THE MAINE DIVISIONS

There are more “Impeach Mills” signs visible on Route 302 as I leave Oxford County, Maine and travel through Bridgton in northern Cumberland County. Every week I pass through on my way to South Portland where I  encounter no such political sentiments. Left-wing Democrat Janet Mills has been our governor here in Maine for the past year and a half. They love her around the leftist bastion of Greater Portland, but folks out in the hinterland of Oxford County and northern border region of Cumberland County have had enough and are obviously plotting her demise.

Also visible in rural Maine are “Bring Back [former governor] LePage!” signs and other evidence of left/right political polarization. In Greater Portland one sees lots of “Black Lives Matter” signs on the roadsides, on buildings, bumper stickers, and elsewhere. Also common are professionally-made lawn signs with multiple messages which would, taken together, convey coded progressive political sentiments.

For example, a very common lawn sign in Cape Elizabeth, Maine has: “WE BELIEVE” at the top followed by seven lines, each of different font size and color. One proclaims: “BLACK LIVES MATTER” followed by: “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL” which would seem to be a paean to open borders. Next comes: “LOVE IS LOVE” in lavender font which probably is a pro-gay, LGBT slogan. After that is: “WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS” which, given that abortion is most prominent in a list of women’s rights proclaimed by feminists, could transmit a pro-abortion sentiment.

Then comes: “SCIENCE IS REAL” which likely pertains to the controversial, progressive claim that 99% of scientists believe in anthropomorphic climate change. Following that comes: “WATER IS LIFE” but I’m not sure what progressive cause to which that might pertain. Last comes: “INJUSTICE ANYWHERE IS A THREAT TO JUSTICE EVERYWHERE.” Not sure of that one either, except maybe a belief that every injustice can be eliminated by a big government — with a resultant utopia.

Further along Route 302 another, anti-Governor Mills sign proclaims: “HEY JANET, IT’S A GOVERNORSHIP, NOT A DICTATORSHIP; OPEN MAINE NOW!” Which would pertain to her restrictive economic shutdown over the Covid virus. Another sign nearby says: “EVERY BUSINESS IS ESSENTIAL; END THE SHUTDOWN NOW! Near that sign, another says: “HOW MAINE SPELLS IDIOT: J-A-N-E-T  M-I-L-L-S”

Maine is very blue, along with every other New England state and so is adjoining New York state, but within each of those states is a divide between urban areas and rural areas. Each is a microcosm of the entire United States within which exists a similar dichotomy. Urban coastal areas of America are overwhelmingly leftist, while the rural interior is mostly conservative. Red/Green political maps of our country have reflected this for several presidential-election cycles.

 Jameesa and Bryan Oakley of Portland, Oregon

The progressive signs described above contain the logo of a Portland, Oregon company called https://www.signsofjustice.com. Visiting it, I saw they also made many of the individual “BLACK LIVES MATTER” lawn signs, bumper stickers, and T-shirts so visible around Greater Portland, Maine. The biracial couple who established the Oregon company states:

“Like many others on election night 2016, our family was left in shock and disbelief. How could a man who campaigned on hate become President of the United States?  What would this mean for our values of love, decency and inclusion? How could we rise above the oppression and make an impact?”

Another barometer of Maine’s political divide might be mask-wearing. It’s relatively rare in Oxford County, but ubiquitous in the greater Portland area, even on beaches. Last week, Governor Mills ordered business owners in Cumberland, York, and Androscoggin counties to enforce mask-wearing in their establishments. All employees and patrons sport masks, but several have pulled them down to their chins inside the store.

To deal with uncooperative Maine citizens like these, Governor Mills put up a tattletale web site for other Mainers to turn them in. Should you wish to do so, go here: https://appengine.egov.com/apps/me/non-compliance. It’s titled: “Reporting on Alleged Non-Compliance with Executive Orders,” and further states: “If you wish to report a potential situation of non-compliance to the guidance relating to COVID-19, you may report those details using this form. The information will be reviewed by appropriate agency or agencies and responded to as needed.”

