Making Almeria Great Again
MIGENNES, France — A great joy in life has been keeping my noble old boat afloat. Her teak and oak planking evokes early civilizations venturing across a bounteous planet. But after a long refit, she is in troubled waters, either a Noah's Ark or the Titanic.
This is less of a Mort Report than just Mort, a cri de coeur from the deck of Almeria. I've learned much about people on rivers that Caesar's legions followed to build an empire that fell from hubris, greed and cruelty. The world changes. Human nature does not.
Crippled nations once had time to recover from imperial overreach or a madman's folly. No longer. All eight billion of us are in the same boat, headed in the wrong direction.
I call these dispatches "non-prophet." Reporters ought to focus on the present based on the past rather than speculate on the future. But what seasoned world-watchers see from hard facts is dead clear. We are rudderless, awash in perilous cross currents.
Upton Sinclair foresaw today's dire straits in 1934 when he put aside muckraking journalism to run for governor of California: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
That explains why the MAGA base keeps believing Donald Trump's bullshit. But the real threat is from his billionaire backers. As the accountant in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" says, it's easy to make money if that's all you want to do.
I'm no commie. But enough should be enough. While I'm quoting wise people, here is Gandhi: "The world has enough for everyone's needs, but not enough for everyone's greed."
All generations matter. Young people have fresh energy with new ideas. Old ones have seen why things went so wrong. Together, they can chart a course to sensible sustainability. Otherwise, no amount of life rafts can save us.
Trump's supporters poison Earth's ecosystem for quick profit, plunder its resources, squander dwindling food supplies and stop foreign aid that saves countless lives. They ignore deadly pathogens and wage needless war.
They are hardly alone in a world of ungodly rich plunderers. But their useful idiot gives them license to make a virtue of it.
At the U.N. General Assembly, Trump called European leaders stupid. He said their countries are headed to hell because they are too nice to refugees and migrants. They will go bankrupt, he told them, by spurning fossil fuel for costly green energy shams.
He rambled for nearly an hour past his allotted 15 minutes with the most boastful, fact-free, contradictory and pugnacious speech I have heard any world leader deliver in seven decades as a foreign correspondent. Can demented hypocrisy be more blatant?
I almost laughed at Stephen Miller's melodramatic screed (attached below) during five hours of fiery talk and fireworks in Arizona to enshrine Charlie Kirk as an immortal American martyr. But it was hardly funny.
A 22-year-old loner shot Kirk after messaging his roommate, "I had enough of his hatred." But Miller blamed Democrats and everyone else who challenges Trump's perverted Republican ideology.
Miller, far more than Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, oversees the massive apparatus of "homeland security." Ill-trained, over-armed 18-year-olds round up people on mere suspicion. Some smash windows, or far worse, with impunity.
Moments before posting this, an ABC report came in with video of ICEholes at work. It is attached below. Rafie Ollah Shouhed, a 79-year-old U.S. citizen with a heart problem, was slammed to the ground during a raid on his carwash in Van Nuys, California.
He says he suffered broken ribs and brain injuries, yet they held him in detention for nearly 12 hours before his sobbing wife could take him to a hospital. Shouhed said he screamed that he had proof he was a citizen.
"All they would say was 'You do not f... with us, you do not f... with us,'" he said. His lawyer is suing for $50 million, which would come from taxpayers if he succeeds. ABC said federal officials had no comment, a typical response these days.
Building toward a finish, Miller said Kirk's example will inspire American children, and their children's children and... He kept on going. But unless we start heading on a different course, a kid born today faces tough actuarial odds.
What sensible parents would expose their progeny to what awaits them on a planet that is already convulsed with the impact of climate collapse? With MAGA making policy, the only uncertainties are how bad and how soon.
Almeria was around in 1914 when a zealot's bullet in Sarajevo sparked serial world war. In 1940, seconded to the Royal Navy, she helped fend off a self-obsessed Führer. In the 1960s, friends found her abandoned at an English port and brought her to Paris.
She docks near Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the Seine, a bronze Winston Churchill strides forward, undaunted by a tyrant-in-waiting who won a close election by twisting truth and then seized power by scapegoating a convenient Other for all Germany's ills.
Hitler, like Trump, was a malignant narcissist heedless of anyone else's pain. But he was a decorated war veteran, a voracious reader who grew up as a hard-knocks hustler in homeless shelters. He wanted raw global power, not personal wealth or empty flattery.
Back then, news media were limited to newspapers and short-range radio. Soaring inflation fed political turmoil, which made Germany easy prey for despotic rule. Land grabs required only tanks, artillery, with rudimentary aircraft.
Today, the internet enables any skilled propagandist to sway millions, offering simplistic policies and permission to hate. Hitler was a monster who exterminated millions, hardly MAGA's goal. But most of his playbook is a dictators' manual.
