idiotic Leadership Endangers Health

Sadly, last week’s column on Robert Kennedy’s insane “leadership” of Health and Human Services got illustrated vividly by Kennedy’s misconduct in the few days since.

The column stressed that makes decisions based on his ideology or interests, not on science. The main example was his sudden and tragic withdrawal of funding for life-saving m RNA vaccines. Instead of scientists reaching a conclusion based on evidence and the agency approving and announcing it, the agency announced its conclusion – which was a total surprise to staff and lacked any kind of rationale.

This week? He followed that up by limiting who can get COVID-19 vaccines. I can, because I’m old, but my wife can’t. Because Kennedy doesn’t like those vaccines. In March this year, Kennedy promised, “Anybody who wants a vaccine can get one, and we will make sure of that, and they can get it for free,” adding, “I’m a freedom-of-choice person.” Well, not most folks reading this.

He also announced a full-court-press on establishing the cause of autism – when he’d laid off a scientist making progress in studying just that issue. Hers was an open scientific study of environmental factors. He needs the study to conclude that vaccines cause autism. Maybe next he’ll fire scientists and hire Kyrie Irving to determine once and for all whether the Earth is flat.

Meanwhile, the CDC has a unit (Laboratory Leadership Service) on strengthening lab readiness to help people recover quickly from infectious disease outbreaks; but the CDC has laid off two-thirds of LLS staff.

But the big news was protest by high-level scientists over Kennedy’s “weaponization” of the CDC.

Dr. Susan Monarez is the CDC director, confirmed by the Senate just a month earlier. Basic qualifications included serving as principal deputy director then acting director this year. She had a strong scientific and public health policy background, including PhDs in Microbiology and Immunology and in veterinary science. The party-line vote was 51-47 to confirm her, over Democrats’ objections, so the Trump folks apparently found her unobjectionable.

But now Kennedy has told her to resign or be fired. She declined to resign, although his office announced that she was no longer in her job. Maybe he’ll fire her tomorrow.

Meanwhile the four other top leaders at CDC all resigned the same day, to protest Kennedy’s continual subordination of science [and our health] to his interests and prejudices. Monarez’s lawyers called his directives “reckless” and “unscientific.” Even Kennedy couldn’t provide scientific backup.

The other four senior officials cited increasing misinformation, political interference, harmful budget cuts, and censorship of scientific communication.

This is NOT liberal/conservative political stuff. These are NOT politicians, but scientists. They are not “the deep state” or do-nothing bureaucrats, but actual working scientists. These four were not fired, or laid off, but quit jobs they loved because they can’t bear seeing the CDC perverted and hunan lives endarngered.

Nor is this some Chinese or Democratic “hoax.” Monarez was a Republican nominee. Republican senators alone voted to confirm her.

Nor is this an isolated incident within the Trump Administration. Kennedy may bring especially bizarre views and conduct to the battle, but the pattern is clear: if science, law, or sound policy stands in the way of total and immediate acquiescence to the Leader’s latest idea, then law, science, logic and human decency must be banished.

This is plain, old-fashioned bad government: illogical, ineffective, and dishonest. Not regarding foreigners. This is about your children.

                                                – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 31 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and presently on the newspaper’s website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

Draining U.S. Greatness at Warp Speed

We’re watching government accentuate the decline of a once pretty great country.

Take health, for example.

Measles and polio were problems in my childhood. Vaccines allowed us to eliminate measles by 2000.

After months of Robert F Kennedy heading Health and Human Services, amplifying his voice fostering doubt about vaccines, we have more measles cases than we’ve seen since the early 1990s. Misinformation fosters vaccine hesitancy and decreases coverage, facilitating the spread.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came out of nowhere and changed all our lives, initial response was hampered by the first Trump Administration having jettisoned the little department that used to look for such things. Trump denied the seriousness, blamed China, and recommended absurd or dangerous remedies.

We developed effective vaccines that used messenger RNA technology, telling one’s system to create a “spike” cell that’s harmless but triggers the immune system to fight COVID-19. This sped development and facilitate alterations to fight virus adaptations. Vaccines minimized urgent care visits and hospitalizations, reduced transmission, saved lives, and were generally quite safe. Trump called this “one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in history.”

It worked.

Recently the Government ceased funding further research projects and announced that those vaccines just didn’t work.

Usually such an announcement would follow expert staff reaching the conclusion based on facts, evidence, and science.

This announcement surprised everyone. It appeared absurd. It contradicted experience. But it was announced. Pathetic efforts to explain it followed.

That’s how upside-down this administration is. We are all Alices in Wonderland. But it’s not wonderful, in its impact on human health.

It’s also disastrous for our country’s future.

Climate craziness, which the rest of the world has united to mitigate, “is a hoax.” So we won’t deal with it, or develop viable alternative energy sources and products that are green. That means that when we eventually have to buy those, we’ll buy from China, or Norway.

