If Parrots Could Pray

     As an observant member of a Christian denomination, I follow this personal rule: I avoid mentioning that I am an observant member of a Christian denomination.
     This spares me hearing from the loudmouth who watches for opportunities to declaim that he does not believe in God, and phrases himself  to imply that I am a fool. At the other extreme, I'm spared dealing with the Christian soldier who assumes that I share his views on everything from politics to sexual practices, and that I am quivering to join him in evangelizing everyone within earshot.
    Also, my rule reduces my risk of discomfiting members of a plentiful tribe these days:  principled, good-hearted people who would not dream of joining a house of worship.
     Their reasons vary, in my experience. They may find the available faith narratives implausible. Or they feel they can lead an upright and even a faithful life without belonging to a religious organization. They may resist belonging to a religious organization because the ones on display so vividly reflect shortcomings of human nature.
     Among today's versions of the Christian tradition, certainly, a good deal of dubious human behavior is being amplified through the megaphone of politics. Consider one example in the area where I live. A congressman running for re-election festoons his campaign pitch  with the next thing to an altar call: "I've dedicated my life to sharing God's love through Jesus Christ." He goes on to suggest that his re-election is important in bringing an end to the so-called war on Christmas.
     He is running against a Baptist  minister who nearly beat him once before. They make an emblematic pair: a politician implying divine guidance, and a churchman reaching for secular power.
      The Christian right's covetous interest in political  clout may achieve a new consummation.  One notion simmering in Congress would let churches and charities openly support political candidates yet keep their tax-exempt status. Conservative elements in the church have favored allowing politicians closer proximity to the collection plate and, thereby, churchmen more influential proximity to politicians.
     Proximity facilitates contamination, of course. Politicians resort to such ploys as our congressman's Christmas red herring. Churchmen imagine a modern form of conversion at sword's point: writing religious precept into civil law.
     While the adulteration of political discourse is troubling, attentive citizens do have available the remedy of the vote. The converse effect upon the church is a deeper thing for me.
     Those who want Congress to enforce their religious doctrines on the general public are trifling with the very idea of faith. As C.S. Lewis said, if mere conformity were enough, parrots could pray. And if power were not as dangerously tempting to churchmen as to anyone else, the Christian right would not now be heedlessly embracing a Republican party that has abandoned even a pretense of principled behavior.
     Meanwhile, I fear we shall hear more bogus claims of a war on Christmas. For my own part, I do have relief conveniently at hand.  I can go to lunch at the Jewish deli around the corner from my house. There they have put up two holiday banners. One says Happy Hanukkah. The other says Merry Christmas.
     Now, there's a model.






   

Impeachment And More

     The price of apathy toward public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
                                                                                                       Plato
     
      A man is known by the company he keeps.
                                                              Aesop

     Birds of a feather flock together.
                       Variously attributed








     In my newspaper days we liked to sprinkle lighter stories among the heavier fare of election years. One involved sending reporters to gather man-on-the-street vignettes. Nothing scientific or politically heavy. Just the kind of chit-chat you might have over your back fence or with the customer on the next bar stool.
     Even in presidential years, we  ran across a few people who were not aware that an election was being held. In this, we had anecdotal experience of what is shown by measured evidence: Americans are lousy voters. Many don't vote at all. Among those who do, many vote in ignorance or in heedless fascination with one issue.
     The behavior waxes and wanes. At its worst it magnifies the power of zealous factions and produces the likes of Donald Trump.
      Aesop's admonition (above) does not mean that a man's reputation may be harmed if he keeps shady company. It means that a man's true character is revealed in his choice of associates. Trump's chosen associates have produced through the pores of his administration a steady seep of corruption and mendacity.
     Trump's foes would thus agree with Aesop. And his extremes have tempted them to some of their own. Impeachment talk began amid the echoes of the inaugural address.
     This is, I think, even yet a bit premature. The Constitution does not say the president may be impeached for being a vulgar, self-seeking boor, or even for being deeply unpopular with most of the voting public. It says the president may be impeached for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
     The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" was adopted from English legal traditions. It is meant to apply specifically to holders of public office.  Roughly speaking, it means that a president could be impeached and removed for actions that violated his oath of office.
      While the pursuit of any such charges would be in part juridical, it also would inescapably be in part  political. In either event, charges would need to meet principled standards of proof. Utmost care is wanted in any proceeding against the President -- not for the sake of the president, but for the sake of the principles.
     Robert Bolt caught the idea of it in his play and movie A Man For All Seasons.  In one scene, Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII, is discussing law and ethics with his prospective son-in-law, William Roper.

     Roper: So, now you give the devil benefit of law!
     More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?
     Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that.
     More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down ... do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

     It isn't enough to know that the President is corrupt, as sentient adults by now must  surely do. He must be proved corrupt, by the rules that protect us all. The special investigation now under way bids fair to do so, in its own due course.
     Meanwhile, such voices as The New York Times note that President Trump lost the popular vote by no small margin and call for abolition of the Electoral College. This is another extreme.
      With good reason, the founders were wary of unleavened popular democracy. They knew that the line is thin between public attitude and the fever of the crowd. One of their buffers was the United States Senate, in which small states have equal weight with large ones.  On the same idea they modeled the Electoral College.
     If it is occasionally vulnerable to the kind of circumstantial fluke that produced Donald Trump, it has over the years done its intended job. It has sheltered the legitimate interests of less populous areas from being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of voters living elsewhere.
     It is not necessary or wise to amend the Constitution to counter ballot-box laziness. The larger population has readily available the gambit of voting in greater numbers. They would be so advised by another sage:
   
     We have met the enemy and he is us.
                                         Pogo Possum

