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I confess that I take the Ukraine invasion personally.

I am ashamed that I am rooting for them to kill their invaders. I hope there is a way to stop short of that.

Ironically, my grandparents were born in Kyiv and fled the country to escape the Russians. The other family members didn’t run away from the Nazis in time and were killed in the most awful of ways.

There are none left.

It wasn’t a great country for my people, but somehow, it made me feel more acutely. My grandparents always spoke of loving Kyiv, then Kiev.

A part of it is in my blood.

Thomas Paine wrote that there was no more glorious way to perish than fighting for freedom against tyrants.

That could have been my grandmother and grandfather; it could have been me. Today, millions of Ukrainians are willing to die rather than be subjugated by monsters.

How awful that this is not a new story, as evil and dishonest as it is.

Arrogant, broken, and sociopathic men of all colors have been invading, slaughtering, imprisoning, and terrorizing innocent women, children, and men for all of human history.

No one can calculate the bloodshed and destruction the male gender of humanity has unleashed upon the world – try to add up the innocent casualties of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Assad, Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, and now, Putin.

Like Putin and his eager footstool Donald Trump, most of these men are twisted and ruthless monomaniacs whose grossly inflated egos make them creatures out of Greek Tragedy, doomed to fail because their hubris overwhelms compassion and judgment or common decency.

Don’t be fooled by all the media hype; Alexandr Putin will choke on the blood he has shed. If you read your history, his story is written again and again. He might or might not win in the short run, but he can’t win in the long run.

He bragged that his invasion would be swift and bloodless. He has already failed in that.

Ukraine is a big country with more than 30-40 million people. Modern warfare has taught us that Thomas Paine was right – conquering proud and patriotic people is never as easy as it seems. In modern times, it has been almost impossible.

By blustering and lying for so long, Putin has turned Ukraine into a vast guerrilla nation, just waiting for the chance to fight with their assault rifles and Molotov cocktails.

Charred Russian tanks and convoys are already lining Ukrainian roads.

Bodies of Russian soldiers are already heading home in plywood coffins. Doesn’t this sound familiar to us, whose very powerful, lavishly-funded, well-equipped, and well-trained Army was defeated year after year by a group of religious fanatics in sandals and scarves?

For years, didn’t we hear that we could never lose such a conflict? We were so powerful, and they were so weak.

Every time I read the Russian Army can’t be defeated in this vast and now united country, I thought of the scenes at the Kabul Airport last summer. And then I think of Vietnam and Iraq.

War is a horrible thing; always, the men who make and fight wars never seem to give up causing them and never seem to remember what happened in the previous ones. They care nothing for any lives but their own.

It is still so easy to send other people off to die.

And haven’t we learned that it never turns out the way everybody thinks and promises us it will?

How horrific that all of these people die because one man wants to be the next Peter The Great. Trump might think it’s brilliant – he’s probably wetting himself fantasizing about it – but the best military historians don’t believe it has a chance to work in the way Putin thinks it will.

Of course, Trump thinks his friend Putin is “brilliant.” It’s so Trumpian. Putin is what Trump would love to be if he had balls instead of tweets.

Trump’s fatal flaw is that he keeps inadvertently revealing the truth about himself, even though he is a compulsive liar. He can’t see past his footstools.

Putin is a true psychopath; Trump is just a pathetic old wannabe with ridiculous hair. But unlike his friend Putin, I believe that he still has a soul. Lying is instinctive for him, like a scared little boy on the edge of being punished; killing is not.

Putin claims he is invading to “de-Nazify” the country. How curious that he doesn’t mention the Ukrainian President is Jewish? Shameless lying is the tool of the modern monster all over the world.

I can’t help thinking that truth still matters; why else would people like Putin and Trump lie so often? The cruel monarchs of old didn’t need to lie; they just took what they wanted.

Truth matters, and it will prevail, always, in its own time and way.

Putin’s war is a heartbreaker, as are all wars.

The male ego isn’t just disturbing; it’s the greatest danger to the planet’s future. Wars are nearly the exclusive province of men; they are the greatest danger to the earth.

Ukraine taught my grandparents that it was essential to get to a democracy where they could be free to live their lives.

They were right in choosing America in the years before we became lazy and took being free for granted.

Putin is ending that lethargy, just as Trump did in 2020. The extremists in Washington are right about the “woke,” They can’t grasp its real meaning.

The difference between Donald Trump and Alexandr Putin is that Trump is terrified of his weaknesses, and Putin doesn’t believe he has any.

Much of our country has forgotten the price of our freedom, how much blood fathers and brothers and cousins and sisters have shed to keep our democracy safe, even with its faults and shortcomings.

Putin reminds us of what it means to take democracy for granted or undermine it.

Putin and Trump’s gift to the world is making countless people worldwide “woke” to democracy and the sacred advantage of being free.

I am one of those people.

In 2016 Donald Trump awakened me to how much this country meant to my parents, grandparents, and countless millions of others who have come here for hundreds of years to be free.

My response was to fight in my way – by doing good when I could rather than argue or hate. I found that many good people want the same thing.

We call ourselves the Army Of Good, and we make a lot of sounds rather than argue with people and lie on Facebook.

I see that so many in our country have been lazy about democracy, taken it for granted, and were turned to hate and anger by inept and dishonest politicians and demagogues like Trump.

We are turning into selfish and mean-spirited people. Trump and Putin may just be saving us from that fate. We see the consequences of bowing to them.

It seemed for some years that democracy was losing ground to hateful and corrupt monomaniacs and wannabe Kings and Czars.

But I am seeing  – we all are seeing – what happens when citizens in a democracy get lazy and apathetic and get their ideas off of Facebook. People like Putin become brilliant, good turns to evil, the truth turns to lies, and hatred smothers compassion.

Putin’s war is a delusion, it can’t work, but it can exact an awful price. The world is changing, but not that much, and not yet.

Alexandr Putin and the people who praise him don’t care how many innocent people will be sacrificed to the male ego, which can never be satisfied or quashed. But much of the world does care, and they are horrified and frightened.

