Our Vanishing Wilderness

“In wildness is the preservation of the World,”

- Henry Thoreau

When she was in her early twenties, my daughter Gayley announced she was going off for a three-month NOLS semester. Since I had no idea what NOLS, I smiled and said, “Great.” I soon learned that NOLS stands for National Outdoor Leadership School, and Gayley had just signed up for three months of backpacking, rock climbing, and kayaking deep in the Wyoming wilderness. When I dropped her off at the Philadelphia airport a few weeks later, my child looked barely bigger than the backpack she wrestled out of the trunk. Driving home, I wondered when the call would come to drive back and pick her up.

That call never came, but three months later a tan, healthy, and newly self-confident woman walked into the house. “Dad,” she said, “you have got to do this.” These were not exactly the words I wanted to hear. I was not a young man, and the closest I’d gotten to summer camp as a child was Allan Sherman’s “Camp Grenada” (“Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah).

Less than a year later I found myself at the NOLS staging area in Fairbanks, Alaska, preparing for a two-week stroll through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR. Our group consisted of two guides and 12 students, of which I was the oldest by roughly two generations. My nickname, of course, was “Jerry” – for geriatric. That afternoon we emptied our backpacks and watched the guides confiscate everything they deemed non-essential, which was pretty much everything. One girl was allowed to keep two of the 14 pairs of underpants she had brought. We then refilled our packs with food, camping gear, gas cylinders, pots and pans, a stove, first aid kits, and other requisites for survival. Each of us was to carry 70 percent of our body weight. When I hoisted my pack to my shoulders, I almost fell over.

The next morning we set off into what the 1964 Wilderness Act defines as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” NOLS, and its fervent devotion to “leave no trace,” intended to keep it that way. Anything we brought in we either (1) ate (no matter how many mosquitos we found in the peanut butter) or (2) buried in 12-inch holes with the smooth rocks we used for toilet paper or (3) carried out. Not a grain of rice was left behind.

ANWR, all 19+ million acres of it, is as remote as any place on earth. It hasn’t the beauty of a conventional landscape: on the way up from Fairbanks we passed a lone spruce and a sign identifying it as “the last tree in Alaska.” But its vast stretches of tundra and mountains, rivers and wildlife took my breath away.

We hiked in 80-degree heat, and we sometimes woke up in snow. We saw grizzly bears and caribou, wolves and many birds. Three of us camped on the Continental Divide, which in Alaska runs east-west and is only 3,000 feet above sea level. Out there, so far from anything familiar, I understood as never before my cosmic inconsequence, and yet I felt connected to this vast place and all its inhabitants. Solitude and community seemed to me no longer polar opposites but part of a single spectrum.

And I saw how fragile we humans have made it all. Only a stump remains of the last tree in Alaska, which vandals cut down in 2004. Oil companies have been trying to drill in the refuge since 1977, and for 49 years coalitions of environmentalists, native groups, and climate activists have thwarted them. But now, as it pursues “energy dominance,”the current administration has leases drawn up and ready to sign.

It’s time, I think, to transcend this obsession with dominance and to redefine what we mean by progress. We are neither outside of nature nor in control of it. We are part of it, and we depend on it. Yes, it will be here long after we have gone, but for now at least, it also depends on us.

Enough

But he hasn't got anything on!’ cried a little child.”

- Hans Christian Andersen, 1837

Almost 11 years ago, I inserted into my story of the rescue at sea of four septuagenarian sailors, the following interregnum:

“Little did I know, as we waited for Sparky’s mast to appear above the waves [and hopefully rescue us] that Donald Trump had that day ascended to Number 2 in the Republican presidential polls.

One of the reasons for going to sea is to get away from – perhaps even get perspective on – the minutiae that threaten to engulf our daily lives. In hindsight, how trivial now seem the rantings of this ridiculous man.

And yet, even as the media insisted he was not a serious candidate, Trump continued to suck all the air from the public conversation, getting more headlines than he could ever have dreamed possible. He needs not merely to be ridiculed but condemned.

He is a compulsive dissembler (“I’m really a smart guy”), intimating that he graduated from Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business (“the best school in the country”), when in fact he spent two undistinguished years in Penn’s Wharton undergraduate program, a decidedly inferior brand – and from which he received, not an MBA but, appropriately, a BS. When Timothy O’Brien wrote that his wealth was a fraction of the billions he claimed, Trump sued him – and lost.

His candidacy has been likened to Hitler’s, but the more apt – and worrisome – comparison is Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, an earlier buffoon who did terrible damage to America and for whom the term McCarthyism was coined.”

Two things strike me as wrong about what I wrote then, both of them blueprints for a future we did not take seriously enough:

1. Far from trivial, the rantings are a clear warning of how Trump intended to govern; and

2. I have been listening, on Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s podcast, The Rest is History, about the Nazis’ frighteningly quick transformation of 1930s Germany from a democracy to a dictatorship. It reads like Trump’s playbook.

A decade later, our country is in a shambles, and 250 years of an imperfect experiment in multi-ethnic democracy is on the brink of destruction. Our social fabric is unraveling, and instead of trying to find ways to knit us back together, Trump and his cronies exacerbate our differences for their own gain. In taking our common language to the gutter, they seek to make civic discourse impossible. In dehumanizing entire groups of people, they have set us against each other. A president who demands both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Medal of Honor has waged illegal and immoral wars that have killed tens of thousands of noncombatants – and somehow managed to do the unthinkable: turn Iran into Ukraine. By declaring that states can draw voting districts, not to protect minority voting, but to install political gerrymandering, his judges have reversed 50 years of racial progress and enshrined the grossest form of political partisanship. In insisting that power is the only virtue, the Trump administration has poured scorn on human rights – from our own Bill of Rights to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948.

America has become a country of distrust, in which our citizens don’t trust each other, and neither our allies nor our adversaries trust our word. A country in which the few are getting richer and the corrupt are getting bolder. A country in which beauty has no value and modesty has no place, where only the tawdry, the vulgar, the grandiose can satisfy our tastemaker-in-chief.

I could go on, but I’ll end where I began, with Hans Christian Anderson’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

"’But he hasn't got anything on!’ cried a little child. ‘Dear me! just listen to what the little innocent says,’ said the father; and the people whispered to each other what the child had said. ‘He hasn't got anything on!’ shouted all the people at last.”

How much longer will we refuse to see the naked truth of our own emperor?

Rebuilding the System

“My Dad used to say to me, ‘Have you ever noticed how grateful you are to see daylight again after coming through a long, dark tunnel?’ Well, he'd say, ‘Always try to see life around you, as if you'd just come out of a tunnel.’"

- Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

After my last post, several people responded, “OK, that’s fine, but who are you voting for, Mills or Platner?” It’s a good question, and because I think the Senate race in Maine has national implications, it demands a thoughtful answer.

To cut to the chase: if the election had been held a month ago, I would have voted for Janet Mills; if the election were held tomorrow, I’d vote for Graham Platner. While I think that’s my final answer, things could change between now and the June 9th primary. In fact, I’m intrigued enough by both candidates that my mind could change before I finish this essay.

I have enormous respect for Janet Mills. I do not agree with her on every issue, but she is a straightforward, hardworking, and honorable person, and she has passed her eight years in the Blaine House* with remarkable dignity. She clearly thinks about issues before making a decision, and she stands firm once it is made. An accomplished poet, she chooses words with care. “She doesn’t just read over the top of things,” Maine’s former poet laureate Wesley McNair told Katy Kelleher of Downeast Magazine. “She reads deep down into things.” How refreshing would that be in the United States Senate?

Two points of concern for me are age and current campaign energy. I have absolutely nothing against 78-year-olds (I used to be one), but Mills’ pledge to serve only one term and her so-far lackluster campaign bring back painful memories of Joe Biden’s long goodbye.

Graham Platner came from seemingly nowhere – or at least from the shores of Sullivan Harbor in Hancock County – to captivate a lot of voters: men and women, young and old, liberal and conservative. Along the way he has hit some bumps, from old social media posts in which managed to offend a broad spectrum of people to having a tattoo on his chest associated with the Nazis. He has disavowed those posts and covered the tattoo, saying he was unaware of the Nazi connection. Nevertheless, several members of his staff resigned, and he seemed to be reeling. But he endured. In fact, his candid responses to his transgressions seem to have made him stronger, and six months later, he leads in the polls by a huge margin.

I won’t get into the specific issues, for this is not a state election blog, and voters can visit their websites to see for themselves. But broadly, Mills is a centrist and a pragmatist. Her policy prescriptions focus on reforming, restoring, and expanding things, rather than more radical surgery. Platner resists being labeled, but he stands on the left of his party on many issues, calling for universal health care, opposing war, accusing Israel of genocide in Palestine, and attacking the oligarchy. As for guns, both candidates veer right: Platner opposes banning assault weapons; Mills vetoed a bill banning bump stocks. This is not surprising, as Maine is as pro-Second Amendment as any state in the union.

With Janet Mills we know what we will get in the U.S. Senate. She is experienced; she is straightforward; and she is wise. We can’t be so sure what Graham Platner will bring, and that is both his strength and his weakness. For experience produces a record to be picked apart; inexperience provides an empty slate. But Platner has built a grassroots coalition that has brought together thousands of enthusiastic people from across Maine.

The question we face here and across the country is this: What is the best way to move forward and who are the best candidates to get us there? After my last post, a reader wrote, paraphrasing Platner, “the point of our government moving forward shouldn’t just be to defeat Trump, but to rebuild the system in such a way as to guarantee another Trump can’t happen.” I think that’s exactly right. We once thought we had that system. We have learned that we don’t.

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*A birthday present from a more illustrious James G. Blaine to his wife Harriet in 1862, the Blaine House has been the governor’s residence since the family gave it to the state of Maine following the death of Walker Blaine Beale, who was killed in action at Saint-Mihiel, France, Sept. 18, 1918. He was 22.

The Race in Maine

“As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”

Susan Collins was first elected a U.S. Senator from Maine in 1996. At the age of 73, she is running for her sixth term. Two very different Democrats are vying for the right to oppose her. How this primary and the subsequent election shake out could tell us a lot about where America is heading.

The two Democrats are: Janet Mills, Maine’s current governor, who is barred by law from seeking a third term; and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who has put together an impressive grass-roots campaign. Mills is a soft-spoken, unflappable 78-year-old who, in addition to her two terms as governor, has served three terms in the state legislature, was New England’s first female district attorney, and twice Maine’s attorney general. Platner is a free-wheeling, earthy, unconstrained 41-year-old whose political resume is a bit thinner than his opponent’s: harbormaster for the town of Sullivan and chair of its planning board. He is also a marine veteran who served three combat tours in Iraq.

I am a big fan of them both.

Janet Mills made national headlines in February of last year when she stood up to Donald Trump at a governor’s lunch at the White House. The exchange concerned transgender rights. It ended with Mills responding to Trump’s threats to sue Maine, “See you in court.” Since their confrontation, Trump has predictably gone out of his way to damage Maine’s economy.

Graham Platner has also expressed his views on the issue: “I stand right in the fucking way of anyone who’s going to try to come after the freedoms of the LGBTQIA+ community.” That pretty well sums up the difference in their styles.

Mills has governed as a centrist Democrat, whereas Platner, who has been all over the map in his earlier years, seems to have settled into the populist wing of the party – although it is not really fair to try to pin a label on either candidate. Platner has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Mills is backed by Chuck Schumer, and it’s widely believed that the Democratic establishment in Washington recruited her to run.

The big question for most people here is who has the best chance of beating Susan Collins. But for me the more interesting, and ultimately more important, question is: which vision for Maine’s – and America’s – future do I want representing me in the U.S. Senate? This is not an easy question to answer, but my ideas came into much sharper focus while reading Josh Keefe’s article in The Maine Monitor: “I’m a Maine reporter who went to high school with Graham Platner. Here’s what explains his success.”

Mills made her reputation standing up to Donald Trump – and before him to Paul LePage‚ who for eight years was the worst governor in America. She is not cowed by Trump’s nastiness, and she wants to rescue and rebuild the institutions he is bent on wrecking and to restore the values on which he has trampled.

We need to clean up this mess, and I trust Mills to do it. America’s institutions never worked perfectly, but for 250 years they have been a work in progress that has inspired millions of people. We must continue in that work.

But is that any longer enough?

I am so tired of seeing Trump on the front page of every newspaper. It’s time to stop fixating on him and the damage he is causing and to think far more about how we want to build America’s future on the rubble he will leave behind. We can no longer reclaim America without changing her. That, I think, is Platner’s message.

I will leave you with something he said recently to Ben Rhodes:

“If the Democratic Party is to flourish in the future, it needs to be an antiwar party. . . .We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians. If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.”

A Cockeyed Optimist

“But I’m stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope
And I can’t get it out of my heart”

- Oscar Hammerstein II (“A Cockeyed Optimist”)

It’s not easy to be an optimist these days, especially for an octogenarian with nine young grandchildren who are constantly in his thoughts. And yet, despite the chaos and carnage our country seems bent on inflicting, both at home and abroad, the last several days have brought unanticipated good news.