The Gospel According to Flowers

     One of my favorite fictional characters is Virgil Flowers. He's a lanky, plain-speaking cop who likes Leinenkugel beer, fishing, skinny-dipping with his girlfriend Frankie, and solving offbeat crimes in small Minnesota towns. Virgil also adheres to one other routine. At night, just before going to sleep, he talks to God about the ins and outs of human nature.
     Virgil is not a mystic or ersatz monk. He doesn't hear voices or see visions.  He talks to God the way you might talk to your bartender. Airing things out and chewing them over.
     In the latest story, one character faces an ethical dilemma. Virgil suggests that the man talk it over with God. No-can-do, the man says, because he doesn't hold with religion.
     Virgil responds, Don't get things all mixed up. God and religion are not the same thing.
     Virgil never says more, so we are left to speculate on the details of his theology. I like to imagine he'd say things this way:
     Jesus came along and said, Folks, you don't have a loving relationship with God by making up a bunch of rules and using them to play gotcha games on your neighbors. You have a loving relationship by having a loving relationship.  Your relationship with God is reflected in your relationship with your fellow human beings, and vice-versa.  And that's just about the nub of the thing.
     Well -- as Virgil might put it -- the echoes hadn't hardly faded before folks got right back to making up rules and playing gotcha.  And boy oh boy, have we moderns refined the game. We've got right-wing preachers of condemnation and exclusion. We've got feelgood mega-churches that enshrine greed and deliberately confuse worship with entertainment. We've got so-called religious leaders embracing politicians who have no moral core.
     And in one particularly telling sign of the times, we've got a Roman Catholic pope who has scandalized portions of his church and startled the world.
     How?
     By dwelling on themes of love, forgiveness and inclusion.
     Now, one thing about Virgil is this: Despite all the ugliness he sees, he just keeps on keepin' on. He knows that the good guys outnumber the bad ones. He knows this because it often happens that some of the good guys stick their necks out to help him catch the other sort. They do this because that's what good guys do in life. They stick their necks out for what's right.
     I don't know if Virgil is a reader. (Between chasing crooks and chasing Frankie, he may not have the time.) But I think he might find resonance in the climax of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
     "I believe that man ... is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion, sacrifice and endurance.  The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. ... "
       I have an atheist friend who believes that his capacity for such as love and awe is a kind of biochemical emission. An emanation of his amino acids or his endocrine glands, perhaps. I think that on this point my friend is more than a little silly. To paraphrase an old saying, I am not able to believe that Handel's Messiah emerged from the molecular chemistry of meat.
     I think Virgil would agree. And I think that if he did read Faulkner, he might say something like, Yup, most folks are naturally wired to seek out the right, and the wiring's not accidental.
     So, when I get blue about fools, quacks and scoundrels strutting in the name of religion, I have two sources of relief.
     I can dig out my Faulkner.
     Or I can imagine sipping a couple of Leinies with Virgil.
   


    

   

Sex, Money, Power And Religion

      In my years as a newspaper editor I did a good deal of lunchtime speaking to civic clubs. The residual effects upon me are two: I am wary of baked chicken and green peas. And I bristle at complaints about negativity in news reports.
     Nowadays I bristle in silence.  Back then I tried to explain: By definition, news is information that is new in some pertinent way. It is off the norms of what you would assume, expect or already know. It may alert you to foresee experiences tomorrow that you did not have yesterday. Or it may represent a fresh iteration of developments that have affected you before.
     Your weather report leads with storm or drought, not with the 45th consecutive day of bland weather in San Diego.  Your spouse tells you first that your neighbor had a heart attack, not that health in the rest of the neighborhood remains unchanged. Your newspaper reports that the price of milk or peaches is going to jump. It does not go on to detail the continuing abundance of affordable food.
     I had to remind myself of this outlook as I cringed through news reports of the declaration called The Nashville Statement. In it, an evangelical group (convened in Nashville) played judge and jury on issues of sexual orientation, gender identity and same-sex marriage. In one crescendo they declared: "We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism ... We deny that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree."
     As an observant member of a Christian denomination, I am aware that this hardness of heart does not typify faith or faithful life. The church people in my world are attentive to the core message: Love; do not judge.  They understand the enduring implications of Paul's admonition: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one ... . They would never call tolerance immoral.
     Still, these news reports perform their function. They alert us.  They remind us that in 21st century America, storm clouds are still boiling on the horizons of our shared life. The so-called Christian right remains aroused and aggressive.
     If they were asked what they were up to in Nashville, I suppose the sponsors of the statement might respond with ministerial language.  Proclaiming the word. Calling out error. That sort of thing.
     But of course confrontational behavior of this sort goes farther, and is meant to. Elements of evangelical leadership have been eager for their ministerial functions to be performed for them by the authorities of secular law. Clearly, in framing their  pronouncement, the Nashville people were not unmindful of energizing a zealous bloc that likes to keep a thumb on the scales of public policy.
     The corrosive effect of mixing religion and politics is nowadays lamentably evident in national affairs. It need not be reviewed here. I am saddened, meanwhile, by high-decibel caricatures of the Christian message. Nowhere does the Bible contain blueprints for a moral caste system that entitles some human beings to look down on others.
     Someone wrote that an idea is not responsible for the behavior of everyone who claims it.  I would hope that the Christian message would not be faulted for the behavior of a faction that is covetous of secular power, cordial to mega-church greed, and intrusively preoccupied with sex.
     About sex the Bible has little to say. About power and greed the Bible has a very great deal to say -- all of it cautionary.

