1. It’s Monday, June 5, 2017.

2. It’s the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Six-Day War between Israel and all its Arab neighbors.

Israel still occupies much of the territory it took in those six days. That remains a great lesson to countries that try to gang up on their neighbors, as the Arab states led by Egypt did in the days before the war.

3. There’s a reason London is a target for nihilists. Like New York and Paris, most people there are too busy living to think about dying. For failures in life, this is often too much to bear, so they try to get others to share their misery.

Most Londoners won’t cave in. That’s why there was such a backlash to The New York Times headline about how Saturday’s attack had the city “reeling.”

Reeling, their arse! Londoners, like New Yorkers and Parisians, don’t reel. They stand up. Yes, they mourn and they hurt. But they understand that what nihilists want is for them to be afraid. If they’re not afraid, the jackasses lose.

4. You know who doesn’t understand that? The idiot who somehow got into the Oval Office.

At a time when one the President of the United States’ biggest jobs is cheering on a city in pain, this cetriolo misinterprets the statements of the city’s mayor and whines about how the world isn’t serious about terrorism.

The way he is, by playing 18 holes at the country club he owns in Virginia. You and I paid for that round, incidentally.

The round of tweets – we’re giving up on the idea that this administration has any concept of decorum or standards – that followed Saturday night’s attack were an embarrassment to this country. They will stain this country’s history forever.

And yet, much of the vegetation that voted for Trump still thinks he’s making America great somehow. As if any president before this did anything as humiliating and detrimental to our cause.

5. While I’m in this frame of mind, let me complain about three of my former employers – The New York Times, The Associated Press and CNN.

Yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, the alerts went off on my iPhone. The Times: “ISIS has claimed the London attack…” AP: “The head of the SITE intelligence group says the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the London attacks.” CNN at least has a little disclaimer, but still: “ISIS-linked media wing claims the terror group is responsible for the London attack, but offered nothing to back the claim.”

Really?

ISIS, if it knew what the hell was going on outside one of its caves in Syria, would claim responsibility for sour milk and jackknifed tractor-trailers on the New Jersey Turnpike if it thought someone might believe it.

Anyone who gives credence to an ISIS claim by publishing it without proof helps perpetrate the myth that these people represent anything other than being miserable and making others that way.

That these people are tangentially linked to Islam is really unfortunate and unfair to about 1.8 billion Muslims, most of whom seem satisfied with that general way of religious thinking.

The people who do crap like what happened in London, Manchester, Paris and going back to New York in 2001 are the unhappy fringe.

Unless there’s evidence – a video of these nihilists in a Syrian training camp, a name, a history, something! – that ISIS actually had anything to do with an incident, it is ridiculous for legitimate news organizations to flash their claims of responsibility.

Flashing that ISIS claimed responsibility for London was less informative than flashing that water is wet.

1. It’s Friday, June 2, 2017.

2. It’s the 160th birthday of Edward Elgar, who probably would be stunned at how many times his March No. 1 in D gets played this time of year.

He’d also be pissed he wasn’t born at a time when he could get some of royalty every time it’s played.

3. Had you heard of marocain before last night?

Neither had I.

But apparently 12-year-old Ananya Vinay of Fresno, California, had. In fact, she told the Washington Post that she knew every word she was asked to spell in winning the National Spelling Bee. 

After eliminating everyone else in the competition, she and 14-year-old Rohan Rajeev of Texas went toe-to-toe for 19 rounds.

They were spelling words that few people ever knew existed. Words that I can’t imagine they or just about anyone else will ever need to make a living in this world.

Except, of course, if you’re in the clothing trade and need to order a heavy cross-ribbed crepe fabric.

Marocain.

4. Here’s what Trump and the Republicans are betting: That the indignation you and anyone with even half a brain feel about his decision to pull out of the Paris accords will fade long before they face any consequences from it.

Because the fact is that while climate change is a big deal to a lot of people, it’s not a big enough deal to sway elections.

That’s just a fact.

Think about the last election.

What outrage was there that the question of climate change never came up during the presidential debates?

