Conventional Wisdom

 

The bombing of civilian infrastructure, bridges, power plants is a "war crime."

Pythons in Florida swamps and Norwegian maple trees in New Hampshire are "invasive species."

Colonizing the moon and Mars are an expression of the human spirit of exploration and represents a grand vision for the future of humanity which visionaries like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will bring us.

We want workplaces, universities and clubs to "look like America."

Mad Dog hears these things and they make his head spin, his stomach growl and his fingers itch. These are articles of faith, such deeply engrained conventional podcast wisdom nobody even questions them any more, or, well, not "nobody" but too few people question them. We don't groan or cry out--we just let these things sail by as not worth challenging because so many people just nod and say, "Yeah, we know all that."

WAR CRIMES

The "war crime" thing is usually followed by some mention of the "Geneva Convention." As Mad Dog understands it, after World War II, a number of nations signed a treaty to prevent behavior by nations such as bombing civilian populations, destroying water supplies, torturing prisoners, exacting collective punishment for the crimes of a few terrorists--things for which the Allies executed Hitler's minions and generals, what Goering called, "victors' justice," meaning none of these things would be considered immoral or criminal if the Nazis had won the war by doing these things. 

The answer to "war crimes" is that life on earth was ever so, brutal, ruthless and selfish, and people who try to prettify, restrain or pretend we can wage war like gentlemen are ridiculous fools who think war ought to be fought with chivalry by gallant warriors. 

The only reason poison gas was not used during WWII was the fear if you used it, the other side would use it, and that fear, shared by both sides, worked unreasonably well. The first instance of mutually assured destruction.

Of course, the Americans  fire bombed Japanese cities relentlessly, targeting civilians, setting afire "non combatant" people, homes, factories, everything, even before Hiroshima. That was justified as a way of winning the war. 

But now, all that, which was once called "total war," is called immoral and "illegal." In reaction to that, in 1949 diplomats traipsed off to Geneva, and promised their countries would never do any of that again. They signed papers with ink. But, of course, by 1965, none of that mattered, as the United States tried to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age, mined harbors and set villages afire with napalm.

If there is nobody to enforce a law, is there a law?

If a tree falls in a forest and no ear to hear it, is there a sound?

Pete Hegseth argues we are fools to talk about rules of engagement and he joins Sylvester Stallone and Rambo saying we would have won in Vietnam if only those prissy generals had allowed us to fight with both hands rather than one tied behind our back. It was the American version of the Hitler thing about our indominable armies having been stabbed in the back by their own politicians and undesirable elements.

But nobody ever called any of this Vietnam behavior "war crimes," because these acts were committed by Americans, and even the My Lai massacre of infants and mothers, where photos were undeniable in the age before AI, none of the soldiers or officers who shot infants in the head were convicted--save the infamous Lt. Calley, who served three years of house arrest and then released.

Oh, well. Boys will be boys.

The fact is, when you unleash the dogs of war, they are going to go for the jugular, as the good citizens of Minneapolis discovered. Put guns in the hands of low grade psychopaths and sadists and bad things are going to happen, but that's not a "war crime."

Oh, well, boys will be boys and anyone they kill is a terrorist.

Renee Good

"Crime" means there is some authority to enforce transgressions, but when it's the authorities who are transgressing, there can be no crime. 

If a law is not enforced, it ceases to be a law.

"If the President does it, it's legal." Who said that? 

A/ Nixon? 

B/ Trump? 

C/ The Supreme Court?

 D/ All of the above?

No such thing as a war crime, because war itself is a crime against humanity. And we got no international police force, no international courts which are not a joke, or which have any power to enforce their decisions. Hell, we barely have a Supreme Court in the United States any more--just a bought and paid for rubber stamp for President Trump.

INVASIVE SPECIES

Then there is the concept of "invasive species." Trump would have you believe dark skinned immigrants are an invasive species, and when Mad Dog tried to buy a maroon leafed Norwegian maple, he was told they are illegal in New Hampshire because they are an "invasive species." 

Wrong leaf color. 