Can the world survive, men? Yes. Women and good men are rising all over the planet to fight back.

We will survive them. In this country, we know – many of us – what it is like to be free and control our own lives. I don’t believe we will give it up.

From the first, I saw Trump as a gift to me. He turned me away from anger and towards doing good. He made me appreciate what it means to be a citizen in a democracy.

Putin is bringing this message to much of the world.

Like Trump before him, Putin helped me understand the awful sacrifices my grandmother and grandfather made to get to this country so that I could live the life I wanted to live without being slaughtered, forced into an Army for much of my life, or gassed in a concentration camp.

Putin has made it clear what happens to freedom when people like this are tolerated or trivialized or allowed to invade and kill innocent citizens of another country.

Ukrainian citizens by the millions are lining up to get rifles and learn how to make Molotov cocktails. I feel for the many young Russians who will die alongside them for no reason at all other than one man’s delusions and monomania.

The very mention of war turns me to my stomach, but a part of me is stirred by the reports of thousands of Ukrainian citizens – including grandmothers and the elderly –  lining up for rifles and guns.

It could be anyone, anywhere. Trumpism reminds us that we are not free from danger; there are all those “good people” eager to march with their Swastika flags.

I feel this latest and especially brutal and pointless waste of human life. I have faith that compassion and freedom will ultimately be more important than men’s egos.

I believe that people of faith and good hearts rise to stop them from ruining our world.

I wish the Ukrainian people courage and compassion. They have entered the hallowed halls of free people.

I can’t say to them that we are comrades, but a piece of my heart is fighting alongside you, in part in memory of my own family, who to their death called themselves Ukrainians.

How can anyone love God and not love mercy?

It’s Mid-Week at Bedlam Farm, the temperature is supposed to soar up to 40 degrees today, and the National Weather Service says this means we are likely to have severe floods.

The weather is a source of perennial alarm, it seems. The Weather Channel is making lots of money. Even good news is not good, and never for long. And the news itself is uniformly bad and disturbing. And profitable.

I think it’s a time to rediscover mercy. To hear the words “mercy” and “compassion” lift me whenever I hear them and challenge me to be better. That would be perhaps the most patriotic thing I could do.

—

In case many of you have not noticed, President Trump has begun the giant slide. He’s perfect for the media, and they really can’t bear to let him go. But some influential Republicans are challenging him, ignoring him, and questioning whether there isn’t a better choice. Ambitious governors are circling the corpse.

Politics in America is a blood sport, and every day, I hear and almost feel the wolves circling and howling. Politics is ruthless and draws vultures like blood; it hates nothing more than an aging loser and is merciless.

All those human footstools he surrounded himself with will be the first ones to chew on the bones and rush out the door.

For myself, I seek to find mercy and compassion in all of this argument. I’ve often failed in my life; I’m doing better and mean to do better still. The so-called Trump revolution has always been good for me, is shocked and demanded I find a response that was not angry or punitive. The Army of Good is a child of Trumpism, a reaction to it that wasn’t cruel or hateful.

I want to call the mercy in me as the country faces significant challenges and divisions. I want to see it as a chance to be better, not as a chance to celebrate other people’s pain or jump into the following argument.

Trump will soon no longer be something to hide behind for me and everyone else. But I live in the country; I see and hear how much people rallied to him and saw salvation in him. I know how millions of people love him and count on him to listen to them.

I wish there were a political savor, a man or woman who loves mercy and cares about the poor, as Jesus did, who possesses the kind of moral strength that agrees with the deepest values of many good people. I have this fantasy they are out there and will transcend red and blue, suitable and left, and help bring us together.

We live, writes Lamott, in Vengeance World: “An open, merciful heart is a setup for pain, sham and being mocked…” I know the truth in this. In our time, merciful people are seen as elitists and hypocrites. The very term has become negative.

But that doesn’t mean mercy is dead.

To hear those words  – “mercy, compassion” – can transform a day, writes Anne Lamott, a favorite spiritualist, and author for me.

The prophets claimed that the soul rejoices in what it already knows. I know deep inside of me that mercy is my salvation – as my granddaughter grows, as the ice caps melt.

Soon enough, Trump will be gone, he will leave a huge hole  – even cats only have nine lives – and we will be face to face with one another and with nothing in between them and us. An excellent opportunity to listen.

Where I wonder, has mercy gone in all of this? Why has it fallen from favor? We used to all want to help the poor. Now we can’t stand to talk with one another.

The time is upon me to put my money where my mouth is.

We can empathize and listen, even if we don’t want to. They seem to hate us, and we seem to hate them. Mercy is an icebreaker, always.

We need to find it again. I need to find it. I don’t want to be boasting; there is no reason for anyone to feel superior in this dreadful mess. We should all be ashamed of what has happened to our country; a bunch like this requires a lot of people to make.

I enjoy being learning and listening. I want to understand that he was essential to millions of people, and they will feel his demise acutely.

Donald Trump’s company is in grave trouble – his accountants just disavowed ten years of accounting work. Investigations are closing in on him from all corners, democracy and justice are slow and deliberate, but both are still alive in America and are working to bring this very dishonest man to justice.

He is perhaps the most self-destructive politician in history. Every time he opens his mouth, he builds a stronger case against himself.

His desperate efforts to block an investigation into the Capitol insurrection have failed. He seems to hate the very country he wants so badly to lead. A movement built on lies has no foundation. Somehow, truth always triumphs in the end.

I say this with grudging but genuine mercy in my heart because tens of millions of people have been betrayed, exploited, and abandoned by this man. Some of them are my neighbors.

They have legitimate concerns and complaints that will once again most likely be ignored and pushed aside by the corporations that are now running America and by so-called progressives with their heads forever up their butts.

Remember defunding all those police departments? Crime-riddled governments are hiring more police officers than ever; gun violence has exploded, yet again.

Trump takes millions of dollars from hard-working people who believe in him, but all the money goes to him, not them. The money these good people give him goes into his pocket and pays the army of lawyers trying to protect him,  not improving their lives.

