An Urgent Plea: Look Up — and Buckle Up

PARIS — In his parting dump of Fox droppings, Tucker Carlson “interviewed” the porcine ex-president who he had told colleagues he hated passionately. For half an hour, he beamed approval at reversed-reality insanities, all delivered with the usual snifter of self-pitying whine.

The 14th Amendment bars from public office anyone who incites insurrection. An entire world watched Donald Trump do just that — in real time. And he may be back in the Oval to finish destroying America, with a Tucker Carlson as propaganda minister.

This is an urgent plea for sentient citizens to steer a dis-United States away from collision courses with unimaginable consequences.

Over recent decades, I’ve watched a well-meaning but misguided America edge steadily toward Orwell’s Animal Farm. Today, as the world faces existential perils, the nation best equipped to confront them looks more like John Belushi’s Animal House.

Betsy Reed, the Guardian’s U.S. editor, put it mildly: “I think the media faces a real risk of fostering an obsessive focus on (Joe Biden’s) age to the exclusion of a lot of other issues that are equally if not more salient.” More directly: Wake the Fuck Up!

Biden is the most effective president in my lifetime, considering the time bombs left for him to face against stacked odds. He is decent, empathetic and speaks in whole sentences. Still, too many Americans base judgments on bias, single issues, misperception and a drumbeat of lies.

Imagine the near future when artificial “intelligence” — without human sensibilities or reason — will be able to diffuse simultaneously the exact same twisted truths among countless millions. Far-right broadcasters and “news” purveyors are close to that already.

Far beyond the soul of America, the 2024 elections are about whether kids born anywhere today will face a soulless authoritarian world, with leaders who shorten the time until humans eventually hand over Earth to crocodiles and cockroaches.

From the outside, the world watches Republicans attempt extortion over the debt ceiling. If Democrats won’t let them rob from the poor to give to the rich, they will bring down the House, stripping America of a moral authority that far outweighs the heft of its musclebound military.

The “media” Reed mentioned is no longer a failsafe Fourth Estate. If Newsday on Long Island were not a fraction of its former self, for instance, watchdog reporters would have hounded George Santos out of the congressional race at the first sniff of his bullshit bio.

Know-nothings at state and local levels ban innocuous books that expand children’s minds. They stamp out basic education in civics, geography and world history, preventing young minds – future voters – from thinking critically.

At every level, from the Supreme Court to sheriff’s offices, those animal-kingdom similes define a made-over anarchic America.

On Orwell’s farm, pigs walk upright, declaring some animals are more equal than others. High-living hogs rule beasts of burden that do the work. The parody of Stalin’s corrupt communism also fits extreme capitalism where money rules.

“Animal House,” National Lampoon’s 1978 film, adds such creatures as rogue elephants, asinine donkeys and a muskrat with an ego to match his fortune, focused on dominating space rather than applying innovative genius to preserving what’s left down below.

Polls shows Americans worry most about inflation, immigration and “insecurity.” All are inextricably linked global issues that flared to crisis level under Trump. Rather than join other countries to combat the causes, “America Only” Republicans focus on the effect.

Erecting border barriers is like trying to stop a fire hose with a sponge. Millions are uprooted by climate collapse, conflict, famine and poverty. When America cuts aid, desperate countries indenture themselves to China. Russia muscles in for strategic materials and U.N. votes.

Trump shattered a relatively stable world order from his first hours in office, damning Mexicans, Muslims and NATO allies. He spiked the deal to defang Iran and rejected Paris climate accords. His ham-handed foreign non-policy left America blind, deaf and dumb in a dangerous world.

Hindsight reveals the incalculable damage of Trump’s “perfect call” to extort dirt on Biden from a new Ukrainian president awaiting promised missiles. Impeachment managers detailed his treachery. But Jim Jordan and other House jackals ignored truth, sliming apolitical intelligence experts. Mitch McConnell’s Senate refused to hear evidence.

Rex Tillerson had already gutted the State Department. The nation lost some of its most valuable diplomats and analysts, including Marie Yovanovitch in Kyiv, who was brutally dismissed when she tried to equip policymakers with hard facts.

“Get her out,” Trump ordered, calling her “bad news” and adding, “She’s going to go through some things.” Later, accepting an academic honor, Yovanovitch explained how statecraft operates:

“An amoral, keep-‘em-guessing foreign policy that substitutes threats, fear and confusion for trust cannot work over the long haul. At some point, the once-unthinkable will become the soon-inevitable: that our allies will seek out more reliable partners.”

Netflix’s true-to-life series, “The Diplomat,” illustrates the need for trust, subtle signals and personal contacts built up over time. Trump’s public bullying pushed Xi Jinping to gird for potential war. His fanboy crush on Vladimir Putin led to the attempted blitzkrieg in Ukraine.

David Brooks, the New York Times’ most thoughtful in-house conservative, made the broader point. A president is the face of a nation, the personification of its basic values.

“You may disagree with Biden on many issues,” he wrote. “You may think he is too old. But that’s not the primary issue in this election. The presidency, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, ‘is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.’”

Now, when it has never mattered more, the choice is between an indicted nutcase and an honorable incumbent, respected by allies and adversaries, who signals that America is at least sane, if not stable.

Climate collapse, by far the overriding issue, can only be averted by international cooperation energized by major powers that recognize the threat. Rich countries need to help poor ones survive while scientists and statesmen work out global solutions.

We know where Biden stands on climatic upheaval, which already wreaks ungodly havoc across the planet. Freak “weather events” wash away towns and topsoil. Fish die off in warming, polluted seas that fast encroach on shorelines. Trump still dismisses all that as a hoax. In that “interview,” he said that maybe in 300 years oceans will rise by an eighth of an inch.

Trump’s account of the Afghan withdrawal was a stunning display of how easily snake oil is sold to an ill-informed nation. He called it America’s greatest humiliation. Perhaps it was, taking in the bigger picture of a fruitless war’s finale. But he was almost entirely responsible for it.

He told Carlson that he could have held Afghanistan indefinitely and would have brought home what he said was $85 billion worth of U.S. weaponry (the actual figure is near $5 billion), leaving behind troops until all Americans and Afghans who helped them were safely gone.

In fact, after his abject capitulation to the Taliban he cut U.S. forces from 13,000 to 2,500, too few to defend Bagram Air Base, let alone secure a withdrawal. He set a deadline before his term ended with no plan to evacuate Americans or Afghans at risk. His only concern was something to boast about in his reelection campaign.

At the beginning, the Taliban sheltered Osama bin Laden but was no threat to the United States. Biden wanted U.S. troops to capture Al Qaeda’s high command and come home. Instead, George W. Bush shifted to Iraq. As vice president, Biden tried to stop an unwinnable war that strengthened the Taliban and turned it into a bitter foe.

During the 2020 campaign, polls heavily supported Biden’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops after brokering a handover with leaders in Kabul, the Taliban and regional warlords. But Trump’s surrender ignored the government. A demoralized army collapsed sooner than predicted, and the president fled.

Initial panic was inevitable. But then U.S. aircraft evacuated 125,000 people in what military scholars call a stunning feat. Of course, too many were left behind. War is hell.

But most coverage, including a long New York Times analysis, focused on what Biden should have done better rather than the fait accompli left for him. His popularity plummeted. Nearly two years later, he still bears the blame. Even the bedrock AP repeats tropes like “Biden’s debacle” as if that was established truth.

The upshot is clear: despots’ invariable first move is to undermine factual reporting and, as Steve Bannon put it, “flood the zone with shit.” That is easier if it coincides with deep cuts in seasoned foreign correspondents to report distant news at first hand.

One among many advocacy campaigns, “Don’t Run Joe” does not endorse any Democrat in particular. Just not the old man. “The party,” it says, “desperately needs a viable progressive candidate with major experience in government or leadership of social-justice movements.”

Well, there’s 81-year-old Bernie Sanders. But who else? It is time for hard reality, not wishful thinking. No one who still supports Trump or someone who snuffles at his ankles will vote Democrat. That is a third of a gerrymandered nation with an Electoral College that overrides the popular tally.

The challenge is to help sensible Republicans and independents see what is at stake. That demands going beyond surface reporting and groupthink. Only an election turnout beyond any yet seen in the United States can reverse widening divides.

If Trump implodes, the likely alternative is Ron DeSantis, spectacularly ignorant about the world and an authoritarian who is ready to deprive his state of billions in revenue and legions of jobs over a personal spat with a “woke” California mouse.

These dispatches are getting hard to write. Overworked nouns and verbs have lost their impact.

My pal Phil Cousineau, a brilliant lexicon expert, notes that English includes a million words. I’m already stumped at “c”: crisis, catastrophe, calamity. Then what? Daily mass shootings are “horrific.” Putin’s genocidal war is more than that. We need to see nuance, not generality.

And we need perspective. U.S. inflation, at the top of voter concerns, is now under 5 percent, well below Europe and almost half the rate a year ago. Unemployment is down to 3.5 percent. The markets, Trump’s favorite measures, are stable.

Ageism is stupid; we’re all different. If Biden needs to step aside, Kamala Harris can hold the fort until 2028. With fairer tax rates and more social justice, America will be ready to work on pressing domestic issues. Meantime, we’ve got a world to save.

This is a cri de coeur from an old hand who has seen the past and is scared witless about the future. Democracies get the governments they deserve. If Animal House anarchy gives way to Animal Farm tyranny, America will be beyond saving.