No Crown for a Con!

 

Those five words were the makeshift sign I put together to display at our local No Kings rally. Ann and I went with two women from our community, one of whom is currently undergoing treatment for cancer. All four of us knew that our individual presence—or absence—meant very little to the broader anti-Trump, anti-fascist movement. But it meant something to us, to be there on the side of the road, feeling like we were at least doing SOMETHING.

 

The demonstration was one of several in the area, the largest in West Palm Beach where there was a march on the bridge towards Mar-a-Lago, and perhaps ours was the smallest, lining PGA Blvd. in Palm Beach Gardens.  Nonetheless I would agree with the local paper that there were perhaps a thousand of us at our location.

 

Passing cars generally gave us the thumbs up or honked enthusiastically as our numbers grew by the minute. Of course, there were others who ignored us, or who rolled down their windows to give us the finger. A few muscle car drivers made their displeasure known by flooring it, letting their fart-can mufflers drown out everything.

 

One enterprising MAGA type filmed us, clearly hoping to provoke boos he could use in a social media post. Unfortunately, the crowd obliged. Better to ignore a cipher like that.

 

But the hot Florida sun takes its toll—especially in a community like ours—and our friend with a compromised immune system was unprepared. Though water was available, she hadn’t been drinking much. Eventually, she began to pass out. She clung to me, and I gently laid her on the ground. A volunteer EMT rushed over, followed by police, and finally an ambulance. She was treated on the spot for dehydration, but went to the hospital for further treatment which thankfully was successful.

 

All in all, it was peaceful, but the heat forced us to leave and take stock of what, if anything, we had really accomplished. Juxtaposed against our national wave of grassroots demonstrations was the Big Beautiful Parade for our Dear Leader. It was apparently a low-energy affair. Judging by the slouching march of the troops past the reviewing stand—far from the precision spectacle Dear Leader likely fantasized—they seemed to wish they were spending the day with their families instead. It was a pathetic, expensive waste of time and resources.

 

But make no mistake: he is dangerous—unbound, erratic, governed only by his so-called gut instincts. He has surrounded himself with a cabinet of conspiracists, kleptocrats, and power-worshipers. The Senate’s constitutional role of Advice and Consent is now meaningless, and the justice system has become puppet theater. The country continues to be fiscally irresponsible, and venerable American institutions are being ravaged, threatening our culture and intellectual discourse.

 

We’ve surrendered our private data to DOGE. Our reputation as a dependable ally and reserve currency is vanishing. We’re tearing apart immigrant families that have been here for generations, all in some deluded effort to resurrect an America that’s long since packed up and left. Globalization isn’t going anywhere. I can’t wait for us to reopen those mythical “widget” factories or fruit-picking fields—this time staffed by all-white nationalist labor. You betcha, they’re just itching for those menial jobs—while their overlords get drunk on crypto fortunes.

 

All of this in less than half a year.

 

Just when you think it can’t get worse, along comes the Big Beautiful Bill—a remix of Project 2025 that basically codifies the horror. So I asked AI about this bill. What came back was chilling. This is where AI actually shines: digesting a 1,000+ page bill—rubber-stamped by our somnambulant legislature and distilling it into something clear and actionable.

 

I’ve written to my Florida representatives. Yes, I know it’s hopeless but for the same reason I held my sign on the side of the road, it makes me feel I am doing SOMETHING!

 

In summary, AI’s analysis of the BBB is downright apocalyptic. At its heart it is an expansion of executive power, endangering independent institutions, rule of law, separation of powers, a free press, and fair elections.

 

Perhaps that is one of the reasons Trumpublicans have buried so many issues in one piece of legislation which is being hurried through the legislative process, well before the mid-term elections. 

 

 

 

 

Party Like There’s No Tomorrow – There Might Not Be

 

Dubai Token2049

The May 3 Wall Street Journal describes a bacchanalian bash—unimaginably over-the-top—in “What Happened in Two Days at a Very Wild Crypto Party. Arrests from just a year ago are forgotten. Executives ride zip lines, champagne flows, and deals are struck in Dubai.”

After 100 days, Trump’s presidency is essentially a revenge tour aimed at wrecking the institutions we’ve relied on since World War II. Instead of stability, we have chaos—fueled not by coherent strategy, but by his seemingly impulsive, seat-of-the-pants decisions. It may take generations—if we have that time—to restore public and global confidence in American governance. Behind the chaos stand crafty, avaricious power-seekers, armed with the Project 2025 playbook.

They’ve ravaged the judicial and educational systems, shifted our culture from tolerance to intolerance, and turned Congress and an unqualified Cabinet into obsequious followers. Our international commitments—on trade, the environment, and the defense of democratic allies—have been gutted. We have, in many respects, become the rogue state we once vowed to oppose.

In this sense, Trump’s second presidency represents the most consequential seismic shift in American governance since FDR. But this didn’t happen to us—it happened through us. We hastened it, abetted by a performative “woke” culture that quickly gave way to a reactionary cowboy ethos, supercharged by platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and X that allow anyone to spin their own version of reality, unmoored from fact.

