides in the Deep State. The term loosely refers to knowledgeable government professionals who keep the country running, apart from – and sometimes in spite of – elected leaders. At various times, the Deep State has been scorned by the left and the right. In the 1960s, it was known as the “Industrial Military Complex”, and was deeply eschewed by those protesting the Vietnam War. Decades later, Edward Snowden attributed secret surveillance of U.S. citizens to the inertia of the Deep State. On the other end of the spectrum, the predicate for making America great again was the abolition of the Deep State, which the Trump campaign saw as a swamp in need of draining.

Ideology aside, the Deep State, like most governments, is neither monolithic nor inherently good or evil. It all depends on how it is used. Under our current circumstances, it has proven to be an effective safety net against the autocratic ravages of an unfit president, a “sad, embarrassing wreck of a man,” in the words of conservative columnist George Will. So loudly, confidently and unanimously was the Deep State’s repudiation of Trump’s Helsinki performance that Trump was forced to offer a rare, if lame, correction, allowing that Russia may have interfered with our election, but it “. . . could have been other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.”

While the Helsinki summit was the most dramatic presentation of the divide between Trump and the rest of the executive branch, it was by no means the first. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went on Fox News immediately after the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville to say that Trump “speaks for himself” on his values, and that the State Department remains committed to “equal treatment of people the world over.”

Minutes after the president disparaged NATO allies at the recent Brussels conference, even questioning whether the United States should continue to participate, current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared on Twitter that “NATO is the most successful alliance in history”. According to news reports, Defense Secretary James Mattis deliberately kept a low profile during the NATO meeting and Trump’s European tour to better position himself to help repair the damage later.

Nowhere is the divide between the president and the rest of the executive branch more pronounced than in North Korea. Trump was in an euphoric glow after his smoke-and-mirrors spectacular in Singapore, insisting that nuclear peace is now in hand, thanks to his diplomatic powwow with Kim Jong-un. Pompeo, and the other deep-staters, do not expect the regime to give up their nukes easily, and see nothing but a long slog ahead, as has always been the case with North Korea.

Federal bureaucrats have long been fodder for punchlines. They symbolize what cynics see as a bloated and broken government. And they have a point, particularly when a Social Security deposit is late, or FEMA botches a hurricane recovery, or the SEC fails to stop a Bernie Madoff scheme. Yet, this Deep State also includes bureaucrats who have caught and removed defective medications, recalled dangerous motor vehicles and discovered major breakthroughs in fighting deadly diseases. It includes at least 69 Nobel Prize winners, mostly little known scientists.

Federal servants are bound by a code of loyalty that is very different than the one Trump attempted to extract from James Comey. They pledge “loyalty to country above loyalty to persons, party or government department”. That some cabinet secretaries and intelligence personnel have adhered to that oath and chosen to follow the facts, rather than an unhinged, fact-free president, is an amazing show of patriotism. Long live the Deep State.

NO-PIVOT TRUMP AND THE CAMPAIGN THAT NEVER ENDS

Remember all that talk about Donald Trump pivoting? Once he secured the Republican nomination, he was supposed to pivot from the right to the center. After the election, we waited for him to pivot from candidate to president. When he gave his first speech to Congress without embarrassing himself, there was talk of his having pivoted into a genuine leader. Pundits greeted John Kelly’s appointment as White House chief of staff as the Donald’s major pivot toward becoming presidential. It never happened, none of it. Turns out that waiting for Trump’s pivot was as laborious and fruitless as Vladimir and Estragon Waiting for Godot. Like Godot, the pivot, never came.

Instead, for the first time in our history, we have in the Oval Office a one-dimensional, perpetual candidate, a blowhard with neither core beliefs nor the slightest interest in public policy, a president in name only whose singular vision is his own self-aggrandizement. And this is why our charlatan-in-chief can put children in cages, buy a porn star’s silence, lie 6.5 times a day, and still have a 42 percent approval rating.

All he does is campaign. There is no real governing going on here. Governance to Trump is the art of making stagecraft pass as statecraft. He has created a governing façade that casts himself as the omnipotent, winning superhero, righting imaginary wrongs and taking America back to a joyous, magical place and time that never existed.

We should have seen this coming when Trump filed his reelection documents on the day he was inaugurated, as opposed to waiting until the third year of his term, as all of his modern predecessors did. Or, when he obsessed over the size of his inauguration crowd. Or, when he ordered an investigation of voter fraud, insisting he had been robbed of votes, even though he won. Or when he kept right on holding campaign rallies and leading the faithful in chants about the wall and Crooked Hilary. These are not the actions of a man pivoting from campaign to governance. Alas, the Donald doesn’t pivot. He has only one gear and it’s all about creating adoration for himself.

At this very moment, Trump is preparing the pageantry for a prime-time Monday night announcement of a Supreme Court nominee who will supposedly sound the death knell for abortion rights. He’s been downright giddy about it for days, telling one audience this week, “other than war and peace,” packing the court with the right judges is the most important thing a president can do. Lest you think Trump’s judicial fixation reflects a deeply held reverential respect for the unborn, check out this 1999 clip of him boasting that “I am very pro-choice.” This nomination, like everything in Trump’s life, is purely transactional. He delivers a solid 5-4 conservative majority on the court, and sops up more love and approval from the right. As a bonus, attention is diverted from the thousands of migrant children he pulled away from their parents.

Reach deep into the soul of Donald Trump and you will find absolutely nothing. He is the first president with a totally empty ideological slate, unless winning or self-interest count as ideologies. He has changed party affiliation five times. His position on any issue turns on a dime, based on his instant calculation of what will make him look best in any given moment. Aside from this perpetual self-promotion, he makes no pretense of governing or leading. He doesn’t read briefing memos prepared by his staff. He doesn’t understand many of his own positions or policies. He signs executive orders without reading them or knowing what they do.

