The Carpentariat

A request

I cannot conceive of a worse time to ask for your financial support, given my many absences of late, due to illness. Therefore I'm doing so. Let's call this a "soft" fundraiser. I won't pester you this spring with numerous pleas; just this brief request. The continuation of this site has always been based on reader contributions, and I accept that I haven't held up my end of the deal by going AWOL so frequently. The absences were rather unavoidable, however — a double-barreled combination of clinical depression and lingering gastrointestinal troubles, as many of you know. Today I began feeling close to normal, thus the sudden spate of today's posts. They were not designed to lay the groundwork for this fundraising plea; only afterward did I decide to go ahead and ask for your support. I hope to remain feeling better and capable of daily posts, as I have done for many years. In other words, please hang in there with me. I'm trying. And your financial support would help. Thank you — PM

Fresh posts below.

The slop that Biden must face

In "Biden’s campaign might start a lot like how 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’'ends," the Washington Post's David Von Drehle presents a snarky, ambiguous and, regrettably, often realistic profile of Joe Biden's challenges.

Biden’s problem is that he comes from … a world where people strike compromises (he has struck plenty) and make occasional mistakes (he has made a bunch)….

Unless the public is in a forgiving mood, however, compromises and mistakes are just so much ammunition in today’s campaigns…. And frankly, nothing about his two previous presidential campaigns — in 1988 and 2008 — sparks confidence that he will be deft in his own defense….

In [Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid], we don’t see Butch and Sundance shot to pieces. Director George Roy Hill elected to freeze the frame in their last moment of glory. Biden’s long wait to plunge into this campaign might be his version of that decision — a pause to savor his record before it’s savaged, to measure his reputation before it is torn down.

It's impossible to tell if Von Drehle is lamenting or condemning, but on the whole, his column is suggestive of what's to come from the chattering class. What's commentary worthy, for instance, in noting that a politician made "a bunch" of mistakes over a half century? Biden had been in the Senate for 13 years before Pete Buttigieg was born, and nature is cruel in its demand that humans must make mistakes. Biden has had 50 years to do so, which means, comparatively, decades more of experience from which to learn.

Let us face the historical fact that many of Biden's "mistakes" were popular positions at the time — e.g., Bill Clinton's crime bill. Ebony magazine, Rep. Charles Rangel, Rep. Kweisi Mfume and a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus all supported the Clinton administration's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Biden's pro vote was no mistake in 1994. It was mainstream and righteous, and only the journalistic crime of presentism portrays it in any other way.

What's more, Von Drehle's remark that Biden's delayed entry into the presidential race was perhaps "a pause to savor his record before it’s savaged, to measure his reputation before it is torn down," is simply worthless speculation. Von Drehle is ordinarily quite good as a columnist, but his reflection on Biden's sentiment was uncommonly lazy (in amplifying his word count?). Biden is looking forward, not "savoring his record" — which Von Drehle just informed us was a self-harmful one for the former vice president.

Still, Von Drehle is correct in assessing the electorate's squirrelly idiosyncrasies. They also supported, say, the 1994 crime bill, yet supportive politicians of the last century are now expected to redeem themselves and repent. Pols such as Mayor Pete are off the hook, though; he was 12 years of age at the time.

I pity Joe Biden in having to countenance columnists who are desperate for something to say. Because pretty much anything goes.

Jared Kushner: Whiz Kid of cretinism

Last month, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe referred to the president's son-in-unlawful Jared Kushner as the "smarmy, slimy, smiling … beating heart of this unprecedentedly corrupt and deeply evil administration." Law professors — other than Michael Cohen's at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, described by journalist and author Philip Shenon as "the worst law school in America" — know that ad hominem attacks are the lowest form of adversarial argumentation. Except when they're not.

Exhibit Z against Mr. Kushner: "You look at what Russia did," he said yesterday at the Time 100 Summit meeting — "you know, buying some Facebook ads to try and sow dissent and do it, it's a terrible thing. But I think the investigations and all of the speculation that's happened for the last two years has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple Facebook ads."

In the annals of White House "senior adviser" imbecility, Kushner's remark surely qualifies for a slot in the top 10. What "Russia did" was launch a full-scale assault on American democracy and its electoral system. "According to the Mueller report," writes CNN Politics, "the IRA [Russia's Internet Research Agency] purchased over 3,500 advertisements on Facebook, and the expenditures totaled approximately $100,000 … [and] reached tens of millions of persons."

