High Noon in America — For Keeps

TUCSON — Friends were amazed when I popped in from Paris a month ahead of schedule. Were the riots too dangerous? Why walk out on such a big story — a country set ablaze by commie schoolkids, migrant Muslim terrorists and plundering mobs?

Not quite. France outlasted Caesar's legions, Hitler's blitzkrieg, Big Mac attacks and Emily in Paris. As Jon Stewart noted, protest is as French as adultery. Violent student demos reflect havoc that a lunatic U.S. president has inflicted on an imperiled planet.

Nov. 3 midterms will be the most important referendum ever. If enough Americans flush Donald Trump and his enablers into the sewers of history, time remains to restore human decency, mitigate climate collapse and defuse conflicts with sensible diplomacy.

Polls show voters are finally waking up. Early balloting at twice the pace of past midterms suggests a Democratic House and maybe a slight Senate majority. Likely upsets in Republican districts were unthinkable before Trump's ruinous second term.

Yet Trump has two more years of veto power. His executive orders flip a middle finger at the courts. He ignored Congress to wage an insane Iran war. In his demented bubble, he focuses on trivia while condoning a buffoon defense secretary's war crimes.

This is a final alarm before what may be the last elections if Trump's faithless followers find a way to rig or postpone voting in 2028.

It comes down to this. Irrefutable evidence in plain sight shows that Donald Trump, his family and inner circle have pocketed untold billions of dollars in graft, grift, insider stock trading, untraceable crypto deals and all the rest.

Trump, tone deaf, can't help himself from gloating. At one of his nonstop rallies with sparse crowds, he told cultists who struggle to pay bills that $5,000 buys a hamburger and a small dessert, if that, at Mar-a-Lago. Then he beamed with smug pleasure.

By no definition is the United States a representative democracy as defined by its Constitution unless public scrutiny holds its scofflaw leaders to account. Corruption is now at the top of voters' concerns — rising to 88 percent by some authoritative polls.

Much of the world has already written off America for leadership in confronting global crises it did so much to create. After a week of monitoring TV and canvassing eligible voters, I was stunned at how far the nation has drifted away from the real world.

Foreign countries are barely mentioned, mostly in comic book simplicities. One woman said it might help Haiti to end temporary protected status in America. Haitians can return home to help solve its internal problems.

In fact, 90 percent of Port-au-Prince and much of the interior are controlled by vicious gangs that murder, rape and plunder at will, with little protection from overwhelmed, often corrupt, police. Families hide indoors, many without food.

Few realize the arbitrary killings, torture and robbery by authorities in places like Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, which are paid by the U.S. government to accept migrants with no crimes except entering the United States in hopes of asylum.

Iran is mentioned mostly in the context of gas prices, with little thought to how Trump's insane war has forced so many families to besiege rich-world borders because they can no longer survive at home.

Trump has long since lost his Iran war, needless because Barack Obama had already united Europe, China and Russia in 2015 to persuade Iran to renounce nuclear weapons and surrender nearly all its enriched uranium.

Now over his head, Trump focuses on turning the White House into a King Midas monstrosity while leaving the war to Pete Hegseth, his inept martinet secretary of war crimes.

After firing so much top brass and banning honest reporters from Pentagon briefings, Hegseth demoralizes generals with lie detector tests. Traditional off-record guidance to trusted reporters is vital when U.S. lives and international standing are at risk.

He just cashiered Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, a 30-year veteran whose crucial job was strategic planning as the Joint Chiefs are desperate to find a way out of Iran. Trump, clueless, thought Sylvia was his first name. He told reporters, "She's gonna have big problems."

Nothing illustrates the difference between an inspiring American president and self-serving deviant like Obama's soaring rally speeches. In Ohio, he joked that Trump's White House looked like Saddam Hussein's version of the Cheesecake Factory.

Trump heaped praise on his own impeccable taste. He claimed that his massive, fortified East Wing refurbishing without congressional consent was because Obama was a "lousy president" who left the White House in a mess. Trump told reporters:

"We have to explain that to Obama because he doesn’t understand it because he’s not a smart guy,” Trump said. “In my opinion, he’s not smart at all because the way he ran the country, only a stupid person would run the country like that.”