By not governing, Trump is able to focus exclusively on the only aspect of his job that appeals to him: campaigning. He pours all his energy into promoting himself and his brand, and demonizing those who decline to worship at his altar. Everyday his 40 million Twitter followers are bombarded with mini campaign messages. Yes, most are in prose that could pass for a middle school message board, but based on polling, they are having an impact.

Here’s a quick sample from the past few days:

• Democrats. . .weak on the Border and weak on Crime.
• We are doing a far better job than Bush and Obama.
• TAX CUTS are already providing historic gains for minorities, women, and small businesses.
• Democrats want anarchy, amnesty and chaos – Republicans want LAW, ORDER and JUSTICE!
• Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!
• The Russian Witch Hunt is Rigged!
• Crazy Maxine Waters, said by some to be one of the most corrupt people in politics.

This is what happens when a candidate for president is incapable of grasping the fact that he won, and must now actually lead. Like a character in an absurdist play, he just keeps on campaigning while his kingdom crumbles. Yet, it does explain why a guy who has accomplished so little, and destroyed so much, manages to hold a 42 percent approval rating. As former Trump University students can tell you, aggressive marketing, laced with a modicum of fraud, can sell a horrible product.

FORGET CIVILITY. FIGHT TRUMP WITH WHATEVER WORKS

It seemed so clear to me when I started writing this post: tossing the president’s press secretary out of a restaurant was wrong. So were the boisterous dining disruptions that protesters foisted upon other Trump surrogates. Aren’t we supposed to go high when they go low? All this does is let the Trumsters play the victim card, right? Then a funny thing happened: I changed my mind.

Believe me, that was a painful experience. We all have our own style and approach to dealing with conflict, born of our life experiences. I spent more than 30 years as a union rep, tangling with some pretty virulent management types. The only real control I had – on a good day – was over myself. I chose civility, decency and respect, not out of a higher moral calling, but because that approach worked for me and my goal of helping union members get the best contract possible. That meant avoiding personal attacks and name-calling, and sticking to the issue at hand, while building power to make a decent deal.

So I cruised right along on my high horse, crafting this ode to civility and respect. I reread my words, searching for a pithy and righteous close. That’s when it struck me. I was wrong. This is Donald Trump’s America now, an ugly, hateful abyss that keeps turning darker and bleaker by the hour. Civility and respectfulness are not going to get our country back anytime soon.

During this past week:

A California woman screamed at a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent that Mexicans are “rapists, animals and drug dealers”, echoing one of Trump’s favorite litanies.

A Tennessee congressional candidate put up a billboard vowing to “Make America White Again”.

A South Carolina woman was charged with beating a black child and screaming racial epithets at him because he was swimming in a pool with white kids.

A North Carolina man who insists that God is a white supremacist and the Jews descended from Satan won the Republican primary for a seat in the state legislature.

Thousands of children, many in diapers, remain separated from their migrant parents as a result of Trump’s unconscionable political power play at the border.

The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim travel ban and delivered a serious blow to organized labor. With Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, credible court observers predict that abortion rights will be abolished within 18 months, and that the court will tilt severely rightward for decades to come.

In other words, Donald Trump is doing precisely what he promised. He is shaking up the foundations of our country at levels totally off the Richter Scale. This isn’t a collegial debate over tax policy or farm subsidies. This is a historic existential battle for the heart and soul of America. We are in a cold civil war that is getting warmer by the day. It will take more than civility to win this one.

Earlier this week, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters was wildly cheered by a crowd of energized millennials when she told them: “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!” By the end of the week, Waters had canceled all public appearances because of death threats. Trump called her “unhinged” with an “extraordinarily low IQ” and claimed – incorrectly – that she had threatened to harm his supporters. Then came top congressional Democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, both blasting Waters for encouraging such incivility. Said Schumer: “If you disagree with a politician . . . vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Oh yes it is, Senator. The Civil Rights Act did not flow majestically from a reasoned debate by golden tongued orators. It took years of street protests and massive harassment of political opponents. As Jonathan Bernstein, a former university professor, wrote for Bloomberg this week, “From the American Revolution on, the spoils of freedom, fair treatment and equality have not gone to the patient and polite. The spoils have gone to those who are incensed and determined, unafraid and unashamed to raise more than a little hell.”

No, embarrassing cabinet members in restaurants and other direct actions are not going to end our Trumpian nightmare. But they are viable tactics in a broader strategy to do just that, by flipping at least one of the two congressional chambers in November and removing Trump from office in the 2020 election, if not before. It’s all about voter turnout, tapping into the passion of those millennials who cheered Maxine Waters’ call to action, reaching blacks, Latinos and others, disenchanted with both parties, but ready to act now against a president intent on marginalizing them. Those actions pull them in, strengthen the movement and evolve into votes.

As a personal matter of style, I will continue to choose civility. If I owned a restaurant, I’d let Sarah Huckabee Sanders eat there. On the other hand, if someone tosses her out because of the abhorrent policies she has to defend, it reminds us all that these are not ordinary times. It reminds us that the rules of political discourse have to change in order to accommodate the toxicity of an environment that threatens the values we hold dear.

We don’t have to become Trump to beat Trump, but neither should we cling blindly to an honor code of civility when dealing with a lying thug who takes children away from their parents and emboldens bigotry of every stripe. That, Senator Schumer, is what is really not American.

BLATHERER-IN-CHIEF DESERVES ZERO TOLERANCE

This was the toughest week yet in our abominable Trumpian nightmare. The visceral pain of children pulled from their parents’ arms was exasperated by the president’s repeated lies, and the abject dysfunction of a government gone mad.

Still, the Donald managed to trot out a slogan that describes his presidency with amazing accuracy: “Zero Tolerance”. In the interest of truth-in-labeling, those are the words that should adorn his red baseball caps. After this week – and the 75 weeks that preceded it, “Make America Great Again” is a brutally inaccurate description of this dystopia. “Zero Tolerance” really nails it.

