TUCSON — Nothing says America like Super Bowl Sunday, the annual gladiator pageant of patriotic zeal, beloved by all but sports-scorning grinches and chickens with amputated wings. Pandemic and civil war be damned. As in old Rome, bread (at least pizza) and circuses prevail.

Last night was classic. Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady, at 43 the stuff of legends, skunked the 25-year-old Kansas City kid, Patrick Mahomes, who gamely threw passes despite an injured foot against an overpowering defense. The Buccaneers creamed the Chiefs, 31-9.

Big bruisers’ eyes moistened at the outset as a singer belted out that line in “America the Beautiful”: “…and crown thy good, with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.” The theme was unity, from Joe and Jill Biden’s opening words to the $11 million-a-minute commercials.

Bruce Springsteen, selling Jeeps with scenes of down-home America, spoke home truths: "Fear has never been the best of who we are, and as for freedom, it's not the property of just the fortunate few, it belongs to us all… We need that connection. We need the middle."

The Super Bowl celebrates that bedrock concept we learn as kids: sportsmanship. Referees enforce rules set in stone; cameras keep them honest. Cheaters — players or officials — are reviled and punished. All share a concrete reality, and no one gets to declare alternative facts.

Late in the game, a Tampa Bay player taunted a dejected opponent with two fingers shaping a “V.” Old-pro CBS announcers were horrified on air. Moments later, a referee dropped his flag: 15 yards lost for “unsportsmanlike conduct.”

But as the game recedes into record books with no lasting impact on America and the world, we face the most important trial in history. That fair play stuff is beyond hypocrisy. Off the field, perfidious politicians harp on that vital word, unity, to mask the exact opposite.

TUCSON — For years, my Facebook profile mug was a way younger me, mustache like a dead raccoon and too much black hair whipping in high wind at the brass and teak wheel of The Third Sea off Malaysia. In fact, I’m a chickenshit sailor. But Steve could make anyone fearless.

A stroke finally felled Harold Stephens in Bangkok at 96. Perhaps the best way to capture his outsized life is to start in the middle, go back to the beginning and then end with the end. I wrote this forward in 1995 to one his multiple adventure books, At Home in Asia.

“ As a foreign correspondent, my job involves the usual upheavals, small wars and workaday mayhem. Every so often, however, the mail includes a pleasant surprise which takes me away from that boring routine; a letter from Harold Stephens, filled with some real excitement.

“You can spot Steve's letters from across the room: The address is written in urgent printed characters, with the no-nonsense, slightly askew strokes of a man who has struck gold and is racing to catch the last burro to Eureka. The envelope seems to twitch and quiver from all the energy within.

“I remember one which reached me in Singapore, full of the usual chatty news: ‘chased by crocodiles...,’ ‘capsized off Tioman Island ...,’ ‘pirates nearly got us near the Celebes....’ At the end, when he added, ‘Wish you were here,’ and I thought: me, too.

“If it was merely a matter of voracious reptiles, shipwrecks or killers afloat, I'd bet on Steve, hands down. What always struck me was the tone of the letters. Always humble, courtly, full of derring-do but absent of bravado. But this is only to be expected. Adventure is Harold Stephens' natural state. To boast of his exploits would be like bragging about breathing.

“A product of long nights with Conrad on a Western Pennsylvania farm, he grew up with a code of honor and a sense of ingenuous wonder. He is burly and broad-shouldered — in ‘Mutiny on the Bounty,’ he doubled for Brando when the action got intense — but his buckles don't swash. Handsome, with eyes that, in fact, twinkle, he is no lady killer. His code in that regard is more Sir Walter than Errol Flynn.”

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SONOITA, Arizona — This will be short; we’ve all wasted enough words on Donald Trump. But as he sulks in defeat and disgrace, awaiting a second trial for treachery far more heinous than the last, we had best take stock of an America he so badly crippled.

The pandemic will eventually subside. Shocked by a bald coup attempt that might have crowned Trump king, voters may finally unite to rid Congress and statehouses of self-serving snakes. In time, the outside world may again believe in American values.

But headlong plunder of natural resources, Native American cultures and wild splendor — heritage that belongs to future generations — has caused irreparable devastation from Florida wetlands to the northern reaches of Alaska.

The big picture is achingly clear: the plague Trump let run wild has already killed more Americans than Hitler and Hirohito did in World War II. His inaction on testing, masks and vaccinations now causes 1,000 more deaths each day than terrorists did on 9/11.

A Harvard team calculated in October that Covid-19 had stolen 2.5 million years of Americans’ lives. That has since doubled. A lucky few pile up huge profits while the rest suffer. Jeff Bezos earned an extra $68 billion; perhaps 50 million others go hungry.

