The Prosecutor and the Lunatic.....

 

           In a reality not far away about 60 Million US television viewers saw Kamala Harris and Donald Trump show their stuff.

        If it wasn't earnestly serious, it would be the stuff of comedy, the best of sketch comedy in this part of the milky way. 

    Given that performance, the extraordinary number of lies, the chain of thought that ran like like a wart hog roller skating on marbles, and the beating he took of the righteous, in your face "they call you a disgrace" variety, why any thinking, discerning person would trust him again is beyond even the most sympathetic analyst this side of forever. 

    You can be the most partisan Republican, the farthest right positioned conservative, the angriest anti Democrat, a rich/or poor, old white man scared of the communist dust that gathers in your closet and still not justify voting for the deposed despot. As Republican grandees warned in 2016, he is unfit for public service and not to be trusted. This time around there are some 200 Republicans of the highest calibre, who worked for him who say the man is a danger to the world.

    He demonstrated that he is not of sound mind.

    I know there is no reaching the woman in the Trump and Jesus T-shirt saying that Joe Biden is dead, or the crowd that thinks Democrats eat babies, or that curious breed of evangelistic, they call themselves Christians, who believe that a convicted rapist, felon, swindler, is the kind of person to usher in an age when their "religion" will convert the US into the new heaven.

    I give the Donald a full thumbs up thanks for launching some of the best dog reaction videos in history and the absolute beauty of the women, Taylor Swift included, who have posted lovely and dramatic photos of themself with their beloved cat or cats. My favorites are the dogs barking or seeking a hiding spot as his Lord Narcissus blubbers on screen.

    Mom used to say if you can't say something nice about someone, say nothing.

I'll quote mom, I think she would say Donald is the best "blow hard" in the world. 

Mustering up the nicest thing I can say, I'll quote my Dad, he'd say Donald is a world class "bull shit artist."

    Millions of Americans are beginning to realize he is and has always been a fraud.

        I moderated many debates and as we entered the age when candidates answered your question with a response to their own unspoken and coached question, I'd press back, even noting when they refused to answer the question posed. ABC did a nice job of putting the question on the screen as both VP Harris and Miracle Don rarely responded to what was asked. Such evasion and obfuscation is sadly accepted as part of the performative game. 

        The moderators did a noble job of fact checking and challenging as the debate went on. With Trump, who only lies when his mouth is open, it is a near impossible task. He like many of his posse have trouble with truth, even reality.

        It's not over. Harris was competent, in command, successfully whooped Donald with prosecutorial and debate skills and showed that she can and will govern for all and promised not be a divider. Is that enough? Stay tuned.

        See you down the trail.

Look closely, it's complicated...

         After scrutinizing 15 Presidential elections I’m impressed with the rapid mood shift the recent change in the field has stirred.

            I think we can surmise voters were ready for a change of attitude. Harris and Walz have prompted enthusiasm, to be sure, but they’ve flooded the arena with hope, a sense of optimism, even mirth.

They struck a golden truth when they labled the maga team as “weird.” By comparison and by tone Trump and Vance come off as Slug and Sluggard. 

            There seems to be a bit of fun to the election cycle now and I’m sure the psychologists can spin a lot of theories. From my view of having been on campaign trails, it doesn’t seem as desperate, teetering on the brink of a bunker mentality anymore. 

    

            This seems to be the year America has decided there is an age limit on Presidents. But we should memorialize that one hour before Joe Biden did one of the most courageous and personally hard to accept actions, “passing the baton,” he was full on engaged closing the deal in getting American hostages, home.

            There is no doubt Joe is old, and not as swift or glib as he was, but he was and is still executing the duties of the oval office with as much skill, and historic achievement as we have seen in decades. This “old man” has accomplished legislative miracles, stabilized the nation, infused economic development that will change the American workplace and our infrastructure over the next decades, and asserted American and democratic leadership for the world. He has been steady and calm. But we live in a time when almost everything is performative, and when phones and algorithms have warped our sense of reality. Unfair though it is, in the long run his selfless act is probably best for everyone. He will be remembered well.