This president, and his merry band of hateful sycophants, have zero tolerance for truth, decency, complexity or compassion. They have zero tolerance for the poor, or for those who are neither white nor male. On a deeply personal, existential level, Donald J. Trump has zero tolerance for anyone who is not him, although he has been known to carve out an exception for those who carry his DNA, and/or bow down and worship him.

The atrociousness of this president’s conduct seems to be reaching new lows on a regular basis. It’s like waiting for an addict to hit rock bottom, only to realize there is no bottom, only an indeterminate descension. That means we miss, or forget, so many of Trump’s incomprehensible utterances while preoccupied with the major horror stories of the day. When fixated on images of tormented children wailing in cages, it’s difficult to focus on off-the-wall presidential statements, particularly when there are so many of them.

As a public service, I offer this small sample of presidential inanities, some of Trump’s more bizarre words that may have been lost in the smoke from the American values he’s trying to burn:

JUDICIAL GRAFT. In a speech to a business group this week, Trump ridiculed his own administration’s proposal to hire thousands of new immigration judges to relieve the backlog at the border. Said the president, mocking his own Justice Department, “Seriously, what country does this? Thousands and thousands of judges they want to hire. Who are these people?” Then came the kicker: “Now can you imagine,” the president asked, “the graft that must take place?” This is the president of the United States accusing federal immigration judges of being on the take. Not only is there no evidence, or even a credible accusation, of such corruption, it’s hard to imagine a Honduran migrant stepping off a raft from Mexico with the wherewithal to bribe an immigration judge.

SPACE FORCE. The president proposed a new military branch this week, the “Space Force”. Beaming before the cameras, he boasted that it will be “separate but equal” to the Air Force. Trump is the first president to trot out that old Jim Crow phrase since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that “separate is inherently unequal”.

MINING HIS THOUGHTS. In a Duluth, Minnesota speech Wednesday, Trump addressed a highly controversial local issue involving proposals to mine precious metals in that state. Here’s what he said: “We’ll do it carefully and if it doesn’t pass muster, maybe we don’t do it at all. But it’s going to happen, I will tell you.”

CANADIAN SHOES. In one of his many warning shots over Canadian tariffs, the president claimed that our neighbors to the north are smuggling goods across the border. “They buy shoes,” he said, “then they wear them. They scuff them up. They make them sound old or look old.” He offered no further explanation but ended his remarks with this aspiration: “We can no longer be the stupid country. We want to be the smart country.”

WHATCHAMACALLIT HOUSE. Standing next to the Easter Bunny and the First Lady during last spring’s White House egg roll, Trump tried to thank his wife for keeping “this incredible house, or building – or whatever you want to call it, because there really is no name for it, it is special.” You’d think it would be easy for this white nationalist president to remember that he lives in the White House.

BOWLING FOR TARIFFS. Here’s how Trump, in a recent speech, described how Japan keeps American cars out of their country: “It’s the bowling ball test. They take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and drop it on the hood of the car. If the hood dents, the car doesn’t qualify.” It was unclear what he meant and the White House communication office had no comment.

INSPIRING GRADUATES. Here’s the profound inspiration the commander in chief shared with this year’s graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy: “Winning is such a great feeling, isn’t it? Winning is such a great feeling. Nothing like winning, you got to win.”

OPIOIDS. In a Nashville speech, Trump boasted – incorrectly – that the country’s opioid addiction problem was lessening, thanks to his program. Here’s how he described that program: “We’re getting the word out – bad. Bad stuff. You go to the hospital, you have a broken arm; you come out, you’re a drug addict with this crap. It’s way down. We’re doing a good job with it.”

SPACEY INFINITY. After signing an executive order on space exploration, the president waxed philosophical about what might be out there to explore. “A lotta room out there, right?” he said. “This is infinity here. It could be infinity. We don’t really know. But it could be. It has to be something – but it could be infinity, right?”

THE POOR NEED NOT APPLY. In a Georgia speech, Trump professed his love for the poor but drew the line at hiring them. Here is what he said: “And I love all people, rich or poor, but in those particular positions I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?”

Sadly, there is absolutely nothing about this man, his presidency, or his monopolization of our thoughts these past 16 months that makes the slightest bit of sense. When it comes to Donald J. Trump, all we are left with is Zero Tolerance.

ABRACADABRA! THANK DONALD ALMIGHTY THERE’S PEACE AT LAST

How did a bungling blowhard like Donald Trump became a master illusionist? The guy reaches into a top hat, pulls out absolutely nothing but insists it’s a rabbit. And 40 percent of the country cheers wildly, as if David Blaine had just made the Washington Monument disappear. That pretty much sums up this week’s Singapore Magic Show, where Donald The Magnificent supposedly pulled world peace out from behind the ear of a ruthless North Korean dictator.

Ronald Reagan was known as the “Teflon President” because he could screw up without repercussions. Trump goes way beyond Teflon. He is the Bubble President, encased in a truth-free bubble, hermetically sealed off from our fact-based universe. His illusions are created by neither sleight-of-hand nor clever equipment. Instead, they germinate in a damaged, ego-driven imagination that would make Walter Mitty blush. They go from there, totally unfiltered, directly to his mouth. Reality in Trump World, is whatever the Donald says it is. That’s one mean parlor trick!

But there he was, in front of American and North Korean flags, shaking hands with Kim Jong Un and announcing a “very comprehensive” agreement that will bring peace to the world. He later tweeted that people can “sleep well” now that there is no nuclear threat. Outside the bubble, however, North Korea has not given up a single nuclear weapon and retains the missile system to deliver them. The agreement signed in Singapore contained only promises to work toward disarmament. There was nothing comprehensive about it. In fact, it didn’t go beyond the same kind of general pledges the U.S. secured from North Korea in the past, pledges eventually broken by the totalitarian regime.

