And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not

For what it's worth, I think every newspaper and news site in America should adopt The Washington Post's new motto out of solidarity . . . and out of defiance to the darkness.

President Trump's excellent 'fine-tuned machine'

The Trump Administration is a "fine-tuned machine."

Any attempt to characterize it otherwise is fake news. Duly noted.

And, by the way, it's all Barack Obama's fault.

So, without further ado and for your reading enjoyment, The Washington Post today brings us the best in news . . . and the best in entertainment.

President Trump on Thursday aired his grievances against the news media, the intelligence community and his detractors generally in a sprawling, stream-of-consciousness news conference that alternated between claims that he had “inherited a mess” and the assertion that his fledgling administration “is running like a fine-tuned machine.”

“To be honest, I inherited a mess,” Trump said, in news conference that lasted more than an hour and was at times rambling, combative and pointed. “It's a mess. At home and abroad, a mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country.”

Yet moments later, the president seemed to acknowledge the widespread reports of turbulence and upheaval emanating out of his West Wing, only to claim that his White House — which so far has been marred by staff infighting, a controversial travel ban, false statements and myriad leaks — was operating seamlessly.

“I turn on the TV, open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos — chaos,” he said. “Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine, despite the fact that I can't get my Cabinet approved.”

IN OTHER developments, this from the "Tomorrow's News Today" file,  The Onion will be ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy, having been brought down by "You can't make this shit up."

Signing off

The United States of America comes to the end of another broadcast day. The United States of America is wholly owned and operated by the Russian Federation, and operates on a frequency determined by President Vladimir Putin, with the explicit backing of Junior President Donald J. Trump, because sex, lies and videotape.

The United States of America invites you to join us at 6 a.m. tomorrow for the alternative news by Russia Today, and for another day of the best in oligarchy and a hot bowl of borscht.

On behalf of President Putin, Junior President Trump and the Russian Federation, the United States of America bids you good night and an obedient tomorrow.

Now, our national anthem.

'Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?'Or . . . where is Delta Tau Chi when you really need it?

White House policy director Stephen Miller doesn't like Deltas, either.

In liberal Santa Monica, students in the city's largest high school tended to hold progressive ideas, to be environmentally conscious and open minded.

But Miller went the other way. He quickly stood out as a contentious and provocative student whose conservative and ultra-nationalist politics put him continuously at odds with teachers, administrators and students.

Univision Noticias spoke with several classmates who said Miller had few friends, none of them non-white. They said he used to make fun of the children of Latino and Asian immigrants who did not speak English well.

Early on, Miller began to write opinion columns in conservative blogs, the local press and the high school's own newspaper, The Samohi. He also contributed at times to the national radio show of Larry Elder, a conservative African American, and once invited him to speak at the school.

Displaying his hostility toward minorities, Miller complained to school administrators about announcements in Spanish and festivals that celebrated diversity.

In his third year at the school, the 16-year-old Miller wrote a letter to The Lookout, a local publication, about his negative impression of Hispanic students and the use of Spanish in the United States.

“When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills. There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school,” Miller wrote.

“Even so, pursuant to district policy, all announcements are written in both Spanish and English. By providing a crutch now, we are preventing Spanish speakers from standing on their own,” he added. “As politically correct as this may be, it demeans the immigrant population as incompetent, and makes a mockery of the American ideal of personal accomplishment."

In that article, Miller also complained about his school's celebration of Cinco de Mayo, the existence of a gay club and a visit by a Muslim leader.

School Board member Oscar de la Torre said he had numerous verbal clashes with Miller, and recalled that Miller turned up one day for a meeting of a committee created to help Hispanic and African American students. But Miller was not there to help, de la Torre told Univision Noticias.

“He wanted to sabotage us,” de la Torre said. “He confronted everyone, denying that racism existed. He said that was a thing of the past.”