Rural Mainers see that as Orwellian and wonder: what’s next?

Left & Right Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair.

The producer asks us if we think Mitch McConnell can administer an impartial Senate trial and if not should he recuse himself? I say, yes, he can. He’s a partisan, but he can be fair as much as anyone can, but Chief Justice John Roberts will preside over things.

Mark thinks this impeachment is much more partisan than previous ones, especially Clinton’s. He thinks Trump is guilty and cited reasons why including seventeen high government officials who testified before Schiff’s Committee. I begin picking apart some of that testimony but Mark interrupted me to say he didn’t want to talk anymore about impeachment — except to say one more thing. Then I respond to that and he responds to me… and on it goes.

We move to the Horowitz Inspector General report, which Mark says admits there’s no proof of shenanigans by the FBI and other Obama intelligence agencies. I counter that it says there was no documentary or testimonial evidence, in the first paragraphs of the 400-plus page report, but the rest lays out plenty of evidence, some of which I begin to cite. Then Mark interrupts again, but I go on.

Mark then brings up a discussion from a previous show about American oil production. Mark said I credited Trump with increasing production and he produced a chart showing steadily increasing production from 2008 when Obama took office to 2020. I accept the data on his chart and tell him that what I said on a past show was that Obama attempted to restrict hydrofracking activity by petroleum companies but was unsuccessful. He also restricted drilling on federal lands. Nonetheless, oil and gas production increased anyway. Trump, however, has cut restrictions on drilling and production has continued to increase at the same rate.

Mark then brings up a discussion we had last month about the Daleiden Trial in California. Daleiden was sued by Planned Parenthood for secret video and audio taping of conversations with abortionists at public conventions by Planned Parenthood. Then-Atty General Kamala Harris seized Daleiden’s computers and videos not yet released and criminally charged him. So, he was facing both civil and criminal charges for his actions, the only journalist in California ever to be so charged. I had claimed it was legal to secretly record a conversation if they were about crimes. Mark claims I was wrong about that.

I bring up how dangerous it is to wear a MAGA hat in public, especially in a “blue” area like Portland Maine. I had a 21-second video cued up of a 14-year-old Florida boy on a school bus being beaten by eight black kids for wearing a MAGA hat. Mark said he didn’t want to see it, but something went wrong with my laptop signal anyway so I couldn’t show it. He said I was looking for trouble when I wore my hat in Portland, and I found it. I said my objective was to show how intolerant the left is — that I should be able to wear a hat in support of the sitting president of the United States in an American city without being assaulted.

Left & Right Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Jim Wilfong again sits in the left chair. He's a former Maine legislator and worked in Washington for three administrations in the SBA (Small Business Administration). We open with a question from the producer asking if we'd like to see the White House participate in hearings by the House Judiciary Committee on impeachment. Jim would, citing the House's constitutional power of oversight. I wouldn't, citing rules made by the Democrat Chairmen of two committees rigged against the president and his supporters and denying him due process rights. Jim contends the impeachment process is more political than judicial given that there's no jury of peers, and "Politics ain't beanbag," as Harry Truman said. That leads to a discussion of Harry Truman, his association with Irish gangsters out of Kansas City, among other things. Nonetheless, we both agree that Truman was a man of honor who respected rules, and that trust is the currency in virtually all dealings short of war. I contend that even Irish gangsters had rules which they strictly enforced. Then we discuss the erosion of trust, especially between citizens and government, and that the impeachment process is exacerbating that erosion. Jim says our situation in that light is analogous to the 1850s just prior to our civil war. I cite the red/blue map of the USA as being red in the interior and blue on the urban coasts. In a smaller way, more urban southern Maine is blue while the rest of Maine voted for Trump. Jim picks up on that. He believes the divide coincides with an economic divide, that poor, rural people tend to vote red and also join the military. The producer's second question of us asks if Trump was being childish when he abruptly left the NATO meeting after a video of other leaders ridiculing him surfaced. Neither Jim nor I saw the video or were aware of any impetuosity on the part of Trump. We discussed NATO and the changing nature of war today. Though NATO was formed to counteract a WWII-type invasion of Western Europe by the Soviet Union, few military experts expect any such wars now. Instead, they expect things like proxy wars such as we're seeing in the Middle East. Ideally, we both agree, use of diplomacy is best when backed up by threat of, or use of, economic sanctions as America is doing now with Russia, N. Korea, Iran, and others. It's most effective when backed up by the plausible threat of, and use of military force. In that context I cited a new book about Jeffrey Epstein which purports that he was an Israeli agent, among other things, and that he had a handler in Mossad. It also claimed that he was closely associated with Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. I recall a visit to Israel a decade ago and seeing evidence everywhere of that nation being in near-constant state of war. Citizens are hyper-vigilant and many walk around with AR-15 slung over their shoulders, including what looked like 15-year-old girls. They probably were older, but they looked very young. When French President Macron claimed NATO was brain-dead, we speculated about what he may have meant. Jim guesses that he thinks NATO is stuck in a Cold War strategy and needs to change. Jim ponders motivations for US involvement in Middle Eastern proxy wars and suggests it involves control of strategic resources, which puts us in competition with China. I point to a former NATO official who is now a retired admiral in the US and speculates that Russia should be wary of China's designs on Siberia. We touch on with several other issues but end with using the next show to examine changing definitions of left and right, the title of our show. What issues define left and right? We will research the question.