Some of his followers, with his encouragement, have become hateful and seditious; many have grievances that need to be heard. Their grievances are old, deep, and bitter.

Donald Trump has broken the law all of his life and avoided accountability all of his life. I believe his time of reckoning is approaching, as it does throughout history when leaders choke on their hubris.

He and his family seem terrified now by the prosecutors circling and gathering information.

They spent half their lives on Fox News crying, whining, and pandering.

I have a good friend who has covered the Justice Department as a reporter, and he is convinced Trump will be snared in the massive sedition inquiries now taking place all over the country.

“It will get to him,” he said, “he is at the center of all of it. Everybody knows it, and he admits it every time he talks. He is proud of it.”

I love democracy and believe in it. I trust it, and I trust that my country will regain its faith in freedom and its fabled Constitution and do the hard work of coming together.

I write this because I do not share the bleak and hopeless outlook of people who care about the truth, the poor, the refugees, and the vulnerable. When we open our eyes and hearts, we can see the truth.

We have lost track of mercy,  forgotten how to feel it, been shamed into hiding it, and we need it back. Movements grow slowly, one person at a time. I can only speak for me.

We are mourning for mercy and rediscovering it. Yes, they will laugh at you and laugh at me, but understanding and compassion are much more powerful than hate. They are the answer, the only one that comes to me.

I believe mercy still lives and is vital and will return to our lives, politics, and schools.

These unhappy people are not stupid and are not bigots. They are desperate for someone to listen to them and care about them. They are about to lose their great white hope.

Demagogues appear when government lies to the people, and the people in rural America have been lied to by governments all of their lives.

Remember when all those politicians and economists promised that when all of those jobs went to China and Mexico, new and better ones would replace them?

It seems we are at a turning point, time to get to work in a meaningful and positive way.

How, I wonder, can anyone love God and not love mercy? What did the God most Americans say they believe in require of us but to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly?

“How can you not love mercy?” asks Lamott in her book Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy? In the book, she can’t answer the question. Neither can I.

Loving mercy is not like loving dessert or cheese, says Lamott, one of the best spiritual writers in America. It’s essential to life.

If nothing makes people happier than service, especially the poor, then I acknowledge that I will have loving feelings if I do loving things. There it is.

I’m not sure many people even recognize the eternal presence of mercy in the human spirit any longer. Lamott believes that if she is starving to death for it, then her world is also.

I believe that. The return of mercy starts with me. I am starving for it, and I also have to think the world around me is.

Donald Trump is over. Joe Biden too. A new era is upon us.

Since most of the mainstream media hasn’t noticed, there is no reason why you should.

You probably realize that Joe Biden is also finished, his once inspiring and oddly naive plan in shambles. Politics will be resetting itself. Panic will not help you or the country or your loved ones.

Florida Governor Ron De Santis will most likely be running for President and is a strong prospect for the Republican Party.  I bet that much of the same Democratic slate that ran in 2020 will be running again. Kamala Harris isn’t dazzling the world either.

Conservative journalists (as opposed to Fox News flunkies) have been reporting for weeks now that Governor DeSantis and Trump are now openly at odds with one another, sniping over why DeSantis won’t promise to run against his mentor and creator in 2024 and why they are so far apart on issues relating to Covid-19, the vaccination program,  and how the  Trump administration managed to blow it all.

DeSantis is an interesting and bright politician.

He came of age during the great Covid-19 lockdown mandate and vaccination wars. Oddly enough, Donald Trump suddenly finds himself face to the left of the party he dominates on Covid. But then, he has bumbled every political decision he has ever been asked to make.

De Santis is now. Trump stinks of then.

DeSantis is perhaps the second most popular Republican in the party at the moment, still well behind Trump but moving up fast.

There are all sorts of signs that Republicans think it’s time to jettison Trump and his loopy and conspiratorial agenda, and that DeSantis is on the right track.

Conservatives and many Republicans are unhappy at Trump’s insistence on still campaigning on the idea that the 2020 election was stolen. The man who inspired the  Capitol assault is as vulnerable a candidate for President as could be imagined. The most old and angry white men who watch Fox News are powerful in their own way but represent only a small fraction of the American electorate, something you might never know from watching the media.

Most Americans do not feel good about it.

Progressives and Democrats are in a complete panic over the idea that we are facing an immediate and bloody insurrection, but they miss another critical point: the Republicans and their sometimes unsavory allies don’t need to attack anybody; the Republican Party has the best and most potent friend any political party could have right now: The Biden administration.

Poor Biden is failing on every critical point of the times. People are unhappy with his leadership.

Yes, it’s not all Joe Biden’s fault. He is a nice guy, and he meant well. But the Covid pandemic, inflation, supply line breakthroughs, millions of unfilled jobs, closed schools.  billions of climate disruptions all seem like too much for any President to overcome.

People are afraid and weary and unhappy.

It doesn’t matter who’s really to blame. It matters who is in charge. The one in order takes the heat and the blame.

DeSantis is the first prominent Republican in 2022 to openly break with Donald Trump and refuse to stick his nose up his butt.

He isn’t governing or campaigning on a stolen election or Trump’s insatiable ego.

Trump blew it big in 2020, and he’s even more vulnerable now. Next to Trump, De Santis, a hard-right conservative, looks like George Washington. He may be infuriatingly arrogant, even extreme in some ways, but he doesn’t frighten people. A Yale graduate, he is more intelligent than Trump. And markedly less crude and vicious.

He chooses a few issues and focuses on them.

And he has his focus on the correct issues for people in America in 2022: he hates mandates, dumps on Dr. Fauci, and refuses even to consider lockdowns. Right or wrong, that’s precisely where the overwhelming majority of Americans are at the moment.

Even the most ardent Trump loyalists squirm at Trump’s vulnerability. Imagine all those horrific images filling up Facebook and cable news in 2024. Trump’s role in the capital riot will be a significant issue if he runs for office, perhaps the one that blots out all the others.

While many people are trembling about the future, politics never goes to the panicked, but always to the practical. Politics is not a moral trade but a ruthless and calculating business.