 

Russia, Trumpsters and Greed

   


     What you see is what you get.
                                      Flip Wilson

     Follow the dollar.
                  Axiom of investigative reporting

     As a retiree from the pundit corps, I view with some dismay the plight of colleagues who remain active in the trade. Their obligation to watch and comment on the behavior of the Trump administration has occasioned head-scratching, confusion and an occasional collective sigh that might best be summarized: What the hell is going on there?
     I would venture that what is going on is exactly what appears to be going on.  Before his election, the president lived a life of comprehensive greed and connivance. It is therefore fair to conclude that his personal values are grounded in greed and connivance.  This would militate against his developing in later life a sudden, high-minded interest in public service.
     Sure enough, Trump relatives are trading on his status to line their pockets. Lobbyists and even foreign governments are directing business toward Trump-owned properties. High appointees are using their power to weaken regulations affecting the private-sector lives from which they came and to which they will eventually return.
     And then we have the Russians, and their tampering with our presidential election.  Notions that the Russian government was not the mover of this endeavor can be left to people who believe in unicorns. Vladimir Putin, of course, claims otherwise. Two observations emerge from his suggestion that the meddling was undertaken by patriotic hobbyists: Like our president, Putin is a bold liar. Unlike our president, Putin is capable of a wry joke.
     Theories vary on the Russians' specific reasons for wanting a fool in the White House.  I like the one that focuses on the so-called Magnitsky Act. The back story --  which is quite complicated -- goes roughly this way. People with Kremlin ties used forged documents to claim ownership of a hedge fund actually owned by an American who had been the largest foreign investor in Russia. The thieves then sued the Russian government, claiming they had overpaid their taxes by $230 million. The courts and the Russian tax system paid them. They invested their take abroad.
     That is, people with Kremlin ties stole  $230 million from their own government. The scheme was uncovered by Russian lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested and died in filth in a Russian jail. Congress responded with the Magnitsky Act. It named a list of Russian figures, froze their assets in America, and barred them from entering this country.
     The Kremlin has vigorously complained ever since. Two of the Russians who famously met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort are lobbyists against the act. The Kremlin wants the law repealed because Putin's buddies want to regain access to their boodle. Further, they want the American financial system to be available as a haven for tainted money in the future.  Russia is a white-collar gang masquerading as a country, and the gang needs a safe place to stash loot.
     And what is behind the president's visible eagerness to please Russia? My guess is that the reasons are not unrelated to Russian oligarchs' investment in Manhattan real estate, and to the president's zealously hidden tax returns.
     The administration wants to keep a great deal hidden, by all appearances. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has escalated investigation of classified information leaks. Previous efforts of this sort have produced ironically unintended results.  They have highlighted commonplace abuse of the classification system, and examples of that well aged Washington vintage, hypocrisy. One episode showed that some classified FBI files contained newspaper clippings. Another produced a delightfully naughty intimation that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was often himself the source of leaks he angrily denounced.
     The attorney general may wish to be careful about which rocks he flips over in public view.

Travel Broadens

     My friend Harry loves to travel. With jaunts and journeys he indulges a yen to see what's around the next bend.
     Like Harry, I enjoy the experience of new places. Unlike Harry, I do not enjoy getting from here to there. Travel is said to broaden a person, yes, but the same could be claimed for the medieval rack.
     Air travel often is necessary. Automatically this puts my trip on the wrong foot. I resent having to patronize an industry whose customers widely consider that getting a dollar's worth of value for a dollar would be a pleasant surprise.
     Air travel horror stories are too common to need itemizing here. When forced to fly, I try to distract myself by treating it as an opportunity to study human behavior. For example, what about the training of airline employees ? Where do they go to learn the demeanor of B-movie prison guards?
     And among the passengers, what will be the mixture of tough guys and collaborators? The tough guys radiate anticipatory resentment. They expect a bad experience, perhaps by virtue of being often correct in this regard. They wear stone faces. They glare at seat-backs or the floor.
     The collaborators are at the other pole. They address the cabin crew with a kind of grinning obeisance. Possibly they hope that faking Stockholm hostage syndrome will spare them being confined long enough to develop the real thing.
     For shorter trips, we take the car. Here too, I embark with a bad attitude. On average, an experience of Interstate highways puts me in mind of Napoleon's retreat from Russia.  Too often I reach my destination as a twitching, harrowed survivor.  And auto travel shakes my faith in my own memory. Was there really a time when truck drivers were called the knights of the highway?
     Still, the experience of new places is gratifying. And  Harry's example is a spur. He travels with an embracing attitude that we all should want. From each trip he returns with fresh appreciation that the rest of the world -- even the part just over the state line -- is unlike the place we call home.
     If more of us took Harry's cue, there might be a lower incidence of regional and cultural prejudice. We all have it. For my own part, I have a hard time with Texans and New Yorkers. There is no valid reason. It is rank bias.
     When guilt overtakes me, I seek comfort in the example of the late C.S. Lewis, the distinguished scholar and author. At about the age of ten, Lewis stepped up to his father's easy chair and announced  that he had a prejudice against the French. When his father asked why, Lewis said that if his attitude were amenable to explanation it wouldn't be a prejudice.
     As a native southerner, I have some experience of the receiving end of prejudice. We children of the South are accustomed to being stereotyped as bumpkins or worse.  We get it even from people who know us personally. For years, a dear friend in the northeast -- an urbane and experienced man -- ducked my invitations to come for visit. When I finally asked why, he confessed to fearing that he might be shot if he drove south with Yankee license plates on his car. That was 40 years ago. He still hasn't come.
     I tell myself that I am not chauvinistic about my native region, but of course I am. Everyone is chauvinistic about home. I remember a dinner with a batch of new friends on the prairies of the upper Midwest. I mentioned to a table-mate that I enjoyed her accent. She raised an eyebrow and asserted that she didn't have one. I made the mistake of offering examples of her vowels. She became prickly, to put the matter charitably, and doubled down on her denial. No accent had she, no sir. Not a hint. Only other regions had accents.
     The conversation sped downhill until I inadvertently changed the subject. I stopped the dinner cold by putting sugar in my iced tea. My new friends had never seen it done. Moreover, it was not simply a difference of custom. It was an offense against The Way Things Were Supposed To Be. My miffed hostess assumed that I was openly denigrating the quality of her tea.
     My friend Harry would not be surprised by this story. Out of his vast travel experience he would explain that everyone thinks their own ways are the norm and other people are the ones who are "different." And so, with Harry's example in mind, I persevere in thinking that I should now and then seek the experience of new places.
     Attitude remains a problem, but I do try. Perhaps the flight attendant just has sore feet. Surely the tailgater on my bumper loves his mother.
     For the parts that simply will not abide a rose colored-view, I try to focus on Saint Paul's admonition that suffering builds character.
     I feel a better person just thinking about it.
   