Our Ever-Widening Gulf

Have we become a mutual scorn society? As the gulf between left and right in America steadily widens, it’s gotten to the point where primary divisions in our country are not racial anymore; they’re political. According to an article by Yoni Applebaum in the latest Atlantic:

In 1960, less than 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they’d be unhappy if their children married someone from the other party; today, 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats would be, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute/Atlantic poll—far higher than the percentages that object to marriages crossing the boundaries of race and religion. As hostility rises, Americans’ trust in political institutions, and in one another, is declining.

The right sees mainstream media (MSM) as in bed with the left while the left disdains alternative media like Fox News and AM radio as reactionary. According to a recent Gallup poll, 69% of Democrats trust MSM but only 15% of Republicans and only 36% of independents do. This should concern us because it’s a major shift. Gallup first measured Americans’ trust in MSM back in 1972 when 68% said they trusted it. In 1976 it was 74%.

It should be noted that that high trust level of 74% followed impeachment hearings against Republican President Nixon who had resigned two years earlier. As impeachment hearings on Republican President Trump proceed here in late 2019, MSM trust is down to 41% of all Americans. The widening trust gap isn’t just between Republicans and Democrats either. Only one in three independents trust mainstream media now.

When Democrats initiated impeachment hearings against Nixon, many Republicans in Congress supported them. Republican Senate leaders visited Nixon in the White House and advised him to resign. Impeachment hearings against Trump are completely one-sided and Mainstream Media coverage of Trump since his inauguration has been more than 90% negative.

When pollster Scott Rasmussen was interviewed recently by Sharyl Attkisson on her program Full Measure, he said:

78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. [Voters] think [reporters] use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened... If a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that. So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information.

Ciaramella and Obama's pajama boy

On October 30th, Paul Sperry of Realclearinvestigations named the original Trump “whistleblower” as Eric Ciaramella, who worked in the Obama Administration at several levels including CIA and NSC, then continued under President Trump. Both MSM and Fox News still refuse to identify him. When Congressman Adam Schiff began his secret impeachment hearings, he refused to allow Republican committee members to ask questions about Ciaramella. Schiff still denies reports that his staff had contact with Ciaramella before he “blew the whistle,” and coached him about how to file his original report to the NSC Inspector General.

Obama's staff warmly welcomes Trump on his first day in office.
Eric Ciaramella circled

Sperry also reports that Ciaramella worked with Obama CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Vice President Joe Biden, and DNC opposition researcher Alexandra Chalupa who was investigating the Trump Campaign in 2016. If all that is true, it’s easy to understand why Adam Schiff won’t allow questions about him. Schiff, however, insists he is protecting the “anonymous” whistleblower from potential physical harm, ostensibly from Trump.

