Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
ORO VALLEY, Arizona — Donald Trump, a mix of Midas and Mussolini, is going for broke in America. If he and his despotic cohorts win their game of global Monopoly on a board with no "go to jail" cards, democracy and decency are over.
His latest lunacy is blocking Joe Biden's signature project, an $18 billion road-rail tunnel linking New York and New Jersey. He wants Washington's Dulles International Airport renamed Trump. That is not so laughable if you remember John Foster Dulles.
As secretary of state under Dwight Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles foresaw the inevitable result if NATO did not contain Stalin's Soviet Union. He fortified an alliance with Europe, restoring prosperity after Hitler tried to ethnically cleanse the human race.
Dulles was the main force behind SEATO, a NATO-like military and economic organization to confront Mao Zedong's "Red China" and thwart communism in Southeast Asia after a crippled Japan left Asia up for grabs.
He championed strong support for Israel within the 1947 U.N.-mandated borders — and action to resolve the "bitter fate" of Palestinians.
Trump is trashing all of that. He bullies allies and toadies to adversaries, risking hot war on an overheated planet. And most Americans, caught up in domestic drama, ignore the unthinkable looming dangers.
Oro Valley, just north of Tucson under majestic mountains, is a fool's gold reflection of a wider world fast nearing endgame. Republican zealots in a corrupted, cruel ex-Grand Old Party enable Trump to do his worst.
TUCSON — Now they are coming for the journalists, and we won't know what happens next. If these pigs who walk on two legs prevail, before long no one will be around to write "Animal World," a non-fiction sequel to George Orwell's farmyard allegory.
Even if our overheating planet does not slough off us hapless humans like dead skin, those tempted to "speak truth to power" will have a hell of time finding safe exile in an authoritarian world.
Last week while Donald Trump was making crystal clear that he is the worst U.S. president ever, a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt went viral. The man who ended the Great Depression and led allies to beat back Nazi Germany declared:
"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."
As an old hand still able to jump out of a jeep and navigate hostile territory, I am shifting modes from Quixote to Zapata. Upcoming dispatches will shape big-picture mosaics of global challenges — and ways to confront them.
But this is drop-dead urgent. A senile, malignant narcissist president is siccing masked goons onto American streets to summarily execute good-hearted citizens, label them "domestic terrorists" and then flip a middle finger at anyone who objects.