Trump was never forced to defend his mindless stance. That the abiding by the Paris agreement costs Americans jobs. That it makes U.S. sovereignty subservient to the world.

The fact that you and I and everyone we know and leaders from around the world are angry about this decision is interesting. And that’s about all.

Because the Trump plan goes this way: They take the heat for a little while – perhaps even a little beyond this weekend’s talk shows.

But even by the time Georgia’s 6th Congressional District completes its special election later this month, the furor will be forgotten.

And, by the time we get to Nov. 6, 2018, the day of the next full-scale Congressional election, Trump and the Republicans will have found some phony issue – hell, I wouldn’t be shocked if it was still the damn Kathy Griffin video or Hillary Clinton’s e-mails – to tar Democrats.

That’s their calculation. You – even the most ardent scientist combatting this problem – will forget what Trump did yesterday. Put this country on the wrong side of science and history. Embarrass us.

The track record is on Trump’s and the Republicans’ side. Eventually, nature won’t be, but they’ll have collected their chips and figured out a way to say that the problems were because we didn’t do enough of what they wanted.

Our mission: Prove them wrong.

1. It’s Thursday, June 1, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of Brigham Young and Amy Schumer. Go figure.

3. For some reason, Mr. Met flipped one of his middle fingers at a fan during last night’s Met debacle at Citi Field. 

(Remember, it has to be one of his middle fingers since he only has four of them.)

It was, of course, recorded on video – it’s safe to assume nothing goes unnoticed by a camera in 2017.

It’s not clear if the person inside the costume was goaded into his gesture. It doesn’t matter. It’s not cool.

No, it’s not cool because kids shouldn’t see this sort of thing. If a kid is at Citi Field on a school night in May, he or she has seen and heard far worse than a mute mascot’s bird flip.

It’s not cool because this is a character portrayed for more than 50 years as kind, funny, proud and cheerful. He poses with people wearing shirts and hats from all the other teams – when the Yankees show up every year, their fans line up to take silly photos with the symbol of the team they’re opposing.

To Met fans, and even to fans who don’t like the Mets, Mr. Met is fun in a world that’s not always so open to fun. The Mets have said they’ll handle this matter internally, and that’s how it should be.

I wouldn’t normally too much of a thing about a Mr. Met obscene gesture incident. Comedians and social media are having their fun for the next day or two, and then it will just linger in the collective memory.

4. But there’s something that doesn’t feel isolated or trivial about this.

You know what I mean. Civility, kindness, joy seem to be missing in our lives right now. No one is going to know what prompted a mascot to rudeness, but whoever was in the costume was obviously in a state of mind to do that.

No one can figure out the collective mindsets of the people behind that stupid Kathy Griffin video that drew so much attention. Yes, Kathy Griffin is primarily responsible for it, and she certainly is big on self-promotion.

But somebody had to enable her to do that. There was some mindset that said this is OK – this is actually funny.

People – especially the ones who support him – will groan if you blame Trump for all this. He didn’t make Kathy Griffin hold up an image of his severed head.

5. But the vibe is in the air. And damned if Trump didn’t put it there.

The constant barrage of crazy and angry and self-dealing is wearing down people’s sense of right and wrong, people’s sense of what’s acceptable behavior, people’s sense of responsibility toward others.

It’s depressing. Is anyone really, truly happy in this country right now?

Don’t tell me the people who support Trump are. It takes a lot of energy and karma to rationalize the stupidity and the conflicts. Especially the ones with Russia – the Trump base is old enough to remember when their hero Ronald Reagan called out the then Soviet Union and believe he was the one who brought it down.

And this country is not moving toward anything resembling unity. Especially when there’s a White House determined to rule rather than govern – that believes it doesn’t need as much of the nation behind it as it needs only the people who got them there.

The Trumpian descent into the inferno is in some ways like Dante’s in “The Divine Comedy.” There are the less egregious sins – the Kathy Griffin thing.

And then there are the whoppers – depriving millions of health care, becoming a climate change outlaw, shunning our traditional allies, breaking up families with Gestapo-like immigration enforcement and consorting with demons.