The mRNA vaccines, the incredible drug innovations that muted the pandemic and were hailed by Donald Trump as “a medical miracle,” “don’t work. So we’ll stop work on those. That means that whatever the next pandemic arrives, or some enemy attacks using biological warfare, we’ll be buying vaccines from someone else – if possible.

Our Education Department kind of tried to stick to historical facts and scientific conclusions, which is inconvenient when you want to say slavery wasn’t so bad, there’s not much pollution and the universe started when the bible says it did, so we’ll abolish that department, and let folks teach whatever feels good to them, or whatever their god, mullah or preacher wants ‘em to teach.

That’ll hasten our already serious decline in science skills and learning.

What’s been helping us survive that decline is lots of foreigners, some not entirely white, want to study and live here. So we’ll scare the [excrement] out of folks seeking to visit this country, particularly if they talk funny or don’t kneel to Our Leader’s image.

That’ll help.

A country can be great lots of ways: culturally, as high-quality education, an uncensored Kennedy Center, an uncensored Smithsonian, and thriving public broadcasting helped us toward; scientifically, if you believe in science; economically – though we’re rapidly falling behind other nations; or militarily, having replaced experienced experts with a clownish defense secretary who is using insecure on-line rooms for classified conferences and bankrupting the department with unprecedented numbers of friends and family needing federal security.

               – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 24 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website ("From a Great Nation to a Great Scare" ) and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[ Space didn’t permit further details. Kennedy canceled $500 million in 22 mRNA vaccine research contracts. Although his social media announcement claimed vaccine ineffectiveness, he provided no support (and there has been none) for his view. Further, HHS staff got no advance notice, no explanation, no communication plan, nor even a simple fact sheet to prepare staffmembers to respond to questions. Even if the decision were arguably correct, that’s extremely poor management.

Meanwhile, the moment I sent in the column to the newspaper, there was breaking news about further Kennedy idiocy. Kennedy has long held, without support, that the vaccines cause autism. He wants it that way. Recently he announced a huge project to identify the causes of autism. In particular, HHS would check with numerous available sources. That shocked the federal scientist who had been doing exactly that for years. She’s been tracking whether or not, and to what extent, workers’ exposure to chemicals can cause autism in the workers’ children. Kennedy canceled that and laid off the scientist. That interrupts a valid, ongoing scientific study to determine what he says he wants to determine. Either that’s idiotic, and a terrible waste, or it’s worse than idiotic, and was done to whitewash companies from any kind of responsibilities. At best, it says, “We’ll spend a lot of money to study causes of autism – if we can get the study to implicate vaccines.”

Like your doctor saying, I’ll do a test and proved that your condition is what I think it should be. Not, “this test will determine the facts, whatever they are.” But Kennedy is not your doctor. He’s everyone’s doctor. Or would be, if he were any kind of doctor, rather than a somewhat addled lawyer. At least then he’d have taken the Hippocratic Oath, and sworn to do no harm. ]

Walking a Few Inches in a Cop's Shoes

How can I be writing this, given that when I tried to talk sense into someone yesterday, he shot me dead? I hadn’t even drawn my gun.

Fortunately both our guns lacked bullets, and just made a big noise. We (“media” folks, city councilors, city employees, and a few state legislators), and we were in the Las Cruces Public Safety Building,, attempting police training scenarios, wearing protective equipment and under close supervision.

Police must know dozens of specific legal cases and state or federal laws. They must know ‘em better than prosecutors or defense attorneys. Lawyers can research a law’s details before citing it in a brief or going to court. Police officers must decide on the spot, sometimes in nanoseconds, under pressure, whether or not to put a foot in the door to prevent a man who may or may not be abusing his spouse from closing that door, or how to handle a shirtless trespasser who is acting in bizarre and threatening ways outside Costco.

Our state courts have (mostly correctly, I think, but challengingly for law enforcement) interpreted our search and seizure and other constitutional provisions and laws as more protective of individual rights than analogous federal provisions.

The landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case of Graham v. Connor (as interpreted by later cases) governs police use-of-force cases. The Court unanimously held that all excessive-force claims should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s “objective reasonableness” standard, not a generalized “substantive due process” standard. Were the officer’s actions objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them? Courts judge reasonableness from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer in the moment, not using hindsight. Relevant factors include the severity of the suspected crime, the immediacy of any threat to anyone’s safety, and whether the suspect is actively resisting (or trying to evade) arrest. (More specifics in today’s blog post.)

One could note that we didn’t see the other side of the coin, when police officers step over lines and harm people unnecessarily. While officers spoke of the basic rules, I thought about situations from just a few years ago in which failure to follow those rules led to deaths.

I also saw again the chest video Officer Jonah Hernandez was wearing when a man to whom he’d spoken politely just rushed him, without warning or provocation, and knifed him to death. It’s hard to watch. It’s hard not to reflect on, afterward. It must have been incredibly painful for Chief Story and others who knew him well.

For me, the proper response to the session (which wasn’t my first) is NOT to express unqualified support for whatever police officers do in whatever circumstances; but I do view their actions with greatly enhanced sympathy and understanding. We owe them optimum training, equipment, support, and oversight.

