When he isn’t busy pardoning fraudsters whose family members donate money to him, Donald Trump has the wrecking crew he assembled as a cabinet working to destroy this country.
Commercially exploiting federal land. Denying the effectiveness of vaccination in combatting disease and illness. Pissing off our traditional allies. Attempting to destroy one of the world’s most prestigious universities.
It’s like what the team the arch-villain in a superhero movie conjures. Except I don’t see any Bruce Waynes or Clark Kents in the neighborhood.
And the Democratic Party, the force best suited in this moment to fight back, is engaged in circular firing squad mode.
But Elissa Slotkin, the recently elected junior senator from Michigan, has one idea that might start to turn things around.
Slotkin suggests that the Democrats form a shadow Cabinet – a team of experts that mimics the roles of the actual team of horribles Trump assembled.
While a shadow Cabinet would have none of the enforcement power of its MAGA stooge counterpart, it would help give the Democratic Party something it needs desperately: a plan.
The “secretaries” would help to develop policies – in the same way the party develops a platform just before the quadrennial convention. Those policies would serve as alternatives to what Trump and his henchpeople are doing to America’s government and image.
For instance, with the Republicans seemingly determined to undermine Medicaid and strip it away from millions of people who need it, a shadow Health and Human Services Secretary could propose an expansion of the Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare. That would further reduce medical costs for all Americans and stand in stark contrast.
Put that out there and see what happens. There’s a chance it could force the MAGA idiots to reconsider their plan – they’ll argue it’s socialism or whatever, but they’ll feel some pressure. As opposed to now, when all they’re hearing is that what they’re doing is bad.
Come up with an alternative that someone articulate can sell – and it doesn’t look like “he said, she said” politics as usual.
That’s the thing. The Democrats have an advantage in that most of the people who speak as leaders of the party can do so in complete sentences. From Barack Obama to AOC to Pete Buttigieg to Tim Walz, the party knows how to communicate effectively.
But a shadow Cabinet should not contain people who might be running for the White House in 2028. Or, obviously Obama – unlike the Republicans, Democrats take Constitutional term limits seriously.
Not sure exactly who that is just yet. But it could be AOC, Buttigieg, maybe Walz, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t talent to make the Democrats’ case.
Politico recently gave 21 names for a Democratic shadow Cabinet. Some of them are outright silly. Ben Stein is a hardcore Republican and I’d bet money he voted for Trump; just because his character in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” bemoans tariffs doesn’t mean he’ll stand up against them in real life. He’s also 80 years old.
And Jon Stewart, while incredibly potent as an advocate for veterans, is much more effective as a nonpartisan lampooner than serving as a party spokesman.
But some of the other names are interesting.
Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, has stood up to Trump before and even won a civil fraud case against him and his company. She is a no-nonsense law enforcement advocate and – as a native Brooklynite – isn’t afraid to speak her mind.
Samantha Power knows how foreign aid makes our country safer. She headed USAID when it was giving money to fight disease and hunger around the world – something Trump and Marco Rubio, his Secretary of State, feel is too “woke.” Having her out front as a defender of America’s generosity and compassion is a visual I’d be proud to see.
However, the personalities aren’t important. As I’ve said since January 20, the Democrats can’t just be against Trump. They have to stand for something more than returning to the status quo. They need to understand that people are frustrated with the direction of the country and want their lives to be easier.
Joe Biden understood that, but his limitations made that hard to sell – he couldn’t go to a lot of college campuses or big stadium rallies the way Barack Obama could. The Democrats need a plan of action and a bunch of articulate leaders of all varieties to go out and spell out a better future – and then watch Trump stew as those plans catch fire with the public.
It’ll take some work. But it’ll be worth it. Often bad things lurk in shadows, but they provide shade from a burning sun. And right now, the America we love is getting scorched – a little Democratic shadowing could help.
Naphtali Daggett took over as president pro tempore of Yale University in 1766. He succeeded Thomas Clap, who seemed to piss off everybody in New Haven and the colony of Connecticut.
Daggett never held the full-time title of president when he resigned in 1777, but he remained part of the Yale community. So when the British attacked New Haven in 1779, the 52-year-old divinity professor took on a new title: sniper. He picked off Redcoats until his capture.
The British felt no need to defer to Daggett. They forced him on a long march to West Haven, bayoneting him along the way.
Daggett never recovered, dying in 1780. His son, Ebenezer died a year later after contracting smallpox fighting in Virginia.
—
Everybody remembers the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 because a lawyer, Francis Scott Key, wrote lyrics to a song about it.
But Frederick Hall spent the night of September 10, 1814 in a ditch surrounding the fort, tasked with preventing the British from getting through. Although his fellow soldiers knew him by a different name – William Williams (apparently, that old New York DJ wasn’t the first to claim that name).
There was a good reason for the identity change. Earlier in the year, Hall ran away from the plantation where he was born and enslaved. Even though the British promised freedom to slaves who helped them, Hall signed up to defend Baltimore.
Hall/Williams endured the 25-hour bombardment. He and the 38th Infantry watched the rockets’ red glare probably in terror – an unidentified woman helping out was torn in half by one of the projectiles.
What Hall/Williams couldn’t survive was tuberculosis. He died of it in March 1815, one of four American fatalities in the battle that gave us the National Anthem.
—
William Watson had it going. In his late 30s, he was the speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, one of two bodies in the state legislature.
He also had a military bent and was a captain in the state’s 5th Regiment.