But in “The Divine Comedy,” Virgil leads Dante out of hell, first toward purgatory and then, with his beloved Beatrice, into heaven.

6. So, yes, we need a Virgil.

We need someone who is going to help point us toward light and redemption, to end this gloom that threatens to crush our people and our aspirations.

The time is ripe for anyone who will stop putting up his or her middle finger and will start rallying people. Who will say what he or she stands for, and that it’s something we as a people – all of us – can attain together.

People talk about a resistance. But they’re not really doing anything about it. The person who is going to lead the United States out of the morass and back onto the path of moral leadership needs to be doing that full-time.

When you see someone resign or retire from Congress or a governor’s mansion and say they’re ready to spend all their time working on bringing the country together, when you see someone following a path similar to the one Martin Luther King Jr. followed to fight for civil rights in the 1960s, that’s when the current joylessness will end.

When Trump has to spend his Twitter time attacking someone other than Hillary Clinton because he or she is the real threat to his hegemony, we’ll start to feel better. And then the light will finally be in the distance.

1. It’s Wednesday, May 31, 2017.

2. It’s the 74th birthday of Joe Namath and the 52nd of Brooke Shields – two people you couldn’t imagine being 74 or 52.

3. The one thing you don’t want to do to an enemy is make him sympathetic. And when it comes to Trump, it’s really hard to do that.

But Kathy Griffin found a way.

I’ve never been a fan of what I guess is a woman whose efforts at self-promotion sometimes go to extremes. Even as a loyal CNNer, I can’t stand to watch her on New Year’s Eve with Anderson Cooper.

Yesterday, she stepped over the line with a video that involved an animated display of Trump’s severed head. She repeated the “blood coming out of wherever” line that Trump use to disgrace himself in his criticism of then-Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

By doing that, Griffin threw a lifeline to Trump. She gave his dwindling supporters something to rally around.

It was idiotic. It was not close to funny, which is how I feel about Kathy Griffin in general. I’m glad she apologized, but I suspect she’ll pay a price for doing something that stupid.

Dumb.

4. Now, if Trump was as smart as he and his flock believe, he would have milked the stupid Kathy Griffin thing for all it was worth.

He, indeed, tweeted this morning how upset his 11-year-old son was about the image, and that Griffin should be ashamed of herself.

The problem is he also covfefed.

Late last night, he tweeted “Despite the constant press covfefe”.

Trump probably meant coverage and was about to launch another of his diatribes about how the connection between his campaign/administration and Russia is fake news.

But it just proves the point that he has no self-control about seeking approval or just plain getting attention.

So covfefe, and not Kathy Griffin, became the news story this morning. And those questions about this guy’s fitness for this job – emotionally, physically and morally – are front and center for another day.

Dumb.
5. Unfortunately, no one had ever womansplained Rebecca Solnit to me.

Solnit is an essayist. She is credited with coming up with the concept of mansplaining – how men (and I might be guilty of this sometimes) often trying to explain things to women in a way that comes off as condescending.

Yesterday, Solnit’s commentary on Literary Hub site dealt with a man. The current president.

One reason to think he’ll never read it is that his name is only on the title. It’s not in the text at all.

Solnit’s argument is profound. Trump is a spoiled rich child who has never had to deal with the consequences of sharing the world with people who aren’t as fortunate. He’s been indulged and pandered to by people either in awe of his resources or who thought they could find a way to take advantage of him.

I think it’s a little too smart by a hair. Maybe it’s something I’m reading into it, but there’s a hint of sympathy for Trump, as if his life is some Greek or Shakespearean tragedy of which we are merely witnesses.

Trump, to me, is pure evil. The tragedy is what will befall most of the people of this country when our standard of living – hell, in a lot of instances, our ability to just live – is devastated.

But I applaud Solnit’s effort. Ranting by people like me and others doesn’t seem to be enough to stop the feeling that we’re skidding on an icy road into a giant propane tank. She’s trying a different tact. It’s worth a read.