Adding insult to imbecility, Kushner, replying to a question about why the Trump campaign didn't refuse Russia's, ahem, assistance, said — he actually said — "we didn't know that Russia was doing what they were doing. The notion of what they were doing didn't even register to us as being impactful." Given Kushner's devilish dimwittedness, the proprietor of 666 Fifth Avenue may have meant that honestly.

Prof. Tribe's co-author of Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy, attorney and Newsweek columnist Seth Abramson tweeted this rather unsettling assessment, which far outpaces the senior adviser's cluelessness about Russia: "Kushner is going to get us into a *devastating* war with Iran. Jared, singlehandedly. Jared, to make money for himself. I'll say now that Jared more richly deserves to be in prison for the rest of his life than Manafort, and Manafort richly deserves it. That's how bad this is."

There's something one can always say about the Trump administration with absolute certainty: As bad as things are, they always get worse.

A trifle slow on the uptake

I read this Politico story in a state of absolute incredulity.

The [Mueller] report detailed multiple efforts by Trump and his senior aides to mislead journalists and the public, reigniting a long-running media debate about how to cover such an unprecedented presidency — and when, if ever, to accept White House denials at face value.

"Reporters have to start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media," Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Kyle Pope said in an interview. Pope, who said some news organizations were too slow to challenge official White House statements, added: "The dealings with the White House have to be reframed given what we now know about them."

Only now should reporters "start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media"? Anyone with even a dram of political insight undertook that assumption beginning with Trump's descent on the Trump Tower escalator in June 2015.

It is nothing short of astounding that the editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review would only now encourage reporters to be skeptical of this White Houses' communications department. "Pope even questioned the value of quoting or interviewing Trump’s principal spokesperson, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders."

Breathtaking is as harsh a word I can conceive in describing the blindness of Pope's belated revelation. If there were a harsher word, I'd use it. I'm tempted to use Trump's language and call it "stupid," but I simply cannot sink that low.

Embarrassingly juvenile, even for Trump

Even Dick Nixon understood that in presidential politics, one never "punches down."

Paul Krugman, of the Fake News New York Times, has lost all credibility, as has the Times itself, with his false and highly inaccurate writings on me. He is obsessed with hatred, just as others are obsessed with how stupid he is. He said Market would crash, Only Record Highs!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2019

Yet Trump went even further in his schoolyard taunts this morning.

I wonder if the New York Times will apologize to me a second time, as they did after the 2016 Election. But this one will have to be a far bigger & better apology. On this one they will have to get down on their knees & beg for forgiveness-they are truly the Enemy of the People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2019

It remains a mystery among journalists exactly when the NYT ever apologized to Trump. But for a president who describes a Nobel winner as "stupid," there is no mystery among his base, and so their love of the chief bully grows even deeper.

Trump is doing the Dems' job for them

Attributed to Napoleon: "Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself."

"Trump’s approval rating has dropped 5 points," reports Politico, "equaling his presidency’s low-water mark, since last week’s release of the special counsel report into the 2016 election…. Only 39 percent of voters surveyed [in a Morning Consult] poll … approve of the job Trump is doing as president."

Even fewer, 34 percent, "believe Congress should begin impeachment proceedings."

Do congressional Democrats really want to engender sympathy for Trump by launching such proceedings?

Buttigieg steps in it

Mayor Pete Buttigieg was welcomed to the big leagues last Sunday by catching hell for telling the truth.

Speaking to supporters in New Hampshire, he said that economic conditions made Americans "want to vote to blow up the system," which, as The Hill put it, could make either Trump or Sanders appealing to them.

For that, Sanders' national co-chairman, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), called Buttigieg "intellectually dishonest," adding, bewilderingly, that Sanders only “wants to blow up credentialed elitism — those who reject tuition free college for all."

Thus did Mayor Pete have to "clarify" his comments, which sound very much like his original comments:

“My point is that people have been motivated to want to blow up the establishment. And Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump represent radically different ways of doing that. But I think part of how each of them was able to get some appeal was by speaking to the frustration that so many Americans have with anything perceived as the establishment."

No, Mayor, Sanders wants to blow up "credentialed elitism," a phrase which carries all the credentials of elitism itself.

Anyway, let's hope Buttigieg has learned his lesson: One never criticizes the pure ones among us.