We should recognize that we make them deal with all the hardest problems we are too weak, lazy, or blasé to fix: that modern society seems to drive more people mad, that a capitalist society involves a lot of poverty for those the system can’t use; and that most people are wonderful, by nature, others are somewhat vicious. Whether that’s caused by God or the devil or getting beaten too badly by Papa, trying to talk such a person into acting benignly, without violating his or her rights, or seeing anyone injured, is a tough problem you and I rarely have to face.

                                             – 30 –

[The above column appeared Sunday, 17 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website (sub nom, "Understanding the Tough Choices Law Enforcement Officers Have to Make" ) and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[I mention Graham v. Connor (1989), the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that set the constitutional standard for evaluating claims of excessive force by law enforcement during arrests, investigatory stops, or other seizures. The Court ruled that 4^th Amendment “reasonable search and seizures” standard applied, not the 8^th Amendment, which would have turned on whether the officers had malicious intent or acted with excessive cruelty. (Initially, the Charlotte trial court had tossed the case at the pleading stage, based on the 8^th Amendment standard, and the U.S. Court of Appeal had affirmed.

The facts perfectly illustrate the two worlds different people can inhabit in the same parking lot.

Outside a crowded 7-11 gas station / convenience store, a cop noticed a car pull up, and the passenger jump out, acting a little oddly, and tell the driver he’d be out in a moment. He ran back out soon afterward and jumped in the car, which took off rapidly. The officer followed them, stopped them, and ordered them to wait while he investigated, then released them after a while, once he found out that there had been no crime.

A diabetic patient beginning to experience an insulin reaction asked a friend to drive him to a convenience store to buy orange juice. The store was so crowded that he concluded he wouldn’t be able to buy the juice quickly enough, and asked his friend to drive him to another friend’s house. An officer stopped them almost immediately, and other officers soon arrived and handcuffed the patient, who was injured in the process.

One interesting fact is that I haven’t been able to discover how the case ultimately came out between the diabetic and the city police. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded. That’s a common move when the Court determines that lower courts applied the wrong legal standard, or misunderstood the law. You clarify the rules and play the game over. Lower courts take more evidence and ultimately decide. However, records from lower courts are sometimes spotty. It appears that the parties settled the case out of court after the Court clarified the governing law.

Therefore it seems that the diabetic got compensated. That sounds fair. Even if the first police officer’s stop was reasonable – hold these guys a moment while we have another officer ask the store if it had just been robbed – the cop who handcuffed Graham and rolled him over on the sidewalk, so rudely that a foot got broken and a shoulder injured, ignoring the man’s explanation about the insulin (while another officer said, “I’ve seen insulin shock. There’s nothing wrong with this motherfucker except he’s drunk.”) may not have been so reasonable. (If the plaintiff was physically resisting the stop, such that subduing and handcuffing him was necessary, maybe it’s a different story.)

I also understand that the diabetic was Black. In Charlotte in 1989. I’m pretty sure a couple of middle-class white businessmen in the same situation would have been heard a little better by the officers, or at least treated more respectfully.

At any rate, as I say, last week’s event was a good session. Well-run, and pretty fair. Certainly something more civilians should see or experience. ]

Bad News? Shoot the Messenger!

Economic chickens do come home to roost. August 1’s disappointing July job statistics and downward correction of the two previous months were serious bad news. They fit with the uncertainty Donald J Trump’s tariff madness and dithering has caused everyone. If you’re importing cars or making widgets that use foreign-made components you’d be wise to wait to see what costs and possible prices might be.

Dozens of presidents have seen good and bad numbers and tried to explain them, probably not always honestly.

They haven’t shot the messenger. DJT’s response is to fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics head. Joseph Stalin also punished statisticians when data didn’t match his hopes. Salting economic data sank Argentina and Greece. Given the years of trust that led many folks around the world to rely on the apolitical and objective standard Trump just tossed in the fire, we may never know the full depth of the harm.

Is this the start of the slowdown, or ”stagflation,” (weakening economy yet also inflation) economists have predicted? How much worse will it get? Will Trump respond with more reasonable tariffs? Will the Fed now have to lower interest rates to help repair the damage? As voters have trouble paying higher prices with unraised salaries or lost jobs blame Mr. Trump, or the hated Democrats? Accurate information would help folks answer fair questions.

But DJT is carefully killing all the messengers.

He dislikes the science on climate craziness, and therefore fires scientists, asks the Supreme Court to forget its decision on the subject, and removes solid information from the EPA’s website.

He resents that he was impeached (though not quite convicted). Therefore the Smithsonian’s exhibit on presidential impeachments removes reference to Trump’s two, which are that historical fact.

He started by firing seventeen inspectors-general Congress carefully legislated into existence to keep presidents and departments from breaking laws. Previously strong Republican Senate supporters of the inspectors-general, like Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, wimped out.