Never mind that you never see these trees growing wild in any wooded area in New Hampshire, but only as ornamental trees planted outside schools, parks or homes. 

If  you've taken introductory biology, you know that every species which has ever existed on the planet is an invasive species, seeking out a niche to occupy, out competing other plants or animals for resources, establishing its tenuous foothold in the great competition which is life on earth.

So when human beings say a tree or a fish is not "native" to some place, they mean they do not like that particular tree or fish, and it is crowding out other trees or fish they do like. 

It's a value judgment. 

It's true, some fish can be so successful, they obliterate other fish in the lake and so the lake has fewer varieties of fish, so if that successful fish, which is now the only species, ever succumbs to a virus or a change in temperature, the ecosystem is less diverse and a particular lake may find itself devoid of fish, until a new one arrives to occupy that niche. 

Feral pigs are causing widespread destruction in Texas, and clearly are invasive, as they are the descendants of pigs left off by Spanish explorers, and we do not like them one bit, so they are invasive. 

And don't get Mad Dog started on lampreys in the Great Lakes.

When the Charlotteville Unite the Right MAGA's chanted, "You Will Not Replace US," they were expressing this very sentiment--we are the good   [White] species, and a new, invasive species with Brown or Black skin speaking Spanish or Haitian will not replace us, because they are the  invasive species and we are the natives.

                           You Will Not Replace Us!

But, as George Carlin observed, every human being is an invader, is not native, except, perhaps for a few living in the Rift Valley of Africa, where homo sapiens may have emerged from apes, but everyone else spread out from there, walked or boated across Asia and on to the Bering Strait or down the West Coast of North America by boat, all the way to Patagonia. 

So "Native Americans" are not actually natives, no more "native" than the Europeans who exterminated them, pushed them off the continent using more advanced technology and a determination to end the nomadic hunter/gatherer way of live on the Great Plains, and replaced it with industrialized agriculture. It was a case of one group being better adapted to the environment, even changing the environment to displace another and occupying a niche.

So "Native Americans" is a misnomer and, in fact, if George Carlin is correct, "Indians" were not named by mistake because Columbus thought he had reached India, but because he thought them "Indus Deus," that is people of God, and so there is nothing disparaging about calling people "Indians."

Of course, Native Americans may prefer "Native Americans" because it sounds more entitled, but that's another story. 

Indians were outcompeted by an invasive species, namely the Europeans.

COLONIZING SPACE FOR HOMO SAPIENS

Then there is the idea of needing to colonize Mars or distant solar systems to ensure humankind survives the coming Armageddon.  Truth is, there is nothing within reach--not just within our own lifetimes, but for millions of years, even if we could use nuclear fusion to power our spacecraft and travel at nearly the speed of light (and you cannot go faster). 

But we do it because we are human beings and human beings are explorers and adventurers.

By the time we reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star in another galaxy 100,000 earth years would have elapsed. To put that in perspective, dinosaurs roamed the earth until 66,000 years ago, so any earthling to reach this new solar system would wake up on his spacecraft and the people who sent him (us) would have gone the way of the dinosaurs back home. Certainly, your girlfriend back on earth would not remember you.

And nobody is going to farm potatoes on Mars, not now,  not ever. And if they did, they'd have no market for them either on Mars or back on earth. Love Matt Damon, but really, "The Martian" is actually just a fun movie, not a visionary manifesto.

LOOKING LIKE AMERICA

And finally, there is the idea that our colleges and work places should "look like America." Corporate CEO's say such stuff. So do deans of medical school admissions. As if looking like America, if we could even agree what that means, would be a desirable thing in a medical school class or in an architectural firm or in at a Ford dealership.

Really, why are looks so important? 

Aren't colleges, just to take one example, supposed to be about stuff which is not connected to visual characteristics? Whatever happened to admitting homely girls who were good at differential calculus to college? Or nerds who taught themselves to program and used that to publish a photo book of the girls in the freshman class so guys could know who they wanted to date and now they had the phone numbers to call up their weekend fantasies. 