Univision Noticias requested an interview with Miller through several White House press officials, but received no reply. Subsequently, the White House rejected the veracity of this article and requested a rectification. But Univision has verified the credibility of the sources used in addition to Miller's own writings. Univision again requested an interview with Miller to express his point of view, but did not receive a response.

Miller wrote about those meetings years later, during his time at Duke University. “I was quickly labeled a racist, and after the session de la Torre became combative. He, like countless others during my time at Santa Monica High, tried to convince me that blacks and Hispanics were all victims of inescapable discrimination, deeply ingrained in the white ruling class and all public institutions,” he wrote.

Natalie Flores, another student who witnessed Miller's evolution from middle to high school, said he displayed “an intense hatred toward people of color, especially toward Latinos.” She and other students interviewed for this report recalled that Miller became angry whenever he heard students speaking Spanish in the hallways.

“I think his big problem was the Latinos. He thought they lived off welfare,” said Flores, now enrolled at the Teachers College at Columbia University.

REALLY, this guy is the honest-to-goodness second coming of Doug Niedermeyer. Just look.

Driving angry

It probably won't be long now before Steve Bannon and his furry little friend Donald Trump drive the United States over the edge and way down, down, down into the quarry.

We might be OK.

BOOM!

Well, probably not now.

That's what we get for electing a president -- take your pick, Bannon or Trump -- who drives angry.

Just Wednesday, word came of two road-rage incidents with foreign leaders. In a Friday phone call, Trump apparently threatened President Enrique Pena Nieto with a U.S. invasion if Mexico's military couldn't take care of that country's "bad hombres."

I am not making this up.

"You have a bunch of bad hombres down there," the American commander in chief told his Mexican counterpart, according to a partial transcript of the conversation obtained by The Associated Press. "You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it."

If Trump was offering assistance, that's a mighty strange way to put it.

A person with access to the official transcript of the phone call provided only that portion of the conversation to The Associated Press. The person gave it on condition of anonymity because the administration did not make the details of the call public.

The Mexican website Aristegui Noticias on Tuesday published a similar account of the phone call, based on the reporting of journalist Dolia Estevez. The report described Trump as humiliating Pena Nieto in a confrontational conversation.

Mexico's foreign relations department said the report was "based on absolute falsehoods."

Americans may recognize Trump's signature bombast in the comments, but the remarks may carry more weight in Mexico.

Political analyst and former presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar notes Pena Nieto had enjoyed an apparent spike in his low approval levels, as Mexicans rallied around him for publicly challenging Trump in the border wall dispute.

The latest remarks could undercut that, if Pena Nieto is viewed as "weak," he said.

Trump has used the phrase "bad hombres" before. In an October presidential debate, he vowed to get rid the U.S. of "drug lords" and "bad people."

"We have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out," he said. The phrase ricocheted on social media with Trump opponents saying he was denigrating immigrants.

THE NEXT DAY, it was Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who got Trumped. Or Bannoned. Does it really even matter? Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me.

The Washington Post, which hasn't seen this much crazy since Watergate, has the story:

It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.

Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refu­gee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin — and that “this was the worst call by far.”

Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.

“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.

Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admission of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”

Trump returned to the topic late Wednesday night, writing in a message on Twitter: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!”

THE UNITED STATES should have bought life insurance from Ned Ryerson when it had the chance. Maybe Canada could have gotten a little something from Mutant of Omaha ("When the world's in ashes, we'll have you covered.").

But we didn't, and Canada won't. And as we become Krispy Kritters in the flaming wreckage of Pickup One at the bottom of a quarry, there'll be no do-over for voters who figured that what Washington really needed was to be blowed up good -- real good.

The alarm clock won't flip from 5:59 to 6:00, and it won't be morning in America once again. We're a midnight kind of country now.

How low can you go? Not sure Trump has a floor

 
A Facebook friend wanted to know why I seemingly only post political stuff now.

In this age of Trump, to even ask the question says nothing good about oneself. Still, I'll answer the question by posting this latest outrage from the malignant butt sore residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On Saturday, a 5-year-old boy whose mother is Iranian was reportedly detained for hours by himself at Washington Dulles International Airport as President Donald Trump’s immigration order was enforced.