First was Artemis II’s 10-day, 252,000-mile voyage around the moon and back. With Trump hogging so many headlines, this record-breaking flight got astonishingly little coverage. Yet this was the first trip to the moon in over 53 years ago, and it’s a sign that humans are daring to explore again. But what really thrilled me were the crew members themselves. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen seem like four special and courageous people. As a white American male, a black American male, a white female American, and a white male Canadian, they represent the kind of diversity – of race, gender, and nationality – that we are told is weakening our country. And they didn’t just bring great technical skills, they talked about loving each other and they built a community in a small space capsule with a malfunctioning toilet. For me, the four astronauts are not “heroes,” a word we have trivialized by overuse. They are simply people of great courage, a virtue we have seen too little in this country of late.

Then came the landslide defeat of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s long-time dictator, who had become the poster boy for America’s far right. The Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) has even set up an office in Hungary. Sunday’s loss came despite a campaign visit from J.D. Vance and years of vocal support from Donald Trump. His close ties with both Putin and Trump made Orban the link between eastern and western fascism, which left Ukraine caught in the middle. That the Ukrainians have managed to survive in the face of military force should have been a warning about what we might face in Iran.

From Hungary, Vance proceeded to Pakistan to negotiate with the Iranians. He was joined by Jared Kushner and Steve Witcoff, two shameless private dealmakers who masquerade as public diplomats. The breakdown of the talks made Vance zero for two for the week (which is itself reason for optimism). But he wasn’t quite finished, as he went on to lecture Leo XIV on theology and suggested the pope “let the president stick to dictating foreign policy.” Finally, he said the president deleted the post of himself as Jesus “because a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor.” Did he just discover that?

I’ve asked my doctor start wearing scrubs like Dr. Trump.

So why is all this good news?

For one thing, the Artemis voyage and crew rekindled a sense, less of conquest, than of wonder, of the human desire to explore and to understand our small place in this vast universe. It was carried out by a crew who represented the diversity that has been the foundation of this country until it came under attack a few years ago.

In Hungary, the popular and peaceful transition of power, after 16 years of a dictator bent on destroying his country’s democratic institutions, can only embolden those here who seek to do the same. In the efforts to establish Christian nationalism in America, we got is a man of no fixed beliefs who thinks of himself as Jesus. At last, people are getting the joke.

I am an optimist today because I believe we are taking our country back, not only for ourselves but for our grandchildren.

The Kingdom of the Absurd

“I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. . . . I think I can do anything I want with it.”

- Donald Trump

It’s a little after eleven on Tuesday morning, April 7th, fewer than nine hours before a man with an unquenchable ego, a penchant for cruelty, and the darkest vision for America in the history of the presidency, has threatened to “obliterate” Iran. The sky is blue here this morning, and the sun shines warmly through intermittent clouds. Spring finally seems on the way to midcoast Maine – but snow is forecast for this afternoon. The vice-president is in Hungary seeking to prop up its long-time dictator who is trailing badly in the polls, and the secretary for war (let’s call him what he is) has likened Sunday’s rescue of a US pilot shot down over Iran to the resurrection.

My mind has been going through a fallow period these past weeks. Since I was unable to produce much of interest even to myself, I decided to seek out the thoughts of others, which is how I ended up rereading, after many years, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” in which Albert Camus sets forth his philosophy of the absurd.

I won’t bore you with my pedestrian efforts to grasp the concept, but at its core is Camus’ search to understand the struggle of human beings to find meaning in a universe that is morally indifferent. “This world in itself is not reasonable,” he wrote. “But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational [universe] and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.”

Camus was born into a poor family in the French colony of Algeria and spent most of World War II in France, where he was an active member of the resistance. “The Myth of Sisyphus” was published in 1942. World War II was once called “the good war,” but by the time it ended in 1945, 80 million people were dead, the vast majority of them non-combatants. Almost three-quarters of all the Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe were murdered; in Poland and Yugoslavia the number approached 90 percent. With numbers that size, and with propaganda from all sides bent on dehumanizing the enemy, it is hard to think of each of the dead as a unique individual with a family and a personal history. They are, collectively, victims. Those in unending rows of white crosses are heroes. The others are collateral damage. In the grand scheme of the war their lives made little difference; yet each was precious each irreplaceable.

At 8:06 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the president of the United States wrote: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” adding somewhat gratuitously, “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” What he’s suggesting, of course, is a crime against humanity, the kind the world sought to outlaw after World War II.

That evening Trump announced a two-week cease fire. Some called this an example of strategic genius; most of us just felt whipsawed. Meanwhile, both sides claimed victory; their interpretation of the terms diverged widely; the Israelis kept bombing Lebanon; and the Secretary for War called the man who the day before had called for the obliteration of an entire nation a “president of peace.”

Americans have long believed that our institutions would protect us from a dictator. And yet here we are, the world’s oldest republic ruled by a man who mistakes himself for the state and treats the people, not as citizens, but as subjects.

Welcome to the Kingdom of the Absurd.

Suffer the Children

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

- Jesus (Luke. 18:16)

March 22, 2026. One hundred and three years ago today, the most world’s most famous mime artist was born into a Jewish family named Mangel. They lived in the city of Strasbourg, near the German border in northeastern France. Seventeen years later, the Nazis invaded, and the family fled southwest to Limoges. There the son joined the French Jewish Resistance, which was engaged in smuggling thousands of children out of occupied France. After the war, and with his new name of Marcel Marceau, he would perform his “art of silence” around the world until his death in 2007.

Marcel Merceau as “Pip the Clown”. Photo by Yousuf Karsh

Recently I went to see Marcel on the Train, a one-act play in which Marceau escorts Jewish orphans to the French border, from where they will hike clandestinely into Switzerland. Only a few years older than his charges, Marcel must use all his incipient mime and dramatic skills to keep them quiet when Nazis search the train and to boost their spirits when they start to lose hope. Played by the astoundingly supple Ethan Slater, Marceau combination acrobatics, dialogue, and pantomime give the play an unremitting intensity. I sat mesmerized for all 100 minutes – and yet, almost from the beginning, I couldn’t wait for the play to be over.

Part of my discomfort stemmed from the world beyond the theater, where Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu had just launched their undeclared war on Iran. Among the very first casualties were 175 students at the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab. According to reliable reports, they were killed by a Tomahawk missile fired by U.S. forces.

My reaction to the play was not political, and I write, not as a critic of this war (which I am) nor as an opponent of this administration (which I also am), but as the father of four children and grandfather of nine, a man for whom my family is the epicenter of my life.