            Now would be a good time for voters to look at the extraordinary PBS Frontline examination of “The Biden Decision.” It is searing, tough, told in a no holds barred honesty. It is an American tragedy story, a kind of Irish tale of a political warrior who wanted only to serve. 

dangling

            There is another PBS serving that you can also find at the LBJ Library web domain. Live from the LBJ Library, Woodward and Bernstein. It plays in two 30 minute segments. The conversation led by author/historian Mark Updegrove looks at the Watergate era 50 years on. The inevitable conclusion is the modern Republican party do not possess the courage and decency of the 1970 Republicans who included the godfather of conservative Presidential ambition, Barry Goldwater.  

            50 years this week, those men and women went to their President and told him he was going to be impeached and convicted because they could no longer support him. Nixon resigned. 

            History always gets the last word. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward remind us of a time when honesty counted. Those reflections are illuminating to us about who, what and where we are today.

           See you down the trail.

You deserve better...

 

You deserve much better. 

 

These days since the first “debate” have been a kind of Rorschach test for America. What did we see in that pale drama? What does our reaction tell us about ourself. It needs to be decoded.

 

First, the US deserves and needs better candidates for the “highest office in the land,” or what used to be called “the most powerful job in the world.”

 

Response was immediately seismic and the aftershocks continue. It may become nothing more than a forgotten moment 90 days on, or it could generate a true “gut, head and heart check” by US citizens, the people who ought to care for the democratic republic they’ve inherited. 

 

Those two old men on the stage were not the best of our political system. It’s been said “democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” Surely there are better ways if not better monkeys.

 

The first response of commentators, analysts, and political operatives was “my phone was blowing up!” That is the first take away?! As a sidebar, our phones have changed the way we think and act. Such “neural switching” also short circuits reason, calm and thoughtfulness. Witness the dither and tizzy. All emotion, shoving deliberate thought aside. That is the way of things now.

 

There was much over which to be concerned, but holy cow, we appear to have now created a sub political speculation game, Biden withdrawal? What about what to do with Trump dishonesty soaring to new levels of outrage. Should a network stage a debate if it cannot challenge the lies? 

 

It was painful to see Biden struggle for words. He is 82, had a cold, had been over prepped and not handled well by his debate team. He faltered and hearts sank. There is no excuse, but there are explanations. 

 

His opponent was in normal hyperbolic form, mugging for the camera, lying, fantasizing and evading most questions put to him. He clearly pulled Biden out of his plan.

 

The end of the night, Biden scored on substance, Trump scored on performance so the world was left with an old man who stumbled and an old man who lied and evaded questions. Their presidential records are vastly different. So are their life stories and their character. The debate was one night against a life of record.

 

Replacing a presidential candidate, late stage, is not the same thing as changing pitchers-one guys leaves the mound, another comes in from the bull pen but everything else in the stadium remains the same. Candidate organizations and campaign staffs and offices are not a corporate headquarters. Trying to tool a change of that magnitude is risky at best. It has never worked before. But some Democrats are worried enough to hope for a magic ticket. 

 

If Biden were to exit, it would open a battle that would inevitably damage the party,  and angering elements. There is a history of those who did not get their way, pouting and not voting or voting for a third-party candidate. Many Democrats believe Kamala Harris would deserve the opportunity, but there are many who do not. Her popularity is curiously low. Navigating a change of ticket to find someone who could defeat trump is uncertain. Only Joe Biden has beaten him. There are several other candidates rising in the party, potentially Trump thumpers, but the game is stacked against them at this moment.

 

Here is a difference in this cycle. Democrats are fretting out loud. The New York Times and others editorialize Biden needs to go. The Republicans are afraid to speak of their fuhrer’s wild deceits and excesses like claiming his opponent believes in ripping babies from the womb and putting them aside to die.(Can you believe that was said?) None of the republican gruppenfuhrers and oberfuhrers dare challenge the maga cult leader. The message here is loud and clear.

 

The character of political media, and the election industry deserve a close up. This self-selected sub phylum has been in a frenzy about a Biden exit. Some puff up arguing it is “good for the nation.” It takes audacity to suppose you know what is good for America, arguing for a quick fix, where there is no such option, and while the cry you raise is in tremulous hysteria. As a friend said, everybody should take a deep breath. Biden blew a debate, but he is still being Presidential, and has had by most measures, major success. Trump still whines about the election he lost, is a convicted rapist, felon and faces further legal jeopardy.