Trump is one of the most unpleasant and offensive figures in American political history. His very popularity is a window into the real American pandemic – the undermining of our democracy. We are a sick country, but not a doomed nation. There is a big difference.

As he continues to brazenly lie about the 2020 election and plot against everyone who has ever criticized him, he looks more and more like that sad old stereotype, a low-end William Randolph Hearst, once powerful, not railing at the world from his lavish Mansion, sticking to the bitter piteous story of how the world stole his victory from him.

Joe Biden, I imagine, will go back to Delaware and hang out with his children and grandchildren. Trump will be all alone with his boot-licking “friends”, railing at his growing enemies list for the rest of his life. No one else will be listening. That is Trump’s reckoning with justice – irrelevance and isolation.

Bitter old men in their 80’s and nothing to do, do not generally last long.

The Republicans have a perfect chance to sweep it all in 2024, and the biggest obstacle to them doing it is Trump, a sociopath, and egomaniac who always puts his interests ahead of his friends, family, his party, or the country.

It’s not a moral question for the Republican Party; it’s practical. He has to step away. Or their great victory may be taken from them.

The issue is now who has the best child care package, but who has the best chance of running for President and winning, and in the process, taking control of the Senate and the House of Representatives at the same time. That’s a harsh truth, but it’s the American reality.

Taking control of the White House, the Senate, and the House, and thus the entire federal judiciary is the dream of every one of the 80 million people who live on the right or far right of our political spectrum. And it’s within reach. The right Democratic candidate could alter that history, but as of now, nobody knows who that might be.

The New York Times reported just today that Trump had asked several advisers and loyalists this question: “I wonder why the guy (DeSantis) won’t say he won’t run against me.” Trump claims he practically invented DeSantis, and we know how he feels about people who challenge him.

Trump has suggested DeSantis is a wimp because he won’t say whether or not he has been vaccinated. Rather than fawning and folding, DeSantis is now criticizing Trump openly for his handling of Covid-19 at the very beginning. This is a sore point for the ex-president, who claims he invented the idea of vaccines and has gotten his shots.

Trump can’t handle being disagreed with, much like Freddy Krueger.

So his disagreements with the governor of Florida are ballooning into a full-fledged war. DeSantis has raised $70 million for his re-election campaign in Florida. According to the experts there, he’ll have plenty leftover.

Many Republicans are said to be looking for a way out of the Trump nightmare.  They tend not to give interviews to reporters, especially those who rarely leave their computers or desks.

DeSantis might well be the way out. He is famous and savvy, two things Trump can’t claim.

To me, Ann Coulter is one of the most interesting of the nasty far-right conservative columnists. She is exceptionally bright. Once a Trump supporter and loyalist, Colter wrote recently on Twitter: “Trump is demanding to know Ron DeSantis’s booster status, and now I can reveal it. He (DeSantis was a loyal booster when Trump ran in 2016, but then he learned our President was a liar and con man whose grift was permanent.”

Wow. That is a big deal.

Trump’s Chinese wall of slavish obedience seems to be crumbling.

Unless he can steal the national election – doubtful – he has never had much chance of winning in 2024. If Republicans can challenge him openly and survive, he has none.

Another good indicator. DeSantis is the new darling of Fox News as well as many far-right conservatives.

He’s on the channel several times a week, more than any other  Republican, including Mr. Trump. The signs are piling up. Yes, the Republicans are planning a coup, but it isn’t against the capital. It’s against Trump.

The most difficult challenge facing the Democratic Party is not Donald Trump. The real divide in America is not between Republicans and Democrats; it’s between rural Americans and urban Americans.

The Democrats believe that doing the right thing will bring them victory. The Republicans, as cold and cunning as Doctor Strange, believe that the right thing is anything that will bring them closer to success and power.

They are not the first politicians in American history to feel that way.

The Democrats keep setting themselves aflame by choosing moral policies most of the country either doesn’t want or can’t understand. The Republicans are committed to mostly inventing culture wars and whatever works, and so far, that is a magic formula for them.

There is no objective evidence that the Republican Party is planning or supporting an armed takeover of the U.S. government or that such a thing – a monumental undertaking – could even work.

They are taking over the government the old-fashioned way – winning some votes and stealing some others and slicing up the opposition into small pieces, and running over their bodies on the road. Marjorie  Taylor Greene is not in charge, and once she has outlived her usefulness, they’ll toss her under the bridge as well.

They don’t need to get themselves shot at.

It’s time for the people who call themselves compassionate and progressive to look beyond both Trump – boy, is he over – and Biden, he’s over too. The answers to our political system lie beyond both and will require sacrifice, hard work, and passion.

Hating Donald Trump inspires none of these things. He is not worth it. It’s a waste of time.

As the past few years have shown us, the future is not knowable or even mildly predictable.

A friend of mine told me a few days ago that she is considering buying a shotgun to defend herself against the insurrectionists when they come for her. She is a nurse and has nothing to do with politics.

I didn’t get way what I was thinking; she was upset enough, it was this: “Why don’t you skip the panic and the gun and instead of shooting some hapless wander through the heart, think of something useful you can do, like run for local office, find a candidate to support, or man some telephones.”I’m not good when it comes to pity parties – too self-serving.

She would have hated me for saying that.

It is genuinely disturbing and depressing to see what’s happening to our political system.

But it is not Armageddon, nor is it close to the end of our democracy. Once again, our media fails us by focusing so greedily and obsessively on the good thing, reality, or truth. It seems in recent years that they have no idea what is happening.

Panic doesn’t work. It isn’t healthy, and it accomplishes nothing. That’s why you’ll never see Mitch McConnell doing it. And why he never seems to lose.

Say goodbye to the remarkable Trump era; they’ll be writing books about it for years. I admit I will miss him. But speaking only for myself, I’m excited to see what lies beyond. Whatever it is, it is not in any way what I thought it would be.

Sometime in the next year or three, the rebels and their new political party, the Republican Party, will take control of the House, probably the Senate and possibly the White House.