Look, after a year of Trump and Kim trading threats to blow each other up, is it better that they are sharing plates of crispy fried pork in Singapore? Of course. What’s unsettling is Trump’s total lack of a grasp on what’s happening. The negotiations with North Korea did not end with the Trumpian stagecraft this week; they have barely begun. The fact that these two oddball leaders are talking to each other is, indeed, an improvement over comparing the sizes of their nuclear buttons, but the immediate reality remains that North Korea has nukes and their elimination has yet to be worked out. Trump’s wholly premature victory lap in declaring himself the architect of world peace when substantive negotiations have barely begun, casts grave doubt on his ability to shepherd such a delicate process to a productive conclusion. Seeing only what you want to see, rather than what is really there, is one of the worst occupational hazards in negotiations.

Yet, that has been this president’s biggest Achilles heel. His pathological tendency to construct his own reality, and then make decisions based on those illusions, has plagued every square inch of his presidency. He went after Obamacare, boasting that he had a plan for much better insurance at a lower cost. There was no plan. He insisted that he had a way of getting Mexico to pay for the wall he wants to build. He didn’t. He claimed to have a scheme for a $1.5 trillion program to repair the country’s infrastructure. He didn’t.

Although Trump’s governance by delusion has been the hallmark of this administration, he took his magical thinking artform to new heights this week. After the photo-op pageantry with Kim, reporters asked the president why he thought the North Korean leader could be trusted to disarm, particularly in light of that regime’s extensive history in breaking promises. Trump’s answer, as reported on a Washington Post podcast? He’s a “good judge of people” and his “gut” tells him North Korea won’t go back on its word. Let that sink in for a minute: We can sleep well now because Donald J. Trump is a good judge of people. Pass the Ambien, please.

A central storyline of this presidency has been Trump’s utter ineptness at judging people. His former national security advisor, a campaign foreign policy advisor, his campaign manager and a deputy manager have been indicted on felonies or have already pled guilty. The Donald has had major falling outs with most of his hand-picked cabinet members and top advisors. Just ask Anthony Scaramucci, White House communications director for 10 days and the posterchild for terrible personnel decisions. Steve Bannon was his go-to guy until Trump kicked him to the curb, claiming that Bannon had “lost his mind”. Similar stories for Reince Priebus (Chief of Staff), Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State), Tom Price (HHS Secretary), H. R. McMaster (National Security Advisor) and a host of others. No elected first-term president in the past 100 years has had this much turnover in the people he appointed to top positions.

Trump presumably spent considerable time interviewing and reviewing background information on his appointees, and still ended up going sour on most of them. Yet, he meets Kim for the first time and immediately senses a “very special bond” worthy of his trust. This is a man who had his subordinates killed for falling asleep in a meeting or showing “disrespectful posture”. Kim also had his uncle and a brother murdered, along with at least 340 other people whom he felt did not sufficiently respect him. Given that Trump is limited to dealing with his detractors through a mean tweet, the “special bond” here may well be based on envy.

There is no presidential magic that will successfully denuclearize this ruthless, oppressive regime. If that goal can be accomplished, it will come only through steely eyed negotiations, focused on hard facts, not illusions of grandeur, and based on legitimate interests of both parties, not on the ego needs of deranged leaders. It would also be immensely helpful if the Bubble President took a profound cue from the Teflon President’s experience in a similar quandary: Trust, but verify. It beats the bonding of speed dating every time.

APES, CUNTS & TWITTER, OH MY!

What’s worse on the hierarchy of insults: calling a black person an ape or the president’s daughter a cunt? That insightful question is at the heart of our latest national conversation. Remember when our national conversations focused on substantive, compelling issues, like race, sexual harassment, gun control and income disparity? We are so through the looking glass right now, it’s hard to distinguish a Saturday Night Live sketch from the Nightly News. We have become our own parody.

Yet, for one, brief shining moment, it seemed that the hateful, racist, misogynistic depravity that has been gushing into our cultural veins since the 2016 presidential election had finally encountered a substantial abatement. A major corporation, ABC, acted against significant financial interests in an unambiguous repudiation of racism. The Disney-owned company summarily canceled the “Roseanne” show after its star, Roseanne Barr, tweeted that former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, an African-American, looked like the offspring of “the Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.”

Channing Dungey, president of ABC Entertainment, called Barr’s tweet “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.” For at least 24 hours, hardly anyone disagreed with her. It was an amazing, almost redemptive, moment in our Trump-induced dystopia. A corporate conglomerate slaughtered its cash cow in order to take a principled stand against racism. There was no instant rebuttal from the right, no white nationalist defense of the centuries-old African-simian racist trope. You could almost make yourself believe that there was a national consensus that this kind of blatant, hateful bigotry was simply wrong and unacceptable. It was so pre-Trump.

Then comedian Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a cunt, and all hell broke loose. Bee, on her cable show, had shown a warm, loving picture of Ivanka and her young son, and contrasted that touching parental moment with the Trump Administration’s policy of separating children from their immigrant parents. Said the comic, “You know, Ivanka, that’s a beautiful photo of you and your child. But let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless cunt!”

The Twittersphere was apoplectic with demands for equal justice for foulmouthed entertainers, an insistence that if Roseanne had to be sacrificed for her racist criticism of an Obama confidant, then surely Samantha should be fired for calling Trump’s daughter a cunt. Needless to say, the illusion that ABC’s principled stand in canceling “Roseanne” was a positive turning point in our culture wars, was now dead. What had briefly looked like a constructive consensus was now a full frontal battle between ape and cunt, a bizarre false equivalency between racial hatred and the use of a crude profanity.