Asked on Monday whether Trump’s order — which critics have called a “Muslim ban” — should apply to 5-year-old children, White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave a clear answer: yes.

“That’s why we slow [the process] down a little,” Spicer said at the daily press briefing. “To make sure that if they are a 5-year-old, that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat. But to assume that just because of someone’s age or gender or whatever that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong.”

The argument, essentially, is that basically anyone from the restricted Muslim-majority countries can do dangerous things, so we should carefully vet and potentially ban even young children from entering the US. It shows the breadth of Trump’s order: It truly is meant to affect any traveler from the seven countries (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen) on the order’s list.

WHY DO I post so much political stuff now? Because when you have an administration that can send its flack out to tell the American press THIS with a straight face, what you have is an administration that is systematically destroying the very idea of America.

This is a cancer upon the DNA of this country. This is quite literally anti-American. This is demonstrably a grave attack on basic human rights. This is without question -- veritably, blatantly, plain as opening your Bible and beginning to read -- anti-Christian and blasphemy against Almighty God, inviting divine judgment against this land.

One could credibly argue that, indeed, Donald Trump IS divine judgment against this land.

This is naked evil, and to acquiesce is to risk eternal damnation.

Would you like me to be more clear than this?

OK. Resist.

The alternative facts of (pro-) life

Some folks find it "very, very encouraging" that the Trump Administration "has given the pro-life movement more support at the March For Life than any other administration in history."

I guess you could fairly say that if the "alternative" definition of "more support . . . than any other administration in history" happens to be "blowing smoke up willful dupes' asses at a rate 'unpresidented' in modern political history."

No, I am not happy at all that the Trump Administration is so openly “supportive” of the March for Life . . . or of the pro-life movement, such as it is today.

And when I speak of the “pro-life movement,” what I mean is the old, institutional and political primarily pro-birth movement, which has shown precious little interest in continuing its support of human life once the child emerges from the womb. That “pro-life” movement has sullied itself by becoming a de facto arm of the Republican Party and spending too much of its time and resources in support of politicians who have done precious little to actually stop abortion in this country.

What those lawmakers have done, however, is push manifestly anti-life positions like repeated cuts to social services, as well as reductions to welfare and food stamps. The old “pro-life” movement has sold its soul to a party that backs the death penalty and gave us “enhanced interrogation” — the “alternate fact” designation for torture, which happens to run just as afoul of the Geneva Conventions and U.S. criminal law as it does Christian teaching — and an insanely foolhardy, unjust war in Iraq.

The old “pro-life” movement has sold its soul to Donald J. Trump, who got elected in no small part by scapegoating Muslims and Mexicans, demonizing the American press and otherwise summoning the blackest instincts of the human psyche and spirit.

IT HAS SOLD its soul to the man who vows to give us The Wall — the big, beautiful wall on the Mexican border — which now, we learn, is to be built at American-taxpayer expense and will be defeated as easily as digging a tunnel or hopping on an airplane and overstaying one’s tourist visa.

It has sold its soul to the president who intends to publish a list of crimes committed by immigrants in “sanctuary cities,” a move taken directly from the Nazi playbook in Germany.  Look up The Criminal Jew on Google.

It has sold its soul to — endorsed and campaigned for — the candidate who now, as president of the United States, is ending the refugee-resettlement program and banning all Muslim immigration from countries “linked to terrorism.” Thumb through your Bible (Old Testament and New) to see what the deity of our “Christian nation” has to say about that.

And it has sold its soul to a candidate who campaigned through the Big Lie and now is governing by the Big Lie, which now has been rechristened as “alternative facts.” Joseph Goebbels would be so proud — the March for Life organizers invited Kellyanne Conway, who invented the term “alternative facts” to alternative-fact marchers to death today.
 