According to the Daily Wire: “Mark Zaid, the attorney for the Ukrainian whistleblower, stated just days after President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017 that the ‘coup has started’ and that ‘impeachment will follow.’” It’s hard to dispute that Trump-hating Democrats and Republicans have had their knives out for Trump from day one of his presidency — even before as the Justice Department Inspector General Daniel Horowitz is expected to report December 11th. Trouble is, it’s not just the pundit class that’s deeply divided on impeachment. It’s the entire American populace.

When extended families get together next week for Thanksgiving, the more prudent will avoid discussing politics because divisions run deep at that level too. In most families, however, there’s always someone who will bring it up. Then there will be someone else who cannot let a remark slide and will feel compelled to respond. At that point, whoever is hosting should respectfully request that discussion of politics be off-limits for the day.

Thanksgiving 2019 may be the last at which imposition of such limits will be possible. Next year’s Thanksgiving will come only three weeks after election day. No matter which way the voting goes, tensions are bound to get even higher.

Left & Right October 23, 2019

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair and we open with a question from the producer about whether President Trump has improperly profited from his business enterprises as president. I cite the now-dropped plan to use Trump's Doral facility for a G-7 meeting, a resort that has been losing money of late. I question whether Trump meant to let it be used free to taxpayers as he said. Mark cites a Washington Post story of 2500 instances where Trump has profited from government using his facilities worldwide, and that his sons are making plans for future resorts in Asia post-presidency. Mark raises a recent statement by former Ambassador William Taylor, who claims in an opening statement before his secret testimony to Adam Schiff's committee that there was a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian president. Not having read the 15-page Taylor statement, I question him about details. Mark said I" took my eye off the ball" and I asked what ball? I said the ball his eye seems to be on is getting rid of Trump and I see this Taylor statement as another in a series of "We got him now!" efforts to bring Trump down ever since his inauguration. Mark sums that up as old conspiracy theories. I see Trump's experience dealing with corrupt politicians in NYC as good background enabling him to deal with strongmen in the world. Mark suggested that I think "Cozying up to all the dictators in the world is good foreign policy." I respond that any US leader has to deal with scumbags and sometimes "cozy up" to them to get things done. It's the nature of the job. My stated position is that I agree with what Trump is doing domestically and in foreign policy. Compared to what the Democrat candidates want to do, I'm still with Trump in spite of his sometimes obnoxious behavior. I suggest that Mark looks at most recent political events in the context of getting rid of Trump. He says he isn't. He says there are clear reasons to impeach him: non-cooperation with the House impeachment efforts, emoluments, Ukrainian things, etc. Mark said I look at conspiracy theory web sites and get obscure information that supports my political views. I say I look at lots of web sites, including the ones he looks at but he only visits the ones that support his world views and not sites that offer contradictory information. With five minutes left, we take the second question from the producer: "Which candidates gave the strongest and weakest performances in the most recent Democrat debate?" Having only seen parts of it, I suggest that Buttageig gave a strong performance and Biden gave a weak one, that he's never seemed a very bright guy and now seems to be more and more confused about what he's saying, and maybe he's in the early stages of dementia. Mark saw little of it too, but he thinks Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttegeig did well. He doesn't think Biden has dementia. "I think Biden's always been Biden," and he thinks the primary process pushes Democrats to the left and Republicans to the right. I close with the 2200 dead babies found by an abortionist from South Bend clinics that Mayor Pete didn't mention for over a month. That the abortionist was an admirer of Adolph Hitler. Mark hadn't heard about it and I said that was because his web sites avoid those issues. He asked why I think they'd avoid the Nazi angle. I suggested that it was because Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger had views on eugenics similar to Hitler's and media would avoid mentioning abortion in that context.

Left & Right October 9, 2019

Jim Wilfong of Stow, Maine again sits in the left chair for this show. We open with a question from our producer: "Do you support Trump's decision to pull troops out of Syria?"