He dislikes the independent Federal Reserve Bank’s sensible reluctance to lower interest rates in the present financial context, and so he wants to fire the Fed chief.

His Department of Justice lawyers lie so frequently and baldly that judges, grand juries, and defense lawyers no longer trust the DOJ. All lawyers try to present the best case for their clients; but most competent lawyers try to make their exaggerations reasonable. Our court system depends on some minimum ethical standards, which these folks refuse to meet.

We are supposedly a democratic republic. A democratic republic requires informed voters. I think 90% of our population would agree: let’s look honestly at the facts, then make decisions, on which, of course, we might disagree; but let’s be in the same zip code as the facts.

Mr. Trump is systematically removing all independent sources of those facts.

That’s a quantum leap from just explaining stuff in a way that makes you not look so bad. Like the difference between claiming the wind and a photographer and bad luck caused you to shoot a 12-over-par 84 – versus crossing out scores and saying you shot 70. The difference between making excuses for a senseless war in Viet Nam that killed 58,000 U.S. soldiers – and erasing the casualty figures to claim that only a couple of dozen died. Or, better, getting so tired of making excuses for losing to the Yankees that you hire new umpires paid by your team, not the American League.

                            – 30 – 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 10 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[Trump added another level of idiocy – or dementia – by criticizing Joe Biden for appointing the Federal Reserve Bank’s President, whom Trump appointed.]

[Inspired by our president, I knew just what to do when I received an exorbitant electric bill this week. I shot the postman, though we liked him. Then I blew up that damned Smart Meter. We couldn’t have used THAT MUCH juice last month!]

You bring me a bill that high again, you're toast!

The West Bank, Gaza, the G-word, and Us

Months ago, we saw the film No Other Land at the Fountain Theater. Last Monday an English teacher who’d shot some of its footage was shot to death.

We liked the unique story of the film’s making, by two Palestinian and two Jewish directors, about the forced displacement of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, a cluster of villages in southwest occupied West Bank. The Israelis declared that a huge swath of Palestinian farms and village was part of an Israeli military base, so that the residents were trespassers. Yeah, it reminded me of the U.S. South decades ago. The authorities weren’t marching Negroes to concentration camps, but stood by while white citizens did as they liked.

The film is deeply personal, especially in scenes where the two key directors talk about their situations. The Palestinian was born in Masafer Yatta.

It moved us. It helped humanize what’s going on there.

A similar cooperative spirit ran through our recent radio visit with Amalia Zeitlin, Las Cruces resident and symphony violinist, discussing her efforts to bring Jewish and Palestinian youth together through music in Jerusalem.

Dead is Awdaw Hataleen, father of three. The settler who shot him had been under U.S. sanction for violence against Palestinians – until Mr. Trump took office.

If I focus here on the West Bank, it’s because the slow, inexorable, illegal eviction of Palestinians from their farms and villages there has angered me longer, since well before October 7, and has been so clearly wrong. Nothing could justify the October 7 massacre and kidnappings; but earlier events can help explain.

The film won the 2025 Oscar for best documentary feature, yet couldn’t find distribution because of prejudice among the powerful.

I have Israeli friends whom I love. I do not judge them for their country’s misdeeds, as I was grateful that folks from other countries never judged me for my country’s terrible crimes. Fellow budget travelers who liked someone from the U.S. would say, “Oh, you must be Canadian.”

In December I wrote that Israel’s leading genocide scholar classed Israel’s treatment of Gazans as genocide. That bus is filling up. Just this week two Israeli human rights organizations and Marjorie Taylor Greene jumped on. Include prominent Holocaust historian Omer Bartov, who initially called Israeli actions “just war crimes.”

No one wants to say a country founded partly in response to the Holocaust is committing genocide But there are 60,000 dead, 90% of the population displaced, and 80% of medical facilities destroyed or only partially functional. Amputations have replaced limb-saving surgery. Sixty per cent of housing units are gone. Huge numbers are starving, with innumerable kids suffering malnutrition in what the U.N. calls a “worst-case famine scenario.” More than half of aid shipments have been denied, delayed, or impeded.

West Bank facts help establish motive or intent. They show on a smaller scale, over time, that Israel does not regard Palestinians and their human rights, or lives, even outside Israel proper, as worth protecting. And they predated October 7. Netanyahu has more understandable motives than Hitler did; but he’s doing the crime. So did Hutu. Reasons, but not justification. As an Israeli human rights group points out, all instances of genocide have had justifications, at least in the minds of those who committed them.

As Edmund Burke and Albert Einstein said, the world will not be destroyed by evil-doers but by regular folks standing by silently.

Ain’t that us?

