What We Are Asked Not to See

  

I start this entry with an older Mike Luckovich political cartoon, as it never really grows old. What I have to say here is indirectly related to that January 6th day that will indeed live in infamy—not only the day itself, but how this country has “moved” past it.

 

In the long, trailing wake of that event lies a kind of flotsam—Pollyannaish sanewashing of Trump’s increasingly chaotic, threatening and sociopathic behavior, including a series of Wall Street Journal opinion articles published this past week. I dare any objective person to read them, with the events of January 6, 2021, and the subsequent pardons of the “patriots” who participated in them in mind, not to mention his ill-conceived Iran war, and come away untroubled.

 

Their titles and subtitles signal the tone: “I Give Up on These Defeatists; From ‘No Kings’ and Iran to data centers, too many Americans are fighting progress” (Andy Kessler, April 5, 2026); “Trump Can Make America Optimistic Again; Put aside grievances and keep reminding us why the U.S. is the envy of the world” (Mark Penn and Andrew Stein, April 7, 2026); and “Trump’s ‘Whole Civilization Will Die’ Tweet Isn’t a War Crime; There’s a big difference between actions in war and words on a website” (Matthew Hennessey, April 8, 2026).

 

A few specific comments, taking the last article first, as it perhaps bothers me the most for its content and condescension. Of the untold thousands of seemingly inane social media posts by this President (as if “Truth Social” were his royal scepter), Hennessey refers to what may be the mother of all such outbursts, written (or authorized) on April 5 by a man his sycophants support no matter what he says, a man who could start a nuclear war on what he believes are his impeccable instincts:

 

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

 

Here is but a small excerpt from Hennessey’s article: “They aren’t illegal orders from the commander-in-chief. They aren’t a genocidal threat. And they aren’t a war crime, for heaven’s sake, no matter what your smart cousin says on Facebook…”

 

That is what I mean about the condescending tone, and about the false equivalencies (e.g., what Iran has done in the past somehow diminishes the seriousness of such rhetoric). Hennessey has the platform of the Wall Street Journal, which lends his opinion credibility.

 

For my own appeal to authority, I turn to Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman, who writes “Terrorism, according to ICE — yes, that ICE — ‘involves violence or the threat of violence against people or property to further a particular ideology.’ The official website goes on to declare that ‘Terrorists do not care who they hurt or kill to achieve their goals.’ If you haven’t read Donald Trump’s Truth Social post from Sunday, above, take a minute to do so. Don’t rely on sanewashed descriptions in the media. And then tell me that Trump doesn’t perfectly fit his own officials’ definition of a terrorist. Don’t tell me that his cause is just, that the Iranian regime is evil. That’s what terrorists always say, and even if it’s sometimes true, terrorism is defined by its means rather than its ends — by its attempt to achieve political goals by violently attacking the innocent. And that’s exactly what Trump is doing: he’s threatening to attack civilian infrastructure if he doesn’t get his way. And since Trump is talking about targeting essential services — power plants! — this is a threatened attack on people as well as property.”

 

This is the President of the United States writing such vile, threatening language, and words have consequences when they come from that office. Coming from an unpredictable person with the power to do exactly what he threatens, this crosses from rhetoric into something far more dangerous. If North Korea issued such threats, we would not only take it seriously, but condemn them as a rogue nation. Our credibility as a peace-seeking democracy is tarnished by such rhetoric. It is the threat itself that carries the whiff of criminality—true mobster-speak.

 

I find myself equally angered by “I Give Up on These Defeatists” by Andy Kessler. He was in grade school when we were protesting Vietnam and marching for civil rights. Now he dismisses people like us as defeatists for participating in the “No Kings” rallies, reducing our messaging to what he calls the “spinning Wheel of Defeatist Complaints,” allegedly funded by George Soros–linked groups and “socialist and communist revolutionary organizations, according to Fox News Digital” (emphasis mine).

 

Andy, my wife and I are in our eighties. We marched in the “No Kings” rallies just as we marched in the 1960s—for $free. Indeed, this protest movement is less focused than those of the civil rights and Vietnam eras. There are now so many issues—the corruption of institutions, the rise of cronyism, plutocracy, and American imperialism. Struggling to reclaim our dignity in the world and to stand up for democracy is not defeatism; it is aspirational.

 

Finally, “Trump Can Make America Optimistic Again” (MAOA?) by Mark Penn and Andrew Stein puts on rose-colored glasses and declares that “we are still the envy of the world.” They suggest Trump’s greatest challenge will be to set aside grievances and unify the country.