Trump excels at the Hitlerian grosse Lüge, the Big Lie repeated over and over until it muscles aside truth in plain sight. He often remarks that he loves the uneducated. He targets schools and youth groups to indoctrinate followers at an early age.
At least for now, the Constitution remains in force. Trump is only that wizard behind a curtain in Oz, who deflates when Dorothy's little dog exposes him. But he won't go away so easily, and the Democratic Party is not unified enough to curtail him.
Too few people realize what is at stake. Without a thundering landslide in 2026, Trump and his rogue elephants can likely permanently rig future elections.
Americans need to oppose their phony strongman in every way possible. Peaceful protests help. But the best way, I believe, is to see beyond generalities to damning details of MAGA's plan. Then spread the word among those not yet energized to vote.
This requires journalists committed to honest reporting and analysis. Trump is doing his best to replace their diminishing number with sock-sucking sycophants.
He claimed 97 percent of news stories about him are negative. "They’ll take a great story, and they’ll make it bad," he said. "I think that’s really illegal, personally." He lamented not getting enough good publicity. Reporters are hardly publicists.
His savaging of the First Amendment creates limited stir beyond embattled TV satirists' biting humor. Perhaps, Jon Stewart noted, a 97 percent thumbs-down might be worth some self reflection.
The Guardian is crucial to see America from the outside looking in. So are English versions of the French and German press.
Leaders in what remains of the free world privately describe Trump's America as mean-spirited and shockingly corrupt. They see him cream off billions while so many struggling families lose heart along with their medical care.
Yet faced with his bullying tactics, they often kowtow shamelessly. Meantime, Authoritarians shower him with praise, gifts and real estate deals. All this feeds a bottomless ego and encourages delusions of grandeur. He sees tribute as his due.
The danger is far beyond Trump. He may well implode by 2028, leaving the Oval Office to J.D. Vance, who envisions an isolationist America reshaped by young conservative "influencers" with no real-world experience. Charlie Kirk stood out among them.
Migennes began as a medieval village on the Yonne. It gained prominence in 1832 as the entry point to the 150-mile Canal de Bourgogne, which allowed river traffic from the English Channel to the Mediterranean. It was a jewel in a beautiful part of France.
I first visited in the 1970s for a piece on what I called Calorie Alley, the Paris to Lyon highway dotted with three-star Michelin chefs. Even small family eateries offered unforgettable meals from local suppliers and vineyards.
Migennes is a microcosm of the much-changed world. A few French restaurants remain. But I spent 10 days dining mostly on kebabs, curries and, driving 20 minutes north or south, Big Macs.
My rented room is above a once-renowned bakery, now boarded-up. But across the street, a hole-in-the-wall halal shop makes decent baclava. The old covered market smacks of an African bazaar with handicrafts and cheap underwear.
A kindly Frenchman who grew up around here runs the Maison de la Presse. Like so many people in these troubled days, he speaks frankly but declines to be named. He smiled ruefully when I asked about change since he was a kid.
"It is best not to reflect too deeply," he said. "Otherwise, it is too depressing. I just focus on today and appreciate my friends and family." No xenophobe, he knows why the world is off course and wishes politicians could act beyond their own narrow interests.
His wife added another dimension. Migennes was hit hard by America's 2008 financial crisis — subprime loans and the rest — which fast impacted the rest of the world. Big banks were too big to fail. Mom and pop shops were too small to survive.
That hoary cliché is on point: when America sneezes, the world gets a cold. Barack Obama settled the crisis and left behind a healthy economy on the rise. Trump built on that, pumping up the stock market. Then he let Covid spread out of control.
The world had far worse than a cold. Biden restored prosperity, despite inflation caused by the pandemic, and yet again Trump took over a growing economy likely now headed for trouble.
Nothing is simple in a complex world. Migennes businesses closed, jobs were lost, lifeblood drained away. People from elsewhere moved in with few resources of their own.
Immigration is vital for rich countries to prosper. But too much at the wrong time creates imbalances. Governments need quotas and infrastructure to regulate the flow.
Trump's blood-libel simplicities easily sway fearful Americans. There is no "invasion." Authoritarians don't foist their dregs on America. Most migrants can't survive where they are. They face often imaginable hardship to find refuge in safer places.
Climate collapse and conflict forces rise the human tide. Helping people stay home where most would rather be is self-interest, not charity. They won't simply vanish. Few are criminals and terrorists. But misery in limbo creates desperation and hatred.
A common approach to global crises seems impossible, which it may be. But what is the option? The United States, with its wealth and wherewithal is best placed to take the lead. But its current administration is hardly apt to do that.
Almeria is fueled up and ready to chug three days up to Paris. Steering a 30-ton wooden hull up a perfidious river with sandbars and subsurface snags is always rife with surprise. I'm a reporter. Either things go right, or I have a story.
But I've got a pile of books and notes to digest during rum-sipping time in places unreachable by road. Upcoming Mort Reports will get back to business with reportage and analysis aimed at helping to get things right. Watch this space.
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