Does she look like America?
 But she's cute, so let her in

Even if we did decide to look like America: What would that even mean? That might mean that we'd have people with different skin colors, and maybe they'd even speak different languages at home--Spanish, French, Zulu, Swahili, Dutch, Africans, German, Russian--but, truth be told, even if theses folks had parents who spoke those languages, if they were American raised, likely they'd speak only one language. 

If you speak two languages, you are bilingual. If you speak only one language, you are American.

Now, on Starship Enterprise, it was lovely to see people of all different races, and even some folks with pointed ear pinnae who might not even be homo sapiens, working harmoniously without a trace of racial prejudice. It's a vision of a better world, a better future. But if we learned that Dr. Spock was selected for the crew because he filled the Vulcan quota,  would that not diminish the joy?

So, these are some of the unexamined articles of faith we hear and so uncritically accept, and Mad Dog feels ever so much better getting this all off his half Klingon half Hobbit chest.

TACO Tuesday at the Phantom Toll Booth

Last night, Tuesday, April 7, 2026 did not end a thousand year old civilization. Total war against Iran did not ignite and a ceasefire, which many pundits had told us was not something Iran would ever accept, actually took hold.

Why Iran would not be expected to accept a cease fire was blatantly obvious: The U.S., and most notably its ally in this war, Israel, has ignored every ceasefire, and in fact the U.S. tends to step up its bombing during negotiations. And Israel, well just ask Gaza about ceasefires with Israel.

But the Iranians, unlike Mr. Trump, are no fools, and if they can get something without losing their power plants and bridges, they are shrewd enough to take that deal.

Now, if reporting can be believed, they've got Trump accepting Iranian tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, which they never had before, in a tacit concession by Mr. Trump that the Iranians hold all the cards in that critical passageway. They've come away with a Phantom Toll booth--not a bad deal for them.

But Trump can claim a victory, and maybe he can go home, or at least he can allow the Marines and the U.S. Navy to go home after they flex their Rambo muscles for a while.

Fact is, the Iranians live there, and they cannot and have no reason to try to leave.

It's not like the Israeli settlers who claim land owned by Palestinians, and move in, mow down houses and build their own: Americans don't want to live around Hormuz--they don't even want to build expensive Condos there for time sharing and luxury beach front property. 

Mr. Putin must be laughing, with his bros in the Kremlin, and, in case you've forgotten, Renee Good and Alex Pretti are still dead. Pete Hegseth has not brought them back from the dead. 

And Jeffrey Epstein did not hang himself. 

 

Tuesday's Gone

 "Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the fuckin strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah."

--Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America

During the Second World War, the United States Navy unleashed naval bombardment on Japanese troops who were protected deep inside cement tunnels, only to emerge to slaughter American marines once the bombing stopped. 

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, as President Kennedy considered his options, the possibility of simply launching a quick strike with Marines to depose Castro and to defeat the Cuban government was considered. Marine Commandant David Shoup briefed President Kennedy and his advisors. General Shoup displayed a large map of Cuba, and in the middle of the island was a red dot. That red dot was to scale representing the island of Tarawa. "It took us 18,000 Marines," he said and the casualties were enormous. What do you think, he asked, the cost of invading Cuba would be, and how long would it take? 

Charlottesville Rambos

JFK was a veteran of the Pacific war, where Guadalcanal, another small island, claimed the lives of seven thousand Marines and took 6 months to subdue.

 JFK took invasion off the table. 

Donald J. Trump's bone spurs precluded any chance he would have first hand knowledge of what combat can and cannot achieve. 

There is an old adage in the Pentagon: "Never allow an air force general to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when you are facing a ground war: They only know what you can see from ten thousand feet." Which is to say, you cannot win a war with air power alone.  When air force generals argue that World War Two was ended by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they are wrong.  Japan was already defeated by naval blockade, and an island hopping grinding war and when the Russians entered the war and overwhelmed  the Japanese army in Manchuria, the Japanese finally capitulated. The atomic bombs were not decisive. 

What really worries most of the true cognoscenti is that Israel may use a score of atomic bombs against Iran, as Israel faces effective missile and drone strikes from Iran which Israel's "Iron Dome" cannot defend against.

