This is a madman

I think reporter and historian Garrett M. Graff is only being responsible by discussing the unthinkable out loud. This is what keeps us awake at night.

Is Trump About To Nuke Iran?  
The fact we can't say "no" for sure should terrify us.

... The simple fact that we can’t say “definitely no, absolutely not, for sure” is an astounding commentary on how unhinged and dangerous his presidency has become and how far off the rails the war with Iran has gone as Trump flails about with no plan, no strategy, no exit, and a global economy that day-by-day is reeling from the biggest geopolitical oil shock in history. ...

... I think we have to take seriously the possibility that Trump does consider nuclear weapons as an answer to his own floundering in Iran. ...

 

Graff excoriates the media for failing to digest and raise up Trump's threats seriously. An historian of Watergate, he knows about the "Madman Theory" -- Richard Nixon's bluffing approach to threatening North Vietnam. During Trump's first term, he saw some of that acting in Trump's bellicose threats to North Korea. But he fears Trump's current antics are something else.

... Are we really this inured to unhinged comments that “Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell” doesn’t even warrant a full 24-hour news-cycle?

... This isn’t just “Madman Theory.” This is a madman. Trump’s “leadership” is indistinguishable from your crazy uncle yelling at the TV. He is clearly unwell. And increasingly desperate. He thought he could start a war and turn it off when he wanted, and now has delivered the US a perhaps generational strategic defeat in the Middle East.

... As Vermont’s congresswoman Becca Balint said yesterday — in one of the few and too-rare strong statements of condemnation — “"If President Biden or President Obama had said anything remotely like this, it would be nonstop coverage on every single channel and everyone on the other side of the aisle would be howling about it and demanding that they step down.”

... for the first time, it’s the president who represents an unstable and reckless part of the nuclear equation. Trump, after all, is someone who thinks we could even use a nuclear weapon to defeat a hurricane. We have no idea how the coming weeks of the Iran war will unfold, but does anyone think Donald Trump’s going to be less unhinged and more stable and more thoughtful as the US strategy continues to flounder? .... I’d personally put the chance that Donald Trump uses a nuclear weapon against Iran at some point in the three percent range — which is a stunningly high number, given the history of nuclear weapons and the presidency. ...

Can the U.S. figure out how to curb a lunatic in power? Guess we're going to find out.

Slow-motion imperial decline

Richard Stengel is a former under secretary of state for "public diplomacy" in the Obama administration and once the editor of Time. "Public diplomacy" is a euphemism for image promotion by a country for its benefit -- by as much as possible making friends through soft, cultural power. 

Yes, just the sort of thing that the felonious Orange Toddler despises. Stengel has a harsh assessment of what the current president is doing to the USofA around the world.

... today’s unprecedented disengagement with diplomacy and our allies diminishes Brand USA. To call it a suicide pact is too strong, but it is a deliberate, conscious unraveling of the things that truly made America great.

What Trump is doing to America is a deliberate, slow-motion version of how Great Britain, one of the world’s great powers in the 20th century, became little England after the second world war. Within 15 years, an imperial hegemon became a medium-sized, more inward-focused European country concerned more with domestic economic recovery than foreign influence.

That is essentially what Trump is doing to America. Post-Trump, America will be a more domestic, inwardly focused nation, a country with fewer international connections and allies, but with an outsized, muscle-bound military, and always willing to do anything to make a buck. That is the fortress America of the 19th century, protected by two oceans and happily self-absorbed and insular.

No, we were never quite the shining city on the hill we thought we were. But, post-Trump, the United States will become little America. Smaller, meaner, less shiny. 

I found informative Stengel's evocation of a US analogy to the shriveling of Great Britain as a world power after 1945. A US imperial denouement is even happening in the same part of the world; the Suez Crisis of 1956 marked the end of Britain's far flung order. In that military flare up, the US Eisenhower administration prevented the Anglo-French-Israeli alliance from humiliating a nationalist Egyptian government; by fiat, the US preserved Egyptian sovereignty over the vital Suez Canal and signaled the end of Britain's worldwide reach.