There is history to guide us here, as we speculate.

In the last years of Reagan’s second term there were serious questions about his mental acuity, evidence of the dementia that later claimed his life. He was slower, but he governed. Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919 and in the next 2 years his wife Edith ran the executive branch of Government.(That was before the Presidential Succession Amendment) Franklin Roosevelt was gravely ill in his final years, presiding over US efforts in WWII, negotiating with Churchill and Stalin. If Biden were unable to finish a second term, or chose to retire, Kamala Harris is a better option for American democracy than Trump under any circumstances.

 

So, maybe back away from the ledge and lower the blood pressure and ignore the media hype. It was a tv show, a media creation, not a summit meeting. It was not as though he drooled through the 90 minutes and scored no hits. Look at the video of his appearance later that night or the next morning. America is safer with an old Joe than an old Trump. As I noted, this election is about forces larger than either man. These men are surrogates for values. It is about a system. It is about truth. It is about democracy or an authoritarian cult.

 

Still, voters deserve better options, but you have only one good choice.

See you down the trail. 

 

A Day for America

         There is a moment, a threshold, when something severely injured begins to die or begins to recover. The day Donald Trump was indicted for trying to overthrow America is such a moment. 

       US citizens will watch as the nation's 247 years of history endure the spasm of trying to cure itself of a poison that sought to destroy the historic process of choosing leaders and transferring power.

        Patriots are those who stand against a nation's enemies and detractors. Those of us who live here will learn if fidelity to the cause of the democratic republic will empower our future. The indictments make it clear Donald Trump lied, tried to cheat, conspired and endeavored to destroy the nation's constitutional process, and the honor bound tradition of presidential succession. 

        Last summer the Investigation into January 6 documented the deceptions, trickery, and the role of Trump in inciting the attack on the US Capitol, the nation's transfer of power ritual, and the brutal attack on law enforcement. It was a rebellion that was fed by lies, and acted upon by gullible and malevolent forces and all of it was at the behest of a man who will forever stand as America's most vile political hustler. It was an extraordinary public documentation. 

       The Justice department has prosecuted hundreds of those who violently attacked the Capitol, as a result of the conspiracy.

        Now, the indictments of this day further turn the wheels of justice. This is for the future of our aging republic and to place Trump's name and reputation in chains and a cage for history, forever banished from civility because of his perversity. Of course he is innocent until proven guilty.

        There is no reason to trust the man to do anything but love only himself and to lie, cheat, sell our national secrets and launch armies only for his own glory. He could not accept his loss, and so he became an enemy of America. He is a tin god and we will watch our justice system flush him away.

        There are other indictments, and there will be other cases and they are an accumulative judgement that will render Trump, MAGA republicans, and his time in power as the nadir of the American presidency.

        It has been wrong, judgmental and perhaps even haughty of myself to hold those who support Trump with such contempt. This should be a nation of such freedom to survive faulty judgements and even our failures. 

        I have not been proud of this nation. I have been worried about collective bad judgments. But today is a good day.

        This is a day when, in a sense, we watch ourselves display a fealty to the aspirations and ideals of the American experiment. This is a day when there are signs we have chosen to live, to heal. This is a day of and for history. This is a day for America.

        See you down the trail. 

The Virus in the Shadows

          Stability at home and strength of US leadership in the world is threatened by more than the virus we know. Another wasting disease casts shadows on the future. 

        Detailed here, from briefings, interviews, and conversations, are assessments and judgement of men and women who have advised and informed the policies of Presidents, Prime Ministers and their governments. I've participated in these sessions in recent months. These are the assessments of realists.                                                                                            

        Topics have included China, Russia, Iran, the Middle East region, terrorism, cyber warfare, counter intelligence, weapons systems, technology, defense procurement, the changing nature of spying, alliances, hot spots, nuclear weapons and threats to America's democratic republic. 