And, of course, Trump's threats are empty. Even if he damaged Iran's economy and infrastructure severely, the damage to Western, and yes, to America's economy would be worse.

The question is: Can Trump's advisors put together a video to show him which might help him understand this.

Russia expected a quick victory in Ukraine. They did not expect drones would decimate their columns of tanks.

The best we can hope for is a TACO (Trump always chickens out) Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Renee Good and Alex Pretti are still dead.

And so, for that matter, is Jeffrey Epstein.

Terrorist killed by Submarine

 Barney Frank, the former Massachusetts Congressman, once remarked that he could not recall a terrorist ever being killed by a submarine.

What he was talking about is you have to use the right weapon for a particular enemy, and more generally, you have to fight a war with the right weapons.

There is that indelible scene in David Lean's movie, "Lawrence of Arabia" where an Arab king on horseback pursues a Turkish airplane strafing his village frantically waving his sword at the plane as it disappears off into the sky.

During the war in Vietnam, American military officials repeated the reassuring phrase, "We are bombing them back to the Stone Age," as the Viet Cong sheltered safely in their tunnels only to emerge during the Tet Offensive of 1968 to over run American and South Vietnamese positions.

Bombed Back to the Stone Age

Stone Aged Victory Entering Saigon

North Vietnam Emerges from Stone Age

In our current war on Iran, Secretary of Excursion, Pete Hegseth takes the podium to assure his bros in the sports bars that we are bombing them back to the Stone Age, hitting them while they're down, eviscerating the Iranian Air Force and Navy, which means, of course, we must be winning.

The Real Casualties of US Power

Of course, no mention is made of the Iranian's successful attack which set afire the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, using a $20,000 drone to defeat a $3 billion aircraft carrier. The Ford has fled the field of battle as has the rest of the US Navy, effectively. We have only a show Navy there now. They are too vulnerable to cheapie drones and missiles to risk. Fourth rate powers like Iran and Yemen can take them out with dime store weapons.

Robert MacNamara, a hawk on Vietnam, lost faith in the ability of the United States to win that war no matter how many battles it won because he calculated it cost $20,000 to kill a single Viet Cong.

By that sort of analysis, we have already lost the war with Iran, which uses drones and missiles which cost tens of thousands of dollars while the U.S. and Israel spend missiles costing millions to bring down each of those Iranian weapons.

It is also likely that the Iranians can replace these cheap missiles more rapidly than the Americans can replace their million dollar Patriots.

Beyond all that, the real end point is who controls the Strait of Hormuz, which clearly the United States cannot do, and has, tacitly, admitted it has no chance of doing. The Strait is lined with mountainous caves from which missiles cannot be dislodged, and, in any event, the Iranians can close the Strait without missiles, using fast boats armed with drones or simply mines. So Trump has shrugged his shoulders and said, "We don't need the Strait of Hormuz. Let NATO worry about Hormuz."

Which is to say, we cannot beat Iran. Iran will still be there no matter how many Iranians we kill or how many power plants we bomb and we, eventually, have to go back to from where we came.

But, we beat them! USA! USA! 

Sieg Heil!

And once again, America has won a non touch war, fought on the other side of an ocean costing only money and few expendable middle class lives of hero servicemen and women who we solemnly welcome back in their coffins to Andrews Air Force Base, having made the ultimate sacrifice for a President who thinks them fools and losers.

The average MAGA mob guy will grumble about paying more for gas at the pump, but he knows that won't last long, as his President has reminded him: A short war we can declare we won is not really a war, but only an excursion and we won it, and moved on.

MAGA. MAGA.

And who was that fellow Jeffrey Epstein anyway? So last week's news. 

Trump Uber Alles

One thing about Donald Trump: there's never a dull or unfilled moment. 

It is hard just keeping up with Trump news; one loses track. Fortunately, the New York Times compiled a list of stuff Mr. Trump has attached his name to or has demanded be named for  him:

1. U.S. Currency will now have his signature where the U.S. Treasurer once had his. Not that most people ever noticed. And Trump did make sure his signature got printed on those COVID relief checks.