The next day in Georgia, Obama drew laughter, describing Trump's reaction. He was furious about trivial household issues yet did not object to being compared to Saddam Hussein, a land-grabbing despot with slavish aides who lived in lavish splendor.

For years now, I've been referring to Don, Jr and Eric as Uday and Qusay, Saddam's villainous sons who lorded over Iraqis and amassed fortunes under their father's aegis. True, they were more brutal. But still.

The real stakes go far beyond Trump's countless abuses of power. That's why I illustrated this piece with an uplifting photo of a full moon over Washington captured by Dawn Shepherd, the Mort Report designer and tech brain.

It filled me with hope, like that cheery verse by Paul Simon and his Aussie pal, Bruce Woodley, who founded The Seekers:

"And I think it's gonna be alright

Yeah, the worst is over now

The mornin' sun is shinin' like a red rubber ball."

True, it's the moon at night, and it is not red. Poetic license. It shows the amplitude of what is at risk if we head down a perilous path toward premature endgame by heedless greed and stupidity. Ancestors left us a wondrous world, and it belongs to our progeny.

My two best sources are Solomon the Saguaro out my front door in Tucson, who is perhaps 200 years old, and Emiliano the Olive Tree in Provence, likely twice that. After all their lived experience, neither can now figure out the seasons.

Saguaros appeared in the Sonoran Desert about 8,000 years ago, centuries after migrating tribes settled across what is now the Mexican border. The Tohono O’odham, revere them as family members, a source of food, bird nests, fiber and poles for shelter.

Today, Trump's crews bulldoze them to build a pointless double wall and a wide roadway, which only stop wildlife that can't tunnel under or climb over. Crews destroy sacred sites and the last remaining wetlands.

My last Report lamented about those ancient Palestinian olive groves that encroaching Israeli settlers set ablaze in the West Bank with Trump's tacit approval.

In the American West, devastation is only beginning as Trump opens spectacular wilderness and recreation lands to foreign-owned mines. They pay no royalties because of a 19th century federal law. Profits go to Canada, Australia or Britain.

Mines squander and pollute water in Arizona, which may soon have to reduce its consumption by 70 percent. Worse, a huge Taiwanese chip factory near Phoenix and others on arid desert will gulp down unconscionable amounts.

I keep looking for answers to the basic underlying question. Where is the outrage in America from fresh generations who have so much to lose? True, there is plenty. But not nearly enough. So many, apathetic and ignorant, simply tune out.

In France, protesters stay in the streets until elected officials come to some workable compromise. In Myanmar at the other extreme, Burmese teenagers formed militias in the jungles in a nearly hopeless struggle so their families might have better lives.

Youth uprisings and outraged citizens now challenge entrenched authoritarians in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In Serbia, a protest over deaths at a city train depot that collapsed from neglect toppled Aleksandar Vucic after 10 years.

Even India's tough-minded Narendra Modi took a backward step. His education minister dismissed restive students as cockroaches. What started as an online Cockroach Party lark ended up hounding him out of office.

In Albania, street marches opposing a private resort deal with Jared Kushner grew into violent clashes demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.

And in Brazil, a first-round election looked as if Jair Bolsonaro's son, Flavio, would defeat 90-year-old Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, a populist who excoriates Trump as a wannabe emperor of the world. But Bolsonaro lost and fled to America.

Jimmy Kimmel got off a classic line after the Obama-Trump cheesecake exchange: The two men were the difference between a Ferrari and a folding chair. But it is time to stop laughing.

Now the world watches Trump let Ukrainians bleed out after four and a half years of Vladimir Putin's war of attrition. He has given no arms in his second term. Russia helps Iran target Americans, but he still favors Putin. Elon Musk limits Ukraine's access to Starlink and Star Shield.

We can only guess at the needless death toll Trump caused between his Covid-19 folly and his slashed U.S. foreign aid. It is in the millions.

This could go on and on. But it is enough. Whatever it takes, eligible Americans need to show up to vote on Tuesday or start thinking about what to tell their families — and themselves — why they didn't.