                                        – 30 --

[The above column appeared Sunday, 2 August, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[By using the G-word, I do not mean to equate Israel’s destruction of Gazans with the Nazi obliteration of Jews. Hitler, unlike Netanyahu, had not killed in battle, and had not had family killed by, the people he tried to destroy. Further, while I cannot agree with Netanhayu’s final solution, and believe his conduct influenced also by his desire to avoid legal consequences for his own alleged bad conduct, any reasonable person would have to agree that “How can we end the violence between Jews and Muslims and live in peace?” is an incredibly difficult question I can’t answer. No such question made sense as to the German non-Jewish people and German Jews. Without regard to apportioning blame, everyone in the nation has lost someone to hostile violence, and/or been injured, and/or killed, and many on all sides have been displaced, or lived longing for the home from which they or parents or grandparents were rudely evicted. If one said, “I want all of us to make a fresh start,” it’s not clear what that would look like or how it would be maintained as some few on each side bore grudges too deep to transcend. The Germans had no such problems with the Jews. But the effect on me is the same if I’m a starving orphan in or Jabalia or Khan Younis: I’m in shock, fear, and pain – and grieving, though I’ve harmed no one. Whether it’s because Hitler insanely blames the Jews for Germany’s defeat and depression, or Tutsis horribly took out their anger and resentment against Hutus based on years of discrimination, if you’re a suffering kid you’re a suffering kid. And it doesn’t help to know that the Belgians should or could bear some ultimate responsibility, or the British, or the allied negotiators at Versailles.

Before We Debate Mr. Trump, Let's Contemplate the Context

When someone suggested we debate Donald Trump’s impact, I contemplated the context for that discussion.

The context includes truths we duck. That, to much of nature, humanity is the scourge of the earth, having killed off numerous species. Euro-Christian humans are the worst. Their Torah-Bible-Koran, as generally translated, tells ‘em the earth and animals are theirs to use and abuse – and they do. Everywhere, they’ve decimated indigenous peoples who generally believed more in living in harmony with nature, not trampling it. Our greed and carelessness now guarantee our grandchildren and their descendants a very inferior life.

A second context: the wealthiest of us have long controlled and abused the poorest. (Lighter-skinned folks have abused darker-skinned folks, too.) By any measure, wealth was very concentrated in a few hands in the late 19^th Century. Early 20^th Century progressives, the 1930s Depression, and the 1960s brought that obscene inequality down a little by the 1970s. Then, a reaction set in, bringing even worse inequality. The highest marginal income tax rates declined from 91% (1950) to 37%. The U.S. middle and lower classes got squeezed. And told it was the fault of welfare cheats.

A third point: charging “that sounds Communist!” meant little even when the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China were our sworn enemies. Pure socialism probably hasn’t been tried, except in Kerala; and pure capitalism demonstrably fails. Major efforts at communism have ended in dictatorships. The Chinese periodically had to add in more personal and economic freedoms – “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom!” but curtailed those when freedom annoyed the rulers. The U.S. has had to soften capitalism with pensions, fairer laws, worker’s comp, and even welfare – and regulations that protect workers’ health and even the environment we all share. Even so, we’re extreme: every other advanced nation has public health care, but we retain a dysfunctional private system. Our CEOs make 300 times a worker’s annual salary, not the 40-50x common in several of our allies. There’s lots of room between 300x and socialism.

We’ve also developed a dominant two-party electoral system that ultimately doesn’t serve us too well.

In that context, none of it Donald Trump’s fault, let’s consider his impact.

Claiming scientific facts are “a hoax” and joining Yemen and Libya as the only countries rejecting Paris Agreement on mitigating climate craziness, Mr. Trump is not going to help improve our descendants’ air, water, or temperatures. Denying the need to shift to electric cars lets China get way ahead of us in development we’ll gave to ape.

Lowering taxes for the wealthiest while cutting SNAP, scholarships, and health assistance, and destroying the Education Department probably won’t help diminish our obscene inequality.

Finally, gutting our professional and apolitical civil service system, our inspectors-general, and semi-independent Department of Justice, and mistreating legal immigrants who have anti-Trump materials on their computers, won’t enhance our efforts at democracy or true prosperity. Decisions made to protect the ruler’s ego don’t gain us the world’s cooperation, inspire our troops, or help us be the innovators who create the Next Big Thing.

He may get the Washington footballers to be “the Redskins” again, and bully the news media into submission, and maybe even stymie a welfare cheat; but your great-grandkids, sweltering and struggling to breathe, or sneaking across our northern border, won’t honor you for failing to shout “No!” Neither will veterans and folks with limited incomes and less than perfect health.

                                      – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 27 July, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[ The point I probably don’t make in there is that the U.S. despite all we learned in civics classes, did a lot of harm to a lot of the world, and to a lot of nature, before Donald Trump took things to their logical conclusion. He’s a con man; but just as the con man turns people’s own greed against them, or sometimes their charity, Trump has material to work with. People are angry. Our rulers are adept at masking the reasons for the conditions that cause that anger. In our south or 1930s Germany, it’s the N’s or the Jews; later it’s the welfare cheats, not the reduction of rich folks’ and corporate taxes to less than half the rates we had in the prosperous 1950s. And it’s those immigrants! And folks with unconventional genders.

The principle of Trump’s success hasn’t changed: people are angry; Trump is angry; he bellows and people think he’s angry about the same things that bother them; but, in fact, he’s profiting from those. But he didn’t create the conditions that are troubling people.]