Barlow On Trump

     I got a letter from my Uncle Barlow the other day.  I hadn't heard from him in quite a while, so I was glad for the opportunity to catch up.
     He still lives the country life out there in Barlow County. He's fully retired now, so mostly he hangs out with his buddies and spends a little time with his jug. He's a good-hearted guy, so from time to time he also gets involved with trying to solve problems for his friends. That's what he wanted my help with in his most recent letter. Here's what he had to say.

"Dear Nephew,
     "I am truly sorry I have been so long without writing. As you might think, life doesn't change much out here in Barlow County, so I guess I thought I'd just wait until I had some news, and I lost track of the time between letters. Anyhow, something has come along that I need your advice on.
     "I am worried to death about Millie over at the library.  I've told you about her before. She's a good person and a hard worker, but she's mighty strong in her opinions, and so she gets worked up from time to time.  Since this fellow Trump got elected president, she's worked up just about all the time. I'm afraid she's going to blow a fuse.
     "Now, I've got some sympathy for Millie's views on this, because it did seem to me that when Trump got elected, folks had put a fox in the henhouse.  I thought maybe if she and I sat down and shared with each other about it, she might begin to feel like at least she wasn't alone. But it didn't work. The more we talked, the more upset she got.
      "Then I thought maybe if I did a little research, I could do a better job of it.  Find some little thing here or there that Millie could feel better about.  And that was the start of the thing I need your advice on.  You see, the research just got me confused.
       "Now, for starters, I  couldn't figure out why this Trump fellow wanted to be president.  You don't have to read very much to figure out that he's the kind who'd steal the coins off a dead man's eyes.  I wondered what in the world made him think he wanted to get tangled up in public service.
     "After I read a little more, one notion did occur to me.  Apparently some of his business ventures haven't gone too well.  Casinos and hotels and such. And I read that, now he's president, lobbyists and politicians and even foreign governments are lining up to have their affairs at places he owns. And I read that some of our government's friendlier policies are beginning to land on countries where he has investments.  So, maybe he figured if he got to be president, and it sort of became American government policy that you'd be smart to trade with Trump, his bottom line might look a little better.
     "Anyhow, there wasn't much comfort in that for Millie, so I kept reading.  And I got more confused. You see, we have a saying out here in Barlow County:  'Watch out for the kind of folks who'll pee on your head and tell you it's rain.'  That has always seemed like good, obvious advice to me, so I couldn't figure out what made Trump think it was a good idea to fill up his whole cabinet with that sort.
     "And then, one notion did occur to me. Since we've already got an abundance of such folks in Congress, maybe Trump thought he'd get along better over there if he matched them up with their own kind.  But it's just a notion, and anyhow, there's not much comfort for Millie there, either.
     "So I kept on reading. I thought surely I could find a person or two in the Trump camp who wouldn't make Millie's eyeballs roll back in her head.  But I only came up with the daughter and the son-in-law, whose previous government experience, near as I can tell, consisted of going to the post office. And then there's that press secretary fellow Spicer. I don't know what they're paying that boy, but I hope he's saving it up. He's boogered up that job so bad that after he's through with it he'll be lucky to get work playing piano in a bawdy house.
     "Anyhow, as you can see, I could sure use some advice on how to help Millie. Otherwise, there's not much news from Barlow County. About the biggest thing is that some city fellows opened a brew pub out on the bypass. I guess they're thinking to snare the tourists on the way to the beach.
    "None of us had ever heard of a brew pub, so we didn't know it's just a beer joint where the beer has fancy names.  Scooter over at the cafe thought it might be competition, so he went to try the place out.  They had lots of different beers, and Scooter thought he was obliged to sample them all.  He came home drunk as a fiddler's bitch and tried to get romantic with his wife, Ida.
     "Now, Ida is a real deep sleeper, and waking her up sudden is not a good idea.  Scooter startled her, and she came swarming up out of the bed clothes and clocked him with an elbow.  Then she tuned in to what he'd been trying, and called him a pervert and clocked him again.
     "Scooter did figure the brew pub might amount to competition, so he decided he'd start serving mixed drinks over at the cafe. This was a long reach for Scooter, as his previous idea of a mixed drink had been to add water to the bust-head his cousin Harold makes out behind the barn. And what with his jaw being wired together and all, Scooter began having trouble relaying the customers' orders to the help. One fellow ordered a gimlet and they served him an omelet, and things pretty much went straight down hill after that.
     "I do hope you can help me find a way to help Millie. She's getting downright strange. The other day I dropped in at the library to ask how she was doing, and she shot me this kind of stretched-out smile and said she was just fine because she'd figured out she really didn't need to worry about Trump so much. She said that sooner or later they'd catch him stealing the White House silverware or trying to deed the Washington Monument to the Russians, and he'd be out of there.
     "I think she was joking, but I'm not real sure.

                                                                                            "Sincerely,
                                                                                            "Your Uncle Barlow"

Credibility On Trial

Ad hominem
     Appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect. -- An ad hominem argument.
     Marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made. -- He made an ad hominem personal attack on his rival.
                                                                                                    Merriam-Webster
     
     In presenting your case, if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If both the facts and the law are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.
                                                                       Various versions attributed to various sources


     