The ensuing dialogue had nothing to do with civility or decency. It was all about politics, in the most decadent use of that term. Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Sanders announced that “such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned,” leaving the door open, of course, to condone use of the c-word for Hillary Clinton, as many Trump t-shirts and campaign signs did during the 2016 campaign. Trump himself weighed into the battle, insisting that Bee be fired since that was the fate his buddy Roseanne suffered. That left us with yet one more unimaginable absurdity about the times in which we live: you can be elected president after admitting that you grab women by their pussies, but calling the first daughter a cunt is a dischargeable offense for a comedian.

Then the left fired back with numerous examples of Trump having used the c-word, along with the often told story of singer Ted Nugent calling Hillary Clinton a cunt and then being invited to dinner at the Trump Whitehouse. Moving right along with this scintillating intellectual exchange, the conservative surrebuttal hit its stride with counterclaims to Barr’s dismissal, including a Bill Maher episode featuring side-by-side pictures of Trump and an orangutan. As is so often the case with political discourse these days, the parties use whataboutism the same way a drunk uses a lamppost, more for support than illumination.

There is simply no moral equivalency between a brutally racist comment and the use of the c-word, particularly in this context since it was not used to demean women on the basis of their gender. Bee offered a sincere apology, as she should have. Her sin was not so much the offensiveness of the word, but the fact that its use predictably detracted from her overall valid message about the hypocrisy of Trump family values versus the treatment of immigrant families.

This is, obviously, a powerful word that packs a seismic etymological punch. Yet, it has not always been so offensive. In Middle English, the term was a standard reference for the female genitalia. The earliest reference to it in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the name of a 13th century London red light district street, Gropecuntlane. Chaucer used a variant for the word in two of his works. Shakespeare spun puns from the word in Hamlet and Twelfth Night. By the mid-1900s, the c-word had become quite notorious, generally considered one of the vilest of obscenities. It was used mostly by men to demean women, an angry, hateful, misogynistic slur, like “bitch” squared. That began to change in the 1990s. Many prominent women entertainers, prompted by playwright Eve Ensler and her The Vagina Monologues, began using the word, in effect reclaiming it from the misogynists. That new meaning was reflected in actress Sally Field’s reaction to this week’s brouhaha. Bee, she said, was “flat wrong to call Ivanka a cunt (because) cunts are powerful, beautiful, nurturing and honest.” So sayeth the Flying Nun.

As the dust begins to settle from this latest culture wars skirmish, we seem to be in a pretty good place. Roseanne remains canceled, and an apologetic Samantha is still going strong. When it comes to evil, racism trumps obscenity. After all, cunt is just a vowel movement away from can’t. Now, there’s a bumper sticker for you!

A RAINBOW SHINES OVER CUBA’S STORM CLOUDS

A rainbow was the last thing I expected to find in Cuba. This was, after all, our hemisphere’s epicenter of evil back in the 1960s. I had to practice hiding my rotund body under a grade school desk because Cuba had Soviet missiles pointed at us. After suffering such an indignity, you’d think I’d prefer sailing to Dante’s Inferno rather than to Castro’s Cuba. Alas, Norwegian Cruise Lines has no Inferno itineraries. So, off to Havana we went.

Rainbow spruces up Havana Harbor.
(All photos by Melissa Nelson)

And there it was, this strikingly brilliant rainbow, glowing like a celestial chandelier above the Havana Harbor. There was, to be sure, no pot of gold in sight, only remnants of a broken and crumbling infrastructure in a country where time, in many ways, has stood still since 1959. Yet, this stunningly beautiful rainbow, casting its glow on a people who persevered through one existential threat after another, is a perfect metaphor for Cuba. This country shouldn’t be judged by its storm clouds alone. You have to look for the rainbow, as well.

If you want a vacation destination totally void of nuance, contradictions and complexities, a place filled with perpetual smiles, sunshine and laughter, get thee to a Disney property pronto. The Havana port of call is not for you. On the other hand, if you’ve been frustrated by knowing Cuba only through the endless dialectic of the left and right, and have longed to see it, hear it, breathe it and feel it, up close and personal, go there now, before our president completely closes the door on that opportunity.

Cuba is an island of warts and wonders, an ideological Rorschach test, designed to slot you on a scale from Che Guevara to Oliver North. Fidel Castro is dead and his brother, Raul, just retired, but the legacy of their 1959 Revolution is very much alive and on the minds of the tour guides ushering Americans through the streets of a country once considered our mortal enemy. From the windows of our tour bus, we see collapsed roofs and walls splitting apart. Window glass is missing and paint has long vanished. As we take all that in, like we were inspecting the damage of a Category 5 hurricane, our guide quickly notes the complete absence of homelessness, “thanks,” she says, “to the Revolution.”

Much of Cuba’s infrastructure is missing its 1959 sparkle.

Yes, the tour guide works for the government, the commies who inherited the Revolution. So does most everyone else in Cuba. But her spiel was far from empty spin. Based on independent fact-checking, there was far more accuracy in her three-hour presentation than in, say, a random Trump tweet. She correctly boasted that every Cuban is guaranteed quality health care at no charge, along with a free education, up to and including graduate school. She accurately noted that the Revolution eliminated illiteracy and gave everyone a place to live.

And then came a question from the back of the bus: “What’s the average income here?” The poor woman sighed, knowing that her pitch for a very beloved Cuba was about to sink into the international weeds of cultural dissonance. This, after all, was a bus tour, not a microeconomics lecture hall. Her quick answer: about $50 U.S. a month. That might be slightly exaggerated. Most sources peg it at $25 to $30. She quickly added that those amounts have very different meanings, depending on whether you live in Cuba or the U.S. That’s a tough message to get through to American vacationers who had just been charged more than a month of Cuban wages for bottled water on their cruise ship.

Only a few Cubans own cars, and they are all pre-Revolution models, most hobbled together with junkyard auto parts.