[Bottom line: if you’re Putin or the People’s Republic of China, Trump is probably pretty convenient for you. If you’re someone hoping the U.S. will deteriorate, and/or NATO blow up, he’s pretty helpful. If you like the paralytic partisanship we and our Congress our suffering, he didn’t create that but sure keeps it going. Perhaps if you’re Nature, and want the destructive human race curbed, maybe decimated, maybe he’s a funny kind of help for you, by refusing to focus on cooperation or our long-term survival needs, because, like a baby, he’s mesmerized by the glittering baubles life is waving in front of his crib.]

The Dalai Lama Turns 90

Forty years ago, I stood in the Dalai Lama’s bedroom contemplating a cup with a skull carved above it, which he drank from as a child, so that he would be always aware of death’s imminence.

He had left that bedroom in 1959, aged 14, to avoid having the Chinese capture him and make him sing the government’s praises, abusing Tibetans’ passionate Buddhist faith to weaken Tibetan resentment over the Chinese invasion in 1959. He escaped to Dharamshala, India. One moving morning, after witnessing a sky burial, I climbed to the top of a hill behind Serra Monastery, one of the three most important monasteries around Lhasa, where a man who lived up there showed me religious items that the Chinese had destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. He unrolled them from a dusty bag as if they were treasures.

Tibetans revered the Dalai Lama. In Lhasa, giving someone a picture of the Dalai Lama was one of the biggest kindnesses a visitor could do.

He, and other tulkus, are believed to be reincarnations of important Buddhist lamas. After a death, signs lead religious leaders to a home, and a child who might be such a reincarnation. They observe the child. Sometimes he seems to recognize someone who was close to the dead lama. Often they’ll spread on the floor before him several things, some shiny and appealing, and when he selects a less appealing article that belonged to the dead lama, as if it were familiar, that is also a sign.

We feared then that when he died the Chinese would appoint his “successor,” from some family they controlled. Tibetan Buddhist leaders would search as usual for his tulku, necessarily among Tibetans in India, but the Chinese would beat them to the punch.

Four decades have passed. Wandering around China, I was moved by Hong Kong folks’ justified fears that when the PRC recovered Hong Kong from the British, in 1997, the Chinese promises of semi-autonomy would be like dust on the wind. Tibetans mostly resented Chinese rule. At the time, I studied carefully what I could see on the ground, but also befriended China’s leading English-language apologist for its invasion. Mao, having liberated much of China from bondage, sought to do the same for Tibetans, and considered religion, as Marx had said, the opiate of the people, a mechanism by which aristocrats kept the ordinary people under control. That’s often true, but the Tibetans loved their religion with a humility and passion of which I was always in awe. Imagine folks making pilgrimages to Lhasa from their rural homes, across land not unlike New Mexico’s, and pausing, every three steps, to prostrate themselves flat on their bellies, as they did when circumamulatingg the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. And the Chinese, as the U.S. did with surviving members of indigenous tribes, wanted also to turn the Tibetans into imitation Han-Chinese. It’s called “progress.”

The Dalai Lama lives the “loving kindness” he advocates. He knows all religions, but remains quirky, funny, and warmly informal with everyone. As he says, "A tree can make ten thousand matches, but a single match can burn ten thousand trees.”

Recently he turned 90. His longevity has frustrated Chinese plans. The Chinese are rubbing their hands in anticipation now. In July, he confirmed his plan to be reincarnated, with his non-profit trust locating his successor. Sadly, we will see dual – and dueling – Dalai Lamas.

                                                         -- 30 –

 [The above column appeared Sunday, 20 July, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper's website and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

For me, traveling in Tibet was a marvel. Nearly died of illness at one point, but learned a lot.

For you, probably the best book introducing you to the 14^th Dalai Lama is Pico Iyer’s The Open Road: the Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Iyer is both a noted travel writer and a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama.

Bakground Tibet stuff, or Tibetan Buddhist stuff? I loved The Way of the White Clouds, which I read while traveling there. The writer was a German, a Buddhist but initially a bit of a skeptic about Tibetan Buddism – until he met the tulku of a lama he’d known personally, and the kid recognized him. Anyway, I recall enjoying that and also Alexandra David-Neel’s My Journey to Lhasa. I also recently read a biography of Patrul Rinpoche that I really liked, that really gave one the flavor of the faith.  And humility!  Typical of him, walking the countryside to a town where he was to speak, he fell in with a poor old woman, and traveled with her, and she treated him like a beggar-servant.  He said nothing of who he was, and made no complaint.  She, on her way to hear him in that town, was rather startled when she arrived.   

For any person who is grieving, I would recommend The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. When my mother died I gave a copy to my father, a militant atheist, and he ended up greatly appreciating it. For someone seeking a fine introduction to Buddhism and the Buddha’s life, you might try _______’s . I read it decades ago and again within the last few years. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha. I think of it more as a novel based on the Buddha’s life than as a historical biography, because it mixes historical accuracy with good storytelling.