Jim doesn't. He thinks it a very bad idea to abandon our allies, the Kurds, who have helped us at least since the First Iraq War under President George H.W. Bush, and in every operation in the region since. I have mixed feelings about the move.

We go on for some time discussing 100 years in the region's history back to WWI, after which the British and French carved up the former Ottoman Empire into the nation-states as they exist today, but they divided Kurdish tribal areas assigning parts of "Kurdistan" to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and not one of those countries is well disposed to the Kurdish minority within its borders. All see the Kurds as a troublesome, rebellious minority of which they'd prefer to rid themselves.

We go into Constitutional history in which the Founders gave Congress the power to declare war until Lyndon Johnson was given the power to conduct the Vietnam War by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in the 1960s. Then came the War Powers Act of 1973 which limited the president to act only in emergency situations, and then for only 30-60 days until Congress decides the issue. That, however, is being mostly ignored by successive presidents and Congress has allowed them to.

Jim goes into the Petroleum Politics of the region, citing that we are no longer dependent on Persian Gulf oil, but China and Europe are. He says Turkey is strategic as a site for pipelines for getting Russian natural as to southern Europe. Iran and the Emirates are also interested in getting their natural gas out the same way.

We spend more than half the show on these complicated issues in what is collectively called "The Middle East."

Then we shift to impeachment. I read a 1788 Federalist paper quote from Alexander Hamilton on the subject. He saw impeachment as a divisive and political process more than a legal process.

We examine the House "inquiry" going on now and conducted in secret, that media reporting on much of it is by unnamed sources, a "high government official speaking anonymously," and so forth. We compare the impeachment process in the 1860s for Andrew Johnson, in the 1970s for Richard Nixon, and in the 1990s for Bill Clinton with how it's going now. There is a consistent thread for the first three but not for what the Dems are doing to Trump so far in 2019.

Time runs out before we can thoroughly explore the Supreme Court case about a transexual person fired by a funeral home.

America's Widening Divide

America’s divisions are deepening. Evidence is everywhere with the primary divide epitomized by the continuing effort to impeach Donald Trump, hatred of whom is palpable. That division existed long before Trump, but he has come to symbolize it since his election in 2016. Opponents see him as a rich white guy and that’s enough to hate him because their world view is that no one becomes a billionaire without robbing the poor and middle classes.

Joe Hill

Hatred of the rich has been a central leftist dynamic since at least the early 20th century when IWW (International Workers of the World) activist Joe Hill inserted his song: The Preacher and the Slave, whose refrain is: “Pie in the sky when you die” into its Little Red Songbook.

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky; 

Work and pray, live on hay

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (that’s a lie).

Hill’s song is a sardonic view of Christians who believe in an afterlife and reflecting the Marxist vision that: “Religion… is the opium of the people” which purports that Christian teaching of earthly suffering leading to eternal happiness is a tranquilizer. The left believes a perfect society is achievable here on earth and Christianity impedes progress toward it. The US Constitution was created to limit government and preserve individual liberty and it, too, inhibits the leftist goal of utopian socialism by restricting the growth of government necessary to implement it. Folk singer Joan Baez sang “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night” at Woodstock.

That Trump is supported by the religious right and other conservatives in spite of his narcissistic tweets, his extensive history with marriages, groping women, dalliance with hookers, previous pro-abortion views, petty lying, and verbal abuse toward political rivals bewilders and enrages those on the left who want him gone. Opponents have tried to oust him with Russian collusion allegations, claims of illegal emoluments, calling him racist, obstruction of justice allegations, constructing a 25th Amendment contention of insanity, allegations that he violated campaign finance laws — have all failed. Three years of overwhelmingly negative mainstream media coverage about all that and more have neither put Trump on the defensive nor dented his support.

Though opinion polls show all the top 2020 Democrat candidates beating him, Trump’s opponents fear he’ll win anyway. Democrats controlling the US House of Representatives have suspended all other business in their effort to construct a case for impeachment. They think he’ll get credit for any positive legislation coming across his desk so they’re not passing anything. Socialist Bernie Sanders has long raged about “millionaires and billionaires,” and now so does current Democrat frontrunner Elizabeth Warren. Both have proposed wealth taxes that would confiscate 2% or more of their wealth annually and give it to the poor and middle classes in the form of Medicare for all.