2. Trump coins: one with his profile and one from above the waist, leaning forward on some surface, looking like Marcus Aurelius watching his legions march off to war.

3. The Trump-Kennedy Center. As Llyod Benson remonstrated, "I knew Jack Kennedy. You're no Jack Kennedy." It's a "King Joffrey" move, if you're a fan of GOT.

4. Donald J. Trump United States Institute for Peace. Whatever that is. Likely where they display mementos from the airstrikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean, from the bombing of Iran and videos of Trump and his gang beating up on Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

5. Trump Gold Card: wherein if you give Mr. Trump a million dollars, you can get a visa to visit America.

6. Trump RX: A website for buying prescription drugs, which does not work yet, but Mr. Trump has the concept of the program in mind.

7. Trump National Parks Pass, showing Mr. Trump next to George Washington, who is not as good looking. 

8. Trump Class Warships: which are especially vulnerable to $2,000 drones, like the one which set fire to the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, causing the $3 billion aircraft carrier to high tail it out of the Persian gulf. 

9. President Donald J. Trump International Airport in Florida.

We Know Airplanes

10. Penn Station in NYC renamed to Donald J. Trump Station. This is a nice complement to the Donald J. Trump ice skating rink in Central Park  and might go well with a renamed Grand Trump Central Station at 42 Street, and while we're at it we could rename "Fifth Avenue" to "Trump Avenue," and Tiffany's to Trump Tiffany's and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Breakfast at Trump's Tiffany's. 

For that matter, how about New Trump City?  With 5 boroughs: BronxalDonald, ManTrumptan, DonnyBrookland, Statentrumpia and QueensBarron. 

Airport Security

11. Washington Dulles Airport: Well, who was Dulles any way? Just some guy who traveled a lot by airplane when he was secretary of state. They built that airport way out in Loudon County, Virginia, so far from downtown Washington, D.C. that the joke was nobody would ever use it until you built a train to get to the city, which they did eventually and now it's still light years from the city, but people do use it if they are trying to get to West Virginia.

Now Here's a Man Who Knows Gold!

12. National Football League Donald J. Trump Commanders stadium. Well, they named one Redskins stadium after Robert F. Kennedy--the original RFK, not the JR, and they had some pretty good teams there eventually, but lately the team could use a boost, which surely the Trump name could provide. Maybe we could go back to the Redskins, as long as we are renaming things, which means we could play, "Hail to the Redskins!" again. Or "Hail to the Trump Redskins! Hail Victory. Hail to the Redskins! Fight for Old Donald Trumpty!"

13. The Trump Train: renaming the DC Metro is a no brainer. The alliteration alone would be worth it.

14. The $100 Trump dollar bill. I mean, really, is Benjamin Franklin, for all his talents as a scientist, a statesman, a diplomat not just a little too homely for American currency? Not from central casting. While we're at it, why not go full tilt and replace all those folks, Washington, Lincoln, Grant with Trump. You could add variety by profile, full frontal and maybe different colors for different denominations, as long as they are all gold.

15. And, last, and the piece de resistance: Trump on Mount Rushmore. The problem is placement. The faces are pretty tightly packed, but there does seem to be room to Mr. Lincoln's left, and maybe to George Washington's right. Or maybe, just maybe, we could touch up Teddy Roosevelt's visage and transform it into Donald Trump. Roosevelt never really belonged up there with the first President who held the country together and then retired, refusing to be king or Jefferson, author of the Declaration and the President who purchased the entire North American continent for Anglo posterity, or, of course, Lincoln, who Trump says is the next best President to himself. 

But really, do we need all those other faces? Why not just erase the others and do a really big Trump. Only makes sense. Give the man his due!

What the World Needs Now...Is a Good Apocalypse Movie

 

Reading Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick's wonderful "The Untold History of the United States," Mad Dog recalls the things they tell of,  things buried in his memories. 