A favorite shot of the Potala -- from the Banak Shol

 

Tibetan at Norbu Linka w DL pic

Doubt the DL would approve flag or soldier at Potala

The Potala -- Note name of bar in foreground

This last image is incredibly moving for me.  The photo backdrop of the home with a TV near Guilin or Yang Shuo was Chinese vision of perfection, favorite Chinese scenery and a nice place with a TV.  It was among five or six photo-backdrops at which Chinese tourists could have their pictures taken -- and, to me, rather unpleasant, as a sign of the Chinese transforming the Potala, which was both the DL's home and the seat of the Tibetan government before the Chinese came, into a tawdry tourist attraction.  The Tibetan passing on the bicycle, pausing to regard this, was irresistible as an image -- but what he was thinking I can't know.

All these photos were shot in 1985 or 1987, and are copyright Peter Goodman

Our [illegal] road to Lhasa included a stop at this nomad camp

 

Flood Tragedy -- and U.S. Government Tragedy

As Mr. Dylan pointed out, you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Texas suffered a terrible tragedy: torrential rains, exacerbated by an exceptional conjunction of slow-moving storms, caused destructive flooding that killed 100 people, including kids at a Christian summer camp right where two rivers meet.

That’s heartbreaking. Everyone’s sympathies go out to folks there, particularly parents and siblings of dead children.

Sympathy doesn’t mean ignoring causes. Empathy should impel us all to contemplate why this happened, so violently, and how we might improve our future.

Many wondered how the National Weather Service performed, after slews of DOGE-inspired firings, particularly of experts. It seems to have done well, predicting heavy rain and floods. The viciousness of the storm, and exact rainfall, couldn’t have been predicted precisely, but NWS warned appropriately. But the Warning Coordination Meteorologist, responsible for making damned sure those messages were heard and heeded, then coordinate with local officials, had been “bought out” in the DOGE madness, leaving the position vacant. Yeah, maybe Texas officials should do their jobs and folks living by rivers should watch for warnings; but the hundred dead folks and their families might have favored paying a WCM to ensure warnings were heard and understood.

Of course, Trump plans to have wealthy private pals take over our weather predicting. Less “government.” Huge profits for his pals, whom we’ll pay to do what government did. If some summer camp wants the most accurate weather data, well, that might be too expensive.

The flood’s root cause? Most all reputable scientists agree that we’re experiencing what I’ll term “climate craziness,” because it’s more serious and dangerous than “climate change” suggests and its symptoms include more than greater global heat. Climate craziness is serious. We can no longer prevent it. Experts differ on how much we can mitigate the disaster. It threatens to make many places uninhabitably warm and kill vulnerable people. Our greed and carelessness have caused or greatly magnified it. More and higher floods, bigger wildfires, and and increasingly violent storms, are facts of life.

Mr. Trump claims it’s a Chinese or Democratic “hoax.”

Trump is demonstrably wrong. Many Texans voted to reinstall him in the Casa Blanca. He’s abusing their faith.

It should matter to them that he’s ignoring forces that are killing their children and will make lives miserable for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Seas are rising, glaciers melting, temperatures consistently higher, and these forces compound to cause much of what we’re suffering. Mr. Trump is in denial. (Of course, for decades, denying climate change and minimizing its significance have kept many politicians of both parties in office.

Mr. Trump is cutting government efforts to prevent or predict disasters, thus hindering preparations for the extreme weather he refuses to cooperate with the rest of the world in trying to mitigate. He’s cutting FEMA, which passed out post-disaster bandaids. As Ruidoso folks can testify, those “bandaids” help tremendously when someone’s lost everything in a flood. Washington is also cutting off health benefits for millions of people whose health might get hammered by wildfire smoke, higher temperatures, and/or pollution. (We need to save money to cut rich folks’ taxes.) Our government is also easing regulations, so’s corporations can do what they do more freely and maximize both profit and poisons.

If my kid had died this month, in a flood, with that context, I think I’d notice the connection.

                                                        – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 13 July, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website (sub nom "Trump's Cuts Hinder Extreme Weather Preparedness" ) and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[Remarkably, one MAGA Congresswoman from Georgia tried to claim the tragic Guadalupe River flooding was “fake news,” eventually backing up to the weird statement that the damage was real but the weather fake, apparently under the impression that cloud-seeding (which is mostly ineffective) was the explanation, not the conditions the experts all spoke of. I wonder how that sat with the two Congressfolk (one from Texas, one from Georgia) whose daughters were at that Christian Camp, though fortunately they both survived. The anti-science theme of Trump’s COVID nonsense and Robert Kennedy’s anti-vax machinations continues.]

Feeling Compassion for a Beleaguered Child Who Got Older

Watering tomatoes this morning, I glanced up and watched Foxy watch me. We inherited Foxy, a red-heeler mix, from a woman my wife was helping through her last years of life. Foxy had had a hard life, but blossomed here. Although initially she distrusted male humans, and I worried she’d be a pain, we’ve come to love each other.