For many Americans, that is yet another dread prospect.

Americans are volatile, fending off disease, inflation, climate change,  a paralyzed Congress, an endangered democracy, and bitter divisions throughout the county.

They want something different. Don’t you?

There is much talk in the media these days of civil war and far-right coups, but I find the idea somewhat illogical and farfetched.

Time for some perspective, which is when I venture back into politics.

America has been locked in a cultural and political civil war for decades. It’s just coming to a head. The Democrats have lost touch with Middle America, and the Republicans are disconnected from urban America.

The Republicans have done an amazing job plotting their rise to power. The  Democrats have failed miserably to slow or stop them or respond to their growth and energy.

The two sides keep moving farther and farther apart; a reckoning was inevitable and is, in fact, long overdue. The insurrectionists even have their own cable channel to keep the pot stirred. It turns out that journalists are just as corruptible as anyone else.

This conflict has already turned violent in a country that has been violent since its inception.

About 1.4 million people have died from firearms in the U.S. between 1968 and 2011, four times the amount killed in our first civil war. In 2019, 14 962 people died from a firearm homicide, 37 percent of the total firearm death.

No developed nation on the earth has bloody statistics like that to report. We’ve been in trouble for a while.

No one thinks this civil war will be anything like the first one if it happens at all.

There has already been recurrent and explosive violence in this new conflict. The wise ones say if a civil war erupts, it will look much more like Northern Ireland than Antietam.

The Internet has siphoned much hate and argument onto computer screens and off the streets. You don’t need to go anywhere to hate your fellow citizens but your living room.

Since they are getting what they want by breaking all our democratic traditions and practices, and by crisis after crisis hitting the hapless Biden administraton,  the insurrectionists – the new rebels –  don’t have any reason to revolt violently or on a massive scale in bloody battlefields.

Why on earth would Donald Trump and his angry followers want a violent Civil War? Why would they need one? And who would be left to play golf in all those clubs?

The so-called rebels are making a fortune and doing well at the polls. And all they have to do is sit back, oppose everything, offer nothing, and watch Biden struggle while the price of everything rises.

Trump is not a Greek-style warrior; he is a familiar coward. He gets people to fight for him and then runs and hides. He’s uncompromising and fearsome in his tweets but terrified of germs and face-to-face conflict.

He and his white nationalist and corporate followers are winning the old-fashioned way, as much as they profess to hate it – by being sneaky and dishonest, stealing the more significant elections and winning the small ones, and lying about almost everything else.

That’s more effective than riots and tanks and the risk of getting hurt.

If they win, the political reality will flip, and they won’t like it.

The people at war with our democracy today will have plenty of power and a lot of responsibility, and their biggest weapon: attacking a government they refuse to be a part of – will be lost.

They won’t need guns to do get power or an army.

But it will be a pyrrhic victory if it happens, in every sense of the word. Trump knows how to win sometimes, but he knows how to lose even more.

It’s how he deals with and exploits defeat and failure that defines him and enriches him, not success.

He has perfected the art of shifting blame away from and onto almost everyone else.

He takes responsibility for nothing, so he is, in fact, responsible for nothing. Biden takes responsibility for everything and is up to his neck in blame and resentment.

The pressure will be on the new government, if there is one,  to govern in a better, more humane, and effective way than they have in the past.

They will not be able to do meet the challenge as they now exist.

They are not about governance but grievance and complaint and self-pity. And they are proud of their lack of empathy and compassion. It stirs the macho heart.

They are seeking to turn the clock back to the glory days of white, Christian male supremacy.

It can’t be done.

No one can tell me their ideology because there isn’t one. The movement stands for nothing but Donald Trump and his sociopathic ambitions and resentments.

Either way, if you can take a breath, it seems Trumpism is doomed. That is not our future, whatever it turns out to be.

Nobody knows what Trumpism stands for except the manipulation of white working-class people to fear and fight against their natural allies, the new America sprouting all around them, the Portland moms, Black Lives Matter, me too movement, gay rights, immigrants, progressives, and the explosive rise of politically powerful feminism.

Trumpism depends on those disparate social groups staying apart and fighting one another. Trump is very good at pushing the buttons of division.

Of course, the Democrats are losing voters. And they deserve to.

The country is in a dreadful mess, and so is the Democratic Party, which is bitterly divided, and even when they are doing something about all this, it doesn’t feel like they are.

Their messaging is horrendous.

We lurch from trauma to trauma and disaster to disaster. Why wouldn’t voters turn away? This may not be Joe Biden’s fault, but he is not getting that message across.

Can a Republican Party run by Trump govern, even if they win? It’s hard to believe. I don’t.

There is no platform,  policy or program, or ideology behind Trumpism. They aren’t patriots; they seem to despise our country and its traditions. In that sense, they are revolutionaries.

The movement is all about power, who gets it, and how it is used. And it’s about hating the new and the other, as profound an American tradition as any single thing.

Trumpism is about targeting and despising democratic and progressive, and moderate members of Congress, government, liberals, elitists, scientists, professors,  the educated,  doctors. And above all, professional journalists.

Sorry, did I forget to mention Muslims, refugees,  people of color, and immigrants?

Besides themselves, who don’t they hate?

Besides Trump, it is not clear what Trumpists love, if anything. Can the party of lies, hate, and division take over and govern a nation of this size? Can such a loveless and angry movement thrive in proud America?

This isn’t a third-world country used to dictators. Most of us – not all – are used to being accessible and will fight very hard to stay that way.

Donald Trump has failed in almost every aspect of life – business, marriage, parenting, friendship,  fidelity, loyalty, and competence. He is even said to cheat at golf.

Count on him to stumble and fall.

The pandemic has overwhelmed and defeated both Donald Trump and Joe Biden as it has confounded and defeated every leader in the world. It is more significant than all of them.

It would take a Messiah to pull us out of this unscathed at the moment. None are running for President. Covid will go away when it is ready. And that may take a long time.

Donald Trump’s great weakness is that he learns nothing from the past.