If that were the end of it, we might breathe easier. But the Wall Street Journal article suggests the story only deepens. Beyond the partying at “Token2049,” “the biggest names in crypto and 15,000 of their biggest fans marked a new era of freedom.” Ah yes—“let freedom ring.” But freedom for whom? This is the kind of deregulated “freedom” that enriches the few—like the Trump family—at the expense of everyone else. Quite convenient, when the foxes write the rules of the henhouse.

One marquee attraction: Eric Trump, alongside Zach Witkoff—son of Trump’s Middle East envoy—promoting their company, World Liberty, and its so-called stablecoin, “USD1,” a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency. I don’t claim to understand the technical aspects, so I turn to Wired:

The model is simple: World Liberty Financial receives US dollars in exchange for coins that customers can trade freely in the crypto market. It keeps some of those dollars in cash and cash equivalents and invests the rest in US government bonds—also called Treasuries—which yield interest. The profits of stablecoin issuers depend partly on the going interest rate—right now, short-term Treasuries yield a little over 4 percent—but otherwise scale in a linear fashion with supply. The larger the amount of a stablecoin in circulation, the heftier the underlying reserve of assets from which the issuer can generate income.

How convenient. We’re talking about U.S. government securities—the very instruments that underpin our bloated national debt. About 30% of Treasuries are held by foreign governments or by institutions. The Federal Reserve holds nearly as much. Among other roles, it buys Treasuries to help finance government operations.

And then this torpedo from the Wall Street Journal article: “To whoops and applause, [Eric] Trump said nothing would give him more joy than to see crypto help kill off the big banks that cut ties with his family.”  [emphasis mine]

There it is: the final destination on the Don Corleone Trump revenge tour. About seventy banks were involved in his near personal bankruptcy as well as the bankruptcy of six of his hotel and casino businesses in the 1990s, including Citibank and Chase. These same large banks serve as primary dealers in Treasury auctions. If crypto eclipses traditional banking, the global role of the dollar as a reserve currency is jeopardized. The financial regulatory rules for crypto are being written by those who have most to gain by their easing. 

When the banks have to crawl to Dear Leader, it’s the final nail in the coffin of what was once a flawed but functioning republic.

This article from the March 7 New York Times shows this has been developing right in front of our eyes, as have all his transgressions.  Note the symbolism of the staging:

 

 

 

History Echoes Loudly in an Outstanding Revival of ‘Camping with Henry and Tom’

 

Could the parallels to today be any clearer?  Mark St. Germain wrote Camping with Henry and Tom some thirty years ago as an historical speculation.  Yet its themes have proven enduring and the Palm Beach Dramaworks production leavens the play’s comedic elements, shining a light on contemporary political discourse.

The play is based on the fact that inventor Thomas Edison and industrialist Henry Ford did go camping every year with their friends John Burroughs, the nature writer, and Harvey Firestone, the tire manufacturer.  They called themselves the Vagabonds.  In 1921 they invited President Warren G. Harding who accepted. 

Enough of the facts; playwright St. Germain imagines such a trip with Harding only accompanied by Edison and Ford followed by a tailing secret service agent, in this engaging 3-hander-plus-1 dramedy.  It is a fascinating character study of an “accidental” President, who would rather just bask in the glow of approbation shaking hands on the White House lawn, along with the ultra right-wing Ford (a wannabe President), and the cynical inventor, Edison, who interjects much humor and truth into the mix.  Indeed, if history doesn’t repeat itself, it certainly rhymes with this production.

John Leonard Thompson, Tom Wahl and Rob Donohoe

 

The plot is straightforward: the three are on their way to escape their normal (but famous) lives to a camping ground in a Model T Ford, with Henry Ford at the wheel after furtively arranging the trip to elude the press and secret service as well.  They encounter a deer on the road, damaging the car, although its three occupants are OK (but not so much the deer who amusingly hangs on for most of the play), and suddenly we have a substantive play of dramatic confrontations and comic interactions, Ford having an agenda, clearly analogizing the play’s themes to the temper of our times. 

Director William Hayes has a definite vision for setting the mood, beginning with his version of a silent movie of the trip up until the unfortunate rendezvous with the deer.  He establishes a slapstick foreshadowing of the many laughs yet to come, which gives the audience a reason to like all the characters until the tone gradually changes and the afternoon wanes into evening.

He blends this into a breathtaking set by Bert Scott, consisting of a small clearing in the woods outside Licking Creek, Maryland.  The set has three dimensional elements of the woods as well as a seemingly functioning fire pit right on stage, giving the play a fitting verisimilitude.  The audience feels it can reach out and feel the flora.  A Model T Ford completes Scott’s perfect scenic design.