“Pro-lifers” today are hailing their impending political victories at the hands of our new, all-GOP political order. If any victories are ever realized here, which I rather doubt, I fear they will be wholly Pyrrhic ones, because when this unstable, budding fascist of a president is done bringing this country to ruin, tyranny or both, “God’s name will be reviled among the Gentiles” because of the sycophancy of these “Good Christian People,” as a liberal, gay high-school classmate derisively refers to right-of-hedonist followers of Jesus Christ.

And those of us Christians who fought this present darkness are going to get it just as good and hard as those who sold out their faith and their cause to a short-fingered vulgarian.

The name of God is reviled among the Gentiles

It's a clear biblical precept, and not a particularly complicated one, that when you count yourself as one of God's own yet persist in evil, there will be repercussions in this world, and then the next.

America's Finest Christians (TM) are quick to throw out Bible verses for their own ends, yet their prooftexting of Holy Scripture never seems to be directed at their own misdeeds.

In the more than a year that we had to learn exactly what kind of a man President Donald Trump is, and be told of the manifest evil he himself promised to commit as leader of the Free World, many American Christians found all manner of justifications to ignore God's holy word and turn this amoral vulgarian into a modern-day, flesh-and-blood Golden Calf (more like a golden ass, alas).

Then they proclaimed it God's will and forbade all dissent as un-American, un-Christian or both.

Again, this is not rocket science.

All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it, and all who sin under the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified.

For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people’s hidden works through Christ Jesus.

Now if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of God and know his will and are able to discern what is important since you are instructed from the law, and if you are confident that you are a guide for the blind and a light for those in darkness, that you are a trainer of the foolish and teacher of the simple, because in the law you have the formulation of knowledge and truth — then you who teach another, are you failing to teach yourself?

You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who detest idols, do you rob temples? You who boast of the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written, "Because of you the name of God is reviled among the Gentiles."

-- Romans 2:12-24

THE EXTENT to which Trump manages to do what he promised -- building "the beautiful wall" on the Mexican border, deporting the undocumented en masse, using America's military as an instrument of vengeance or irrational pique, making torture into government policy, turning away the persecuted and suffering and targeting immigrants on the basis of their religion -- he will be doing evil in the name of all Americans.

By extension, those who enabled him and supported his wickedness will be just as guilty as the president. And they will cloak their iniquity with the mantle of God's righteousness.

That sort of blasphemy likely would be a bridge too far even for the areligious Trump.

At last, when the string has played out and our dysfunctional, unstable commander in chief has visited ruin upon our land, God will be blasphemed among those who know Him not -- an ever growing percentage of the U.S. population. And those who fought Trump's lies and misdeeds, for love of God and the God's honest truth, will suffer the coming wrath -- for His slandered name's sake -- right along with those who gave themselves over to the spirit of blasphemy.

Jesus wept. Satan laughed.

I just threw up a little in my mouth

OK, a lot.

God save the United States.

Iowa uber alles

Iowa's crackpot congressman, Steve King, always has marched to the beat of a right-wing drummer.

He now apparently is goosestepping to an Anschluss beat, hobnobbing with a far-right leader of a political party founded by ex-Nazis in old Österreich. The candidate of the ironically named Freedom Party lost Austria's presidential runoff, but apparently its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, still ist Nummer Eins in the heart of the Hawkeye State's korncob kommandant.

Strache, you see, will be attending the inauguration of Donald Trump as the guest of King. Let that sink in for a moment.

Rep. Steve King

Various media had reported that Hofer and Strache had been invited by Washington's conservative republican deputy, Steve King. King, who had already supported Trump in the election campaign, visited Vienna last October, where he met the then-Presidential candidate, Hofer. Now the confirmation.

Facebook knows about Strache:

"I was invited to Washington this week. As usual, I am accompanied by a Freedom Delegation on this trip.

On the margins of the US presidential election, a series of talks with interesting US political representatives is on our tight schedule."

(Translation by Google)

A STORY on an English-language Austrian news site is here.