Might we now see China play some similar role in our current Strait of Hormuz adventure? A flailing TACO Trump could use an intervention to get him out of the crisis he has made for himself and us all. An anxious world wishes there were an adult to step in ...

It was the women who laid Jesus' body in the tomb

This work by Arthello Beck.hangs in the worship space/chapel at the Interdenominational Theological Centre in Atlanta, Georgia. I am haunted ...

Good Friday

I fear I am largely allergic to poetry. Too often, it seems to flow at a pace and by a course that my mind doesn't grasp. (Since Erudite Partner is a poet, this is an unfortunate disability.)

Lucas van Leyden, 1517

But very occasionally, a poem gets through to me. This meditation/poem did so this morning as I sought to engage with the commemoration of the execution of Jesus.

Nobody crucified Jesus

Religious leaders accused,
culture made excuses,
politicians gave orders,
people in the streets went along,
friends left him to the system,
and the army pounded nails.
Who do you blame for that?

We live in a cross-shaped world
that believes in the expedience
of other people’s pain.
The most injurious to God
are those with good reasons.

Even the most powerful
have only the power someone gave them.
What evil have I helped to empower?
What part of me helped create this evil?
Am I ready for it to be healed?

Just as we found ways, working together,
to do evil,
it will take a lot of us working together
to do good. 

By Steve Garnaas-Holmes; h/t Diana Butler Bass.

Friday cat blogging

 

She wants to know what's in there. She approached cautiously, then braved the narrow tunnel. What if there were something in there to eat or harry to its death? (That's what she does to the unlucky stray fly.)

But no -- nothing in there. It took her a moment to figure out how to back out. She looked a little disconcerted. 

A low energy, dimwitted speech to the nation

What if an American president gave a speech and nobody cared? That's what happened last night. I almost never listen to Trump; his bleetings are not worth attempting to decode. But he's gone and launched a murderous war so I figured, I should. Thousands are dying under air assault by my country. Why? 

What a waste of time it was to watch this. The man is a floundering moron. And he looks like he could use a nap.

Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama communications guy, knows what he saw.

Typically, presidents follow a decision to go to war with a nationally televised address to explain the decision, call for shared sacrifice, and define what victory looks like. ... One month into the war, Trump finally gave a nationally televised address — but instead of offering clarity or rallying the country to the cause, he delivered an overlong, low-energy, rambling speech that served no strategic purpose. 

... Because the speech was so poorly written, it’s hard to identify any strategic rationale for giving it. To the extent there was a purpose, it was to declare victory. Instead, it read as an admission of defeat. ... 

Having started a war, Trump seems to intend to bomb some more and just walk away from a broken international oil delivery system, leaving passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz under hostile Iranian control. I guess we knew he didn't know how to read a map.

During the speech, Trump argued this didn’t matter to the United States:

The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it. We haven’t needed it, and we don’t need it.

With Trump, the line between dumb and dishonest is always blurry — but this is a genuinely nonsensical statement. ...

Trump started this war and raised your gas prices. Ending it on these terms won’t lower them.

What Trump says doesn't matter here, because Americans can't be tricked into thinking gas prices aren't high. The fact that he thinks they can says a lot.

Pfeiffer knows well that slipping presidential approval rarely recovers during a second term.  

Trump’s numbers have been sliding for a year, but the decline has accelerated since the war with Iran began. A bounce-back is conceivable if the war ended and gas prices came down — but that would be a historical anomaly. Most second-term presidents never recover. They just amble off into the dustbin of history.

Trump’s path back to relevance looks especially precarious. The decision to go to war violated the two fundamental pillars of his political appeal — lower costs and no new wars. And as last night’s speech made clear, he can barely muster the energy to sell the war or save his presidency.

Trump has three more years to do possibly irretrievable damage to people and planet. The project remains: stop him as much as possible and envision a better future.

"Both performative and substantial" -- after No Kings

There's plenty of punditry going around in the backwash of the big day. For what it is worth, here's mine.