When the Mexican-American War broke out, the governor promoted Watson to lieutenant colonel and sent him south to join Gen. Zachary Taylor. From Texas, the army marched to Monterrey, Mexico.
It was there that Watson and the regiment fought house to house. First, his horse was shot out from under him. Then he got hit.
Fifty-seven years later, a monument to Watson and those who fought in Mexico was dedicated near a park in Baltimore. The ceremony was led by Watson’s daughter, born the day he died.
—
Thanks to the movie “Glory,” the heroism of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry is known to millions.
One of the real soldiers who took part in the siege of Fort Wagner in South Carolina was James Henry Gooding. He was born a slave in 1838, but someone – most likely his father – purchased his freedom as a child. He eventually became a whaler, working out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married in early 1863.
He didn’t spend much time with his wife. Just before the wedding, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation – and Gooding enlisted a month later.
Gooding actually survived Fort Wagner – as we saw in “Glory,” much of the 54th Massachusetts didn’t. But in early 1864, he was wounded in the thigh in Olustee, Florida, and captured by the Confederates. He died in the notorious Andersonville, Georgia, prison that summer and is buried there.
His war letters – including one to Lincoln demanding that soldiers receive equal pay regardless of race – were published more than a century later.
—
Newell Rising sounds like one of those young men who has trouble figuring it all out.
At age 27, after working as a mold maker in an iron works and a clerk for an insurance agency, Rising went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1896 and enlisted.
He was first assigned to the U.S.S. Vermont, but soon moved to the U.S.S. Maine. His job was coal passer, lifting 140-pound buckets of coal to the firemen keeping the ship running. He also had to clean coal dust from strainers and other not-particularly-pleasant-sounding tasks.
Rising was aboard the Maine on February 12, 1898 when it suffered an explosion while on a tense mission in Havana, as the United States and Spain faced off over Cuba.
In all likelihood, the coal was responsible for the blast. But William Randolph Hearst preferred a different theory – that the Spanish set it off. Thus began the Spanish-American War, which led to the U.S. gaining territory in Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Newell Rising’s body was never identified. What’s presumed to be his remains – and those of 228 other sailors and marines – are buried at the Maine Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. There’s also a marker commemorating Rising at Summerfield Park in his hometown of Port Chester, New York.
—
The New York Yankees finished in seventh place in the American League in 1914.
One of the team’s players that year was Tom Burr – but that’s kind of stretching it. Burr was put in as a defensive replacement against the Washington Nationals on April 21. He played one inning in center field.
That is the sum total of his MLB career. He didn’t get to bat, a la Moonlight Graham in “Field of Dreams.”
Barr went back to college at Williams, then found his way to France when World War I broke out. After serving as an ambulance driver, he signed up for the aviation corps.
Exactly 30 days before the war ended, Burr was flying over France when his plane collided with another aircraft. His body was recovered 12 days later.
Burr was one of eight major leaguers killed in what was once called the Great War.
—
Joseph Takata worked as a clerk for Castle & Cooke, the conglomerate that developed Hawaii beginning in the 19th century.
Less than a month before Pearl Harbor, the Nisei – second-generation Japanese – man was inducted into the military and assigned close to his Honolulu home. He got married in the spring of ’42 as he began his tour throughout the world.
That tour took him to Italy, of all places. He was part of the 100th Infantry Battalion – an all-Nisei unit, some of whose soldiers had family members in relocation camps because they were Japanese in origin.
The 100th – and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team – got stuck with the brutal task of freeing Italy from fascism. On September 29, 1943, at Salerno, Takata was killed in combat – the first, but far from the last, Nisei to give his life for a country that didn’t respect him.
He was not forgotten. Every year, a ceremony is held in September at the National Memorial Ceremony of the Pacific at Punchbowl to honor Takata and his comrades.
—
Despite being born in Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern University, Thomas Baldwin Jr. chose to attend Cornell, where he studied architectural engineering. It was the family legacy – his father worked as an architect for the Crane Co.
Baldwin was 25 years old when his was called to active duty as the Korean War broke out.
About six months later, Baldwin was wounded as American-led U.N. forces faced down the last major offensive mounted by the North Koreans and their Chinese allies. It either wasn’t that serious an injury or he just talked his way back to his unit.
In any event, a few days after returning, Baldwin was killed on what now would be North Korean territory.
He was buried in Maryland. His parents, who outlived him by more than 20 years, are buried there with him.
—
Yesterday would have been Paul F. Doyon’s 77th birthday. Unfortunately, last Sunday was the 55th anniversary of his death.
Doyon was a lance corporal in the U.S. Marines. He was from Ipswich, in the northeast corner of Massachusetts.
On May 21, 1967, Doyon’s company in the Third Marine Amphibious Force was in action in Quang Tri province in South Vietnam. He would have been 19 three days later.
Doyon was the first resident of Ipswich killed in Vietnam. To honor him, the community voted to name its relatively new elementary school after him – it wasn’t the one he would have attended when he was of age. The vote was 99-98, which says a little something about the frictions the Vietnam War created throughout America.
It is still Paul F. Doyon Elementary School. There’s a picture of him in the lobby
—
Meredeth Holland would be about my age right now.
She grew up around Corpus Christi, Texas, with a love of the sea. She studied marine resource management at Texas A&M, but found that going out on survey expeditions made her seasick.
So Holland did the logical thing. She became a firefighter, then got involved in investigating fires for insurers, moving to the San Francisco Bay area.
She also enlisted in the Army Reserve at the age of 34. She got into the military for the benefits, fearing that she might otherwise grow old and live on the streets.