My reaction was at once visceral and deeply personal. As I watched Marceau try to save the Jewish children from almost certain death in Nazi concentration camps, it was impossible not to think also of the 175 Muslim schoolchildren who had just been killed without warning in their elementary school in Iran. Nor is it possible to think of the inexpressible sadness their families are suffering without thinking of my own young grandchildren and how much I love each and every one of them.

We hear much these days about the evils of empathy. Elon Musk declared it “the fundamental weakness of western civilization,” and last year one of a growing number of conservative Christians published a book called The Sin of Empathy. But empathy is a far more complicated and difficult emotion than simply feeling sorry for someone. It involves trying to put yourself in the shoes of those who may be very different from you and to understand, from their perspective, what they are living through. This is the task of art: to transcend the merely political and take us to a realm that is at once personal and universal – to unite us with humankind. So often in war, the objective is the opposite – to dehumanize the other in order to more easily kill them – and to insulate our consciences from the unconscionable.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

Those who make war do not, as far as I can tell, think of children, and so children, like empathy, become the first casualties of war.

Whac-a-Mole

Earlier this year, a dictator decided to overthrow another dictator. And then another. It was like the old game of Whac-a-Mole. When a mole raises its head, it gets whacked, but another one pops up somewhere else.

Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro was the first to get whacked. On January 3rd, U. S. military forces captured him and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flew them to New York City to stand trial for narcoterrorism. Emboldened by how smoothly that operation went, our dictator did it again. This time he was not alone, as Benjamin Netanyahu had been pushing him to join Israel and overthrow the government of Iran. Cuba is apparently next. In all these countries, the leaders are malevolent, the economies are in a shambles, and the people are suffering. There are a lot of countries like that.

By all accounts, Maduro is a very bad man. A repressive dictator, whose election was widely denounced as illegitimate, he was detested in his own country, and many people both there and elsewhere cheered his removal. The combination of his unpopularity and the efficiency of the U.S. military operation seemed to muffle critics who might otherwise have questioned the right of one dictator to overthrow another dictator.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was loathed even more than Maduro. He ruled over a brutal theocracy that viciously crushed dissent, killed thousands of its own people, most recently in January, and constantly sowed violence beyond its borders. An estimated 80 percent of Iranians oppose the regime, and millions of people in Iran and around the world celebrated Khamenei’s death.

As with Venezuela, the odiousness of the Iranian theocracy seemed to silence potential critics of its decapitation. No one wants to support a brutal dictator who foments global terror; almost everyone believes the world would be a better place without Khamanei; and there is at least the hope that the massive U.S. and Israeli air attacks might lead to improved lives for Iranians. And so, once again, the voices of those concerned about one man abrogating to himself the right to decide another country’s future were muted.

Do not be fooled. Despite this administration’s short attention span, these are not short-term operations. Donald Trump has said that he must have a say in choosing the governments of both countries. Nor are the based on America’s ideals: democracy, at least for now, is not an option.

Oil, of course, is a factor. Venezuela has the largest proven reserves in the world, and Iran ranks third behind Saudi Arabia. Trump has said the U.S. would control both Venezuela and its oil for a long time to come.

As for Iran, a week after the bombings began, and with no clear endgame – or even strategy – in sight, Trump demanded the country’s “unconditional surrender.” Traditionally, you’re supposed to declare war before you call for unconditional surrender. But Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to declare war, a fact our founders made unequivocally clear. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states: “Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War.”

Why did they do this? They feared, above all else, a dictator who would substitute his personal will for that of the people.

Many media outlets do not report the military operations against Venezuela and Iran as  American undertakings. They call them Trump’s wars – wars of choice, waged at the whim of one man. Nor do we need to look beyond our own borders to find an authoritarian leader who instigates violence against his own people and seeks by force of arms to impose his will on other countries.

The Price of Bread

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

- Oscar Wilde

Affordability has become the new political buzzword – as it should be. The Brookings Institution reported last year on what it called the “nation’s affordability crisis,” in which one-third of all middle-class families “struggle to afford such basic necessities as food, housing, and child care.”

“Life is considered affordable,” the authors wrote, “when a household’s income is equal to or greater than the total cost of living.” Not all middle-class families suffer equally, of course. About a quarter of white families fall into the unaffordability category, while half of Hispanic families do. Black, Asian, and Native families are in between. If you add the middle-class numbers to those of the poor, almost half the people in this country must spend more than they earn just to make ends meet. That leaves no room for saving.

The two political parties have so far responded to the crisis somewhat differently. In his state of the union speech, Donald Trump denied it even existed – and if it did, it was all the Democrats’ fault. The Democrats, by contrast, are all in on the issue, which they see as key to winning this fall’s elections.

Beware, however, of mistaking the price of bread for the value of the republic.

More than 2,000 years ago the Roman empire was at the zenith of its power. Its borders stretched from the British Isles to North Africa, from Egypt to the Caspian Sea. So powerful was its grip on the known world that the era became known as Pax Romana.

But the poet Juvenal saw deeper. Looking back to the days of the republic, he described a time “when we sold our vote to no man,” and the people decided who would be their civil and military leaders. But since the empire had supplanted the republic, “the People have abdicated our duties.” We are no longer citizens but subjects and have become a group who “anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

The Romans did provide grain to its citizens from crops grown in the colonies and paid to the government as tribute, just as President Trump has long promised us a $2,000 dividend check paid for by our tariff surpluses. And the emperors regularly filled the coliseum with elaborate and bloody games, often including gladiators fighting to the death. The intention was to keep the people quiescent.

On June 14th the White House will host a spectacular UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) match to celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States and the 80th birthday of Donald J. Trump. From reports I’ve seen, the event will include a full card of fights. The weigh-ins will take place at the Lincoln Memorial, and the fighters will later be escorted from the oval office to the South Lawn, where an enormous octagon has been constructed under a massive lighted arch. The cost of this extravaganza is expected to exceed $60 million and will be paid for by private donations. Although Trump has said 100,000 people will attend the event, a more reasonable figure, given the size of the area, is 17,000. Tickets are by invitation only and will presumably go to the largest donors. Unlike in ancient Rome, the public is not invited, but we can watch from large screens on the ellipse outside the White House and also on TV. The intention is to keep the people quiescent.

Happy Birthday, America. Have you become what the Founders envisioned 250 years ago?

The Pen is Mightier

Travel back with me to Saturday, March 20, 1999, when Saturday Night Live had my all-time favorite “Celebrity Jeopardy” skit. On the stage are the host, Alex Trebek (played by Will Ferrell) and the panelists: Calista Flockhart (played by a very thin Drew Barrymore); Nicholas Cage (played by a very young Jimmy Fallon); and Sean Connery (played by Darrell Hammond), who always steals the show).