     Somewhere in the distant mists of my school years, I received lessons in debate tactics.  Among them was counsel against ad hominem argument.  It isn't proper or smart, the teacher said. It's a dead giveaway of weakness on your own side: You can't keep up with your opponent's game, so you're trying to change the subject.
     This is one of the many lessons never absorbed by our incumbent president. Plagued by detailed accusations of wrongdoing, he has assailed the character, competence and mental health of his accuser, former FBI Director James Comey. Comey has in turn called the president himself a liar, but in this he has not added new notes to ongoing controversy.  The table-pounder-in-chief's penchant for mendacity is well known to sentient observers above the age of 10.
      Thus are the two squared off in a swearing contest for the time being. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, former FBI Director Robert Mueller is assembling a team to search for facts within the fog surrounding relations between presidential intimates and Russian leaders.  Reports say he is amassing major firepower, in the form of top-flight experts in criminal law.
     The medieval monk William of Occam propounded a principle of logic colloquially known as Occam's Razor. Roughly speaking, it holds that the simplest explanation of a matter is often the best. By this rule we would conclude that the president behaves as though he has something to hide because he does, in fact, have something to hide.
     This line of thinking begins with his refusal to release his tax returns.  It runs through his abrupt firing of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose investigative interests included Russian money laundering through Manhattan real estate deals, and fishy stock trading by incumbent Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. It continues through the firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who tattled on then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for lying about contacts with Russian officials. It has now reached an apparent climax in the firing of FBI Director Comey, who says the president urged him to go lightly on the Russian issue.
     William of Occam also would permit us to conclude that Mueller is recruiting experts in criminal law because he feels his investigation may uncover criminal behavior.  At a minimum, perjury and obstruction of justice come to mind. One key recruit is an expert on fraud, and led the Department of Justice's prosecution of Enron's wrongdoers.
     Mueller has a reputation for ability and probity. The wheels of justice do grind slowly, but they are grinding.  The president has not been able with bullying and  bluster to make the entire system of our government dance to his tune.
     The rest of us will have to live for now with the bullying and the blustering. And in the credibility contest between the president and James Comey? The known record does not favor the career chiseler who insisted for years that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

For Summer People

      For everything there is a season ...a time to be born ... a time to plant ... 
                                                                                            Ecclesiastes 3:2

      Right on schedule, the little tree by the front door is turning from red to green. We're told it's a dwarf red maple, but I've never looked that up.  I don't need to know the kind of thing the experts would explain. I know that our little herald changes every year because something elemental is going on between the earth and the air. That's enough for me.
      The azaleas, too, are settling in for summer. They had a rough spring. The weather was too soon warm and then too late cold. The neighbors up the hill had bright blossoms nonetheless. But our plants are in a low spot and couldn't soldier through. Their blossoms were few and quickly dead. Maybe next year.
      If seasons of nature are matched by seasons of the mind, the summer season is my best. I learned to love it as a boy, when we lived for a time with my grandparents on their patch of farm land. I was too young for farm work and too old to need watching. For me, shirtless, shoeless freedom was the hallmark of  summer days. Christian liturgical calendars call them "ordinary time" -- the span between the crescendo of Easter and the promise of Advent. The term has always seemed odd to me. A bit of a flat note. Maybe none of those old calendar-makers ever laid on his back to sky-gaze through the lacework of a honeysuckle thicket.
       My shirtless, shoeless days are gone, but summertime still features special joys -- and chores. I keep a close eye on those azaleas. They gave me fits for years. They refused to bloom. They refused even to maintain a proper demeanor.   The dictionary has a word for it: Tatterdemalion -- A person dressed in tattered clothing. A ragamuffin.  Until I found the right ways of care and feeding, our azaleas were tatterdemalions.
      We had a bit of struggle with the flowers, too. We plant them in the ground around the driveway light, and in the baskets hanging from the back deck rail.  It took a while to find a kind the deer wouldn't eat. They come mostly at night, although on the peak heat days of high summer we may see them taking our backyard shade. They stare at our windows, and if we are careful to do no more than stare back, they do not startle.
     We did find the right flowers. The experts call them Pentas. We ordinary folk call them Starflowers. The deer don't like them, but the hummingbird does, and so they serve us well all around.
       

     ... a time to die ...  and a time to pluck up what is planted; 
                                                                       Ecclesiastes 3:2

     The flowers must come out in the fall, of course. They have their season, and seasons end. The azaleas -- which do bloom now, when the weather's right -- get a little extra snack as they begin setting their flower buds for the following spring. The days are milder, but they are shorter, too. It is a mixed thing for me, as I consider what's ahead.
     Those ancient calendar-makers may not have understood a little boy's country summers, but they knew a thing or two about seasons of the mind. As they organized  and named the days, they gave us festivals and wakes, too. They knew we needed both. They knew our inner sense that the cycle of the seasons amounts to more than changing weather.  Not only because of the cold do I dislike the stark, bare limbs of winter trees.
     But that's for later, and even then I will know a steadying thing. I will know that next year, right on schedule, the little tree by the front door will announce the arrival of a new summer. And that's enough for me.

Politics And Good Sense

    Politics is the science of good sense, applied to public affairs, and, as those are forever changing, what is wisdom today would be folly and perhaps ruin tomorrow.  Politics is not a science  so properly as a business. It cannot have fixed principles, from which a wise man would never swerve, unless the inconstancy of men's view of interest and the capriciousness of the tempers could be fixed.
                                                              Fisher Ames
                                                             U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts, 1789-97
    

   Dogmatic: Inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true.
                                                           Oxford English Dictionary