Nearly all Democrat candidates call for a huge expansion of government to “prevent climate change” or the world as we know it will be gone in ten years. They would spend trillions in “reparations” for black slavery and purported genocide of Indians. How that would be done or how it would be financed is unclear. They’re all behind the House impeachment efforts — this time over a phone call to Ukraine purportedly asking a foreign government for assistance against a political rival.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters, while recognizing his narcissism, his marriages, his groping of women, his dalliances with hookers, his previous pro-abortion positions, his petty lies, and his verbal abuse toward political rivals, still defend him. Why? Because they fear an unimpeded expansion of government with its excessive regulation, its choking of economic growth, its infringement on personal liberties, imposing progressive notions of “non-binary” sexuality, and public financing of abortion. They fear leftist control of the federal judiciary, creeping globalism, open borders, socialism, and threats to national sovereignty — all of which they see Trump fighting against.

Trump’s supporters see mainstream media as in league with the Democrat Party and Never-Trump Republicans. They don’t trust the media and are not persuaded by them. When Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people,” they cheer. They know Trump’s opponents consider them unenlightened at best and “irredeemable”; “deplorable”; “xenophobic”; “homophobic”; and “Islamophobic” at worst. They believe Obama Administration officials spied on Trump’s campaign and his transition. They’re convinced that an anti-Trump “deep state” within the federal government continues to sabotage his presidency.

James Hodgkinson before firing on congressional Republicans

Both sides worry about violence. Trump opponents suggest a recent mass shooting in Texas was inspired by Trump rhetoric, as well as demonstrations and a death in Charlottesville last year. Trump supporters point to beatings of conservatives by ANTIFA thugs and a Bernie Sanders supporter opening fire on congressional Republicans. Both sides fear civil strife will escalate after the 2020 elections no matter which side wins. Individual families avoid political discussion fearing it gets so heated that it damages interpersonal relationships.

Left & Right September 25, 2019

Mark Guerringue sits in the left chair for this show. We immediately address the producer's first question: "If President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine as a means of pressuring them to dig up dirt on Joe Biden's son, should he be impeached?"

Mark says Trump and Giuliani have already admitted it, that's an impeachable offense, and Pelosi had no choice. (I should mention that the transcript of the call hadn't been released at this point in the show).

We compare Trump's possible impeachment with Clinton's impeachment, the process as it was begun under Nixon, and could have been under Reagan after the Iran-Contra scandal. We agree that's it's both a political process and a legal one, but mostly a political one.

We discuss how the Clinton impeachment backfired on the Republicans and speculated about how it could backfire against Democrats if they should proceed against Trump.

While we're talking, the producer brings us print-outs of the whistleblower's transcript just being released. Mark reads it and there's some damning stuff, but no smoking gun. Then again, it's only a few pages of a larger transcript.

Mark pivots to the Democrat primaries saying Elizabeth Warren is catching fire, while Bernie is sinking. I refer to that morning's proposal of a "wealth registry" by Bernie to one-up Warren's proposed "Wealth Tax" of taking 2% of the total assets of wealthy people annually. Bernie now wants to freeze their assets and take even more.

I bring up a transcript of a staff meeting in the New York Times last month in which its editor acknowledges how his paper geared up to cover the "Russian Collusion" story which went bust and how disappointed NYT readers were that Trump was still standing. Then the editor said he was gearing up to cover Trump and racism until the 2020 election. I said it was an example of the NYT and other leftist mainstream media orchestrating stories and narratives.

Mark said it was all okay and that's the way newspapers should operate. I said, "Okaaaay..."

Lastly, he brought up the continuing, extensive coverage of a duck killing by some football players at Kennett High School. I said I was amazed that it got so much attention. "I mean, it's a duck," I said. Mark said it was more the reaction of the community that the coach and other school officials should have handed down worse penalties than a three or four-game suspension. He asked me if I agreed. I said I agreed with the coach.