But she was right. Money means drastically different things in these two countries. The goal of Cuba’s 1959 Revolution was to dismantle private wealth in order to create a life where people’s basic needs were taken care of by the government. To this day, Cubans stand in lines daily to receive a loaf of bread and other rations. Their housing is paid for, as is their medical care and education. That means a medical doctor, a teacher and a store clerk all make about the same amount of money, and all get the same services from the government. Job selection is based on interest, skill and satisfaction, not economic opportunity.

It’s not easy for us Americans to wrap our heads around a system that devalues money. We are so accustomed to using our adjusted gross income as we did our GPA in college, as a measure of our worth and value. The American Dream is rooted in the belief of working hard in order to move up the economic ladder. That makes it tough for us to understand a place like Cuba where people are supposedly content in their subsistence, without ever having the chance to improve their lot.

Sunset on Havana Harbor.

The truth is that both these countries, despite their ideological animus, are more alike than they are unalike. Yes, one is rooted in capitalism and the other in Marxism. But both systems have produced amazing flashes of a quality life. And both have experienced dismal failures, a result of opposing operating systems running amuck. Cuba remains economically cut off from the world, struggling to survive. Yet, it manages to educate, feed and house its people, and provide them with top-notch medical care. On the other hand, dissidents are jailed without due process and there is no freedom of speech or other hallmarks of democracy.

Yet, here in the good old U.S. of A., we’re not exactly without our own warts. In fact, we just elected one as president. The great middle class has been rapidly shrinking. Some 20 percent of the nation’s wealth is owned by 1 percent of the population. The bottom half takes in only 13% of the income. Millennials are saddled with absurd amounts of college debt, even as their job market declines. Meanwhile, 32 million Americans can’t read or write and 28 million have no health insurance.

Unlike in those Soviet-inspired missile crisis days of yore, Cuba no longer poses a threat to us. Much of the economic embargo we imposed on our southern neighbors in the early 1960s, was lifted during the Obama Administration. Trump then reinstated the bulk of those sanctions. That was a severe blow to the Cuban people, with no benefit to U.S. interests. It’s time to return to that détente mediated by Pope Francis. Let’s lift those meanspirited sanctions. Somewhere over the rainbow, let there be solidarity between the people of Cuba and the United States.

FORGET STORMY, COMEY & MUELLER, TRUMP IS TRASHING AMERICA

President Trump should be grateful for the Mueller investigation. Thanks to the special counsel’s work, news producers and consumers are obsessed with the daily minutia of Russian collusion and obstruction of justice theories, not to mention the deeply profound question of who paid Stormy and why. Easily missed is the most important story of this administration: Donald Trump is making America terrible again.

Yes, Russia’s interference in our elections is a big deal. So are alleged presidential attempts to interfere in the investigation of that foreign intrusion. But the daily bombardment of speculation, Trump attorney churn and bizarre Rudy Giuliani proclamations seems to have crafted a useful, even if inadvertent, cover for the severe damage the 45th president is doing to our country.

We desperately need an end to this American nightmare. Yet, unless a Nixonian-like smoking gun tumbles out of Mueller’s shop, impeachment is a longshot. A two-thirds Senate vote is needed to remove a president. That’s never happened, and it’s unlikely to any time soon, absent blockbuster evidence that would pull Republican senators away from a president who remains dismayingly popular with his party. A shoot-and-miss runs the risk of burnishing Trump’s outside martyr credentials for a 2020 reelection campaign. Six-and-a-half more years of Trump shredding America’s values is unthinkable.

That’s why Democrats need to march into the midterm elections with a substantive agenda for truly turning this country around. That means quantifying the damage done these past 16 months and offering a plan to reverse it, not merely running on an impeachment promise.

Here’s just some of the ways Trump’s administration has reversed decades, if not centuries, of American progress:

BIGOTRY RUNS RAMPANT. Emboldened by their president, bigots have come out from under their rocks, openly spewing their hate at anyone who is not an American-born white male. Every published study shows dramatic increases in hate crimes against blacks, Latinos, Muslims, women, and the LGBTQ community. One source pegged such incidents at 250,000 a year. Another study showed that one in five hate crimes was committed by people using Trump’s name. For example, this letter sent to at least 10 mosques across the country in 2017: “To the children of Satan, you Muslims are vile and filthy people. . .There’s a new sheriff in town – President Donald Trump. He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. . .You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.”

SEGREGATED NEIGHBORHOODS are encouraged. The Trump administration suspended a rule requiring communities receiving federal housing funds to assess patterns of segregation and barriers to fair housing and devise plans to combat them. HUD Secretary Ben Carson called such desegregation goals “failed socialist experiments”.

SICK CHILDREN are shortchanged. Just this week, Trump asked Congress to cut more than $7 billion out of already approved funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program in order to demonstrate fiscal constraint in the wake of huge budget deficits brought on by tax cuts for the rich.

MIGRANT CHILDREN are being separated from their parents. Trump’s Justice Department announced Monday that it will prosecute every migrant fleeing violence in Central America who crosses illegally into the United States. That means children will be taken away from their parents who will be immediately incarcerated. The previous practice was to treat such migrants as asylum seekers, not criminals, and allow the families to remain together in this country while their asylum request was considered.

HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS are soaring. Insurers say Trump’s successful push to end the individual mandate that required everyone to be insured has created a “death spiral” for the market. Insurance executives predict that premiums will increase by steep double-digits in 2019 as a result of healthy people stopping their coverage.

CONSUMER PROTECTION has been gutted. Trump has brought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to a virtual standstill. Investigations into questionable business practices have ended. Hiring is frozen. No data is being collected and a database of consumer complaints is in the process of being dismantled. Existing cases against companies are being closed or put on indefinite hold. The department is expected to drop a major case against Navient, the student loan company accused of cheating borrowers.