This was big; there are critics, as has historically been the case when the underlying upsurge toward equality and justice erupts in all its flavors from frivolity to ideological zealotry. Somebody feels left out; somebody else feels the action should have been done differently. Leaders are blithely lionized or viciously and even falsely reviled. In my (too) long experience of these moments, these kerfuffles are just symptoms that something genuine is happening. Let us be glad -- for the moment calls on us each to find a role in the struggle for a better country. There are many roles.

I joined the walk from the Embarcadero to City Hall in San Francisco. By comparison with lots of previous marches, this was not a huge crowd. Maybe somewhere in the five to eight thousand range? It's hard to tell in a narrow corridor. But the wonderful Brad Newsham who pioneered organizing human protest messages on Ocean Beach reports that Saturday's crowd there, the same morning was some seven thousand participants! That's San Francisco too.

And, quite intentionally, these No Kings events were meant to show our faces everywhere, totaling over 3,000 locations nationwide and probably 8 million people overall.

Who came out to Market Street? 

• Sure, there were lots of white-haired old timers. The Bay has a good supply of us. But my observation (and my hundreds of photos) show that as many as half were "middle generation," 30-65, sometimes with kids, workers who get Saturday off, the kind of folks whose jobs usually don't require them to get dirty. They may earn more than the national median income, but in this town, that doesn't mean they are affluent. 

• There were many people from visibly Asian origins. More than the white folks, these people seemed quite likely to come from the class of workers who do jobs that do require them to get dirty.

• A lot of people appeared to be what I call "Californian," folks who don't look exactly "white" but whose ethnicity is not obvious. 

• There were plenty of gay men, slightly unusual for a broad spectrum San Francisco march. Perhaps some were government employees who sniff out bad times ahead?

• There were NOT many high school and college youth marchers that I saw. Those I did see appeared more serious than some of the old timers. Are the young appropriately scared of the world we are offering them?

• There were very few visible Black marchers. Of course, gentrification has ensured that there are very few Black San Franciscans ...

• • • 

Andrea Pitzer, author of a study of concentration camps, asks Does No Kings Matter? 

She too has participant observations:

My sense is that, more and more, people aren’t showing up in some generic self-congratulatory way, but with the understanding that we need one another, that we are reliant on each other, and that policies of cruelty and exclusion will only lead the country into a cul de sac of fascism.

This is an idea that protesters are helping to shape as they expand the movement. It’s a profound realization to know that millions of other humans have enough desire for a different world that they’ll make an effort on behalf of something better, even in the tiniest, reddest towns. ...

... The No Kings movement is a bottom-up force that is creating pressure for a different kind of politics locally and nationally. That process is bound to be messy and take time to sort out. But the protesters understand the assignment: the most important place they can be is right where they are. No Kings is binding together the core movements we’ve seen for a while on the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and elsewhere.

We’re seeing a massive shift in favor of the abolition of ICE, deep support for trans folks, and fury over the Iran War. Though we see the effects of public pressure on actions like the recent DHS shutdown, Democratic politicians have, by and large, had a hard time keeping up, because the movement is still evolving and moving faster than institutions can respond....

... first-time protesters are practicing for the harder tests that may be coming. In the wake of the murders of Porter, Good, and Pretti, the risks are clearer now. They’re girding themselves to help because we know where authoritarianism goes and how far it will stoop to acquire more power, even after having seized so much. The greater the number who stand up now, the fewer the number who will have to pay with their lives later.

So many individuals have become atomized, isolated, and lonely. Protesting is an antidote for all that. And is also how to pull people into realizing they can play a role in building the future. No Kings is both performative and substantial. Showing up with a sign is in and of itself a powerful action to take in this moment, but it’s also a path to doing more.

She's caught on to something I agree is real. 

• • •

Want to know WHAT'S NEXT? Click this link. 

Not simple and not going away

Sportswriters -- the good ones -- are different from other journalists. Well, maybe theater critics are also different in a similar way. Their job and craft is to describe the practice and art of people and collective groups who seek to demonstrate the excellence and delightful potential of our troubled species.

This calling sometimes makes sports journalists unexpectedly blunt commentators on our accompanying societal follies. The existence of athletes who break gender categories can bring out the best of them.

