The Republican Senate’s failure to block manifestly unqualified nominees was not principally a failure of education, intelligence or information. It was a failure of character—the willingness to recognize what was wrong and act on that judgment despite political consequences.

After casting about fruitlessly for an explanation as to why 53 Republican Senators failed so miserably to block President Trump from installing more than a handful of hapless boobs he knew had no qualifications for critically important cabinet positions, I landed, not surprisingly, on the quality of character. Now wait—before you groan at the lack of originality in that statement—let me walk us through how we got stuck with a series of footmen, how an immensely powerful, extraordinarily wealthy, profoundly endowed nation such as ours has slipped so precipitously in its skills of self-management. Now, we don’t want to overstate the degree of severity of that fall; the slip referred to above was from a not-so elevated capacity in the first place, as we have done a lot of stupid things over the last fifty years or so, with our fair share of incompetent congresses, so maybe we didn’t really have that far to fall after all.

But getting on with this, of the 53 Republicans in the Senate, 26% graduated from highly selective learning institutions, including the Ivy League. Several are lawyers. In 2022 that group was at 34% and in 1973 it was 55%. While a lesser figure than in the past, you would still think that men (they are all men) with a privileged educational background and years in public office with full access to investigative techniques and reliable vetting tools would be demanding judges of character. Being a good judge of character, however, is a common, natural instinct for many of us of a certain age. But it is not the same thing as character, which is another way of saying that character is what drives one to act on his or her best instincts, rather than just moving on.

You might recall that we elect senators to be just that kind of an evaluator of humankind, to screen incoming streams of presidential nominations for talent, honesty and commitment and to reject those who have too little or none of those qualities or whose background conceals vile or corrupt behavior. The character of the senator would require him or her to act on their judgments, irrespective of the consequences. And that is where our Republican senators failed us, again and again, right up to the present day.

How absurd, for example, is the beautifully written and perfectly accurate letter written by Senator Tillis to President Trump calling for the removal of Secretary of War Hegseth. Tillis is right, of course, but he’s far too late. He knew very well what a fool Hegseth was but lacked the courage to stop him when he had the chance, along with others. Now, he speaks out, free from reelection concerns and Trump’s disaffection. Or Senator Cassidy, a medical doctor who had enough on Robert Kennedy Jr to stop him cold, who naively accepted a promise to coordinate vaccination policy when he must have known this odd creature was no where near qualified for such sweeping, consequential duties. Or Senators Cornyn and Cassidy, boldly holding up their approval of Todd Blanche as AG until they got a worthless piece of paper about the slush fund, when the real issue was Blanche’s many illegal, retributive prosecutions at Trump’s direction throughout his first year. Those were substantial grounds for his disqualification, but the good senators swept them right under the rug. Their failure was particularly poignant given that both were exiting their senate seats and could have done the right thing at no cost, but those cushy post-congress lobbying positions beckon.

And so we come to the uncomfortable part. How are we, the electors, supposed to judge the character of the people to whom we entrust enormous power? We cannot see inside their heads. We cannot know in advance whether they will stand firm when the president calls, the party leadership leans in and their political future hangs in the balance. We can listen to their speeches, watch their town halls, read their campaign literature and study their records. But character reveals itself only when the moment arrives—and the moment demands a choice.

Subscribe now

That may be the great lesson of the Republican Senate’s surrender to Trump: education can furnish judgment, experience can sharpen it, and information can illuminate it. But none of those things can substitute for the character required to act on what one knows to be right.

And if we cannot find that character before we elect them, perhaps we should at least demand it when the moment comes.

America is approaching an election that could dramatically alter the political balance, but the greater uncertainty lies beyond Election Day: whether Trump accepts diminished power, whether Republicans reconsider their allegiance to him, and whether a divided nation can begin rebuilding its battered political order. The central idea is less about the election itself than about what happens to America after the votes are counted—whether the country can absorb the result, whether Trump accepts diminished power, whether Republicans break with him, and whether the nation can begin rebuilding its political system.

The nation and much of the world is consumed these days by the political suspense playing out in the United States as we the approach the November mid-term elections. Within the next few weeks the pace of the arguing, lying, charges and countercharges and outright fabrications will pick up. The attack ads will grow even more venemous. The most acerbic of American political conflicts will come to full life. We will all look fondly ahead for a return to calm.

The world, particularly those countries whose security and stability was in large measure tied to their relationships with the United States, will continue to re-evaluate that dependency, as they have been doing for the past year, and may hope for a return to their American heliocentric orbit. They’ll be looking for any indication that the final two years of the Trump Presidency might be trimmed a bit, diminished, its bark muffled and its bite softened.

So two overarching questions are hovering, lying unanswered for the moment: One, what will our wicked and troublemaking president do to try to seize the process, corrupt it to his own ends, that could cause the death of Americans or the republic itself; and Two, what mood will ensue, what will be the social and political weather be like that Americans could choose afterwards to manage the remains of Trump’s perverted plutocracy in order to get through the next two years. Will Republicans experience that long awaited epiphany, abandon Trump, at least those who survive the election? So, while America teeters on the chair’s edge as its near-term future plays out, it will most likely also have to wrestle with what the looming political climate looks like. What lessons will we take away from two awful, unprecedented years of Trump’s bastardization of American elective democracy.

From the standpoint of an American citizen, be it a business person, an academic, a researcher, a political figure of any status, will they not as well ponder in some fear and trembling what follows the November elections? There are signs we may be on the cusp of an expression by the electorate that it is fed up with this president and the turbulence, chaos and division he has sown and then so successfully embraced. If Mr. Trump’s power and influence is indeed depleted or drained what will the resulting division of power look like? What will those newly elected figures who will presumably replace Republicans who had been allied with Trump advocate? What will a perhaps newly empowered Democrat Party do with the oomph that has been denied them do to reassert themselves? What retribution, if any, will they seek?

Apart from the consequences of an election the outcome of which is hard to forecast, what if the Trump administration intervenes with federal forces in the process and corrupts it, steals ballots or refuses to certify the results? Imagine for a moment the civil strife, the physical harm, the public fear and anger, the profound uncertainty that will rattle the already fragile societal fabric of our nation if even a few of these scenarios come to pass.

As we race into November my gaze is on what this great nation, stirred unlike at any time in recent history, and beset with a highly and freshly exercised rank and file, will do after the election results have been announced and must begin to assess anew its footing, take stock of itself, and make plans. And, presumably, hopefully, begin to rebuild our tattered politics.

Immigration enforcement is ultimately about more than immigration. The treatment of deportees is a test of whether American power remains constrained by law, humanity and the traditions of a nation built by immigrants. America has deported millions before, but the manner in which this administration is conducting immigration enforcement raises a more fundamental question: Can the United States enforce its laws without diminishing itself in the process?

The US Government has embarrassed itself in so many instances as a violent, indiscriminate, unenlightened thug, whether it is the conduct of counter-narcotics gunsels, a harebrained war with no outlet, ICE press gangs sweeping undocumented immigrants from the streets, potty-mouth and insulting language, mindless infidelity to allies, or a metastatic lurching to autocratic power. As overwhelming as all of this is to a reeling public in fear of an upcoming election, let’s just focus for a moment on one aspect - how we deal with the 10-12 million undocumented immigrants in this country, the vast majority of whom work, contribute to the economy and pay taxes. And who are being systematically and indiscriminately thinned out.

The US Government is paying a fortune to fly undocumented immigrants to a series of foreign countries, somewhere to the tune of $40 million plus as of January, 2026. The special program has deported 22 thousand immigrants as of January of this year, 19,000 of which were sent to Mexico and 3,000 to third countries. Since January the program has rapidly expanded so these numbers have been by now greatly exceeded. Some of those 3 thousand deportees were sent via US military aircraft and the rest via specially chartered aircraft. Most of that 40 million dollars then would have been spent on shipping the three thousand abroad, as it would cost next to nothing to send the 19,000 to Mexico. These numbers are collected by the US Senate in a recent study. Another thing to keep in mind is that of those 22,000 deportees only a tiny fraction were legitimately the “worst of the worst”; most were hard working families or singletons who were paying federal, state and other taxes.

The 3,000 deported abroad have been sent to 26 different countries, with a substantial and growing number now going to Africa. We are paying outrageous sums of money to those governments, in some cases millions, in fees and the costs of transport—per person.

The US Government has for decades deported undocumented immigrants by the millions. The process has been legal, conducted largely below the surface and from what we know the deportees returned to their countries of origin under protocols that respected the dignity of the US itself as well as those being deported. The programs under presidents Obama and Biden were not characterized by the thuggish behavior of this administration’s Homeland Security Department and thus went largely unnoticed.

Quite apart from the grizzly atmospherics of the process, what the proper, sensible approach to immigration in this country should be is a magic formula that still evades reasonable men and women. A nation that was built on the shoulders of immigrants and long struggled with their absorption still treats the subject with fear and uncertainty.

But while we continue the search for whatever the acceptable pace and extent of our immigration policies should be, the conduct of ICE and CPB officials under DHS management, which reflects the hard-line anti-immigration and far right nationalist political philosophy of Stephen Miller is an open, running sore on the character of the country. Trump takes the blame as he put Miller, a moral, civil, degenerate outlier, where he is and blesses his wielding of extensive, malicious power.

There should be no criminality or inhumanity in dealing with deportees or the manner of their deportation, once that step has been judged appropriate by an immigration court. How one is arraigned, detained and ultimately deported from the United States must be responsive to the core of our beliefs as described by the body of law and precedent that governs the entire nation. Deportation should be just and carried out with obeisance to the dignity of the government as well as the deportee. That is not the case today.

Subscribe now

Trump’s critics argue that the defining characteristic of his second administration is no longer simply conflicts of interest or self-enrichment, but an emerging pattern in which presidential power is allegedly leveraged to extract financial and political concessions from those dependent upon the federal government. History suggests that when corruption evolves into extortion, even powerful regimes begin to decay from within.

There are many forms of political corruption, but extortion sits at the summit. It is the moment when public power ceases merely to enrich those who wield it and begins compelling others to pay, comply, or suffer the consequences. Critics argue that this is the latest—and most dangerous—evolution of corruption in the second Trump administration.

If you accept that corruption is the single most visible and consequential root cause of the history of crumbling autocracies, then the inevitable question becomes, when does Trump’s perch at the head of the most corrupt administration in the history of the republic bring him down. In this less than book-length treatment, it is a challenge to recount his many tawdry scams and blockheaded moves. But the corruption is so in-your-face that to it deserves a brief refresher. A refresher that showcases how corruption has become a blinding fixture in our government today that, like fallen autocracies in Europe and elsewhere over the past century, it threatens to bring Trump down with a loud thud.

And positioned prominently on the Trump rap sheet is now the most recent national indignity, a cheeky extortion campaign to solicit giga-dollars from America’s wealthiest corporations. And apparently with the same fear that enshrouds the members of the House and Senate Republican caucuses, corporate America can’t hustle fast enough to send the solicited money. It feeds Trump’s ravenous appetite, and those of his janissaries, for more and more cash and power.

So extortion is layered over the previous headline grabbing incidents:

Profiting from cryptocurrency while president. Trump and his family have maintained major financial interests in crypto ventures, including the $TRUMP memecoin and related businesses, while his administration has shaped crypto policy. Critics argue this creates unprecedented conflicts of interest because individuals, including foreign investors, can financially benefit the president through assets he controls.

Acceptance of Qatar’s luxury Boeing 747. Trump’s plan to accept a luxury aircraft from Qatar for government use and eventual transfer to his presidential library drew bipartisan ethical criticism and constitutional scrutiny under the Foreign Emoluments Clause. The administration argued the arrangement was lawful. Appearances and the outlandish cost of refurbishing the plane have made it an open sore on our republic.

Continuing extensive private business interests while in office. Unlike recent presidents, Trump did not fully divest from his businesses. His hotels, golf clubs, licensing, and other enterprises continued to receive revenue from domestic and foreign customers, leading to recurring conflict-of-interest concerns.

Mass pardons and clemency benefiting political allies. Many if not most pardons rewarded loyalty or protected political supporters rather than serve traditional justice objectives. Presidents have broad constitutional pardon power, making this largely an ethical rather than legal issue, but Trump’s global abuse of the pardon power grossly outstrips any poorly judged pardons of all his predecessors.

Extensive Use of Trump Properties for Official Business. Numerous presidential meetings, Secret Service deployments, and official travel involved Trump-owned properties. Taxpayer money flowed into businesses owned by the president, and it blurs the distinction between public office and private enterprise.

Selling Access Through Branded Products. During campaigns and while in office, Trump promoted, bibles, sneakers, watches, NFTs, cologne, trading cards, and other branded merchandise.

The firing of independent Inspectors General.

Pressure on the Department of Justice to carry out selective and retributive investigations and charges.

Repeated market manipulation or insider trading.

Worse, he is selling early access to Truth Social postings that may impact market values up for sale to major investors for $100K at a monthly pop.

As precursor to extortion, there are four recurring themes:

1. Personal enrichment — retaining or expanding private wealth while exercising presidential authority.

2. Transactional government — blurring the distinction between official decisions and personal or political benefit.

3. Weakening oversight — reducing the independence of inspectors general, ethics officials, and other accountability mechanisms.

4. Eroding institutional norms — departing from practices that previous presidents, regardless of party, generally observed to avoid conflicts of interest.

Rolled together, Trump’s failed presidency and corruption are the weapons, when hurled at him in the hands of a rising public, will bring him down.

No formula can predict presidential greatness, yet history and common sense suggest that the balance between youthful energy and seasoned judgment may matter more than Americans have been willing to acknowledge. Ultimately It’s about framing the presidency as a balance among four qualities—experience, judgment, vitality, and leadership.

For years now a common concern among voters has been the advanced age of serving elected officials and support for term limits. There are 41 members of the US House and 16 in the senate who are 75 or older. Two over 75 in the Supreme Court. In most cases they were elected as much younger people but never left. Increased public comment has not resulted in any movement in the legislature to act on it, for obvious reasons of self interest.

As I began to ponder the opaque issue of what the most promising range of age in years might be optimal for a prospective American president or other holder of high elective office, an ill-fated attempt quickly descended into an impenetrable tangle of unknowns and the unpredictability of human nature. In truth, how well any man or women will execute the duties of positions of paralleled complexity and stress is virtually unknowable until he or she is already in the chair.

The search for the best age for executive capacities, where one should be the most enlightened and vigorous turns out to be, unsurprisingly, amorphous and ungraspable. Yet, there are intuitive answers that can be factored into a group of candidates about age relevance to suitability for office. They are perhaps more honored in the exception—that someone too young or too old should be rejected based on age alone—because a candidate’s readiness may be perfect despite falling outside a favored age range. For openers, that favored age range seems to align with a maturity which, in very general terms, lies somewhere from 45 to 70, with the sweet spot in the mid-fifties to the mid-60s. This range is intuitive and from the personal observations of a man of 86 years and a substantively diverse biography of professional experiences, and from observing our national elected officials over many years. Too young, and there may not be an abundance of experiences. Too old, and fixation with tired or routinized methods, being too set in one’s ways, could fail to meet today’s tests.

Among our long list of presidents the youngest on taking office were Theodore Roosevelt at 42 (on the assassination of William McKinley) and John F. Kennedy at 43. The oldest were Donald Trump at 78, Joe Biden 78, Ronald Reagan at 69 and William Henry Harrison at 68 in 1841(between 75 and 80 in age equivalency today).

Subscribe now

An historical survey of US presidents conducted by C-SPAN and the Siena College Research Institute concluded the three most ineffective presidents were James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Franklin Pierce, all having held office in the mid 19th Century and were, respectively, 65, 56 and 48 years of age on inauguration. Now those ages should be within the sweet range of youth and vitality for a man in the mid-1850s, more like someone in his mid-60s these days. The top three US presidents are consistently ranked as Lincoln, Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Truman rank highly as well, although Eisenhower who left with high approval tends to look less attractive over time and Truman who left office with terrible approval numbers more-so.

So, there are still some safe assumptions one can make about the relevance of age, always subject and in addition to personal and professional qualifications of course, to guide voters in voting their preferences. The American people have been whipped back and forth over the past decade of political turmoil, unarguably at the hands of two aged polar opposites, and a compliant congress that abandoned it’s duty, have presumably learned that a man or woman’s age, in some measure, will probably influence their choices in the future to a greater degree than in the past.

The Secretary of War, although most of us would prefer he still be called the Secretary of Defense, is an embodiment of Trump’s shrunken mind. He has inculcated and absorbed the misogynistic and racist traits of the president, and in support of Trump’s inimical tendencies echos Trump’s power-mongering style. Both Trump and Hegseth, along with Mullin and Patel, as father and sons who now share identically malevolent DNA, manage their personal and professional relationships in the same manner, through the application of brute power. That would include the denial of any kind of resistance or modification of Trump’s policies. No room for independent judgment by experts, no space for personal elaboration of a stated policy other than to follow it precisely and to the letter. Anything else, of course, and the Trump/Hegseth/Mullin/Patel national security team sacks you and replaces you with an automaton.

That disabling combo produces a single solution approach to every problem as if it were stamped out of an Elon Musk produced, MAGA inspired, ideologically pure AI system, consistently reliable and loyal to the Trump machine. It is not an administration. It is a machine. A real administration relies on the individual capacities and expertise of the cabinet secretaries, selected for their knowledge and proven experience, free to make the best choices to score against the goals and needs of the American people. A machine produces a predictable product, manufactured to certain inviolable tolerances and impervious to the needs of a massive and richly diverse population. Which approach would you prefer, flexibility or ideologic rigidity?

Put another way, Mr. Trump’s approach, as all of us in the US now know as well as the entire rest of the sentient world, is ignorant, harmful to the greater good, unresponsive to the needs of we the people, and in the face of an upcoming election of momentous significance to our future, a gut-churning threat.

Enter stage right the Trump perfected, not-so-secret weapon of election interference. Like a defeated demagogue whose briefly sensational political harangues and simplistic answers to complex problems have run their course and are no longer selling, he resorts to force. And this is where the sycophants Hegseth, Mullin and Patel and their willing adoption of Trump’s autocratic despotism could come into play; functioning as a robotic instrument Trump could well attempt to deploy. Federal forces available, should Trump invoke the 1807 broadened Insurrection Act of 1792. Should Hegseth not be called on by Trump, or should he be ordered to do so but finds the Chairman and Joint chiefs unwilling, Trump will have to rely on Homeland Security’s CBP and ICE and Kashyap Patel’s FBI to do his dirty work.

Each day that passes there is greater recognition that the burden grows. There are nearly 7 in 10 Americans who refuse to accept Trump or his prospective physical grab of America’s storied election process. It is on them that the burden of our salvation grows. The nation’s media is replete with warnings of either physical disruption at polling places to confound the process or a declaration after the fact that the results are to be tossed due to internal corruption and foreign intervention. There is a pervasive sense across the country, where the sensitivity to the degree of risk is sharply felt, that Trump is highly likely to make such moves.

The threat from Trump as a chief executive without the talents or tools to look after us is wrenching enough by itself, but the strong possibility that his will could be acted out unreservedly by the powerful men who rule The Pentagon, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and who are imbued with the same sense of power, hubris and invincibility, is clearly causing many Americans to lose a lot of sleep. Meaning, one could say, that they are also becoming more awake day by day to the menace, and that they are increasingly motivated to do what they can.

Donald Trump may be the agent of America’s democratic decline, but congressional Republicans have become its indispensable accomplices by surrendering the constitutional independence the Framers expected of them.

This post is personal. I don’t speak for anyone but myself.

Not a day goes by that I don’t fume while the media saturates us with the relentless litany of muddled blather, lies and a transparent grasping for power and wealth by Mr. Trump. Lurking just behind those offenses, though, are two other phenomena that, truth be told, infuriate me as much if not even more than the despicable man in the White House; and those are the congressional poltroons of the GOP caucus and the 30-some percent of MAGA Americans who continue to support him.

To those MAGA Americans who tolerate his viciousness and align with his wicked immigration policies, this is not addressed to you. First, there are probably few of you who navigate the pages of Substack, and second, it is your constitutional right to favor Trump’s mix of poisonous advocacy. If you choose Trump you are only dismissing a personal option — or call it an obligation — to educate yourselves as to why your political preferences are unwise and harmful to you or the nation as a whole.

My comments here are directed at the Republicans in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, that latter group which was formerly popularized as the “world’s greatest deliberative body”. The senate was originally designed by the framers of the Constitution to be a small, deliberative, and independent chamber capable of checking the more impulsive actions of the larger, population-based House of Representatives. Today, you in the Senate do nothing of the sort in terms of checking the other chamber’s missteps and you resemble not at all the deliberative duties described. It is you, some 50 plus men and women, who are chiefly responsible for enabling and empowering Trump as he pursues a calamitous and unchecked path, based solely on his hunger for personal glory, a virulently malignant narcissistic personality disorder whose roots reach deep into every crevice of his muddied mind, and a blinding ignorance. You are torn between conscience and ambition and choose wrongly. And you are doing little to nothing to corral the House GOP and its slavish, kool Aid swilling partisans, so many of whom are in service to Trump.

Among you more than 200 Republicans in the House, a handful of you have distinguished yourselves by stepping over the inert bodies of your mates to tackle issues like the Epstein coverup and a few others. You, often with women in the lead, are earning the recognition and respect of millions of Americans. And you stand apart because of it.

In the senate, the sober maturity that your chamber was intended to showcase for a young country, one whose founders showed surprising foresight, is absent nearly all the time. What you do show us is your fear of Trump and your ghastly patronizing. Echoes of those richly argumentative Roman forebears who debated issues of virtue are becoming relics at best, history’s flotsam at worst.

If you in the senate are subjected to the further humiliation of having to stand idly by as Trump dispatches FBI, CBP, ICE or God forbid members of the military, to seize ballot boxes, voting machines and election officials in November, you will either come to your senses or bear the weight of another act of faithless betrayal.

If the American people speak loudly enough this autumn, you will face a defining choice. You can reclaim the constitutional independence your office demands, or you can complete a betrayal of the institution you were elected to serve. History will remember which path you chose.

I have respect for Senator Thom Tillis and for his maneuvering of Todd Blanche into meeting with Epstein survivors. But do let’s get serious about the confirmation of Todd Blanche as AG, and stop noodling around with issues of a secondary nature, regardless of their importance to those valiant survivors.

The issue is whether everything Todd Blanche has already said and done over the past year and a half are, or are not, grounds for denying him a powerful government position which’s he has so far abused. Well, jumping to the chase, they are indeed grounds for a no answer and Blanche should be denied senate confirmation. A lot is known and documented about Blanche’s slavish subservience to Trump for many of us to conclude he will never ever look properly after the role of AG as he should; whether he meets with survivors or not.

Going a little further, these hearings, like the one with Jay Clayton to be DNI, are exercises in waste and untruthful answers in so many instances that the nominee’s comments are obviously simply tailored in so many instances to get through the process and then get on with doing what they or the president wants. Those hearings of SCOTUS nominees are another glaring example that senate “advise and consent” has become a largely meaningless protocol, and that it will stay that way until a vast plurality of members of the former GOP either get a nighttime visit form Jiminy Cricket to remind them of doing the right thing or are driven out and replaced with men and women of virtue, if even just a little.

Americans have spent years debating what has already happened. The more urgent question is how citizens and institutions should respond if the nation’s democratic safeguards are tested in ways no one can yet fully predict.

How do we as citizens—forget for the moment that we have a constitution that is suppose to protect us from the government—stand up to an increasingly politicized and coercive instrument of presidential power. You see evidence every day that Americans are out on the street protesting, writing letters to their congressmen, speaking out on social media, and demonstrating how pissed off and frightened they are.

Day after day, many of us who write on Substack have searched for the words and descriptive verbal images that we hope will stir the hearts of the men and women who read us to stay positive, to prepare for an unprecedented constitutional confrontation of some kind surrounding the election, to march, protest, make signs, whatever, to show we are all not sheep. I, for one, do that much of the time but must confess I sometimes feel the wind escaping my sails. I wonder, when the citizens, unarmed except for their anger, meet government thugs whether in masks and uniforms or dark suits, white shirts and school ties show up in enough numbers at polling places to physically shut down voting, will do. Will there be violence? To what end? Can direct, physical actions stop the government? Will the outcomes be more bloody? And what will the election executives in counties and states do if the FBI rolls in on Election Day and seizes hundreds of thousands of ballots while making charges that those ballots have been altered by corrupt election officials or interventionist foreign intelligence organizations?

As I tick through one gritty scenario after another I keep up the persistent search for how things will likely turn out. We don’t know what Trump’s government will do or attempt to do; we don’t know whether all official government authorities such as the FBI, DHS, or local law enforcement will participate to the full or balk, and we don’t know what honest American citizens like you and I will do.

Roughly four months from now this should be clear. It is also possible that as we approach the election a sharper picture of what we will be up against will emerge and that we will have a much better sense of what we are likely to face, not to mention how we should do it. But right now, if you are like me, you fret over these things. Fret because the enemy is known to us, we are familiar with some but not all the vile and unconstitutional methodologies he is keen to launch against us, or what the recipes are that might have been worked out in advance for colluding with his oligarchical cronies when the time comes.

Our president is an autogolpe, a Spanish term for a legitimately elected leader who illegally seizes dictatorial powers, and instead of being overthrown by the military or rebels, uses his existing powers to dissolve the legislature, suspend the constitution, and neuter the judiciary. The legislature, not yet dissolved but largely inert, hangs by a few threads and the judiciary seems squishy.

I get short tempered when I hear others talk about the things this wretched man, Trump, is doing to our nation. Or the criminal and immoral ledger he owns that dates back to his earliest days in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Or the louse he was becoming under the mentoring of godfather Roy Cohn, the same gothic figure who helped create the communist hunting monster Joseph McCarthy. We know these things; it’s all written down in the history books; Americans have long known of Trump’s dark streak and we are intimately aware of how he is malevolently sending this nation of ours into troubled waters. I get angry because I know all these things and they are very bad. And I know most of you know about them. What we don’t know is what’s coming, what form it will take, how we meet the challenge, and what the detailed nature of that challenge will really consist of. We do know two things: we are rather firmly in the hands of a Shiva-like deity of destruction and, that as baffled as we are, we must be prepared to do something.

On the one hand, there is correctly admiration for the European leaders of the NATO countries as they managed a carefully drafted choreography at Ankara in dealing with a combustible American president.  It was a masterful piece of collaboration, each of them playing their roles perfectly, not overacting and always with conviction.

On the other hand, and at the same time, there is what can only be called a creepy sensation, among the American audience at least, as it witnesses what was more often than not the transparency of what was happening, to see how pointedly the Europeans were reaching out with newly created cheerfulness to welcome Mr. Trump into their midst.

It would be fair to label President Trump the designated protagonist in Ankara, as he was clearly the central character rather than just another member of the substantially enlarged 32 member defensive organization.  From the warm, ceremonial welcome by the avuncular Turkish president Recep Erdogan, guiding Mr. Trump handily through what were apparently for The President a confusing series of maneuvers, to the collective effort by the key European leaders to make Trump feel respected, a still indispensable player in the storied organization, and the principal figure in delivering victory to the goal of greater financial NATO investment.  NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte made it clear that he and his European colleagues believed Mr. Trump was the one who finally accomplished what several previous American presidents and secretaries of state and defense had been unable to do, regardless of the coarse manner in which the caper was stage managed by the rude American president.

The Europeans also skillfully avoided traps laid by Mr. Trump when he criticized the UK, France, Germany and especially Spain, and they stepped aside to bring the focus back to the organization’s core issues of defense and unity.  And the Europeans never took the bait offered by Trump when he again went after Greenland or opened with his ill mannered criticisms of NATO’s choice to not get involved in Iran.  No, in point of fact our president left Ankara singing the praises of the other leaders, blessing them and the new NATO by characterizing the climate as one with “ a lot of love” and “a lot of unity”.  Mr Trump roared into Ankara a snarling lion and departed a devoted comrade in arms.

The result was a good one for NATO and the political Gemütlichkeit of what we blithely refer to as the settled Western democracies.  And it was a particularly good thing for the United States of America.  We owe thanks to what we can only assume was a private board meeting of the key European leaders before the full gathering in Ankara the purpose of which must have been to work out the details of their highly effective scheme.  One cannot prove such a planning session actually took place, of course, but it would have had to have taken place in order to clarify how they were to portray themselves, and where and how to put the emphasis in playing their individual sunny roles.  Having created the winsome environment for a council of the Western world’s shakers and movers, we all can rightfully rest a bit easier, albeit as the Iran and Ukraine wars roll on.

But for all the relief that the leadership that this selective NATO conclave produced, America could be forgiven if the conviviality is overshadowed by the joyless recognition that our great leader predictably fell victim to targeted manipulation and flattery.  It bordered on adulation.  Trump was not leading, but lead.  He was not Churchillian or Rooseveltian by stepping out where there is risk and reward, but something of a useful pawn.  Though we are pleased in the afterglow, we are a little diminished, grateful he was saved from himself, if a bit chagrined that it was necessary.

The Republican Party is pursuing a rapid, multi-front strategy to entrench political power before an increasingly alarmed public can organize an effective electoral response.

On an almost daily basis one struggles to evaluate two combative movements within our country.  The contest ranges across all regions of the Nation.  Our two contestants are the partisan GOP majority of the government and the other is the vast and diverse realm of opinion tribunes and citizenry who are increasingly vocal and are contributing significantly to the richness of public discourse.  They are battling for the prize of the republic.  Each is racing to reach a position of dominance in the mid-term elections and beyond.  The eventual speed the peoples’ tribunes can ramp up to in the next several months and years is unknown; but the GOP, home of the partisans, is picking up speed, opening new fronts and moving out smartly with a suite of both known and unknown, fair and illegitimate weaponry.

They are trying to close out the pace of our citizens tribunes by achieving escape velocity — make it impossible for the rest of the awakening nation to catch up.

Within the national revival I see and hear from across the civil spectrum of podcasts, mainline and auxiliary media, authors and political sentinels, a flurry of exhortations to voters warning them of a metastasizing autonomy, imbalanced tax policy, reductions to America’s and the globe’s vulnerable populations, corporate greed and an oligarchical progression of ever elaborating and unchecked innovations.  They make up a credible and impactful storm of warnings and wake-up calls to coming heavy weather.

From the GOP partisans, you are witnessing a carefully calibrated, multi-front attempt to seize governing power through legitimate as well as questionable if not blatantly illicit means.  The array of weapons is substantial.  Under Oval Office direction federal and state Republican administrations have opened a gerrymandering war.  Democratic states responded in kind but the number of Republican states is far greater.  Among the legal weaponry there is Presidential visibility, fund-raising, digital campaigning, ground organization, issue emphasis, capitalizing on an ecosystem and a variety of other legal tools.  But other highly questionable practices are at work as well: aggressive and intrusive voter rolls manipulation, vindictive DOJ political prosecutions, recent and supportive Supreme Court rulings such as lifting constraints on the huge wealth of Super PACs, the use of misinformation and ad hominem attacks in targeted digital advertising, often using malicious AI imagery, ungrounded challenges to voter eligibility, outright efforts at voter suppression, the threat of the invocation of the Insurrection Act, and an abject failure to enforce Hatch Act restrictions, among so many others.

These measures illustrate factual forward movement from the government that often yields strengthened success among the supportive populations of the President, often through the misuse of its resources and resulting in broadening its grip on the nation.  On the other side — for our purposes here we will call it the “we the people” side — there is an expanding awareness of a gathering threat.  The road to Damascus is long and our political epiphany has been slow to take shape.  It is doing so now, but still ploddingly.  It is infused with a lot of hope but as yet our ability to to project what its ultimate size will be is limited, and how loud its exhortations will be, or what the total impact the collective’s potential influence on elections will amount to unclear.  We have a very fuzzy picture of the punch and reach it is capable of generating in the coming months.

With so much of the “we the people” picture unfinished, the GOP strategy is clearer and easier to measure.  It is in the hands of a vicious president with a character utterly devoid of scruples or principles, and who has the support of a Republican caucus and associated machinery that is an unambiguous blend of active supporters, sedated seat-warmers, sufferers of decision paralysis, limpid go-alongs, and a smattering of tired quitters who make for the exits mouthing now safe criticisms.  The citizen sentinels can do better against these men and women.  We must up our game.

Our endless diversity produces conflict, confusion, resilience and renewal in equal measure. The American experiment survives not because we agree, but because we continue choosing the Republic over the tribe.

America has never been a nation of one people, one religion, one ethnicity or one ideology. It is a sprawling, sometimes chaotic collection of individuals whose diversity makes demagogues possible—but ultimately prevents them from permanently capturing the Republic. The American people possess enormous latent power. History suggests that when democratic norms are seriously threatened, that power eventually awakens, transcending partisan identities in defense of the Republic.

America is not a conventional country with an ethnicity of blood and soil as some would like to make it, but a destination where human striving can come to find the fulfillment of their personal capacities. It is a place of many different places, occupied by many who have either often forgotten or never took aboard to deeply consider the most important features of the place where they live.

The vast array of reactions across the country to the violations of law, norms, common sense, decency and outright criminal actions launched by the White House illustrate the complexity of America. That is not news, or should not be, for anyone who is in the slightest bit reflective of our current tribulations. But our complexity spans human experience: ethnic origins, political views, religion, interest in the course of current events, nature of the specific countryside where they live, the idea of how much or how little the government should act to help vulnerable or troubled categories, and the degree to which they obsess over the state of their own, personal financial or spiritual wellness. That mix is as big a jumble of humanity as you will find anywhere in the world. Yet, somehow, it works. Mostly and most of the time.

Another feature of America is the degree to which it is vulnerable to the placations of a demagogic personality who, because of the rich mix of diversity in this country, can always find, feed, and excite a sizable group of citizens. It happens chemically, one supposes, and emotionally as it tugs away at unmet goals or simmering resentment. The demagogue is fueled by it and, self recurrently self-charged, stirs all the antibodies of disaffection among the targeted groups.

And whose fault is that? Is it the fault of the tunnel-visioned demagogue who pursues what he considers his right, demented as it might be? Is it the unread, embittered citizen who immediately links to a perceived kindred spirit? Is it wrong to support someone who appeals to your irritations?

Of course, none of these are culprits per se for America’s curious and unique social-political version of the human condition. It’s the awesome, tousled and sometimes messy cocktail of personal habits and darlings of the nearly incomprehensible blend of souls that stretch from Portland to Key West, San Diego to Bangor, Minot to San Antonio. There are no national politicians who routinely are representative of the whole, but are those who praise general objectives, broad schemes that elevate the individual away from his or her personal fixations to the higher level of the plurality. The nation either functions well and silently in those states with enlightened leadership; or not so well in those instances where religious interests dominate or regressive, Luddite policies prevail. There are several gripping examples of the latter. And in Washington D.C., broad direction of technology, taxation and legislation will also have an inevitable effect, but best if in conjunction with states and municipal policies.

You might think this in an ungovernable composite, but it works surprisingly well as long as there is good will at both ends of the political-geographic matrix of state and federal lawmaking and good will.

Two hundred and fifty years ago the founders were heavily influenced by the concepts of virtue by the writings of the ancients, both Greek and Roman. Thomas Ricks has written beautifully on those influences in First Principles. He also captured the battle between American leadership in the early nineteenth Century between the eclipsing importance of puristic virtue and the rapidly emerging stress on individual rights of determination. The latter became dominant, reinforcing the notions of Americans’ belief in individual prerogatives-and that’s pretty much where we have landed today.

Put another way, there rests, often largely inert, the massive power of the American people. It lies scattered from spacious open lands to large, tightly packed cities, places with widely differing interpretations of individual rights, but who do share the fundamental principle that they shall not be overrun by demagogues, bad legislation, greed or general ill will. In eclipse for much of the last decade, that latent supremacy awakens today. It will have to confront the real threat that the Trump administration poses to the November elections. The American people are stirring and they had better be ready.

The Attorney General stands closer than almost any public official to the living machinery of the Constitution. When that office is perceived as an instrument of personal or political loyalty rather than impartial justice, the damage extends far beyond one administration and strikes at the public’s faith in the Rule of Law itself.

Todd Blanche will have to look in the mirror one day and when he does the wrenching history of his infidelity to the Constitution and to our republic will look back at him, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, and remind him of who he really was - and by extension - the man he could have been.

Of the many presidentially appointed positions, cabinet officers and the heads of agencies critically important to the national security of the United States and the well being of the American people, there are a handful who stand apart for their unparalleled power. Among them, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of (now) War, Health and Human Services, and a number of others whose influence on the quality of our lives are felt every day. But at the top, there is the singular power of the Attorney General. This person’s grip on one of the most fundamental bricks in the foundational structure of our union—the Rule of Law—is virtually uncontested within our system, and it reigns supreme from coast to coast as well as in many respects beyond. He is a figure who only the judiciary, in particular the highest courts in the land, have the capacity to challenge.

You may think the Secretary of State should be up there too, as that figure ranks, protocol-wise, ahead of the Secretary of War and only under the Vice President. But the view of those two secretaries is outward, into the world. They seek to balance the strength of our national defense and relations with the world, and they look after the state of readiness of the tools we have in the national arsenal that are designed to protect us from external threats.

You can also turn your attention to the Department of Homeland Security for a moment: it is supposed to be our guardian angel, eyes inward but importantly, fed with threats that come here from intelligence. But DHS is still subject to American law and it is architecturally subordinate to those in our government who enforce the law and to whom its conduct is accountable.

The Attorney General is the person to whom DHS, and in many respects every other senior official of the government, must answer; he sits atop the Constitution. The President, Vice President, Speaker of the House and Leader of the Senate Majority all conveniently shift aside when it comes to enforcing the law, it is the AG and the sprawling department of thousands of lawyers and committed civil servants that labor under his direct command who sit collectively at the right hand of the US Constitution. In a very real sense the Constitution is the AG’s guide book, a book of law and a Jiminy Cricket, perched on his shoulder as a whispered voice of probity, honor and virtue, who keep the AG and his DOJ on target, faithful and earnestly dedicated to our principles. The outrages of the President, be they loosed here or abroad, or the national embarrassments at his hand, or the loss of American stature and influence, not to mention respect, should not be permitted to block out the frightening fact that the laws of our country, their fair and just enforcement, are in the hands of a man who is demonstrably a sold-and-paid-for soul, a robotic praetorian chieftain who dispenses investigations, charges, and collects indictments at will and at the direction of a demented chief executive.

No doubt Todd Blanche will one day attempt to field the defense “I was just following orders…”. Inevitably it will happen when the time comes for him to answer for his actions as Trump’s hangman and for undertaking the final stages of transitioning the DOJ from its role as the administrator of justice to that of a junta of henchmen who follow the orders of an ever dissipating mind.

Does the AG not know that the chair he occupies is a temporary thing? Granted, it will take years to put DOJ and other institutions which have been trashed by Mr. Trump with the connivance of the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, to put back together again. But does he really believe that he will enjoy the protection of Trump and others when the inevitable end to this shameful chapter is at last upon us? He may think he’ll be able to land a seven figure job as general counsel in the board room of some former Trump donor or deep-pocketed K Street law firm after they all make a discreet exit into political obscurity when Trump is at last driven out. That kind of escape cannot be ruled out. But does Blanche tell himself at night, as he tries to fall asleep, that he will walk out of DOJ with his head high or that his wife and children will be able to find welcoming friends among the discriminating or compatriots and be able to luxuriate in the common bond of pride knowing that their father and husband played a key role in attempting to dismember and reconstruct the republic?

For decades, the DOJ and FBI formed the core of the nation’s counterterrorism and counterespionage defenses. Policies that hollow out those institutions in favor of politically driven priorities are weakening the government’s ability to detect and disrupt threats before they mature.  The administration repeatedly invokes “national security” to justify immigration and border initiatives while simultaneously diverting personnel from missions focused on terrorism, espionage, and foreign influence operations. The result is a growing mismatch between where threats exist and where government resources are being deployed.

America’s global webbing of national security devices, instruments and mechanisms is complex, competitive to some degree, and a powerful arm that reaches out and into virtually every corner of the world.  The goals are to explain ourselves to others, influence others where possible and in our interests, and then run every shred of information and foreign content needed to secure the United States against foreign threats back through the huge federal bureaucracy.  Diplomacy, the application of soft power under the Department of State, intelligence collection of all kinds, US Military offices in embassies and elsewhere, and a host of other foreign service offices of our government which engage productively with the world at large are all part of this vast machine.  The dispensing of US Aid, before its dissolution under the Trump administration, was a valuable part of that now substantially weakened aegis of soft power.

But threats can silently take root within the country, too, threats that on the surface bear little or no identifiable connection with foreign actors abroad, threats that must be monitored minute by minute of every day.  A broad network of capabilities exists within the country that is largely managed and directed by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  They are actively present around the country and collaborate with state and municipal authorities, which feed critical information to them.  It is these two enormous and celebrated institutions, supported by those state and municipal entities, that are there to watch over us here at home.

Apart from our international reach abroad then, the DOJ and FBI are the heart of the US Government’s capacity for delivering tangible, demonstrable skills and tools wielded for the preservation and strengthening of the nation’s national security.  Or at least we can say that the DOJ and the FBI were robustly doing so as of January 2025.

There is, at any given time, thousands of foreign threats covertly at work throughout the country, some of them in concert with witting and non witting Americans.  The large presence of these figures in the country unquestionably represents a threat in terms of terrorism plotting, whether organized under foreign nonstatal actors or lone-wolf operators, and there is always a wide variety of cleverly disguised intelligence collection operations being run by foreign interests.  They do present a serious threat.  It is the National Security Division within the DOJ and the many special agents of the FBI where these duties land the hardest.  And it is the deliberate weakening of both the DOJ and the FBI under a corrupt, inept and thoroughly compromised national leadership that have vitiated the country’s epicenter of counterterrorism and counterespionage defenses, tinkered dangerously with our capacity ability to protect ourselves internally.  Make no mistake, we are certainly not defenseless, but these protective walls against foreign subterfuge are straining under a deliberate program, blindly conceived and one which will leave us partially blind to the location, nature and objectives of developing threats.

This administration throws around the term national security irresponsibly.  It is used dishonestly as a phony excuse to undergird the execution of reckless detention and deportation operations, extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and grossly inflated appropriations and authorizations of precious government funding for Border Protection and Immigration Control.  Hundreds if not thousands of DOJ and FBI professionals have been transferred from legitimate national security positions essential to countering terrorism, espionage, and other activities, both foreign and domestic and all harmful to the nation, in order to sweep the land in a manic search for undocumented immigrants.

This series of Trump policies stems from racial obsessions, bald disregard of pressing needs in other sectors of the federal community, an unlettered president served by malicious and committed aides.  The American people feel directly and daily the grind of a loss or reduction to various federally funded transfer programs essential to help many with education and health.  In a less concrete way, they may be slowed spiritually by governmental and state chaos, authoritarianism, a needless war and question what the next day, week month or year holds for each of us  collectively.

Americans cannot be expected to follow or fret over the murky nature of unmet national security needs that are lurking in many of our cities and which are not fully addressed by DOJ and the FBI, so others among us, acting as communal consciences or peoples’ tribunes must.

Like a vessel suffering multiple breaches below the waterline, the United States faces a series of interconnected failures that, collectively, pose a profound challenge to the durability of its institutions and traditions.  The greatest danger facing the United States is not any single policy or personality, but the combined effect of years of democratic erosion, factionalism, and elite self-dealing that have left the nation increasingly unable to govern itself effectively.

I’ve always had a soft spot for nautical metaphors when called upon to characterize the management or mismanagement of events, whether they’re moving smoothly and according to plan or when corrective measures must be taken to save a ship and crew faced with foul weather, shipboard catastrophes or enemy action.

Like an almost incomprehensibly complex modern vessel where thousands of elaborate systems must function reliably, all interconnected, and thousands of crew members who must execute their duties to exacting perfection, often under stressful or perilous conditions, our country, mirror-like, similarly reflects the quintessence of collaboration under strong, enlightened leadership.  It is the combination of such essential efforts that the safe and sane conduct of the republic demands of each of us.  And when that ship is faced with an existential threat and under the command of a demented, incompetent leader, as many in our country believe we are today, courageous subordinates step in and push him aside.  Shades of the Caine Mutiny abound, if you hadn’t noticed.

The nation these past several years has taken on a great burden of unwanted negative political and social ballast, slowing our progress and inhibiting our maneuverability to change and fix broken things.  It is the kind of ballast produced by our fouled and divided politics, an incompetent legislature, unbridled greed and corruption, vile language and a personalized, wicked leadership.  These conditions threaten to sink us, morally, spiritually, politically, economically, and they are gnawing away at the despoilment of one of our greatest national assets, our collective self respect.

These political storms and supremely flawed judgment at the top that have been tossing and turning us for nearly a decade now are the accumulated weight of the incumbency of this president, dragging us down, while much of America watches, stomachs turning.

Let’s not look not at the horrors of individual policies or presidential personal failings, but at the sum total of these many twisted, thoroughly un-American moves.  When stitched together so they can be seen as a whole, they compellingly illustrate that we are  under a crushing and ponderous ligature, a suffocatingly wet blanket across the length and breadth of the country, and a pernicious weakening of two hundred years of developing our national republic’s structure. Trump is mangling all of us who live below the celestial zone of uber wealth and power, well beneath but in the grasp of mega corporations and oligarchic mergers.  Captains of industry, technology, communications, entertainment and broadcasting are in a tight brotherhood with the unimaginably corrupt Trump administration, and they are remaking their own version of America.  There are stirrings of resistance among us for certain, but dissidence against the Goliath is still in the early stages.

The focus I want here is on the sweeping degree of infection that the brotherhood in its entirety has already created to strangle the rest of us.  I want to illustrate how terrifying it is when we step back and see it as the scurrilous whole that it is.  The creeping dissolution of American democracy has infected to some extent nearly every aspect of national life, and this is only a partial accounting:

• Our ability to work together in the legislative branch has been non-existent in the face of “polarization” for nearly 20 years.  But Trump’s creation and expropriation of a hard core, hermetically sealed MAGA contingent, slavishly loyal to his every irresponsible whim, has poisoned American politics to the point that the two party system has grown incapably sclerotic.

• The nation’s trade picture is wretched, unnecessarily broken among close friends and allies as well as distant cousins, unnecessarily, unwisely, stupidly managed, because of personality quirks and no concept of international economics.  Blind acts of personal vindictiveness lead to mindless tariffs, poorly understood by Trump and whimsically imposed.  Trade deals authored by him between our two most important trading partners, Mexico and Canada, are in the tank.

• Our vaunted and superbly trained and formerly equipped military has been hijacked by incompetent leaders, a finely tuned and committed machine of spectacular capabilities has been surrendered to lumbering and sightless fools at the controls.

• Our foreign policy is a shambles.  We have today no real, reliable allies who are prepared to come to a joint mission of urgent need or who are aligned with a new and crumbling set of priorities in Washington.  Consistent and ill founded criticism of old friends has sent them away.  We fly solo, with the exception of some third-rate nations who come along for the ride on the occasional, nonsensical initiatives such as the “Peace Board” who will be there only as long as sit suits them. We have lost respect, standing, purpose. The President lies and lives within the prison of his own mind and narcissism when he says we are respected.

• The pursuit of excellence has been utterly forsaken for mediocrity in all things that contribute to the well being of the nation; scientific and medical research is being abandoned, renewable energy is disavowed while other nations embrace it; experimentation has given way to regressive economic, social, commercial and a vast host of soft power mechanisms. Competence swapped for blind and cowardly loyalty.

• The introduction and endorsement of narrowly rigid religious preferences throughout the federal government has allowed a camel’s nose of intolerance into the tent, threatening a hard to win enlightenment with respect to the relationship between government and religion, forsaking the precious principle of the separation of Church and State.

• The founders’ fears of Party and Faction, accepted in the early 19th Century as essential to a governing democracy, have been tense over two centuries, but managed.  The current administration has so terrorized resistance to it that the full merger of the Republican Party and the office of the Chief Executive is near complete, collapsing a foundational principle of a democratic republic.

• Wall Street and much of the financial sector have dismissed many of the rules governing the protection of its investors in boosting new IPOs of record size, and is increasingly in the hands of the American titans of finance.  Small investors are either priced out of the market or involuntarily and hastily included in investment packages invisible to them.

• Financial oligarchs grow stronger with federal collusion and ignorance of trust-busting needs; a steadily enveloping oligarchical kakistocracy is gobbling up critical information sources and seizing more influence.

• Great imbalance is happening in the distribution of fiscal transfers meant to assist education, medicine, food assistance, infrastructure development, those funds returned to federal coffers and projects of either personal interest to the president or the brotherhood at large.

The United States is on the verge of an election that could conceivably turn the ship around or shackle its captain, or both.  But make no mistake, the administration will make multiple efforts across a broad front to interfere in November.  If that effort ruins what should be an honest and fair election, this nation of growing disaffection and disgruntled, angry Americans may well explode in the non-violent, mass protests of millions in the streets, the kind of turbulence that brought down the Eastern European satellite states in 1989-1990.  That, perhaps, would be the best medicine for us, saddled as we are with an impotent legislature which refuses to impeach.

As Israel pursues maximalist goals, Iran maneuvers between confrontation and negotiation, senses weakness as Washington struggles to define its aims, the prospects for a successful resolution grow more remote.

It is so very difficult to watch the most powerful and principled nation on earth founder haplessly in a catch-22 in Iran.  It has become a modern day pickle of international affairs mismanagement, a kind not seen since 1914’s similarly stoked egos fumbled dozens of efforts to stop.  And one of the major reasons the three leaders of Iran, the US and Israel, are caught in a stop-start conflict that much of the world and all of the tortured Middle East continues to be troubled over is the abjectly poor communications from everyone.

There has only been one constant in the mass of loud and conflicting public announcements, leaked position papers, arm-chair generals, well-meaning journalists, and former senior figures in government, and that is Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.  He has been consistent beyond a fault as to his wishes—regime change in Teheran and eternal destruction of the Iranian nuclear program and elimination of all the accrued science that goes with it.

And both of Mr. Netanyahu’s goals are fanciful, unrealistic.  First, Iran has a new Ayatollah but he seems marginally in charge at best, may be dead as the Israelis claim, and may be somewhat irrelevant as the country’s tyrannical governmental and military power lies with the distributed authority of dozens of capable and well equipped IRGC commanders, stretching across the length and width of Iran’s vast geography.  And as for the science of nuclear weaponry, how could anyone doubt that a country so fiercely determined to one day have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, married to an existing base of advanced missilery, would not find multiple ways to preserve that precious knowledge.  To think otherwise is delusional.  But then, Bibi has been hanging on to power for so long and is fueled to stay there by the need to avoid a pending conviction, and so buzzed by a cabal of hard right Likud politicians who want all of Gaza and the West Bank, that he may actually believe some of what he says.

So, while Netanyahu has been perfectly clear about his war objectives, the same cannot be said of Iran and Washington.  Iran’s positions, at least as they have been reported for the past 100 days, have shifted among readiness to negotiate, hardening its positions, flexible on the Strait of Hormuz and then not, willing to negotiate nuclear issues at a later date, then not, and so on.  Much of Iran’s positioning has looked like probing the others or in reaction to Israel’s relentless attacks on Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Perhaps the most confusing of all commentary though, has not been that from Iran or the Gulf States but from here in Washington.  More than 90% of USG comment on purpose of the war, the status of the war, or the status of negotiations to end it have originated with President Donald Trump himself.  Observations from Secretary of State Rubio are rare, or are echoes of no consequence; the unprofessional and shambling negotiating team of Witkoff and Kushner is so lacking impact of any kind as to be non-existent.  Neither is a serious player and every interested party to the conflict knows it, possibly with the sole exception of the US.

In the current stage of American diplomacy that the American Government has chosen to rely on the South Asian country of Pakistan as principal go-between—a country that throws minimal weight in the mix of Arab, Jewish and Persian players—is all the evidence one needs to see the current absence of Washington’s foreign affairs skills or more critically the ability to center the talks around those issues important to us.

And it has been the consistent, confusing, dishonest, shifting, disinterested, inaccurate and misleading stream of utter nonsense from The President that has failed to make clear to the Iranians exactly what the US wants to bring this war to an end.  The lack of honesty when The President explains to the American people his  relentlessly evolving next steps signals to the Iranians that we are indeed stuck; we are without the prospects of an exit of any kind that will not be seen by the entire world and our many adversaries a national embarrassment and an acknowledgment of  strategic weakness.  It seems a desire to withdraw from the world.  Releasing the magnificently unparalleled and swift terrors of the American military on one’s enemies is one thing, willingness to tackle the minds and moments of a globe in crisis, apparently not.  

The American experiment has survived previous periods of turmoil because citizens ultimately chose reform over resignation and unity over faction. The challenge before us is not merely to correct today’s excesses but to renew the constitutional and civic foundations that have sustained the republic for nearly 250 years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Although it’s still early in a four-year term, we are in the gloaming of the disastrous Trump administration and, in a sense, approaching the dawn of what could be a fresh era with Democrats, classical Republicans and Independents at the helm.  There are hundreds of postings, opinion writers and Op-Eds that thrash the Trump administration daily.  They expose the failures and staggering level of corruption and, what has been until just the last few days the muted, tightly corralled Republican majorities in Congress.  These are days of dark brooding and ruminations.  Oracles of our national dilemma tell us repeatedly and in great detail about all the wrongs of this president, his wholly owned Unitary Executive Branch, consisting of the shells of nearly  extinguished independent agencies, and the dissolution of which which has been watched over and blessed by an arrogant, out-of-touch Supreme Court. Trump-authored suicidal policies and rampant immorality, all ready and waiting for criticism, are there for anyone to pick at, and well meaning attacks are launched at them every day.

What we do not have yet, however, is a blueprint for what could come next, a plan for a US Constitutional revival, a revitalization of the founding document’s primary and principal instructions.  The Constitution, designed to replace the failed Articles of Confederation, a document that proved too weak to effectively govern the new nation, came to life in 1787.  The Founders knew that a modern version of the various collectivist systems that pulled together the scattered states of Ancient Greece and Roman was needed, something to meld a disputatious and independence minded collection of states.  A rebirth of adherence to our Constitution is calling us, a new start and an epitaph for the fiercely ideological and divisive Project 2025.

The general election of 2028 can deliver a new government for the nation, be it Republican or Democrat.  I would love to see a nation-wide movement of illustrious Americans who would provide enlightenment where it is needed and suggestions for neutralizing the venom in our politics today—and to reawaken the precious levers of true republicanism—so obviously awaiting to be productively used—that the founders designed and put in place for self-correction.

The differing views will not disappear, of course, but they can be argued respectfully:

~language can be self-monitored and less injurious,

~caustic attacks can be relieved of unnecessary sting;

~the harm we have been doing to ourselves can be showcased and a reasonable plea made to halt it;

~the sharp edges of intense ideologies should be shown to be the horrible weapons they are, despite good intentions;

~pushing religious advocacy in areas where it is inappropriate and unwelcome should be talked down;

~intolerance of sexual and gender issues, and women’s healthcare should be discouraged in favor of family, medical and professional care rather than government controls, to name just a few.

But how to do it?  The better angels of many of us have been napping.  James Madison, an unsung hero of the forging of the American Constitution said in Federalist Paper 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

A national movement should be given serious thought; to remind the mass of Americans who have been inundated, distracted and misguided with tinny and shallow political urgings from unprincipled politicians seeped in self assurance and admiration and who need a splash of cold water now and then, (not Jefferson’s ill-conceived call for occasional violence: “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots...".

We must recognize America is confronted from all sides with exhausting, adversarial challenges, existential threats, and a rising perception of international feebleness, and so much of it has been self-inflicted.

To be blunt, we are in no position today to meet these challenges. We are politically fractured at home, in disagreement over just about everything of significance and much that is not. We are perceived by adversaries and friends alike as drifting, anchored only to a dysfunctional democratic system and without clear or unified goals. There is worldwide doubt whether we have the strength to make and keep commitments. The weaker we become domestically, the greater our vulnerability to external threats.  How we deal with these issues in the months and years to come will determine whether we can sustain the support of other nations and demonstrate that we can and will deal against long-term challenges. And if we are to meet the challenges of the mid-century, we absolutely must begin to pull ourselves together at home, taking to heart Abraham Lincoln's prophetic warning about a house divided.

What I suggest in response to our current collective dilemma might seem wishful and beyond the healing of America's current divisions. Nonetheless, I believe the following actions are essential if we are to recover as the most respected - and strongest - democratic republic, carrying on in the best traditions of responsible global leadership and securing the rights and privileges of our people.  The hard truth is, if we cannot change our direction, we might soon find ourselves on the road to dissolution.

• We must try to assemble and fund a national, bipartisan movement of power and influence  to promote and foster unity. A great nation cannot deal with international crises without the undergirding strengths of political and societal cohesion.

• We are starkly divided and constantly losing the capacity to govern ourselves or deal head-on with the nation's plainly visible needs.

• Should a pervasive sense among Americans grow that we are governmentally dysfunctional - and we can readily see such signs all around us - it will create a pathway more welcoming to another authoritarian solution.

• We badly need to resurrect productive bipartisanship by sending men and women to Congress and the Executive who will create and nourish it.

• Achieving such ends might well become the primary challenge to mid-21st century America.

It will take the vigorous participation of thousands of influential citizens across our entire social and economic spectrum. Such a movement would oppose venomous monologues in the public square and support the constructive and civil contest of ideas. That is what our founders envisioned, and it has been followed by many wise and patriotic American figures since.

We must increase voter turnout, not suppress it, and hammer home the fundamental principle that only men and women of good will and balance - not systems - can ensure the success of the American Experiment.

The job must be shouldered by a robust public collective. To drive it, we must empower a dynamic steering/leadership group drawn from the best of America; men and women of stature and respect. Look to media giants, academia and big-dollar donors of all political persuasions as well as faith groups, industry captains, organized labor, our medical establishment, technology leaders and a host of other entities. Admittedly, they will have to pursue the task for years to achieve impact, so they must be hard-minded enough to tolerate lots of heavy weather along the way.  Self-financed and driven in large measure, such leadership would be a powerful expression of direction from “we the people”.

Donald Trump has transformed the presidency into a mechanism for personal enrichment, breaching the line between public service and private gain. While America’s billionaire class may have amassed fortunes through the excesses of modern capitalism, Trump’s use of political power to generate new wealth represents looting and a very consequential departure from democratic norms and constitutional expectations. It enjoys the support of that billionaire class.

It seems that every day that goes by The President is reported to have engaged in a new round of questionable financial activity in which he adds a significant amount of wealth for himself and his family. Each of these reports has been carefully documented by the media, is unchallenged by him or his administration, is carried out in plain sight of the entire country, in many cases affirmed as legal and proper by senior officials of his administration who happen to be, by the way, extremely wealthy themselves. To put it another way The President is immorally skimming billions off of a system without working for it and trashing what we blithely refer to as the rule of law and governmental norms.

The illegal activities range from the out-of-office conviction on 34 felony counts having to do with misrepresentation of asset values for financial gain and reimbursement of hush money payments, for which he was fined hundreds of millions of dollars. His behavior in violation of long accepted presidential norms is too lengthy to recount here but is rich its diversity and a surprisingly bold, thumb in eye of the tax-paying public and a middle finger to what used to be everyday morality expected of high level government officials.

The nature of Trump’s norm-breaking conduct boils down to the use of his office to promote money-making schemes that look either like outright fraudulent scams, insider trading or policy by executive directive that benefit certain business organizations in which he has a personal financial interest. Dating back to the days of his start in real estate development as a young nepo-baby in which his shabby treatment of contractors and black Americans has been exposed, to today’s yowling exploitation of the presidency for more financial gain, his combined holdings are so corrupted that it’s fair to call them filthy lucre or dirty money.