1. It’s Tuesday, May 30, 2017.

2. On this day 134 years ago, fake news led to death. There was a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge, opened just six days earlier, was about to collapse – the ensuing stampede killed 12 people.

The Brooklyn Bridge is still standing.

3. Despite Trump’s constant protestations, the scandal of his administration is hardly fake.

Today, his communications director is resigning. This administration is a little more than four months old and it’s already hemorrhaging senior staff.

That’s probably because no matter who holds the title of communications director, there’s only one communicator in this farce. The guy who tweets out fake fake news alarms at 7 a.m.

A real president – hell, a real man – would want to clear the crap away once and for all.

He would tell Congress and an independent prosecutor and, yes, respected news operations to bring it on. Take their best shot. Try to find what he or his son-in-law or the double-dealer he chose as his national security adviser or the bigot he named attorney general did wrong, because they did nothing wrong. There’s nothing to hide.

4. So the only conclusion anyone who can reason will draw is that there is something to hide. In fact, a lot more than something.

Trump can start with answering – intelligently, and not tweeting like a ranting fool – if his son-in-law met in December with a man whose bank has been linked to Russian intelligence and is subject to U.S. sanctions.

And if they did meet, why? What was discussed? How was what was discussed in the interest of the nation?

The New York Times quotes Trump spokeswoman, Hope Hicks – I wonder if she still has a job – as saying Kushner was acting in his capacity as a transition official. That implies that he wasn’t acting in the financial interest of his own or his father-in-law’s family. She also says Kushner will answer questions from congressional investigators.

That statement alone might have calmed the waters a little. But then Trump started tweeting this morning. Fake news, blah, blah. Russians laughing, blah, blah. Democrats embarrassed Hillary Clinton lost, blah, blah.

The insecurity of this guy who has been entrusted with the most important job in this country is scary and infuriating.

The tweets are the fake news. They’re the smoke screen Trump is using to hide what he and his confederates are doing to destroy this country.

Let’s not let him off the hook. To do otherwise would not be true to our values or our future.

1. It’s Monday, May 29, 2017.

2. It’s the 100th birthday of John F. Kennedy.

For those of us who lived through his brief presidency, it’s hard to imagine JFK as a centenarian. He epitomized America as a young country – at 46, he was even younger when he died when Barack Obama was when he was elected.

It’s because of that youth that he’s idolized. He symbolized what many of us think America should be – a country that’s a beacon of democracy and freedom, proud of itself, looking toward the future.

JFK is revered partly because he was murdered. But he’s also revered for the promise: the steps he took toward healing our nation’s racial divide, toward putting people on the moon, toward a more peaceful world.

They were big dreams. But dreaming big is what this country is supposed to be all about.

He was tough when he had to be – the Cuban missile crisis was a test he passed, thankfully. And he had his big failures – the Bay of Pigs and getting us more involved in Vietnam.

But no one questioned John F. Kennedy’s motivation and patriotism. And anyone who heard him speak – particularly what might be the best inauguration speech ever – doubted that he believed in the people of the United States in a way that’s sadly missing from the White House on his 100th birthday.

3. It’s Memorial Day.

For the families of those who lost loved ones in our nation’s battles, their loved ones are hard to imagine as older men and women. They will always see the sepia or fading color picture, with either a tight smile or a serious pose, and sharply creased uniform of the service to which they belong.

People who die young don’t age in the minds of the people who love them. Those who died in World War II and Vietnam are seen by their grandchildren as somehow younger than they are.

There might be some small comfort in that – that the ravages of age don’t take away their youth, don’t afflict them with the problems all of us endure as we get older.

But that comfort is totally overshadowed by the sense of what’s been lost. The chance to see a younger generation grow and succeed. The joys of graduations and weddings and children and trips to wonderful places.

That they sacrificed so that their children and the children of millions of others could enjoy the blessings of life seems cruel and unfair. But it is a price they paid bravely, with honor.

So today is the day to think of those young people, perhaps to grant them eternal youth along the thanks of a grateful nation. To see their smiles or their earnest stares – in portraits painted in the Revolution or photographed since the Civil War – and realize there is no America as we know it without them.