Damage from the Trump virus is incalculably pervasive. Beyond the fatalities after he ordered a lynch mob to the U.S. Capitol, at least 38 police officers overrun by unmasked insurrectionists have tested positive for Covid-19.

Yet a thumping majority of Republicans, ignorant of facts, or simply ignorant, still rally behind him. He likely won’t run in 2024, but someone else will, on a similar oligarchic, authoritarian platform based on lies and distortions.

Congress is now shot full of faithless partisans fixated on their ambitions. A smattering of conspiracy-theorist newcomers with their own twisted realities stretch the limits of abnormal psychology.

The roots of this American Nightmare run deep. Ronald Reagan set in motion income inequality that is now a yawning abyss between rich and desperate. He dumbed down schools, quashed labor unions, cut taxes at the top and gave big business free rein.

Barack Obama restored prosperity after George W. Bush’s $6 trillion wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But factions hardened in Congress and statehouses. Mitch McConnell’s intransigence eroded an historic tradition of compromise.

And then Trump, the bad shepherd, flocked America, fleecing his sheep-like followers to within an inch of their lives. He used his one great talent — slinging bullshit — to create of base of zealots who politicians and tycoons exploited to their own advantage.

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The Capitol assault was no bozo Bastille. America called 911, and no one came. “We came close to half the House nearly dying,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said afterward. She feared Republican colleagues would direct insurgents to Democrats’ hideouts.

When the teargas cleared and Congress resumed certifying votes, Cheney declared: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

Everything, she said, was Trump’s doing: “(He) summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”

Yet only a handful a Republicans voted to impeach. Others aimed their wrath at Cheney, not Trump, and sought to remove her as their caucus chair. Polls show that two-thirds of Americans who voted for reelection would do it again.

Ten days later, the enormity of it is sinking in. At one point, the Washington Post reported, a group chanting “Hang Mike Pence” missed seeing the vice president by 60 seconds as the Secret Service spirited him away.

The world watched for hours as thousands overran police, killing one and battering others in a superpower that spends $720 billion a year on “defense.” When the National Guard finally moved in, most had gone, high fiving and plotting their next move.

Top level officials declined to brief the nation, but reporters pieced together what happened. Mayor Muriel Bowser wanted to protect the Capitol but could only send local police. In Washington, the Pentagon commands the National Guard. Troops were deployed to direct traffic and in the Metro.

Governors of nearby states made urgent, repeated calls to offer Guard units that could have blocked access to the Capitol and arrested assault leaders in flagrante while evidence was fresh, with firsthand witnesses. Generals declined, wary of “the optics.”

Those “optics” will be far worse on Wednesday to a stunned world. America, which symbolized open unassailable democracy, plans to inaugurate a president shielded by 21,000 armed troops and barricades that make Washington look like Baghdad in 2003.

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Editor’s Note: Facebook is hard to like (Mark Zuckerberg has wormed his way into owning even that simple word). But for speed and reach it has its advantages. These pieces are expanded from my page, one as barbarians stormed the gates, others looking upward and ahead.

Lock Them Up. Immediately.

The first thing a reporter learns when covering a gulag or shithole run by a mad king is how to read signals to the aroused rabble and gestures to the Gestapo. It’s harder in Romanian, Serbo-Croatian or Lingala. But Trump’s pidgin English is so unmistakably clear he might as well have bright red flash cards and an interpreter signing at his shoulder. I watched him on Fox, as usual, making sure no blunt movable objects were nearby to ruin yet another TV set.

As in every speech, he hammered away at a favorite line. Any anarchist commie terrorist who disrespected the statue of an America hero, enslavers and Indian exterminators included, would be jailed for 10 years. He berated the three Supreme Court justices he put on the bench for siding with the people over him. Then, after an avalanche of horseshit about a stolen election, he ordered his howling mob to the Capitol, saying he’d be there with them. Fat chance. He went back to our White House to watch.

Throughout Trump’s term we’ve seen police in Washington operate with higher authority. A favorite tactic is the “kettle,” herding protesters, reporters and hapless tourists passing by into clusters to be carried off in paddy wagons. Journalists only doing their jobs spent months on end fighting charges that could have put them away for decades. We all saw Trump’s insane foray to hold a Bible upside down, protected by a four-star general in combat fatigues among cops in riot gear flailing batons with high-tech sonic weapons at the ready.

Yesterday, the world watched, stupefied, as louts in battle costume swarmed into the Capitol unhindered, trashing our representatives’ offices, pawing through their files, stealing computers with classified data, taking selfies and slapping high fives before filing out unhindered to ignore a 6 p.m. curfew. Grinning assholes smirked at TV cameras, flipping us all the finger. Video shows lone cops fleeing in panic, under assault or, in some cases, standing back in apparent approval.

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