 

Seriously, have they been living here this past year? Putting aside grievances is not in Trump’s DNA. And do they know any informed person in another developed country who genuinely wants to live here now? Does anyone seriously believe it will not take generations to repair the damage to our alliances and the world order we helped create—and have so abruptly abandoned?

 

It reminds me of Republican friends who say they dislike the man but support his policies.

 

Taken as a whole, this trifecta is less about argument than reframing. Across all three, the same theme emerges: America is fundamentally strong, but we have fallen into unwarranted pessimism. The problem, we are told, is not what has happened, but how we feel about it. And the solution, improbably enough, is that Trump might lead us back to renewed national optimism.

 

We once had such a sense of hopefulness.

 

Today, government makes its case in inane “press conferences” (or, as I would call them, indoctrination cheer-leading sessions), offering a litany of achievements: the moon mission, military strength, a stock market that briefly exceeded Dow 50,000, and the “landslide” election victory of Donald Trump. These are offered as answers but they are diversions in place of accountability, as though prosperity and innovation can offset democratic erosion.

 

By this logic, any powerful nation may excuse rogue behavior so long as it continues to thrive.

 

What unites these reality distorting opinion pieces is not their optimism, but their insistence that our problem is merely one of mood management. Public concern is treated as a kind of collective misunderstanding rather than a rational response to events that have unfolded in plain sight—beginning, as I keep returning to, with January 6, 2021. We see what is happening.

 

And so I come to a second image: Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

 

It feels as though he reached out from the late 19th century to capture the present Zeitgeist—a pervasive anxiety that stands in stark contrast to these columns’ casual insistence that nothing of lasting consequence has occurred.

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:

 

 

 

The Art of Making Things Worse

 

As usual, Politico’s editorial cartoonist, Matt Wuerker, says more in his drawings than mere words can, so I begin with his conception of the present political chaos.

Little did I know.  I was just one of many pawns being used to carry out The Disrupter-in-Chief’s “plan” of destroying our democracy from within.  As his bizarre behavior and the ensuing bedlam began to overwhelm everyone after the election, I was reacting with every outrage by emailing or texting articles and thoughts to friends and family.  I’ve been duped, helping to make “awful into worse,” adding my anxiety to what they too were already feeling.  I’m resolving to choose my future messaging more carefully.  So forgive me my friends for these past indiscretions and just adding to what you were already feeling, dreading, suffering, while watching this all play out.

We’ve already gone to the point of no return in Trump’s second Presidency. If this was a story set to music (as dissonant as it would be), the tempo is now approaching “prestissimo” and if not resolved in some satisfactory way, it just collapses upon itself.

The numerous opportunities we had in our traditional political system to prevent the obscenity of this 47th Presidency have come and gone, two impeachments, not being able to bring him to trial for his culpability in the Jan 6 insurrection and his attempt to interfere with GA votes, his stacking SCOTUS with sycophants (Mitch McConnell deserves a special place in hell for that), and now we are left with the utter chaos of cartoon character Cabinet members, revenge plans, tariffs, deportations, and the final straw, DOGE and the anointed Elon Musk.

I write as if Trump is in charge.  He’s been called Putin’s useful fool.  But I also think he is a useful tool for a band of grafters, nihilists, right-wing zealots to whom the dim-witted American Public handed the keys to the kingdom.  Democracy is now dying by a thousand cuts daily, much faster than anyone could have anticipated, and being handed over to kleptocrats and kakistocrats.  (“Like all good illusionists, the kleptocrats know how to distract us from looking at their misdeeds and the kakistocrats know how to distract us from their ineptitude. They do it by talking to us about ideology and attacking those of their rivals. While we watch and play our part in these ideological circuses, they steal. Or tinker with government policies they don’t really understand.”….As quoted by https://carnegieendowment.org and originally published by El País, June 18, 2018)

What’s to be done with sycophants such as AG Pam Bondi who has decreed that someone who throws a tomato at a Tesla is a domestic terrorist while backing her mobster boss’s exoneration of the J6 insurrectionists?  What hypocrisy, but as long as the American public is entertained, job well done!

The lonely anti-Trumpism voices are some journalists and a fragmented Democratic leadership.  The Republican majority in Congress is complicit with its silence, ceding power to the executive branch.  The Judiciary now seems to be useless, and he has cowed the nation’s largest law firms into submission.  Lots of luck getting legal representation!