Pelosi on impeachment

Staying on the topic of impeachment, I agree that Speaker Pelosi's position is, in a word, sickening. Never has this country suffered the likes of Trump, a cryptofascist goon who should be summarily evicted from the White House. Nevertheless:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, acknowledging a Democratic divide over new findings from Robert S. Mueller III, appeared to urge her caucus to hold off impeaching President Trump for now, even as she decried his "highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior" which she said "does not bring honor to the office he holds."

In her first extended comments since the release of the special counsel’s report last week, Ms. Pelosi counseled caution to Democrats as she tested for cracks among Republicans. In a letter to colleagues, she said, "Congressional Republicans have an unlimited appetite for" the "low standards" set by President Trump….

But she also urged Democrats not to put a specific punishment — namely impeachment — ahead of lining up the facts in the coming weeks in hearings and a potential legal fight over access to the special counsel’s investigative files.

The thrust of Pelosi's position is that impeachment is a political act, not a legal one. She is obfuscating that reality by emphasizing "hearings" and legal fights for the benefit of the pro-impeachment caucus, but above that she is underscoring the necessity of some bipartisan movement toward impeachment. And it just isn't there. Thus impeachment would be interpreted by voters as a partisan maneuver — which isn't helpful going into 2020. So while Pelosi's stance may be sickening, it's the right one.

A tribal mistake

Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, joins the impeachment crowd:

Despite Attorney General William Barr’s assurances and President Donald Trump’s boasts, the Mueller report doesn’t come close to exonerating the president of wrongdoing. Instead, it invites Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings. It’s time for Congress to heed that invitation….

I have written previously about the dangers of impeachment talk. The consequential and divisive decision to impeach is not to be taken lightly, ought not be used as a tool of political convenience, and should be avoided until the dangers of holding back exceed the dangers of proceeding. With the arrival of Mueller’s damning report, however, the time has now come.

Although I sympathize with Tribe's sentiments, time is instead running out. 2020 would be upon us before the House Judiciary Committee could conclude its hearings, with no guarantee of a full House-vote referral. Pro-impeachment Democrats would face the wrath of an anti-impeachment speaker (who would probably prevent a floor vote from ever taking place anyway), plus the last thing the Democratic Party's presidential candidates wish to discuss is impeachment. That debate would dominate the 2020 presidential race, when voters would rather hear about health care and the economy.

Idealistically, impeachment might be just the ticket. Pragmatically, it would be politically disastrous for Democrats.

As of Wednesday, it's "candidate" Biden

The waiting is over. Joe Biden will make his candidacy official this Wednesday.

That's the good news. The bad news is that "identity" squabbling among Democrats will commence with a ferocity heretofore somewhat tame. It's as though the identity-politics crowd has been vulturously though virtuously circling over the prospect of another white guy joining the race; they will now descend and proceed with pecking at the flesh of poor Joe, along with Bernie and Beto.

The opportunity for some Democrats to prove their progressive bona fides — rather than debate who can best eviscerate Trump — is upon us. Months will be squandered in a sophomoric kind of ontological transcendence. Should not the Democratic nominee be selected demographically — i.e., by race and gender — rather than his or her ability to win in the general?

In old-school politics that would be a rhetorically laughable question. But today, many Democrats prefer to participate in the primary process as part of a sentimental support-group, not as a trooper in trench-warfare politics, the way God meant it to be. If the ancient founders of democracy could do no better (for which Aristophanes was thankful), we sure as hell can't.

Joe Biden's contribution will be one of splendid simplicity: We are in a "battle for the soul of this nation." As the Atlantic puts it, "Biden’s campaign will, at its core, argue that the response to Donald Trump requires an experienced, calm hand to help America take a deep breath and figure out a way to get back on track." That's precisely what's needed in the Democrats' "messaging," while identity politics contributes nothing in the way forward.

In addition, Biden will bring to the race a compassionate, humane, pragmatic populism as a counterweight to the right's cryptofascist brand. Last Thursday, in Boston, he joined picketers with the United Food and Commercial Workers, bellowing that “Bankers, Wall Street, and CEOs didn’t build this country, You did!” Adds the Atlantic, "he spoke about the dignity of workers, health care, and good wages."

What better Democratic message? And what does identity politics bring to the left-right battle for the soul of this nation?