The title is something of a misnomer--what these authors tell is not "untold," as Mad Dog remembers nearly everything they say about the 1950's, and even the stories set in earlier decades are hardly untold, merely forgotten, covered under layers of dust. What they have written is really, "The Forgotten History of the United States."

Going over those golden decades of the 1950's, the "Leave It To Beaver,"  segregated, halcyon days to which MAGA wants to return us, the whole Eisenhower era, where a man could support his wife and family and have a car and a lake house on his factory salary,  where serious men in the highest levels of the government wanted to use atomic bombs to cut a new Panama canal, to melt the polar ice caps, to intimidate the Communists into submission, to threaten Guatemala, Cuba and any other Latin American country who dared challenge the American United Fruit Company, the sheer lunacy of the times comes back into focus. Let's dig missile silos into the moon so we can attack the Soviet Union from space. Generals, Congressmen, up and down the chain of command, American officials were saying this stuff.

"Atoms for Peace" was Eisenhower's response to the outcry from scientists and a partially aroused public, when people like Einstein and Bertrand Russell sounded alarm bells about nuclear weapons threatening to end mankind. 

But that was all a con--Eisenhower's basic strategy, embraced by his loyalists (Dulles, Nixon, General Curtis LeMay et al), was to simply threaten with nuclear annihilation anyone who opposed the commercial interests of American corporations, or the political interests of the United States. He insisted nuclear weapons were just another addition to our military arsenal, and he considered using them in Korea, Indochina (later called "Vietnam" after he left office), the Suez Canal and elsewhere.

That benign looking, grandfatherly figure was mad as a hatter when it came to nukes. Even Churchill thought so. 

We could dig new harbors with nuclear bombs on the Alaskan coast; we could make new medicines with nuclear fallout; we could blast the earth in Arizona down toward the hot, magna core of the planet, for thermal heating systems. We could kill all the snakes in Africa with a-bombs! (How the bombs were going to select out the snakes, apparently, was not a problem anyone could solve.)

And don't forget our missile bases on the moon, which one wag said would be run by the Department of Luna-cy.

As is true now, the American public had no clear idea of who to believe, but then Neville Shute published a book, a novel, called, "On The Beach," and a movie soon followed.

 It simply described the aftermath of a nuclear world war, encapsulated in an Australian beach town waking up to the appearance off shore of an American submarine which has taken refuge, after firing its missiles. We meet the commander and crew of the submarine and we meet the Australian folks who take them in. Some star crossed romances ensue, but mostly what follows is the nuclear cloud, which crosses the equator and heads down toward Australia, ineluctably, as it moves toward the final elimination of human life on earth.

Churchill sent a copy to Khrushchev in Moscow, but he did not send a copy to Eisenhower because, Churchill said, Eisenhower had become "too muddle headed" to read it, or to appreciate it if he could read it.

The book's scientific assumptions were challenged, but the general conclusion was then and is now thought to be mostly correct: Nuclear war has the capacity of ending human life on earth.

And how did it all happen? There is only a general explanation--things got out of hand. 

Bibi Netanyahu, Iran, Ukraine are not mentioned nor predicted.

But you can be sure Joe Biden, addled as he might have been, remembered "On the Beach," as he replied to a question about whether the United States would go to war with Russia over Ukraine, "I don't want to start World War Three,"  Biden said.

Throughout "Untold History," American politicians continuously invoke the horrific menace of what we are facing--communists, Central American revolutionaries, Africans from tumultuous failed states, and it all sounds so today--we need strong men (in masks) to protect us from rape and murder coming from people who are not White or Christian or even English speaking. The escalation from the mundane to the five alarm fire is simply first gear for the MAGA mob. 

But where is our "On The Beach" today? 

Where is the book or movie or Netflix series about a Kingfish who denigrates experts, scientists, generals, becomes President, unleashes previously controlled viral diseases by abandoning vaccines, betrays America's allies, starts a war in the Middle East, then moves on to a war with China, as masked storm troopers suppress all dissent, murder and imprison all opposition, as he churns out gold coins with his image imprinted on them, renames airports, bridges, buildings, theaters, sports arenas after himself and he fiddles (or plays golf) while his apathetic nation is distracted by the circus, and he ultimately provokes Armageddon?