        This post examines the present danger and damage of  deliberate deception, and the anti democracy fascism that fogs our constitutional principles and aspirations.

        "For 70 years foreign policy was not a partisan issue in Washington, but now it is," says John Sawer, who was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in Britain, MI6.

        "So, friends and hostile nations will have trouble in thinking in terms of American strategy in periods of decades, because it might change every four years."

From The Radio Historian

        MI6 was founded in 1909. It is the senior intelligence service in the world and helped nurture the birth of the US CIA,  assisting the OSS (Office of Strategic Service) during World War II. They are an ally who knows us well.

        Sawer says both the UK and US have been through political upheaval, a kind of residual reaction to the crash of 08. 

        "The best plan forward is to put our own homes and systems in order. In the UK that is absorb the cost of Brexit. In the US it is to somehow not just relaunch the economy and get control of COVID, but to find a way to develop a polity, a consistency and a durability to America's role in the world, or American will be in decline. The decline is certain if it just swings back and forth every four years."

        The Biden administration declared "America is back," and he has begun to shore up alliances, and return a respectability to our foreign policy, but our standing in the world is damaged. We are no longer seen as the strong force, the leader of the free world, a beacon of democracy.

        "There is some concern about whether the US word and commitment will be reliable, especially since Trump is in the background as a force in US politics," says John Brennan former director of the CIA. He worked for 6 US Presidents.

        "Trump as laid waste to our credibility and reliability. It will take time to restore confidence that commitments will outlive changes in the White House. This is something to confront, because in the last 4 years, many years of trust in the US word and commitment is challenged."

        The malignancy of Trump was apparent in the view of Homeland Security, Cyber Security and Infrastructure officers and veterans when we discussed the US election campaign, social media influence, and the cascading affect of the big lie.

        Belief in and the credibility our system has been and is being eroded by intentional deception, and behavior that condones it. 

    

        A former CIA chief of station, with over 30 years of distinguished service including in the former Soviet Union, Europe and war zones in the Middle East and South Asia offers a harsh truth. Donald Trump enabled Russia in it's efforts to undermine and disparage our democratic process.

      "That is the first thing they're focused on, trying to portray our process as inherently unstable and in conflict with our supposed democratic values. It doesn't matter that they're an autocracy. They don't want their people to see us as an inspiration to those Russians striving for democracy."

        I withhold his name because he is still active. But he is emphatic in his assessment of how Trump was used for anti American purposes.

       "Putin is very active in public propaganda and information warfare. Through his propaganda arm he does not want the US to be a beacon of hope. He needs to continue to emphasize the US is unstable."

        Trump's prolonged attack on US media, the undermining of the election and judicial process were powerful weapons. Russia's interests were seen early. 

        "That Trump Tower meeting was meant to be discovered. Don Jr. took the cheese from Putin's mousetrap," he said, citing it as one of many public relations victories and instances where Trump was outplayed by a wily intelligence officer, Putin.

            The path to an improved image and renewed strength of leadership is challenged by the Republican party's turn to fascism and authoritarianism. Unless his mounting legal woes disable him, Trump wields power. Republicans running for office can either bend to the boss and his world of lies and deception or be run out by the mob of racists, zealots and lunatics who are taking over state parties, driven by Trump's nationalistic fantasies. 

           The Republican party is at war with itself and betting is on the fascist wing and those disconnected from reality, fed by the far right media. 

         Analysts say Republicans have become the party of deception, at the federal and state level. It is there tactic in a winner all view of the world. Recent examples being cited is the McConnell flip flop flip on Trump, Texas Governor Abbott's deceit about the role of wind power in the recent power grid crash, McCarthy on the Covid bail out package, Cruz, Jordan, Hawley and Johnson on the Capitol insurrection. And it goes on. 

       A common theme of the briefings was domestic terrorism and the rise of armed militias. The Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo and others were part of the Capitol invasion. Local, state and federal authorities are warned to be vigilant and prepared for other acts;  attempted kidnapping of a officials, State House invasions, bombings, and shootings. There is  concern over security of the State of the Union address when most of the government is assembled in the Capitol.

        The danger is underscored by what investigators are learning about inside influence in planning the attempted coup. 