Holland married Hugh Hvolboll in December 2005, just after she learned that her unit was being deployed to Afghanistan. They had known each other for years, but thought it important to get hitched before she went into danger.
Her job in Afghanistan wasn’t supposed to involve combat. She was part of a campaign to help educate kids – especially girls – gifting backpacks to them.
But on September 8, 2006, Holland was the gunner on a humvee rolling through downtown Kabul. A suicide bomber smashed his car into the military vehicle, killing Holland. At 52, she was the oldest female fatality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is no final resting place for Meredith Holland – unless you count the water near her two hometowns. Her husband ran a fireworks company. Some of her ashes went up in a fireworks display over Corpus Christi, the rest in one over San Francisco Bay on what would have been the couple’s first anniversary.
—
Memorial Day has become big parades and civil ceremonies. Placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington. Furniture sales and baseball teams wearing camo outfits.
We know that thousands of Americans have lost their lives in our 249-year history.
But what’s also been lost is the idea that these people weren’t just Risk board pieces. Or easily wrapped into one giant flag.
They were people with lives and loves. Dreams of careers and even careers themselves. Families sometimes. Troubled and privileged pasts. Ex-slaves.
They were individuals. And they gave up that individuality for the idea that this country, for all its faults, is a land of promise. They didn’t revel in victory – the notion of victory in war as if it’s a sporting event is disgusting, in case Trump or one of his moronic adherents reads this.
They just served their country because it was what they thought they were supposed to do.
When you get to Monday, try to think not of the collective sacrifice but the individual ones. The lives interrupted and the courage it takes to endure that. The loved ones missing someone so badly it hurts.
I feel privileged to have gotten to know the stories of the ten people above. May their memories be a blessing.
The United States is co-hosting the 2025 Men’s World Cup soccer championship,, beginning next month, along with Canada and Mexico.
I’m not a soccer fan. I don’t care what the world thinks and I don’t care how funny “Ted Lasso” is. It’s a boring sport. My father categorized a sport he didn’t like as an “eye test.” That works for me.
There was one thing I did like about the World Cup being in the United States — was that a world of people with a low threshold of excitement were going to fly to New York, Los Angeles and Boston – among other places. They were going to spend money in our hotels, eat at our restaurants, buy tchotchkes from people on street corners, maybe go to the theater or see live music.
It was going to be great getting easily entertained people to part with their euros, pesos, yen, won or whatever.
Not any more.
Americans somehow chose Donald Trump as president. The rest of the world didn’t. And as much as they enjoy seeing guys wearing their nations’ colors running around kicking a ball and occasionally putting it in a net, the people of the world aren’t looking for the hassle the Trump troupe seems hellbent on inflicting.
This was expressed most clearly last week by the dolt who is vice president, J.D. Vance.
“Of course everyone is welcome to come and see this wonderful event,” Vance said. “We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games.”
There’s always a but with these people.
“But when the time is up we want them to go home,” he added, warning them not to overstay their visas.
Successful tourism makes you feel welcome. My family went to London last summer and I felt welcomed and appreciated by everyone I encountered. Their patience with a dense old American was exemplary.
Contrast that with what we’re telling people coming to this country in 2025. Sure you can show up for your sports event, but then get the hell out of here.
As if anything we’re doing is encouraging people to stay.
The fact is that the U.S. was poised to benefit from a strengthening world economy. New York City, perhaps the No. 1 destination for international tourists, was expecting a surge in visitors – an especially welcome development for a city whose theater industry generates significant revenue.
Now, forget it. The wacko rhetoric of Trump and his henchmen. The videos of people suspected – not convicted, mind you – of being in this country without documentation being ambushed by ICE and police collaborators.
That’s not what people traveling want. They can watch the World Cup from a pub in their home country and not worry about abduction, harassment or just plain stupidity.
It’s a shame. We have a fantastic country that we should share with the world. We have spectacular national parks, theme parks that are the envy of all, magnificent art and architecture.
None of this is of value to Trump or the rest of the Republican idiots. They think what makes America great is a perverted value of strength.’
In the process, American tourism will lose billions of dollars from people who are too afraid or too angry to put up with the nonsense we’ve been dealing with since January 20.
Trump will revel in the World Cup when it begins on June 11. He’ll show up at some stadium, probably one in a place where he’s not wildly unpopular – Dallas or Miami. And he’ll sit in some luxury box and wave majestically before he leaves at the 45-minute intermission.
We’ll have to deal with this crap again in 2028, when the Olympics come to Los Angeles. Unless the situation in this country is so bad that it would be a colossal mistake to hold the games here.
For some reason, that doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
My biggest worry when I was 18 is no American’s biggest worry in 2025.
It was the draft. The Vietnam War was on – and I was one of my many peers who thought Vietnam was a stupid, evil idea.
And not just because being drafted to go to Vietnam would screw up my life plans. The idea of dying in a war about as far away from New York as possible, for no reason that I thought worthwhile, was about as pathetic a thing as I could imagine.
The draft was abolished just in time for me to miss it. I actually went through the lottery in 1973 and came up with 89 – out of 365. Those odds wouldn’t have been good.
So I never served in the all-volunteer U.S. military.
Over the years, I’ve grown to respect and admire the men and women who serve because they believe it is what Americans are supposed to do. That was wrong in Vietnam and Iraq, as history has proven. But it reflects a love of country that seems honorable from here in 2025.