Failures and defeats are just fresh opportunities for him to move ahead, point fingers, sacrifice others, and find a way to make some money from his many disasters.

He is no deep thinker or visionary. He forgets one of the great lessons of common sense: be careful what you wish for; you might get it.

If he had any real savvy, he’d remain holed up in Mar A Largo and his golf courses, scheming and plotting and taking money under pretenses and stalking Biden and the democrats and his lengthening enemies list.

He is free to do what he’s best at, manipulating his followers to hate everyone who does not support him—and getting a lot of money for undermining our democracy. If he returns to the Oval Office, he will have to do a lot more than that. He will be walking into a firestorm, and his trademark is running and hiding from firestorms, not into them.

Trump is all ego and little substance. His ego can’t bear defeat; there is no rational reasoning. You can’t govern on ego alone.

The country is changing, and as unhappy as this makes white Christian nationalists (Trump is their open leader now) or beleaguered white working people, they’d have to co-opt a vast Army, shoot a lot of judges, and slaughter 80 million or so people do it.

This mess could well take decades to sort out, but it is neither apocalyptic nor civil war or the end of our way of life. More than 500,000 Americans died in our first Civil War; I can’t imagine any existing scenario that would make that possible or happen now.

When the Republicans take over most or all of Congress next year, they will lose their most significant advantage – being responsible for nothing. Now, they can yell and scream, point fingers, manufacture false outrages, and make stuff up all day.

They can avoid blame or accountability for anything, even attacking our capital and killing the people defending it. That will change in a flash if they are in power. They will overnight become the enemy to many people struggling with life.

They will own everything they criticize, and half the country will be in a rage.

They won’t be the outsiders tossing rocks through the church windows anymore if they are on top. They’ll be the insiders screwing up people’s lives.

They will instantly be held accountable for a profoundly confusing and schizophrenic economy, a raging pandemic, a divided country, and a powerful and motivated opposition (not the Democratic Party, but the people who counted on it to defend and protect them.)

I am not aware of anyone in their right mind who believes that Donald Trump and the gang that couldn’t shoot straight can handle this. This is a vast and diverse country. Did they accomplish one significant thing in four years or power?

I don’t believe that Joe Biden will be running for re-election. I suspect it will be a younger, more charismatic, and vastly more popular candidate.

That would profoundly change the political landscape, and it is possible, even likely. If  Trump runs, he may well have a strong opponent. And there is no politician more vulnerable or exposed than he is.

If any country in the world is ready for new leadership, it is ours. That leader is not Donald Trump.

In a democracy, a coup like the media is talking about would provoke massive resistance and opposition in forms not yet even imagined.

I can’t imagine anyone governing in an environment like that, nor do I think we are the next Myanmar, whose army will enthusiastically butcher anyone with a cell phone.

Trying to every Democratic state, including New York, California, and Illinois, will mean co-opting every federal law enforcement agency and tens of millions of people.

What are he and his neutered political party – striped of sane and honest legislators –  going to do to revive the economy, to stop Covid from spreading all over the world, again and again? What is his plan for stopping gun violence?

How will the Great Divider unite the country? His border walls were already an instant joke, rusting and falling apart already, and at great expense, with thousands of immigrants pouring through and around them.

And what about climate change, which is displacing and leaving in ashes and ruining the lives of millions of Americans.

What will the leaders of the far-right coup do about what? What is their plan? How will they quiet the armies of young people organizing to save our planet?

As a party, the Republicans don’t believe climate change is real, vaccines work, or Covid 19 is dangerous and on the way to killing a million Americans.

How can they understand how to meet those challenges?

Bleach didn’t seem to do it two years ago, and today they fight vaccination mandates all over the country. They have become the champions of ignorance and bigotry, the party of the Dark Ages.

What is their idea, exactly, an American freedom die-off? Is killing people the new direction for health care?

If you want to think about a civil war, think about how all those women and people of color and environmental activists and the others in the new America would react to a government and leader that took away their votes, their rights, the lives of their parents, children, and friends, ethics, and standards and trampled over their passions and goals.

The perennial victims will become the persecutors, and the persecuted will become patriots, as actually happened in 2020.

The abortion struggle reveals the difficulties of bringing a dictatorship to a diverse, large, and complex country like America.

Even before the court cripples or overturns Roe v. Wade, Big Pharma sells millions of effective abortion and contraception prevention medicines pills that are freely available all over the country.

They are as easy to get for the poor as for the rich. It would take a huge Army to stop them. And one thing we know – Trump and his party never turn away lobbyists or disappoint them.

Soon enough, new technologies will make the abortion debate seem like a battle of the dinosaurs, which is what it is.

Perhaps one day, both sides will learn that people can’t be bullied into belief and surrender. People have to talk to each other, something Americans forget how to do.

The present does not define the future; that takes real imagination and strength. But it’s the present that scares the hell out of people.

Suppose anyone should be worried about a civil war. In that case, it should be the flag-wavers for Trumpism, a hateful and dysfunctional social movement, not a political party or trained army or diverse social activity.

As horrific as they were and might have been, the plot against the governor of Michigan and the capitol were stunning in their ineptness and stupidity. These people are still a fringe on the outer edges of our society.

The Republican Party has lost any thread of moral authority or integrity – not one of them turned up at the Capitol ceremony last week.

Being distrusted and reviled by half the country will not make governing easy for them. No President as unpopular and distrusted as Trump has ever succeeded or accomplished one significant thing in all of our history.

The failure of  Trumpism will come by the Trumpist’s own hands – they got what they wished for without giving any thought to what they will do with it.

So here’s the bottom line from my point of view :

Civil war as we think of it is not looming over the horizon, and I can’t quite buy the idea of an imminent and total coup. It”s not the end of our world.

There are several years to go before the election. In this world, absolutely no one can predict the future. And things change fast.

My motto is to be strong, keep the faith, and do good whenever possible and as often as possible. No one outside of me is going to trash my center. And I won’t live in fear and anger.

My idea is that there will be significant work for me to do, and I intend to do it well.

I believe that love, truth, and compassion are the most potent weapons. in the world.