       Of concern at home it sends signals to the world. As long as members of the Senate and House continue to placate Trump, perpetuate his lies, and enable the fascist and thug control of the Republican party, they play into division, deception, enable our adversaries and enemies, and undercut the nation's authority.

 

        The breeding of instability at home, weakens us, makes us less secure and contributes to a dangerous change in the balance of power abroad.                                                                                                                                        

         While this post examines the legacy of the inner turmoil on ourselves and our position in the world, a linked topic is the rise of China.

          General David Petraeus and Christian Brose spoke to China's influence as we have been weakened in the eyes of the world.

        "For 25 years China has tried to disrupt our military development and research. They are very competitive and they play by different objectives." Petraeus

        "We need to rethink what we are strategizing in that region. What does national security look like in the absence of our dominance?" Brose

        Petraeus is former Director of the CIA and is a retired US Army General with 37 years in uniform.

        Christian Brose was staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a senior policy adviser to Senator John McCain and adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

        While rogues and fascism destroy the party Brose served, US is weakened. It happens as China is on a trajectory to become the dominant military force in the world. 

        "This requires changes in systems, postures and at home. I am concerned at damage done to alliances and strategic partnership, especially at a time when we need to rely on them more."  Brose

        In decades of reporting I've worked with intelligence officers, analysts and national security people. They are skilled at getting to the point. They are capable, thoughtful and engaged in facts, finding them and analyzing them. They deal with complexity, distant horizons, multiplicity of patterns, input, motivations, intent and they make sense of it.  They can be the very opposite of the public officials and politicians who task or review them and who use their product. 

        

      China benefits as we continue to handicap ourselves. But it is the former KGB officer in the gilded offices in the Kremlin who looks to America, sees what the last four years did to his adversary, and watches as one of America's parties devolves to a gang and mob, and he smiles. One of his intelligence services in the meantime has invaded American cyber systems, manipulated elections, driven social media deception, and he smiles even more.

     Biden's priority has been to attack Covid and its impact on people and the nation as a whole. 

     He has also signaled the America First nationalism of Trump has been trashed. Trump still breaths however, given life by a Republican party that has become a threat to the nation by enforcing the power of the mad mob boss from Mar a Lago. 

    As long as Trump lurks as a shadow influence, he remains a petulant virus in American culture and politics. Variants of Trump are already jockeying for position, and his state party apparatus have begun efforts to suppress and limit voting. 

     Le Carre', Clancy, Ludlum, Forysth, Greene, and Fleming could not have written such a plot.

        What do the realists conclude? We are in trouble and there is thrashing and winnowing to do, to save our future. Truth, an adherence and devotion to it, is a good start. As children we were taught it is wrong to lie. This nation needs to live into that.

        From time to time subsequently, I'll offer more from my notes as we continue our briefings and decipher the times. 

        Stay well.

        See you down the trail.

        

        

Moral Bankruptcy

 

        As certain as sky meets the sea and sea meets the land there are immutable principles and forces at work, laws of nature. 

    Human life is bound by canons, history measures with the cold calculus of principle, that too is immutable. Character is rendered, judgement revealed. Human history is made of these. It is the log of our evolution, and it is indelible. 

    The Republican party set the nadir of moral bankruptcy and cowardice. Deplorable and despicable were their actions and now their reputations. Mitch McConnell's wile, his post acquittal statement, is like the man, fraudulent. After his time on the national stage he fears the inevitable searing truth of the historian's ledger. He will not have it both ways. Four years he enabled a destructive invasion of the republic and has again allowed a pernicious evil to go unchecked. It will be his votes, his record of complicity that history will recall. Generations will revile Trump, his mob of insurrectionists, his seditious accomplices and his hypocrites like McConnell.

    I needed fresh air and a long view after the acquittal. Though the outcome was expected, I hoped late information, the McCarthy and Tuberville phone calls, proving presidential inaction and cooperative complicity with those in the Capitol and seeking to harm his vice president and others, would land a shred of decency in a few of the cowardly republicans. 

    

     The free ranging cattle have more moral conviction than 43 republican senators. I was struck by the irony of 10 grazing animals, as the vote for the good fell 10 short. 

      The republican party is at war with itself. At this juncture the spineless, deceptive, and crooked are beholden to the ignorant fans of authoritarianism. Nikki Haley's recent ploy signals there could be some life yet in those who want to run away from Trump and are willing to say it out loud, though late as it is.

        History will recall the warnings sounded by arguments in the first impeachment, that acquittal would only embolden the rogue president. Proven in short order. He began the incitement when he cultivated the militias, Q crazies, insurrectionist cells and the core racists. He started the movements violent turn when he began to undermine the credibility of the election early in the year. His claim the election would be fair only if he won should have been a warning enough. His relentless pursuit of overturning the election, lies, fraud, crazy theories, were all part of the incitement. 

        I'm sorry the Impeachment was not framed more widely to include all of that, and his lack of intervention but Republicans were there, they had to flee the threat of killing mobs who were in Washington only to "Stop the Steal." They know who was the architect. History will record their knowledge, their complicity and their cowardice. It is time to for both the House and Senate to begin actions to purge the anti American  pro authoritarian Republicans. They are the enemies of the people.

        

        There's a patch of woods I sometimes retreat to and on my last walk I spotted trees that I took pleasure in seeing as symbols of the character of the republican party.

the hawley

the cruz

the graham

    Our experiment in a democratic republic requires the give and take of checking and balancing views. The nation has been at its best when bipartisanship was in season. My previous post tracked the genesis and evolution of the death spiral that made Trump a republican inevitability. We can only hope that traditional republicans will regain control of the party. 

    Trump and his kind, and the poor suckers who believed him are still here. When the gutless, craven, poltroons did not drive a stake through his heart, they made it possible for a vile and evil force to continue to menace not only them, but the future of the nation.

        Over the last few months I've been a part of conversations, interviews and briefs with intelligence and national security people. Their view on this moral bankruptcy in a once great nation will be the subject of a future post. 

shout out to Lana

                                            

            We've reached valentine's days and we are still eating fresh tomatoes. This plate is the last of this year's crop. They were picked, when green, before she pulled the plants. They have continued to ripen. For a guy who grew up in the tomato growing calendar of Indiana, having our own fresh crop at this time is amazing!

     Stay well, stay safe.

     See you down the trail.   

FRUIT OF THE STORM and THE ROAD TO GROTESQUE

         Storms bring an aftermath, sometimes a strange fruit. It is that way in nature pristine, and in human behavior. We'll explore these in this post. 

     Storms also bring change, sometime destruction and upheaval.

The mighty can be brought low

        Political winds are blowing. The Biden administration has moved forthrightly to undo and repair. So have the caretakers of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve in Cambria.

      The fallen are dispatched. Dead wood, like dead policies, are discarded. The initial repair of the United States government continues. Deep work will be more arduous, painstaking and undoing the toxic.

       Contrived though it is by this writer, there is a symmetry we seek here. We observe how nature, left to its own heals and cures in a way that is both stunning and mystical. We wonder how human behavior metastasizes to bring us to where we are.

        Below you'll see the outward signs of nature's enablers. They are, to a degree, angels of death, though in a very good and life providing way. They are part of an underground world of mycelia, a network of tendrils and life that converts the dead and decaying to new earth, new life. There is beneath us an internet of sort providing a connectivity to all life.

An elfin saddle 

        This woods, on this day after the storm was a bounty of mushrooms and fungi, some of this world's oldest life, tireless and dependable in doing transformation. What we see is merely the above ground evidence of the work of changing death to life, involving communication via mycelia.    

        It is an appropriate visual support as we trace the decayed Trumpism to it's surprising origins. 

republican civil war

        The Republican party is at war with itself, the Impeachment moves to a Senate trial, Republican values are on the scales. They are the party that attacked the Capitol. They are the people who sought to kill at the citadel of liberty. They are the party of Trump jihadists.

        Republicans did this to themselves and you could see it coming since Richard Nixon.

    Republicans tend to look out for American business and industry and those who reap the profits. They are anti tax but favor tax cuts for the wealthy. Stinginess for welfare and public works projects, anti union, in favor of a small government with large defense budgets is there modus operandi. They used to bluster about national defense.

    There was a time when the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, was much better on issues of civil rights than the Southern Democrats who were avowed racists and state rights fomenters and old confederates.

    In fact Richard Nixon had a better history on civil rights than JFK, who beat him in 1960. But when Nixon reemerged the Republican party began building the monster that became Trump. It started with the "southern strategy."

                                             Richard Carson/AP

        Desegregation, after the Supreme Court Decision, Brown Vs. Board of Education, was active in the US as Nixon began his new bid for the Presidency.

    

        "The Republican Party placed its major activities toward

    winning southerners' votes in order to change the majority in the US Congress, slowing down the desegregation process, creating alternatives to public school desegregation, (such as school choice option,) and making conservative appointments to the federal judiciary."

      Frank Brown author

Nixon's Southern Strategy and Forces Against Brown

      Republicans were on a track to racism, nationalism and domestic terror. They borrowed tricks from the old southern racist democrats and became the party of voter suppression. 

      Once republicans sustained liberal, moderate and  conservative wings. Conservatives captured the party and nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. Despite their landslide loss they worked to build a power base and began attracting one issue zealots and activists, and those on the right wing fringe. They began to change the balance, while driving toward a dark future.

    Enter Lee Atwater. A young political operator who got around.

 

Trump and Atwater
   

        There is prophesy in these photos. Strom Thurmond, one of the longest serving members in US Senate history ran for President as a segregationist and states rights candidate in 1948. When Democrat Lyndon Johnson pushed Voting Rights and Civil Rights, Thurmond left the Democrat party for the  Republican party in 1964.  Republicans continued to lock in racism. 

    Atwater was a campaign specialist. He was chairman of the Republican National Committee, an advisor to President Reagan and campaign director for George H.W. Bush

        Atwater ordered the infamous Willy Horton television spot  that helped destroy Michael Dukakis's lead in the 1988 Presidential Campaign. Of that ad about Dukakis Atwater said he wanted "to blast the bark of that little bastard."

republican family jewels

       The most honest revelation came from Atwater when he betrayed the family jewels of Republican campaign strategy.

        "You start out in 1954 by saying "nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"-that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, state's rights, and all that stuff and you're like getting so abstract. Now, your'e talking about cutting taxes, and all these things your talking abut are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites..."We want to cut this, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh and a hell of lot more abstract than "nigger, nigger."

Washington Post 

Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Atwater 

     The dark future of the American Republic was foreshadowed on that day.

        Most Americans who lived through the Reagan years do not associate hard racism with him, but he was masterfully handled and he was a much better pitchman and performer than Trump. He built on the Nixon foundation.

    Candidate Reagan put the world on notice when he chose a speech at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia Mississippi to say "I believe in state's rights."

    As his advisor Atwater acknowledged, "...you can't say nigger, nigger...so you say stuff like busing and state's rights..."It was a signal, the Republicans were using the Southern Strategy again.

        The affability and likability of Reagan was a mask for his frequent use of coded language about "welfare queens," "busing," and "affirmative action." Read his speeches, follow his narrative, and you see the trail.

    Possibly Reagan's most insidious act in building the inevitability of a direct attack on the federal government was his own barrage against the very government he lead. It was 1968 when he first used what became one of his famous and frequent lines;

    "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

    The genial actor drew laughs but he was relentless in building an anti-federal government case. He created an anti-tax attitude, and talked about big government spending, while raising taxes and running up the deficit. A hallmark legacy of his administration was selling the idea the government can't solve problems. 

      Attacking the credibility and at times even the purpose of the Federal government became Republican gospel. A generation of increasingly conservative party operators began to spread a belief that Federal government and Federal programs were bad. 

     Reagan used another code word and one that came from more ancient Republican Strategy, "Socialism is a great evil."

    Old time Chamber of Commerce and Capitalist Republicans used the threat of socialism and communism as a way to bust union power and to hold back tax increases. For years Democrats have campaigned for health care, education and other safety net programs that would require federal money, often designated as coming from increased taxes on high earners. Democrats had the support of labor unions as well. That prompted the old Republican trope of "evil socialism."