I concede that a woman nominee would also be a smart, pragmatic contribution, since wise, caring women of all colors (as opposed to the right's Neanderthal white males) constitute the largest base of the Democratic Party. But there is no female Joe Biden. If there were — all other things being equal — I would support her over him merely on the basis of who comprises the party these days.

I'll keep hope in the notion of a pragmatic choice, which comes down on the side of Joe Biden. The race should be about electability — not identity — and there, we have no better choice than the former vice president.

Trump is bungling his way to a united United States

I'll say one thing in praise of Trump the Uniter, as he preposterously promotes himself whenever he hits on the meth bong: Political absurdity has a way of not only bringing the left and right together, it renders them virtually indistinguishable — and this country has never seen such political absurdity as the botched rollout of the Mueller Report, thanks to the amateurishly Machiavellian Donald J. Trump.

He and his fellow connivers thought they could ingeniously exercise damage control via the informational drip, drip, drip method. But all thst has done is prolong Trump's headaches. And now both sides, left and right, are often interchangeable in their assessments of the agonizingly protracted rollout; either that, or you can't tell who was writing if you were provided a blind copy: an excitable progressive or a Trump-adoring right winger. Here, for instance, is what the editors of the conservative Washington Examiner had to say:

“The Mueller report exposes in Trump … a total aversion to transparency rooted in either actual guilt or serious paranoia. Trump was his own worst enemy. Had he let the investigation run its course, he would have looked less guilty…. [He has] repeatedly pushed others to lie or deflect in order to defend himself. This reflects his disregard for the federal law enforcement apparatus of which he is the constitutionally designated head. That is unbecoming and worrisome, and it is unethical to press others to lie, even when the lies are not under oath."

That reads like something you'd find in a hyperpartisan leftie blog, no? Well here's the assessment of one of those for-real zealous progressives, The Root's Stephen Crockett:

"The president, arguably the dumbest man in politics, has played us all and I can do nothing but applaud his efforts…. In hiring an attorney general who’s firmly holding on to the sweatpants leg that Trump wears as a tie, what was supposed to be a deep dive into the role Russia played in American politics has become the greatest political joke ever. On Thursday, the byproduct of consensual man-love between actor John Goodman and famous TV dad Frederick Flintstone, William Barr, decided he’d hold a press conference before releasing the redacted Mueller report so that he could tell the American public exactly how to not-read the Mueller report."

In the superb 1975 film Three Days of the Condor, an aged superxpook laments that he misses the "clarity" of the immediate postwar spats between the virtuous West and the wickedly Stalinist Soviet Union. As Trump's personal attorney general, Willam Barr is helping to erase the once-clear demarcation between America's left and right: Both sides are now seeing the sitting president as a clown, a hopelessly hapless bungler, a "political joke." Yes, Trump is, after all, bringing us together.

An EXPLOSIVE, little-noted section of the Mueller report

Amid all the analyses of the Mueller report by legal analysts I've heard on cable news today, there is one passage in the report that, inexplicably, has been missing from their analyses. You'll find it on pages 9-10 of the special counsel's report, and it is astounding in its potential.

In effect, while Mueller did not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice charges, neither did he exonerate the president on conspiracy to defraud the United States, loosely termed "collusion." I quote from Mueller's report:

"The investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and the Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. These lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference….

"[W]hile this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given ... identified gaps [imposed on (the Office) by legal regulations], the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report" [emphases mine].

With so much media attention and legal expertise devoted to Mueller's "does not exonerate-Trump-on-obstruction" conclusion, he essentially wrote the same about Trump and collusion. In brief, he was asking Congress to keep digging — not so much about Trump's conspicuous acts of obstruction, but about conspiracy to defraud. And yet, on this matter, I have heard nothing from the legal analysts. An I missing something — or are they?

The Barr Show

Well, it appears that Trump has been but a babe in arms, an innocent victim of a foul legal system that was out to get him.

Yet this wicked legal system — Mueller's "witch hunt" — came up with "no evidence" of any collusion, according to Attorney General Barr, who spent 90 percent of his time defending Trump on this particular charge.

On the multiple charges of obstruction, however, Barr had virtually nothing to say, except that Trump should be excused because he was "frustrated and angered" by the investigation. What a bizarre defense. It tells us, I should think, that there is a load of evidence against Trump on the obstruction charges.

And the White House knows it. Why else would Barr have shared information with the White House prior to release of Mueller's report — a sharing of information that has "aided the president’s legal team," reports the Times, "as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings."