Ann Killion writes about sports and athletes amid the fading embers of the daily San Francisco Chronicle. And she calls bullshit on the current round of obfuscation from the International Olympic Committee about transwomen athletes.

Olympic ban of transgender women an overly simplistic decision with vast consequences

This past week the International Olympic Committee did the easy, simple thing. IOC President Kirsty Coventry announced that transgender women would be banned from all Olympic events, starting in Los Angeles 2028 and going forward. 

... It was simple — and simplistic — because it conveniently ignores the science that indicates that this issue is far more complicated and nuanced. But, hey, we live in a time where global warming is ignored, once-eradicated lethal diseases are making a comeback and scientists are mocked for their knowledge, so why not throw one more complex issue on the bonfire of human research and intelligence?

The IOC’s decision was simple because it flaccidly capitulated to the Trump administration, ceding territory to the loudest, meanest and basest elements, and ignoring the objections of scientists and advocates. ...

Killion goes on to explain the uncertain science that exists about the correlations between simple gender markers and athletic performance. The scientist who discovered the genetic variation which the IOC uses to define sex is not a fan of the current determination.

The IOC ban will require every female athlete who wants to compete in the Olympics to do a one-time gene test, either by drawing blood or having a cheek swabbed, to prove they are indeed female athletes. 

The test is designed to determine the presence or absence of the SRY gene, found on the male Y chromosome. Forget how this conjures up the long history of discrimination against female athletes and perceptions that if you’re good at sports you must not truly be feminine. The basic science behind this test is controversial. 

Andrew Sinclair, the Australian researcher who discovered the SRY gene in 1990, wrote an article last year after World Athletics — the governing body for track and field — adopted the same standard the IOC will implement. He decried the decision.

... Sinclair noted that biological sex is complex with a variety of physiological factors coming into play, and the SRY test only indicates whether the gene is present, not how it is functioning or whether testosterone is being produced. ...

We, both the scientists and the rest of us, know so little about what's "real" and what's meaningful about sex and gender in our species that we easily default to prejudice and bigotry when our preconceptions are challenged. Some people just don't fit. People who don't fit aren't going away. 

What's novel is that we live in a time when gender-complex people refuse to be erased. Get used to it.

I recommend again 800 meter runner Caster Semenya's The Race to Be Myself for a peek into what it is like to live inside these contradictions. 

Some whimsy from No Kings

I'm always bemused when the MAGA-ites describe those of us who repudiate their vision for the country as mired in anger. Sure -- we think MAGA's racism and retreat into an individualistic and patriarchal past is ugly, even sometimes evil. And we say so.

But when we get together, we know how to have fun. And there's joy in feeling you are part of creating a more courageous and happier future. The creativity was out in force on Saturday:

Imagine walking a couple of miles in that get-up!

Or along with that baby unicorn!

Three eagles consult before stepping off.

 

Sometimes it is good to watch a bit before jumping into the human flow.

Oh well, let's toddle along with march.

No Kings in San Francisco

No Kings, No ICE, No War. A few images:

 

The people assemble at the Embarcadero Plaza by the old clock tower and the new wire sculpture.

And then the crowd swelled, and swelled, and pushed forward ...

 

Many had their personal messages ... 

Some were happy to be part of this crowd.

 

Some earnestly rejected MAGA insults.

And others shared their fears.

At the end, the crowd drifted into City Hall Plaza for more speeches.

 

As it was for many marchers, arrival there was my signal to leave. We've done this before and, after drifting up Market Street, we didn't need any speeches. But we did check out the many organizational tables set up between the Main Library, the Asian Art Museum and the old federal office build on the way to BART. 

A good day, and we know in our souls this is to be continued ... 

No Kings today ...

Much more tomorrow.

Friday cat blogging

Janeway becomes possessive if one of us packs a bag for an overnight. She seems to ask: can I go too? No, you can't.

Big Mio tries to assert he's top cat. And he's certainly a big guy. But I'd bet on Janeway to take the lead every time.

 

A lot of feline mischief goes on in this household.