Of course, this isn't the 4th District representative's first flirtation with the outrageous.

In 2010, King said he could "empathize" with a domestic terrorist who flew his small plane into an Internal Revenue Service field office in Austin, Texas, killing himself as well as an IRS manager and injuring 13 others.

That same year, during the final House battle to enact Obamacare, The New York Times quoted him as saying this:

“Let’s beat the other side to a pulp!” Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to the last stand of Tea Partiers on Sunday night. “Let’s chase them down! There’s going to be a reckoning.”

In 2016, King attracted attention when a television report showed a small Confederate flag on his desk in Washington. Earlier, he had defended the Rebel flag as a "symbol" of Southern pride and decried efforts to ban the banner from official display:

“A huge price has been paid. It’s been paid primarily by Caucasian Christians. There are many who stepped up because they profoundly believed they needed to put an end to slavery,” said King. “This country has put this behind us.”

And less than a week later, on TV at the Republican National Convention, der Kongressabgeordnete went all master race on an MSNBC panel when someone mentioned the last gasp of "old white people" in the GOP.

This 'old white people' business does get a little tired, Charlie," King said. "I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

"Than white people?" Hayes asked, clearly amazed.

"Than, than Western civilization itself," King replied. "It's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That's all of Western civilization."

The other panelists objected, with Hayes trying to keep the peace. Panelist April Ryan, who is black, asked, "What about Asia? What about Africa?"

"We're not going to argue the history of Western civilization," Hayes said. "Let me note for the record that if you're looking at the ledger of Western civilization, for every flourishing democracy, you have Hitler and Stalin as well."

WHEN IT comes to Steve King, I haven't even scratched the surface of the lowlights here. Believe me.

And now this.

Let me summarize "this": A congressman who can do nothing outrageous enough to alienate his constituents in Bumf***, Iowa, happens to be an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump, who could do nothing outrageous enough not to become the 45th president of the United States.

Then, the outrageous right-wing congressman invites an outrageous right-wing politico of a Nazi-birthed Austrian party (who late last year signed a cooperation pact with Vladimir Putin's United Russia party) to the swearing in of Trump, who has his own thing going with the Russians, whose geopolitical aim is to blow the Western alliance to hell and achieve complete Eurasian dominance.

No, nothing to see here. Move along to the showers for delousing.


IT WOULD SEEM to this schlub sitting at his computer in Omaha, by God, Nebraska, that the problem isn't that Steve King and Donald Trump are going to turn America fascist. It seems to me instead that the reason we have public disgraces like Steve King and Donald Trump at the forefront of American public life is because large swaths of our land already have gone fascist.

Folks hereabouts would deny that till the cows come home, and they'd probably want to sock me "in the goddamn face" for saying it. Of course, the other plausible explanation is that an electoral majority in Iowa's 4th and a winning electoral-college coalition nationally elected these two little Hitlers because they were too effing stupid and racist to manage otherwise.

If I were an King voter in western Iowa or a Trump enthusiast nationwide, I'd just cop to fascist.

For the rest of us, the Resistance begins Friday.

Spin the people the way they want

Part of what poliicians do -- in their spare time when they're not lining their pockets or conducting ideological thermonuclear warfare in America's fallowed halls -- is tell people what they'd prefer to believe.

This, of course, exists in stark contrast to what actually is. Or was. Or will be.

Enter President Obama, speaking to a group of aging Korean War veterans on this, the 60th anniversary of the armistice that silenced the guns but never formally ended the war:

When the war ended with a cease-fire rather than a surrender, Mr. Obama noted, some offered the cynical quip "die for a tie" to describe the result of the war that had claimed the lives of more than 36,000 Americans and over a million South Koreans.

But "that war was no tie," the president said as he stood before thousands of veterans and their families on the National Mall, within sight of the Korean War Memorial. "Korea was a victory."

As a result of the heroism of those who fought, he said, tens of millions of South Koreans are able to thrive in a free and prosperous country instead of living under the thumb of tyranny in North Korea.