In what world would a White House prepare a rebuttal to a report that "exonerates" the president?

***

Unless I'm misreading it, it seems that Mueller declined charging Trump with obstruction merely by virtue of Trump's office. A similar investigation of an average citizen would have resulted in "traditional" prosecutorial charges, according to Mueller's report.

Doesn't it seem the president of the United States — ultimately the highest law enforcement officer of the land — should be held to the highest, not the lowest, standard?

***

After listening for the last hour to MSNBC's legal and counterintelligence experts, who have digested Volume I of Mueller's report (the collusion section), my conclusion is that far from exonerating Trump on the collusion question, his guilt is substantially established. Mueller made clear in his report that lying by Trump's associates to the special counsel's office complicated and in fact obstructed any provable evidence of collusion by Team Trump.

One assumes the House Democratic intelligence and judiciary committees will utterly destroy Barr's twisted extraconstitutional defense of his client and properly reframe Mueller's actual findings. Hence an honest, authentic investigation of Trump-Russian collusion has yet to begin.

***

What still shocks me most about the "Barr Report" (versus reality) is the number of legal analysts I've heard on cable news say that they initially trusted William Barr to be an impartial "institutionalist" in his appointed role of attorney general of the United States, and not the president's personal attorney. As experienced lawyers, their trust was, at best, naive. Why would any political observer — lawyer or layman — have assumed Trump would appoint anyone but an underhanded loyalist who would corrupt the exercise of legal procedures just as Trump has corrupted virtually every aspect of executive authority? Barr's portrayal of the Mueller report was precisely what we should have expected. And this, it seems to me, projects a paradox: Barr's prominent loyalty has done Trump more harm than good; by making himself a target as well, the AG has merely highlighted, underscored and reopened the wounds of the president's crimes at the highest legal level.

If I can bear it, I'm going to watch A.G. Barr's extraconstitutional defense of Trump tomorrow morning. I hope to have some thoughts afterward. (I'm trying to get back in physical shape but it's taking longer than I expected.)

This is why we're concerned

The ways of the law — let's not call it justice — are a mystery. Politico:

"The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency," U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said during a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a Freedom of Information Act suit demanding access to a report detailing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller.

So what did Judge Walton do?

He denied a request from BuzzFeed to issue a preliminary injunction requiring the Justice Department to release Mueller’s report by Thursday.

"Not a ton" indeed

Among the more interesting findings of declared Democratic presidential candidates' charitable giving:

Former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) released 10 years of tax returns last night. He and his wife reported $1,166 of charitable giving from a total income of $370,412 in 2017, the most recent year for which they released a return. That’s one-third of 1 percent.

en. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) released 15 years of tax returns on Sunday, showing that she and her husband earned $1.9 million last year and gave $27,000 to charity — or 1.4 percent. Harris reported no charitable giving at all during her first three years as California’s attorney general.

The most generous of the top-tier presidential candidates appears to be Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). She and her husband donated $50,000 last year of their $906,000 income. That’s 5.5 percent.

As for Trump? The Post reports that he "donates his government salary as president…. It’s impossible to know how much Trump has given to charity without seeing his tax returns." In fact, would it not be impossible to know if he even donates his salary? After all, what hasn't he lied about?

…- - -...

The first 35 seconds, especially, are worth watching. (What France doesn't understand is that Trump would know better than its professional firefighters, since he had an uncle at MIT.)    

And a hearty congratulations to the first reader who translates this post's title.

Notre Damn!

I know some of you possess deep engineering or archeological knowledge, so perhaps one of you can answer my question.

Given the tragic incident taking place at Notre Dame — the news coverage on which I am transfixed — my question is this: How is it that stone structures, such as European castles and Gothic cathedrals, can burn down? Ancient and Middle Ages histories are littered with these incidents, but I have never read how this was materially possible.

My question probably seems rather stupid to those of you who understand the subject, but my question is genuine. 

How can Trumpeteers live with themselves?

Underlying E.J. Dionne's broad survey of the differences between our two major political parties is "the question raised again and again about Republican politicians…. Why, oh why, don’t they have the courage to speak up against a president who, many times a day, violates the most basic norms of decency?"

Dionne's somewhat reductionist answer is that Republicans "are overwhelmingly a party of whites and Christians," as well as "the party of older people," that "has been working hard for half a century to become monocultural and mono-ideological."