     A friend of mine is offended by the chicanery and mendacity  of the incumbent presidential administration.   Politicians are all alike, he says, in sinking to the lowest available expedient.  They want to  lead us around by the nose. They will say anything to keep their hold on power. They care not about service, only self-preservation.
     In a lifetime of journalism, this was not my experience. Most of the officeholders I met were genuinely interested in service. They worked hard and withstood constant criticism. Many sacrificed financially. Their reward -- they hoped -- was in seeing their communities, their states and their nation become better places.
     The ablest among these officeholders were skilled politicians. They had to be. Ours is a political system. Election was not a grail. It was the portal to the workbench of service. Politics was not a game of tricks. It was a craft for reconciling the interests of constituents who pressed varying and even conflicting demands.
     All of which brings us to certain officeholders of today, and to the reasons for my friend's dismay.  The president, for his part,  has lowered standards of public behavior past the descriptive capacities of conventional vocabulary. His stock in trade is broken trust. On a given day he is either doing it or accusing others of doing it.
     The president is an exemplar of personality disorder. Beyond this, his administration displays two systemic weaknesses. One is amateurism.  The White House is in the sway of people who genuinely believe that the most complex government in history can be run as if it were a real estate company.
     The second weakness is a foolish belief in the sufficiency of ideology.  The president's own ideology is very personal and  very narrow. He is a scoundrel in his bones. Into the vacant space left by this stone-hearted ethic his minions have poured their own right-wing doctrine. Critics fault it for being extremely conservative. I think it is better faulted for being extremely simple-minded.
     The crafty men who created this nation would scorn a notion that governance could be as simple as enthroning the right dogma. Their system was meant to shelter contending ideas, not to discourage them. The proper job of American government is to serve both me and the neighbor who deeply disagrees with me -- not to put one of us over the other.
     In Congress, right-wing dogmatists have hamstrung proper process, abetted by leaders who would dance naked on the Capitol steps to preserve a Republican hold on power.  They have not so much lowered politics as abandoned the craft altogether. A my way or the highway standard prevails. The body that is supposed to serve all of us has become hostile to the interests of millions of Americans who do not share the controlling point of view.
     There is no happy perspective on these circumstances.  No rose-colored view of fools and mountebanks.  However it is useful to see them as the exception that shows the rule. To borrow an image, we don't complain that a line is crooked if we don't know what a straight line is. History and even the experience of modern times offer plentiful examples of politics as conscientious service in the public interest. What we're watching offends us because we know better.
     Change is stirring. Change is always stirring. Legislators are being booed out of their own town meetings, or ducking them outright. Tomorrow is on the way, with unforeseen and unforeseeable problems that will dramatize the bankruptcy of the solutions on offer today. Given the advancing Russia investigation, and the president's stumble-bum efforts to obstruct it, tomorrow may arrive with welcome dispatch.

Send In The Clowns

     Considered rigorously, the proposition that government should be run like a business makes as little sense as saying that business should be run like government.
     Yes, the federal government is bigger than it has a valid need to be. Yes, it is expensive and at times extravagantly wasteful. Yes, it is peopled with careerists who believe they know what is best for the rest of us. Yes, our leaders have kicked this can forward for decades. And now comes the Trump administration to offer the remedy of ...
     New spending and nepotism.
     A new agency will be called The White House Office of American Innovation. It will be tasked with bringing a business mindset to the operations of the federal bureaucracy.  It will be headed by Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who displayed his business acumen at an early age by rocketing to the top of his daddy's real estate company.
     This escapade is consistent with the record of a president who has, in just a few weeks in office:
     -- Issued executive orders the courts won't swallow.
     -- Proposed a budget the Congress won't pass.
     -- Crashed and burned for a jalopy of a health care law that he didn't understand.
     -- Spilled scandal all over himself.
     -- Advanced job-creation measures that won't really work.
     -- Commissioned propaganda so preposterous that his own minions can't sustain it.
     Kushner and wife Ivanka -- who has her own office in the White House -- are entangled in a real estate and investment empire so widespread that ethics experts are goggling at the potential for conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, Kushner will find that an organ of public service cannot successfully mimic an organ of private wealth. He will also find that Trump's  zeal for limited government is restricted to programs he doesn't like. Both of them will encounter a corollary attitude in Congress, where members are cordial to reforms affecting some other member's constituents.
     Thus the Office of Innovation offers to be another train wreck -- unless the Trumpsters plan to take credit for exploring new ways to abuse the public's trust. And thus the tenor of the administration remains as set by a president who surrounds himself with grifters, lapdogs and kin.
     This White House radiates a paranoia not seen since the Nixon years. (Trump has appointed political commissars to keep an eye on his own Cabinet secretaries.) It reeks of casual greed. But the overriding body language of the administration is amateurism. Gaffe follows gaffe, each to the accompaniment of clumsy lies.
     The Trump administration is in danger on several counts, not least the mounting evidence that his people engaged in heavy petting with the Russians.  Even if he survives that one, he risks being deemed feckless.  His presidency is staggering.  He personally is staggering.  He has become such an object of ridicule that the Comedy Central Channel has created a weekly show centered on lampooning him.
     So far The Donald, who likes to style himself a man of quick action, is on his way to showing in record time that he simply can't cut the mustard.
   

Gall In The White House

       And now, further adventures with Kaptain Klump and the Klepto Kids,  also known as the president of the United States and his top appointees.
     Today's episodes include a return appearance by that old presidential retainer Michael Flynn, who keeps showing up like a black-sheep cousin at Thanksgiving. Booted earlier for making eyes at the Russians and lying about it, Flynn was a busier boy than most of us knew even yet. Before and after the election of his patron, he was also pocketing a cool half million in boodle to run errands on American soil for the Turkish government. In this he was required by law to register as an agent of a foreign power -- but, well, he just didn't get around to that part of it until now.
     The Klump presidential transition team knew about Flynn's deal with the Turks.  They did not however, reveal it. They didn't even tell the Kap. Perhaps they didn't want the voters worrying their pretty little heads about whether they were actually voting for the Kap, Vladimir Putin or Recep Erdogan.  Perhaps they also reasoned that the Kap was busy figuring out how to use federal law to enforce religious prohibitions and enhance the privilege of white people.
     The Kap does have an especially full plate these days.  Federal civil servants have annoyed him by continuing to fulfill their sworn obligations under law. He has responded by firing them in wholesale lots.  This leaves him with a very great deal of hiring to do. His challenge is compounded by his very particular job requirements. He must find candidates untroubled by the premise that government workers can be loyal to him or to the American public but not necessarily both.
     Meanwhile, the Kap's sons are busy as well. Although they lack official status, they are a kind of junior varsity Klepto Kid.  The junior KK's (no, no; only two K's; only two) have been jetting around with tax-paid protection to run their Dad's business empire.  The Kap and his folks think it churlish of others to worry about conflicts between the public interest and the family's mercantile imperatives. After all, the Kap has demonstrated that he does respect the altruistic principles of public service. In moving from his New York tower to the White House, he has selflessly accepted smaller quarters in a poorer neighborhood.
     Truth to tell, the Kap has stumbled a bit with this presidential thing. Now, he's giving it another big try. He's wading in with support of the proposed new health care law. Republicans like it for being consistent with their philosophy of channeling wealth toward people who already have some and are therefore experienced in handling it. Republicans are big on Capitol Hill. Sometimes it seems the Congress has more Republicans than members.  If he's been reading his poll numbers, the Kap might reasonably feel that he needs to round up a lot more friends.
     And the work never ends. The Kap is busy. The junior Kleptos are busy. Supplicants of the government are lined up over here. Customers of the empire are lined up over there -- except when the supplicants and the customers are the same people.  Witness the current example of the candy industry, which is lobbying the government to change its policies on sugar subsidies. Industry leaders gathered last week for their national conference -- at one of the Kap's resorts. They have two more meetings scheduled, both in one of his hotels.
     Perhaps the Kap and boys would represent this overlap as a kind of efficiency. This would be consistent with the administration's wholesale redefinition of words and ideas. Mendacity is alternative honesty. The greed of the few is good for the many.  That sort of thing.
     To this pattern there is, however, one sure exception.  The Kap and his team would never argue that black is white.