"Let it be said that Korea was the first battle where freedom held its ground and free peoples refused to yield," he said. To the veterans and their families, he added, "You have the thanks of a grateful nation and your shining deeds will live now and forever."

THIS, of course is revisionist history. It is ascribing a ex post facto point to what many, if not most, Americans saw as pointless six decades ago.

And no one -- no one, save the communist Chinese  -- was declaring victory in the Korean conflict. As one network radio commentator said on this day in 1953, how do you declare victory when no one's keeping score, when you have no clear objectives?

Gosh, this sounds familiar.

The commentator went on to liken the Korean War to a football game where the field has no goalposts and the entire objective is to keep the other team from crossing the 50-yard line. In other words, contra Barack Obama's revisionism, "Die for a tie."

It is what you settle for when "making the world safe for democracy" doesn't exactly work out.

HERE, THEN, is what we were really saying about Korea when the all the firing was freshly ceased. It comes from an old, old reel-to-reel tape made by an Omaha doctor who thought the moment momentous enough to electronically scrapbook for future generations . . . and then salvaged by this future generation at an estate sale a decade ago.

The prophet was a soldier

‎"Men are blind and crazy, they think all the people of Ohio are trying to steal their slaves and incite them to rise up and kill their masters; I know this is a delusion—but when people believe a delusion they believe it harder than a real fact and these people in the South are going, for this delusion, to break up the government under which we live."

-- William Tecumseh Sherman, 1860

You knew William Tecumseh Sherman was a great Union general. You know what he did when he marched through Georgia, and you might even know that in the process, he invented modern "total" warfare.

But did you know that the general was also a prophet? That months before Louisiana's P.G.T. Beauregard set his Confederate batteries upon federal Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Sherman told his wife in Ohio and a secessionist Louisiana friend that there would be a war, why there would be a war, what would start the war and where it would start. Everything came to pass just as he said it would.

In December 1860, the founding superintendent of the fledgling Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, known today as Louisiana State University, sat down to pen a note to his little daughter Minnie back home in Lancaster. It begins with a papa telling his little one about their new house in Louisiana. It ends as a very grown-up lecture on the cold, hard facts of life.

Sherman writes another note to Mrs. Sherman, telling her his letter to Minnie drifted into something more appropriate for her, adding that she should just read what she saw fit to their little girl. Then, he added this:

There is an evident purpose, a dark design, not to allow time for thought and reflection. These southern leaders understand the character of their people and want action before the spirit subsides. Robert Anderson commands at Charleston, and there I look for the first actual collision. Old Fort Moultrie, every brick of which is as plain now in my memory as the sidewalk in Lancaster, will become historical. It is weak and I can scale any of its bastions. If secession, dissolution and Civil War do come South Carolina will drop far astern and the battle will be fought on the Mississippi. The Western States never should consent to a hostile people holding the mouth of the Mississippi.

But, oh, what he earlier wrote to Minnie!

Alexandria, La.,
Dec. 15, 1860

Dearest Minnie,

I have been intending to write you a good long letter, and now I wish I could send you all something for Christmas, but I thought all along that Mama and you and Lizzie, Willie, Tommy, and all would be here in our new house by New Year's day. The house is all done, only some little painting to be done. The stable is finished, but poor Clay has been sick. . . In the front yard are growing some small oak trees, to give shade in the hot summer days; now however it is raw and cold, the leaves are off and it looks like winter, though thus far we have had no snow. Maybe we will have some snow at Christmas. In the back yard I have prepared for a small garden, but the soil is poor and will not produce much, except early peas, lettuce and sweet potatoes. The house itself looks beautiful. Two front porches and one back, all the windows open to the floor, like doors, so that you can walk out on the porch either upstairs or downstairs. I know you would all like the house so much - but dear little Minnie, man proposes and God disposes - what I have been planning so long and patiently, and thought that we were all on the point of realizing, the dream and hope of my life, that we could all be together once more in a home of our own, with peace and quiet and plenty around us. All, I fear, is about to vanish, and again I fear I must be a wanderer, leaving you all to grow up at Lancaster without your Papa.