Stay strong. Be glad.

 

This weekend, several people inspired me to speak some truth to lies, cruelty, hatred, and bigotry. Joe Biden finally decided enough is enough and ordered 80 million federal and corporate workers to stand up to the irrational and ignorant and get vaccinated to help save lives, restore our economy, and the very idea of mass vaccination, which America brought to the world.

He said he’s getting sick of selfish lunatics and ignoramuses about time.

When all is said and done, this is a make-or-break time for American democracy. Our public health, our right to choose, women’s right to be free and equal are all on the line.

I am no Pollyanna, but I sincerely believe this is something America badly needs to deal with. Donald Trump, forever a lummox when it comes to political decisions, will end up almost single-handily saving our social democracy and the idea that government is necessary and can do real good.

He is making us all understand something many of us got lazy, about he is forcing us to understand that government is sometimes necessary and can do great good.

Trump’s fatal flaw is that he only cares about himself, and in politics, that is a fatal flaw.

To read our spinning media, one would think Trump won in 2020. He didn’t. He and his legions of trolls have managed to grievously offend and alienate at least twice as many people this year than they offended in the previous four years.

And we still have a couple of years to go. The motto of convention journalism ought to be: we need to see the forest for the trees. Sitting at their cable news desks, texting one another, they just can’t.

I repeat: letting women, men, children,  and older adults die needlessly is not a win-win proposition, no matter what Ron  DeSantis and Greg Abbott said.

The extremists in the Republican Party are running away with it, and they are inevitably pulling Trumpism over the cliff with them. If you don’t believe me, listen for the California recall Tuesday results. The Republican Party has spent many millions of dollars crowing about their looming takeover of that state. Let’s see just how many California’s are willing to trust the party of Trump, DeSantis, and Abbott in the fight against an embattled governor given up for dead.

Last week, the Governor Of Texas (Mr. Abbott) defended the state’s abortion law’s refusal to allow abortions for rape and incest this way: “We will wipe the rapists off the streets, we’ll end rape by chasing down all of the rapists out there and getting rid of them.” Then, he said, rape and abortion would no longer be an issue.

I waited a good while for some reporter to ask him why, if this was possible, it hadn’t happened. But no one did.

Politics is not, in the final analysis, about polling; it’s about feeling.

I do not have a perfect record for predicting political outcomes, but I have a pretty good one. It’s a kind of idiot savant gift I was given when I was a political reporter, one that has made me uneasy all of my life.

I have no desire to be a popular pundit or always be right,  but I have a great desire to be authentic, and I strongly believe we are now witnessing the rebirth of our democracy, not its undoing.

I believe the facts – rationally examined away from the hysteria of Washington and New York – support that feeling. It is time for me and others to back away from fear and intimidation and speak the truth.

It is a social crime to be an elitist.

It is a crime against humanity now to be a timid liar or to walk on eggshells when our very way of life is on the line, and lives are literally on the line. Not to mention the fact that our children need us.

I, for one, will not be silent as millions of people defend the cultural murder of children and thousands of older people by rejecting the idea that lives can be saved. Donald Trump’s social movement is, above all things, profoundly ignorant and unrelentingly selfish.

We have governors all over the country who will sacrifice helpless children to their campaigns for re-election and enslavement to a vicious and greedy incompetent leader.

The Republican side of the House of Representatives is moving towards kicking Elizabeth Cheney out of their caucus for speaking the truth about the January 6 treasonous insurrection. Racist  Marjorie Taylor Greene is welcome to stay.

There we are.

I am concerned about what has happened to rational politics in America; I am not pessimistic.

This country was born by people who wished to be free; it will be restored by people who want to be free. It would be wise to remember that there are a lot more of us than them.

Those polls the media loves so much report that 70 percent of Americans believe we should all be vaccinated, although you would never know it by the news.

Joe Biden spoke the truth when he said we could no longer afford to put our lives in the angry, ignorant, sexist, bigoted, and irrational hands.  It is literally killing us.

The majority have rights as well, and they can whine as well as anyone.

When your bladder starts to twitch, keep this in mind.

This is the party that opposes the vaccines that would end the pandemic, has passed the cruelest and most offensive legislation ever aimed solely at women, denies climate change as half the country burns and the other half floods, is stealing hard-won voting rights from black people all over America,  and has spent more thn $6 billion dollars to keep the Quantonoma Bay prison open even thought there are only 40 prisons today and not a single one has yet gone to trial.

If this is the party American wants to run their lives, I’ll start checking on Costa Rica real estate prices; I need a place that will take two donkeys and three dogs.

The reason for this is so that they can continue to frighten Americans about a handful of aging terrorists even though the worst act of terrorism in modern times was launched by Donald Trump and his supporters on January 6. This is the party of Wonderland.

Cindy, a long-time blog reader, wrote a painful message to me saying if I continued to write critical things about Donald Trump, she would have to stop reading me.

This was my answer. I’ve evolved:

“Cindy, here is my feeling about your request. If you support bigotry, you are a bigot. If you support suppressing the voting rights of black people, you are a bigot. If you support the horrible and cruel persecution of women who seek to make their own decisions about life, then you are a sexist. If you support a fascist leader, then you are fascist. If you cannot be persuaded to change your views, then you will never be comfortable here. And I can’t say any longer that I regret that. If you support these extreme and cruel ideas, I really don’t want you here; this is not the place for you.”

I’m with President Biden on this point. It’s time to start telling the truth about what she and her fellow supporters of this movement are trying to do and how much damage they are doing to our country. When it comes to government, there are consequences to stupidity and ignorance.

The new American Revolution is underway.

Thousands of tech workers in Texas say they are considering moving out of the state or already are. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being raised to fund out-of-state travel for women seeking an abortion if they choose to terminate their pregnancies or are pregnant due to rape or incest.

And a score of lawsuits have already been filed against a blatantly unconstitutional and unconstitutionally cruel piece of legislaton. This awful law will not survive in this form.

Make no mistake about this either.