4. Memorial Day often seems restricted to those who remembering those die in uniform.

I think that’s a little shortsighted.

I absolutely don’t dismiss the sacrifice of those who fought for the United States. But I think fighting for the United States entails more than just enlisting in a military service.

So, on this Memorial Day, let’s remember the people who died stopping terrorists from crashing United Flight 93 into the Capitol or the White House. They weren’t active military personnel, just people who realized what was happening that horrible Sept. 11 and acted as patriots.

Let’s remember the more than 21,000 law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty.

And, the most recent example, let’s remember bystanders who did anything but stand by – the two men killed last week trying to stop a white supremacist terrorist from harassing a Muslim woman on a Portland, Oregon, commuter train.

It should be Memorial Day for all of them and anyone who has sacrificed her or himself for this country. I sincerely believe the men and women who died in uniform would share that sentiment.

1. It’s Friday, May 26, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of Miles Davis and Levon Helm.

Musically speaking, you’d have a hard time topping that duo. I’m trying to imagine a Miles arrangement of “The Weight” with Levon’s vocals – that would have been interesting.

3. It’s the gateway to the Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer.

4. It’s also about to be Ramadan.

This is another in a series of challenging Ramadans for Muslims in the Northern Hemisphere. The month begins tonight and ends June 24, which means it includes the summer solstice. And since Ramadan entails fasting during the day, those who celebrate can’t eat during the longest days of the year.

I imagined that this would be a real problem if you’re a Muslim in Alaska, where there is almost no night this time of year. But a Muslim colleague reassured me that, when that’s the situation, Muslims are allowed to go by the hours of Mecca’s day, which are more normal. This way, there’s no gorging at 1:30 a.m.

Wherever you are, if you celebrate, Ramadan kareem!

5. Some Democrats are in the dumps this morning after Republican Greg “The Slammer” Gianforte pulled out a 6-percentage-point win over Democrat Rob Quist in the Montana congressional election.

You would think getting arrested for assaulting a reporter the night before election day would be a problem for a candidate.

But Gianforte had a bunch of things going for him. One is that about 70% of Montanans voted before he broke Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs’ glasses on Wednesday night.

The second is that Gianforte had a lot of money to work with. His own – he’s a multi-millionaire – and that of the unbridled fountain that is the right-wing money machine.

By contrast, Quist was working with the modest resources given him by national Democrats and however much he’s made singing country songs.

So Gianforte won.

Democrats are torn. On the one hand, the 6-point margin is far narrower than the 20 points by which Trump won the state last November.

So it could be a sign that Republicans are in trouble – this is the fourth election since Trump’s inauguration that the GOP has underperformed. Perhaps 2018 can’t get here soon enough.

On the other hand, losing isn’t winning. It’s losing. That seat still belongs to the Republicans, and the size of their majority in the House remains intact.

6. But let me repeat something I tell fans of the team that loses the World Series every year: Yes, you can lose if you play. But you can’t win at all if you don’t.

For too long, Democrats have yielded these supposedly safe Republican seats. And not just in the House and Senate. In state legislatures and city councils and town councils. That’s why we’re in this mess – we didn’t compete, and we lost leverage when it came to such things as redistricting and setting local laws.

That’s gotta end. We need our voices heard every single time, whether we win big or lose 94-6.

It doesn’t feel great being on the short end of an election with a lowlife like Greg Gianforte. But at least Rob Quist tried. Maybe next time, people will remember that effort, and see how lousy things are with Republicans having a say.

And the outcome might be different.

1. It’s Thursday, May 25, 2017.

2. It’s the 40th anniversary of the release of “Star Wars” and the 70th birthday of Karen Valentine. You have to be around my age to know who Karen Valentine is.

3. If you think the Congressional Budget Office scoring of TrumpRyanCare – it’s not right just to blame this monstrosity on Trump – is meaningless, consider this:

It was the reporter’s question about the analysis that set off the moron in Montana who now faces six months in prison for bodyslamming the reporter.

What you can glean from the CBO report is that nothing about TrumpRyanCare is great for anyone other than the wealthy who would get the tax cuts that are its main goal.