Trump: Strongman or Stumblebum?

     A government of laws, not of men.
                                                    John Adams
     In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.
                                                    Adlai E. Stevenson II



      The phrase does not roll trippingly off the tongue: President Trump.  It feels rather like saying crackerbox palace.  Some images are just ungainly.
      However, The Donald is in the White House for now, and pundits are hip-deep in fodder. Assessing this administration so far amounts to assessing a soccer riot, but the word merchants are game. They do apply standards adjusted for the realities of the Trump era. His Tuesday speech to Congress is receiving good marks on grounds that he did not make a fool of himself. And the fact-checkers -- a new specialty in punditry -- are ever busy reviewing his assertions for untruth.
      Thus one of the evergreen questions about Trump.  Does he really believe the wild nonsense his administration peddles, or does he not?  Only he can truly know, of course, but all the possible answers are dismal. In any case, the blizzard of lies may blow itself out with time. The whoppers may be too preposterous to sustain. They already have have subjected aides to howling ridicule. Even a man of Trump's coarse sensibilities must realize that ridicule is dangerous to his presidency.
     Also dangerous is the issue of Russian dalliance with his campaign team. Hitherto die-hard allies in Congress are declining to ignore this one.  If it is shown that Trump's team courted an under-the-table deal with a hostile foreign government, his best available response would be that he didn't know. But ignorance would not serve him as a defense. It would go down as a confession. Hence, perhaps, his conspicuous eagerness for the issue to be dropped.
     Were it settled today, the hallmark of the Trump administration would not be autocracy but incompetence. He has signed a major immigration order he didn't understand; offered Cabinet nominees with checkered pasts; hired advisers whose performance ranged from corrupt to absurd; undercut his vice president and two Cabinet secretaries; angered or frightened allies; raised speculation of a trade war with Mexico; left hundreds of vacancies in the top operating ranks of government agencies, and engendered an atmosphere of chaos in Washington.
     Meanwhile, across the nation, his signature political tactic is failing him.  While fear-mongering has made vulnerable people afraid of his administration, he has not been able to make Americans afraid of each other. Rather, he has provoked an upsurge of solidarity in resistance across cultural, religious and demographic lines. He also has stiffened attitudes of resistance in multiple levels of government.
     Trump won nomination by exciting a fervid minority within a Republican Party whose majority failed to vote at all. He lost the general election popular vote by millions. He entered the White House without a coherent mandate.  He cannot create one with vulgar personal outbursts of hubris, falsehood and zany paranoia. Nor can he erase that record by making a single speech in which he did not appear to be unhinged.
     Congress will watch and calibrate Trump's squandering of his limited political capital. If Democrats sense that he has crippled himself, they will go for the throat. Republicans will use him opportunistically when he is willing to lean their way on pet issues. But they won't go so far as to risk their skins for a man who may be no more than a headstrong stumblebum -- and they are already feeling heat at home.
     The record so far: In just a few weeks, comprehensive opposition has been energized against the visible particulars of Trump's bad ideas,  and the would-be strongman has made a dog's breakfast of the role.  No one who respects the meaning of words would call this a hopeful start, but it could be a lesser evil.

Family Values

     On a recent trip I passed near a site of boyhood memories. Today it is an urban green space. Back then it was the county park where my mother's family gathered under picnic shelters for their annual reunions. Passing it put me in mind of so-called family values.
     The Internet tells me that family  reunions are nowadays an artifact of lifestyles -- something one chooses to do, in a larger sense of the word, as one would choose to garden heirloom tomatoes or learn French. Links offer expert planning guides. (Mr. Spiffy is especially detailed in his advice.) Magazines recommend "steps to family reunion success." (Create a command center; start with a bang.)
     Our long-ago reunions were less grand. My experience of them featured sweat, stinging insects, acres of jello salad, and boredom triggered by the ritualized patter of the most ardent attendees. I remember inwardly critiquing them with the self-focused literalism of a 10-year-old: Yes, of course I'm still Mildred's boy; yes, of course I've grown.
     I learned to duck the sweet, matronly cousin who always opened with, You don't remember me do you?  I did remember her, just not the name she forced me to tease out of her year after year. Only in adulthood did I tumble to the code embedded in the annual appraisals of my grandfather's unmarried, middle-aged sister: Ida is really sweet, I'm sure. She just hasn't met the right man yet.
     My mother's forebears were yeomen of the rural South, sun-seasoned and corded with the muscle of farm labor, man and woman alike. Only in her generation did some of them begin moving to town and taking indoor jobs. Only in my generation did any of us think of going to college, or moving to live in distant places.
     Our family was not different from others. We had angels and scoundrels, charmers and boors.
     We had my grandmother, who defied the customs of segregation and went to live in her black housekeeper's husbandless shack when the woman was ill, to nurse her and care for her children.
     We had a great-uncle who now and then climbed to the attic with a shotgun and a jug of white lightning, and dared anyone to bother him before he  finished his bender.
     We had spouses who cheated and spouses who spent body and, yes, soul to sustain a proper home.
     We had achievers and ne'er do wells, exemplars and black sheep.
     As a boy I wondered why my folks wanted an annual gathering that required of them so much tiptoeing around hard differences and old hurts. As a man I better understand.  The journey was long from the tobacco field to the classroom and the desk job, and they were all in it together. That was the backbone of things. If some trifled with the basics, everyone knew what they were.
    Beyond the particulars of my family's situation, the larger point is this: For them, the foremost family values were affirmation and inclusion that transcended differences.  Disappointment in a son did not forestall wanting an occasion to display pride in a nephew. If my grandmother grieved over her drunken brother's willingness to frighten his family, she could nonetheless once a year share fried chicken and pecan pie, and in this way affirm that even that little bit of sharing mattered. With their annual appraisals of Aunt Ida, those farm matrons in their flower print dresses were affirming to each other that they knew she was a lesbian but loved her anyway.
     Flash forward to now, and hear family values defined in terms far removed from affirmation. Hear that family values are inconsistent with single parenthood, gay marriage and a woman's private control of her own body. Family values are against this, against that, against the other. Family values are defined by what -- and whom -- they oppose.
     Within this message is at best a hollow core, and more often a crabbed and narrow view of love, not to mention human decency.  I believe that my relatives of yesteryear would be surprised to hear exclusion celebrated in the name of family. I don't know all they might think, say, of the openly homosexual couples among my friends who are marvelous spouses and excellent parents. I do know that they would respect the spousal commitment, the parenthood, and my friendship.
     My relatives were taught by hard lives to discern essentials.  They would see through the politicians and ambitious clerics who nowadays claim to embrace family for the purpose of aggrandizing themselves. My grandmother, who never in my hearing uttered a hard word, would not stoop to use the vocabulary necessary to call them what they are. She would clear her throat and change the subject. It was her ultimate dismissal.
     My grandmother's approval was a dear thing to the many who loved and admired her. For my own part I miss her -- but I do sometimes reflect that it's just as well she's not around to be pained by my enduring dislike of jello salad.
   