“It’s time for Double Jeopardy,” Trebek announces. “Let’s take a look at the board. The categories are:”

• Potent Potables

• The Pen is Mightier . . . “That category is quotes from famous authors,” Trebek explains, “so you’ll all probably be more comfortable with our next category” . . .

• Shiny Objects . . . “continuing with” . . .

• Opposites

• Things You Shouldn’t Put in Your Mouth

• What Time is It? … “And, finally,”

• Months That Start With Feb. 

“Mr. Connery,” says Trebek. “Why don’t you pick a category?”

Connery: “I’ve got to ask you about the Penis Mightier.”

Trebek: “What? [Pause.] No. No. No. That is, ‘The Pen is Mightier’.”

Connery: “Gussy it up however you want, Trebek. What matters is, does it work? Will it really mighty my penis, man?”

Trebek: “It’s not a product, Mr. Connery. . . .”

Connery: “. . . Because I’ve ordered devices like that before – wasted a pretty penny, I don’t mind telling you. And if the Penis Mightier works, I’ll order a dozen.”

Trebek: “It’s not a Penis Mightier, Mr. Connery. There’s no such thing!”

Nicholas Cage: “Wait, wait, wait, are you selling Penis Mightiers?”

Trebek: “No! No, I’m not.”

Connery: “Well, you’re sitting on a gold mine, Trebek!”

Fast forward 27 years to the winter Olympics in Italy’s Dolomite mountains, where, as The Guardian reported, “The World Anti-Doping Agency is investigating whether ski jumpers were injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid in order to fly further (sic),” all in search of a gold medal. Suddenly, Sean Connery’s words seem prophetic.

Hyaluronic acid occurs naturally in the human body, and its benefits range from arthritis relief to plumper lip. And also apparently to loft time – as some ski jumpers have allegedly been injecting it into their genitals to stay a bit longer in the air and gain a few meters on their jump. “Penisgate” has become my favorite scandal of these Olympics.

At first I wondered how this procedure could possibly increase a male skier’s hang time. But it turns out that the Hyaluronic advantage takes place long before the jumper is airborne. In fact, the Guardian reports, it happens before the games begin, when the skiers are measured for their suits, including crotch size – a process that “is tightly regulated to prevent any athlete having an aerodynamic advantage.” You’d think a wad of Kleenex or a tennis ball would be easier, but the official 3D body scanner would easily detect them. Scientific American reports that one centimeter of increased crotch size in the ski pant can add more than three meters to the jump. There are, however, a number of risks associated with the procedure, gangrene being the worst-case scenario.

Gary Cooper and his wife, Veronica Balfe, get a great view of five-time Olympian and decorated WWII bomber pilot Art Devlin jumping over them at Aspen Mountain. Photo by U.S. skiing champion Dick Durrance.

Although the scandal remains a “wild rumor,” Alessandro Littara, Italy’s leading practitioner of these injections, told USA Today, “I did in fact treat an athlete from that sport . . . and used a generous dose of hyaluronic acid."

Will he win the gold and vindicate Sean Connery after all these years? We may never now. He told Littara he wanted the injection “to avoid embarrassment in the changing room.”

The Courage of Gisele Pelicot

“I always thought this man would protect me.”

- Gisele Pelicot of her husband, Dominique

Not long ago I wrote about the grace of Tatianna Schlossberg, who died from leukemia last December 30th at the age of 35, leaving behind her husband and two young children. Today I write about the courage of Gisele Pelicot, who, over the course of a decade, was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men in the small town of Mazan in southeastern France.

On Saturday morning I listened to Ms. Pelicot’s searing interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on the eve of the American publication of her memoir. A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides tells the story of Gisele lying unconscious in her own bed as unknown men assaulted her. Her husband filmed the ordeal, which inadvertently created a record of the crimes.

In France, as in many countries, rape trials are generally held behind closed doors, away from the press and the public, to protect the privacy and identity of the victim. One reason for this is to shield her from public shame. Another is that defense in such cases almost always tries to blame the victim.

Gisele Pelicot stunned the court and the nation by insisting on an open trial. She attended it every day, always elegantly dressed. “It was a way of me saying, ‘You will not affect me,’” she told Garcia-Navarro. “That was the strength I had within me.” And “it was also a way for me to prop up this tortured body.” But the defendants misinterpreted her courage. Far from making them feel shame, it emboldened some warped sense of their own innocence: “If she is here, she must be responsible for what happened.” It was not rape, insisted the 45 lawyers for their 51 clients (ages 22-70) – she was complicit, she was an accomplice. Besides, they argued, her husband had given his consent. These men have committed no crime. In the end, every one of them was convicted.

Why had Gisele endured so much with her head held high? She had come to understand, she said, that this trial was not just for herself. “Fighting that shame on an individual level also meant working for the collective.”

That collective, I believe, includes all the women who sat in the Congressional gallery last week and watched Attorney General Pam Bondi try to defend (or rather, deflect) her office’s cynical release of the Epstein files. Like Gisele, these women had been raped and sexual assault on a scale that still seems unfathomable.

Now Bondi’s Department of Justice – yes, Justice – had victimized them once again. The released files were meant to have protected their identities and identified their perpetrators. In many cases, they did exactly the opposite, showcasing nude photos and private information of the women, blacking out the names of the men. These women had come to Congress to bear witness, but Bondi didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge their presence, let alone apologize for their treatment. Why would she? This is what we do to victims these days.

With a supercilious sneer, Pam Bondi explained to the Representatives that “the Department of Justice’s core mission is to fight violent crime, protect the American people, and defend the rule of law above all else.”

According to its website, “The Justice Department’s mission is to uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe, and protect civil rights.”

In a nation that long ago lost any sense of nuance, these definitions might seem pretty similar. On closer reading, they could not be more different.

Gisele Pelicot stood up, alone, on behalf of every victim everywhere. She had learned from her nightmare that the health of the collective – of the community – depends on the recognition of the dignity of each and every one of its members. This is something that General Bondi will never understand.

Donald Trump is Destroying America - Part I

Donald Trump is destroying the America in which I have lived for 80 years, and in which I continue to believe.

• He has turned a democracy into a dictatorship, public service into private banking, and a beacon for immigrants into a construction site for concentration camps.

“You combine the threat of prosecution with armed troops in the streets. The picture is pretty clear for anyone who’s read a history book what kind of administration we’re dealing with,” Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan.