I’m almost resigned to the fact that if we as a nation survive the next 4 years it will be purely by accident.  To think that we’ve already alienated alliances forged after WWII in these few short weeks.  I’d be embarrassed to show my face in Canada and Europe, and almost any place in the world.

During the weeks since the inauguration, I’ve been frantically forwarding articles from the New York Times, even the Wall Street Journal, from the historian, Heather Cox Richardson, and authors I follow on Substack, many serious journalists and others best described as “acerbic humorists” who plant F-bombs galore in their writing and therefore effectively channel the absolute fury and helplessness we feel.  I was an uninvited curator of such news for friends, but really was intended to make ME feel good that I was doing something.

But what to do with the gut-retching information I normally send in some form? Perhaps I’ll let my frustrations play out in this space from time to time, collecting them and posting when I reach a particular, yet undefined nadir.  I certainly don’t want to set a schedule, like “the weekly list of shock and rage” although there is guaranteed to be plenty of content.  

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal thankfully remain excellent newspapers with both seemingly drawn more towards the middle from their traditional political extremes.  This is good as other papers such as the LA Times and the Washington Post seem to be selling out, kissing the dystopian ring to avoid the wrath of the “President.”

Unfortunately, the Palm Beach Post used to be a real newspaper, but it has become a shell of itself with mostly syndicated articles.  Its original editorial decisions are now subject to local or political pressures. The Gannett Group, now the owner of the PBP, recently dismissed Tony Doris, the PBP opinion editor of some 20 years, because of such pressure.  The NYT asked Doris to comment and he said: “They’re afraid of their shadow. I think it speaks to a misunderstanding or failure to engage with the mission of an editorial page.”

It is symbolic of what is happening all over the country but his dismissal was a particular blow to me as he published my letters and editorial opinions without much change; he seemed to welcome future ones.  Now the venue of local newspapers is disappearing as well; they are really controlled circulation advertising flyers.  Any weakening of 4^th estate has dire consequences.

One feels as if one MUST do something though.  I made an attempt to engage my Congressman Brian Mast.  He is an obedient MAGA disciple. Yet I hoped a reasonable letter might make the difference.  I appealed to his patriotism as a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom.  As a congressman, surely his allegiance to the Constitution would give him pause I thought and as the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee he might have something of meaning to say about the administration denigrating Ukraine for merely defending itself.  Instead I got what might have been an AI response, but nonetheless I sent a follow up, pointing out the deficiencies of the response, not expecting a reply, and there has been none.

The latest outrage which FOX and Friends and the administration are whitewashing is the Signal messaging app security breach detailing plans for the attack on Yemen. (True to the MAGA gospel of deflection, AG Bondi declared that the incident will not be criminally investigated as “it was a very successful mission.”)  Talk about hypocrisy, the Sturm und Drang over Hillary and her server, while rationalizing the greatest breach of national security I can remember by the amateurs we call our Cabinet, even inviting in a reporter and then saying he’s corrupt!  The content of that discussion is chilling.  It’s like they were playing a video game, replete with emojis of the American flag, a fist, fire, whatever. The real damage (aside from the danger it might have caused our military) is further alienating those European allies who will now remember an American promise is only as valid as the administration that made them as well as the covert hostility by this administration towards them.  (Vance referred to the action as "bailing Europe out again," while Hegseth accused Europe's reliance on U.S. military might as "freeloading" and "pathetic.") 

We need an opposition dream team to come forth, one that can organize and coordinate meaningful protests, a team representing both sides of the aisle: perhaps Beto O’Rourke, Tim Walz, Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney?  Each has spoken out for the truth and each is currently out of politics.  Some have suggested Maryland Governor Wes More as a potential leader.  His is a story of exceptionalism.  Credible leadership is needed now before it is really too late.   

As I was concluding this piece I saw Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent “Letters from an American,” with a particular passage I would normally forward to many.  So instead, I quote it here.  I’ve turned over a new leaf!

The craziness going on around us in the first two months of the second Trump administration makes a lot more sense if you remember that the goal of those currently in power was never simply to change the policies or the personnel of the U.S. government. Their goal is to dismantle the central pillars of the United States of America—government, law, business, education, culture, and so on—because they believe the very shape of those institutions serves what they call ‘the Left.’

Their definition of ‘the Left’ includes all Americans, Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats, who believe the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights and who support the institutional structures Americans have built since World War II.

In place of those structures, today’s MAGA leaders intend to create their own new institutions, shaped by their own people, whose ideological purity trumps their abilities.