The list of hits to the American people goes on and on. Trump’s much ballyhooed tax bill did zilch for the working class. Corporations, for the most part, used their enormous windfalls to repurchase about $800 billion of their own stock. Meanwhile, worker pay has barely moved. Close to a million immigrants, most with black or brown skin, are subject to deportation under Trump’s policies. This includes hundreds of thousands of young people brought here as children and who know no other home. The environment has been devastated by such Trumpian moves as eliminating regulations on carbon emissions from coal-based power plants, opening vast swaths of Alaskan wilderness to new oil and gas drilling and the reversal of another 29 environmental regulations.

Never has this country fallen so quickly from its core values. That’s why Democrats need to make the midterm elections all about truly restoring America’s greatness – without the red hats. As despicable as this president has been, this campaign cycle has to be about more than just Trump. We’ve been in an All-Trump-All-The-Time world since November 8, 2016. We need to focus now on the specific ways we can disengage from this dystopia and take our country back.

That means talking about true tax reform and a fair redistribution of wealth that will provide meaningful help to the poor and middle class. It means finding a way to let every kid who wants a college education to have one, without crippling student loans. It means having a sensible, fair and compassionate immigration policy, one that never closes our borders on the basis of race or religion. It means taking reasonable steps to protect our planet. It means renouncing every form of bigotry, and unabashedly protecting human rights whenever, and wherever, they may be endangered. This, after all, is what America is all about. As Trump mania blasts at us 24-7, let us never lose sight of that fact.

(Scheduling note: Due to a long-planned retirement trip in honor of my wife and editor, Melissa, this space will remain dark for a couple weeks. We will be back shortly after Memorial Day.)

ODE TO A HERO WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE MY WIFE

Melissa Nelson is retiring this week as director of collective bargaining for The NewsGuild-CWA, the union representing media employees and other workers. In the infamous words of Joe Biden – as cleansed by the AP – that’s a big f—ing deal. So big, in fact, that this space is giving a temporary pass to the inanity and profanity of national politics, in order to pay tribute to a genuine hero.

So as to avoid being Sean Hannityized, let me disclose a potential conflict of interest: I have a spousal relationship with Melissa. But I also spent 31 years working for the same union, and copiously followed her amazing journey, drawing more and more awe with every step she took. In other words, I’m an expert witness. This is my testimony:

When I met her, Melissa was an advertising artist at the Hearst paper in Albany, NY. The labor movement really needs to build a monument to the Hearst Corporation. If that outfit hadn’t paid its women artists considerably less than their male counterparts, the NewsGuild would be without one of its greatest legends. Worse, I would still be single. Fortunately, the injustice of pay inequity ignited a passion in Melissa that propelled her into the calling of union activism. It was an all-consuming tour of duty that went from rank-and-file agitator, to local president, to full-time Guild staffer in Philadelphia, to directing the national union’s collective bargaining operation in Washington, DC.

That last sentence, particularly for those who don’t know her, is opaquely encyclopedic. Every union has activists and staff. What Melissa brought to the table was a unique package of style, substance, class, and grace, all served with a special sauce of forceful and respectful advocacy.

Melissa Nelson teaches new Guild leaders about collective bargaining.

To me, Melissa’s breakout moment came about 25 years ago. This is when I knew for sure that she was destined to play a key leadership role in the union. It started as an ordinary exchange at the bargaining table. She was making a pitch for one of our proposals. A boorish, over-testosteroned management guy, accustomed to the centuries-old rooster game of one-upmanship through interruption, tried to cut her off. Melissa was in mid-sentence when he flashed a sneering smirk and said, “Well, that isn’t true . . . “ Without skipping a beat, Melissa leaned across the table to face her adversary. In a quiet, calm-but stern voice, she said, “No, no, no. Do not interrupt me. I wasn’t finished. You need to listen to what I am saying, and then it will be your turn to talk.”

I braced myself for a major explosion. I had verbally dueled with this troll many times and knew he was not easily quieted. There was a momentary silence, the two of them leaning deeply into their respective sides of the table, just staring at each other. Finally, the management guy spoke, using a tone that reflected a meekness and contrition I’d have sworn was not in him: “I’m sorry, Melissa, please continue.” Damn! I later asked the troll about the exchange. He called it a “flashback to elementary school”, adding that he almost said, “Yes, teacher.” It was an amazing moment.

The anecdote perfectly captures Melissa and her rare and immensely effective communication style, one that is firm, assertive and honest, yet delivered totally free of threat or hostility. The volume is low, the tone pleasant, and the verbiage tight and succinct. The result is a message laced with respect, thus inviting respect in return. When it comes to managing conflict, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Melissa has spent decades using that style to make life better for so many people: victims of sexual harassment, unequal pay, unjust discipline, discrimination and mistreatment; employees in search of better pay and working conditions, dignity and respect. Her voice, so carefully crafted in her estimable manner, has carried with it all the voices of the workers she represents.

But that’s not all, not by a long shot. Melissa’s real gift – her legacy – to this union is her uncanny ability to connect with members, local leaders and staff in a way that amps them up, makes them stronger, better, more confident. She has spent years perpetually plugged into the lives of Guild activists from coast to coast. She knows their strengths and weaknesses, the content of their contracts, their management’s every quirk and idiosyncrasy. She also knows the names and ages of their children, their family vacation plans and how their parents are doing. To her, leadership is, at its core, relational.

Somehow, without the use of a single algorithm, Melissa has spent the past decade using all of that instinctively processed data to guide, mentor and advise an entire national union, one person at a time. We’re in the middle of dinner, and someone from Kenosha calls in a panic over contract negotiations. Or a bankruptcy in Boston. Or more massive layoffs in Denver. Or the sale of the paper in Akron. And in each case, I smile with wonder and pride as Melissa calmly and confidently listens, reassures, offers needed information and counsel, and then guides the caller to land the plane safely. Each time that happens, the union grows a little stronger because the folks on the other end of those phone calls are learning and building confidence, secure in the knowledge that they are not alone.