Even the $119 billion in deficit reduction – assuming that deficit reduction when interest rates remain with a percentage point all-time lows is a bad thing – comes at a cost. That reduction reflects the idea that government will be paying less for coverage of the elderly and poor under Medicaid.

That means the cost to society is to make it almost impossible for those who need insurance the most to get it.

Remember those death panels Sarah Palin talked about when the Affordable Care Act was enacted. Well, here they are – seven years and a different piece of legislation later.

Overall, the CBO projects that 23 million people will lose health care coverage by 2026. Baby boomers – my generation – will stagger to the Medicare line at age 65. Assuming these ghouls don’t start tampering with that, too.

4. One would think this is going to be, at best, a hard political sell for the Republicans.

That’s probably why Greg Gianforte, the Trump wannabe running for the open House seat in Montana, didn’t want to answer questions about the CBO report. Especially from a non-Montanan reporter from a publication that leans left.

Between that, the pressure of a surprisingly tight race and who know what else going through the usually empty space between his ears, Gianforte appears to have lost it with Ben Jacobs of The Guardian.

To their credit, the three members of a Fox News reporting crew is rebutting Gianforte’s version of the story – that Jacobs was overly aggressive in questioning the candidate. That’s probably why Gianforte was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault.

But this is where I transition this piece from slam to slamdunk.

In a fair world, Gianforte would lose big time. Not just because he’s on the wrong side of the argument with Democrat Rob Quist, but because he’s clearly not temperamentally fit to serve in Congress.
But this is Montana and this is a big seat. The Republicans have spent a fortune to maintain it.

And many people have voted already – all of the main Montana news sites are reporting people calling their elections board to see if they can change their early votes. Which, of course, they can’t.

So there’s still a better than 50-50 chance that Gianforte wins. And when his mighty leader, Trump, returns from curtsying to the Saudis and shoving NATO leaders in a photo op, he can welcome Gianforte.

For Democrats there might be two consolation prizes: A picture of Trump congratulating Gianforte on his win, and the fact that folks in Georgia might get turned off by that as they prepare to vote on another open seat previously held by a Republican.

5. Sometimes it’s hard to be of good cheer in the America of 2017.

Trump has made us grumpy and sad. We don’t trust each other any more. Hatred and bigotry have been given license. Our place in the world as a moral beacon is being vacated by greed.

If you want to look for hope amid the Trump dystopia, read the speech given last week by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

His city has been taking down monuments, built as the Jim Crow era began, aimed at giving a glowing patina to the Confederacy. There were statues to generals and the former political leader.

The fact they were coming down bothered Confederate apologists. These statues, in their eyes, represented a sacrifice made by those who stood up for their beliefs, and taking them down desecrated that history.

And what Mayor Landrieu did was call out the hypocrisy.

“These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history,” he said. “These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.”

The Confederacy wasn’t some romantic notion of states’ rights. It wasn’t an honest difference of opinion.

It was about preserving the enslavement of black people, often through brutality. And it was about treason, pure and simple.

I’ve always maintained the Confederate flag, which people even here in supposedly enlightened New York blithely stick on their pickup trucks, is the ultimate symbol of treason in this country.

Anyone who heralds it cannot, in any way, be considered a patriot.

I doubt there’s anyplace in this country with a statue honoring Erwin Rommel or Adolf Hitler. We don’t pander to those who trash our values.

That’s the equivalence.

Mayor Landrieu gets it. He runs a city that’s pretty diverse – we New Yorkers tend to think we have a slight edge in that department. And he is determined to make things right for all of them.

“Because we are one nation, not two; indivisible with liberty and justice for all, not some,” he said. “We all are part of one nation, all pledging allegiance to one flag, the flag of the United States of America. And New Orleanians are in, all of the way.”

That is a real slamdunk.

1. It’s Tuesday, May 23, 2017.

2. It’s the third anniversary of the Isla Vista tragedy, when a 22-year-old man stabbed three roommates, shot to death three University of California-Santa Barbara students, and injured several pedestrians with his car before killing himself. His problem was that he had trouble connecting with women, and resented anyone in a relationship.