The idea of doing something for your country before you begin a lifelong career seems to be lost on most young Americans. It was tarnished by the Vietnam experience; many of the parents and grandparents of today’s teenagers are adamant that their kids not serve in the military, especially involuntarily.
But what if the draft wasn’t only for the military.
What if all Americans, by the time they turn 23, were required to perform some sort of national service. It could be in the military – there are millions of people who are inclined to serve that way.
But it could also be for purposes that don’t require guns. National service could be used as a conservation corps to maintain national parks. It could be used to help convert commercial buildings into affordable housing. It could be a way to teach underserved kids to read, to feed senior citizens and veterans.
It would be almost an extra education year that would come with some sort of renumeration.
Why is this a good idea?
Three reasons.
First, it would put the energy and imagination of our nation’s young people toward solving problems that just never seem to go away.
Young adults would not do dangerous jobs. They would get some leeway in choosing the service they perform, much as those who sign up for the military now pick the branch of service they want.
In the process, they would challenge the way we do things and improve on them. They would be a force for the change they want to see in the world, taking responsibility for it in a way that getting a job out of school wouldn’t.
Secondly, it would give different things to different people.
For those coming from underprivileged backgrounds, a national service requirement would provide training and guidance that they’re not getting in school. It would give them an opportunity to find something on which to build a career.
As for the privileged, working a year in public service would show them how the things they do affect society on an interpersonal level. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, among others, often don’t understand how their decisions play with the people of a community. This would be a chance to see it at ground level.
When the draft existed, it was easy to duck if you had the resources. Example No. 1 is the current occupant of the Oval Office, who despite attending military school managed to get out of induction because of supposed bone spurs in his feet. (This is a man who his doctor currently describes as 6’4″ and 224 pounds, so his medical history might be questionable.)
This draft would not be duckable. If you have bone spurs, you can still work as a clerk in a food distribution warehouse. You can help sort stuff cleaned off a beach.
Finally, a national service requirement would provide something that’s been missing from the United States for a long time.
A sense of empathy for the other people in our country.
There’s this nonsense that stratifies the coasts from the interior, recent immigrants from people whose families came here generations ago, blue states from red states.
A national service requirement would force young people to interact with other young people from around the nation. New Yorkers have no concept what rural Wisconsin is like – Wisconsin farmers have all kinds of Fox News-induced ideas about the terrors of Manhattan.
In World War II, getting to know fellow Americans worked to create the most powerful fighting force in history – one that defeated fascism around the world. And that was with the kind of discriminatory laws that prevented everyone from taking part.
A national service requirement might help stop the nonsense that we’ve seen in this country this year.
It’s probably never going to happen. But it’s an idea worth considering.
The Republican who represents my Congressional district held a town hall meeting this week.
Perhaps even more than other districts, this is a swing. Mike Lawler, with the help of more than a million dollars of Elon Musk’s money, held on to the seat he first won in the GOP sweep of 2022.
So the nearly half of voters who didn’t vote for him – and even a percentage of those who did – were pretty damn pissed about what’s gone down since January 20.
How pissed?
Here’s the first few paragraphs of Nicholas Fandos’ account in The New York Times:
No one was expecting a love fest when Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, faced constituents in his suburban swing district on Sunday night. Still, even he seemed surprised by the night’s first clash — over the Pledge of Allegiance.
“Please tell me you’re not objecting to the Pledge of Allegiance,” Mr. Lawler asked incredulously after some members of the audience inside a high school auditorium audibly groaned when he suggested reciting it.
They acquiesced, and several hundred attendees labored to their feet to say the pledge, but not without indicating why they believed its words had come to ring hollow.
I didn’t attend the meeting at one of the high schools in my school district. I expected my more boisterous neighbors to show up and say pretty much what I would have said about the disaster that is the 47th Presidency of the United States.
But I would not have “labored to my feet” for the Pledge of Allegiance. Because I think you can find the core of what’s wrong with the United States right now in it.
Most of the countries that have traditionally been our allies – Britain, Canada, France, Italy and so on – don’t have a pledge. Their kids don’t start their day trying to say a word similar to “indivisible;” whoever wrote the Pledge – and its authorship is disputed – was not thinking clearly about the hearing and enunciation of elementary school kids.
That wouldn’t be a problem. We’re not those countries – as Archie Bunker said, “We threw the British out of here.” – and so there’s no need to follow their example.
The problem with the Pledge of Allegiance is that it’s only secondary to “the republic.” Its primary focus – and this goes for the National Anthem, too – is the flag.
The first thing is the flag. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.”
The flag. Not the Constitution. Not the laws of our land. Not to the now 340 million of us who actually make up this country, who get kissed off at the end with the words “with liberty and justice for all.”
No. A rectangular cloth of nylon, polyester or cotton – is the thing to which we pledge our allegiance. The material would have been used as a windbreaker or a tablecloth or the flag of Vanuatu. But because it has a pattern of stripes and stars that meet general approval, it deserves our allegiance?
That seems like a lot. And I think the problem is that too many Americans – particularly the ones who support the current president – confuse the flag with what it’s supposed to stand for.
They think its existence is the height of patriotism. They actually say that – every year, some group runs with a flag from West Point to somewhere else before Memorial Day. The promotion of it in our town calls it the most patriotic thing.
It’s the Shroud of Turin of the American experience.
And lost in all this is how we think about each other.
We are supposed to be a nation of laws. We have this great Constitution – if you’ve been reading this blog recently, you’ve joined me in a full reading. And it’s being trampled by Trump and his henchmen because they worship the flag, not the principles that are supposed to guide American democracy.