“But I have to say, certainly his actions, his administration's actions in the first year, in which they very rapidly sort of dismantled the federal bureaucracy, took over the Justice Department, took over the FBI, took over the CIA and then have created this brute squad, which is called ICE – these are the acts of a dictator, plain and simple,” America historian Robert Kagan.

But the Dow just broke 50,000, best not rock the boat.

• He has replaced a nation of laws with a system of cruel caprice, turning justice into vengeance and mercy into weakness.

Donald Trump: “There’s no place for mercy in my administration. A very highly placed official from a country I’m making up in my head right now [sic] told me, ‘Sir, mercy is for the weak and everyone knows that you are strong.’”

Donald Trump: "In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."

But the Dow just broke 50,000, best not rock the boat.

• He has sent masked and violent thugs into America’s cities, sowing fear among our neighbors.

“It is a scary moment for thousands of families in Minnesota. . . It’s like being, maybe, in the middle of a civil war,” Francisco Segovia, Minneapolis community organizer.

But the Dow just broke 50,000, best not rock the boat.

• He has vulgarized our public discourse and made it the weapon of a bully, rather than the language of a leader.

Donald Trump: “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds.”

But the Dow just broke 50,000, best not rock the boat.

• He has sought to banish from our history books 250 years of the courageous struggles of people trying to live out our ideals, replacing them with a whitewashed narrative we once called propaganda.

“America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better, to protect and deepen our democracy, to fulfill its promise for each and every person who calls it home.” Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York City.

“Mamdani’s family fled violent racial hatred [in Uganda] only for him to come to this country – a country built by people he never knew, overflowing with generosity to his family, offering a haven from the kind of violent ethnic conflict that is commonplace in world history. And he dares, on its 249th birthday, to congratulate it by paying homage to its incompleteness, and to its, as he calls it, ‘contradiction.’ . . . Who the hell do these people think they are?” J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States

But the Dow just broke 50,000, best not rock the boat.

• He has snuffed out Liberty’s lamp and slammed shut the golden door.

Liberty:

“Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Kristi Noem: “Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom – not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”

But the Dow just broke 50,000, best not rock the boat.

Fire and ICE

“You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t. You can’t walk in with guns, you can’t do that.”

- Donald Trump

“You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want – it’s that simple. You don’t have a right to break the law.”

- Kash Patel

This is a story of two men who took their guns to a street protest. One is named Kyle Rittenhouse; the other is Alex Pretti.

On the evening of August 25, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse was in the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, which was undergoing a second day of unrest in the wake of the shooting death of Jacob Blake, Jr. by a police officer. Rittenhouse was 17 years old and openly carrying a semi-automatic rifle, which, because of his age, it was illegal for him to own.

On the evening of January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti was in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, which was experiencing unrest in the aftermath of the killing of Renee Good earlier in the month. Pretti was 37 years old and openly carrying a cellphone. In his waistband or pocket he had a pistol, which he was licensed to carry.

Before the evenings were over, Rittenhouse had used his rifle to shoot and kill two men and wound a third. Pretti never touched his gun. Videos show an ICE agent removing it from his body while he was on the ground being pummeled by five other agents – after which two agents fired 10 bullets into his prostrate body.

Kenosha County prosecutors charged Rittenhouse with two counts of murder. He was tried and acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

Pretti died at the scene, the victim of 10 shots fired in five seconds.

Aftermath

After the trial, Rittenhouse visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and made guest appearances at Turning Point USA rallies. Trump called him “a really nice young man.” Even before he had been acquitted, then-Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz offered Rittenhouse an internship, an offer that set off a fierce competition: Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar said he would arm-wrestle Gaetz for Rittenhouse’s services, and both Madison Cawthorn and Lauren Boebert also offered internships. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill to award Rittenhouse the Congressional Gold Medal.

Pretti, who was a nurse in the intensive care unit of the veterans hospital in Minneapolis, was also the object of high-level attention. Stephen Miller called him a “domestic terrorist . . . who had tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.” Calling the Border Patrol agents the real victims, Gregory Bovino accused Pretti of wanting “to do massive damage and assassinate law enforcement.” Kristi Noem accused him of domestic terrorism and assaulting the ICE officers. Pam Bondi blamed Minnesota’s politicians for the shooting.

The common theme running through the government’s reactions to both shootings was to blame the victims. In both cases the victims were dead.

Turning Point?

On Tuesday Bruce Springsteen released his new song, “Streets of Minneapolis” (video). One song doesn’t make a revolution, but Springsteen’s evokes memories of the protest songs of the 1960s, when music was an essential part of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. Peaceful protests in the face of official violence and lies are the difference between a autocratic state and a vibrant democracy.

I end with a poem Robert Frost published a century before ICE became an acronym.

Fire and Ice (1923)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Las Vegas on the Levant

“It became necessary to destroy this town to save it.”

- Unnamed U.S. Army major explaining the obliteration of Bien Tre, South Vietnam, to AP reporter Peter Arnett, February 7, 1968

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

This picture left me speechless.

It is, as the sign says, a schematic for the New Gaza, which Jared Kushner presented at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Kushner was speaking for the Board of Peace, the recently formed organization of which his father-in-law, Donald Trump, is chairman for life. A permanent board seat can be had for $1 billion.

When I say I found the image distasteful, I don’t want anyone to infer that my revulsion is merely aesthetic. I certainly find it ugly, but as the Romans used to say, de gustibus non disputandum est (“matters of taste are not to be disputed”); and if you like gold bathroom fixtures, well, good for you. But its garishness is not just an affront to my personal sensibilities; it mocks the land on which it will be built, the devastation which preceded it, and the people it seeks to eradicate culturally once they have been removed physically. That is to say, its ugliness doesn’t just lie on the surface – on the hideous buildings, the swank beaches, and the rich tourists it seeks to attract. It goes deep into the soil of Palestine in its effort to divert us from the devastation of the old Gaza that paved the way for the New Gaza.

REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

Those of us old enough to have witnessed urban renewal in American cities in the 1950s and 1960s will remember the razing of slums, displacement of residents, and gentrification of neighborhoods. In hindsight, most of these efforts have been criticized as misguided, and several of the housing projects were subsequently dismantled, although the urban reformers of the day believed they were doing the right thing.

But the urban renewal of the Gaza Strip is something else entirely. This is a real estate deal designed by real estate dealers, and there is a lot of money to be made. The Israelis and Hamas handled the land clearance, always the most difficult part of assembling large parcels of land for development. More than 90 percent of housing units have been destroyed in Gaza since Opctober 7, 2023; over 71,000 people have been killed; and virtually all of the 2+ million residents of the Gaza Strip have been displaced, most of them more than once.