True enough, although other definitions just as properly reductionist abound, such as that of Jon Chait's: The modern GOP is “the transformation of a party into a cult of personality dedicated to the most unfit personality ever to occupy the Oval Office."

Speaking with the Times' Michelle Goldberg, House Democrat Jamie Raskin described the opposition in this manner: "The Trump phenomenon" — which is to say, the modern GOP — is "a religious cult surrounding an organized crime family."

Even the 18th century's François-Marie Arouet, otherwise known as Voltaire, had an eerily accurate premonition of today's Republican Party: "I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

Three centuries later, the Washington Post's insightful Anne Applebaum defined the GOP in terms of what it is not: thoughtful. "Moderates often achieve less than they could," she wrote in 2010. "But extremists achieve nothing at all" (except, of course, imbecilic tax cuts and unprovoked wars).

My answer is even more reductionist. Simply put, today's GOP is soulless. It is a squalid caboodle of lemmings mindlessly shuffling toward a sea of non-ideological nihilism, led by the most demon-possessed, duck-billed platypus of all times; it's a pathetic collection of authoritarian personalities; it's the greatest embarrassment of American political history — a sorryass assemblage of self-inflicted ignorance.

Hence there, Mr. Dionne, are some other answers — in addition to your own — to "the question raised again and again about Republican politicians" and their millions of like-minded disciples: "Why, oh why, don’t they have the courage to speak up against a president who, many times a day, violates the most basic norms of decency." The absolute shortest answer? They don't, because they themselves are egregiously indecent.

The historical misreading of virtue is a vice

I shall give Bret Stephens the opening shot:

"It was once the useful role of conservatives to [minimize shame] — to stand athwart declining moral standards, yelling Stop. They lost whatever right they had to play that role when they got behind Trump, not only acquiescing in the culture of shamelessness but also savoring its fruits. Among them: Never being beholden to what they said or wrote yesterday. Never holding themselves to the standards they demand of others. Never having to say they are sorry.

"Trump-supporting conservatives — the self-aware ones, at least — justify this bargain as a price worth paying in order to wage ideological combat against the hypostatized evil left. In fact it only makes them enablers in the degraded culture they once deplored."

Stephens' thematic essence is correct, although his timeline is a bit off — i.e., by about half a century.

Trump's precursor of shamelessness, "movement conservatism," was launched by its unlikeliest of founding fathers: Republicans' 1964 presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. Throughout his libertarian career, the Arizona senator had always honorably resisted — on ideological grounds — the public admixture of "social morality" and national politics. The cultural upheavals of the 1960s, however, allowed his advisers to persuade him that his only hope of winning the presidential contest was to go native with the fundamentalist crowd: the hustlers of right-wing Christianity, the Phyllis Schlafly types. Only in tub-thumping desperation did Goldwater agree — hence the true orange of today's movement conservatism.

He never forgave himself for having inaugurated his successor: the shameless, morally pompous New Right of the 1970s, which further led to Reaganism, Gingrichism and the like. To quote Goldwater from memory, "Perhaps I'm one of the reasons this place [Washington] is so redneck." This he conceded in his later senatorial career. What we call political religion is, by definition, uncompromising, which of course renders pluralism impossible. And Goldwater knew it.

Thus, historically, one cannot lay the "annihilation of shame" on only Trump and his supporters' shoulders. Its misguided genealogy of exclusively appropriating family, flag and God extends decades.

Until NeverTrumpers — such as Bret Stephens — comprehend and accept their collectively shameful past, conservatism will remain destructive — both to itself and the nation.

***

Personal note: I again apologize for my absences of late. My physical difficulties, compounded by a case of rather sinister clinical depression, seem to be waning, however. I'm not yet 100 percent, but I'm getting there. So I intend to resume my customary writing schedule. I thank you for your patience and understanding, and extend a special thanks to all who have written such kind words of support and encouragement via private correspondence and in the comment section.

Watch this. And that's an order.

Please excuse the Biden overdose of late, but a friend and reader sent this 19-minute video of one of his 2012 speeches — watch it, and I promise you'll never forget it. The speech is gut-wrenching, uplifting, and as genuinely human as a man can be. I have been there, where Joe once was, with the loss of a loved one far too soon, just as many of you have been there. How he kept a dry eye through the speech, I don't know. I didn't.