Hell, they used the flag as a weapon on January 6, 2021. Watch the videos of these MAGA maroons assaulting Capitol Police officers with sharpened flagpoles. They pledged allegiance to the flag – and then betrayed the country it represents.
And then there’s the variations designed to intimidate people they don’t like. The black stars and stripes with the blue stripe in the middle that says I support police, even when they’re beating up people for no reason. The “Blue Lives Matter” answer to “Black Lives Matter.”
It’s not just the pledge – our national anthem is the freaking “Star-Spangled Banner,” about a flag that’s still flying after the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. No one remembers much about the battle, like how many Americans were killed or how they managed to hold off the British who had just stomped through Washington.
Instead, what they remember is some lyrics a lawyer wrote to a British drinking song about the flag still being there.
No other civilized nation I can think of is as hung up on the flag as the United States.
Various groups have established all these rules on how the flag should be presented. You can’t wear it. God forbid it falls into a puddle or, shudder, touches the ground. You have to burn a flag if it’s worn out, but if you burn it in protest, woe is you.
The things that are sacred to me about the United States of America are the things to which I’ll pledge allegiance.
The rule of law.
Civility. Conducting myself as a responsible citizen.
Kindness.
Appreciation of just how beautiful this land is. Shepherding the land so that fellow Americans appreciate the same things 1,000 years from now.
Honoring those who have served our nation. Not just the military, although it should be held in reverence, but those who have labored to make our states, our cities and our neighborhoods safer and stronger. That includes teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, and so many others that their omission is going to piss off people. (Sorry!)
And celebration of the people who live in my country. No matter what they look like or who they love or where their families started their American journey.
When the flag is the point, people aren’t. And that leads to the kind of detachment so many Americans seem to have. We’re a nation of indignation because we’ve lost respect for our own people. America isn’t the flag – it’s the people and the laws that protect them.
That’s to whom we should pledge our allegiance.
We did, once.
In 1776, our representatives meeting in Philadelphia approved a document written by a Virginia farmer. It ends this way: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
We should be willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor mutually – in support of one another – as Americans. Not a flag.
But recently, I’ve had a lot of thoughts about a performance of the National Anthem I saw.
It was before the start of a Mets game at Citi Field in New York. The day was chilly – the temperature never rose above 47 degrees. At least it was sunny – I sat close to the field and the sun beating down helped keep things comfortable.
On an aesthetic level, I’ve never been a big fan of “The Star Spangled Banner.” My argument boils down to this – the nation that produced George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Carole King and Stevie Wonder should not be represented by a Maryland lawyer’s poem sung to the tune of a British drinking song.
The song is hard to sing. It’s a so-so message. And, in the dumb way the United States seems to think of patriotism, it’s about a flag.
(Getting hung up on the flag is also the problem with the Pledge Of Allegiance. That’s a topic for another time.)
Another issue is that the government of the United States has not inspired any fervent love since, oh, noon ET on January 20. The inanity of Trumpism clouds every decent day and exacerbates the lousy ones.
This was particularly true when this anthem was performed. It was five days after the Mets’ home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays, the only Major League Baseball team that makes its home outside this country.
Until 2025, no one gave much thought to the rendition of “O Canada” when a Canadian team showed up in a U.S. stadium. But then Trump, not content with taking a dump on the rest of the world, decided to pick on the best neighbor any country has ever had.
That led to the boos from about a tenth of the crowd. Forget that some young woman is performing before 40,000 people and hearing disdain from about 4,000 people. She’s doing her best, but, yeah, boo anyway.
I wasn’t shocked by this. But I was not going to follow that wretched display by singing “The Star Spangled Banner” with these slugs.
So I found what I thought was appropriate- bowing my head as if this were a moment of silence, in memory of what we as Americans have lost because of this stupidity. (It also made me respect, all the more, what Colin Kaepernick did by kneeling – had I stronger knees, I might have thought about it.)
Fast forward five days. It’s only going to be the U.S. anthem at the game on the cold day because the Mets were playing Miami. I get up, remove my hat and bow my head.
And then I hear the anthem.
It was performed by a chorus of students from the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music. It is one of the special high schools in the New York City public school system – you need to go through an audition process to get in.
And, for the few who don’t know, it’s named for one of the most influential Latin musicians in U.S. history. She left Cuba shortly after the revolution and made great music with another renowned Hispanic artist, Tito Puente. Her influence was such that, if you look in your loose change, you might have the quarter with her image that came out last year.
The chorus performed a capella. You had to think about that, because the harmonies created were so lush that they seemed like an orchestra.
What was striking was that these students – from all over New York City and most, but not all of them, kids of color – were putting incredible passion into this rendition. Maybe it was because they wanted to impress thousands of people hearing them.
But that kind of performance requires more than showing off your musical chops. It was as if they believed they were honoring their home with the magic of their combination. There was commitment to their vocalizing.
When the National Anthem is performed at a baseball game, it’s pretty pro forma. As the singer finally gets to the last lines – “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave…” – the crowd usually starts cheering, almost as if to rush things along and get the game started.
Not this time. The crowd didn’t want to miss the end. They didn’t start cheering until the chorus was finished. And it erupted. It was as if we heard this song that we’d heard more times than we can count for the first time ever.
I wasn’t expecting to be stirred by a song I don’t like. But I was – and I’ll tell you why.
Those kids aren’t what Trump and the livestock that support him have in mind about making America great again. And I’m sure the worst of them – Trump included – would never appreciate the care and devotion the Celia Cruz chorus put into the song. They would prefer you stand there listening to some band go through the motions.