Who are these people? Over 99 percent are Palestinians, primarily refugees from the 1948 resettlement and their descendants. They are overcrowded and impoverished (almost half the people – and 70 percent of young people – are unemployed). They are young (almost half the population is 14 or under), and they have one of the highest fertility rates in the world. They are literate (more than 97 percent of the people can read and write). And there are more child amputees in Gaza than anywhere else in the world.

Last year, President Trump announced that the U.S. would “take over” the Gaza Strip, "level the site" and rebuild it. He spoke of the United Sates “owning that piece of land” and creating “the Riviera of the Middle East.” His plan calls for evicting the current residents, leveling the place, and starting from scratch. He would disperse them to camps in different Middle Eastern countries. Asked if the Palestinians would have a right to return, he responded, "Why would they want to return?"

Why indeed? The New Gaza is not for them. Reminders of genocide are not good for business.

Blind Patriots

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

- Mark Twain.

Musing about patriotism: five historic quotes.

1. "My country, right or wrong." These words were part of a toast Stephen Decatur gave in 1816. Dubbed “the Conqueror of the Barbary Pirates,” Decatur was in many ways the founding father of the U.S. Navy,

   Context: What Decatur actually said was, "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” Not as snappy as the oft-repeated five words, to be sure. But Decatur did express the hope that the country would strive to be in the right; and he limited his reach to foreign affairs.

2. “Partisan politics stops at the water’s edge.” Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican senator from Michigan, who reframed Decatur’s theme after World War II.

   Context: Vandenberg had been an isolationist until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, when he became a committed internationalist. He supported a bipartisan approach to foreign affairs during Harry Trumans presidency, forcefully backing NATO, the Marshall Plan, and the United Nations. While Americans could have political disagreements at home, he believed, we must present a united front to the world. I grew up with that idea, which led me to enlist in the army when the country was entering a war I opposed and against which I protested when my term was up. On May 4, 1970 I was stationed at NATO Headquarters when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on anti-war protestors at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine others. Determining the water’s edge suddenly became very complicated.

3. “My country, right or wrong; if right to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” Carl Schurz, another Republican senator, amended Decatur’s declaration on the Senate floor in 1872.

   Context: Schurz was an immigrant who had fled from Prussia after the European revolutions of 1848. In his adopted homeland he became an attorney and newspaper editor, Civil War general, early member of the Republican Patery, and the country’s first German-American U.S. Senator. As with so many immigrants, Schurz believed strongly in the possibilities of his new country; as a reformer he sought to correct what he perceived as its faults.

4. ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ Samuel Johnson, an 18th-century British writer called “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history.”

   Context: His biographer, James Boswell, expanded on Johnson’s words: “Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Boswell wrote, “Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apothegm, at which many will start: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.” It was instructive to read these words as Donald Trump addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

5. "We have come to a point where it is loyalty to resist, and treason to submit," Carl Schurz.

   Context: And so we return to Schurz in a speech he gave on March 23, 1859, just a year before the start of the Civil War. As masked and armed ICE members put their “boots on the ground” in American cities – and now in my own state of Maine – and as the president demands the annexation of Greenland, Carl Schurz’s words resonate. Donald Trump speaks for himself, not for me. True patriotism demands more than blind allegiance. It calls Americans to come together in a crisis. We are in a crisis now.

Pretty Baby

“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation . . . .“ Book of Exodus (20:5)

Hessy Levinsons Taft died on New Years day at her home in San Francisco. She was 91. Born in Berlin in 1934, she had come to New York City with her family in 1949. After graduating from Barnard College in 1955, she entered the PhD program in chemistry at Columbia University. There she met her future husband, a distinguished mathematician named Earl Taft. They both taught at Rutgers until Hessy left academia to raise their two children. Years later she joined the faculty at St. John’s University, where her research focused on water sustainability. I had never heard of Hessy Taft before, and all my information comes from her obituary and from Wikipedia.

Dr. Taft’s life is remembered, not for her academic or familial accomplishments, however, but for a photograph taken of her when she was six months old by a well-known photographer named Hans Ballin. Ballin entered that photo, along with several others, into a contest to find Germany’s “most beautiful Aryan baby.” This was a big deal: Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi government’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, was the contest’s judge. Goebbels pronounced Hessy’s photo the winner. What followed was a whirlwind of images of the baby all across the country: in advertisements, on postcards, and on the cover of “Sonne ins Haus” (“Sun in the Home”), a pro-Nazi magazine and one of the few periodicals to have survived Hitler’s press shutdown.

This was, to say the least, ironic. Hessy Levinsons was Jewish.

The closest modern-day equivalent I can think of would be if Stephen Miller anointed, as the cutest baby of the new American empire, a child of Venezuelan immigrants.

Winning the contest was more than ironic. It was dangerous. Hetty’s parents were Latvian-born Jews who had emigrated to Berlin in the late 1920s to pursue their careers as opera singers in what was then the artistic capital of Europe. When the cleaning woman brought them a copy of the magazine cover, they were scared for their lives. “I can laugh about it now,” Hessy said 80 years later, “but if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.”

The odds of Hessy winning the contest were below infinitesimal. First of all, it’s safe to assume she was the only Jewish entry. Second, the Nazis were obsessed with race and eugenics, and they produced enormous amounts of “scientific” research – from measuring ideal facial characteristics and coding eye color to ensuring that no drop of impure blood went undetected – to demonstrate their own racial superiority and to prove that others, especially Jews, were subhuman. (Such efforts were also pursued in Jim Crow America and apartheid South Africa.)

There are two morals to Hetty’s story. The first is that all babies are beautiful, especially to their parents. That’s why politicians kiss them. The second is that, if the most beautiful Aryan baby – chosen by Joseph Goebbels himself, no less – is a Jew, isn’t it time to put all the rancid theories of racial purity and ethnic inferiority in the dung heap where they belong?

Stephen Miller appears to disagree. His target is immigrants, particularly those from “third world countries” – and not just those who are undocumented or newly arrived, but those whose families have lived here for generations.

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here,” he said on Fox News, “You see persistent issues in every (italics mine) subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

Goebbels would be pleased.

The Grace of Tatianna Schlossberg

“Our language is the reflection of ourselves.”

- Cesar Chavez

Gauged by the headlines, the man of the year for 2025 was Donald Trump. He’s undoubtedly very happy, as those are the metrics that matter to him. For me, however, Tatianna Schlossberg, who died less than a week ago at but 35 years old, had a far greater and more meaningful impact on my life in 2025, and I hope that her story will resonate across this country long after the depredations of the current era have passed.