Men are blind and crazy, they think all the people of Ohio are trying to steal their slaves, and incite them to rise up and kill their masters. I know this is a delusion - but when people believe a delusion, they believe it harder than a real fact, and these people in the South are going, for this delusion, to break up the government under which we live. You cannot understand this but Mama will explain it to you. Our governor here has gone so far that he cannot change, and in a month maybe you will be living under one government and I another.

This cannot last long, and as I know it is best for you all to stay in Lancaster, I will not bring you down here at all, unless some very great change takes place. If this were only a plain college I could stay with propriety, but it is an arsenal with guns and powder and balls, and were I to stay here I might have to fight for Louisiana and against Ohio. That would hardly do; you would not like that I know, and yet I have been asked to do it. But I hope still this will yet pass away, and that our house and garden will yet see us all united here in Louisiana.

Your loving papa,

W. T. SHERMAN.

"WAR IS hell." Sherman told that to graduates of the Michigan Military Academy in 1879, recounting "cities and homes in ashes" and "thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies." Though he certainly knew it from his Louisiana days, maybe it was unnecessary then to belabor the point that war also destroys the fondest dreams of even its eventual winners -- really, more like its lesser losers.

That's a lesson we never learn, and everybody's always spoiling for a fight. Especially in the South. Especially now -- it's all over Facebook . . . if you dare go on Facebook anymore amid the latest existential conflict (gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre) swirling about President Obama like leaves caught in an autumn whirlwind.

"Men are blind and crazy . . . when people believe a delusion, they believe it harder than a real fact." In other words, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." 

IT'S PROBABLY no historical accident that so much of This Present Nuttery has its genesis below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Having lived for a quarter century some 1,100 miles and a world away from the peculiar stew in which I was reared, I think I've gained a little perspective on my home state, Louisiana, and what we of a certain age were indoctrinated into as sons and daughters of the South. I have found that that perspective goes something like this: "Holy sh*t!"

In this angry day, during this troubled age, you could be forgiven for thinking nuttery has become the norm in America, and the vortex of the granola cyclone -- a perfect storm of nuts and flakes -- is moving slowly up the lower Mississippi River basin.

So, for all the secessionist, nullificationist, insurrectionist folks back home whose outrage has assaulted me at every cyber corner, I have just one more quote from LSU's founding father, W.T. Sherman. The then-superintendent of a little military academy delivered it, weeping, to his friend, Professor David F. Boyd:

You, you the people of the South, believe there can be such a thing as peaceable secession. You don't know what you are doing. I know there can be no such thing. . . . If you will have it, the North must fight you for its own preservation. Yes, South Carolina has by this act [its secession --R21] precipitated war. . . . This country will be drenched in blood. God only knows how it will end. Perhaps the liberties of the entire country, of every section and every man will be destroyed, and yet you know that within the Union no man's liberty or property in all the South is endangered. . . .

Oh, it is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization. . . .

You people speak so lightly of war. You don't know what you are talking about. War is a terrible thing. I know you are a brave, fighting people, but for every day of actual fighting, there are months of marching, exposure and suffering. More men die in war of sickness than are killed in battle.At best war is a frightful loss of life and property, and worse still is the demoralization of the people. . . .

You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people, but an earnest people and will fight, too, and they are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it. . . .

The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth -- right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with.

"WITH A bad cause to start with." You could almost forget we're talking about an anguished warning on Dec. 24, 1860, and think the future general was trying to talk some sense into today's laptop revolutionaries, heat-toting gun nuts, and the seceders, nullifiers, Obama-impeachers and insurrection-seekers who love them.

In a lot of ways, America today is as much a powder keg as it was in 1860. And just like 1860, there is no shortage of people, with hotheaded Southerners in the forefront, pitching lit matches in the arsenal door.