 

Obama's Legacy

     With a Republican Congress promising to abuse power, and a new president poised to disgrace the office, I'm among the many who watch President Obama's departure with deep regret.
     History will see matters this way:
     Race was a consequential factor in the unprecedented opposition Obama faced. This was well known by political foes -- people at high levels in American government.  Yet they were willing to be complicit and even to abet.  Throughout his term, the president received criticism that was unprincipled, vicious and personal.
     Bigotry neared open display with the Republican presidential candidates of 2016. It broke through in the campaign of Donald Trump. To the last minute he clung to the lie that President Obama was African by birth. (Don't forget, he's bla-a-a-a-ck.) And Trump's white supremacist libel of Mexicans and Muslims will echo in American life long after the victory he was willing to seek at terrible cost to the integrity of our electoral process.
     With ceaseless and scurrilous attempts to undermine a duly elected president, the Republican Party of the early 21st Century posted a record of moral bankruptcy for which it will be forever known. This is the context that will make President Obama's legacy shine even more brightly. He met every adversity with dignity and courage and grace. He was matched in this by his wife Michelle, who has won widespread admiration through the sheer quality of her persona.
     His legacy of elevated leadership will dog the Lilliputians who've taken over. They may be able to compromise his policies, but they cannot erase his example.
     And the example will be alive yet awhile in both the Obamas. The President is a young man. He displays no inclination to fade away.  While former presidents have traditionally left the leadership field to their successors, leadership is highly unlikely to be the hallmark of the Trump administration. President Obama would do the nation further service by finding ways to remain vigorously engaged in public life. Michelle Obama is amply equipped to take an ongoing role in her own right, and to enlarge on the material contribution she has already made.
     For the time being, our government has passed to people who are capable of very low behavior. The dangers they pose are not limited to law and policy, which can in the longer term be corrected. The deeper danger will be temptation to lose faith in the possibility of integrity and higher purpose in our leaders.
     The legacy of the Obamas is to remind us that the possibility need not be lost.
   
 
   

Gritty Issues

     I've been thinking lately about our great cultural divides. These are the lines that separate dog people from cat people; morning people from night owls; punctual people from laggards.
     I've been thinking about one boundary marker in particular:  grits.
     I come at this from a certain perspective. By birth and early upbringing I am a southerner. But late in boyhood I became a nomad. I've lived or spent time in most of the regions east of the Mississippi, and I've made a few stops out west.
     In my life experience, four kinds of individuals are found along the grits spectrum:
     -- People who've never heard of grits.
     -- People who've heard of them but never tried them.
     -- People who've tried them but don't like them.
     -- People of discerning taste.
     Those in category one can be forgiven their ignorance. Outside Dixie, grits can be very hard to find. I remember once trying to order grits in a Detroit hotel. The server's expression said I might as well have asked for a serving of library paste.
     In category two, grits often have a bad reputation. The reasons have never been clear to me. It may be a manifestation of regional prejudice (we all have them). Or perhaps the explanation is simpler.  As the name of a victual, the word "grits" is not rich with appeal.  Purveyors of grits might take a useful cue from those who fob off green beans as haricots verts.
     In category three we must of course allow for the vagaries of personal preference. We must also be forgiving of untutored experience. I once saw a New Englander mistake grits for cream of wheat and flavor them accordingly.  The result was not agreeable.
     In my early upbringing we lived for a time with my grandparents on a small farm.  The food traditions there were strong. When pigs were killed in the fall, my grandmother made chitlins. My grandfather's favorite breakfast was fatback with molasses and buttermilk. Collard greens and boiled okra were regulars.
     Our family didn't make a big occasion of New Year's Eve but the folks down the road did. They always had Hoppin' John, and they always made it the authentic, old-time way -- with pig knuckles.
     For me all these are now staples in memory only. But grits remain a staple in fact. I am an ardent member of category four.
     We do not have a bed of roses there. We struggle  against temptation to condescend. We know we must not. The cultural deprivation of others is not necessarily their fault. Our proper role among them is ambassadorial, not missionary. We must hope that tact and patience will be effective in broadening their horizons.
     Although in Detroit it may be a tough sell.