3. Sadly, that seems like a good place to start a discussion about the horror of what happened last night in Manchester, England.

As a parent, it is hard to fathom the agony of those whose children perished. No words anyone wise or thoughtful can say could possibly mitigate that kind of pain.

Those of faith can offer prayer, those who aren’t can offer sympathy. Think about the parents today and whenever you can, and hope that the strength of our thoughts can help them handle more than they ever should bear.

4. But, inevitably, thoughts turn to how and why these things happen.

Here are the current headlines on the three news sites I most respect:

The New York Times: ISIS Claims Responsibility for Manchester Attack; Toll Rises to 22, Including Children

The Washington Post: ISIS Claims Responsibility for concert attack that kills at least 22 in Britain

CNN: ISIS claims responsibility for Manchester bombing

The first word in all three is ISIS. As if a bunch of clueless morons with beards in the Syrian desert knew there was an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, last night.

Whoever did this – alone or in a group – was homegrown. I’d bet 5 quid that the bomber was either born in the UK or became a UK citizen at a young age. He might be from a Muslim family; he might have converted when he wanted something to anchor his disaffection and discovered ISIS.

But this attack is not about ISIS. I don’t doubt the evil that ISIS is – and I hope it’s wiped off the map in Syria and Iraq.

And this attack is especially not about Islam. Anyone who blames a religion for this is an accomplice to the evil this bomber unleashed.

5. No, this guy’s spiritual kin showed up twice this past week in the United States, and neither time had anything to do with ISIS.

In New York last Thursday, police say a 26-year-old Navy veteran with a history of violence, mental illness and substance abuse deliberately attempted to run down pedestrians in Times Square. He’s accused of killing an 18-year-old Michigan girl – her parents fully understand the feelings of parents in Manchester – and injuring 20 other people.

Last Saturday, on the University of Maryland campus in College Park – where my daughter got her bachelor’s degree – a young African-American was stabbed to death at a bus stop. The 22-year-old suspect in custody supposedly belongs to a white supremacist group and the incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

So two things can be gleaned from this.

One, if you think Islam is responsible for what happened in Manchester, by your logic the Navy is responsible for what happened in Times Square and white people are responsible for happened at UMD.

Second, Western society – including the United States and United Kingdom – is doing a terrible job confronting problems that often doesn’t even register on our radar: disaffection and mental illness.

The people who committed atrocities in Manchester, Times Square and College Park – whoever they are – were sick. And they conveniently found anchors – Islam, white supremacy, PCP – for what they did.

Something drove them to the point of committing acts of madness. Maybe it was poverty. Maybe it was being bullied or teased as a child. Maybe it was conflict between their actions and their families’ own moral values.

In time, we will know more about who committed the wanton act of violence in Manchester. British authorities are downplaying the name in an admirable effort to deny this killer his blaze of glory.

6. For now, we need to commit ourselves to three courses of action.

One is to fight the scourge of mental illness. We need to identify people with problems and get them help before they succumb to the temptation of easy scapegoat philosophies. How did the guy who plotted the Isla Vista nightmare evade detection or notice from those who knew him? Fighting mental illness will do more to end terrorist attacks – whether they’re politically or socially based.

Second is to figure out how to minimize the opportunities. How did this guy in Manchester get the explosives? How did these people who shot up Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Century 16 Cinema in Aurora and Norris Hall at Virginia Tech get access to the weaponry? Who gave the Times Square guy the car keys and the PCP?

Third is tolerance. Anti-Semitism didn’t die with the end of World War II. But it’s become less acceptable because we’ve embraced our Jewish brothers and sisters, and told them we will never let what happened in the Nazi death camps ever happen to them again.

We need to be that way with everybody, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender. We can not let there be any glory in hatred.

ISIS could be wiped out in the Middle East. But, in the rest of my lifetime, sick people will claim acts of horror like Manchester in its name.

Yes, ISIS is a problem. But solving the problem of mentally ill people will do more to end the Manchesters, the Sandy Hooks, the Isla Vistas, the Times Squares. And so on.