None of this is about policy or the budget or Joe Biden’s mental strength or governance. This Revolution is the newest and hopefully last confrontation between white and mostly Christian nationalists and the new diverse America that has been building for years and is about, I believe,  to explode in their races.

The governors pushing for this heinous legislation are all hoping to run for President and have their noses so far up Donald Trump’s ass that it’s a wonder they can breathe.

When policy is set only by rich white and fearful men, then the policy is doomed to fail in a country as large and diverse as this one has become.

The original idea was for all of us to be free, not just whining, angry, ignorant, and selfish Christian nationalists or white people. That sounds like a better idea than any I have heard come from the mouth of Donald Trump or his knights of the wobbly table.

They are going after black people, poor people, children, women, gun victims all at once. Killing citizens or manhandling a pandemic is not a policy; it is an abomination, and that realization is now spreading across the country.

Failing to protect children from mass murderers is not about freedom; it is about getting donations from the NRA.

Killing people and refusing vaccination is not freedom; it is the very opposite of freedom. It was Josef Stalin’s policy, and Mussolini and, yes, Hitler’s. It has never been America’s policy, and I do not believe it will stand.

In addition to Joe Biden and countless women all over the country, former President George Bush also stood and spoke some truth on 911 in Pennsylvania when he said the greatest terrorism threat is not coming from overseas; it is coming within our borders.

The terrorists who attacked our capital and the terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers are “children of the same foul spirit,” Bush said in Pennsylvania.

In doing so, he made certain that January 6 could never be dismissed as fake news or a picnic gone bad. It is not permanently enshrined in history as an act of terrorism and treason, not of politics.

There is also great hope in Washington now, despite the past weeks.  Washington Post Columnist E.J. Dionne, one of the most respected political writers in the country, wrote this on Sunday:

“Virtually all Democrats in both houses of Congress understand it would be politically ruinous and historically irresponsible to kick away this opportunity to establish a more equitable social contract. That’s especially true since their initiatives – on child care, paid leave, elder care, health care, education, and the pro-family tax credit – are broadly popular.”

There was another extraordinary political development in Washington yesterday. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie returned to reality.

There is no leading Republican in America who did more to enable and legitimize Donald Trump and his hateful movement in 2016 than Chris Christie, the once honest, open-minded, and popular governor of New Jersey until a closed bridge scandal upended his own political future.

A very significant thing happened at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library yesterday; Christie compared Trump’s conspiracy-minded supporters to the John Birch Society in the 1960s and likened Trump to authoritarianism, and flatly rejected the Big Lie – that the 2020 election was stolen.

“All this lying has harmed our nation, to our party, and ourselves, “Christie said, calling out “the white supremacists and the wild extremists in the Republican ranks.”

No Republican leader as powerful and influential as Christie was in 2016 – he almost single-handedly gave Trump some legitimacy – has yet to speak so critically and openly and honestly about Trump.

It wouldn’t have happened a year ago.

The people who surround and enable Trump have no spine. It will only take a couple of rats to make the others jump off the ship. I hear the patter of rats in the wall.

Christie’s reversal was significant: another defector joined the Second American Revolution. Christie matters. And Christie is said to be planning to run for President in 2024.

Chris Christie is a savvy politician; at his best, he was considered almost unbeatable. If he jumps ship, it means something. He is not impulsive or foolish.

There was yet another sign of a turnaround in American politics over the weekend. For weeks, the media has been banging the drums about the effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsome. “Newsome fights for survival as historic crises fuel extraordinary race,” said the Guardian’s headline last week.

Yesterday, a different headline on CNN: “Republicans need a historic polling miss to win the California recall.”

No one, absolutely no one who knew one thing about politics thought California, the most Democratic state in the union, would permit a wacky Trumpist acolyte to unseat a Democratic governor and turn the state over to Republicans like Trump and his Republican governors set about alienating as much of the country’s as they can and showing us and the fence-sitters just what a Republican takeover in Washington and elsewhere would be like.

Once, Democrats were terrified that Trump would be on the ballot again. Now, they can’t wait. Democrats in California say they believe that the ex-president, who keeps hinting (bullshit) at the idea of another run for the presidency, has enormous power. But not in the way he once did.

He still has at least one kind of power, mobilizing suburban women and liberals and moderates.

All Newsome had to do was mention Trump, and the polls just spun almost overnight his way. The California recall will tell us a lot about just how powerful Trump is when dealing with people who aren’t his mind-bent followers.

If the Republican Party cannot count on Trump, they have nothing else in the bag other than a trail of lawsuits and resentment.

Democrats and Progressives have never had more reasons to organize, register, and vote than now or more people in public office to hate and fear, or more reasons to organize and fight for their very freedom and lives.

Trump is much better than King George III even was when it comes to creating true revolutionaries to oppose him. He couldn’t see past his own nose either.

So here’s my stab at punditry: Trump is much too much of a coward to risk running again, no matter what the screamers in Washington say.

And Biden will pass more or all of his dramatic and far-ranging legislation on behalf of equality and social democracy.

Of course, there will be Democratic infighting right up to the wire, as there should be with such historic legislation. And as they always do.

And no, the Republicans’ frantic effort to compromise our voting system will not result in a Republican victory in 2024.  The courts made that clear last year, and there is still time for new legislation from the Senate to curb the voting restrictions the Republicans are placing on poor and black people.

For all this trouble, this is still the world’s biggest and strongest Democracy, and I do not believe anywhere near a majority of people will give that up for Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, or Greg Abbott, or the smoldering ruins of the . Republican Party.

Politics always reminds me of pendulums, it swings one way, and it swings the other. I believe the pendulum is swinging back to sanity and some level of decency. You know where to e-mail me if I’m wrong: [email protected].

As always, I will be happy to admit being wrong; it happens a lot.

But I feel pretty solid about this.  Sadly, when it comes to understanding politics now, we are all on our own. My only agenda is to try to help.

Welcome to the New American Revolution. If you value freedom and equality, and justice, sign up. There’s plenty of time. Maybe we’ll finish the job.

“Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody or other. If wise men decline, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not.” – John Adams.