That’s a simple experience Donald Trump has never had. He seems never to have had a pet. Well, what could the pet do for him? (What he could do for a dog or cat is a question that wouldn’t occur to him.)

Later, during a break from writing, the internet played a bit of Jason Carter’s memorial speech about his grandfather, Jimmy. Loved the part about hanging zip-lock bags up to dry for re-use. My wife has us doing that, too. And the Carters being small-town folks who never forgot who they were. A cutaway showed Donald Trump, scowling, then the Bidens and others laughing at the laugh lines.

I felt sorry again for Mr. Trump. He was raised by a Father obsessed with making more money. Donald and his siblings learned to compete for money and status, not to love. Or give.

Next, the Internet showed me Robin Williams, in Good Will Hunting, released twenty-five years ago, making that great speech telling the young genius, Will, that although Will could write a book on Michelangelo, he can’t tell us how the Sistine Chapel smells, or how it feels to look up at that marvelous ceiling; and that while he’s memorized Shakespeare’s love sonnets, he has never loved enough to be vulnerable, never loved a woman “so much she can level you with a glance,” or sat in her hospital room during her last months.

Some people know those feelings. Others avoid them. I don’t envy you, Donald. I envy men who stayed married to and loving a single woman all their adult lives, raising children the best they could to be loving, caring, confident, honest folks. Men who showed a steadiness neither you nor I ever did. You touched women without permission – the sign of a man who needs to bully women, not one seeking love, or even sex. Seduction takes a gentler mode.

Sorry, Donald. We’re 79 this year. I’m sorry your life has been so limited by your fear of real feelings, real friendship, love, or the sensation of wandering alone into a new country, having no common language with the folks there, humble as a baby in their culture, but smiling while they laugh at you. You’ve never been writing and suddenly teared up because your fictional characters lost a child or learned some painful truth. Have you ever truly loved a woman, as more than a status symbol, sexual release, or appropriate decoration for a life designed to impress folks?

I’m nobody. But when I die, if I’m able to reflect, I won’t regret having so few worldly accomplishments. I’ll regret moments I chickened out, didn’t ask the hard question, didn’t provide a kindness, I could have, didn’t go deeper into the Peruvian jungle, the Tibetan mountains, or the mind of a character, or didn’t love enough.

I’m sorry your father and mother didn’t teach you love and integrity, and exemplify those. I took all that for granted, mostly rebelled, and only later appreciated – and had time to tell them I appreciated – what they gave me.

                                     – 30 –

 [This is an odd and personal column. It illustrates how, in so many quiet moments in our pleasant personal lives, Mr. Trump and the dangers he and his confederates pose to the republic can suddenly insert themselves. But it takes a more human look at him. By the way, this is a sensible discussion of Trump's psyche by a man who has written a book on the subject. See also his nice, Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough. ]

[Posting a link on Facebook to this site, mentioning compassion for Donald Trump, and recognizing how odd that likely sounds, I felt I should add: 1 Nothing in this column excuses or justifies any of his personal or political bad conduct, though it may help explain something. 2. Compassion for Donald Trump will sound particularly weird to folks who hate him.  However, would you really like to be stuck inside his head -- to BE Donald Trump, with all his inner pain that he's trying to get back at the world for?  How would that FEEL?] 

[ A point that deserves elaboration: as a young lawyer, I had an experience that taught me a lot. When I summered at a huge San Francisco firm, and later accepted employment there, a young lawyer was particularly prominent. Despite his relative youth, he spoke with a certain authority. The partners thought highly of him. And after I was employed there, we were acquaintances, though not particularly close. Over the course of a year or two, I formed close relationships with various young women employed there; and three different women, a Mexican-American secretary, a receptionist who was also an artist; and a woman who worked in document-processing, each told me privately that Carter [no, not his real name] had hit on them sexually in rather appalling ways. The secretary [a tough young lady who, when I once carped about her wearing nail polish, looked me sternly in the eye and said, “When I picked fruit in the fields beside my parents, it made a mess of my hands and nails, and I swore I’d get out of there, and I’ll wear nail polish whether you like it or not.”] seemed sweet and deferential, and probably Catholic, and he called her into his office to see the sunset and asked, “Don’t I deserve a kiss for that?”; the receptionist, he commented on her mammaries; and I forget how he came on to the third lady; but in each case, he was talking to a woman of lower status at the law firm and who likely seemed to him likely to be intimidated, or; in each case, he insulted her or seemed almost threatening; but none of these “advances” were designed to lead to an affair. He was a very smart fellow; I’m sure that, had he wanted to talk someone into an affair, he knew how to do it; but he was simply being pointlessly cruel and domineering. (Eventually, complaints on the subject reached the firm’s leading partners, and led them to suggest he go practice law somewhere else.) In the same way, Mr. Trump’s conduct is designed to bully, not to generate love or even satisfy lust. It’s a need he has to reassure us (and himself) that he matters.]