But the grand success in monetary terms of his second term has been greatly boosted by Trump’s support from and partnering with a new class of American oligarchy. Trump’s administration represents the most overt alignment of presidential power with billionaire interests in modern U.S. history. They point to the presence of numerous billionaires in advisory and governmental roles and to the growing influence of wealthy donors on policy. If “oligarch”, a subjective term which some in and out of government reject, means a billionaire with significant personal access to and influence over Trump, it is more or less obvious that a core group of perhaps 5–15 individuals, surrounded by a wider network of several dozen wealthy donors, executives, and financiers make up this now pointedly pro-Trump class. The number is inherently subjective, of course, because there is no agreed-upon threshold for when a wealthy political ally becomes an oligarch.

Some of the most influential donors and inner circle influencers are:

• Elon Musk

• Howard Lutnick

• Peter Thiel

• Stephen Schwarzman

• Harold Hamm

• Miriam Adelson

The wealth of these and others who support The President, who have acted frequently in ways to advance his policies, denigrate his political enemies through control of the media or helped finance well heeled PACs, have earned their way to the top on the strong back of American capitalism. Aided by trust-breakers looking often in the other direction, the growing number of mergers and acquisitions they have been allowed to pursue may be appear off-color or inappropriate, but not illegal.

In brief, and admittedly an oversimplification of what Popes Francis, John Paul II and Leo XIII have all critiqued as capitalism “unfettered”, “unchecked”, “dung of the devil”, the “imperialism of money” or the “greed of unchecked competition”, it is still globally accepted as a foundational part of many countries’ economic systems. Generally, it can be said that the men and women in America who gathered their wealth that way operated within acceptable norms.

Mr. Trump, on the other hand and as the new partner of many of them, is accumulating new, additional wealth through baldly corrupt means. That sets him apart from those who support him, as unseeing and without integrity as some of them are.

For much of modern American history, compromise and pragmatism allowed citizens with differing philosophies to govern together imperfectly but productively. Today, identity politics and ideological purity have replaced that tradition, creating a climate where collaboration is suspect and political warfare increasingly overwhelms democratic governance

I have always favored Hybrid politics for myself rather than pick an identity label.  The simplified version of hybrid politics is one that I adopted fifty years ago when I left the US Navy and joined the CIA: conservative in most respects when it comes to a strong defense, national security and abundant soft power; more pragmatically progressive when it made sense to focus on concerns relative to the state of the American people and those many instances when only the federal and state governments are strong and wealthy enough to step in and help.  I never had to go to battle in defending those views because whether as a Naval officer or an intelligence officer politics were kept in the bottom drawer and left there.  Not even brought out in the evening over drinks.  And usually, the administration in power at any given time from the 1960s through the early 2000s had a reasonable mix of both international and domestic policies, including some notable policies advocated by Republicans.  Both parties had a heart then, although it would be foolish to deny that there was ever a cleanly balanced agenda.

Governing in those decades was generally fair—no mistake, there were exceptions such as race, taxation, emphasis on religion, occasional corruption—because the term ‘compromise’ was not only something that was still routinely practiced, and more significantly, it had not yet been tied to the stake and burned as a concept.  But compromise was possible then where legislators had the will to actually work a smoke filled back room.  Otto von Bismark’s World famous metaphorical reference to sausage making and the messy business of making laws was real, and it worked.

Identity politics is unhelpful, to say the least.  Much worse is the purity demanded by both Republicans and Democrats in fielding candidates and building campaigns.  Both requirements are a gross impediment to innovative thinking and productive collaboration.

As my political hybridized thinking matured, I included in the must-have category a healthy respect for and heavy doses of pragmatism.  The purpose of this article is to underscore the principle that pragmatism should always be an essential, integral part of that smoke-filled room process.  This I believe because I myself am a pragmatist at heart; if a thing is deemed by its studied qualities to be good for most Americans, the expectation is that will be achievable, and affordable against that part of federal spending sensitive to and directed at the needs of the population as a whole.  And it should be an idea the truth of which has been studied and believed will be preeminently tested by its practical consequences.

Pragmatism is the arch enemy of identity and purity politics. Those latter two have been feeding on the better interests of the nation as whole and have bedeviled American politics now for nearly two decades.  First Identity and Purity behavior were were lumped under the simplistic rubric of polarization, which sounded good but stopped further attempts to understand the reality of what was happening to us, like a medical diagnosis of an obvious condition without treatment.  Then they hardened into a 21st Century version of a return to Luddite rejection of potentially meaningful and positive political innovation.  Now Identity and Purity politics are linked organically to vicious political warfare, the progenitor and evil master of which is Donald Trump.  He showcases verbal, graphical and social media attacks, and drives legal charges as weapons.  And Democrats are encouraged to fight fire with fire in like manner, necessary perhaps to survive and doubtless harmful to the nation’s long term interests.

The cliche about American politics being a blood sport is threatening to become a literal, physical truth.  The system needs to be recovered, rehabilitated and reinvested with American politicians who follow a far different set of priorities and principles, a model that can resemble that of yesteryear but which sports a willingness to entertain innovative solutions.

The American republic has entered a period of dangerous imbalance in which public anger, political tribalism, and institutional cowardice have weakened the guardrails that once protected democratic governance. What began as frustration with government evolved into a movement powerful enough to reshape the presidency, intimidate Congress, and test the resilience of the constitutional order itself.

We have become a government of a fraction of the people, by a small handful of the people, and for a sliver of the people. The traditional, standardized machinery of the US Government that most of us came to know is gone almost completely if not necessarily permanently. And in days gone by, as boring as it usually promised to be, government included political heterodoxy, windy candidates, the occasional scandal, a nominal amount of waste, fraud and abuse, and promises unkept, but for the most part it got the job done. Today the government has been legislatively and voluntarily slimmed down to two branches, the Executive and the Judicial. The latter is split between a Supreme Court that is infused with ill concealed ideological and religious interests on the one side, and the lower courts on the other, struggling mightily to maintain the precious judicial balance a democratic republic needs to sustain and right itself when needed. In short, The US Government as designed is not working.

To oversimplify this very complex equation, there appear to me to be several principal and perhaps dominating factors:

• First is the accumulation of disappointment among the American people with inherent flaws in our system and the unjust policies and practices that have been allowed to accumulate through special interests and which left many Americans by the roadside. A great wave of discontent and distaste for government festered slowly and silently for decades, showing its teeth in the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president. The basic nature of the man they had just elected was more less clear enough to them, but his flaws could be overlooked because he addressed those newly emerged worries.

• Second was the evolving nature, temperament and grandiosity of Trump himself. A dishonest and slippery businessman who launched on his father’s wealth and appeared nonetheless successful was the man they knowingly put in office. The personality he grew into over those first four years and later in his inconceivable second term would shock and horrify many, a materializing Mr. Hyde before our very eyes.

• Third is a look at the decision by 77 million Americans to put Mr. Trump back in office in 2024. His election can only be seen and understood in the failure to perceive the depth of anger, impatience and disappointment of the Trump followers and supporters; it was more profound than anyone fully appreciated. The alienation of those voters had intensified during the Biden administration to the point that even the Trump felonies conviction, sexual abuse and the Jan 6 2020 insurrection at Trump’s call did not amount to enough exasperation for them to leave him. Albeit there were more than a few huge campaign errors on the part of the Democrats, which of course did not help.

• Fourth is the unwavering loyalty of the Republican Party to Trump in congress. They quickly chose to kiss the hem of his garment and not stand in his way rather than risk their cushiony positions to his vindictive instincts. There is also a credible security factor that they understood endangered themselves and their families, borne out by numerous documented acts of violence by rabid Trump supporters. They cannot be airily dismissed. Neither should the fact that perhaps more than 100 Republican representatives and senators were subjugating their personal judgment, a quality the electors were paying for although they rarely recognized it, to the vitality of Trump support among the people back home. The combination was a powerful driving force; a vast reserve of personal courage and determination would have been required to mount an effort to face it. There was never nearly enough of it.

And today the federal government in Washington, a number of states whose sympathetic governors are quite content with the status quo, and hardcore MAGA voters have sent their roots deep. In March 2025 fully 71% of Republicans still identified as MAGA, 36% of the voting public. No doubt there has been a slight decline from those numbers in the wake of raging inflation and the Iran war, but there is good reason to assume that this bloc of Americans is still intact and ready to throw its weight around in November 2026 and 2028.

As the country moves circumspectly into its future over the next few years, despite our disgust with Trump, his sycophantic, oligarchical cabinet and enabling congressional delegations, those supporters will still be a factor, a stone in our collective shoe. Punchy and innovative campaign themes, great gobs of charisma and demonstrable virtue must be the package carried by candidates and honest, stand-up media coverage will help the rest of America tell the tale of our immediate destiny and America’s longer-term prospects.