But the students are what truly makes America great. Their backgrounds are varied and fascinating. When they came together that chilly afternoon, they made a sound that haunted and inspired.
I will still bow my head for “The Star Spangled Banner” in sadness until this idiocy ends or it destroys me, whichever comes first. But as long as I can, I will fight for a country that includes and celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion – and understands that a mosaic is a far more interesting and wondrous work of art than a whitewash.
And, if Taylor Swift or Beyoncé can write a better anthem, please go at it.
The United States of America is the latest in world history’s chain of empires.
Since the end of World War II, the only challenge to America’s position as the world’s most powerful nation came from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And because the U.S.S.R. was basically the Russians domineering a lot of neighboring nations that really didn’t like them very much, and we basically held our ground, the threat didn’t last.
Imperialism is a tough job. What you want is a world that’s generally at peace. With stable, sustained economic growth.
That was what the Romans meant by their Pax Romana, a nearly 200-year period when their control was mostly unchallenged. It wasn’t really that – it was during that time that a cult formed a Jewish carpenter would upend the whole thing.
But you and I have – probably without thinking much about it – lived through Pax Americana. The world has revolved around us. American music, American film and television, American technology, American food and American ideals can be found just about everywhere.
And, of course, America’s economy is the world’s benchmark. The dollar is practically a universal currency, with the majority of transactions being conducted through it.
In part, the world has been stabilized by American force. We invented the atomic bomb – we actually used it. And we have more than a few of them, all of them way more powerful than the weapons that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This may sound bad – and there are lots of people in other countries who don’t particularly like us.
But empire has its privileges. Even for those of us on the Bernie Sanders-AOC side of the political spectrum. Having the world run by the dollar makes our goods cheaper, and easier to buy and sell. It gives consumers the confidence to shop for stuff.
So you have to wonder why Trump and his economic wizards thought it was such a good idea to throw that all away.
Not just because he decided to launch a trade war against almost every being on the planet, from the more than a billion people of China to the penguins on Heard and McDonald Islands in the South Pacific.
It was also the stupid bluster. Threatening Canada and Denmark, worry-free allies that didn’t do a blessed thing to deserve that. Talking tough to Europe and cozying to Russia, the world’s outcast nation for good reason.
And it’s the way he’s gone after people not born white and in a red state. Tourism is sharply lower because who the hell wants to come to a place where they hold or cart off people the administration doesn’t like. When you act like Russia and North Korea, you don’t get respect. You get contempt.
Trump has forced the world to reexamine the order that gave the United States so much control over things.
In a research report this month, Goldman Sachs – not exactly the wobbly left – warns of the world decreasing its reliance on us. Consumers throughout the world are making the decision to not buy things tied to us. Governments are looking into ways to negotiate high finance without the steadiest currency the world has ever known.
That could lead to a decrease in our standard of living. Inflation, unemployment, isolation.
We’ve walked the world as Americans, loud and proud. Trump is in the process of reducing us to what conservatives in the 1970s feared – a pitiful, helpless giant.
In the late 1700s, more than 1300 years after the fall of Rome, British historian Edward Gibbon wrote his masterwork, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” While believing Rome’s embrace of Christianity contributed to its fall, he thought it came about more through decadence – Rome got too rich and complacent.
Someday, if the human race makes it to the 3300s, somebody will look back at what the Americans did to quash their command of the planet. The answer wlll be that Americans got too filled with self-interest and self-pity to care what anyone thought. They thought they go it alone in a world that thrives only when it’s cooperative.
The American Empire didn’t shoot itself in the foot. It gave the gun to a huckster, and he shot the foot.
I lucked into a daughter whose love of theater surpasses my own.
In fact, she’s written plays that were staged or read, and – BRAG ALERT – they’re really good.
What my daughter doesn’t write is news copy. That’s what I used to do – for much of a 40-year career.
I’m glad she loves writing. I’m also glad she’s not in the profession that helped pay for the education that led her to writing plays and TV scripts.
The reason this thought came up this week is that my daughter took me to see the Broadway production of “Good Night, and Good Luck.” It stars George Clooney, who directed the film from which the play is derived. In the play, he portrays broadcast journalism legend Edward R. Murrow after playing Murrow’s producer, Fred Friendly, in the film.
In case you haven’t seen it, or forgot, “Good Night, and Good Luck.” highlights Murrow’s CBS broadcasts on Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose crusade against people he perceived as Communists led to an atmosphere of fear in the 1950s. It captured – and was focused – on the fear of the era, educating another generation about a dark period in American history.
The movie is excellent and I recommend it if you can find it on a streaming service or old DVD.
But I thought the play underscored a great point in a way the movie didn’t.
The play, much more that the film, takes place in the CBS “See It Now” newsroom. It depicts what’s great about journalism – the collaboration among colleagues, the rush of tracking down a hot story, the matching of wits with really smart people.
Murrow and his crew were disgusted by McCarthy’s intimidating and smearing. The parallels to 2025 America are obvious to anyone who checked their news alerts at the theater before turning off their phones.
But the play also highlighted the nature of the business known as broadcast journalism.
TV stations and networks have big newsrooms. They produce some incredible work – few newspaper pieces can match the power of a well-produced piece on a “See It Now” or its offspring, “60 Minutes,” not to mention some of the great PBS documentary series such as “Frontline.”