Eventually, someone will light the right match in the wrong spot, and something's gonna blow. And there will be blood.

Because some people never learn.

For the love of God. . . .

If you needed confirmation beyond what we've witnessed the past four years, here it is: The American right has lost its freakin' mind.

Such as it was. 

This comes from some Facebook page called "Government Sucks," and I've traced it back as far as Nov. 14 on followingjohngalt.org . . . which tells you about all you need to know about that particular whackadoodle website. Government may or may not suck, but what really sucks are people so far gone that they think the roundups and exterminations are about to begin -- and that we need assault weapons to stop it.

Apparently, disturbed people acquiring military-grade home arsenals and slaughtering innocents in movie theaters or first-grade classrooms are just regrettable collateral damage in the quest of "right-thinking Americans" to protect themselves from Pol Pot Josef Stalin Adolf Hitler Barack Obama.

I DON'T KNOW what you can say to people who believe this . . . or who will post this sort of offensive nuttery on sites like Facebook, which used to be a nice place to hang out online with your pals. And this is offensive. If I were Jewish, I would be beyond apoplectic.

Hell, as a Catholic, I am bordering on being the other side of apoplectic.

The thing is, you can't pull these folks back from the edge. Hardline "conservatives" are hellbent on getting further and further out there, and they cannot be reasoned with. "Get a hold of yourself, man!" will have no effect, and indeed will brand the exhorter as one of "you people." As an appeaser. As less than patriotic. As a "socialist."

As an enemy.

No, you can't argue with crazy. This sh*t is crazy. And presumably, the people who have given themselves over to the paranoid spirit of crazy are heavily armed -- or want to be. This will not end well.


UPDATE: Speaking of crazy, this from Politico:

Freshman Republican Rep. Steve Stockman (Texas) on Monday said he would "seek to thwart" executive action by President Obama in regard to gun laws by any means necessary, even if it means "filing articles of impeachment."

"The White House’s recent announcement they will use executive orders and executive actions to infringe on our constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms is an unconstitutional and unconscionable attack on the very founding principles of this republic," Stockman said in a statement. "I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment."

At a press conference in the East Room on Monday, Obama said he would consider executive actions on gun control, but said such actions would be limited in scope.

LORD, have mercy. Not that we have even a scintilla coming.

Bang, bang, shoot, shoot

This is crazy.

Gun Appreciation Day?

Designed to "send a message" to Washington?

By going to your local gun store and firing range?

The day before President Obama is sworn in for his second term of office and two days before the public Inauguration Day ceremonies?

SAYS the NPR blog item on The Two-Way:

Saying they're following the example of last year's Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, a coalition of "gun rights" activists announced today that they're calling on like-minded Americans to visit gun stores, gun ranges and gun shows on Jan. 19 in a show of unity they're calling "Gun Appreciation Day."

It's no coincidence that the 19th is Saturday of the weekend when President Obama will be sworn into office for a second time. Organizers say the date was chosen "to send a message to Washington two days before Obama's second inauguration." They're worried about what they see as the "Obama administration's post-Sandy Hook assault on gun rights."

On Dec. 14, a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., before taking his own life.

Among the groups that are on board with Gun Appreciation Day: the Second Amendment Foundation and the Conservative Action Fund, a so-called SuperPAC.

PRAY TELL, what exactly is the message right-wing gun nuts want to send here? "Screw with us, Obama, and we'll kill you"?

"We don't like how the election turned out, so we're thinking about implementing Plan B, which rhymes with "P," and that stands for 'putsch'"?

That's certainly what it sounds like. That's certainly what the splenetic context of the four-year conservative freak-out, as well as the timing of the event, suggests.

What this stuff also suggests is that the United States has gone as mad as it's been since the darkest days of the late 1960s. The difference today is that we operate on depleted social and civic capital and thus have little room for error.

It wouldn't take much for a whole bunch to go seriously south in a big hurry. Paranoid, angry people and guns are a match made in hell.

In other words, this is crazy.