This has not happened without taking a toll on Melissa. The stress has been enormous, and its chief cause has been the exponential increase in the demand for help, and an insufficient number of hours in a day to provide it. As a result, her voicemail and email inboxes are perpetually jammed by cries for help. How do you triage all that? Is a layoff more critical than a bankruptcy? Which do you take first, the pay cuts call or the pension freeze? This has been her life. And despite the stress, it has brought her enormous satisfaction from knowing that she has made a difference.

Through it all, Melissa never once unplugged – not from her phone, her email, or any other form of engagement. She is constitutionally incapable of disconnecting. She knew that most of the people reaching out to her had workloads every bit as hectic as her own. They were counting on her. There is no way she wouldn’t be there for them. That’s because Melissa saw her work, not as a job, but as part of a movement. For the movement to succeed, leaders need to keep on moving. And that’s just what she did. As a result, she can retire now fully assured that the movement she nourished with every ounce of energy she had will keep right on moving. After all, those movers learned from the best.

ONE TOKE OVER THE RED LINE, SWEET SYRIA

If the first casualty of war is truth, surely the second must be moral clarity. In the case of Syria’s civil war, both Presidents Obama and Trump, men with wildly disparate world views, drew the same “red line” of morality. Here’s their shared ethical standard: Killing and maiming thousands of noncombatant men, women and children with guns, bombs and explosives is acceptable, but if chemical weapons are used to accomplish the same results, there will be hell to pay.

Three times now in recent years, we’ve gone through the to-bomb-or-not-to-bomb drama of responding to Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad’s decision to leap over that red line. The first was in 2013 when Obama pushed for a missile attack to punish Assad for using chemical weapons. Congress, however, declined to authorize the bombing. There were similar gas attacks in 2017 and earlier this month. On both occasions, Trump sent the bombs dropping on Syrian military facilities as a way of denouncing the regime’s “evil and despicable” use of chemical warfare. Both actions won him more bipartisan praise than anything he has done in office.

Most of the news coverage these past few days has focused on the narrow issue of whether Trump’s punitive air attacks were effective. The general consensus of military leaders is that Saturday’s bombing might have put a dent in Assad’s chemical arsenal, but is unlikely to hold the regime back from making and using new ones. Scant attention has been given to the broader matter of whether we are drawing the red line in the right place. In other words, do we really want a moral imperative that limits evil to one category of weapons? Is it a greater wrong to kill civilians with gas than it is to shoot or bomb them to death?

What started as anti-government protests seven years ago, quickly evolved into full scale civil war in Syria. There is no end in sight. More than a half million people have died, and the vast majority of them were civilians, including tens of thousands of young children. Yet, it’s only the chemical attacks that show up on Trump’s outrage meter or Twitter feed. In the most recent incident, 70 civilians died from Assad’s use of what is believed to have been sarin, a chemical nerve agent that can cause agonizing death in minutes.

Here’s what Trump said in justifying the retaliatory bombing: “The evil and the despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children thrashing in pain and gasping for air. These are not the actions of a man. They are the crimes of a monster instead.” In calling Assad a monster, Trump was uncharacteristically without hyperbolae. Yet, the president’s moral offense was aimed at the specific method of the dictator’s mass murder, not the broader act of having spent seven years killing his own people.

There is, of course, a case to be made that chemical weapons are more evil than their conventional counterparts. As Obama noted in 2013, the weaponization of poisonous gases conjures up dark moments of thousands of American GIs dying from mustard gas in World War I and, of course, the Nazis’ use of gas in the Holocaust during World War II. The civilized countries of the world have agreed not to use chemical weapons. In arguing for a punitive strike after Assad’s 2013 chemical attack, Obama said such action would reinforce the taboo of chemical warfare.

Yet, in the context of this ongoing Syrian massacre, limiting our moral outrage to the relatively small number of deaths caused by chemical weapons is a de facto acceptance of the other 500,000 murders at the hands of weapons just as lethal and painful as gas. NPR reported that the regime has used crude but deadly barrel bombs almost exclusively on civilians. An international team of scientists found that 97 percent of the deaths from these devices have been noncombatants, mostly women and children. Another report found that at least 14,000 children have been killed in Syria by snipers, machine guns, missiles, grenades, roadside bombs and aerial bombs. Another 1,000 children have been executed and more than 100 have been tortured and then executed. None of those atrocities, however, are included in our government’s outrage and punitive air strike over Assad’s use of chemical weapons.

Leaving the battlefield for a moment, let’s apply the same moral relativism to a pair of terrorist attacks. In 1995, a religious cult used sarin to kill 12 people on the Tokyo subway. In 2005, terrorists set off bombs in the London subway, killing 52 and injuring more than 700. Are we really prepared to view the latter as more morally acceptable than the former? Steve Johnson, an academic expert on chemical weapons, says he “can understand why (chemical warfare) feels emotive to us – it is insidious, there is no shelter, it is particularly effective on the young, elderly, and frail, and can be a violent and excruciating death. When one breaks it down ethically, though, it seems impossible to say that it is more acceptable to kill 100 people with explosives than with nerve agent.”

This is much more than a mere intellectual exercise in moral philosophy. It’s about adopting a coherent and meaningful standard with respect to regimes that murder their own people. Trump’s Tweetstorm about the evil of killing children with chemical weapons, followed by tough talk and a quick act of cruise missile theater, does absolutely nothing to address the daily atrocities faced by the Syrian people. As George Washington University professor Stephen Briddle put it, “That’s not a Syria strategy. It’s a psychodrama.”

Although Trump boasted that his response to Assad’s chemical weaponry reflected his “concern for humanity,” that concern is no larger than a pin prick. By the end of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. welcomed 15,479 refugees from Syria into the country. These were men, women and children, literally fleeing for their lives. Under Trump’s travel ban, however, the door slammed shut for Syrian refugees. So much for humanity. A moral code that rejects chemical weapons but gives a dictator a pass at killing by any other means – and offers no safe shelter to his victims – is anything but moral.