Is the story simply implausible? Just too far out?

In today's media world even a book as riveting as Shute's would have to fight through an ocean of titles competing for attention. In 1960, there were only three TV channels and Hollywood produced a manageable stream of movies shown in local theaters. You could get everyone's attention, if you had the money.

Today, getting enough clicks is tougher, and getting people to actually sit still and watch a movie is even more unattainable. And, to get the attention "On the Beach" got, to achieve that sort of reach through our population, you'd need Bezos, Zuckerberg, all the 0.001% guys to get on board. 

Don't think we could rely on Elon Musk for that.

Or, for that matter, any of them.

But there is a chance: A lot of people watch "The Pitt," and millions will see "One Battle After Another."

The question is whether or not it is still possible to get enough people on the same page to coalesce opinion.

But, it won't be easy:  even after masked federal agents shot a White mother and a White nurse in Minneapolis, Americans turned the page and moved on to "March madness."

Renee Good and Alex Pretti Are Still Dead

 News cycles being what they are, what are a couple of murders of ordinary people in Minnesota to fret about?

Last night, on PBS Rick Scott, the U.S. Senator from Florida was asked about the Democratic opposition to mask ICE agents roving the streets in unmarked vans, shooting people and he rolled out a list of names of people he claimed were murdered by illegal immigrants and pointed to heroic ICE agents as the good guys who are defending white womanhood from the depravations of Spanish speaking rapists and  murderers.

When asked at his confirmation hearing about his statement that Alex Pretti was a terrorist intent on murdering policemen, Markwayne Mullin said he might have "misspoken" about that, and, he admitted modestly, you can't get everything  right every time.

Not that  of this sort of hyperbolic tripe is new in America--Senator Joe McCarthy claimed there were thousands of Communists infiltrated into the halls of the U.S. government--he had a list of names--and that they were planning on taking over America and making it a pawn of the Soviet Union.

Pointing to a nurse holding a sign, "Melt ICE," and screeching, "Terrorist, rapist, murderer!" is so very American.

Up here in New Hampshire, most folks don't want to think too much about a mother or a nurse murdered by sadistic agents of the federal government. Haven't seem 'em up hereabouts. 

ICE is searching for empty warehouses where they can stash Spanish speaking, brown skin people caught driving or walking while Brown in Kavanaugh stops.  We put Japanese in concentration camps once for being of Japanese heritage. What's so wrong about seizing Spanish speakers and stuffing them in concentration camps? As Justice Kavanaugh said, when you find an illegal alien, he is apt to be speaking Spanish, looking Spanish and hanging around with other Spanish speaking people in Home Depot parking lots. So that satisfies that pesky requirement in the Constitution called "probable cause."

Was a time Black folks were lynched for being Black and walking around town after some white woman claimed to have been raped by a Black man. Much the same thing.

Clinton triggered a mass psychotic break called the "Unite the Right" rally when he observed the United States was moving ineluctably toward become a "majority minority nation."  That struck a deep chord: "We will not be replaced," the White men marching in Charlottesville shouted, wearing Swastikas, and there were some very fine people there, Trump reminded us. Also some Very Fine Cannibals, no doubt.

Very Fine Cannibals, Charlottesville, VA

Harry Truman didn't much like Jews, who he called "kikes" and he certainly did not like scientists, especially if they expressed horror at the uses of atomic bombs and if they spoke out against developing hydrogen bombs. Those scientists were all sissies and Truman said he never lost a wink of sleep about dropping the bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.  And to this day, most people have no idea why Nagasaki had to fry. Even before Hiroshima, but surely after Hiroshima, the Japanese were toast, literally, and they knew it and dropping the second bomb then and now looks like, "Well, we had this bomb: What were we supposed to do with it?"

So, this America, man. 

Alex Pretti and Renee Good are dead and will stay dead. There is no statute of limitations on murder, because death is forever. But, of course, there is no murder, if the government does it.

Was always so. Thus is ever so.