7. I had wanted to write about the remarkable speech the mayor of New Orleans gave yesterday. I’ll save that for next time – when hope is back in bloom.

1. It’s Monday, May 22, 2017.

2. It’s the 161st anniversary of an incident in the House of Representatives in which a South Carolina congressman beat a Massachusetts senator who had spoken passionately against slavery.

Just a reminder that evil in this country is not restricted to the second decade of the 21st century.

3. I’m rebooting these blog posts after a long absence. There were two reasons for the hiatus.

One that was I was in the throes of teaching my two journalism classes. And while giving my students a lot of homework doesn’t endear me to them, it also doesn’t endear me to me – I was consistently about two weeks behind on my grading.

But the semester ended last week. I’m still recovering from reading 31 final projects and – more tiring – judging them. Making decisions is wearying business.

The second reason is one I’ll write about in more detail sometime soon but one of the last things I mentioned – the deaths of my father and father-in-law on consecutive days. As you all do when you face the loss of loved ones, I’ve thought about them in the past three months – and, at some point, with your help and indulgence, I’ll try to sort this out.

It might sound weird to say not much has changed since my last post on April 19, in the wake of Jon Ostoff’s first-place finish in the Georgia 6th Congressional race.

Because if you experienced the past week, and all the blockbuster events that occurred each day, you’d think things are changing at supersonic speed. (For a great summation of last week, see John Oliver’s brilliant take in last night’s “Last Week Tonight”)

4. But if you’re really think about it, what has really changed in the four months since Trump was inaugurated?

He’s still president. He’s still tweeting stupidity at all hours. He’s still doing his damnedest to minimize how much the Russians helped him get where he is. He’s still doing whatever he can, in cahoots with the quisling Republicans in Congress, to shred the social safety net and give those who have more.

Despite all that has happened in the past few months – the firing of Comey, the meeting with the Russians, the effort to sabotage Obamacare, the reign on terror on those who’ve come here seeking a decent life – the basics remain the same. Trump and his Republican henchman are in power and trying to expand it.

The approval ratings are about as low as they’ve been all along – maybe a little lower than Inauguration Day. And they might get lower still, because a few of Trump’s supporters will come to their senses and realize how much this travesty is hurting them.

But as long as Republicans crave office, as long as Fox News can draw people to watch propaganda and fabricated scandals, as long as people choose to ignore what legitimate news sources are reporting, there’s nothing that is going to change between now and Nov. 6, 2018, when the next Congressional election takes place. And even then, it’s unlikely.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be fighting this crap. Democrats should be focused on winning every single election in their sights – from seats on a sanitation commission to town council to county executive to congressman to governor.

And don’t accept what’s going down. I have no doubt Republicans are ready to pass their act dumping Obamacare and replacing it with all the things that make health care nearly impossible for people who can’t afford it. Anybody who believes the Senate isn’t going to cave is deceiving themselves.

But we gotta keep fighting. Impeachment is unlikely, and is no solution with craven jerks such as Mike Pence and Paul Ryan next in line. Trump would just take our money and run, and then spend the rest of his miserable days at one of his gilded properties tweeting potshots that his sycophants cheer.

It’s a bad time, and it’s hard to be optimistic. The question is whether we who still cling to the idea that America should be a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world believe restoration of that notion is possible after the last four months.

I’ll expound on all this in the days ahead.

5. One quick thought on the students who walked out at Notre Dame yesterday.

Good for them.

It’s not an easy decision. Commencement, especially at a school as impressive as Notre Dame, is a big deal. If you’ve earned a degree from the school, it’s not just for watching football games – this is one of the best institutions of higher learning in this country. Their families are rightly proud – not to mention somewhat lighter financially.

For these students, Mike Pence flies in the face of what they think they’ve learned in South Bend. He’s an intolerant fool, and fools aren’t suffered lightly by those who believe thinking is a big deal.

So the students made a statement that they would not listen to someone who is not worthy of them tell them how to live their lives. I’d hope I’d have the guts to do what they did.