But big newsrooms are expensive. And, as many of the scenes in the play highlight, they don’t exactly bring in big numbers – news only gets ratings when it’s catastrophic, like the September 11 attacks. People even turn off Election Night coverage to watch old movies
There are scenes throughout the play when CBS’ chairman, William Paley, reminds Murrow that it’s the sponsors who pay his and his co-workers’ salaries. Murrow and Friendly even have to pay the costs of their McCarthy broadcasts because sponsors won’t.
I’ve seen the respect for broadcast journalism go from awe to awful. When I was young, there were icons on the air – Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Daniel Schorr, Judy Woodruff. Barbara Walters was an outstanding interviewer, pressing for a point when a politician kept trying to dodge it.
People trusted and admired these men and women. They accepted that what they reported was as factual as it could possibly be.
Time, unfortunately has eroded that trust in two ways.
One is the quality of what we call news. Too much of what passes for news in the 21st century would have been scoffed at when I was young. Somebody setting a record on “Jeopardy!” A male celebrity’s stupid remark. A female celebrity’s apparel choice.
On TV, local newscasts forsake important issues in their community if they have video of somebody being rescued from a river in Thailand. The only stories that seem to take place in their market are easily filmable crime scenes and suspects, often the exceptions to the statistics that show crime decreasing in a city.
Celebrity and sensational stuff have been increasingly infringing on news. Even Murrow, the patron saint of broadcast journalism, did interviews with people like Liberace and Zsa Zsa Gabor to satisfy CBS’ ratings cravings.
The other problem has come up a lot more in the past 30 years, since the creation of Fox News by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch: Calling propaganda “news” and blaring it 24 hours a day.
It plays on people’s fears and addiction to personalities. And it makes crises out of nothing – think famously of Barack Obama wearing a tan suit or Joe Biden eating an ice cream cone. It trumpets clowns like Donald Trump – unless he accidentally does something that hurts Fox’s bottom line – and promotes morally bankrupt ineptitudes like Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity as “newsmen.”
In the play’s final monologue, Murrow – speaking to some unnamed awards dinner – muses that television should inform as much as it should entertain. That primetime should be used not just to show westerns and comedies, but also discussions of domestic problems and foreign policy.
The problem is that it’s unlikely you’d get even 1% of the audience for “Tracker” or “Chicago Fire” for those kinds of discussions. The most popular news show, “60 Minutes,” is a notable and laudable exception, but it is more about hot-button issues than in-depth discussion of matters that matter.
As a result, we’re not as smart as we should be. We’re susceptible to demagogues and liars.
I went into journalism as my way of informing a world I wanted to improve. I thought the truth, whether it fit with what I believed or not, was the most important thing – that’s what I told the Northwestern professor who interviewed me in 1971. He warned me that, while my thinking was admirable, the truth was not as rock solid as I thought.
As “Good Night, and Good Luck.” reminded me, I love journalism. I love what it accomplishes when it’s good. There are still colleagues of mine doing incredible work – and I’m so proud I know them.
But I’m happy my daughter is a playwright and screen writer. Because I think that, in 2025, she’ll help people find the truth about the world a lot more efficiently than if she worked in a newsroom.
This isn’t Edward R. Murrow’s America any more. We’re all the worst for that – and the path back from that is hard to see.
As of the moment this gets posted, I am 71 years old.
I can’t comprehend being 71. I remember being 17. It doesn’t seem that long ago.
Being 71 is something I never imagined. When I was pining for some young woman, when I got bored in a Sociology class, when I played second base in my town’s youth baseball league, I couldn’t foresee the world where I am now looking back on all those things and more.
There are lots of things not good about being 71. I go back to knee rehab Monday. My diabetes prevents me from scarfing a genuine toasted sesame bagel with a schmear of olive pimento cream cheese. I’ve seen Trump get elected president – not once, but twice, once after he tried to stage a coup after he lost,
But there are pluses. There are descriptions I can apply to myself that I would have had a difficult time justifying in my youth. I call them entitlements because I feel as though I’Ve earned them.
CURMUDGEON
I’ve aspired to curmudgeondom ever since I started working as a wire service writer.
One of my mentors was Charles J. Morey. He was a phenomenal broadcast sports writer for the Associated Press. He was nearing retirement age when I was hired in 1977.
His talent – writing simple, clear, declarative sentences that someone could read on the radio with ease. That he was able to string them together with wit and charm made him great.
But Charlie seems very forbidding when I met him at age 22. I’d get to work at 4 and he would sitting at his desk, arms crossed, waiting for his replacement. He was perpetually cranky and full of invective, particularly about the management of the organization.
He was never, ever afraid to express his views out loud.
My managers told me that I should try to be as good as writer as he was. But they also said you don’t want to share his personality.
They got it wrong.
I loved the idea of being this inscrutable old man who passes down proclamations as if residing on Mount Olympus. And I loved the idea of making people think twice before bringing up a stupid idea.
I’d like to think that, with the passing of time, I’ve ascended to Mount Curmudgeon. And once my time among the mortals is past, Charlie is waiting for me with an Irish whiskey, arms crossed in the corner of a room, with my empty chair next to him.
CUT-RATE
A year before I turned 65, I went into New York to have a drink with a former colleague. On the way down, I stopped at the New-York (the hyphen isn’t a typo) Historical Society. If I waited a year, it would have cost me $10 less.
I revel in senior discounts. I pay half-price for the subway and commuter rail. I pay lower prices to get into museums. I bought a Senior Pass for National Parks just before Trump screwed them up and didn’t pay to visit Joshua Tree, Haleakala and Sagamore Hill. I get 10% off every time I go to the local supermarket.