Hayes has assembled three company veterans for the major rolls.  They’ve acted together on the PBD stage so many times that this production soars as a tightly knit ensemble production.  Hayes keeps their performances cohesive and well-integrated in spite of their diverse personalities discussing their families, fame, and failures.  He allows his actors’ arcs to shine, from Ford’s baleful plans to becoming crestfallen, from Harding’s acquiescence to redemption and then acceptance, and Edison from comic foil to change agent.

John Leonard Thompson plays the obsessive Henry Ford, envisioning unlimited energy from a hydro-power project he hopes to steal from the government (hence, cornering and blackmailing President Harding on this trip ), as well as becoming the next President of the US, enlisting his “sociology boys” to gather dirt on Harding.  It is blackmail pure and simple under the guise of patriotism.  Thompson knows how to win over the audience as he relates some home-spun tales of his life and his admiration of Edison, as well as revealing his damaged relationship with his son, Edsel, but he also shows the very dark side of his character in musing what he would do “with the Jews.”

Ford delivers some eerie comparisons to today’s politics: “I want to knock some rust off this government!  I want to give it back to the people and boot the moneychangers out of the temple so fast.  It will make their heads spin.  The shylocks and the socialists who don’t believe in a honest day’s work, and suck our teats instead….I want to fix this country and put it back on the road again, and that’s why I’m going to be the thirtieth President of the United States!”  Or, in thinking about running, and his deficiencies as a public speaker, he proclaims that “I’ll just pay the best people as to how to say it and what to say.”  Thompson, a frequent actor on the PBD stage, gives yet another stand-out, memorable performance such as his portrayal as Teach in American Buffalo fifteen years ago.

Another PBD veteran, Tom Wahl, who plays Warren Harding, assiduously peals away the layers of his character.  It is a deceptively difficult role.  The buoyantly optimistic, hail-fellow-well-met characterization by Wahl becomes an exuberant epiphanic portrayal of being released from the bondage of an inauthentic self.  It took the rising conflict with Ford in the play for this realization to emerge and Wahl embraces the moment, reveling in it with great comic chops, a fantasy of being free from the burdens of the presidency and his wife (who considers her husband a trophy President)!  His is a truly remarkable performance, among many throughout the years at PBD.

I haven’t counted them, but I would guess that in spite of the long theatrical resumes of his two costars, Rob Donohoe has had the most frequent appearances on the PBD stage.  The variety of his performances has been staggering, and his role as Thomas Edison in this play is another triumph.  It is delivered with a Mark Twain sense of humor and cynicism, self-deprecating and continuously ornery, with philosophical observations about “the damned human race.”  He admonishes Ford for his extravagant view of their accomplishments, pointing out their inventions just made things easier, not necessarily improving the world: “we’re toymakers; don’t get noble on me, Henry.”  Or his observation about “the great American fairy tale of Justice.”

Yet for most of the play, Donohoe’s intensity is in hibernation, released finally by demoniacal plans of Ford.  His portrayal is transformed from observer to becoming a bold antagonist, from comic foil to a bulwark to protect the nation from what he clearly sees as a danger, Ford and others like him whose political currency is conspiracy theories and the quest for power and money.  He recognizes Harding’s humanity and posits that it is civil servants like the secret service agent who run the government.  He also has a deeply moving epiphany, when suddenly and tearfully he remembers the name of a boy who drowned when they were both children, something he had emotionally buried, a poignant “Rosebud moment” in the play.  Superlatives are lacking for Donohoe’s performance.  

John Leonard Thompson, Rob Donohoe and Tom Wahl-photo by Curtis Brown Photography

 

Rounding out the cast is another familiar face, John Campagnuolo as Colonel Edmund Starling, a secret service man.  He is all business in his trench coat, goggles up on his forehead after finding the three of them, borrowing Edsel’s Model T.  He “takes care of” the hurt deer shocking Harding.  And off the four go, to return to civilization; things have changed to remain the same.

Costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, 1921 authentic in detail and in that moment in time.  All wear suits, and those ubiquitous straw boater hats but Edison and Harding also are outfitted in vests.  Harding has a suit for the first Act, and an identical one for the second as he has slept on the ground soiling the original one.  

Lighting design is by Kirk Bookman capturing light for the late afternoon as it wanes into night.  White light illuminates the actors in the moonlight, and while, trying to determine their compass direction, they face the warm lighting of the sunset in the west. The seemingly functioning fire pit is brought to life by very clever lighting.  

Sound design is by Roger Arnold, authentically creating the chatter of the forest, frogs, birds, and crickets permeating the production, plus the shuffling sounds of the injured deer as well as the echoes of the actors’ occasional shouts for help.  And of course the sound of the Model T’s untimely meeting with the deer, launching all that follows. 

Mark St. Germain has written such a relevant play, propitiously brought back to life at this moment in time by Palm Beach Dramaworks in a well-conceived, entertaining, but thought provoking production.  At the denouement, Edison observes that Harding has something that he and Ford lack to which Ford immediately replies: “weakness” (our current president posted “only the weak will fail” on social media last week).  Ford failed to understand that Edison meant a sense of shared human connection and understanding.