Buried With Bush

“Have they buried him yet?” I kept asking last week. Observances of former President George H.W. Bush’s death seemed to go on forever. For a week or more, media were completely dominated by commemorations of his passing. Services held in Maine, Texas, Washington, DC, and elsewhere were extensively covered. Very few stories have that much staying power in America’s public consciousness anymore, so why was it so hard to finally put old George to rest and move on?

It was a combination of factors, I think. He was the last president from the World War II generation, or “The Greatest Generation,” as NBC’s Tom Brokaw called it. When former senator, presidential candidate, and fellow WWII vet Bob Dole paid his respects to Bush, he had to be assisted to stand from his wheelchair in order to salute. Very few of that generation remain with us and soon they will all be gone. Not only will they be put to rest, but so, we fear, will the values by which they lived.

To them, family, church, and country mattered most. Not everyone from that era lived by those values but no one disputed them as ideals. Today there is no general agreement on any of them. Bush was married for more than seventy years. That he loved his wife and was loved back by her no one doubted. Except when he lay in state at the Capitol, most remembrances were held in churches where his extended family — and it is extensive — participated. The final theme dominant in the wall-to-wall coverage was his service to country beginning in WWII and continuing through his presidency.

Five current and former presidents were seated in the front row at Bush’s service in Washington. Of those, all but Trump remain in their original marriages, but lies and coverups of marital infidelities led to the impeachment of President Clinton — and may for President Trump as well. Last week’s release of data from the Mueller investigation prompted soon-to-be US House committee chairmen to salivate over the prospect of impeaching Trump for alleged campaign finance violations in the form of payoffs to two professed mistresses. It’s likely that many presidents have been unfaithful and some biographers have documented their infidelities. The same is true of kings, queens, and other past leaders, but publication was usually delayed until after they died. Not anymore.

Most dictionaries still define family as: “a group consisting of parents and children living in the same household,” but that description is now disputed by many calling themselves “progressives.” They see traditional family as a source of oppression, a haven for “the patriarchy.” Homosexual and transgender activists tend to agree and work to broaden the definition to include almost any grouping of human beings wishing to address themselves as such. If we haven’t reached that point already, most children will soon be born into a collection of people not comprised of a mother, a father, and children.

Churches are in steep decline across America as well with some predicting that soon the majority of us will be “unchurched.” That’s already true in many “progressive” regions. Religions we used to consider “mainstream” have sanctioned marriage between two men or two women. After over two thousand years, even the Roman Catholic Church is making noises in that direction since the election of Pope Francis in 2013. A preliminary statement emerging from a Synod of Bishops on the family in 2014 called “Relatio post disceptationem” hinted at a relaxing of Catholic teachings on homosexuality and divorce. Prominent bishops attending the synod, however, condemned that document and claimed that most bishops wished to preserve traditional teachings. In the four years since divisions within the Catholic Church have only deepened.

As for devotion to country, many Americans calling themselves “progressives” dispute the very concept of the nation-state, of national sovereignty, and of national borders. They support abolishing ICE, which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They marched in Washington, DC recently chanting “No borders! No wall! No USA at all.” Democrat leaders deny they support open borders while consistently blocking serious efforts to control illegal immigration or funding for a wall on our southern border.

Not only is there widening disagreement about family, church, and country, it seems we cannot even agree on who is a man or who is a woman. More and more “progressive” psychologists, clerics, and politicians are insisting that homosexuals are born that way but men and women are not. People who consider such notions crazy place themselves in danger if they voice their opinions. They could lose their jobs, be forced to undergo “sensitivity training” which some would call brainwashing, and they could be charged with a “hate crime.”

Buried along with George H.W. Bush, we fear, were the values of the generation that produced him. What comes next, no one knows.