It might seem silly to those of you paying the full price for everything. But it’s a small pleasure that makes me thing I’ve got something that those of you who aren’t 65 or 71 don’t.
Of course, there is one drawback: I don’t ever get questioned about whether I’m entitled to a senior discount.
I’m reminded of the time my 72-year-old grandmother visited my parents, taking a bus from Queens to the North Shore of Long Island. She was indignant. She hadn’t said anything, but the driver charged her the senior fare.
“How did he know I qualified for it?,” she scowled, believing that it was hard to look at her and know she was 72.
I don’t get carded, either. That must mean I look every bit of my 71 years.
Great.
CONSEQUENCE
When I was young, I wanted to be famous. I originally sought a career as a TV reporter, thinking the fame I’d attain would garner respect I didn’t get a lot of as a heavy kid in the suburbs.
That didn’t happen.
Would it have been cool to be a household name? I’m not sure. I have friends and family who have attained measurable success – I can find them on Wikipedia – and they seem happy and grounded. Some sought the limelight, some didn’t.
But sometimes I wonder if fame is an opiate. People can’t handle the pressure or the adoration. They turn to ways to numb the feeling – alcohol, drugs, abusive behavior, infidelity, violence.
So I haven’t attained celebrity. And I don’t feel as though as I’m missing anything.
Because I believe I’ve attained consequence instead.
Consequence is contributing to your world. It’s having people seek your advice and respect your opinion. It’s gaining from the experience and wisdom of others. It’s sharing a honest laugh with a few good friends and your family.
It’s helping to bring two great kids – the most fun people I know – into the world and sharing their triumphs and occasional setbacks. It’s spending my days with someone I love who seeks my counsel as she wrestles with her own efforts at making a mark.
I couldn’t imagine consequence when I ambled home from high school or drove from my summer job at a tire store. But I also couldn’t imagine cellphones, streaming TV and air fryers, either.
I’ll take it. And, betraying my curmudgeon aspirations, gladly.
My son took an improvisational comedy class this winter – and his class show was last Sunday.
It was a good hour of solid laughter as he and his fellow quick-thinkers responded to the moment with some hilarious ideas.
As his class instructor said at the conclusion, that was the only time that show will ever be seen quite that way. The next time, it will be somewhat different, funnier or maybe not.
Improvisation is a great form of comedy.
It’s a lousy strategy for fighting would-be dictators.
Right now, Democrats are wisely capitalizing on the nonchalance of Trump’s national security team, which accidentally gave a journalist access to deliberations on this month’s strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
No one claims to know how Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was included in what should have been a top-secret chat on the messaging service Signal.
In the process, Trump and his Trumpettes have blamed Goldberg, called it an accident, told two versions of what they knew about the situation, blamed AOC, asked if it might have been a nefarious plot by Signal workers, said the dog did it, blamed Joe Biden and anything else you can think of. Not all of that is real, but given how these people are, you might be tempted to think it’s possible they used all those alibis.
Here’s the thing: I would be surprised if anyone loses their job because of this. Even Party Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary and White Lotus wannabe.
Accidentally broadcasting American military operations and putting the lives of brave men and women at risk is only a mild stretch from sexual predation, persecution, family destruction, illegal deportation, violations of free speech and 34 felony counts of fraud.
And if, by some stroke of unusual competence in Team Trump, somebody does get canned, what does that mean for the quality and integrity of the U.S. executive branch?
Bupkis.
It doesn’t matter if Pete Hegseth or Peat Moss holds the title of Defense Secretary, even if they have the same level of intelligence.
See, the thing is, Trump and the Republicans aren’t improvising. They’re working from a script. And they will stick to the script no matter who the actors are.
Their script is to weaken and decimate the federal government. And nothing – not even a scandal involving the basic idea that YOU DON’T TELL EVERYONE YOUR SECRET MILITARY PLANS – will cause them to ad lib.
They told you what they were going to do when they put out their Project 2025 playbook. And even when Trump went around denying he knew anything about a plan he almost certainly approved, did you ever believe the Republicans wouldn’t abide by it?
And that brings me to the Democrats.
We are good at getting mad. Reacting in the moment to some injustice or wrongdoing. Our lawmakers ask the piercing questions at committee hearings. We create clever memes and social media posts.
What Democrats don’t do is plan.
It’s almost as if they expect would-be voters to trust that they’ll find some way to attain the ideals they proclaim. But they don’t have a blueprint to get to that point.
And people like blueprints. They like specifics. They like benchmarks to gauge progress and ideas.
Democrats are afraid of ideas. They’re afraid people will shoot them down.
Try them. Instead of saying we think education needs to be reformed, ask people what they want for their kids and then work with them to attain those goals. Instead of saying we need to take care of our elderly, ask seniors and their caregivers what’s needed and figure out how we get to that point.
If people are angry about their healthcare options, see what’s troubling your constituents and then work toward it.
Trying to fight the drive toward Project 2025 won’t come ad hoc. It is, to be sure, extremely unpopular – it polled so badly that Trump and the others denied it existed even though it was in print and online for all to see. Once they won, they just went back to the plan as if it was a mandate.
The advantage Democrats will have if they develop an action agenda in consultation with the people showing up at town halls is that people will support it. Make it a genuine grassroots idea, and they’ll back you to the hilt.
It’s well and good to improvise a reaction to a security scandal or whatever Trump’s next A.S.S. (Act of Shame and Stupidity) is. But you can’t wing your way to win the hearts of your fellow Americans.
SUBJECTISM 