    "Socialism only works in two places-Heaven, where they don't need it and hell, where they already have it."  Again Reagan would draw smiles, and agreement.

     For decades Republicans have tried to blur the lines and the distinctive differences between socialism and communism. An increasingly lazy electorate has lacked the intellectual curiosity to know the difference and to actually examine nations where those systems are in place, and in varying degrees. Socialism is not a gateway drug to communism, though that has been Republican mantra. The VA, Medicare, Social Security, interstate highways, national health care are socialism, and as we all know it affects the bottom line.

    Reagan was an American icon and his popularity added a halo effect to hardening Republican anti government, anti welfare, anti busing and other dog whistles.

    By now Republicans had hardwired their hard edged brand of stubbornness  and conservatism. It created a prevailing attitude that would eventually denigrate to cult of personality populism. The storm needed seeding of thunder.

    A corrosive bludgeoning prophet who fed the monster was Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House. The Republican Revolution he engineered is a leading cause of the dysfunction that grips Capitol Hill.

    Gingrich brought legislative combat, winner take all obstructionism, the weapon of name calling, distortion and lies.

Gingrich made deception a party tool. He poisoned the body politic.

    "One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party  is that we don't encourage you to be nasty,"  is a Gingrich mantra. 

    You know who was listening.

    The final body part of the monster was the loyalty of the evangelical right wing. George W. Bush had success in building the  evangelical base. He had a ready appeal to southern states, rich with right wing evangelicals. They tightened their attraction to the Republicans during his 8 years. He explained it in an interview with the Washington Times;

    "I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person...I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is."

     The Southern Strategy, playing to the confederacy and the notions of white supremacy, the clever use of code language and dog whistles, voter suppression, distortion, building a climate to attack the purpose and function of the Federal government, were as former Republican strategists acknowledge were the Republican soul. 

    Attacking the media, trying to erode the credibility of examination or challenge was a Nixon tool, all those years ago. Roger Ailes who founded Fox News was a propagandist who worked for Nixon and Reagan. It was there he hatched the idea of a right wing Republican news network with the audacious slogan "Fair and Balanced."  Lazy viewers, fed a party line over and over, repeating Republican mantras and the stage was set.

    Donald Trump is a creation of the Republican Party. At no time during his mendacious administration did Senate Republicans challenge him, try to limit his insanity, listen to those who worked for him and quit, or take a cue from the path he was charting. They did not convict him, which emboldened his criminality. There was no attempt to challenge his increasingly seditious behavior. Even when the election was known, and all the court challenges rejected, even by fellow Republicans, Mitch McConnell continued to aid and abet his lies, and insurrectionist threats. 

    The racist history of the party came fully born in Trump.

The moral bankruptcy of lies and distortions, code language and dog whistles came into full view. 

     Are there good and decent Republicans, those who disavow their cult rites? Yes, but not many in Washington. The idiot gaggle in the House even tried to unseat a hard core conservative named Cheney who voted to impeach.

      Good Republicans who served the party and the nation well, are dead, or old, or retiring but Missouri's John Danforth speaks for them. He calls the current party and its leadership "grotesque." A party that seats Taylor-Green, that allows Cruz, Hawley, Jordan and the weasel ways of McCarthy is a cancer in the body politic. If it is not excised it will spread. It has already made this Republic ill.

    So we end this long tome by returning to the metaphor of the fungi. There is a beauty in these transformers of life, emerging from the detritus of a forest floor, springing to life in the wake of death, decay, swamp, mud and upheaval. We can hope this for our nation, and for the party who gave us Trump. They got exactly what they wanted. But America did not deserve it.

     Rot away Republicans, transform yourself.

      Before he died of a brain tumor Lee Atwater apologized to Dukakis and to the nation for his "naked cruelty."  

      He told an interviewer "I didn't invent negative politics but I am it's most ardent practitioner."

      Some in the evangelical movement have come to see the absurd paradox of supporting Trump. 

       There were many honorable Republican election officials and state leaders who stood up to the attempt to subvert the election. So there is an opportunity to again be respectable, but first, the dead hearts and deal morality must fall.

       Stay safe. Stay well.

       See you down the trail.