Watergate Was Nothing Compared to This

First thing every morning I skipped down two flights of stairs to get the Boston Globe because I couldn’t wait to read the latest developments in the Watergate scandal then bringing down the Nixon Administration. Familiar as I still am with those details, they pale by comparison to abuses of power under the Obama Administration and its collusion with the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign recently coming to light.

President Nixon’s campaign had hired a group called “the plumbers” to plug leaks of information from his administration to the media. Their activities were legal up to the point when they broke into to a rented office of DNC Chairman Larry O’Brien in Washington, DC’s Watergate Hotel, hence the name of the infamous scandal. They were hoping to find embarrassing information to hurt Democrat presidential candidate George McGovern’s 1972 campaign against Nixon.

During the long investigation into this break-in, other illegal activities came to light including another break-in to the office of Daniel Ellsburg’s psychiatrist. Ellsburg had leaked the classified “Pentagon Papers,” which revealed that some of Nixon’s public statements about his conduct of the Vietnam War were erroneous, and the New York Times published them. Nixon was not aware of the Watergate break-in until the Washington Post began publishing stories about it. At that point he began using his executive power to thwart the investigation. That led to credible charges of “obstruction of justice,” for which he resigned to avoid impeachment.

Nixon had contemplated other abuses of his power like using the IRS to harass political enemies of which he had made an infamous list. He never did, but Americans were appalled that he considered it. The Obama Administration, however, did more than consider it. It actually used the IRS to harass political enemies, but The Washington Post and the rest of mainstream media were disinclined to investigate.

Conservative pundits claim most of the 62,979,879 Americans who voted for Trump last year believe Democrats, Republican leadership, and Mainstream Media all cooperate with each other against them. Variously called “Bitter Clingers” by Obama and “Deplorables” by Hillary Clinton, Trump supporters see their man as someone with the temperament necessary to kick all their a**es while he “drains the swamp” in which they all reside.

Denizens of the swamp went into a collective panic when Trump unexpectedly won. After the shock wore off, the lame-duck Obama Administration began laying traps for him using an obscure, never-enforced 1799 law called “The Logan Act” according to columnist Byron York. Using the Logan Act as justification, Obama officials cited the dodgy “Trump Dossier” constructed by an opposition research firm paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee (DNC). FBI agent Peter Strzok, whom Special Counsel Mueller recently dismissed from his investigation, used the dodgy dossier to obtain FISA warrants to wiretap both the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team.

Strzok and Mueller

It was Strzok, presumably under the direction of then-FBI Director Comey, who offered to pay $50,000 of taxpayer money to Christopher Steele, author of the dodgy dossier, to continue his research against Donald Trump during the campaign! Strzok also led the dubious FBI “investigation” of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Compared to these revelations, Nixon’s actions during Watergate seem trivial. Why aren’t Washington Post reporters looking into these developments?

Under dubious authority, other Obama officials including Susan Rice and Samantha Power requested hundreds of FISA transcripts including General Flynn’s December, 2016 contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during Trump’s transition. They unmasked Flynn to set him up for FBI interrogation four days after Trump’s inauguration. ABC reporter Brian Ross breathlessly reported last Friday that Trump directed Flynn’s conversations during the campaign! Ross had to retract it hours later and was suspended by ABC, but not before his report caused the stock market to plunge.

Flynn and Kushner

According the Buzzfeed, it was Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner who instructed Flynn to contact Kislyak and discuss the then-upcoming UN Security Council vote against Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. According to Fox News, it was K.T. McFarland. Whoever it was, their instruction was during the transition after Trump had won — not during the campaign — and therefore not within the realm of Mueller’s original charge to investigate alleged Russia/Trump campaign collusion. It’s perfectly reasonable for a transition official like Flynn to contact foreign governments, yet Flynn evidently lied about them to the FBI. Why? We don’t know.

As of this writing, neither Mueller nor anyone else has yet found evidence of Trump/Russia campaign collusion despite a year-and-a-half of investigations by mainstream media and Congressional Democrats. Trump supporters see them all as part of “the swamp” conspiring to bring down the Trump Administration. For that, there’s plenty of evidence.

Watergate was nothing compared to what I’m seeing now.