 

Tragedy Over and Within Washington, DC

 

Matt Davies, Newsday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist

Who do YOU believe, a Congresswoman from Texas or our President?  Rather than writing commentary, I let them speak for themselves:

 

From Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett

No one knows what caused last night's tragic crash outside DCA.

Investigations are ongoing, and no one - not Donald Trump or anyone else - should be drawing conclusions until all the facts have been released.

But here is what we do know.

On his first day in office, Donald Trump froze the hiring of federal employees—including air traffic controllers.

Also on January 20, Elon Musk pushed out the Chief of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Trump didn’t appoint an acting replacement until after last night’s crash

On January 22, Aviation Security Advisory Committee members were told Trump was cutting members of all advisory committees in a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”

Also on January 22, Trump fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.

In June 2023, the United States Department of Transportation Inspector General found that 77% of air traffic control facilities critical to the industry's daily operations were short-staffed.

FAA staffing shortages have been exacerbated by @HouseGOP's repeated near-shutdowns of the government and their refusal to fully fund critical government functions.

These programs were only funded because more Democrats than Republicans voted to prevent these shutdowns.

 

Trump’s News Conference (as reported by Associated Press)

Q: “Are you saying this crash was somehow caused as the result of diversity hiring? And what evidence have you seen to support these claims?”

TRUMP: “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a much higher standard than anybody else. And there are things where you have to go by brainpower. You have to go by psychological quality, and psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various, very powerful tests that we put to use. And they were terminated by Biden. And Biden went by a standard that seeks the exact opposite. So we don’t know. But we do know that you had two planes at the same level. You had a helicopter and a plane. That shouldn’t have happened. And, we’ll see. We’re going to look into that, and we’re going to see. But certainly for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest. We want somebody that’s psychologically superior. And that’s what we’re going to have.”

Q: “You have today blamed the diversity elements but then told us that you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistake. You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake.”

TRUMP: “It’s all under investigation.”

Q: “I understand that. That’s why I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.”

TRUMP: “Because I have common sense. OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level. When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time, and they’re all coming in different directions, and you’re dealing with very high-level computer, computer work and very complex computers.”

Q: “The implication that this policy [hiring people with disabilities] is new or that it stems from efforts that began under President Biden or the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is demonstrably false. It’s been on the FAA’s website —”

TRUMP: “Who said that, you?”

Q: “No, it’s on the website, the FAA’s website. It was there from 2013 ... it was there for the entirety, it was there for the entirety of your administration, too. So my question is, why didn’t you change the policy during your first administration?”

TRUMP: “I did change it. I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy. And then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I signed a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”

 

To preserve my sanity I am trying to avoid watching news and writing about the actions of the Provocateur-in-Chief. But the politicalization of everything sometimes makes the latter impossible.  No sense analyzing the foregoing.  Matt Davies’ political cartoon says it all.

But nonetheless I slide on the slippery slope into the fray, focusing on the normalization of absurdity, perhaps for no other reason than preserving documentation.  Our Gish galloping Provocateur-in-Chief is a Festivus for one, airing his imagined grievances, celebrating the misery deportations will cause, daring anyone to oppose him, his J6 army locked and loaded.

An excellent article “Trump and the Collapse of the Old Order” By Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal goes deeper into the seismic nature of it all.  Here are some bullet points:

·       No modern president has achieved this level of complete cultural saturation. It gives him power in this ill-educated, broken-up, low-attention span country.

·       [T]he second rise of Donald Trump is a total break with the past—that stable order, healthy expectations, the honoring of a certain old moderation, and strict adherence to form and the law aren’t being “traduced”; they are ending. That something new has begun. People aren’t sure they’re right about this and no one has a name for the big break, but they know we have entered something different—something more emotional, more tribal and visceral.

·       There’s a sense we’re living through times we’ll understand only in retrospect. But the collapse of the old international order and the break in America’s old domestic order are shaping this young century.

She warns Democrats: not to talk but do. Be supple. The Trumpian policies you honestly support—endorse them, join in the credit….Most of all, make something work. You run nearly every great city in the nation. Make one work—clean it up, control crime, smash corruption, educate the kids.

Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far.  It is time for the Democrats to take some responsibility and implement change.

But, what about Republicans and Supreme Court Justices?  Are there are few brave ones in Congress and/or on the Bench who will recognize the uber-seriousness of this moment, and choose those critical issues that truly threaten Democracy, and do the right thing to preserve the three branches of government?

Traditional journalism is part of the problem; even Noonan’s article which although insightful, normalizes the dangers being created by these first few days of the new “administration.”