That story, so tragically short, is by now well known. Daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, granddaughter of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Tatianna was an environmental reporter whose most touching story turned out to be her own obituary, which she published in the November 22nd issue of The New Yorker under the headline, “A Battle with my Blood.” Who can forget her opening line? “When you are dying, at least in my limited experience, you start remembering everything.”

“at least in my limited experience”. That six-word phrase, coming between four words on either side of it, takes your breath away. So unassuming and yet so evocative, it pulls you at once into the story of a woman who has something important to say, something that you will not soon forget. Tatianna writes her short essay in plain language, using straightforward declarative sentences that invite your empathy but do not ask for your pity. They break your heart.

I have written before about Donald Trump’s assault on language and why that matters so much. I am hardly the only one to have remarked on this, of course, but I felt as I read “A Battle with my Blood” the hope of a revival of our language, of its role, not as a crude bludgeon of attack and degradation, but as a means of communicating thoughts to others and also to ourselves. For how can I know what I am really feeling until I have put it into words that I can understand? Our common language can be so beautiful when we use it carefully and thoughtfully.

What we have done to our language reflects what we have done – and continue to do – to our country and now to the world. We have vulgarized it, ripped from it any notion of nuance or modesty, deprived it of craftmanship and so of beauty. There is no poetry in it and no humanity. We have weaponized it, so that we can debase those whom we do not like and divide us against ourselves.

“A Battle with my Blood” was published on November 22nd, 2025, the 62nd anniversary of the assassination of Tatianna Schlossberg’s grandfather. He was America’s first Catholic president, a descendent of the nation’s most famous family of Irish immigrants. But Schlossberg, of course, is not an Irish name, and all four of Tatianna’s paternal great-grandparents were Orthodox Jews, born near the Vorskla River in Central Ukraine. They came to this country by way of Ellis Island.

This is the America I want to reclaim, the land where Kennedys marry Schlossbergs, and Orthodox Jews and Irish Catholics settle down to build a life together, one in which diversity, though often difficult, can open us to new customs, new cultures, and new ideas. One in which our language can once again teach us how to laugh and sing together and how to love each other. Reclaiming our language can be one step in reclaiming our country.

This is the message I take from the short life and tragic death of Tatianna Schlossberg.

On hearing that the Kennedy Center had been renamed

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

- Juliet

Sometimes, these days, words fail me, and when they do I often turn to poetry. Yesterday, for example, when I read that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had, without warning, become the Trump-Kennedy Center, I had no more words. With all the carnage going on around us, the renaming of a building might seem a trivial thing. But somehow it symbolized all the pettiness, the self-aggrandizement, the puffery, the strutting dishonesty of this presidency. The board of trustees voted unanimously for the change . . . well, except for Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a board member who had called into the meeting on Zoom. “It was such a surprise to me when they said we’re going to rename it,” she later told The New York Times. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and pushed my button. But then I was muted. Everything was cut off . . . and then they immediately said, ‘Well, it’s unanimous. Everybody is for it.’”

Of course we are.

In 1818 Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Ozymandias, a sonnet about the transitory nature of power and the hubris of tyrants. But it is worth noting that the king’s statue is not the only thing that has been destroyed by time and history. He has also turned the empire over which he ruled into sand.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

 And on the pedestal, these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The Debasement of Language and the Rise of Violence

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less..”

- Humpty Dumpty

On July 2, 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot at the Sixth Street railroad station in Washington, D.C. For two months he lived in agony, the victim of primitive knowledge and medical malpractice. He died on September 19, 1881, just six months after he had assumed the presidency. On February 27, 1882 Secretary of State James G. Blaine eulogized the late president before both houses of Congress.

I bring this up because several people urged me to watch the recent Netflix series, Death by Lightning, which covers the last years of Garfield’s life, and also because Blaine’s eulogy is considered one of the finest speeches ever delivered in Congress.

We now live in a time when language is daily being debased as never before in our history. It is not just that Donald Trump and his administration seem incapable of speaking in complete sentences or following a coherent train of thought, it is that they have forged their inarticulateness into a weapon. Like Humpty Dumpy, their words mean whatever they choose them to mean. Language is no longer a means of communicating with each other; it has become, instead, another way to attack each other. The more I read Trump’s presidential orders and listen to his toxic, repetitious meanderings, the more I realize they say nothing. And that is why they are so dangerous, for their emptiness points the way to violence, bigotry, and hatred, nothing else. Language has consequences, even when it is inarticulate.

And so, I return to Blaine’s eulogy of Garfield – to the final two paragraphs of his long speech in which he paints the last moments of the life of his sometime rival and longtime friend, in which he demonstrates that words can heal as well as harm:

“Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's  interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death – and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunnedand dazed, he could give up  life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeksof  agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he  looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell! –  what brilliant broken plans, what baffled high ambitions, what sundering of strong warm  manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behindhim a proud,  expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the  full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the  little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy  sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a  father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before  him, desolation and great darkness. And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled  withinstant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the  center of  nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of the world. But all the love and all the  sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering  front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of  the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divinedecree.

“As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had  been to him the wearisome hospital of pain; and he begged to be taken from its prison walls,  from its oppressive, stifling air, from itshomelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the  love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die,  as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With  wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's  changingwonders – on its far sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low  to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes  read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the  silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore, and felt  already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.”

No King

“In a free society, all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty; all are responsible.”

- Abraham Joshual Heschel (quoted by M. Gessen in “How to Be a Good Citizen When Your Country Does Bad Things”)

We all know the Declaration of Independence. It’s the founding document of our nation, which declared, 249 years ago, that this country would have no king.

Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a document of three parts:

The first is an inspiring introduction with perhaps the most memorable sentence in our history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The equally rousing third part is the declaration itself: “We, therefore, the representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” It ends with the 56 signers pledging “to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” They were not signing some random petition; they knew if they failed they would lose all three.

The second part is a long list of grievances that almost nobody reads. But earlier this week, in a class I am giving called “The Soul of America,” we actually read the list – and were stunned by how eerily it reverberates today. From ignoring laws and keeping standing armies in our midst to imposing tariffs and making the military superior to civil authority to depriving us of trial by jury to deporting us to foreign countries, it reads like an 18th-century playbook for the Trump administration.

I had long thought that “No Kings” was a silly name for the weekly protests against tyranny, just more fodder for Trump’s limitless appetite for self-aggrandizement. Now it seems particularly apt.

Here is an abridged list of grievances the signers enumerated in the Declaration of Independence:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

• He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

• He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

• He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected.

• He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners.

• He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

• He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

• He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

• He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

  • For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

  • For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

  • For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

  • For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

  • For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

  • For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.

• He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana.