A Cri de Coeur: Enough!
WILD OLIVES, France —Donald Trump is leading America off a cliff, and Republicans follow in lockstep. Democrats dither in disarray. A re-United States needs a thundering groundswell that transcends partisan politics in 2026.
A two-party system works only if lawmakers respect the law and consider all their constituents' angst before deciding how to vote. Elections are now cage matches to the death.
As Democrats jostle among themselves to find coherence, the choice smacks of two TV series: Monty Python's Flying Circus or MobLand. But one party defends decency and the Constitution. The other, corrupted and cruel, is bent on authoritarian takeover.
In 2026, an R next to any name on any ballot — federal, state or local — should signal ruination. With voter suppression and electronic dirty dealings, 2028 elections may be rigged in advance, if there are any at all.
A cross-party movement can energize 90 million eligible voters who stayed home in 2024. About a quarter of them voted Democrat in 2020 yet overlooked how Joe Biden restored the economy after Covid and kept isolated conflicts from sparking global war.
Many young people unschooled in critical thinking and misled by online echo chambers ignore global threats to their future. Many old ones, set in their ways and fearful of essential change, are easy prey to xenophobic stupidities.
Trump's health is a mystery, but his delusional narcissism plainly deepens by the day. He may soon "age out." JD Vance lacks cult-leader charisma yet is soulless, amoral and smart. If voters cede power to his billionaire backers, he won't need it.
With a firm grip on Congress, hobbled courts and an outmoded Electoral College system, America could have a Dear Leader on a par with Kim Jung Un.
Everyone knows people willing to listen. Patient fact-based conversations can build a critical mass. For starters, there is Trump's 1,116-page Trojan Horse bill. It is no "emergency." He wants to ram it though Congress before people digest what it means.
Basically, it would cut taxes for the rich, deny health care to the neediest and add $4 trillion or more to a soaring national debt. But consider just one paragraph lurking deep inside:
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued …”
Trump could simply tell the judiciary to shove it. He is already trying that in his signature style. An all-caps post calls federal judges who oppose him "MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL."
Call this a Mort Retort, my opinion based on reporting from a world that an insular superpower obsessed with itself largely sees in distorted simplicity. It is the first of occasional briefing papers to help people who care explain to others what is at stake.
Allies and adversaries see the nation that held up a torch during eight post-war decades descend into shortsighted lunacy led by real estate hustlers, ideologues and people who regard wealth as the way to keep score.
A dying planet facing runaway conflicts is left to fend for itself. Scores of millions see loved ones die because America denies aid or asylum and undercuts international organizations that help them. Some will suffer in silence. Others will get even.
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Wild Olives, the dateline on this piece, is a bit of Provence down a rutted backroad. In June, it is perfumed with flowering yellow broom, jasmine and rosemary. Wildflowers bloom in every color of Cezanne's palette.
But now birdsong competes with overhead jets from a nearby airbase as France readies its nuclear force de frappe to protect Ukraine. Germany, Britain and others are stepping up. They know firsthand why war is hell and how easily democracies can die.
Families and friends around here spend more time with butchers than bankers. They talk about more than politics at Sunday lunch. But they regard "presidential" as a serious adjective. Felon and fools make bad leaders. A Trump would be in jail by now.
Elections last only months from start to finish, with strict spending limits. Corporations aren't people, and foreign money is forbidden. The whole country watches a final debate — two candidates slug it out face to face for two hours.
I found an abandoned olive grove in the 1980s as time-out territory when I was the Associated Press chief foreign correspondent. Based in Paris, my job was to cover coups and earthquakes — war, famine, mayhem, whatever — in far-flung parts of the world.
In between, I looked for subsurface stories in places Trump calls shitholes. I quickly saw most people share the same internal software. Parents want kids to grow up healthy, educated and free from authoritarians who turn their homelands into shitholes.
Foreign aid is not charity any more than sensible diplomacy is optional. When poverty, violence or pointless wars force people to flee from where they would rather be, they seek refuge across distant borders. No walls or draconian cruelty will stop them.
Since 2004, after 39 years with AP and two as top editor of the International Herald Tribune, I have been an "independent," committed to what objectivity is supposed to mean: not "both sides" but rather guided toward conclusions by observable fact.
I returned here in March after watching November elections in Arizona and their aftermath across America. During six decades abroad, I have seen nothing even close to the danger that Trump's rogue elephants now pose to a planet approaching endgame.
Back in the 1970s, I covered Ferdinand Marcos when the Philippines had a freewheeling, deep-digging press. But he moved on to martial law and murder. A "People Power" movement toppled him in 1986.
Lew Simons at the San Jose Mercury News spent 18 months on a Pulitzer-winning investigation to track down what Marcos amassed over two decades. Others did their own digging. Estimates vary between $5 billion and $10 billion.
Trump and his family are nearing that range after five months. And they flaunt it: crass "merch," paid access to power, staggering gifts from foreign states, payments by Americans seeking pardons, commercial advantage or personal favors.
He opposed bitcoins and such as dangerous until he sniffed huge profits. Banks must report transfers of $10,000 or more to regulatory agencies. Any chiseler, mob family or terrorist network can move around crypto currency undetected.
Untraceable legal tender undermines the international monetary system on which economic stability depends.
Public interest groups and nonpartisan oversight bodies not yet dismantled reveal details. But we don't know much. Trump's aides scrub records that by law must remain in the National Archives and edit out much of his incoherent rambling.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's briefings to handpicked sycophant "reporters" and contemptuous partisan White House messaging need a second upcoming dispatch to summarize.
A pervasive tendency excuses actionable graft as just more of what previous presidents did. Hardly. The Foreign Emoluments Clause, dating to the Articles of Confederation in 1781, covers a Qatari flying palace and hawking Teslas on the White House lawn.
The Republicans' above-board numbers are stunning. George W. Bush and Trump in his first term cut $10 trillion in taxes. Money trickled up, not down, to widen the gap between rich and desperate. Now another $4 trillion, if not twice that, is in the offing.
Trump's Covid denial added multiple trillions to the deficit. It caused the inevitable inflation and supply disruptions he blames on Biden. His projected "Golden Dome," estimated at $175 billion, will likely end up as an outmoded $500 billion white elephant.
What matters more is beyond all this. House Speaker Mike Johnson defends that democracy-killing bill by saying Republicans want a better future for new generations. But they recklessly rape nature and poison the atmosphere. Future is an open question.
Alan Weisman, a meticulous reporter who wrote the runaway bestseller, "The World Without Us," spent years traveling the globe to assess climate collapse in a new book: "Hope Dies Last." Early on, he gets to the heart of it:
"Our worsening weather finds growing numbers of us beseeching miraculous deliverance from flood, drought, fires, or terrifying winds. By now, even the most bellicose deniers know the climate has become unmoored -- they're either so scared that they lie to themselves or they're making so much money that they lie to us."
The Trump regime hastens a final reckoning with vast demands on fossil fuels and water supply to support a wasteful economy. "Deregulation" equates to devastated natural splendor, national reserves and Native American heritage.
This, too, needs another hard look.
Violent 1960s-style protests give over-armed police an excuse to crack down. Today, the effective priority is opening closed minds with repeated personal contacts to persuade with convincing detail.
Talking to hardcore Trump cultists is like shucking oysters with a plastic knife. Writer Paul Dickson got it right in the 1980s: "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig."
Townhalls and demonstrations help. So do letters, phone calls and encounters with candidates' staffs. But Republicans who mouth soothing platitudes in public only break with party doctrine when in fear of losing their place at the trough.
Stick with those 90 million who did not show up in 2024 and others who did not even register. And focus on the wider world where existential crises play out beyond many people's lines of sight.
This takes time, and everyone is busy. Still, Americans spent $59 billion on video games last year. Access to streamed movies and series is near infinite.
Spare yourself most media babble. "Breaking news" on TV usually means "what the fuck is Trump up to now?" CNN's Jake Tapper titled his book on Biden's acuity "Original Sin." Neither journalism nor history, it is shameless commercial hustle.
America's most recent "original sin" was not impeaching Trump in 2017. Mitch McConnell blocked senators from hearing vital testimony. His winner-take-all politics packed the Supreme Court, along with lower ones. We are seeing the result today.
Trump tried to extort Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Biden by holding back missiles needed to blunt a Russian onslaught. He fortified his defense by scapegoating intelligence analysts and ambassadors with long experience in a complex region.
CNN also has Christiane Amanpour, who, like Fareed Zakaria, keeps world crises in perspective. She spoke to Fiona Hill, the fired National Security Council expert on Russia, who explained how Vladimir Putin jerks Trump around like a stringed puppet.
Hill said Putin, like other authoritarians, pegged Trump from the start as a pushover guided only by an inflated idea of his own genius. After the impeachment failed, Trump continually bashed NATO. Putin saw that as an opportunity to invade.
"America is squandering its leadership role, reducing its capacity to withstand future challenges," she said. Putin," she added, will likely fight "to the last Ukrainian and possibly to the second last Russian."
China supports Russia, eager to weaken the West. North Korea gets sophisticated help from Putin to amp up its own high-tech nuclear arsenal in exchange for providing cannon fodder in Ukraine.
After the damage of his first term, Trump is doing far worse all over the map, especially in the Middle East. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accuses Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes for political purposes. Jews everywhere face indiscriminate antisemitism.
Devoid of human empathy, Trump does diplomacy the way he does real estate deals. If he gets bored, he walks away. If outflanked, he finds someone to blame. Years of brutal combat, civilian slaughter and suffering populations are extraneous detail.
More specific dispatches follow, but the main point is primordial: Every country must protect its borders and national interests. But all countries need to sell what they have and buy what they don't. None can be first or alone. Bullying ensures payback.
Restoring America's old values while adapting to a vastly different world requires a reversal of just about everything Trump and his zealots are doing. In the next few elections, politics as usual are not enough.
Anyone who still disputes Trump's fitness to remain close to those nuclear codes ought to look at The New York Times piece attached below. It is too unhinged to summarize.
A mass movement across partisan lines can clear the way for a principled two-party system to begin making America whole again. An abrupt awakening of citizens on the sidelines needs to drive off Donald Trump and the elephants he rode in on.
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